“What do we tell the girls about the doc, Captain?” Vasouvy's voice was urgent in Mak's ear. “They want to go back in for her.”

“I've got her. She's safe, but I can't get her out right now, it isn't clear.”

“Right. Erenn's contacted Sinjin. They're sending one of those small pods to fetch them.”

“One of you goes with them. Not negotiable.” He wasn't trusting those girls to the cordon officials without one of his own team watching out for them.

“Got it. Speak soon.” Vasouvy dropped out, and Mak concentrated on getting himself and Nyha back to the circular room.

She stood behind him, pressed up against his back, her arms and legs hidden by his, her forehead pressed between his shoulder blades as they slid along the wall.

The guard he'd smacked in the back of the head ran past them just before they reached the central atrium, and they stood still as he stopped in the middle of the passage, did a turn, as if hoping beyond hope he would somehow discover which way Nyha had gone.

“What is it?” Garde jogged toward him, coming back from the passage the girls had escaped from.

“She disappeared. Just disappeared.” The guard rubbed his face in disbelief. “I know it sounds crazy, but one moment she was there, the next, she was gone.”

Garde's lips thinned. “Actually, I do believe you.”

He seemed to slump with relief at her words.

“Something's going on here. Come with me.” She carried on past him, toward the docking bay. “Have you spoken to Cors?”

Her voice faded as she turned a corner, and the guard's response was unintelligible, but it focused Mak's mind.

He'd almost forgotten about Cors.

Mak had passed him on the way to rescue Nyha. He'd been stalking down the passage toward the room where they'd kept Nyha and the girls, fury and temper in every line of him.

Where was he? It didn't take that long to free two people.

Mak hesitated before stepping into the open, central space, and Nyha leaned against him.

It felt good, he forced himself to admit.

“What now?” she whispered.

“We run.” He grabbed her hand and stepped into the atrium, keeping to the walls, avoiding the exposed center.

“Slowly now,” he told her as they started down the passage where Cors still lurked. “Get behind me again.”

They made their way sideways, keeping to the opposite side of the passageway to the room she'd been held in.

When they reached the opening to the room, Mak paused.

Cors was kneeling on the ground beside Hamand, his hand fisted in the guard's shirt.

“I'm telling you, she was talking to someone. Someone other than those girls. We approached her to find out who, and what she was using to communicate, and she attacked. We were taken by surprise.”

“He's telling the truth.” Baint was sitting with his forehead on his knees, his voice muffled. “One minute they were sitting there, sweet and quiet, the next, they took us down.”

Cors stood, held out a hand to Hamand and pulled him to his feet. “Go find Garde, help her get those girls back.”

“Yes, sir.” There was an undisguised glee in Hamand's tone as he ran off to obey.

“What're you thinking?” Baint asked as Hamand's footsteps faded away.

“Maybe losing those girls isn't such a bad thing.”

Cors's response froze Mak in place just as he was about to shuffle on.

“What?” Baint lifted his head, mouth open.

“This whole operation has gone to hell. It was desperate to start with, and there is no fucking way we're getting that generator out of here. No fucking way, whatever alternative reality Veld and Garde are living in.”

“But I thought . . .” Baint tailed off. Cleared his throat. “I thought they knew how to get it out.”

“Theoretically.” Cors's voice was scornful. “I should have known better. I did know better, I was just temporarily blinded by the money.”

“Wasn't that high placed official supposed to run inference for us, though? Give us time?”

“With this moon headed straight for Kalastoni? No matter how special those Halatians are, do you really think one high-up can persuade the Verdant String to sacrifice a whole planet for them?” Cors shook his head. “If we had a way to get that engine out quickly, this would have worked. I was just down there, and we don't. No way.”

“What do we do, then?” Baint pushed slowly to his feet, and Mak felt a frisson of pride in Nyha when Baint winced as he straightened. She had done some damage there.

“I'm going to have to think about it. But one thing's clear.” Cors waited for Baint in the doorway, and by the way the two men reacted to each other, Mak had the sense they were old friends. “We're making a Plan B of our own.”

They walked away, and as soon as they were gone, Mak grabbed Nyha's hand and pulled her along to the circular room around the corner.

It was time to find out what was under this ruin.

* * *

It was hard following an invisible man, even if he was holding your hand.

Nyha stumbled a few times as she bumped into Mak, but it didn't take long before they were in the circular room she and the girls had spent an hour or so in just the day before.

The air in front of her flickered and then suddenly a massive figure all in black stood in front of her.

His hand came up and touched the side of his helmet, and as the glass retracted, Nyha got her first look at her rescuer.

Steady gray eyes watched her from under dark, straight brows, all set in a sharp-angled face of bronze skin.

She smiled, and his lips quirked up in response.

“Nice to meet you, Mak.”

The twitch of his lips turned into a full-blown grin. “Likewise Dr. Bartali.”

He crouched, and she realized some of his bulk was his equipment. He had a pack on his back, and he was wearing what must be a space-ready suit.

“Going spacewalking?” she asked, crouching down opposite him.

“I hope not.” There was a flash of worry in his eyes, and the lightheartedness that had bubbled up in her fizzled away.

“You think there's a chance this place will go boom while we're still on it?”

He hesitated, and her mouth dropped open.

“You do!”

“It's a possibility. A possibility I'm going to make it my mission to see doesn't come to pass, all right?”

She gave a fervent nod. “I'm behind you on that.”

There was that quick quirk of his lips again.

