As befitted a mega rich criminal mastermind, at least that was how he saw himself, Biggar Fro had taken the most expensive suite in the hotel. High above the streets the lighting of the penthouse was visible as far as the horizon. Even the rippling caused by the reflection from the waters of the private swimming pool was clear to the naked eye. To reach the exalted heights, a visitor had to get past three levels of security before being allowed into the private elevator that would whisk the occupant at gravity defying speed to the two-hundred and twenty-fifth floor.
However, An Kohli had no intention of using the private elevator. Not when she had a perfectly good jetpack at her disposal.
The roof of the penthouse itself was covered with so many pressure sensors that any bird foolish enough to attempt a landing would be blasted to oblivion by the automatic firing shotguns that were placed around the roof’s perimeter. Only then, after the shooting stopped, would a security guard come to see what had tripped the alarm and caused the guns to fire.
But an Kohli wasn’t foolish enough to attempt to land on the roof of the penthouse. Between them she and Gala had spotted the weak point in the security of the hotel; the roof of the generator house that fed the power to the anti-gravity beams that propelled the elevators up the towering building and then controlled their fall as they responded to the planet’s gravity when the power of the beams was reduced. Any system designed by a male, An Kohli thought as she reduced the thrust on the twin jets strapped to her back, can be beaten by a female; especially when that female has the engineering skills of Gala Sur at her disposal.
An Kohli made a last check around the edge of the generator house roof to make sure that there were none of the deadly shotguns, but it was a smooth as a sheet of glass. She cut the power and dropped the last few sim, flexing her knees to absorb the minimal shock. She shrugged her way out of the jetpack’s harness and lowered it quietly to the roof’s surface. She would need it later to make her escape, but until then it was only an unnecessary encumbrance.
She lay down on her belly, dragged herself to the roof’s edge and started to feel along the underside of the small overhang. Finding nothing she shifted along a bit and tried again. On her fourth attempt, her fingers found what they were seeking. The cable that fed the power to the sensor pads. The alarms themselves were triggered by wireless signals when the pads reacted to pressure, but like all such systems they required electricity to make them work. Once the sun had sunk below the horizon at the end of the day the pads needed power to be fed to them to replace the solar energy; a small weakness, but a vital one, at least for An Kohli.
Reaching for her belt she pulled out a pair of wire cutters and snipped the cable. There was a brief flash of sparks as the twin cores of the cable were pressed together by the sharp ceramic edges of the cutters and created a short circuit. There was no sound of an alarm and the shotguns remained inert. She watched as the miniscule green glows of the myriad of power indicators went out, one by one, as the small internal batteries of the pressure pads exhausted their charge. It took twenty standard minutes for the last one to wink out, just as Gala had predicted.
An Kohli turned herself around and lowered her legs over the edge of the roof, letting the weight of them drag her body after them. The generator’s roof was barely higher than her own willowy self, so she only had to drop a few sim before she would be on the penthouse roof. She braced her body for what might follow and let go. Every muscle cringed in expectation of a shower of explosive powered shrapnel, but nothing happened. No backup system, just as Gala had assured her.
“I’m on the penthouse roof. Systems disarmed.” An Kohli whispered.
“OK. I’ve managed to get into the computer system. There’s no indications of any alarm having been triggered.”
“Can you disable them?”
“No. There’s about three different passwords required to get into the control panel. The best I can do is tell you if you’ve tripped an alarm.”
“OK. Well, if I do that it’s probably game over, but thanks anyway. OK, I’m going over to the access hatch now.” She used one of her elegantly varnished fingernails to flick a switch and deactivate her communications system. The last thing she would need now is for Gala to interrupt and distract her at a critical moment.
The glow from the penthouse’s lights gave her enough illumination to be able to identify the service hatch that gave access to the roof. She wondered idly how often someone had to come up and remove the shattered carcasses of birds and to reload the shotguns. She pushed the gory image from her mind and forced herself to focus on the task at hand.
The hatch wasn’t secured; after all, why should it be? No one could land on the roof so there was no need to lock the only way down from it. A ladder was secured to the wall beneath to allow the maintenance team to climb up and down. An Kohli lowered one leg through the small square and onto the top rung. The ladder gave her access to a short service corridor which emerged beside the door of the main elevator. Now she was standing with her feet sinking into the thick pile of the carpet of the corridor that led the short distance from the elevator to the main door of the penthouse.
Staring straight at her was the unmistakeable shape of a camera lens.
An Kohli pulled her Menafield Pulsar from its holster and pointed it towards the door. If anyone was going to come to challenge her she would be ready. She counted to ten. The door stayed shut. She counted to another ten. Still no reaction from within the penthouse.
Biggar Fro would be asleep of course, but why had his security guards not reacted? There could be only one explanation. They too were asleep. Asleep on the job, too complacent to believe that the hotel’s security systems could be defeated. Well, someone was in for a rude awakening.