Rylando’s bad habit of forgetting to maintain a live comms connection left her ready to bite him. Or at least ask Shen to do it. Everything was as far from “fine” as it could get, and as soon as she rescued the girl, she bloody well would not be “leaving them alone.”
After webbing Jhidelle to her suit like she was a casualty, Taz had intended to go up. The shower of debris from the largest aftershock yet changed her mind. That, and her scans warning of the imminent failure of the pins holding the shaft’s capstone.
Climbing down took all her concentration. The crates on her back couldn’t take much abuse. Squashing live rescue targets was considered bad form. Noise from above overloaded her audio. Dust swirled everywhere, impairing visibility and making Jhidelle and the animals cough.
The pivot-swing back into the basement hallway wasn’t pretty. The last ladder rung gave way. She stumbled forward, then scrambled to keep her footing on the slick floor as the aftershock finally dissipated.
Anger at herself for not listening to her instincts about the targets warred with terror that her failures might have gotten Rylando hurt or killed. He wasn’t answering any of her pings.
The basement seemed to weather the aftershocks better than the shaft. As soon as she got well past the dust, almost to the cursed storage unit where the trouble began, she stopped. Freeing Jhidelle took just a few moments, giving Taz the chance to retract her armor and step out of her suit.
Taz took a long moment to put her chaotic feelings in a box to deal with later. “First off, are you hurt?”
“No,” said Jhidelle. She opened her coat and looked down at a creature she was carrying in a sling. A tiny orange-and-white foxlike head sported ears big enough to fly with. “Farenoso is okay, too.”
Truth, according to Taz’s sifter talent.
“Okay, tell me what happened up there.”
“The airsled was too heavy and they didn’t want to let go of their bags. Po made me get off. He threatened to shoot me if my father didn’t hand me off to Pelvannor so she could shove me out.” Despair laced her tone. “My father had no choice.”
“Holy chaos, what is in those bags?” She should have scanned them when she had the chance, regardless of GSAR privacy regulations.
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders hunched tighter. “I came here to save him, but I just made things worse.”
Taz kept a lock on her temper as she caught the girl’s eye. “Save him from what?”
“Po. Pelvannor.” She pointed up. “All I could do was send Tzima back to the airsled to look after him.”
Now Taz was confused. “Who is Tzima?”
“My kinkajou. She’s very good at jumping and good at getting into things. I can see through her eyes. Hear through her ears.”
It took Taz a second to realize what that meant. “You’re an animal-affinity minder, like Rylando.” When Jhidelle nodded, Taz continued. “Let’s go back to the saving part.”
“Father brought me to Salamaray to do some shopping. In the middle of the night, four people broke into our condotel. Po and Pelvannor took my father. The other two stayed with me to hold me hostage.” She frowned. “They took my percomp and comms, locked me in my bedroom with water and a mealpack, and told me to keep quiet. They didn’t know I had my pets with me. Farenoso’s a fennec fox. He can hear a whisper from a kilometer away.” The fox looked up at Jhidelle’s chin when he heard his name. “The two who stayed didn’t even check my room before they locked me up, and they complained about everything. Having to guard a stupid kid instead of going to the CAC with Po, who had instead taken stupid-as-stardust Pelvannor. What they’d do with their share. What Po would do to my father if he didn’t cooperate. What they’d do to me.”
“What did they want your father to do?”
“Help them steal from the basement storage units. That’s how I knew where to go.” She blew out a sigh. “I couldn’t let them use me as leverage, so I escaped out the window and came here. I thought if my father saw I was free, he could get away. The earthquake changed everything.”
The girl’s story sounded like an adventure thriller, but she was telling the truth as she knew it.
Half the rescuers in her unit wouldn’t have been so resourceful. “How old are you again?” asked Taz.
“Almost sixteen.” Subtle annoyance threaded the words, like she had to answer that question a lot.
“But why your father, particularly?”
“I haven’t figured that part out.” Jhidelle shook her head, frustration evident. “He’s a design engineer for asteroid mines, not a thief.”
Taz rolled her shoulders back and took a deep, calming breath. “Why didn’t you tell us this immediately?”
Jhidelle shrugged sheepishly. “I was afraid you’d wait for law enforcement instead of helping my father. Po and Pelvannor would have killed him to hide their crimes.” Abject remorse settled on her face. “I’m sorry I got your partner in trouble. I messed up.”
“Yeah, kid, you did.” Taz waited until Jhidelle looked up. “I did, too. So let’s figure out how to fix it.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re not mad?”
“Oh, I’m mad as hell. We’re stuck down here because of those assholes.” Taz pointed toward storage unit 79. “Makes me want to find out what was in there that Po wanted so bad.”
Jhidelle’s eyes widened, then darted to the animal crates that were still strapped to Taz’s mech suit. “Could Farenoso and I say hello to your animals?”
“They’re Subcaptain Delroinn’s, not mine.” Taz hesitated. “Have you been around other animal-affinity minders before?”
Jhidelle nodded. “My father is gone a lot. When I’m not taking classes, I volunteer for an animal-rescue group. Several of us are minders. All my pets are rescues.”
“First, promise me you won’t order his animals around, or try to bond with them.” Rylando would never trust her again if anything happened to his team.
“Yes, Subcaptain, I promise.” Jhidelle’s sincerity rang as true as her other statements.
“Call me Taz. Come on, I’ll make introductions. You can entertain them while I pop that misbegotten door.”
She spoke Jhidelle’s name warmly and patted the girl’s shoulder to show the animals that she wasn’t a threat. Even the cats seemed interested in checking her out.
Unsurprisingly, the building’s AI was back to monosyllabic insensibility, but she had a GSAR mech suit with customized capabilities all its own.
Two minutes later, the ring-light flashed and the door irised open.
“How did you do that?” asked Jhidelle.
“Telekinesis,” lied Taz. GSAR’s best-kept secret was the existence of their vast hypercubes of access codes. GSAR strictly monitored and reviewed each use to deter rescuers from abusing them for personal motives. Rescuers kept the secret because no one wanted to be held hostage and forced to open every lock in the galaxy.
Taz stood at the threshold for a brief look into the room. One empty set of shelves and dust. No sign of the explosives that Otak had alerted Rylando to. Kem-X packages had to be bigger than a backpack to work, and it was too common to be worth threatening a child’s life over.