Page 24 of Galactic Search and Rescue
Taz’s audio sensors identified the girl’s location as near the northwest corner. “On my way.”
She disabled the last timer, scanned it to be sure, then turned to Shen. “Find Moyo.”
Shen yipped twice, then turned to trot down the aisle. On impulse, Taz picked up the now-harmless Kem-X packet, then followed.
While she’d been working, she’d been pondering several questions. First, if her military-grade comms were blocked, how did Po and Pelvannor expect to get through with just commercial comms to trigger the timers? Second, if they’d known what type and how many Kem-X packets to get, why had they needed to kidnap Stramlo?
When she reached the corner, all the animals were there. The crates, too, because Jhidelle had dragged them down from the other entrance and opened their doors.
Taz set down the packet and stepped out of her suit. Overusing her teke talent to speed up the timer decomms left her ears ringing like bells.
The chilly air of the facility momentarily felt good on her sweat-soaked skin as she turned to face them with a tired grin. “Good job, all of you.” Shen’s and Moyo’s tails wagged. The cats’ ears pricked forward. Lerox chose that moment to lick his butt.
Taz laughed. “Is anyone thirsty?” She patted her thigh pocket. “I have extra water pouches and a collapsible bowl.”
Jhidelle’s eyes drifted a bit. “No, they’re good.” She pointed to the packet. “What’s that for?”
“Evidence.” That sounded better than muttering about instinct and curiosity. “Let’s take a look at the door.”
The substantial metal slab looked more like it led to a vault, similar to the one that was now a storeroom in the financial firm on the first floor. Still, the door and jamb had the standard bright colors and the word “exit” printed in a dozen languages. It also had a formidable code lock on the wall. Whoever designed the exit had evidently decided security was more important than safety.
“I need my suit for the scans. If the exit is blocked above us, we’ll have to go back to the lower basement. Either way, we need to crate the team. It’s the only way I can protect them.” She snapped her fingers. “Before I forget. Is your father a telekinetic minder?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “No. Why?”
Taz shook her head. “Nothing, just a passing thought.” She climbed back in her suit to check the architectural records and run scans while she poked at the door controls with her GSAR magic.
After three long minutes, the lock begrudgingly accepted her codes. The door slowly irised open to reveal a small anteroom with a standard-sized lift at the end.
“Okay,” said Taz. “If I’m guessing correctly where we are, and the lift takes us up instead of down, and the building above is still standing, and the architectural records are correct, we’ll be in a space labeled ‘Recycling Overflow.’”
“That’s a lot of ‘ifs.’”
Taz paused. “Want to go back down instead?”
“No.” Jhidelle motioned Moyo toward the crate. “The animals don’t, either.”
As Taz hooked the crates to her suit again, she hoped the undisturbed dust in the anteroom and the wallcomp for the lift meant Po and Pelvannor hadn’t lined the lift shaft with explosives.
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Salamaray Citizen Activity Center, Perlarossa • GDAT 3242.334
“No,” shouted Rylando so Po could hear him through the mask, “I can’t make my owl crawl through the air pipe to scope out the other side. She’s too big.”
Po’s expression soured again. Watching the rest of them work had apparently been boring enough to inspire a series of harebrained ideas. It never seemed to occur to him that they’d get out faster if he helped with the digging.
Or maybe it had. Rylando was rather certain that Po intended to shoot him, and maybe Stramlo, to give Po and Pelvannor time to escape.
They’d gouged out enough material that they should break through to the other side any minute. It would have been sooner if they hadn’t been forced to detour around a two-meter decorative block of denscrete.
Hatya’s tone sounded in his earwire. “Good news, bad news, and really bad news.”
Rylando grabbed the handle for the nearly full bin of tailings—Stramlo’s word—and pulled it out of the work area.“Go.”
“Good news. Two lifesigns and five animal signs just showed up on my scanners. They’re together. Still no comms, but I’m about to deploy a relay to see if I can fix that.”
He worked his way over the rubble to the dump pile. The bin’s poor wheels would never be the same. “Copy.” The hope that he’d be seeing his team and Taz again before the day was done made it easier to breathe.
