Maybe it was because they’d sent her to slavery. Maybe she needed to believe there had been some meaning and some purpose to those twelve years of exile.

  If so, it was hardly up to Merrick to destroy those last lingering hopes. “I don’t know any truth either,” he said. “Your mother may just be playing it careful to protect her group. It’s not like we’re telling her everything about us, either.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes still lowered. “We’re going to look for my father now?”

  Merrick sighed, feeling worse than ever. “Yes,” he said, taking her arm and heading across the clearing. Even at their best speed they weren’t going to reach Svipall before nightfall. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you in there. I was angry and…and things aren’t going as well as I’d hoped when I agreed to come here. I’m making this up as I go, and I need your help.”

  She was silent another moment. “I’ll do whatever I can,” she said at last. “Just tell me what you need.”

  “Right now, I need to fill in some gaps,” Merrick said. “Tell me everything you know, starting with what happened back at Alexis Woolmaster’s house.”

  “There’s little you don’t already know.” She shot him a glance, looked quickly away again. “My father took me away soon after my mother led you to Svipall. He said that you would surely open a path into the village, and that we would then enter the masters’ area and obtain their secrets. My mother joined us, and we waited.”

  “Until I escaped?”

  “Yes,” Anya said. “But the hoped-for path didn’t appear. We waited and watched, and then my father told us to wait while he searched on his own for a way inside. He promised to be back in two hours. But he wasn’t.”

  “When did you come here?” Merrick asked, nodding back toward the hideaway.

  “We waited two days,” Anya said. “My father had not returned, nor had we found any trace of you. I told my mother that you knew of this place, and that if you remained free you’d come here to search for me.”

  “Which I did,” Merrick said, feeling a small twinge of satisfaction. At least he’d gotten that right.

  “Yes,” Anya said. “When we heard the stone move, my mother was afraid the masters had found us. So we hid in the secret room until you appeared.”

  “Right,” Merrick said. “So what makes your mother so sure your father is in Svipall? Couldn’t he just have been captured by the Trofts out in the forest?”

  “In which case, he’s still in Svipall, is he not?”

  “Probably,” Merrick said. Technically, she was correct. But on a practical level, Ludolf hiding anonymously among the Svipall villagers and Ludolf a prisoner in the Troft warehouse were two very different scenarios. “I’ll just have to get back in. And your mother’s right—the sooner, the better.”

  “You have a plan to rescue him?” Anya asked hopefully.

  Merrick pursed his lips as he gazed into the forest. To rescue him. To rescue the man who’d tried a blatantly underpowered revolt against the Trofts, resulting in dozens, maybe hundreds of his fellow slaves getting killed. The man who, when the revolt failed, had failed to protect his young daughter, but instead had allowed her to be taken offworld into Troft slavery.

  But there was no point in mentioning any of that. Ludolf Treetapper was family; and in this case, for whatever tangled reasons, family trumped reason and logic. “I think so, yes,” he said instead.

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Later,” he said. “Right now, we need to be quiet and concentrate on not getting attacked.”

  He did have a plan, or at least the beginnings of one. But as always with such things, the devil was in the details.

  And there was definitely a devil in this one. One massive hell of a devil.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lorne had promised Jin that she would love the place he was taking her to. It was quickly apparent, though, that his promise was going to be on hold for a while.

  It wasn’t Lorne’s fault. If anyone’s, it was Jin’s fault for escaping from Corwin’s house in such a loud and destructive manner. The injured Marines she’d left behind gave the response team even more incentive to track her down, and it didn’t take them long to find the hidden exit. At that point, Reivaro’s predictable reaction was to flood the drainage conduits with angry Marines.

  Fortunately, the system was more extensive and complicated than they’d apparently anticipated. It was also just as hard for them to get through the narrow passageways as it had been for Jin and the others.

