It turned out the system didn’t have anything Lilliana could throw at Fortunato. The Meadows had some hardened defenses around its banking sections and the computer cores that ran the slots and the gambling pits, and there were heavy defenses clustered around the public entrances, but its back corridors were depressingly unfortified. The computer-controlled defenses that she could find were in disrepair or offline.
She supposed that was all an equal stroke of luck for her side, but at that moment she would have happily relied on her own manipulations to make sure only the right people got blasted, if only there were something to blast them with.
She couldn’t even drop a door on him, though… while the station’s intruder countermeasures were malfunctioning, the safety protocols on its sliding doors were online and fully functional.
She did what she could to slow him down by closing doors off in front of him, but once he met up with the HAVOC forces, that option disappeared… their captain had a local override that could open all doors in a moving radius around him. She figured out how to get around that by designating the corridors beyond as “contaminated”… it seemed that someone had recently kludged together a high priority hazard flag that couldn’t be easily countermanded by any base security forces.
But these were office doors. It didn’t take much to get through them. Lilliana killed the lights in the cell and in the corridors immediately outside it, and also set up a redirect on all the visual feeds from within the security cell… by that point, it didn’t matter so much if anyone noticed she was working the system from inside there or not. She squeezed herself into a corner of the dark room, ducking down so that her head would not be at head level to anyone who entered and immediately fired into the corner.
She didn’t bother giving Regan any further directions… she knew Bard would do what she did best when confronted with a threat. Pretty much the exact opposite of what Lilliana did.
The game was all but over. She’d lost track of her allies’ progress, trying to slow Fortunato’s progress. It was just possible that they were close enough behind him that they could come metaphorically riding to her literal rescue over the proverbial hill.
Possible, but not likely. Bard could buy seconds, but not much more than that. Especially if Fortunato showed even a little wisdom or caution and sent the armored men ahead of him.
Lilliana fervently hoped that he’d prove to be unpredictable and impetuous to the end, and walk right in to take care of the ultimate loose end in his life himself.
In that, as in so many other things, he disappointed her. The door slid open. She could just hear the pulsing whine of the stunners discharging as Regan charged at the opening.
Sheer momentum was enough to keep her staggering forward a few feet…
It wasn’t enough to explain what happened next.
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