Inner Discord, ch 39 v2 (Patreon)

Author Note: As the title indicates, this is a rewrite of chapter 39. information needed to be added for a later chapter to make sense, and while I usually 'make a note' so I'll add what is needed when I write the second draft, this time, I couldn't make that work, so I rewrote the chapter.

Alex regretted asking the moment the smile formed on Tristan’s muzzle. His Samalian read the screen, then called up information, the smile growing.

“We are going to survive whatever you’re planning, right?” Alex asked. The responding nod was distracted. He went over what they’d just talked about and what he knew about Tristan, looking for where the information intersected.
They couldn’t blow up the tower because of the consequences of releasing so much energy. There was the transportation system within the walls separating the cities. Tristan said it couldn’t be accessed from outside, but Alex trusted that if needed, his Samalian could make it happen. The defense system made using the landing pad a no-go since he couldn’t coerce it into ignoring them, and that same defense system made approaching the tower improbable, since the speeds and kind of piloting needed to keep from being hit mean there would be no way to stop so they could…
Alex looked at Tristan, still looking over information, his smile not quite sane looked. He studied his undeclared adrenaline junky of a Samalian. Then breathed easier when they headed away from the tower and out of the atmosphere.
Until he remembered a ship like theirs needed distance to reach the kind of speed a plan as crazy as he suspected Tristan was concocting needed.
“Isn’t the kind of energy needed to blow up the tower, which would ignite the atmosphere, be enough to turn this ship into slag?” he asked.
“I’m not blowing up the tower,” Tristan replied, grinning. “Just getting us inside.”
“And won’t going through those shields require energy on the same level?”
“Energy on that level, focused on a smaller target, isn’t the same total energy. And the ship can survive a burning atmosphere.”
That was good to know. “There’s a wall after the forcefield.”
“The materials used in shipbuilding are made to endure much higher stresses than any groundside building will require. The walls, with whatever reenforcement has been added to handle what the atmosphere throws at them, will give way before the structure of the ship.”
The grin was on the level of maniacal when he looked at Alex. “Put your harness on. This is going to overload the dampeners.”
The stars slid to the side until the planet was the only thing on the screen, and as Alex locked himself into the harness, they dropped toward it far too fast.
An alarm sounded a moment after he made out the dot that was the tower in the center of the uneven circle of cities surrounding it. Then his back pressed against his seat painfully and his vision dimmed.
He forced himself to remain conscious in spite of the force pushing him. The screen turned orange and red from the friction before it compensated, and Alex could make out the tower again, enough details to see they were approaching at steep angle. Then the image blurred as Tristan dodge incoming fire. There might have been more alarms, or it was being thrown left and right in the harness that made Alex hear things.
Then they came to an abrupt stop to the sound of metals and polymetals bendings in ways they hadn’t been designed to survive.
* * * * *
Alex gasped as he came away. Then groaned from the pain in his chest. Stopping this quickly and still being in his seat meant the harness had saved his life. By what felt like shattering every bone in his chest.
“I hate you,” he mumbled, using the board to push himself back into his seat, “I wish you’d let me take Heals before this.” He undid the harness and forced himself to his feet.
“Forgot about that,” Tristan said, sounding in pain, but still grinning. “Definitely want to be on those before I do this again.”
“You ever think of doing this again.” He opened the cabinet with the medical equipment. “And I’m locking you in cryo.” He took two hypos and injected himself with the combination Heals and painkiller it contained. “Now that Hart knows we’re here.” He lobbed the Samalian equivalent to Tristan. “Why isn’t he going to get in his ship and fly off?”
The Samalian caught it and injected himself. Some sanity returning to his eyes. “Multiple things. He doesn’t know we are here. Only that a ship crashed into his tower. He has enough information to guess you are in it. He is smart enough to expect you aren’t alone, but the best he can work out is that you have a team of merc with you, not me. So he will expect his security forces to be able to deal with us.”
He made his way out of the damaged cockpit and into the back, which wasn’t as damaged. “Once it becomes clear they can’t deal with us, he will retreat to his panic room to be with his collection, knowing that there is no way to get in one of them.” He pulled a satchel out of a cabinet and slung that over his shoulder.
“But not aware there aren’t any places made you can’t get into,” Alex added, looking at the damage to the ship.
“His desire to keep anyone from reaching his collection has locked him into a room with only one access.” Tristan smiled. “And as you said, I will open it.”
“And we’ll be leaving in his ship, I take it?” he asked, following Tristan into the hold, and then to the front hatch.