  In fact, it was probably worse. The Marines couldn’t walk completely upright any more than the Cobras could, which left them three options. They could waddle along with bent knees, though without the assistance of servos or powered armor that would quickly fatigue muscles and joints. Alternatively, they could find or jury-rig some sort of wheeled carts—grav lifts were too big to fit through the manholes unless they were disassembled—on which they could kneel or sit, though the rough flooring would make for slow travel. The same rough flooring would also create enough noise and vibration to telegraph the carts’ approach half a kilometer away.

  Or, worst of all, they could lean forward as they walked. Worst, because with their shoulders angled down and forward, there would be a point somewhere directly ahead beyond which their epaulet lasers couldn’t reach. An opposing force waiting beyond that point would get their first attack for free.

  The Cobras wouldn’t set that kind of ambush, Lorne assured his mother. Not unless it became absolutely necessary. He and the others were still hoping the confrontation could be resolved without additional bloodshed.

  Fortunately, it didn’t come to a life-or-death decision, at least not that first night. Werle found them a partially collapsed side tunnel that clearly hadn’t seen use for years, and the four of them settled down to wait out the Dominion search. Above them, the day turned into night, and the group’s watchful waiting turned into sleep.

  Werle and de Portola were up early the next morning and headed out for a quiet recon. They returned with reports of no Dominion activity in the area, but Lorne decided to wait a little longer, just to be on the safe side. Finally, about midmorning, he decided it was safe and they set off.

  As they traveled, he once again promised Jin that she would absolutely love their final destination. Having just spent a fitful night lying on cold ceramic without any blankets or pads, Jin assured him that she absolutely would.

  The journey through the drainage system took twice as long as the previous day’s trek, and with the ever-present threat of a sudden Dominion attack it was at least three times as stressful. Jin tried to keep track of their turnings with her nanocomputer’s compass, but by the time Lorne called a halt she was thoroughly lost. He opened a camouflaged door to reveal a hidden stairway and led the way down about two floors’ worth of stairs to the entrance of their final destination.

  From Lorne’s glowing description she’d half expected to find a five-star hotel waiting at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately, she’d only half expected that, or else would have been thoroughly disappointed. The structure they came to was composed of maybe a dozen rooms of varying sizes—most of them small—with plain and undecorated ceramic walls and only thin carpet to cushion the equally hard floor. There was a sleeping area filled wall-to-wall with cots, and separate corners devoted to kitchen and sanitary facilities.

  One of the larger rooms had been equipped with long tables and folding chairs, where eight women and two men were working with some kind of clay and what looked like ball bearings. A number of industrial and craft-style items were laid out on another table along the wall. Three of the people looked up as Lorne and Jin stuck their heads in the door, but the rest ignored them, their full attention on whatever they were doing. In one of the other rooms four women and two men were cutting out odd-shaped strips from sheets of soft-looking, flesh-colored cloth or foam. Beside the table were two recliner type chairs that reminded Jin of the types used for eye surgery.

  Small, unadorned, and plain. But at least the ceilings were tall enough for her to stand upright.

  “Well, it’s a step up from the Braided Falls cave,” she commented as Lorne concluded the brief tour in the kitchen area. “Probably three steps up from last night’s accommodations. And don’t get me wrong—it’s very cozy. But it’s hardly the glorious refuge you were promising.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t promising luxury,” Lorne said. “At least, I didn’t mean to. I was promising that you’d love the irony. You have any idea where we are?”

  “Not a single clue.”

  “Yeah, the system was sort of designed that way,” Lorne said. “Hard to navigate. Turns out we’re directly under the Dome. About fifteen meters below, to be exact. This place was supposed to be our last refuge in case of a Troft attack.”

  Jin stared. “You’re kidding. This was here during the invasion?”

  “And for a lot longer than that,” Lorne confirmed. “It didn’t get used because everyone had forgotten it was here. Just like everyone had forgotten that the drainage system was designed to be a secret personnel expressway in case of emergency.”

  Jin shook her head. “That’s bizarre.”

