He walked to the rubble pile and started digging again. Every time he turned his back on Po and Pelvannor, he subvocalized more details to Hatya.
“Ah, hell, Rylando, you two have been having fun without me. I’m five minutes from the ERC. After that, I’m bringing the shuttle for scans. Keep talking when you can.”
A hand waved in front of his face. When he looked up, masked Stramlo leaned close and shouted. “Po wants you.”
Rylando dropped the shovel and crossed to where irritable Po stood, awkwardly holding the cutter. Pelvannor was back to her stoic self.
Po thrust the cutter into Rylando’s arms. “Drill the goddamn air pipe.”
Unsurprisingly, Pelvannor followed to watch him closely as he used the cutter’s densometer to zero in on a thin spot, then set the tripod legs and turned on the cutter. As the debris lasers burned through the rubble, the printer extruded pipe into the deepening hole. Five minutes later, the lasers hit open air and shut down. He extruded the pipe several centimeters longer before turning off the printer and powering down the cutter.
As he folded the tripod legs, he realized they’d still be sucking increasingly stale air if Taz hadn’t salvaged the cutter from the regular military trash heap for repair. She’d even cleverly etched the GSAR logo over the cutter’s serial number in case someone asked.
Po eyed Rylando with suspicion. “Why didn’t you tell us it had a laser? We could have been cutting our way out.”
Unexpectedly, Stramlo answered. “It’s not a beam, it’s a pinpoint array. It’d take half a day to cut enough holes to make a one-meter slice.”
Po threw his hands up and stomped toward his perch. “Fine. Get back to digging.”
Rylando got Pelvannor’s attention, then pointed first to the cutter, then to the airsled. When she nodded, he carried it back inside and stowed it in its case.
He took the opportunity to subvocalize to Hatya. “If you have a choice, get Taz out first. Being trapped underground will be hard on her. And if there really are explosives, she’s in danger.”
“Working on it. I know she’s important to you.”
Hatya’s half-teasing tone gave him an out, but the words cut through his defenses. He couldn’t lie to himself any longer. “Yes, she is.”
She sat down in front of the sixty-fourth Kem-X packet and barked twice, then barked twice again.
“Good job,” said Taz as she approached. She and the dog had worked out a steady rhythm, marching up and down the aisles, decommissioning each and every timer. Seventy-five minutes later, here they were.
“Jhidelle,” she said, letting her suit do the amplifying. “Last one. Any outliers?”
“Moyo and Lerox say no.” Between the dog’s fantastic nose and the weasel’s fearless sense of curiosity, they would have found anything interesting, especially with Jhidelle guiding them. “The cats found a door. It’s marked exit, but it’s heavy and coded.”
Taz’s audio sensors identified the girl’s location as close to the northwest corner. “On my way.”
She disabled the final timer, scanned it to be sure, then turned to Shen. “Find Moyo.”
Shen stood, tail wagging, then turned to trot down the aisle. On impulse, Taz picked up the last Kem-X packet, then followed.
While she’d been working, she’d been pondering several questions. First, if her military-grade comms were blocked, how did Po and Pelvannor expect to get through with just commercial comms to trigger the timers? Second, if they’d known what type and how many Kem-X packets to get, why had they needed to kidnap Stramlo?
When she reached the corner, all the animals were there. Jhidelle had even dragged the crates down from the other entrance and opened their doors.
Taz set down the packet and stepped out of her suit. Overusing her teke talent to speed up the timer decomms left her ears ringing like bells.
The chilly air of the facility momentarily felt good on her sweat-soaked skin as she turned to face them with a tired grin. “Good job, all of you.” Shen’s and Moyo’s tails wagged. The cats’ ears pricked forward. Lerox chose that moment to lick his butt.
Taz laughed. “Is anyone thirsty?” She patted her thigh pocket. “I have extra water pouches and a collapsible bowl.”
Jhidelle’s eyes drifted a bit. “No, they’re good.” She pointed to the packet. “What’s that for?”
“Evidence.” That sounded better than muttering about instinct and curiosity. “Let’s take a look at the door.”
The door looked more like it led to a vault, like the one that was now a storeroom in the financial firm on the first floor. Still, it had the standard bright colors and the word “exit” printed in a dozen different languages. It also had a formidable code lock on the wall. Whoever designed the exit had apparently decided security was more important than safety.
“I need my suit for the scans. If we can’t get out here, we’ll have to go back to the lower basement. Either way, we need to crate the team. It’s the only way I can protect them.” She snapped her fingers. “Before I forget. Is your father a telekinetic minder?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “No. Why?”
Taz shook her head. “Nothing, just a passing thought.” She climbed back in her suit to check the architectural records and run scans while she poked at the lock with her GSAR codes.
After three long minutes, the lock begrudgingly accepted her codes. The door slowly irised open to reveal a small anteroom with a standard-sized lift at the end.
“Okay,” said Taz. “If I’m guessing correctly where we are, and the lift takes us up instead of down, and the building above is still standing, and the architectural records are correct, we’ll be in a space labeled ‘Recycling Overflow.’”
Taz hoped the undisturbed dust in the anteroom and the wallcomp for the lift meant Po and Pelvannor hadn’t lined the lift shaft with explosives.
Chapter 8
Salamaray Citizen Activity Center, Perlarossa • GDAT 3242.334
“No,” shouted Rylando so Po could hear him through the mask, “I can’t make my owl crawl through the air pipe to scope out the other side. She’s too big.”
Po’s expression soured again. Watching the rest of them work had apparently been boring enough to inspire his series of harebrained ideas. Apparently, it never occurred to him that they’d get out faster if he helped with the digging.
Or maybe it had. Rylando was quite certain that Po intended to shoot him, and maybe Stramlo, to give Po and Pelvannor time to escape.
They’d gouged out enough material that they should be breaking through to the other side any minute. It would have been sooner if they hadn’t been forced to detour around a two-meter decorative block of denscrete.
Hatya’s tone sounded in his earwire. “Good news, bad news, and really bad news.”
Rylando grabbed the handle for the nearly full bin of tailings—Stramlo’s word—and pulled it out of the work area. “Go.”
“Good news. Two lifesigns and five animal signs just showed up on my scanners. They’re together. Still no comms, but I’m about to deploy a booster to see if I can fix that.”