DAY 220

That night, in one of the smaller openings, Ky woke repeatedly to hear nothing, see nothing amiss. But every instinct told her that danger was much closer than it had been. In the morning, she was tired, and instead of eating lunch she lay down in that day’s rest stop and told Gossin to wake her when it was time to leave. She had just dozed off when the familiar stench woke her instead. She fumbled the cable from around her neck, and felt along the wall for the outlet. Green light. She plugged it into her implant.

“Ky, check your skullphone signal.”

“Rafe, how nice of you to call. Yes, I have a live skullphone connection. Why I have it when I haven’t had it for days now—”

“You’re about to get a call from someone you know, on a ship you know.”

“My, how mysterious.”

“Ky—it’s important. Are you awake? It should be day where you are.”

“I’m quite awake.”

She was certainly awake now.

“Don’t unplug your ansible cable. Leave that connection on, and answer your skullphone when it pings.” The ping of her skullphone followed.

“Hello again, Admiral. This is Master Sergeant Pitt.”

“Well met,” Ky said, still wondering what Rafe had done to the phone signal.

“We’ll be landing a fully equipped force in about two days; we received the sitrep you sent the Rector. Can you hold for two days?”

“Yes,” Ky said, her mental fingers crossed.

“Good. See you after we land.”

After that, sleep was almost impossible. She wanted to call Rafe back on the implant ansible and demand to know how he’d punched a skullphone signal through, but that would take more time than she had before Gossin came in to wake her.

She needed to stay alert and focused for whatever they actually found, and that meant—if she could stay awake this afternoon—using her implant to ensure better sleep than last night. They finished the day with another 180 kilometers covered, all boring.

NEARING PORTMENTOR
DAY 220

Rafe woke with a jerk when the pilot announced they were two hours from landing. “All’s clear so far. We’ll be on the ground unloading the scheduled freight; relief crew will take her on.”

The cabin attendant was up; Rafe smelled coffee and what was probably breakfast. MacRobert was asleep; the Rector was awake, sitting at the table. She had changed clothes; Rafe wondered how long she’d been up. Teague turned over abruptly, opened his eyes, yawned. Rafe made his way to the toilet and back to the table.

“If you want to wait, you can shower in the Vatta offices after we land,” the Rector said.

“Then I’ll wait. What’s next?”

“I thought you wanted to destroy their data center.”

“I do. Easier and safer on the ground. If I do it from here, they could trace the source. Because we’re moving.”

A shuttle with the Vatta Transport logo stood on the apron nearby, pallets moving down a conveyor onto a flatbed attached to a tug. Rafe looked out the cockpit windows. Early-morning sun lit the taller buildings of Portmentor, the sea beyond showed varying shades of blue. To the right a headland jutted out, thickly forested almost to the water. Rafe could not see the mountains, looking west, but knew they were a tall mass to the east.

“And here she is, right on time—” Grace interrupted his observations.

A skinny ship Rafe recognized from his own trip in it had just landed at the far end of the long runway. “Is that the same Vatta courier—?”

“Yes. We should go out the back way. Come on.” The cabin attendant handed them each gray coveralls with the Vatta logo on the back; Grace pulled hers on as if she’d done that many times before. She led the way to the back of the plane, past cargo racks full of boxes and bags. At the rear, the attendant opened the passenger exit ramp, and as they started down it, other hatches opened on the plane’s sides. Ground crew pushed over conveyors and soon cargo was moving out of the plane onto more flatbed carts.

A flight crew waited at the foot of the steps; when Teague, last in line, had cleared the ramp, the flight crew headed up. Grace led the way into the Vatta offices and then up into the second level, where they had an almost-unobstructed view of the action below and what was outside the hangar. By this time the Vatta courier was almost to the hangar. Rafe gave it a glance and then looked around.

“Communications center here?”

“Through that door,” Grace said. “Have fun.”

Rafe glanced at Teague. “You want to do this?”

“You need me?”

“No. Just offering.”

“Then no thanks. It’s your game.”

