“How would that help?” Tyler asked.

  “The longer we can spend inside the compound without being noticed by any of Zariv’s systems or defenses, the better,” Matt said. “Even if it only buys us a couple of minutes, every little bit helps.”

  “So we'd be like ghosts as far as the bots are concerned?" I asked.

  The engineer screwed up his face and waggled one hand with uncertainty. "Essentially yes, though the ruse has limits. If they hear you or move their attention outside of the feedback loop area, they’ll know something’s wrong. But like Matt said, everything helps.”

  "Outstanding!” Matt approved. “Make it happen.”

  “Wait a second,” Tarvik cautioned. “Lantzy, it’s risky to go back into Zariv’s network. You made it in and out twice. Three times may be pushing your luck. Altering code like that, someone’s bound to notice.”

  “As long as they don’t notice until we’re out of here and on our way to the shipyard, we’ll be fine,” Lantz replied. “We can leave as soon as I set up the illusion.”

  “We should at least get a little more quark for going the extra mile,” Tarvik said.

  “We don’t have any more quark,” Matt replied.

  “But we can put in a good word for you with Princess Goloran of Gothori,” I said. “You’ll need new employment offworld, and she’ll likely jump at the chance to hire you.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Lantz said with a grin. “What do you say, Tarvy?”

  The other man shrugged. “Might as well. I’ll just picture the look on Zariv’s face when he realizes he’s been outsmarted.”

  Lantz immediately returned to his workstation, dropping back into intense work mode.

  “It looks like we’re on final approach,” Matt said. “Any questions?”

  Of course, Tyler raised his hand.

  “What is it, Tee?”

  “Unrelated to our plan to storm the castle and rescue the princess bride, when do we eat?”

  CHAPTER 24

  After a couple of close calls with random bots coming and going from Zariv’s campus, our carriage came to a stop in a dingy alley a few blocks from his sprawling compound. Matt paid the robot driver for the ride from downtown and requested it wait here while we climbed out. After days of planning and preparation, the time had finally come to infiltrate enemy territory.

  Already, my nerves were stretched tight as over-tuned guitar strings. I shivered despite the warm breeze filtering around the surrounding buildings, all shorter and wider out here than where we had hailed the carriage. It was as if a giant had stomped on the skyscrapers to flatten them.

  So much rode on what we did here today. Not just my life and my friends’, but possibly our hopes of ever returning home. Everything hinged on Nyree’s successful rescue.

  When Matt rejoined us on the ground, his gaze was intent as he scanned our surroundings. Much older and more industrial than the city center, there was little sign of activity anywhere in the area. "All right, let's move," he said, waving us toward the alley's mouth. We paused there while he dipped his hand into his pocket to retrieve Head Case and the RFD. “Ben, you’re up,” he said through the comm.

  “Copy,” our micro-sized captain replied. Head Case’s main thrusters ignited as the ship lifted out of Matt’s hand, continuing to climb until it crested the six-story building beside us. We peered over Matt’s shoulder, watching the tiny ship’s forward camera feed on the RFD’s small screen.

  Gaining speed, Head Case approached Zariv’s compound, hugging the roofline of the buildings. As the compound came into better view, we saw Zariv's security bots loitering near a guarded gate, their yellow armor glinting in the sun.

  “Not too close,” Matt warned. “I’m sure they’re watching the skies, and we don’t know how sensitive their sensors are.” At the ship’s current size, it would be challenging to pick up on all but the most finely tuned equipment.

  “Copy that, Boss,” Leo replied. Head Case immediately slowed and changed direction, skirting the perimeter from across the street and remaining close to the structures.

  “The perimeter is clear,” Ben said once Head Case reached the corner of the compound's wall. “You’re go for entry.”

  “Copy that,” Matt replied, tapping a button on the RFD to switch comm channels. "Lantz, are you in position?”

  "Locked and loaded, boss," the engineer replied. "Ready to commence Operation Stupid, Useless Robot on your signal.”

