Page 20 of Galactic Search and Rescue
Taz’s suit and crates were a tight fit in the power ladder’s tube. She hugged the stepped rungs and rode them up, with Jhidelle right below her.
The end of the tube was too short to be the main-floor level. Instead, the access way opened into a darkened room.
Stepping into it tripped motion sensors and triggered a small circle of overhead lights.
“What is this place?” Jhidelle looked down at her little fox. “Yes, baby, I know it’s cold in here.” She pulled her coat tighter.
Whatever it was, Taz’s comms were still blocked. Damnit.
The scans from her suit were so unexpected that she ran them a second time to be sure. “I’ve only seen training holos of these. It’s a galactic hypercube node.”
Jhidelle walked to the edge of the darkness. “Like a comms node?” More lights flicked on. Three-meter-tall equipment stacks looked like rows of tall buildings in a planned corporate district. The room had a quiet underlying hum of chilled air circulation.
“No, a data storage node. It’s a redundancy relay for the galactic net. It has direct comms with the planet’s net and the solar system’s comms nodes.” Taz frowned. “Or it did, except the other end of the building collapsed and took the comms with it. Probably why the stacks are quiet now.”
“Why would they put a node in Salamaray?” Jhidelle’s tone suggested she didn’t think much of the town.
“Who knows?” A slow-blink floor light caught Taz’s eye. She stepped sideways and crouched to get a better angle.
Scans confirmed her visual. Now she knew where the scent of explosives came from. Without even trying, she saw three more of them spaced at regular intervals. She had a twisted feeling in the pit of her stomach that those were the leading edge of the meteor storm.
7
Salamaray Citizen Activity Center, Perlarossa • GDAT 3242.334
Sweat trickled down the back of Rylando’s neck as he sent soothing thoughts to Otak, still hiding in his pouch, and to Mariposa, perched on the far side of the airsled’s roof. He sensed the girl’s kinkajou—it miraculously survived the landing—but he couldn’t tell where it was.
No circulation made the lobby’s air smell stale and increasingly hot. The heavy, indestructible GSAR uniform and the warm rat on his chest weren’t helping.
Stramlo, perched nearby on a chunk of denscrete, hugged his messenger bag like a shield. He twitched with each noise, whether from the ruined lobby or from Po swearing.
Rylando was better at projecting calm for the sake of his animals, but not so good at stopping himself from worrying about them or Stramlo’s daughter. Or Taz. So far, he’d not been able to make mental contact with his team and had no way to talk to his partner. The overheated lift coil cooked the airsled’s comms when it died.
The room’s emergency lights were plenty bright enough to illuminate the depth of their predicament. All the ceiling decorations and a third of the roof supports now littered the floor. The beat-up airsled sat in the middle of the lobby. At least the final lurch had shed the heavy piece of denscrete that had weighed it down. More caved-in rubble from the building’s roof layer blocked both ends of the lift lobby. The corner of a giant block of denscrete protruded from the lift shaft behind him to his left. That entire wall bulged out from the pressure.
Pelvannor stood in the open doorway of the airsled, alternating between holding the beamer on the prisoners as ordered, and following Po’s subsequent orders to lift or move things as he pawed through the sled’s contents. So far, they’d found and unloaded two bins of food and water, medical supplies, water-protection suits, climbing gear, and one box of spare parts.
Rylando had already told them the airsled’s only useful tools for freeing them from the lobby cave-in were shovels and pry bars, but it had been a waste of breath.
Po appeared in the doorway, brandishing a wand-like tool with the yellow and red GSAR logo. “What’s this?”
“A spectrum analyzer for materials composition.” He winced when Po carelessly tossed it onto the parts box on the floor. Taz had spent five days repairing and customizing it to work better than the original version.
Otak once again alerted him to the explosives scent. Unfortunately, Rylando couldn’t give the rat the usual food reward. A thought of praise would have to do.
It didn’t take an astro-engineer to figure out that the source was Stramlo’s messenger bag. Too small to be a regular Kem-X packet, but maybe samples? No clue why he’d been keeping it in his storage unit.
Po’s hard-shell backpack, which he still wore, must have high-value items, or he’d have given it up. Pelvannor’s heavy bag had probably held valuables, too, which explained why he’d yelled at her when she’d tossed it out of the airsled.
He still couldn’t rule out the possibility that Stramlo and Po had more than just bad luck in common.
Movement caught his eye. Tzima, Jhidelle’s kinkajou, was now on top of the airsled. He was glad he’d managed to open a vent for her so she could slip inside the airsled’s cab, but now she was an added worry.
He cautiously reached out with his talent. Instead of encountering the animal’s mind, he felt the presence of another, stronger directive, directing her gaze. Jhidelle must be connected to the animal’s senses. The best he could do was ask Tzima to hide and hope the girl would take the hint. Po was the type to break or kill things to take out his frustrations.
Rylando wished he was a stronger minder, like Jhidelle apparently was. He’d developed training techniques to compensate, but they were no help now that he needed to connect with his own animals. To find out if Taz was okay. He’d been a rock-brain for not being more wary or paying attention to her instincts. If they lived through this, he planned to tell Captain Bhayrip he’d ordered her into this mess. Otherwise, they’d both get demoted for going in understaffed and getting caught in criminal games.
After two more “what’s this” queries, Po jumped out of the airsled and stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Rylando. “We need your partner in her mech suit. Get her up here, now.”
