Back at her desk, she had a thin metal strip she’d used before for unsticking recalcitrant boxes. She fetched it and worked it under the front of the box. Sure enough, she could lever the front up a little, and as she’d suspected the footpads stretched a little. They needed to be replaced. She worked the metal strip vigorously until she had the footpads separated from the short front legs of the box, then—holding the front up perhaps half a centimeter—tugged hard. Harder. The box made a sort of scrunching sound and the blinking orange light turned red.
Clearly it was malfunctioning, and the sooner she disconnected its power supply—if this wasn’t due to some chemical deterioration inside—the better. Merced braced herself and yanked hard, with all her strength. She felt the back legs come loose and staggered back just as the box disintegrated in a bright light that was the last thing she ever saw.
Alarms went off, emergency lights flashed all over the building, a recorded voice announced “Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!” Not until all the regular employees had left the building did anyone enter the room where Merced had worked. One man stopped at Merced’s desk and called up the activity log for her shift. The mess at the far end of the stacks offered no more information than the log, but that was enough.
“Stupid woman,” the man said. “Why didn’t she just inform her supervisor? She’d looked up the procedure in the manual.”
The second man sighed, fogging the faceplate of his protective gear. “Now we’ll have to do a new background check on her. Maybe she suspected something.”
“Or maybe she was just bored.”
They cleaned up the mess, and by the time they’d satisfied themselves the area was safe once more, Nils Rolander had arrived. By then, another of the boxes was blinking.
“What a shame about poor Merced,” he said. “I would never have suspected her of initiative.”
“We’ll have to do another background check—”
“Yes, of course, Ted. And I see there’s another signal gone off. Someone’s messing with our systems—”
“Bet it’s that old woman.”
“Old—?” Rolander raised his brows.
“Vatta. She must’ve gotten around our fellow in AirDefense finally.”
“Or her niece is alive. Or both of them—”
The three men looked at one another for a long moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rafe Dunbarger jerked as if he’d been stabbed and dropped the plate of eggs he’d just picked up.
Grace looked up. “What’s wrong?”
“I—I have to go—” He turned on his heel and walked unsteadily, swiftly, in the direction of the guest suite.
His face was a peculiar unhealthy shade; she wondered what he’d eaten the day before. “Does he do that often?” she asked Teague.
“Not very,” Teague said. Grace glared at him, but Teague seemed impervious to her glares. “It may be his temporary biosculpt wearing off.”
“I forgot about that,” Grace said. She hadn’t, but it was a possible explanation.
“We should let him alone,” Teague said, spreading jam on toast.
“Tell me, Teague,” MacRobert said as he walked in. “Do you like fruitcake?”
“Fruitcake? That thing with dried fruit where they pour brandy on it and set it afire?”
“No,” Grace said, with a quelling glance at MacRobert. “That’s plum pudding. Quite different. I must make you a fruitcake sometime.” She looked at MacRobert. “Just a plain one, nothing fancy.”
“Where’s Rafe?” MacRobert said. “I have some information for him.”
“He felt ill,” Grace said. “He dropped that plate.” She pointed with her fork.
“Um,” MacRobert said. “Waste of good eggs.” He scooped it up and put the mess in the trash, then wiped the floor, finishing just as Rafe came back.
“She’s there,” he said, looking straight at Grace. “We made contact. She’s in one of those huts, as we thought.”
“How?” MacRobert asked as Grace said the same thing.
Rafe lifted one shoulder: refusal to answer. “She described the buildings; they’ve gotten into only the two huts and a shed with a generator. There’s electricity, but not for long—not enough fuel unless they find more.”
“She’s alone? How did she—”
“She’s not alone. She’s with the others that were on the shuttle, twenty of them. Some died from sabotage of the survival suits—the Commandant, his aide, the pilots, two more. And then two after. She’ll get me a list of names. I warned her about using the comunits, even if they come alive—that whoever’s secret this is will be aware the scans were unblocked for most of a day. She was exhausted, I could tell—but she’s alive!” He paused for breath, then went on. “They don’t have enough food for the whole winter; there’s some kind of entrance to a bunker or a mine, but it won’t open to the same code.”
Grace looked at MacRobert; his eyelid flickered. He thought he had figured something out. Teague had the totally blank expression he used when he was determined not to let anyone see anything of his reactions. Rafe—Rafe was excited, happy, ready to act.
“I need transport,” Rafe said. “A plane—long-range—that runway is long enough—”
“It’s more complicated than that,” MacRobert said. Rafe turned to glare at Grace.
“We haven’t told you everything yet,” she said. “It will take awhile.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ky made it back to the first hut and found Marek awake in the kitchen.
“All secured?” he asked.
“Yes. Power shut down, though I didn’t lock the door,” Ky said. “If we find enough fuel, we can open it up again for the extra space.”
“Open bunk, left side bottom,” he said.
“Thanks. Wake me at shift change if I’m not up.” She lay down. She didn’t feel like sleeping; finally getting a contact with the outside world had her mind racing. Rafe was here; he knew why no one had come for them; he knew about dangers she’d barely guessed. And how was she supposed to warn everyone not to use their skullphones or comunits without creating intense curiosity about how she had come up with such a wild notion? She dozed off finally.
In the morning, she woke determined to explore every possible resource in the area. So far they had found six empty barrels that had once held fuel for the generator, a half barrel more of fuel, no more full ones. No sign of a well house, or any pipe or pump for water. Ky wondered if the crew that had been here had brought water in by air. She looked down the smooth strip of snow that reminded everyone of a runway—because the land undulated, she couldn’t see all of it—then over at the two big humped buildings that might be hangars. She considered climbing up onto the cabin roof, or up on the tower, for a better view, but for now other things had more priority. Those two big humped buildings that might be hangars, for instance. They could explore the runway another day.
“Over there, Admiral!” Corporal Riyahn said. Ky looked. Out from behind a rumple of land she hadn’t noticed, a file of at least twenty of the gray-brown animals she’d seen earlier ambled toward the runway, then pawed at the thinner snow and lowered their heads to eat whatever grew under it. Barely a hundred meters away—if she’d had a rifle, and not her pistol, she could have dropped one easily. With a pistol—she remembered her early training with firearms. She might hit one, or simply spook the herd.
She walked slowly toward them, gesturing to the others to stay back. The animals ignored her for the first ten meters, fifteen meters, twenty, then one lifted its head and stared. Others looked. Ears waggled: forward, back, forward, back. She stood still. One stayed alert; the others went back to eating. She took one step. No reaction. Another. No reaction. Another. The sentinel waggled its ears and two other heads came up. She walked backward three steps and stopped. The sentinel tipped its head side-to-side, the antlers making a wider sweep. All the heads came up, but they didn’t move off. Ky turned and angled back toward the others, watching from the corner of her eye. Soon all were back to eating.