  But now that she thought about it, she realized that not only was it not bizarre, it was all but inevitable. The original Aventinian colonists had arrived in the aftermath of the first Dominion-Troft war, using an access corridor through Troft territory that had been basically forced down the Trofts’ throats during the peace negotiations. Tensions had been high, on both sides, and with the fledgling colonies far beyond quick communication with the Dominion, the betting in the Dome had probably been that the colonists would be wiped out within ten years.

  The colonists themselves had undoubtedly given themselves even worse odds. And so, when it came to founding their first real city—Capitalia—they would have planned for the worst.

  “Clever, I guess,” she said. “A little more headroom in the tunnels would have been nice.”

  “Actually, I’m guessing they scaled the dimensions exactly the way they wanted,” Lorne said. “I get that from some incomplete documents that Chintawa more or less accidentally dug up and handed over. The designers wanted the tunnel system to be hard to get through so that it would be more defensible for any survivors who made it down here.” He gestured somewhere off to the side. “Unfortunately, somewhere along the line a later cadre of urban planners forgot about the system’s secondary use, so when the city did its second big westward expansion they put in smaller conduits. I ran into that problem back when I was trying to get Governor Treakness out of town. Still, we’ve got access to the entire center of the city.”

  “Hopefully, that’ll be enough,” Jin said. “So the irony is that this was designed against a Troft attack, but we’re using it against the Dominion?”

  “Even better,” Lorne said with a wry smile. “The real irony is that this whole thing was designed by the Dominion.”

  Jin blinked. “They designed it?”

  “Lock, stock, and barrel,” Lorne said. “Including the materials, the layout, the defense capabilities, even the stealth layering. Even better, I’d give you long odds that nothing Santores has access to even hints that this is here, or how to find it.”

  “But I thought the first big expansion from Old Town didn’t start until after the Corridor had been closed.”

  “It didn’t,” Lorne said. “It was Great-Grandfather Jonny Moreau who brought the plans with him, just before the Corridor was closed. The records aren’t clear, but they also hint that it might have been Jame Moreau who had the plans drawn up in the first place.”

  Jin nodded, her stomach tightening. Jame Moreau. Brother of Jin’s grandfather Jonny.

  Grandfather of Captain Barrington Moreau. Who was currently at Qasama.

  “But that’s all history,” Lorne continued, motioning Jin out of the kitchen area. “Let’s move on to current events. Specifically, our two-pronged plan to be as big a pain in the butt to the Dominion as we can.”

  “Without killing anyone, right?”

  “Without killing unless we have to,” Lorne amended grimly. Ahead was the doorway into the room with the long tables; taking his mother’s arm, he steered her inside. “This is our mudball team. They’re working on our latest attempt to mess with the Marines’ weapons system.”

  Jin stepped to the table for a better look. Earlier, from the doorway, she’d guessed the assembly materials to be clay and ball bearings. Up close, they looked like exactly the same things. “Okay,” she said. “So the idea is to throw a whole bunch of small missiles—the ball bearings—with the clay to hold them together?”

  “Basically,” Lorne said. “We’re figuring the first laser volley will disintegrate the clay and leave the metal to swarm the target.”

  “You’re figuring? Does that mean you haven’t tried it?”

  “Not yet,” Lorne said. “We’ve had to fiddle with the composition—the things were falling apart before they even left our hands. This is the first batch that’s held together in our tests.”

  “We’re hoping to be ready for a field test in a couple of days,” de Portola added, walking into the room behind them.

  “Be careful when you do,” Jin warned. “Uncle Corwin said the Marines have pulled the whole planet’s personnel lists and are running facial recognition scans on everyone they see.”

  “So we understand,” Lorne confirmed. “But we think we’ve got a way around it.”

  “Speaking of which, they’re ready for us,” de Portola said.

