One of them took a step in her direction, and she briefly froze. He couldn’t possibly see her, and her suit had countermeasures to muffle her sound and any scents, and to mask her heat signature –

  “What is it?” the other guard said.

  “Look at the carpet,” the first said.

  Callie looked down. She couldn’t see her own body – one of the more disorienting parts of being inside this suit… but she could see the oval bootprints she left in the deep-pile carpet. Two depressions as clear as footprints in the snow. Just her luck to draw an attentive guard.

  She raised both her arms and let the suit’s targeting computer – a recent addition Ashok had put together – slightly shift her aim. She had wrist gauntlets with an array of non-lethal and lethal weapons, energy and plasma and simple projectiles, and she used the latter because she didn’t want to put holes in the walls. The gauntlets made a thpt thpt thpt sound as they fired rounds into both the guards, unerringly through the view-ports in their armor, and on through their eyes. They writhed, tentacles lashing – Liars had distributed nervous systems, and it took their appendages a while to realize they were dead – and Callie stepped back.

  “I intercepted the security alert that triggered when the guards stopped having vital signs,” Shall said. “I’m locking down the hallway just to be safe, though – there’s a ‘protect the director’ protocol that effectively quarantines that part of the station, so I’m sealing you in.”

  “Thanks.” Callie’s voice croaked a little.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I… did what had to be done. I didn’t like it.” She was extremely comfortable with self-defense, but attacking from ambush, even in a righteous cause, never felt good to her. She reminded herself that the guards wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her, or worse, capture her for interrogation and experimentation. That didn’t make her feel much better, but she shook it off for now and focused on the mission.

  Callie stepped around the corpses of the Liar guards and tested the door to the director’s office. “Can you unlock this?”

  “I… ha. No, I can’t. I think it’s an actual physical deadbolt.”

  “Breaking stuff it is.” Callie punched the frosted glass pane to the left of the door, and it shattered. She shouldered through the opening sideways, barely squeezing through, and found herself in a gorgeous office, all dark wood and lush plants and high ceilings with exposed roof beams as wide as trees. The walls were lined with shelves that held various trophies and objects of art and models of spaceships. There were comfortable chairs, and a desk approximately the size of a king-sized bed.

  No sign of Kerneghan, though. Callie checked the director’s private bathroom, wrist gauntlets raised, but the beautiful slate shower stall and gleaming fixtures and pedestal sink didn’t offer any hiding places. She looked under the desk, too, just in case, then looked around, frustrated. “Shall, the office is empty.”

  “She’s got a tracker on, Callie, and it says she’s right next to you. I can even see her vital signs – her heart rate is elevated, so I’d say she’s pretty stressed about something.”

  “I don’t see–” Callie stopped, thinking of the hunter-drone on the ceiling of the scourge-ship.

  She looked up, just in time to see Kerneghan drop from the rafters on top of her.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Scut-work,” Kaustikos said. “A waste of my considerable talents.”

  “Please shut up,” Ashok said.

  “Why? No one can hear us. We’re in vacuum.”

  “I can hear you,” Ashok said. “It’s terrible.” He found the access hatch and opened the lever, crawling through into the tiny airlock, and Kaustikos crammed in after him. Ashok was very aware of the bomb he’d attached to the probe and very unhappy about it pressing into the small of his back. The outer door opened and Ashok tumbled into gravity, knocking over mops and a bucket when he landed. He was glad Callie wasn’t there to see him.

  “Now who should be quiet?” Kaustikos floated in the center of the room, a dark orb covered in glittering lenses.

  “Still you. Shall, we’re here. What’s the situation out there?”

  “Pretty amusing,” Shall said. “I sent a fake security alert to all the roving guards on this level, telling them there was a riot in the showers. They all obligingly rushed in, and then I sealed the bathroom doors – the quarantine systems on this station are really useful. There are a few other guards, watching the dormitories and the cafeteria, but I hijacked hunter-drones and got the authorities pinned down secured. Zero casualties, and all the security on this level has been neutralized.”

