Page 92 of Throwing Fire

“Forget that. Tell me what it looked like.”

“Small black tubes. They jammed them into the walls and threw them among my people and ran, then left my people to die in flames?—”

Sounds like PBEx, a compact explosive that can be detonated from a distance with a high-frequency signal. “Was there a whine before they blew?”

Acker nods. “Like an insect buzzing.”

Yeah, that’s what a high-frequency detonator sounds like to me, too. “You got comms in here?”

Acker nods and pulls out an eskey. He fits it to his ear, where it sits awkwardly, being designed for a human ear.

“Call Kez,” I tell him. “Tell her to get Gig out here now with every piece of gear he can carry. We need a signal blanket.”

I wait while Acker relays this over the eskey to Kez. He’s silent while Kez responds, then he says, “About an hour.”

After he signs off, I ask, “Gig’ll be here in about an hour?”

That’s fast work. I figured the kid would need some time to pack at least.

Acker flashes the first grin I’ve seen since we arrived. “My Wisdom is awake and asking when we’ll be back. She wants to ensure that we eat.”

I clap him on the shoulder. “Told you she’d be okay.”

Acker nods and some of that awful bleakness leaves his eyes.

I gesture him on down the tunnel. Acker sets off slowly, unwinding the eskey from his ear. I don’t ask why he doesn’t keep it on. It looks uncomfortable from a distance.

“Why don’t you wear an eskey?” Acker asks. “Surely with the resources you have now?”

“Yeah.” I could be wired nine ways to fiveday. “I did that for years with SAWL. No one is ever wiring up my ass again.”

“You prefer to be a ghost,” Acker observers.

“Mmm. I know they say eskeys are untraceable. Too much noise to pick out one signal, right? Don’t believe that shit. I shot one poor fucker on Phogath straight through the ear by tracing his eskey signal.”

Acker looks askance at the eskey in his paw before shoving it into a pocket. “How long were you in the military?”

“Ten years standard.” I got my iridium button right before I shipped to Tje Dhos.

“You must have been very young when you signed up.”

“Seventeen standard.” Feels like a lifetime ago. I wasn’t naive or idealistic even then – too much time in juvie – but I don’t have much in common anymore with that big, brash kid who thought it would be fun to fight for a living. “When’d you take over the Whites?”

“Eight years ago. I was nineteen standard and had just survived the Change.”

That makes Acker Kez’s age. I’d pegged him as older. Those eight years have been hard.

“Some don’t?” I ask. I know black-market geneering carries risks, but I thought they were of the ugly, rather than the fatal, variety.

“Sadly, no. And your modifications? Were you born with them or did you undergo your own change?”

“I was geneered on Paggen for the atmosphere mines, so I was born with most of ‘em. But I bought a new face and eyes after I outed Tol Seng.”

Acker stops in mid-step and stares at me. “No one escapes Tol Seng.”

Kez said the same thing. Under pretty similar circumstances, when I think about it, only we were leaving the rats’ tunnels instead of descending deeper into them. “Yeah, well, there’s a first for everything. You know, I crawled through shit to break out of Tol Seng, too. Smelled pretty much the same.”

Acker glances at my boots as he begins walking again. “I will find you some fresh boots.”