Mike laughed. "Two trainees and a bunch of pensioners? I'm quaking in my boots."
"Trainee Harriet …" began Bernie. She wanted to explain about her plan, but it would be remiss of her to give the information to the enemy. "We must stay off the line. No more communications."
"Oh, why not?" said Mike. "I like listening to the panic in your voices."
Bernie disconnected, then shut down her internal comms system. If the enemy could listen in on calls, they could also use the network to triangulate her position. The enemy didn't know she was on the way to Chirless, and her arrival would therefore be a surprise. She wanted to keep it that way.
Bernie glanced out the window at the buildings hemming the street. They were blurring past so quickly they were a single, unbroken line, but she feared even that wouldn't be fast enough.
— ♦ —
Alice guided the jet between the apartment blocks surrounding the Peace Force building, and lined up for a landing on the roof. As she got closer, she saw a figure waiting for her, which turned out to be Duke Banville. The jet set down with a thump, and Alice took the ladder to the ground. "What's up?"
"Harriet wanted me to warn you. Your comms have been tapped. The enemy are listening in."
Alice stared at him. "Peace Force commsets are supposed to have a secure channel, completely unbreakable. How the hell did they manage that?"
"You know Mike, that maintenance guy you met? He's one of Darting's people."
"He was a spy?" Despite herself, Alice was impressed at their enemy's resourcefulness. "Cool!"
Banville frowned at that. "Yes, well we reckon he messed with one of your commsets while he was hanging around earlier."
"No chance. I barely saw him." Then Alice remembered where she'd first met Mike. The upgrades to her commset! She'd left the device with the store owner, and Mike could easily have bribed the woman to install a backdoor. Realising she'd been had, she cursed under her breath.
"What is it?" asked Banville.
"I think I know how they broke our comms. Tell Harriet I'll be back in twenty."
"Are you sure? She won't want you running all over the city."
"No more than twenty minutes, I promise." They both looked round as they heard a clatter of feet, and they saw Ben stepping off the ladder. "Turn around," said Alice. "We're going to run an errand."
— ♦ —
"Nice line of upgrades you do here," said Alice, as she laid her commset on the shop counter. She'd sent Ben off to his grandfather's store, preferring to deal with this particular matter on her own.
"I do my best," said the store owner.
Alice studied the owner's face. "Do you know how many years you could spend behind bars for this?"
The woman blanched. "But you asked me to upgrade it!"
"It's not the upgrade I'm worried about, it's the little extras you plugged in."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"This commset has a secure Peace Force channel. Turns out it's not as secure as it should be, and I can only think of one reason." Alice reached behind herself. "You're under arrest. Turn around."
"He made me do it!" said the woman quickly.
Relived, Alice withdrew her hand. She didn't have anything to cuff the woman with, but the threat had worked. "Mike Dantriss?"
"Yes. After you left your commset here, he came back to ask me about you. I—I said you wanted your commset upgraded, and he made me install the bug."
"Paid you, you mean."
The woman shook her head. "I'm already paying them protection money. He waived a whole month's payment. I had no choice, they're bleeding me dry."
Alice leaned across the counter. "The Peace Force is here to stop them, but when you gave them access to our comms, you were making our job very, very difficult. And if they beat us, you'll be paying that protection money forever. Do you understand?"
The woman nodded.
"Right, so get rid of whatever you put on my commset, and let me get back to kicking this gang off our planet."
"I'll get on it right away." The woman hesitated. "It's going to take fifteen minutes."
"Ten, or you're getting a tour of our cells."
"A-are you still going to arrest me?"
"I will, if I'm still here in fifteen minutes."
— ♦ —
The air in the Peace Force station was thick with dust, with more being added by the minute as the boxes of old files were transferred from the stairwell to the front doors. They formed a thick barricade in front of the piled-up furniture, and Harriet was pretty sure they'd stop any flying glass if the enemy managed to blow the front doors in.
They were nearly finished when her commset rang, and she frowned when she saw it was Alice. What happened to staying off the air? "Yes?" she said curtly.
"Comms should be clear again," said Alice.
"How?"
"Tell you when I get there. I'm on my way back."
She disconnected, and Harriet eyed her commset. There was no way she was going to trust the thing until Bernie confirmed it was clear, but Bernie had ordered her to stay off the line. She toyed with the device, weighing up her options, then decided to take the risk. She put a call through to Bernie, but instead of the robot's voice, she heard a recorded message.
"Thank you for calling the Dismolle Peace Force. Unfortunately, all our operators are busy, but if you state your name, address, and the nature of your crime we will send the next available officer to arrest you."
Harriet disconnected. It seemed Bernie had shut down the network, so she wouldn't be getting any help from that direction. All she could do is wait for Alice to return, and perhaps learn why they'd been compromised in the first place.
Chapter 18
Harriet's train of thought was interrupted when Birch came to find her.
"Not to state the obvious," he said, "but we need more weapons. We've held them off