  “Then let’s go get greeted as liberators.” Ashok left the maintenance closet and stepped out into the main holding level. Kaustikos floated along behind him. Ashok didn’t actually need the AI, but Callie didn’t like leaving Kaustikos unattended, and Ashok had drawn babysitting duty.

  “Why am I even here?” Kaustikos complained.

  “Callie doesn’t like leaving you unattended, and I got babysitting duty.”

  “Bah. Haven’t I proven myself yet? I helped rescue her. I led alien ships on a merry chase for her, at great personal risk.”

  “I know. It must be super frustrating for you.” Ashok hummed to himself as he approached an intimidating metal door. “Open,” he said, waving his arm, and Shall obligingly made it swing wide. Ashok passed through another security door and walked to a low railing, then looked down onto the cafeteria, where hundreds of humans in shapeless gray jumpsuits were eating under the not-at-all-currently-watchful eyes of several hunter-drones.

  “Greetings from the resistance!” Ashok called, amplifying his voice through the speakers built into his face. “We’re here to set you free!” Assuming Callie could get their collars deactivated, anyway.

  The humans looked up at him, and gaped, and lots of them looked at the hunter-drones, shying away in fear.

  “Dance for me!” Ashok shouted, and Shall, snorting amusement in his comms, made the drones spin and bounce and jitterbug on their spindly knife-sharp limbs. “Okay, now go away.” The drones scurried off toward the kitchen. “I am the drone king! I can do anything!”

  The Exalted who ran the kitchen came out, shouting, “What’s the meaning of this? Who are you?” Two Exalted assistants trailed her.

  “Newly liberated people of this station! You could grab her.” He pointed to the Exalted cook. “Tie her up. Put her in the freezer or whatever. I’d do it myself, but… I’m all the way up here. Seriously, it’s okay. The resistance has control of the station, in a sort of general, overall way. We still have to subdue the odd supervisor, but we’re working on it. In the meantime… empower yourselves.” For a minute he thought he’d have to send Kaustikos zooming down to tase the Exalted or something, but then one of the prisoners flung a tray at the head cook, who squawked and turned to run, and then there were plenty of volunteers to pile on and subdue her.

  Ashok found the stairs and ambled down to the main floor, looking around. “Is there any kind of leader here? Anybody who wants to be a leader?”

  A woman with dark hair buzzed short climbed up on a table and stood tall. “I used to work with the resistance. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from?”

  “I’m Ashok. I’m a human, just like you, only with some mechanical upgrades, which, let me be honest, I like way better than the biological ones your enemies are into. Just a personal prejudice, I guess. I’m from the moon, originally. Earth’s moon, I mean. Is that what you were asking about?” He tried to remember if he was forgetting any social niceties. Oh, right. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Serafina, but – are you really from the resistance?”

  “I’m sort of an outside consultant, but yes, I’m technically a hero of the revolution. I could use a co-hero, though. Do you think you could help me coordinate people here, have them grab whatever they can carry from the kitchens – we’re going to have a lot of new mouths to feed back on Niflheim – and then guide them to the main hangar to await transport? This weird floaty orb thing can show you the way.”

  “Oh, I can, can I?” Kaustikos said.

  “You wanted something to do.”

  “Something worthy of my talents. But fine, yes, I can play sheepdog.”

  “Much more appropriate use of that comparison this time,” Ashok said.

  Serafina watched them with wide, disbelieving eyes. Ashok tried to smile at her reassuringly, though he gathered that usually didn’t work well, since a lot of his face was metal and glass. She ran a finger under the silver collar around her neck. “What about these? Escaping isn’t much good if we’re still collared. The Exalted can trigger them remotely.”

  “That’s someone else’s department, but the collars are being dealt with. Are you good here? I have to go liberate the dormitories and the labs and stuff. Lots to do, and eventually the Exalted out there in the rest of the system will notice and try to stop us, so, faster is good.”