  “He’s not bitter about losing his job to a machine or anything, is he?” Tyler cracked.

  “Not at all,” I replied with a nervous grin.

  “I collected the last six minutes of video from each of the bots inside the compound and out,” Lantz continued over our commentary. “As an added bonus, I captured the sound recording too, which is all they’ll hear while you march right past. Once I trigger the feedback loop, that’s about as long as you’ll have before they figure out their sensors are lying to them.”

  “Nice work. You’ve definitely earned your pay,” Matt replied. “Do it.”

  Something so impressive should have come with more flair. Instead, I heard a single light click from Lantz’s keyboard. “Done.”

  “Let’s go,” Matt said, drawing his blaster. Ally and I did the same. “Remember, don’t touch them.”

  I held my breath as we left the relative safety of the alley and sprinted toward the compound's front gate, three blocks away. With only six minutes, we needed to get there as quickly as possible and hope Lantz’s trickery worked out as expected.

  We knew it did long before we reached the guard bots because they didn’t react to our unobscured advance. Their blank gazes swept along the street, staring directly at us without a reaction and continuing, then reversing as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Matt slowed when he reached the machines, the space to reach the manual gate controls limited behind them. “Noah, you’re up,” he said, eying the sentries warily to see if they reacted to his voice.

  They didn’t.

  I holstered my blaster and retrieved the tablet from under my arm, activating it to retrieve Lantz’s stolen credentials. A few taps transmitted the encrypted symbols to the gate control, and the heavy iron-barred barrier slowly moved aside. The guard bots still didn’t react.

  “I have to be honest,” Tee said. “I thought Lantz and Tarvik were going to be a couple of two-bit script kiddies at best. They’ve sure proven me wrong, and I’m happier for it.”

  “Agreed,” Matt said. “Now can it, T-Bone.”

  “Yes, sir,” he crisply replied.

  Safely past the perimeter checkpoint, we picked up our pace, angling along the towering wall. More guard bots walked a predefined pattern just inside, the loop misleading them into believing the area remained clear. Walking past a gaggle of murderbots unnoticed had to be one of the coolest things I’d ever done.

  We continued along our own predetermined route through the compound, maintaining a good clip as we passed a handful of low-slung buildings. Each spewed steam or some sort of vapor out of short, wide stacks jutting up through their roofs. I figured they had to be bot factories, churning out new automatons nonstop. Large transports occupied bays on the sides of the structures, and a glimpse of a pallet of folded-up arms and legs confirmed my suspicion.

  “We need to pick up the pace,” Matt announced. “We’ve already burned half our time.” Finding another gear, he opened up from a hard, steady jog to a dead run. Tyler managed to keep pace, but Ally and I struggled to stay with them. My heart thudded, lungs burning as we passed the factories, a second wall coming into view. I already knew from our maps that Zariv’s guest houses awaited us on the other side.

  We reached an unguarded but still formidably secured steel door embedded in the surrounding wall. I tensed as Matt tapped our stolen credentials into the lock pad. If anyone spotted us, the first thing I expected to lose was our security clearance. Thankfully, the heavy door swung inward.

  We filed quickly through, finding ourselves in a lushly landscaped garden stuffed with alien plants. Colorful insects danced among the technicolor blooms, and small, yellow, bat-like creatures flitted among the eaves of some two dozen cottages. At any other time, it would have taken my breath away.

  “Two minutes, Noah. Be ready.”

  “I’m ready,” I replied through my heavy breathing.

  At last, we reached the door to Nyree’s cottage. Tyler and Ally took positions on either side while I rapped on the door. For long seconds only silence answered, allowing the fear Zariv himself might be currently visiting Levain’s daughter to trickle into my head. Then came the snick of a lock disengaging before the door whispered open.

  Nyree stood behind it, regarding me with one elegantly arched brow. "It certainly took you long enough. I was starting to think I'd be stuck here forever."

  Despite her biting words, relief flooded her delicate features. Clearly, the lavish accommodations hadn't equated to an enjoyable stay as Zariv's guest.

