Ivan Xav’s hand grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “No,” he gasped. “Don’t you dare!”
She gulped, and tossed her cold light out as far as it would go. It bobbed a moment and sank slowly; but its glow was quickly occluded in the opaque brown murk of the bubbling water. She could see nothing through it. Scum rings twisted on the moving surface.
As they stared, aghast, Grandmama jogged up-Tej had never seen her move faster than a dignified stride, before, and finding her breathless was weirdly jarring. She stared with them, then, hesitantly, stepped back and put a hand to her belt. The pale oval force-field sprang out around her, buzzing and sputtering.
“No, Lady ghem Estif!” said Ivan Xav. “That bloody thing is shorting out already. It won’t hold, and once the water gets in, it’ll kill you outright.”
Reluctantly, her hand fell once more, and the field died away. Her lips moved numbly in her carved face. “I’m afraid your evaluation is correct, Captain Vorpatril.” She looked…old.
“What can we do?” Tej’s whisper was not, now, for secrecy.
Ivan Xav glanced down where the waves nibbled at his toes. “Back up. Water’s still rising.” They all did so, peering uneasily downward.
“We must return to the lab, and stay inside,” said Grandmama, with a glance around. “The freshest areas of the Mycoborer tunnel have a certain amount of flex and rebound, but that concussion may have cracked the more cured sections. Very unstable, very unsafe.”
“It was pretty hardened around the, the bomb,” said Tej. “What if it collapsed on Rish and Jet? What if they’re buried?”
“Or drowning,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Or buried and drowning, oh God.”
Grandmama hesitated. “If they were close to the explosion, I don’t expect they’ll have survived to experience either. If they weren’t.” The last sentence fragment stopped rather than trailed. She didn’t finish the thought aloud.
Ivan Xav was swearing under his breath, or praying-it was hard to tell which. But, his hand still gripping Tej’s arm too hard, he turned her around, and they all started back.
“It was a squib,” he said after a minute.
“What?” said Tej.
“Sergeant Abelard’s bomb. If it was originally intended for ImpSec, it should have turned this whole city block into a crater. The explosives were deteriorated. Just…not quite enough.”
“But I saw those eye-pins on his collar,” said Tej. Because otherwise she would start talking about Rish and Jet, and saying stupid, hopeful, unlikely things, and the spinning words would hurt like razors. “Would an ImpSec man have been trying to blow up ImpSec?” Maybe he’d been a bomb-disposal man, instead…?
“I looked him up,” said Ivan Xav. “Yesterday. Maybe it’s day before yesterday, by now.” His stricken gaze darted around the tunnel, permanently night but for the jerking cold-light beams poking between his and Grandmama’s tight grips. “He was one of Negri’s boys, but all his records say is that he disappeared during the Pretendership. He could have been on the Lord Regent’s side, trying to take out the building when Vordarian’s troops held it. Or he could have been one of Vordarian’s-they had men inside all the corps, the whole military was divided-either before or after. Once…” He swallowed. “Once Simon might have known. Which. Offhand.”
They stepped back inside the lab, where, apparently, some argument between Dada and Ser Imola had just ended; at any rate, Imola was sitting on the floor clutching his jaw and moaning, and Dada was rubbing his knuckles and being very narrow-eyed. He looked up at them, gaze widening. “Did you find-” he began, then, seeing their faces, cut himself off. “What did you find?”
“We can’t tell how much of the tunnel is collapsed, if any, because evidently the blast cracked that storm sewer,” said Grandmama. “Water was pouring in. It had filled the portion of the tunnel nearest the pipe already.”
“We can’t get past,” said Tej.
“It’s rising,” said Ivan Xav.
“Can it get this high?” asked the Baronne, coming up behind Dada in time to hear this. Her hand clutched his shoulder; his hand rose and pressed hers.
“It might,” said Ivan Xav. “I suppose it depends on how many of those damned random Mycoborer branches lie below our level. And how hard it’s been raining out there tonight.”
Dada moved quickly through the doorway, and bent down to examine the oval slab of wall that had been removed. “Hm.” He called back over his shoulder, “Amiri made most of his cuts angled inward, good boy. If we can find something for sealant, we should be able to boost this back up in place; the pressure of the water on the outside will hold it. If it comes to that.”
“I guarantee,” said Ivan Xav, “that we have ImpSec’s full attention right now. I expect they’ll find that access well in the garage pretty quick. If anyone can get through from that side…well, they’ll get to us somehow. Sooner or later.”
“Does-I hate to bring this up-but does anyone out there actually know we’re in here?” said Pidge, joining the circle collecting around the aperture.
“Star,” said Tej after a minute. “Ser Imola’s men.”
“If they didn’t just toss her in the back of their van and all take off, when the job went up,” said Emerald. “If they had half a brain among them, that’s what they should have done.”
“They likely just about did have that,” sighed Dada. “Damned cheap rental meat.”
“Ivan Xav,” said Amiri, looking around at him in fresh hope. “Surely they’ll miss you.”
“When I don’t show up at work in a couple of days, sure,” said Ivan Xav. Then stopped. And said, “Ah. No, they won’t. I’m on leave. Nobody’s expecting me.” He walked over to the still-unconscious man he’d stunned, bent, and stripped him of his wristcom. Stepping out through the aperture, he looked up, then began trying to punch through a call. Nobody tried to impede him.
Unfortunately, no one had to. Nothing went through. He came back and parted the protesting Imola from his fancier one, and tried again.
“We’re pretty far underground…” said Tej, watching over his shoulder.
“Cheap civilian models,” he growled, shaking it and trying again. “ Mine would have worked here.” Still no signal. “Damn.”
“Simon will figure it out,” said Tej, trying to inject a note of confidence as she followed him back inside. “Wouldn’t he?”
“Simon,” said Ivan Xav, rather through his teeth, “for some reason-you might know why, Shiv-is under the impression that you all haven’t even started to tunnel yet. Let alone arrived at your goal. All the Arquas suddenly disappearing off the face of Barrayar…might have more than one hypothesis to account for it. In Simon’s twisty mind.”
“And you, too? Without a word?” said Amiri.
“I’ve been kidnapped before,” said Ivan Xav. “You would be amazed how many memories tonight is bringing back to me. All of them unpleasant.”
Tej would have held his hand, but she wasn’t sure it would be taken in good part, just now. He was looking a bit wild.
They all were. And maybe she was, too, because Ivan Xav reached out and gripped hers, and gave her a tight grimace that might have been intended for a smile.
“No sign of Rish and Jet?” said Em, in a constricted voice.
Tej shook her head, throat too thick to speak.
“They might…maybe they were on the other side of it, when that explosion went off,” Em tried. “Maybe they got out. Maybe…ImpSec will find them over there. Or-Imola said he didn’t see them, and they can’t have got past him, so maybe they went to hide up one of the other branches.”
Or down one. Tej had an instant and unwanted flash of it, freezing water pouring into some Mycoborer side-channel, knocking the two off their feet, making the slope too slippery to scramble up…