It was impossible to find a good place to hide.

Part of the problem was that Nyha had no idea who she and the girls were hiding from, and what their plans were.

All the hiding in the world wouldn’t matter if some zealots were here to blow up Cepi a week early.

But the other, more practical, problem was that there were no doors on any of the rooms in the ruins and most of their interiors had been stripped bare. Even if some of the waist-high carved stones that had been sprinkled throughout the ruins had still been in place, they wouldn't have provided much cover.

“We're screwed,” Vik whispered, summing it up succinctly.

Standing with the four girls huddled around her in a room at the far end of the top level, Nyha had to admit she was right.

She'd muted the sound on her comm set so she could concentrate on finding a place to hunker down, but desperate times were at hand.

She switched the sound back on. “Hello, Mak? Are you still there?”

“Where are you?” His voice was a deep, reassuring rumble in her ear.

“On the top floor, in one of the empty rooms,” she whispered.

“Are they searching for you?”

“I don't know.” But the chances were, of everyone here on Cepi, whoever had hijacked their pick-up vessel would know about her and the girls. It was their ride that had been stolen, after all.

“The best thing you can do is hide in one of the outside chambers in the ruin walls. Use a side exit, get out of the ruins, and I'll come and get you.” His voice was still low, but there was an urgency to it now, as if he knew something she didn't.

“We'd have to go down to a lower floor using the central spiral. There's no outside access on this level except the obs deck.” And whoever had hijacked the ship would surely have someone watching the spiral. It was everyone's way out.

“If you stay where you are, you're caught for sure.” Mak's voice was calm. “There's a side exit on the fifth floor, only two floors down from you. If you can get down there before they come up for you, you could make it.”

The idea of sitting here, fatalistically waiting to be rounded up, and either shot like the security guard or imprisoned, did not sit well. This was at least something constructive to do. “Right. Which side is the exit?”

He made a sound of approval, a sort of hum, as if he were a proud parent whose child had done well in a test. She fought down a spike of irritation as she waited for him to speak.

“It's on the opposite side to the docking bay, which is fortunate. Once you're on the fifth floor, go down the corridor, and you'll find a small balcony with no railings. If you look over the edge to the right, you'll see a graduated series of terraces. It should be possible to lower yourselves over the side with only a very short drop to each terrace until you reach the ground.”

“I'll let you know when we're down,” she said. “I won't speak while we're trying to get out.”

He grunted in response, and she had the sense he was running, or doing something strenuous.

She wondered if she'd seen him in the staff canteen. There had been quite a few security guards, and she hadn't known any of them by name. Although the ones she'd seen had all been in Kalastoni uniform, and from his accent, there was no question in her mind Mak was Arkhoran.

She explained the plan to the girls, and was pleased to see the tension in them ease a little at the possibility of escape.

“Absolute silence, all right?”

They nodded. Tilla was holding Fran's hand, and Vik and Ju were standing shoulder to shoulder.

They had come into the world in worse conditions than this, Nyha reminded herself, and they'd had to be strong their whole lives because of that rough start. They would get through this and they wouldn't fall apart.

She led the way back to the central spiral, every sense alert.

She could hear voices below, raised in shouts. The archaeological team had been found, she guessed.

She waited until everyone was standing beside her, and let herself be spun downward.

When she stepped off two floors down, she heard the shouting below had increased, and she winced as someone cried out in pain.

The lights in the rooms and corridors on Cepi were always on--no one had found a way to switch them off--and to her relief the area seemed empty.

When all the girls had stepped off the spiral, she led them to the only corridor she could see, walking quietly and close to the wall. The exit was a small open-air area, a balcony of sorts, jutting out from the ruin like a strange afterthought.

Sure enough, to the right there was a drop of about two standard units to another balcony that looked the same, except it had no access back into the ruin.

“Ju, you're the tallest, you go first. And wait until we're all down there 'til you go down to the next one.”

Ju nodded, and swung down easily with her usual athleticism. Vik and Tilla went next.

Nyha was crouched down beside Fran, showing her the best way to reverse down, when she felt the brush of air on her nape that signaled movement behind her.

She turned, heart thundering, and found herself staring at the business end of a laz. She skipped her gaze up, to the large hands holding it, and then higher, to clash with the dark brown eyes of a man in an Arkhor flight crew uniform.

“Quick thinking,” he said, nodding down to the girls below. “Very quick thinking.” Then he smiled. “But not quick enough.”

* * *

They were herded down to the docking bay. A woman and four teenagers surrounded by four armed guards.

Nyha wondered at the overkill of it when they arrived in the big loading area to find everyone else from the archaeological and support teams, some forty people in all, held by just six.

“Settle down,” the man with brown eyes shouted when a cacophony of voices rose up as soon as they entered the area. “Most of you will be leaving shortly. We're giving the authorities at the cordon permission to bring in a ship that'll take you all, and we'll be ferrying you across to it fifteen at a time in the pick-up.”

There was abrupt silence at that, and Nyha wondered if everyone felt the same sense of relief she did.

“What about my artifacts?” Professor Faro called out.

“Your artifacts?” one of the guards sneered. “Ours now.”

This was about the artifacts?

Nyha focused on the man who seemed to be the leader here. He looked in control, and completely sane, but no one could take these artifacts, sell them, and not get caught. They were unmistakably from Cepi. There had to be more to it than that.

As she watched him, he leaned in close to one of the women on his crew.

“Who the hell brought in a genuine believer?” he murmured to her. “I thought Cors weeded out the idiots.”

“I thought so, too,” she murmured back.

Nyha frowned, trying to work it out, when Faro's voice suddenly rose. “You have no right to the stones. No right!”

“Enough.” The leader stepped forward, shooting a disgusted look in the direction of the guard who'd started the argument with Faro. “No one says another word.”

He turned back, looked Nyha in the eye and pointed at her. “Except for you.”

He started walking toward the canteen, and raised an arm, flicking his hand forward. “Bring them.”

At his order, the woman he'd spoken to earlier jabbed her laz into Nyha’s shoulder.

“Move.”

Nyha looked over at the girls, hoping they just meant for her to go, but the other guards were prodding them too, so it looked like they were keeping them together.

She held out a hand and Vik took it, and the others all latched on, so they walked in a row, linked together.

As they passed the archeological team, she caught sight of Faro and Garett standing together. Faro's expression was one of horror, Garett's was stone cold and absolutely without emotion.

Catano had maneuvered herself to the edge of the crowd, and as Nyha passed her she flicked her gaze to Nyha's ear, then rubbed a finger over her lips.

Nyha frowned at her, then she was shoved by the woman and stumbled forward.

Oh, she got it.

Catano wanted her to keep quiet about the comm set. As if she hadn't figured that out for herself.

But it also told her Catano had lied to her.

She hadn't been rebooting the comm set. She'd deliberately set it to the same wavelength as Mak's. Which meant she suspected something was wrong when Captain Farga's transmission had cut off.

Why hadn't she said something?

And why not set her own comm set to connect with Mak's? Why do it to Nyha's?

Because no one here took her seriously.

The answer came swiftly, and hit all the right notes for Nyha. Catano knew Nyha and her girls would be the last group anyone would expect to be in clandestine communications with a security guard.

Although . . . had Mak been scooped up with everyone else?

She was sure he'd been running when they spoke a little earlier, so maybe he'd gotten away.

She hoped, she really hoped, that someone had.