  "Yeah, you know how it goes," Tyler laughed, clearly riding an adrenaline high. "Traffic was murder."

  I shook my head in wry amusement. Trust Tee to joke when we remained a long way from safe escape. "We need to move."

  Nyree didn’t hesitate, slipping out the door and closing it behind her. “Do you have a blaster for me?” she questioned.

  “Figures you’d ask,” Ally replied, not bothering to disguise her mistrust. “You’re a crack shot.”

  “I’m still my father’s daughter,” she replied. “Whether he or you like it or not. There’s no reason to think I’m a plant for Zariv just because I know how to protect myself.”

  “Nobody accused you of being a plant,” Ally said.

  “Your eyes did,” Nyree countered. “I don’t blame you, really. Under the circumstances, I would struggle to trust me, too.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” Matt asked. “We need to go.”

  Nyree came to a sudden stop. “Go? What do you mean, go? We aren’t done here.” She noticed one of the bots walking the perimeter of the garden. “Why is that bot still active?” Her gaze whipped toward me. “How did you get past them?”

  “We have some tricks up our sleeves,” I replied. “We need to get you out of here before they catch on.”

  “I don’t want to get out of here,” she snapped, holding her ground. “Our deal was for you to help me kill Zariv, not for you to rescue me from him.” She thrust her finger toward the tallest building at the center of the campus, still only fifteen stories high. “My father’s murderer is in there. You can either follow or leave without me.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Matt grabbed Nyree's arm as she tried to march past him toward the central tower. "Stop. We're not ready for a frontal assault on Zariv."

  Nyree wrenched her arm free, eyes blazing. "You don't understand. Either we leave here with Zariv dead, or I don't leave at all."

  Matt blew out a frustrated breath. I saw the wheels spinning behind his eyes as he weighed our limited options. We were out of time, and Nyree seemed intent on martyrdom if we refused her demand.

  “How can you be willing to sacrifice yourself for a man who didn’t even care about you?” Matt growled.

  Her open palm against his cheek crackled like a gunshot. “Don’t you dare talk about my father like that. It doesn’t matter if he cared about me or not. I cared about him, and the man in that tower murdered him.”

  She didn’t want to factor in that both were running criminal enterprises along with their legal businesses, competing over the same turf. I didn’t need to have seen the Godfather to know that one of them had to die. Levain just happened to have pulled the short straw.

  Matt lightly rubbed his reddening jaw, nodding tightly. “Fine. We'll try to take down Zariv while we have the element of surprise. But no heroics, you hear me? At the first sign of real trouble we haul ass whether he's dead or not."

  Nyree's answering smile held more than a hint of madness. What had we gotten ourselves into?

  “We had a deal. If you want access to the Wardenship, I expect you to honor it.”

  Before Matt could argue, she set off toward the building at a dead run, forcing the rest of us to scramble after her. My heart thudded against my ribs. I couldn't believe we were really about to try to assassinate Zariv with zero prep and no exit strategy.

  We were going to kill someone. On purpose.

  The thought made me suddenly nauseous and weak in the knees. I lagged behind the others, struggling to accept the truth of our deal. Yesterday, they were just words. Today, it was really happening.

  “Katzuo, you okay?” Tee asked, noticing my loss of enthusiasm.

  “I…I can’t murder anyone,” I replied.

  “The guy’s a murderer himself. A monster.”

  “He’s still a person.”

  “I get it. I don’t love it either. But let’s be real. For one thing, Zariv’s been gunning for us since we got here, so it’s only fair to turn that crap back on him. For another, we need to get home, and Nyree is our best shot at doing that. None of us have to like it, but you need to man up and support your team. We’re all in this together. If you get a chance to pull the trigger, you do it. I’ll do the same. There’s a reason Matt’s training us to fight, and this is it.”

  I looked over at Tee. Usually so full of lighthearted banter, the severe look on his face unnerved me at first, but the more his words bounced around in my skull, the more they motivated me. I nodded, picking up the pace. ”You’re right.” My stomach remained queasy, but the strength returned to my legs. “I’m with you.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Tyler replied with his trademarked grin.

