Kafari didn’t have to wonder what it was for, because the guards were hard at work, filling up the rest of it. A massive crowd of people had been herded to the edge of that ghastly trench, forced into position by the automatic guns on the fences, which were strafing the dirt in every direction except into the pit. Bolts of energy flew like horizontal rain, forcing the crowd to retreat. There was only one place for them to go: into the trench. The guards didn’t even have to shoot them. The ones on the bottom would be crushed and suffocated to death. The ones on the top might live long enough to be buried alive by the bulldozer that idled in the hot light, waiting its turn.
“Red Wolf,” she said through clenched teeth, “remind me to kill the commandant of this camp. Slowly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then the aircars in the lead fired their missiles and the guns nearest the crowd exploded in towering gouts of flame. The fences came down. The guard in the nearest tower started shooting at the leading aircar. It jagged sideways, avoiding the hail of bullets, and cleared the way for the second aircar crew. A hyper-v missile shrieked into the tower, fired virtually point-blank. Tower, guard, and gun ceased to exist. People on the ground were screaming, trying to run. More fences came down. More guard towers exploded. Savage delight tore through Kafari as Red Wolf made a strafing run, taking down two towers. She was picking up reports from other crews at other camps. The battle was well underway and going better than—
“ARTILLERY!” Red Wolf yelled.
Kafari never saw the gout of flame or the shell. The aircar slammed her against the restraints as Red Wolf sent them screaming toward the sky. He fired air-to-air missiles in the same instant. The aircar rolled into a sickening move that sent the smoking sky and the hot, glaring stone spinning in wild and blurred confusion. Something detonated just below Kafari’s window. Flame and smoke engulfed them for a single, split second. Then they were in clear air again and gaining altitude fast.
Red Wolf, she realized belatedly, was blistering the air with curses.
“That was a genuinely fine maneuver,” she gasped, voice unsteady.
“The hell it was. Dinny Ghamal is going to rip ’em off and stuff ’em up my ass. They got way too close to you.”
“A miss,” she said, still breathless with reaction, “is as good as a mile.”
“Nobody has calculated in miles for a thousand years,” Red Wolf growled. He was circling back around, keeping his distance as the other aircars continued the attack. The artillery gun that had come so close to toasting them was, itself, toast, along with the building it had been hiding in. Less than three minutes later, Kafari’s team was in complete control of the camp.
Red Wolf kept them airborne until their own people had cleared the site, satisfying themselves that there were, in fact, no more P-Squadders anywhere. Several guards who’d tried to barricade themselves into the administrative building had been killed by the prisoners, themselves. Once the shooting had started, the prisoners had turned into a howling mob bent on vengeance. They had rushed the building and torn apart the guards, with their bare hands. By the time Kafari’s aircar landed, her people had brought a semblance of order to the chaos.
The people who’d already been forced into the trench were rescued, with a surprisingly high survival rate. Survivors were organizing themselves, triage style, with the ill and the injured helped into barracks by those still strong enough to render aid. When Kafari climbed out of her aircar, people stopped in the midst of whatever task they’d undertaken, and followed her with their eyes, electrically aware that she was in command. People whispered as she passed, thousands of voices hushed with a sound like wind rustling through ripened wheat. She wished she could have risked removing her battle helmet, with its necessary, concealing visor, because the pain and joy in these people’s faces deserved that small courtesy from her.
But she didn’t dare.
Not yet.
Somehow, they seemed to understand.
“Commodore,” Dinny saluted crisply, “the site is secured and we’re ready to start shipping people out. But there’s someone you need to see first, sir. We’ve asked him to wait in the commandant’s headquarters.”
“Is the commandant still in them?”
“In a manner of speaking, sir, yes, he is. There’s not much left to look at.”
“Ah, well. So much for a long tete-a-tete with him.”
Dinny’s eyes glinted, hard as flint. “It would’ve been nice, wouldn’t it? But I can’t blame these folks, if you catch my meaning.”
“Very clearly. Let’s get this out of the way. I want this place cleared out fast.”
Dinny nodded and led the way through the erstwhile camp.
Someone had cleared out the remains of the commandant. Judging by the pool of sticky blood that had filmed over like scalded milk, those remains had been scattered rather more widely than a human body normally would’ve occupied. There were two men waiting for her arrival. One was a boy, little more than seventeen or eighteen, at a rough guess. The other was older, tougher, with shrewd eyes and a nano-tatt that had cost him a bundle of money. They were both watching Kafari, the boy with wide-eyed wonder, the man with narrow-eyed speculation.
“You in charge?” the older one demanded.
“Who wants to know?”
“Somebody with information you could use.”
Kafari swept her gaze up and down and saw very little to commend him to anyone, let alone to her. He looked like a street tough who made his living preying on others, maybe not as vicious as a rat-ganger, but definitely on the greyer edge of lily-whiteness. She wondered coldly what he thought he could wheedle out of a deal with Commodore Oroton. She spoke into the vocorder, which deepened her voice into a masculine bark. “I don’t have time to deal with assholes who think they can sell me some priceless piece of crap I’ve no earthly use for.” She started to turn on her heel. Then paused when he grinned. His nano-tatt flared golden, in rippling patterns like flame.
“They said you was a hard-assed bastard. Okay, try this one out, Mr. Commodore: I’m the fuckin’ Bolo’s mechanic.”
She swung back sharply. “You’re what?”
His grin widened. “I’m the Bolo’s mechanic. For the last four years. ’Til this little nosewipe,” he nodded at the boy, who flushed crimson, “got himself mixed up in a food riot and was sent out here t’ this country club. Sonny told me what happened, when he disappeared so sudden, and I got so damn pissed off, I hadda say something, you know? I hadda tell folks, ’cause it wasn’t right. Giulio’s a damn-fool kid, gives my sister migraines, just dealin’ with him, but he’s a clean kid, you gotta give him credit for that, and he for damn sure didn’t deserve this.” He swept one disgusted gesture at their surroundings. “So I shot my mouth off, said enough to make the P-Squads mad as fire, and ended up out here, keepin’ him company.”
Kafari considered him for long moments, resting her hands on her hips and studying his eyes, his posture, everything she could notice, trying to read the nuances of what he was saying — and not saying. “All right, Mr. Mechanic, how would you go about repairing damage to an infinite repeater cluster?”