The bout began slowly, because Cosper was merely arrogant, not stupid, and she saw in his gaze that he was realizing this was a very bad idea. Ky tired of that by the second time circling the mat. She moved in, her awareness as always both crystalline and a little distant, and he grabbed her arm in a move she remembered from her Academy training. He would do this, and then that, and supposedly she would fly up in the air and come down flat on her back. But she’d been many places and in deadlier danger, so the flying part was her idea, and her other arm found its target, as did her knees, and when they both hit the ground he was facedown and she was on top of him. She stood up. He lay there a moment, then pushed himself up.
“How did you—?”
“Leverage. Physics. The advantage of being shorter. If I’d been your height it wouldn’t have worked as well. Let’s go again.”
She decided, on the third throw, not to launch him into the wall, satisfying as that might be, because the bruises on his back were already coming up and she didn’t want to risk damage that would slow him down if she needed him for something useful. So she dumped him back on the mat, headlocked him before he could move, and said in his ear “I expect you will quit bullying the others, Sergeant. Is that clear?”
“Yes… sir. Admiral.”
“Good. If you want to learn any of the throws I used, I’ll be glad to teach you. Later.”
She released him and got up. She felt much better, and definitely ready for her shower.
Cosper, when he clambered up, looked at her with something more than admiration. “I didn’t know—”
“Well, now you do. We’ve both done enough now. We have a busy day ahead.” Ky walked off, daring him to mention stretches, and signaled the other three with a flick of her fingers.
Still, as the shower beating down revealed that she, too, had incipient bruises, she had not figured out what to do next, how to anticipate what the enemy was up to. She was going to have to contact Rafe again and make clear what she needed to know and that she needed data now, not five minutes ahead of the attack.
When she assembled her little troop, she was struck once more with how amazing it was they were all still alive. Not only alive, but fitter than they had been right after the crash. She had to admit that much as she disliked Cosper’s methods, he had hassled and bullied the others into better condition. “Where are we with communications?” she asked.
“We can pick up satellite broadcasts, which suggests they can pick up anything we send that way,” Gossin said. “We don’t have a way to test tight-beam security, not that I’m familiar with. Lakhani found a crosslink between our transmissions and a landline.”
“A landline to where?” Ky looked from Gossin to Lakhani.
“I don’t know and don’t know how to tell,” Lakhani said. “It could be a buried cable to somewhere else on Miksland, or it could connect to one of the marine cables.”
“To… what’s the likeliest?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Finding which way a buried cable goes means getting up on the surface and trying to work through the snow and ice. It might go any direction. There might be a marine cable between Partin Reefs and the Pingat Islands Base, but it would run well north of Miksland. But those cables are all old, you know. The marine cables were put in early, when the planet was first declared open for colonization. After the first wave, when trade picked up, then more satellites went in and ISC installed an ansible.”
“But cables are supposed to be more secure than satellite, right?”
“Yes, sir, even with encryption. You have to have a ship and a way to find and then actually touch the cable to pick up anything. But the codes used back then aren’t the ones we use now. I don’t know them.”
“Someone will,” Ky said. “And as long as we don’t know that code, and don’t know who’s on the other end, we can’t use our main com because someone might be listening.”
Nods around the table.
“Are you picking up anything at all on the broadcasts?”
“Nothing about the shuttle, if that’s what you mean. Sports scores from the Southern Association srithanball tournament. Market reports on commodity prices and investment tips. Provinces are about to inaugurate new legislators: we can watch that tomorrow, if anyone’s interested. Impossible Dreams is in its sixteenth season—”
Ky laughed. “I watched that when I was in secondary. Not at the Academy, of course. Has Bryony married Zaldur yet?”
“Oh, yes,” Droshinksi said. She ran her fingers through her hair and tossed it. “It was magnificent, that wedding, and they had twins, but then Max DeLonga kidnapped the twins and Bryony, and drugged her and—”
“And now she’s hiding out because she escaped with one of the twins and thinks she’s being hunted, the other twin was kidnapped again by Max’s accomplice who was going to blackmail Max, Zaldur killed the accomplice and didn’t know the baby in the house was his own child so he left a note for social services—”
Ky had not suspected Gossin of being an Impossible Dreams fan; she seemed entirely too practical for that.
“Now,” Ky said with emphasis, “we have other concerns. It’s still just an hour program, right? Put it on a stick and anyone who wants can watch it in their off time.”
They settled again, with a chorus of “Yes, Admiral.”
“I’ve finished reading Colonel Greyhaus’ diary,” Ky said. “And I’m now sure of the date this base usually opens for the summer season. I expect someone will be coming before that, with intent to kill us. They’ll be looking for the earliest break in the weather, the very first time they can get transports in. But we don’t know which way they’ll be coming from or how many they’ll have. I’m going to try another skullphone call to the Rector today and see what she’s managed to find out.”
“Do you want us to continue looking for more hidden spaces?” Staff Sergeant Gossin asked.
“Yes. Given the complexity of what we’ve seen, I’m certain there is more to this facility. We don’t have the right keys yet, is all. Staff Sergeant Kurin, any progress on decoding the weapons in the armory?”
“Not yet, Admiral. But we can dismantle them completely, bypassing the palm locks. It will take an estimated hour per weapon to take them apart and put them back together, and each one will have to be recalibrated.”
“Will that damage them?”
“Yes—they lose autolock-on-target and auto-zoom on the ’scope. Anything electronic goes when you tinker with the palm-ID lock. They’ll still fire, though, and the autoloader is mechanical, not electronic.”
“Go ahead. As many as you can. We’ll start training with them on the range as soon as you have enough for six.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll need Hazarika and Drosh.”
“Fine. Off you go.”
She made the rest of the day’s assignments, then went to her quarters to call Rafe, with Kamat standing guard outside the door.
In seconds after she sent the contact code, Rafe answered. “Well?”
“All’s well so far. What’s your situation?”
“Extreme frustration.” His report was organized, compact, dense with data. She let her implant take it, knowing she could replay later, and listened to the nuances of tone. He wasn’t just frustrated, he was seriously worried. So was she.
When he finished talking, Ky reported what she’d read in Greyhaus’ diary. “What about those marine cables? And how can I cut them off the satellite hookup? We need a broadband connection.”
“I know that. Cables—that’s hard connection, right? Optical or metal?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t tampered in case they can detect it.”