“We have to turn this disk,” he told her. “We both turn it clockwise from each side.” He put his hands on it, and she copied him, pressed and turned the disk when he did, and then scrambled back as a hole appeared in the floor.

“Jump in,” he said to her.

“Are you crazy?”

He shook his head. “Please, Nyha. Just go.”

She shot him a look that promised revenge, and jumped.

It was as if she'd blinked and landed somewhere else; a dark, echoing space.

She moved away, knowing he was coming after her, and then he seemed to just be there, in another blink.

“What is this?”

“Damned if I know. But whatever it is, someone here's known about it long enough to set up this whole hijack, as well as The Calling's court application, and your invitation to the ruins.”

“Garett,” she said, and there was venom and satisfaction in her tone.

“Garett,” he agreed. “At least him; probably others.”

“Not Faro,” she said. “Unless he's an undiscovered great of the acting scene he was genuinely working around the clock to preserve the artifacts, and was equally annoyed with my and the girls' presence here.”

“You didn't like Garett?” he asked as he led the way down a dark passageway that seemed to get more and more narrow.

He'd unclipped a light from his belt, but she couldn't see much past the breadth of his shoulders and the bulk of his pack.

“He was a smarmy little asshole,” she said. “Hovering over my shoulder half the time, ignoring me the rest. And always with a slightly condescending air about him.”

Mak made a humming sound. “You get strange vibes from anyone else?”

“No. Well, except Catano. Who I'm guessing is a colleague of yours?”

He turned and looked back at her. “Yes.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Standard Arkhor Special Forces team of seven,” he said.

“Ah.” She got it now. “Last ditch power grab from the mother planet, right? Arkhor giving the finger to Kalastoni one last time?”

“That's most likely exactly what it was.” She could hear the grin in Mak's voice. “But aren't you glad of mother planet interference now?”

He had a point. “Extremely. Arkhor can interfere as often as it likes, if it always turns out to be this useful.”

The passage was now only just wide enough to accommodate them single file, and then suddenly Mak stepped aside, and they were in another circular room.

From the direction they'd walked, she guessed they were underneath the atrium, directly beneath the spiral.

“Wow.” There was no other word for it.

In the center of the space was an . . . object. Glowing faintly in the same blue as the spiral in the atrium above, it throbbed and twisted in a strange pattern of light.

“Is it just light, or is there something solid under there?” She took a step closer and Mak joined her, crouching down so he was on an eye-level with it.

“There's something under there, but it looks transparent, and then there's a second light source in the center. A tight ball of light.”

“This is the grav and atmosphere generator.” She circled it, marveling at the size of it.

The generators of the Verdant String would take up all the space in this room four times over, whereas this looked like something she and Mak could pick up between them.

It wasn't precisely her field of science, but the idea that the spiral, which was everyday Verdant String tech, was somehow powering or influencing this grav generator, was beyond intriguing. She yearned to learn more.

“What did Cors say about this? That they can't move it?”

“Yes. I couldn't follow him and Garde in here, it was too risky, but I'm guessing they were trying to pick it up and couldn't.”

“How would that even work? Wouldn't it destabilize the moon if they moved it?” She thought about it. “I bet they tried about a year ago, just before The Calling set up shop as a cult.”

“Just when Cepi's trajectory suddenly changed,” he agreed. “See. It isn't exactly in the center of this disk anymore, it's just slightly to the right.”

“How do you think they moved it?” She wouldn't want to touch it, even with protective gear on. It looked too alien. Too strange.

Mak pointed to a pile of equipment in the corner, which looked like it included laser lances as well as simple crowbars.

“My guess is they tried everything they could think of. Nothing worked very well, though. And it's also my guess that they haven't been able to get back in here with the access they need until now.”

“They created the problem themselves when they knocked Cepi off its trajectory. And since then, the ruins have been off limits to everyone except the archaeological team.”

“They put the whole of Kalastoni at risk.” Mak's tone was controlled, but she could hear the anger just under it.

“But why?”

“Greed,” Mak said. “Either they want to work out how the generator works and sell the technology to the highest bidder, or they plan to sell the generator to someone who wants the tech themselves.”

“A grav generator this small, efficient, and quiet would be literally priceless.” And if it was kept in the Verdant String, it would be used for the public good, with profits and expenses shared across the seven planets. Nyha crouched down herself, peered through the blue glow to what lay beneath. “What are we going to do?”

She caught Mak's gaze over the top of it.

“Changing the trajectory of Cepi back to what it was would take months, even if we knew how to do it, and as it's weeks from hitting Kalastoni, there's no time for that, so the moon still has to be destroyed. This is going to be destroyed with it.”

“If they'd only told the Verdant String when they found it, Cepi wouldn't even have to be blown up, and we'd have all the time in the world to try and work this out.” The bastards.

She stood in a quick, fluid movement, unable to stay still in her agitation.

Mak took out a mini-scanner and walked slowly around the generator, then crouched down and went around it on his haunches a second time.

“That's as good a record as it's going to get for the scientists, I'm afraid.”

“And now?” She looked over at him, felt her breath catch a little in her throat.

She liked the no nonsense attitude he wore like a comfortable jacket, the dry sense of humor he'd revealed a few times, the sharp, masculine beauty of his face, but most of all, she liked the fact that he was several steps ahead and looked like nothing would stand in his way for long.

“Now we get out of here.”

She smiled at him. “That's another thing I can get behind.”