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Gods, what did Atalantia’s warlocks cook up now?

They were collaborator civilians we relocated to Angelia, far from any military facility. Put them out of harm’s way, I said. If Sevro had been there, he would have laughed. “Where do you put a chickenshit officer if you need him to expire?” he once asked me. “Out of harm’s way!”

Pax was out of harm’s way too.

“You ever seen anything like this?” I ask Thraxa.

She shakes her head. “Maybe he was testing a new bioweapon.”

“There are easier ways.” I bark at my medici to take a sample and evac to Necromancer for transmission. Central Command needs to know. I start to laugh as I realize the game. “It’s all to buy time. Puzzles and pain.” I look around. The facts don’t add up. What is he buying time for? We could get an airdrop and catch up to him, so it wasn’t to extend his lead. Eleusis was ripe for the picking. How does this side trip change the board? Thunder peels to the north. My storm is slowly forming.

“Howler One,” Alexandar says in my ear com. “We’ve got something at the ore refinery.”

* * *

—

Alexandar, Rhonna, and several Howlers are gathered in the control room of the city’s ore refinery when Thraxa and I join them. Disabled spidermines and microwave bombs lie on a table.

Marbles, our Green slicer, and Clown’s best friend, is jacked into the central computer’s input port. A worn black hardwire runs from the computer’s port to a small port on his right temple. His eyes roll back in his head as he travels through a virtual landscape. His fingers tap on the plastic chair. After a moment, he sighs. His dry lips smack together and he reverts.

“Sumn nastyfoul darkpart,” he says in staccato silicon slang, skipping past the words that make sentences intelligible to us carbon bodies so that it sounds like his mouth is full of marbles. “Rickety roads, slipped package uranium dense, destinations easy as 01100001 01100010 01100011.” He stutters the numbers out like a garment needle.

“Alexandar, translate.”

Quick with low and mid tongues, Alexandar steps forward.

“No,” Marbles says, holding up a bony finger. The dark circles under his eyes war with his sunburn. “I do this time. See, boss, like this. Angelia dustyass worktown. Systems all in a web, redundancy protocol to keep hard grip. We cut web in Rain. Didn’t cut shadow web.”

“There are latent systems?” Alexandar asks, first to understand. “Old hardlines?”

“Hardlines.” Thraxa looks amused. “What dullard missed—”

“Quiet,” I snap. “Marbles, you telling me the mining cities are still connected?”

“Only some. Old system. Someone slagged it good, missed shadow somehow. Stupid analog, mostlike. Hardlines under the pan.”

“So he sent a command to other mining cities via this console,” I clarify.

“Yah.”

“What did he send?” Thraxa asks.

“Nulls. Dunno. Mad encryption. Got slicers with Gorgons, right? Slick pricks.” He taps his head. “Give this silicon a week, plus three clicks for sleep, and I got your answer.”

There is only one message worth sending to the other cities. My gut sinks. Rhonna pieces it together. “Could they send signals to the other reactors?”

“Give me diagnostics on the mine’s reactor,” Thraxa says. Marbles turns to the computer just as I jerk the hardwire away from him. As soon as he checked the reactor, I’ve no doubt a neurological attack would fry his brain to jelly. Trap after trap after trap.

“He’s going to overload this reactor and any connected by hardwire,” I explain, and head for the door. “It’s going thermal.” Angelia doesn’t matter, but the cities it’s hardwired to will. Those reactors are what fuel our shield chain. I open my general frequency. “All Howlers, evacuate the city. Buddy flights if you don’t got boots. Colloway, bring the Necro for air hook.”

By the time I make it out the door of the refinery, half the Howlers are already airborne. Those with gravBoots lock the magnetic buddy belts around their waists to the Howlers without them. They take off. Rhonna and Thraxa are the last pair away. Alexandar waits for me. I turn around so he can link the metal coupling at his waist to the one at my tailbone. The magnets snap together. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pats my chest.

I lift off hard from the ground, my gut wrenching as the boots thrust us up till we’re free of the city. Overhead, Colloway is scooping Howlers into his shuttle’s open garage. Alexandar and I land smoothly and decouple. I look down at the city and shout for Colloway to get us clear.

The logic is sinister.

That forest of bodies and biological weapons were meant to bring medical and science teams. To slow us down as we patched our wounded and scratched our heads, focusing on the small game instead of the grand stage.