symbols you have that worked before, even if they don’t now.”
For a long moment, Sicarius stared past Rias’s shoulder at her. Finally, he wiped the dagger, sheathed it with the myriad others he carried, and handed her the torn scrap of paper, neatly folded.
“ Thank you.” Half the numbers were the same. She would have to check the sphere to translate the others. “I have some ideas about how to get through the web.” Maybe pretending to include Sicarius in their plans would make him more likely to believe they shared the same goal. She put a hand on Rias’s shoulder. “Can you make something that causes smoke? A lot of smoke?”
“ With the right ingredients, yes.” Rias snapped his fingers. “Sicarius, can you get us some bat guano from the cavern?”
Tikaya almost choked. Bat guano?
Sicarius’s eyes narrowed. “There is no potassium nitrate in these labs?”
Of course. Potassium nitrate-salt peter-was harvested in bat guano-rich caves, and it was one of the core ingredients in black powder. The kid was bright. They would have to be very careful-and probably lucky-to trick him into helping.
“ I haven’t seen any,” Tikaya said. Which was true. With her spectacles missing she had not bothered examining the lab closely.
“ I’ll prepare the vats and put together the rest of the ingredients to make some smoke bombs,” Rias said. “And Tikaya will work on the entry code for us. We can finish your mission before Bocrest even misses you.”
“ Bat guano,” Sicarius said. “Very well.”
As soon as the door shut behind him, Tikaya and Rias grabbed each other’s arms and started to talk at the same time.
“ You first,” Rias said.
“ First, I think it’ll be a lot easier to find potassium nitrate in one of these labs than making it from scratch, but I assume you’re just trying to keep him busy.”
Rias nodded. “Yes.”
“ Second, can you look at this and tell me what you think? These are the translated numbers from the door pad.” She fished out the page with her solution for the puzzle, wincing as she handed it to him. It had seemed a logical guess during her in-cabinet mulling, but now that she had to share the hypothesis with someone else, she feared it a foolish one.
“ A Skiltar Square?” Rias asked. “It looks like you solved it. In Turgonia, you can get books full of them to entertain your precocious children.”
He smirked, and she wondered how many his parents had foisted on him. Her amusement at the idea faded quickly.
“ This can’t be right then,” she said. “Too simple for these people. And surely they wouldn’t have had similar puzzles to what we have.”
“ Why not? In your studies, haven’t you found that the fundamental properties of numbers are the same in every language, amongst every people? Mathematics surely transcends humanity, existing whether we do or not, so it doesn’t seem odd to me that another species would play the same sorts of games with numbers. And why wouldn’t this entrance code be simple? Do you think someone carrying a toxic weapon up a ramp would have wanted to stand outside the door for three hours making calculations? What if he dropped one of those poison-filled vials and it broke at his feet? Big oops, eh?”
Tikaya laughed. She had not considered that.
“ Besides,” Rias said, giving her an appreciative smile. “Those squares aren’t that easy to solve. Why don’t you translate the combination from the journal and see if it’s a solution to one.” He thumped a fist on the railing. “We still need a way to destroy the weapons. I was thinking we might find a formula for a powerful alien version of naphtha or kerosene, because even gas is flammable, right? At a high enough temperature… Tikaya, where are you going?”
Halfway through his spiel, she had charged to the cabinet where she left the cube. She raced back with the contraption clutched in her arms, and Rias lurched back a step at the sight of it.
“ It’s not active,” she said. “I’m not sure why, but it gives us the chance to experiment.”
Rias recovered, though he eyed the device warily. “Experiment?”
“ The cubes already clean things by incinerating them, right? All we need to do is add those weapons to the list of items its programmed to burn, throw it in that chamber, and close the door. You took one apart, right? Do you think you could alter its parameters? Like a punchcard in a steam loom?”
“ I… Tikaya, that thing is so far beyond a steam loom I wouldn’t have any idea where to start.”
“ Even if I can translate the schematic?” She thrust the blueprint she had copied toward him. “Give me a moment, and I might be able to find repair instructions in the sphere’s library too.”
Though his eyes darted, devouring the schematic, his wary frown did not fade. “All before Sicarius returns or the marines stumble upon us or angry relic raiders burst in?”
So, that’s what daunted looked like on him. Huh.
“ We can do it.” Tikaya slapped him on the backside.
He blinked. “What was that for?”
“ I’m encouraging growth.”
CHAPTER 21
Gunfire cracked in the distance. Again. Bent over a table with Rias, Tikaya did not lift her head. The cube, one side removed, sat between them. Several parts she could not name lined the table in the order Rias had removed them. A three-dimensional display of the inside of one of the cubes hovered in the air, courtesy of the sphere. The blue lab lighting continued to flash, providing poor illumination for such detailed work.
A yell of rage-or pain-sounded in the tunnels. Rias grumbled something under his breath about how he ought to be out there, helping the men. He had set the situation up so everyone would be running around in the tunnels, distracted dealing with each other and the darkness, creating just this time they needed, but it clearly did not sit well with him.
“ The screwdriver thing,” he muttered.
Tikaya handed him a long tool with a magnetic hook on one end and a tiny flat-tip head on the other. She had finished her work, gathering supplies for Rias’s smoke bombs and translating the schematic and the numbers Sicarius had given her. The latter had proved to be another Skiltar Square. Now she handed Rias tools and tried not to feel useless.
“ Close,” he said. “It’s just a switch that modifies the level of ‘cleaning’ to be done, so it’s easier than I thought, but reaching it without taking everything else out is the problem. Also…I’m afraid if I take everything out, I won’t be able to get it back in correctly without breaking something. The insides are much more fragile than the outside.”
“ Take your time,” she said, wishing it didn’t sound so inane.
She was not sure how many minutes-hours? — had passed since Sicarius had left the lab, but she was beginning to think he must have run into a distraction. As uncharitable as it was, she hoped for a nice arrow or pistol ball to the chest.
Rias grunted and held out his hand for another tool. The kit of precision implements they had found ranged from knives and scalpels to repair gizmos, most of which she could only guess at. Some were too large for human hands, but all were well-made, the craftsmanship amazingly sturdy for such fine tools. A pair of black knives, in particular, had caught Rias’s eye, and he had stuck them into his belt.
“ There,” Rias whispered. “I think I got it.”
“ Is there a way to test it?”
“ Not here.” He started replacing the innards. “We’ll have to get into the tunnels on the other side of the cavern. That’s where I found the panel to cut off the lights. I’m guessing that whatever powers them powers these cubes and that’s why they’re inert.”
Tikaya realized how lucky she had been when the blasts brought down all that rubble. If power had been
