The dust caught her attention again. A bloom came from the doorway where it had undoubtedly blown in over the threshold. Oddly, another bloom came from the back corner of the unit, beyond the shelves. Now that she was looking for it, she saw the shadow of another doorway and what might be a powered lift ladder.
Damnit, why wasn’t Rylando answering her pings? Had Po and Pelvannor gotten away yet? And what about Stramlo? Her stomach roiled with images of Rylando injured and without her or any of his team to help him.
“Subcap… er, Taz?”
“Yes?” Taz turned to look at Jhidelle, who had pushed her dusty, torn coat off her shoulders, probably because the hallway was hot and stuffy. She looked nothing like her father, but considering what body shops could do these days, no one with funds had to keep the appearance they were born with or aged into.
“I can still connect with Tzima from here. I asked her to hide and listen. Her eyes are bad, but her hearing is good. Po is yelling at everyone.”
Taz made herself ask the bad-news question. “Can you tell if anyone is hurt?”
“No, but Po’s giving ’em orders. ‘Stramlo, sit. Pelvannor, search the sled. GSAR-man, stay where you are.’ That sort of thing. I think they’re trapped in the lift lobby.”
Taz double-checked her comms, but nothing from Rylando. She hooked her thumbs into her utility belt and drummed her fingers on it, thinking hard. Finally, she focused on Jhidelle.
“You’re old enough to have a vote in this. The storage unit has a power ladder that leads up. If we’re lucky, it’s an emergency exit to the first floor, or at least to someplace that has working comms. On the other hand, it would likely be safer to stay here and wait to be rescued. This is where our pilot, Captain Wa’ara, will look first.”
Jhidelle glanced down the hall toward the shaft, then at the suit, before returning her gaze to Taz. “I vote for the ladder. If we can get out, we can get help. Down here, we’re not helping anyone.”
An almost-sixteen-year-old’s sense of adventure wasn’t always supported by good judgment, but Taz hoped an almost-thirty-nine-year-old’s experience could keep them both out of trouble.
“Okay, the ladder it is. Let’s wedge those shelves in the doorway so it doesn’t jam up like before.”
Jhidelle pulled her coat back on. “I can do it while you get into your mech suit.”
Taz checked that the crates were still secure and thanked the animals for their patience. They’d be happy to be reunited with Rylando. Not that she could ever tell him, but she would, too. She wanted to see him safe and smiling again.
Taz’s suit and crates were a tight fit in the power ladder’s tube. She hugged the stepped rungs and rode them up, with Jhidelle right below her.
The end of the tube was too short to be the main-floor level. Instead, the access way opened into a darkened room.
Stepping into it tripped motion sensors and triggered a small circle of overhead lights.
“What is this place?” asked Jhidelle as she looked down at her little fox. “Yes, baby, I know it’s cold in here.” She pulled her coat a little tighter.
Whatever it was, Taz’s comms were still blocked. Damnit.
The scans from her suit were so unexpected that she ran them a second time to be sure. “I’ve only seen training holos of these. It’s a galactic hypercube node.”
Jhidelle walked to the edge of the darkness. “Like a comms node?” More lights flicked on. Three-meter-tall equipment stacks looked like rows of tall buildings in a planned corporate district. The room had a quiet underlying hum of air circulation.
“No, a data storage node. It’s a redundancy relay for the galactic net. It has direct comms with the planet’s net and the solar system’s comms nodes.” Taz frowned. “Or it did, except the other end of the building collapsed and took the comms with it. Probably why the stacks are quiet now.”
“Why would they put a node in Salamaray?” Jhidelle’s tone suggested she didn’t think much of the location.
“Who knows?” A slow-blink floor light caught Taz’s eye. She stepped sideways and crouched to get a better angle.
Scans confirmed her visual. Now she knew where the scent of explosives came from. Without even trying, she saw three more of them spaced at regular intervals. She had a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that those were the leading edge of the meteor storm.
Chapter 7
Salamaray Citizen Activity Center, Perlarossa • GDAT 3242.334
Sweat trickled down the back of Rylando’s neck as he sent soothing thoughts to Otak, still hiding in his pouch, and to Mariposa, perched on the far side of the airsled’s roof. He sensed the girl’s kinkajou but couldn’t tell where it was. No circulation made the lobby air stale and increasingly hot. The heavy, indestructible GSAR uniform and the warm rat on his chest weren’t helping.
Stramlo, perched nearby on a chunk of denscrete, hugged his messenger bag like a shield. He twitched with each noise, whether from the ruined lobby or from Po swearing.
Rylando was better at keeping calm for the sake of his animals, but not so good at stopping himself from worrying about them, or Stramlo’s daughter, or Taz. So far, he’d not been able to make mental contact with his team and had no way to talk to Taz. The overheated lift coil cooked the airsled’s comms when it died.
The room’s emergency lights were plenty bright enough to illuminate the depth of their predicament. All of the ceiling decorations and some of the roof supports now littered the floor. The beat-up airsled sat in the middle of the lobby. At least it had shed the heavy piece of denscrete that had weighed it down. More caved-in rubble from the building’s roof layer blocked both ends of the lift lobby. The corner of a giant block of denscrete protruded from the lift shaft behind him to his left. That whole wall bulged out from the pressure.
Pelvannor stood in the open doorway of the airsled, alternating between holding the beamer on the prisoners as ordered, and following Po’s subsequent orders to lift or move things as he pawed through the sled’s contents. So far, they’d found and unloaded two bins of food and water, medical supplies, water-protection suits, climbing gear, and one box of spare parts.
Rylando had already told them the airsled’s only useful tools for freeing them from the lobby cave-in were shovels and pry bars, but it had been a waste of breath.
Po appeared in the doorway holding a wand-like tool with the yellow and black GSAR logo. “What’s this?”
“A spectrum analyzer for materials composition.” He winced when Po carelessly tossed it onto the parts box on the floor. Taz had spent three days repairing and customizing it to work better than the original version.
Otak once again alerted him to the explosives scent. Unfortunately, Rylando couldn’t give the rat the usual food rewards, so a thought of praise would have to do.
It didn’t take an astro-engineer to figure out that the source was Stramlo’s messenger bag. Too small to be a regular Kem-X packet, but maybe samples? No clue as to why he’d been keeping it in his storage unit.
Po’s hard-shell backpack, which he still wore, must have high-value items, or he’d have given it up. Pelvannor’s heavy bag had probably held some, too, which explained why he’d yelled at her when she’d tossed it out of the airsled.