Rafe set to work. He already had the linkages he needed, and he uploaded the probes to power sources, carefully routing them variously, with lockouts to protect this location. One by one he opened the gates, directing more and more reserves toward the data center. Though it was just dawn here, it would be several hours before dawn there. He brought up the satellite surveillance for that sector, zoomed in on it. The sky there was partly cloudy, but he could see, in the infrared band, the heat signature of every cooling vent.

All he had to do now was open the last few circuits, the ones he’d primed from Grace’s house. This … this … and finally … with the surge protectors all disconnected, the overload went through the entire center. He imagined the arcs from machine to machine, to everything electrical, all the circuitry from HVAC to lighting, from doors to … and there, the scale alongside the infrared scan shot up—much hotter inside. The first visible light, at one end of a building, brighter than the security lights on the perimeter. They would have explosive charges to protect vital data—and yes, there went the first. The second. Every office building everywhere had something flammable in it, if the temperature was high enough. There would be flames soon, with those temperatures.

Red flashing lights appeared at the entrance end of the facility—alarms would be going off. Rafe grinned at the images on the screen. Tiny dots of light were moving around, but increasingly hard to see against the glare of explosions, fire, and the steadily climbing temperature. Smoke obscured the visual bands now, but the infrared showed long blocks of white, one building after another. The only thing missing was sound, but he could imagine that. Right about now, the pipeline should—and there it was. He could see the shock wave; the communications masts went down, not onto the burning buildings but into the parking lot and entrance gates. He glanced back at the outer room, to see if anyone else was watching. Stella was there now, talking to the Rector. He turned back to the screens, now with his headset on, listening across the bands for any chatter about it.

About an hour later, what he heard made him yank loose his ansible cable and plug it in.

“What?”

The Rector, damn her, was right beside him; of course she noticed his sudden movement. “They’re moving. They’re moving now. I didn’t delay them; I kicked them loose. I have to get to Ky—”

“Do it, then.”

DAY 221

Again Ky woke to the familiar stench. She had gone to sleep easily that night, aware that the enemy might already have landed, but also that they had hundreds of kilometers of lead on them, with a lot of very thick doors in between. Yawning, she hooked up the cable.

“Ky! Get out now; they’re almost there!”

“Calm down—”

“No, seriously—they left early. I thought frying their data center would slow them down, but it didn’t.”

“You fried their—how?”

“Never mind how—you’ve got to get out. We thought there were just over a hundred; there’s two hundred, on four aircraft. They’ve already taken off from the Pingat Base and they’ll be there in just a few hours.”

“I told you we’d left days ago.”

“But you’re moving slowly—you can’t be more than a hundred kilometers ahead of them.”

“I knew you didn’t get all I said. We’re much farther away than that; more like six to seven hundred kilometers. With doors they probably can’t open between us and them, assuming they even realize there are doors.”

“But they were in the base every year for … years. They have to know every inch—”

“No. Didn’t you tell me it’s not the same troops? It’s those other mercs. They won’t know anything.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Away from where they’re landing. I told you—” She stopped. “Maybe north. How’s the relief force coming?”

“Slower than I’d like. Stella just landed—uh—we’re in Portmentor; we’ll be flying again in a few hours, getting closer to you.”

“Not too close. Let the professionals handle it.”

“And what about you? Are you—oh. You’re a professional, too. Dammit, Ky, be careful.”

“I will be as careful as I can. And that means getting some sleep now, while I can.”

“Ah. Sorry; I should have realized—”

“Get some rest, Rafe. I’m going to.” She pulled the jack free and realized she was grinning. She’d surprised him again. She liked surprising him. Rafe was alive and well, the enemy had lost a data center, and somewhere in space Master Sergeant Pitt and a Mackensee landing force were on the way. Two days, Pitt had said. Even three wouldn’t kill them, she was sure. With any luck she had enough lead on the enemy that she’d merely have to deal with the boredom of riding a slow vehicle in a gray tunnel for several more days.

She let her implant put her to sleep.