Hellflower (v1.1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

keep-aways and don’t—worrys arranged neatly on its chest and arms. Its optical sensors glowed red in the dark but most of its dull gray hide was a dull gray blur. I wished I’d brought some night-goggles, but they would of raised eyebrows at the front desk when I was scanned and the info Pally had said the Justiciary was kept lit at night on all levels. On the other hand, if I died right here I wouldn’t need to see anything.
    The tronic turned and walked away.
    "I told you so," Paladin said smugly. "Machines are stupid."
    I was challenged twice more-once by another securitronic, once by a housekeeper-and each time Paladin answered for me. I carded the little access door set into the big "for-show" courtroom doors and slipped out.
    The hall outside wasn’t dark. It was pitch black.
    "Helluva time for the high-heat to start economizing," I muttered, staring/not staring into the dark. "Now what?"
    "Hm," said Paladin, just to let me know he was still there.
    I could tune my pocket-laser to a torch, which the manufacturer does not recommend you do. I was just about to see if I could do it by feel when I heard heavy tronic-steps coming toward me and the whine of a housekeeper’s treads coming up behind.
    Paladin sang out in a flurry of musical notes as I scrambled the securitronic right between its little red eyes with my stunner and then whipped out another shot to about where its brain ought to be. The guard hit the floor with a clatter, and the housekeeper nuzzled up to my ankles and went around me.
    The nice thing about a solenoid stunner is that it’s completely harmless to organics and death on tronic brains.
    By the glow of my retuned laser I could see the housekeeper merrily disemboweling the ex-securitronic. The lift to Security Detention was a few meters away.
    "Here’s where thee-an-me subdivide, Pally," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
    "I will monitor all city-wide communications," he said, not sounding really wild about all this either, "and brief you when you come out." When you come out. Thanks for vote of confidence, little buddy. "Won’t be long," I said.
    The lift door opened. I got in and stood there for a while feeling stupid, then it reopened on Detention level.
    I was looking at a man in a CityGuard uniform standing in front of a console with a securitronic on either side of him. I scrambled both of them, and while he was still trying to figure out why they didn’t work he let me get close enough to him to hit him over the head with my stunner.
    Never depend on your technology.
    Then I was past the check-in point and running down a long corridor three tiers high and lined with doors. I’d borrowed the Guardsman’s blaster, so I used it to zap two more tronics. I wished I had Paladin with me to tell me about all the alarms and excursions being raised all over the place.
    Tiggy’s cell was at the very end, but at least it was on the bottom. I switched the setting on my borrowed blaster from "annoy" to "leave no evidence" and blew the lock out. The cell door sprang right open, and there was my hellflower.
    He was chained hand and foot for punishment drill, and spread out on the wall pretty as a holo. The Justiciary’d took his jewels and all his clothes in payment of fines, and he was wearing a pair of Det-ish pants that didn’t fit by a long shot.
    And the look on his face was everything I could of hoped for. "Chaudatu, " he finally said. "Not you again?"
    "Yeah, me. I’m here to rescue you."
    Later, when Paladin got his, um, hands on an alMayne lexography, we found out that "chaudatu" means "outlander," except that what it really meant is "anyone who is not alMayne and therefore not a real person." Unfortunately, even if I’d known that at the time it wouldn’t have made any difference.
    I got out my picks and got to work on Tiggy’s shackles-feet first, then hands-and hoped that Time, Fate, and bureaucratic cock-up would give me the fistful of nanoseconds needed to get