He appeared like a genie. “Kendra! We dropped down into some kind of monster fest. All holograms, and they’re moving in loops.”
She could see a little of what was going on behind Scotty. Creatures were battling, blocking an entrance highlighted in green.
“How are you doing this?” Kendra asked.
“It’s some kind of a video link here, not on the main circuit. Listen: I don’t know how much time we have. Do you have any kind of thermal fix on the pirates?”
She was relieved that she actually had good news to offer. “Yes. If all of your people are currently with you, then Moresnot has six men working their way down from the top. Three more on the second level, two on the third. And… indistinct traces on the access stairs along C and E.”
“They may be putting their wounded there.”
“Wounded?”
“We used Xavier’s little ambush against them.”
She felt her breath catch in her throat. “What did you do?”
“Well, they won’t be winning at ‘thumb war’ any time soon, and they’ll wake up with the headaches of the year. Oh… and we have their weapons.”
“You do? What?”
Scotty looked at his equipment. “Some kind of crossbow pistol. Very compact, very nasty. They almost tested it on us: drove a bolt through a quarter-inch steel plate. Uses a kind of hand-crank to cock the latch.”
“Christ!”
The Kowsnofski woman appeared behind him. “And we have an air gun. Haven’t tested it yet. Works on pressurized gas.”
“Darla!” Kendra said. “You work in… Engineering, right?”
“Yes. Structural.”
“That will do just fine. Look at those guns. If I told you they were constructed here on the Moon, who made them?”
Darla looked more carefully at the makeshift weapons. When she spoke again, her speech was more measured and clipped, with less trace of her Oakie accent. “I… hmm. That’s interesting. I’d say that the energy efficiency on the crossbow suggests some kind of compound construction, maybe foamed steel stock… some kind of polymer. Falling Angels, maybe. But that’s the raw stock.”
“Construction?”
“Well,” Darla said. “I can’t get there with the crossbow. But the air gun? It’s using the same gas cartridges used to drive the Liquid Wall bubbles, but the size… these welds imply an arc. Most of the shops use laser welds, but this looks like plasma to me. More expensive, but higher temperatures and more precision.”
“I need an opinion,” Kendra said.
Now at last her speech patterns betrayed her childhood again. “Well… I’m not looking for a lawsuit or anything, Honey, but if I were you, I’d talk to Toby McCauley.”
Kendra exhaled hard. “Thank you.” She turned to her assistant. “Get me Piering.” Then back to Scotty. “What can we do for you guys?”
“We need to stay ahead of Moresnot. Keep scanning us. Scan them. If we’re in trouble, you tell us. We have their communications gear, and we’re changing the frequency to… one point two three.”
“Got it,” Kendra said. “Good work. Get moving.”
“What are you doing?”
“If Thomas Frost and Toby McCauley are implicit in this, then for the first time, we’re ahead of the ball. And I want to stay ahead.” A pause. “And another thing-”
“What?”
A hard smile. “You just won my election for me.”
As the image faded, Kendra turned to see the hulking Piering squeeze through the door.
“Kendra?”
She nodded greeting. “I want to put out a hypothesis to you to see if there is anything I’m missing. But first I’m going to write a name on the other side of this paper.” She did so.
Piering seemed puzzled. “What is this?”
“This is in reference to your experience. Someone is helping the kidnappers. We believe that the Frost twins are expatriate Kikayans with a grudge. They arranged this, but they had help.”
“Help?”
“Help, yes. The kind of help that could get someone spaced. Weapons. Equipment.”
Piering squinted, and frowned. “All right…”
“Now,” Kendra said. “It could be money, but the Frost brothers don’t have much. It could be that someone arranged payments to an account on Earth that we can’t cover, so we’ll look into that. But what I’m asking is: Did the Frost brothers ever touch on anything that might lead them to having leverage on someone connected with Fabrication or machining?”
Piering sat down, hard. “You know… back almost four years ago, your husband and I were looking into an information link.”
Kendra winced. “Is this the same incident where he was injured?”
“Both of us were injured,” Piering said. “Yes. Do you remember?”
“Data loss, connected with an He3 find if I recall.”
“That’s it.” Piering nodded approval. “It was interesting because the Frost brothers vouched for someone. They said that he was with them at a time when a data terminal at his shop was being accessed.”
“I remember. The lock on the shop was broken.”
“And do you remember the name?” he asked. “It was Toby McCauley.”
Kendra turned over the piece of paper. TOBY McCAULEY, was printed in block letters. “What a coincidence. Toby McCauley’s shop has everything necessary to make the weapons used in the assault.”
“Where does that leave us?” Piering asked.
“It leaves us setting a trap,” she said, and then turned to her assistant. “Tell Toby I’d like a meeting with him in fifteen minutes. It’s an emergency.”
“If he asks what the emergency is?”
“He’s not an idiot. He knows what it’s about. Even if he’s innocent, he knows what it’s about.”
The alien fungus farm looked like something out of Alice’s Wonderland. As Shotz and Celeste entered, the overlapping shadows turned the entire room into a Halloween graveyard. Weapons at the ready, they searched the entire room. Not until Celeste heard a low groan from within one of the stalagmites did they find Miller. Bai Long was nearby, wrapped tight within a second spire.
Shotz shoved them awake as Celeste worked on the wire binding their wrists.
“What happened?”
The taller man groaned. “They… came out of the stalagmites.”
Shotz shone his lights around the room, feeling a grudging admiration for the trick the gamers had pulled. Their opponents were more capable than he had expected. “And now they have your weapons. I would kill you, but we’ve lost enough people.”
Bai Long held up his hands. “They broke my thumb!”
“Then I don’t need you, do I?” He grabbed a thumb and squeezed, just enough to produce a whimper.
“I… I can still search, or run communications!” he said.
Shotz patted Bai Long’s head. “Don’t make another mistake.”
In bubble 80-F, the gamers huddled, conferring.
“Scotty. You need to get to the substation in bubble… 115-H.”
“What then?” Scotty asked.
“We want to raid the dome, but the pirates have placed explosives. If they see us coming, they might detonate them.”
“Yes. I saw one of the packages,” Scotty said. “I don’t know a lot about things like that, but I don’t think
