Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [178]
The guards didn't know which question to answer first. The saboteurs had arrived at water-level and climbed the towers with their bare hands and feet. A small explosion had shut down one of the six pumping stations, but the damage wasn't severe. In fact, the guards believed the bomb had been a diversion. The patrol on duty, disarmed by the friendliness of the locals, had probably been too complacent.
‘Sounds like a flaw in our security planning. We gave the people of Rhejak an inch, and they took a tower. Get this place cleaned up and repaired. Wake up the Company crews and any EDF engineers you need. The faster we get the facility up and running again, the less of an impact those yahoos will have made.'
One of the guards led a flushed Company man who was dripping perspiration from his forehead. Willis remembered him as Drew Vardian, the facility administrator. ‘That isn't the worst part. They knew what they were doing. They took two recirc sorters.' He raised his hands. ‘Recirc sorters!'
‘That means nothing to me, Mr Vardian. Explain yourself.'
‘Vital components, absolutely vital - the computer sensors that control the extraction and filtering systems. They sort out the metals and chemicals we want from the rest of the garbage. We can't run the Works without them.'
‘Now, that's a fine piece of news. How did these rabble-rousers know what to do?'
‘The Company uses locals for part-time work, anyone who wants to earn extra money, especially medusa herders.'
‘So, they just yanked these sorter gizmos and swam off into the night? Can't we track them down?'
‘They had small putter-boats, Admiral - fast enough to get away, but relatively short-range.'
‘Then contact Lieutenant Commander Brindle. I want high-res scans of the vicinity. Get me two Remoras equipped with spotlights. We're going fishing.' Willis put aside any sympathy she had for the people of Rhejak. They had abused her trust.
The culprits turned out to be three young men, the oldest no more than seventeen. They were racing through the reef channels in an unlit putter-boat, confident they could remain hidden. From high above, EDF scanners quickly picked up their body heat, the emissions from their small engine, and the metallic components of the stolen recirc sorters they had loaded aboard.
Two Remoras swooped overhead and hovered with a blast of engines, to shine a white spotlight down on the fleeing boat. The young men sat in the rocking boat, flicking rude gestures at the pair of fighter craft.
Meanwhile, on the water, Willis downloaded the coordinates from the Remoras into her guidance computer and chased after the rowdies in the raft-base's fastest skimmer. As her skimmer closed in on the bright spotlights, she watched the three young men through telescopic lenses. ‘Oh, crap. They're even stupider than I thought - stop them!'
But the men in the hovering Remoras could do nothing, and Willis's skimmer couldn't close the distance quickly enough. Stuck in their putter-boat over a deep channel, the three young men wrestled with two heavy hunks of machinery, each larger than a fuel barrel. Knowing there was no escape, the defiant kids rocked the components over the edge and into the depths. A splash swallowed the second recirc sorter just as Willis's skimmer closed in.
She yelled across the water, her face stormy with rage. ‘What the hell do you think you're doing? Do you know what that equipment cost?'
‘Cost? Maybe it bought us a few days' freedom!'
‘Why should we work, so you can send everything back to the dirty Hansa?' a second boy yelled.
She got on the comm and called her engineers. ‘Get divers. We need to recover those pieces.'
The youngest of the three boys looked as if he was about