  We'd barely covered half the distance to the central tower when Matt looked back at me. I was still a short way behind the others. “Time’s up,” he announced.

  The words had barely reached my ears when the previously blind guard bots snapped erect, heads swiveling sharply in our direction.

  With a start, I fumbled the tablet from my pocket, acutely aware of plasma rifles swinging in our direction. "Goodnight, and good luck!" I shouted.

  The closest four bots instantly collapsed in limp heaps. Nyree’s head whipped over her shoulder to look at me, confusion creasing her delicate features.

  "How did you do that?"

  "No time to explain," Matt urged. "Move!"

  We scrambled the remaining distance to the tower's entrance. More bots emerged to intercept us. Again I spoke the phrase and again they dropped, buying us precious seconds to make it to the doors.

  "What’s going on?" Nyree demanded as we entered a richly decorated lobby, bright yellow rugs on the floor and dozens of huge paintings of yellow sunsets lining the high walls. "Why are only some bots affected?"

  “This guy has a weird yellow fetish,” Tyler commented offhand.

  I quickly explained about the modified firmware as we hurried across the lobby toward a bank of elevators. Another trio of guards moved to block our path. Again, I spoke the command phrase. Again, the robots collapsed. I smiled in fierce satisfaction at the outcome.

  We reached the elevators and paused there while Matt frantically used our stolen credentials to call a cab, tension skyrocketing when nothing happened. Zariv had to know we were here by now. Even if we could down his guard bots with a simple phrase, his personal guard was undoubtedly on its way from wherever they were stationed. Undoubtedly nearby.

  Matt used the RFD to call the man in the chair. "Lantz, we're at Zariv’s elevators, but they won't activate."

  “What are you doing at the elevators inside Zariv’s offices?” Lantz replied in shocked annoyance. “You’re supposed to be on your way back here by now.”

  “Change of plans,” Matt replied. “Why doesn’t the code work?”

  “Your credentials don’t have privileges to those elevators,” the engineer replied. “If you had told me plans changed before you got there, I could have saved you the trip.”

  “Too late for that now. Is there anything you can do?”

  “Getting you access will alert Zariv’s techs to the breach. They’ll trace it back here and shut the access down. Meaning it’s a one way trip, and Tarvy and I need to bug out the moment I activate the override.”

  Matt didn’t usually hesitate to make a decision. He did now, turning on Nyree. “I told you we weren’t ready.”

  “Do you want the Wardenship or not?” she replied just as sternly.

  “Lantz, it’s your risk, so it’s your call,” he said.

  The engineer didn’t hesitate. “Screw ‘em. We’ll be waiting for you at the shipyard, hiding in one of the half-builts. You’d better pick us up.”

  “We will,” Matt promised.

  A drawn-out pause followed. I pictured Lantz hunched over the battered keyboard, fingers flying as he prepared to burn our trail back to him. Finally, the doors whispered open, and we stepped inside the plush compartment.

  As the cab began to climb, Nyree turned burning eyes on Matt. "Whatever happens, Zariv dies today."

  Matt's answering nod was grim. Checking our weapons, we rose swiftly toward the top floor and whatever awaited us.

  “Here,” Tee said to Nyree, passing her his blaster and holding up his left hand. “I’ve got this.”

  She gasped as it hardened to titanium. “The Warden granted you a boon?”

  “Yeah, you like it?”

  “I don’t care for anything that comes from the Warden.”

  The comment stole Tyler’s thunder. He looked slightly dejected as the elevator slowed. A glance at Ally revealed confident determination. I imagined it was easy to feel that way when you could take down anything with a single shot.

  The elevator stopped. The doors opened, and we spilled out into a reception area. The two doors, one on each side of the room, were closed. Between them, a full-length window framed the three desks directly ahead of us, offering a panoramic view outside. I quickly crossed to the window, looking down in time to see a number of bots converging on the building.