Catalyst

  Torado and the two security officers stripped the belts off the guards and buckled them around their own hips. Korelonn grunted as he pulled out his new weapon and looked it over. “They’re still using leadslingers.”

  “I hope they don’t try that in their ships,” Ekatya said.

  He nodded. “I haven’t shot one of these since my second year of training, when we covered primitive weapons. All right, people, we’re still operating in nonlethal mode, which rules these out. But if you have to use them, be aware that they kick, they’re inaccurate unless you’ve had a lot of practice, and they’re going to sound like the inside of a rail gun.”

  “So if we want to advertise our position, we should use it, is what you’re saying.” Torado jammed his back in its holster.

  “Exactly.” Korelonn looked around the group. “Let’s go. We have two more in the junction room.”

  “I’ll distract them.” Ekatya shot him a quelling look. “I’ll look less suspicious than any of the rest of you.”

  Roris came up beside her. “This is you and me, Korelonn.”

  The carpet absorbed their footsteps as they all moved to the end of the corridor. Ekatya strolled right past both guards, who were standing against the wall on either side of the junction room’s entrance, and got halfway across before they recovered from their surprise.

  “Captain, our sincere apologies, but you can’t leave this area,” one of them said.

  “I can’t?” She turned to find that they had both followed her to the center of the room and now stood with their backs to her team. Behind them, Roris and Korelonn were lining up their shots. “My sincere apologies in turn. I must have been mistaken.”

  “Where are your guards?” the second one asked. He began to turn but stopped in mid-motion when a dart appeared in his neck. The first guard toppled to the floor right after him.

  “Nice shooting,” Ekatya said quietly as the others came in. “Any more nearby?”

  As Korelonn consulted his pad, which had a thermal readout laid over the map he had generated during their tour, Roris and Ennserhofen appropriated the weapon belts of the sleeping guards.

  “Not for another forty meters.” Korelonn turned his pad toward Ekatya, showing the other two corridors branching off this room and leading to opposite sides of the map. “There are two more guards at the next intersection. After that, we’re clear as far as this can measure. My guess is that during the night shift, they only set internal guards on the residential area.”

  “Lucky for us they value people over machinery.” Ekatya glanced around the room, which was barren of any closets or furniture large enough to hide the guards. “Looks like these need to go in my suite as well.”

  Korelonn pointed to his second and Torado, who soon vanished down the hall, bent under their burdens.

  “We can’t carry any more back,” Kitt said. “My jammer won’t reach far enough.”

  “Then we hope we can hide the next two.” Ekatya looked back at Korelonn. “Same routine?”

  He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. “I don’t like it. But it works.”

  It worked on the next guards as well. Though they were more suspicious, Roris and Korelonn only needed a few seconds of distraction. There was no handy furniture in this area, either, but Bellows found a toilet not far away. Soon both guards were concealed inside, their weapon belts now on Bellows and Blunt.

  They moved silently, looking for a way to get to the sixth floor without taking a lift that might be monitored for usage. Once again it was Bellows who located the door to a flight of stairs. He reached for the handle but was stopped by a glaring Korelonn. “Not until you know what’s behind it,” Korelonn whispered, holding out his pad.

  The stairs were clear, as was the corridor they exited into. Cautiously, they crept through several more passages and small junction rooms, all of which were unguarded. It appeared that security really was limited to the residential area and not dispersed through areas considered less restricted.

  Korelonn relaxed slightly, both from the lack of thermal signs on his map and because Kitt’s pad, which was monitoring electrical activity and radio signals, confirmed that the room they had targeted was indeed the communication core.

  But when they came in range, the thermal scanner showed someone sitting inside it.

  “Stun bead?” Korelonn asked.

  “No!” Kitt and Bellows whispered simultaneously.

  “You could damage the equipment,” Bellows explained.

  “And it’s too much noise.” Ekatya caught Korelonn’s eye. “We shouldn’t use stun beads until we have no other choice.”

  “Well, we’re not sending you in there.”

  “You don’t need to. Only one signal? We haven’t seen any guards working alone. It’s probably some data analyst staying up late. This is a time to just walk in and shoot.”

  He nodded, looking relieved that she hadn’t tried to volunteer, and tapped his second for backup. When they arrived at their destination, the others hung back while the two security officers walked to the door, yanked it open, and vanished inside.

  Ekatya heard an unfamiliar voice, the thwip of a dart, and then nothing.

  Korelonn poked his head back out. “All clear.”

  Kitt and Bellows wasted no time exploring the room, talking together in excited tones. The hapless analyst who had been working there was now lying in a corner, her legs carefully pushed out of the way. Korelonn kept an eye on his thermal scanner, monitoring the corridor outside for any movement, and Ekatya watched her data analysts for signs of progress. This had gone a little too smoothly so far. She was expecting trouble any moment now.

  Bellows peeled off and came straight toward Ekatya, a smile on his face. “Lieutenant Korelonn can stop staring at his pad. We found the security terminal. It routes everything somewhere else, probably to a dedicated security room, but the data comes in here first and there are small displays. He can watch the whole building.”

  Korelonn looked intrigued. “Show me.”

