Never trust an elf

Then Chigger gave a moaning chuckle, the same queer victory signal he'd uttered when he'd secured copies of the IDs used by the company that serviced Andalusian's phone system. The decker dropped into the real world and said, "Got a loc."

"Don't keep it ta yourself. Pop it over ta Rabo's screen and get back ta grabbing anyting dey got on da crystal."

The decker mumbled something and resumed his tapping on the cyberdeck. His screen still churned with agitated shapes, but the monitor on which Rabo had been following his progress blanked for a second. The new image that appeared was a diagram of the facility. Kham recognized the layout of the buildings, so he knew that the red dot identified their current position. A red line zigzagged across the compound to a flashing pip that should be the area where the crystal was stored. It was two buildings over. Kham didn't like it; too many of the areas on the diagram were dark.

"What's dis drek? How come so much is blacked out."

"Must be a partitioned system," Rabo said. "Different parts of the facility are under different security protocols."

"Why didn't Chigger cut into the main program?"

"There may not be one. Depends on how paranoid the security chief is."

"We got anyting on how secure dat area is?"

Rabo ran the keyboard, causing a series of windows to pop up and vanish in rapid succession. The stuff went by too fast for Kham to make sense of the data. At last Rabo hit the Enter key with a flourish and said, "There. That's what we got."

Yellow dots appeared at scattered locations of the diagram, some brighter than others. The clusters at the gates and in the security headquarters building Kham took to represent guards. Surprisingly, there were only a few along the route Chigger had shown them; the decker had done his job right.

"Alarms?"

"Chigger'll ride cover."

"Good enough." It had better be. If the decker couldn't override the alarms as the rest of the team proceeded, they'd bring all of Andalusian's security down on their heads. "Now just where is dis place we're headed?"

"Main assembly building. Ground floor's mostly open space and automated assembly lines. They'll still be running, which means supervisors, but we'll miss all that if we follow Chigger's route. We'll be coming in along an access tunnel into Basement Level One. The rock's three levels down on Number Four."

"Underground. Yes. That is where we must go." Scatter chuckled. "The spirits speak of secrets hidden beneath the earth."

Geez, don't need this mumbo-jumbo drek. If only he had been able to get a real magician. Kham tried to ignore her. "How come the security's so light?"

"Perhaps they are running the purloined letter gambit," Neko suggested.

Without Kham noticing, the catboy had joined them at the console. That meant nobody was watching the outside. Kham sent Ratstomper; he'd rather have the cat-boy's advice than 'Stamper's. Besides, with 'Stamper out of the conversation, Scatter wouldn't have quite so much support among his guys for this round. "Okay, catboy, what's dis letter stuff?"

"I meant that perhaps they conceal the importance of what they hide by not hiding it at all."

"No," Scatter said sharply. "There are magical defenses."

Kham didn't doubt that, even if he didn't believe Scatter had definitely determined their presence. "Ya gonna be able ta deal wit 'em?" "My spirits are strong." "Right."

They skimmed Chigger's data filchings for what they could use and laid plans to further penetrate the An-dalusian facility. Kham started to feel a slim hope that they might actually pull it off. Half an hour later, they left Chigger to dig for files and ride Matrix overwatch, and Ryan to guard the decker while he worked. They made it down to the basement without a hitch, but a sentry at the entry to the tunnel required a bit of special attention from Neko. The catboy amazed Kham with the stealthiness of his stalking and the sureness of his strike. The guard never knew what hit him, but then Kham didn't either. One moment the uniformed man was standing there. The next minute he had crumpled to the ground. They stowed the fellow in a utility closet, and waited for Chigger to signal that he had overridden the lock. Then they headed down the tunnel.

The entry to-the assembly building's basement had a manual lock as well as an electronic one. Chigger cut the latter, but he couldn't do anything about the former. Before Kham could regret having left Ryan with the decker, Neko stepped up and began working on the lock. His skill in opening it was another surprise from the catboy, leaving Kham to wonder why he had needed Ryan on the crew at all.