At first glance, it was chaos. Narseil commandos raced through the corridors past the crumpled figures of unconscious Kyber crewmen. A handful of Kyber, more cyborg than human, were still on their feet, fleeing or hiding. Several were shooting back. They were soon brought down by gas or neutraser fire—but not before a Narseil went down.
The commandos moved swiftly to secure the com stations. Within the intelnet, Deutsch was working to keep communications with the main outpost cut off. Because an abrupt failure was as likely to attract attention as an alarm, Deutsch was trying to make it appear a momentary glitch, an accidental triggering of safety firewalls. Legroeder’s job was to make sure Deutsch did his—as if he could do anything about it, anyway.
By the time Deutsch verified that the com “glitch” was working as intended, the commando action was over. One Narseil was wounded, two pirates were dead and two wounded, and the rest were unconscious. Legroeder dropped out of the comlink to report to Fre’geel, just as word was coming back through the airlock: The docking station is ours.
Fre’geel’s face was a study in piercing concentration, his dark Narseil features taut, his vertical eyes flicking this way and that, the gills under his neck pulsing rapidly. He voiced the question everyone was thinking. “Any sign we were detected from beyond the station?”
“I don’t believe so,” answered Deutsch. “It all looked isolated from here.”
“How long do we have?”
“Impossible to be sure. Minutes? An hour or two, maybe? Probably no more.”
Fre’geel bobbed his head. “And in your estimation, can you run your intelnet search from here?” His glance included Legroeder in the question, but they all knew who was going to answer.
Deutsch’s luminous glass gaze seemed to sweep the bridge. “Better bandwidth from on board the station. And from there, we can use the sweeping tools and storage nodes.”
“Go, then. Both of you. At once!”
Legroeder and Deutsch hurried from the bridge.
Legroeder’s heart was thumping like a drum as he raced through the station, his breath rasping steamily in his facemask. The air was probably clear of gas now, but no one was taking chances. All around them Narseil commandos were busy pulling unconscious and semi-conscious pirate captives out of the corridors. Deutsch led him to a maintenance control center, where a half-circle of consoles sat glowing. Deutsch floated before them, studying the controls. “I think this will do it,” he said in a metallic whisper. “It should enable access to the intelnet. If we can keep from tripping any alarms…”
Legroeder slid into a seat on Deutsch’s right. Glancing at an external monitor, he saw a startling image: a great, luminous city stretched out into darkness, into the Flux—with crossmembers and pillars reaching both down and up, and fading away where they appeared to extend out of this layer of the Flux altogether. He felt the implants buzzing with interest as a dozen questions leaped into his thoughts; but there was no time now.
“Yah,” Deutsch grunted. He unfolded a pair of shiny extensions from the console and jacked them into metal plates on his chest. “Let’s go,” he said, his amplified voice turned down to a mutter. “If you can’t use these arms, see what else there is.”
Legroeder found a headset and adjusted it, as Deutsch was setting up a channel to Cantha, back on Flechette. Cantha would be recording everything.
Legroeder took a deep breath and focused his thoughts downward into the link. He entered the station’s local data matrix, a dark place full of yelling voices and colored, smoky lighting. The voices were not other users, he realized after a moment, but helper-engines within the system. Banks of flickering strobes pulsed through the steaming murk, churning up a stink of oil and plastic and ozone. They were somewhere in the data sections used by station maintenance. All around him were vague mechanical shapes, connections full of repair specs and technical detail.
(Still receiving?) Legroeder murmured back to Cantha, and received a single-bit acknowledgment in reply.
He wondered if there would be anything useful here in the local section. Up one level, he heard music: a thrumming bass rhythm. Enviro controls? Yes—and what else?
They needed to get their bearings quickly, and move into more useful areas of the intelnet. There was still hope that they could discover a link to the underground; but failing that, their job was to gather strategically meaningful information and get the hell out.
Legroeder sensed Deutsch moving through the matrix like a monkey through a set of climbing bars, graceful and quick, never lingering. With practiced speed and the power of his augmentation, Deutsch was conducting a search of the local node, far more efficiently than Legroeder could have. He didn’t linger long; apparently he didn’t regard much of it as relevant to their goals. Legroeder followed him into what appeared to be a technical library connection, filled with datastores like tiny, spinning whirlwinds. There was no time to comprehend the material; but as they passed, Legroeder tried to judge by smell and feel, and spun copies of some of them down the line to Cantha, in case there was something useful buried in them.
But where was the important stuff? It wasn’t as if data on the defenses of the raider outpost, or on Impris, or anything that might lead them to an underground movement, would be laid out for casual perusal.
(We’re not finding the tactical and strategic info that Fre’geel wants,) Deutsch said. (We should get out of here and make the jump to the main intelnet.)
(All right,) Legroeder answered. He whispered their intentions back to Cantha.
Deutsch was already analyzing the severed links to the city, trying to figure out which might safely be restored. (Legroeder, you stick out like a sore thumb. Until you can find a way to blend in, you’d better let me handle the approaches.)
Blend in? Legroeder thought. Fat chance of that.
// We are preparing your camouflage now, // the implants informed him, holding up his false-ID information with a quick flicker for his approval.
He glanced at it and waved it away. (Fine, fine…)
Deutsch was unraveling some of the knots he had tied in the links to the main outpost. He tested carefully, leaving as much of the “glitch” in place as he could. Finally he opened a single channel, under the cloak of technical maintenance. They were going to try to slip into the main intelnet using the technical library connection as a gateway. Legroeder felt a sudden movement, like a swiftly flowing current.
(We’re passing through the comlink now. Stay close…)
Deutsch was following the link like an underground spring, delving toward its roots. It was like slipping down a silver thread into an utterly different world…
Deutsch felt himself driven by an increasing sense of urgency. (Keep moving, Legroeder!) He wondered if he was losing his mind, even to be attempting this. Something more than just practical expediency was driving him onward, some sense that this was what he was supposed to be doing. But why? To aid Legroeder and the Narseil in some quixotic blow for freedom? Partly that, perhaps. But there were also those jangling echoes of voices at work in his mind, almost inseparable from his own subconscious. They made him feel as if he were, somehow, connected to the Kyber underground.