  “Okay,” Lorne said. “Got to go, Mom. There are meal bars and water in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

  “Sounds good,” Jin said. Actually, it sounded awful. She’d been living on meal bars since arriving at Uncle Corwin’s—there hadn’t been time for any real cooking while they worked on the neckbands—and her stomach was going to have to growl a lot louder before she could face another one of them. “I think I’ll look around here for a while first.”

  “Okay,” Lorne said, eyeing her closely. “If you’re not hungry, you should at least go lie down. I doubt you got much sleep last night.”

  “I will,” Jin promised. “I’d like to watch the work here for a while first.”

  “A little while,” Lorne insisted. “We may need you up top at any time, and if you fall asleep Reivaro won’t even have to chase you.”

  “And that would hardly be sporting,” Jin agreed. “Don’t worry, I’ll get some sleep. Three hours at least.”

  “Make it six and you’ve got a deal,” Lorne said.

  “Fine. Six.” Jin reached out and took his hand. “Be careful, Lorne.” She looked at de Portola. “All of you.”

  “We will,” Lorne said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “And you,” he added, leveling a finger at the people working around the table. “Don’t let her offer to help. If you do, she’ll be here until you run out of clay and she’ll never get any sleep.”

  “Don’t worry,” one of the woman said dryly. “We’ll make sure she learns how to sleep sitting up first.”

  “Good,” Lorne said. “See you later, Mom. Let’s go, Dill.”

  Jin watched them go, an all-too-familiar hollow feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. Her whole family, at immediate risk or facing unknown dangers…

  But others had lost more. Forcing the fears into the back of her mind, she turned back to the table.

  The work seemed straightforward enough. Each of the workers had a bowl filled with a brownish clay or stiff mud, plus a shallow plate of steel bearings. The method most of them were using was to lay out a thick strip of clay on the table, press bearings into it, then roll the strip up like spiral cake. A couple of the finished mudballs looked a bit different, as if one of the workers had experimented with the technique. But for the most part, they looked pretty much alike.

  The woman who’d spoken earlier looked up at Jin. “Don’t even think it,” she warned. “Lorne would have our hides if we let you work.”

  Jin smiled. “That much of a taskmaster, is he?”

  “He’s Lorne Broom,” the woman said. “We need him.” She smiled suddenly. “And you’re Jin Moreau Broom. We need you, too. I’m Leslie, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jin said. “So. Clay and ball bearings?”

  “That’s the plan.” Leslie cocked her head. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that anything I came up with would necessarily be better,” Jin assured her hastily. Clearly, Lorne was in charge here, and she would never do anything that would undermine his authority or leadership. She’d learned the importance of that back on Qasama. “But different might not be bad. Shaking things up might keep the Marines off-balance.”

  “Well, everything we’ve got is over there,” one of the men put in, pointing toward the table against the wall. “Go see what you can come up with.”

  “Thanks,” Jin said.

  Lorne had ordered her to go get some sleep. And she would.

  But it wouldn’t hurt to have a look at the equipment first. Just a quick look. That’s all.

  * * *

  Werle was sitting in one of the recliner chairs in the makeup room, being worked on by one of the women, when Lorne and de Portola arrived. “How’s your mom?” he asked, opening one eye.

  “Tired, but functional,” Lorne said, nodding at the woman adding the artificial skin to his cheek. “Hello—I don’t think we’ve met. Lorne Broom.”

  “Kathia Rezondo,” she said. “I’m one of Jennie’s people. I work—used to work—on Anne Villager.”

  “Jennie?” de Portola asked.

  “Jennie Sider,” Lorne said. “Chief makeup artist on Greendale.”

  “Ah,” de Portola said, nodding to the woman. “Nice to meet you. Sorry about you getting shut down—I really like the show.”

  “Thanks,” Rezondo said. “To be honest, we got away with it longer than I thought we would.”

  Lorne nodded, feeling a twinge of guilt. It had been his idea, but James Hobwell and the people of Polestar Productions had been the ones who’d carried it out, and in the process borne the brunt of Lij Tulu’s anger.

 

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