“It is there. It would be a shame not to make use of it.” The hatch resisted, sparks erupted when the hinges gave out. With a foot planted into it, Tristan forced it open and more sparks welcomed them into the tower, as well as a broken and buried bodies.
“How are we doing this?” Alex asked, gun in a hand, and knife in the other.
Tristan smiled. “As bloody and noisily as possible. After all, we want him to be well aware we are on our way.”
* * * * *
“Oh no, you don’t,” Alex said, as the tower’s coercionist zoomed toward a communication port. He rewrote his location, then was before the man, unleashing binding programs.
Alex couldn’t kill the man from within the system. That was the realm of fantasy vids. He couldn’t even keep him from exiting the system, technically, since all he had to do was disconnect from the outside. But the fact he’d headed for the connection told Alex this coercionist had forgotten the basics.
Or had never learned them. It wasn’t always easy to tell with coercionist who were good enough to develop their own coding processes. This one could be self taught, for all Alex knew.
What he knew was that the man was growing desperate to exit after the trashing Alex had given him.
“You really shouldn’t have fallen asleep at your post,” Alex said. “Sure, the communication blip you use to maintain contact with the net makes it neigh impossible for some outside coercionist to get in, but that’s not an excuse not to keep training.”
So long as he could keep the man panicked, he wouldn’t think to disconnect and do the hard shutdown of the data stacks Alex had ensured couldn’t be ordered through the system. His programs needed time to get him the map to the tower. He’d been hoping to give himself access to the panic room, but Hart was smart enough to have that on an independent system without an outside connection.
“So, how should I do this?” He brought up a query program and made alteration to its code before the man. “Get this to root through your mind and give me the codes to the vault?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the man replied, fighting the digital bounds.
“I find that unlikely.” He pulled a long line of code, rewrote it with data mining subroutines, and the man fought harder.
Self taught, Alex decided. There was no way someone typed the same disconnect commands he figured the motion represented this hard if they’d gone through the second year coercion-command course. Code was code, and whoever the better coercionist was, had control. At this point, there was no doubt who the better one was. Alex had thought it was an act the first time the man had panicked, an attempt at having him think he wasn’t good. But it had become obvious there was no act. The man was in over his head, had realized it, and freaked.
Alex wondered how he’d convinced Hard to hire him. He might not be corporate, but with the wealth he had access to, he had to be able to poach someone better than this.
The code when back into the program, and its representation change, gave it an aggressive appearance.
“Look, I’d rather not use this,” Alex said. “I usually have a rule against leaving a fellow coercionist as a babbling idiot, but if you insist on not—” his programs returned. “Don’t move.” He confirmed the information, sent it to his datapad, then smiled at the man. “My work is done here. Thanks for hanging around. So, word of advice, should you be able to find someone else willing to hire you after this. Remember that you aren’t actually in here. Just reach over and shut the connection off so you can attack from a different angle. It’s not pleasant if you’ve never done it, but it’s better than just sitting there and letting me do what I came here to do.”
Then Alex was out of the system.
Someone screamed, someone gurgled.
Alex turned into the chair and watched Tristan rip the throat out of a guard while another approached from behind. Alex leaned back to enjoy what was about to happen.
Tristan’s ears twitched, first in his direction, then to the back. With an annoyed expression, he turned and brought the body down onto the would be backstabber.
“You could have shot him,” the Samalian said, ears canted in irritation.
“And keep me from watching you kill someone? You know I never get enough of that.”
Tristan approached him, lips pulled back in a snarl that revealed blood covered teeth. Alex swallowed.
“You are lucky we have a job to do, Alex,” Tristan growled. “Or I would—”
Alex kissed him hard, dug his fingers into the bloody fur at the back of Tristan’s head and forced his tongue into the muzzle, tasting the blood there. He felt his Samalian stiffen, then relaxed and kiss him back.
“That isn’t the reaction me threatening you should cause,” Tristan said when they broke apart.
“Then don’t do it covered in our enemies’ blood. You know what that does to me.”
“They were going to interrupt you. Did you get what you were after?”
Alex took his datapad out and brought up the map of the tower. “It’s all there. Corridors, maintenance conduits, and even where the bedrooms are.”
Tristan looked at him. “Really?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Alex, if I was going to fuck you, it would be right here, right now.” He took the datapad and studied the layers. “But you’re going to have to suffer until after the job is over.”
“I’ll just console myself with the knowledge of what you’ll do to me once we’re in Hart’s ship.” He headed out of the room. “Come on. Let’s get this over with. I don’t intend on waiting forever for that.”