  Serafina nodded, then clapped her hands and shouted, “Listen up! We’re being rescued!” She started organizing the prisoners into teams to loot the kitchens, and Ashok went away, humming one of his favorite Luna-Pop songs cheerfully, following Shall’s directions to the dormitories.

  Kerneghan didn’t have the same upgrades Metcalf did. She’d kept her own arms and legs and instead grafted long, thin pseudopods all around her waist, like a grass skirt made of meat. She must have used those tentacles to pull herself up into the rafters to hide when she heard the shots fired or the glass breaking.

  The director hadn’t fallen squarely on top of Callie – Callie was still invisible, so Kerneghan had been forced to guess at Callie’s location, probably from watching her footsteps appear and disappear in the deep-pile carpet. She struck Callie a glancing blow on the shoulder and knocked her down, though, and after that, Kerneghan – a slight, dark-haired, sharp-featured woman, pretty if you were into the birdlike type – lashed around wildly with her tentacles, feeling for Callie since she couldn’t see her.

  One of the tentacles hit Callie in the side and instantly snaked around her waist, and then the others crawled along after the first, winding around Callie’s body, pinning one of her arms to her side, and attempting to squeeze her to death. The tentacles were hellishly strong, but the suit had its own musculature, and Callie outweighed Kerneghan by many kilograms, so she used her free arm and her legs to struggle to her feet, then grabbed hold of one of the director’s tentacles, and yanked.

  She pulled Kerneghan forward and off balance, and Callie moved toward her, viciously head-butting the director with the faceplate of her helmet. Callie only regretted that it wasn’t her own forehead that did the smashing, because then she could have felt the satisfying crunch of the director’s nose breaking. The tentacles squeezed tighter for a moment, but then went slack as the director stumbled back, dazed, her sharp nose blunted and blood all over her face.

  There was a good smear of blood on Callie’s faceplate, too, and with her active camouflage on, it would appear to be floating there in mid-air, like the ghost of a bloody wound.

  Callie yanked the tentacles away from her suit like she was tearing ivy off a brick wall – those little cilia were sticky, and clung – then stepped out of grasping range. She opaqued her suit and pointed a wrist gauntlet at the director. “Doctor Kerneghan, if you twitch a pseudopod at me, I’ll put extra holes in you, in uncomfortable places.”

  Kerneghan’s voice was high and nasal. “May I spit some of this blood out of my mouth?”

  “Just don’t spit it on me.”

  Kerneghan turned her head and spat out a wad of reddish gunk, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but her tentacles didn’t move.

  “What do you want?”

  “There’s a terminal on your desk. You’re going to enter your override code and deactivate all slave collars.”

  Kerneghan sighed. “Slave collars? How ridiculous. Their only purpose is to monitor vital signs. This is a medical facility, not a prison.”

  Callie unzipped a pouch and drew out one of the collars. “Oh yeah? You wouldn’t mind wearing one, then? With the remote in the hands of the resistance?”

  Kerneghan stared at her, then released a rattling breath. “No, thank you. I am quite healthy.”

  “If you want to stay that way, deactivate the collars.” Callie gestured with her gauntlet. Kerneghan moved to her desk, tentacles swaying with every step. “If you try to do anything besides what I told you to, you lose a tentacle.”

  The director looked over her shoulder at Callie and nodded gravely. She tapped at the terminal.

  “She’s behaving herself,” Shall said. “Not even trying to call for help. She grasped her current situation pretty quickly. There. It’s done. The collars are off.”

  “Shall, get on the public address system and tell the prisoners they can throw off their chains.”

  Kerneghan slumped into her chair, which wasn’t a proper chair at all but some sort of gel-filled sphere, to accommodate her tentacles. “What happens to me now?” Her voice was small.

  Callie smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile. “You get to make a choice. You can turn yourself over to the resistance. I’m sure they’d love to talk to you.”

  “They would torture me.”

  “I don’t go in for torture myself – it’s counterproductive and erodes your moral authority – but you’re probably right. They have some grievances and they’re going to come out ugly.”