  Before long, both of the security officers were tracking movement within the palace while Kitt and Bellows settled in front of an information terminal. Ekatya didn’t see any difference between that one and the twelve others in the room, but they did, and she was happy to leave them to it. Bellows held up his pad, the virtual screen activated, and used the translation program to transform the Halaaman characters into Common text while Kitt read it and began inputting instructions. They spoke back and forth in a language that occasionally sounded like Common, but was otherwise entirely foreign. Data analysts were a whole different species when they got into their equipment and code.

  Roris and her team flanked the door, looking ready to take down anyone who might wander in. Ekatya suspected that, like her and Gizobasan, they were simply staying out of the way.

  Fifteen minutes dragged by, broken only by her call to Lokomorra to tell him of their progress so far. She was calculating the amount of time they had remaining before the first guards came out of sedation when the quiet of the room was interrupted by a shocked and too-loud call. “Sucking Seeders! Captain!”

  She jogged across to Bellows. “What is it?”

  His eyes were rounder than she had ever seen them. “I recognize this encryption.”

  “You recognize it?” Kitt’s eyes were nearly as wide. “In the Great Leader’s communications?”

  “I’d know this anywhere. I spent a week breaking it after we went to the fundraiser. These messages are from Elin Frank.”

  Ekatya sagged against the nearest console as understanding crashed through her brain.

  Sholokhov had known. Or if he hadn’t, he had at least strongly suspected. This was why he had wanted Bellows on the team.

  Why in all the purple planets had he not told her?

  “Can you bridge the systems and get copies of
those messages?” she asked.

  “Already working on it.” Kitt indicated a bit of equipment attached to the terminal.

  “Working on it, or doing it?”

  “Working, but…” Kitt checked a readout on the equipment. “If you give us another five or ten, we’ll have it. In the meantime, we’re taking images of the code, so even if we can’t get the full communication train, we’ll have that.”

  The next eight minutes dragged on forever. Knowing they were this close to getting what they needed made Ekatya even more certain that something was going to go wrong, so she was not surprised when Korelonn said, “We’re out of time. Guards are on the move.”

  “No!” Bellows protested. “We just need another minute.”

  “You don’t have it. Get ready.”

  Ekatya moved over to Korelonn’s station, where two displays showed squads of guards jogging down the corridors. “Those are different uniforms,” she said.

  He nodded. “And they’re carrying different weapons. The grips aren’t the same. If I had to guess, I’d say these are the Great Leader’s personal troops.”

  “That does not sound good.” Ekatya called Lokomorra. “The situation just went light-speed. We’re going to the roof now.”

  “Confirmed. They’ll be ready for your call.”

  “Serrado out.” Raising her voice, she said, “All right, let’s go.”

  All of the others moved to the door except Kitt and Bellows.

  “Lieutenant, Ensign, now!”

  “Got it!” Kitt crowed. She scrambled to disconnect various cables, while Bellows raced over to the security station.

  “We can blind them. I already prepped it.” He yanked the loosened cover off the terminal, exposing the equipment beneath, then took a small device from his pocket. A tiny red light began to blink on what Ekatya recognized as an electromagnetic pulse bomb. “Get back,” he said.

  Ekatya and Korelonn backed away, and Bellows pushed the bomb into the tangle of naked circuitry. He had barely turned around before streamers of sparks arced in all directions from the station. Every display and illuminated switch went dark, not only at that station, but the ones on either side of it as well.

  Bellows grinned at Ekatya. “You had the right idea about blowing out their surveillance equipment. It was just more effective here.”

  She shook her head with a smile. “Well done. But next time, tell me what you’re planning. Now let’s get moving.”

  Korelonn checked his pad. “The hall is still clear, but it won’t be for long.”

  They poured out into the dim, quiet corridor and ran. Though they were moving twice as fast, the distance to the stairs seemed four times longer. Ekatya ticked off the landmarks as they flashed past: short corridor, connecting room, longer corridor, connecting room, left turn, and another long corridor…until they rounded the last corner and the stairs were finally in sight.

  But between them and the stairs were the lift doors, which were sliding open with an ominous sound.

  Four soldiers stepped out, took one look, and pulled their weapons.

  “Stop!” one of them bellowed.

  Ekatya had known it was too easy. Three stun beads were already in her hand, and she shouted a warning even as she threw them. She let the follow-through spin her in place and dropped to the floor so quickly that she skidded on her knees. Folding into a ball with her chest resting on her thighs, she covered her ears, closed her eyes, and waited.

  The percussive force pushed against her back, and when she straightened, the echoes of what had been a deafening blast were still reverberating.

  “The other way!” Korelonn shouted. “Move, move!”

  She risked a look back. The four soldiers were inert on the floor, but a dozen more were running toward them from much farther down the hall. They would not get to the roof that way.

  “Tell me you have other stairs mapped,” she said as they ran.

  “No. But I have an idea.” He was holding his pad, checking for thermal signatures. They rounded a corner, ducked through an intersection, turned another corner, and stopped in front of a door. When he found it locked, Korelonn pressed his pistol against the lock plate and activated a stun charge. At point-blank range, the charge made a dull thud, followed instantly by a higher, metallic sound of something breaking.

