Paying Dues - A Sallie Starlinger Story

Ascent

Now that the ministry rooftop was clear of shitheads, Sallie was free to begin the next phase of her infiltration. She set the sniper rifle aside in favor of a penetrating grapple launcher. Though the grapple couldn't penetrate crystalanium like the windows of Brig. Gen. Lia's office, it could melt its way through common bullet-proof glass easily enough. And it appeared that only people important enough to have offices above the 25th floor rated crystalanium windows. As long as she fired the grapple into a window on the 25th floor, it should be able to secure itself. Only question was whether or not the suction cups would work on wet glass...

One way to find out. Sallie took careful aim at the window of an empty office on the 25th floor. The window was clear of the view of any camera or sensor. It was a blind spot in the building's defenses. The sighting scope on the grapple launcher wasn't nearly as advanced as the one on the sniper rifle had been. Nevertheless, when Sallie pulled the trigger, the projectile's minirocket carried it true, unspooling a trail of nearly invisible nanocable behind it. The projectile hit right where she'd aimed it.

Through the launcher's sighting scope, Sallie watched with satisfaction as the suction cups held the projectile to the glass. Next, a small thermite charge fired into the bulletproof glass melting a small hole through the window. A couple drops of molten glass dripped down the side of the building in steaming orange streaks which quickly cooled in the rainy night air. After several seconds, the glass around the new hole cooled. The projectile inserted its primary payload, the grapple itself, through the small hole it had made in the bulletproof glass. Once through, the grapple expanded and now the nanocable zip line was secured. The near-invisible but super-strong cable would carry Sallie from her present perch atop the nearby building to the side of the defense ministry building.

The building's defenses had been designed around either a major aerial attack from above or a frontal ground assault from below. So Sallie would come at them sideways. She switched momentarily back to the rifle and looked through its superior infrared scope. No one seemed to have heard the grapple. Gen. Lia still tossed fretfully about on the cot in her office. Looking at her former lover through the scope, Sallie lingered on Sissie briefly. A true soldier, Siskin had always been more comfortable on a cot than an actual bed. Next, Sallie raised the scope's view upward to check the rooftop. There was no action on the rooftop yet, but eventually, the two dead sentries would be discovered. She had to hurry.

She double-checked that she had her supersonic parachute secured properly on her back—wouldn't want to forget that—and that she had her climbing harness set up properly. She was ready to go. She stood at the edge of the forty-one story building and stepped off into the nighttime nothingness with only a nanocable thinner than a human hair to hold her. The zip line trolly's micropulleys hummed angrily as they carried Sallie over the rooftops of the smaller buildings below. Her feet dangled over nothingness as rain and darkness slanted away into the dimly street-lit void below. Sallie knew that any human would be afraid of the height, but that's because humans had all evolved from monkeys. They still harbored a subconscious fear of falling from trees. Sallie was no mere human and thus suffered from no such irrational fears.

At the end of the zip line, Sallie came to a stop on the outside of the 25th floor of the Olost defense ministry. Now, she had about 13 floors of smooth, vertical crystalanium to climb up the side of the building to get to the roof. The storm, determined as ever, continued to provide cover for Sallie's nocturnal activities, but it also made everything she touched slippery. Suction cups would never work to get her up to the roof. Luckily, Sallie had anticipated this and brought a set of grav anchors. The grav anchors were noisy, and not much faster than suction cups, but they wouldn't be affected by the surface being wet.

The grav anchors looked like metal disks, about ten centimeters in diameter with a handhold on one side. Sallie turned one disk on and placed it against the wet glass of the building's side. A low humming sounded from the disk as it used gravimetric forces to anchor itself to the side of the building. The disk's hum didn't sound like much from outside the window, especially with the roar of the heavy rainstorm, but Sallie could only guess how loud it must sound inside the building where the glass would act like the head of a drum. Anybody on the 25th floor should be able to hear it. Luckily, the building was mostly empty at this hour. If she hurried, she could get to the next floor by the time anybody traced the sound to this window. Holding all of her weight with that one arm, she hauled herself up. She turned the other grav anchor on and placed it against the glass as high as she could reach above the first one. Now, the two anchors were harmonizing with one another. The cacophony inside the 25th floor must be intense by now. She pressed the release button on the lower anchor, pulled herself up with the upper anchor, and repeated the process.

In this fashion, she pulled herself up the side of the building, hand-over-hand. Her legs dangled uselessly below her. The powerful, specially designed muscles in her arms were more than strong enough to carry her mere 39 kg of mass and the 20-or-so kg of gear she was carrying. Hand-over-hand, as fast as she could, she scaled the building. A half a meter at a time, floor by floor. She knew she'd definitely been heard on at least one floor as she looked down and saw flashlights shining out through the crystalanium below her. But she was nearly to the top by that point.

She hauled herself over the railing and onto the roof. The two huge, hulking missile launchers slept inside their weatherproof housings. The two dead sentries slept their endless sleep in pools of blood and rainwater. And one NCO kept warm and dry inside a control booth, oblivious to how near death was. That was when the alarm sounded. Likely someone had finally found her zip line grapple anchored against the glass way down on the 25th floor