  “You said I had a choice?”

  “Everyone always does. Option two is, you can stay here and explain to the Exalted how you let thousands of prisoners escape under your watch. What do you think they’d do to you? More torture?”

  “They’d break me down for parts,” Kerneghan said. “That’s what they did to my predecessor, and her only infraction was losing slightly more than the acceptable number of subjects to suicide.”

  “Funny you should mention suicide.” Callie looked up at the ceiling. “That’s option three. You could throw a rope over one of those rafters and get it done, I guess.”

  “I don’t have any rope.” Her voice was dull and her face was blank.

  “You’ve got all those tentacles,” Callie pointed out. “Some of them are plenty long enough.”

  “Ready for the final stage,” Callie said.

  “I’m on it.” Shall spoofed a message from the director’s office to the three scourge-ships, still floating around the station, still totally unaware of the security breach. “Priority alert. The main research center on Vanaheim is being bombarded by rebel ships. With the shipyard station shut down, we don’t have the resources to muster a defense. Engage the rebels and destroy them immediately.”

  Shall watched through the station cameras as the scourge-ships sped off toward the far side of the planet, where the main facility was located… except only two of the ships went. Shall reviewed the security protocols and sighed. “Callie, the last ship isn’t going to budge – there are strict orders not to leave the station completely unguarded. They know what a tempting target this place is for the resistance.”

  “That’s okay,” Callie said. “Three scourge-ships is too many. One is just right.”

  Lantern was in the cockpit with Drake and Janice as they eased forward in stealth mode. They watched two of the scourge-ships depart, but the third one stayed. “Looks like we get a little action after all,” Drake said. “Are you comfortable running the tactical board, Lantern?”

  “As long as you don’t expect anything too brilliantly innovative,” Lantern said. “I’m not Callie.”

  “We’re just stabbing them in the back from cover of darkness,” Janice said. “If we have to fight, that’s my favorite way.”

  “I don’t think that would work.” Lantern ran simulations on the board to confirm her suspicion. “If we blow up the scourge-ship so close to the station, the debris when it breaks apart will do significant damage to the station’s structure, and may harm the prisoners.”

  Janice sighed. “So we have to drop out of stealth and wave a red flag to draw the ship away.”

  “Moving into a better position,” Drake said, and the ship slid through space until the bulk of the station floated between them and the scourge-ship – that way the enemy vessel would have to move away from the facility before it could engage them in combat, or else risk damaging the station itself.

  Lantern waited for the right moment, then engaged the displacement field to make the White Raven appear to be several kilometers away from its actual position.

  The scourge-ship immediately spun and looped around the station, following the shortest possible route to get a clear shot at their mirage. Lantern watched lines on the terminal indicating probable debris fields and shrapnel radii. When the trend lines were clear, her pseudopods moved on the terminal and input a firing solution.

  She was about to kill someone, but when she thought of the pilot of the last scourge-ship she’d seen, mind scrubbed and body twisted into something new for a terrible purpose, it eased her pangs of conscience a bit. The scourge-ship fired a beam at the illusion of the White Raven, which obligingly mimicked signs of explosive damage.

  “Torpedoes away,” Lantern said, and watched the green dots on her board streak toward the red dot, so she didn’t have to watch the real thing through the cockpit screens.

  “The last scourge-ship is disabled,” Shall said. “The other two are almost at their maximum distance, but I imagine they’ll be back soon. We’ve got a small window of free movement here.”

  “Send the White Raven to keep an eye on those other ships,” Callie said. “If they come back early we need to slow them down and distract them. Can you cover the transport ship yourself?”

  “It’s so cozy in here,” Shall said. “But yes, if you insist, I can play guard dog.” He cut a hole in the hull and sprang out into space, whirling around into a useful orientation. The resistance transport ship was on its way, approaching the station’s largest docking platform. It was a big ugly whale of a vessel, one of the ships the Exalted used to transport large numbers of prisoners from place to place, liberated in an earlier resistance raid.