  With a pained hiss, Korelonn dropped the pistol and shook out his hand. Then he pushed open the door, kicked the pistol inside, and motioned everyone in what appeared to be a conference room. They crowded into the dark room and watched in silence as he carefully closed the door behind them, pulled the nearest chair from the large table, tilted it on its ornate back legs, and jammed it under the handle.

  “Clever,” Ekatya whispered.

  “Learned that in security training,” he whispered back. “Works great for these old mechanisms.” He picked up his pistol and holstered it, then opened the back pocket on his jacket and pulled out a thin coil of cable.

  Ekatya recognized it immediately and looked toward the floor-to-ceiling window. Yes, there was a balcony.

  “Ensign Bellows, you’re going to love this,” she murmured.

  They all froze as voices sounded in the hall, muffled through the thick door.

  “They didn’t go this way! Come on!”

  “We need the security cams! What’s taking so long?”

  “They destroyed the whole system. Nayalam said it won’t be fixed tonight.”

  The voices faded as footsteps pounded away.

  Ekatya tapped Korelonn on the arm. “Down, yes?” At his nod, she pulled the others aside and spoke quietly. “They know we’re on this floor, but thanks to Ensign Bellows and a well-placed EMP bomb, they can’t see us. And they were depending on their security system, so none of them are carrying thermal scanners. We’ll go down to the next floor and try for the stairs from there while they’re searching for us up here.”

  Bellows swiveled toward Korelonn, who was testing the window for an alarm. “Oh, no,” he groaned.

  Ekatya smiled at him. “Don’t worry, this will be easier. This time you get a grapnel and a cable.”

  “We’re six floors up!” Kitt stared at the window in horror.

  “And in a few minutes we’ll be five floors up,” Ekatya said. “Lieutenant, you’ve done this in training. With the exact same equipment.”

  Gizobasan looked nearly as frightened as Kitt, but she squared her shoulders and gave a short nod. “We can do it.”

  “You can,” Torado said. “There’s nothing to it.”

  “It’s easy,” Blunt added in her soft voice. “The only hard part is at the very top. The rest is simple.”

  Korelonn joined them. “Looks like you blew out more than just their video logging system. Their external alarms must have been routed through that terminal as well. Nicely done. Now, listen: I’ll go first and lock down the other end. All you have to do is lower yourself a few meters and I’ll catch you.”

  “See?” Ekatya told Bellows. “No swinging this time.”

  “Thank the Seeders. It was a week before my back stopped hurting.”

  The balcony was large enough for all of them to look over the edge as Korelonn attached the grapnel to the bottom bar of the railing and tossed the cable down. Though the night was warm, there was enough of a breeze to rattle the cable against the railing below. The sound could not have been that loud, but to Ekatya’s ears it seemed like a crash of cymbals advertising their location.

  Korelonn climbed over the railing, crouched on the bottom bar, then gripped it with his hands and let his body dangle over the edge. He wrapped his ankles around the cable and let out a soft grunt as he held on to the railing with one hand and grabbed the cable with the other. Then he was fully on the cable, swaying gently back and forth.

  Kitt gasped. It did look precarious, Ekatya had to admit. Korelonn
was hanging over a six-story drop, and while the aggressively pruned trees below them had looked pleasing enough this afternoon, in the darkness they seemed spiky and menacing.

  It felt as if half an hour passed as Korelonn lowered himself hand over hand to the next floor. At one point, he froze in place while a squad of guards raced through the garden below, but none of them looked up, and no spotlight flashed on to mark their balcony. In truth, Ekatya reminded herself, the palace was enormous and the troops had only a vague idea of where they were. Discovery would require sheer luck, and the vagaries of fortune worked both ways.

  Kitt made another choked sound when Korelonn reached his destination and began swinging. Again and again he swung, farther out each time, until he let go and landed with a thump on the balcony below them.

  Time sped up once more. Korelonn had the cable secured and was motioning Roris down when Ekatya thought of something they should have done earlier. She dashed back into the conference room and began opening cupboards and drawers.

  Bellows joined her. “What are you looking for?”

  “Something to go between our hands and the cable. Cloth napkins, table protectors, anything flexible but tough enough to withstand the friction. If we have that, we can slide. Otherwise we’ll have to go hand over hand.”

  He started a search on the other side of the room, and Ekatya paused to watch him. He had changed so much from the nervous, starstruck young ensign she had met a year and a half ago.

  “Ensign Bellows.”

  “Hm?” He did not look up from his efforts.

  “Before we go back out there, I just want to say…I’m proud of you. You’ve done a tremendous job tonight. I look forward to seeing what you’ll grow into, because I think you’ll be a fine officer.”

  He straightened and turned around. She could not see him well in the darkness, but she thought he looked both surprised and very pleased. “Thank you, Captain. From you, that means everything.”

  “You’re welcome. You’ve earned it.”

  They smiled at each other, then turned by unspoken agreement and resumed their search. Ekatya pulled open three more drawers before finding a stack of rectangular cloths that were too small to be napkins and too large to go under glasses. She didn’t care what they were, only that they would work.