Hell to Heaven by Kylie Chan

Author:Kylie Chan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780732286873
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Published: 2010-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

Gold, Zara and Calcite returned early the next morning. I met them in the hub room, and found Gold jumping up and down with the two demons in hysterical delight. He came to me, grinning broadly.

‘Please keep these demons, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I know them from when I was bonded to serving the Dragon all that time ago. They’re hard workers and he treats them very poorly. Please let them stay.’

‘That’s already organised,’ I said, to a chorus of whoops from the two demons.

Gold touched my arm. ‘I appreciate your compassion, my Lady. These demons will work hard for us.’

‘Is the data back up? How close were you to finding the demon we want?’ I said.

‘Another thirty-six hours, ma’am. I’m sorry but the data transfer from tape takes time; it’s not a fast backup method but it is reliable and holds a lot of data,’ one of the demons said. ‘We have to physically run the tape past the reader and we can’t do it too fast.’

‘We can help,’ Gold said, and Zara and Calcite nodded agreement. ‘But it is still a slow process reading the tape, so we won’t be able to start processing the data again until at least lunchtime tomorrow.’

‘How much more time did you need on the original run-through?’

‘A pattern was beginning to emerge,’ Gold said. ‘Not so much showing people all headed to the same place, but they were being channelled through a number of different agencies to some common locations. We were narrowing it down.’

‘The web of companies involved is huge and complex,’ Zara said. ‘But we were definitely getting there.’

‘How much longer?’

‘We have about six more hours of crunching to do once we have the data back up, so by midnight tomorrow we should have something.’

‘Okay.’ I sat at one of the terminals. ‘Can I help?’

‘Yes,’ Gold said. He came to me and leaned on the desk. ‘Get out and give us room to work.’

I stared at him for a moment, then rose. ‘Suit yourself.’

I went up to my office to find the Tiger lying across the doorway.

He rose and stretched. ‘We have to stop meeting like this.’

‘Out of the way,’ I said, grabbing the documents out of Yi Hao’s in-tray and jumping over him to get into my office.

‘Whoa,’ he said as I sailed over his body. ‘That was a good three metres, babe. How far can you jump?’

‘Dunno, haven’t jumped in human form in a long time,’ I said. ‘Don’t have the room here, and on the Celestial I’m a snake and snakes can’t jump.’

‘Seems like they do sometimes, they move so damn fast,’ he said, sauntering into my office and sitting in the middle of the floor. He licked his paw, carefully running his tongue between his toes. ‘Your hard suit is ready.’

I flipped through the documents, then waved one hand at him without looking up. ‘Give me twenty minutes, there’s some important stuff here.’

‘You got it,’ he said, and sauntered out again, his tail twitching.

‘Wait,’ I said, looking up. ‘Where are you going?’

He grinned his tiger grin.

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