“Was anyone seriously hurt?” Tej interrupted.
“Both, but not critically. It really wasn’t at all clear what was going on for a couple of hours, till the medics finally got Star waked up. Then, of course, all hell broke loose. Especially after some fool-somebody finally thought to call and wake up your mother and Simon.”
“Ah,” said Ivan Xav, uneasily.
“Star swore there would be survivors in the bunker, even though the sensors were picking up nothing from it. The rest of the night was setting up the engineering, as soon as the search-and-rescue boys figured out it would be impossible to go in from the garage end. It’s a real circus up there.”
Ivan Xav glanced upward, his lips twisting. He walked over to the first soldier and advised him, “Let your command post know to treat this as a Class Two Biohazard Area. At least.”
The soldier wheeled. “And you are…oh. Captain Vorpatril. Yes, sir.” He spoke into his audio pickup.
The engineering tech crouched at his control panel, overhearing this, stopped inhaling, but, after a minute, gave up and continued his task.
Coming back, Ivan Xav said, “I’d want to dub it a Class Five, myself; but my grandmother-in-law would probably correct me. But that should discourage too many tourists till someone can get the appraisers down here for inventory. This place is going to need guards, and guards on the guards.”
“Well, they’ve certainly come to the right place…” By mused. “Is there really a fortune down here, or was Star exaggerating for fear we might not dig you out?”
For answer, Ivan Xav took him over and showed him the box of seal-daggers, in which he seemed to have taken a possessive interest; Byerly sobered considerably. “And that was just the first crate we opened,” said Ivan Xav. “You should see some of the rest. Not to mention the half ton or whatever it is of Occupation gold.”
Byerly, looking spooked, stared out over the sea of crates, then went aside and spoke into his audio pickup.
Tej went back to hover over the engineering tech, hovering over his control panel, so was the first to hear him say, “ Good girl, Rover!” He looked up with a grin that made him suddenly look his real age-well, no, he probably wasn’t fourteen-despite his military garb. “Found ’em. They’re following Rover home now.”
She and Byerly both leaned through the door, watching anxiously, as a bright light appeared in the throat of the tunnel. Scrambling after it, two exhausted, muddy, chilled figures…
Byerly reached out and dragged Rish over the threshold, and was suddenly plastered all over with lithe blue woman, a somewhat darker shade than usual. “You rescued us!” Rish cried, a view that unfairly left out the rest of the army that seemed to be involved, but which Byerly did not bother to correct. Jet stumbled into a welcoming committee of Arquas, and it was several minutes before the critique began.
“We were just working on the dirt pile,” Rish told them all, “when we saw lights coming down the tunnel that weren’t ours. We retreated all the way back to the storm sewer, then ducked up the biggest blind alley. There was a ruckus down on the other end, shouts and stunner fire, and we drew back-just in time, I think-we were both near-deaf for an hour, after the blast. When we looked, the entry end was collapsed, and the other was already filling with water. We retreated…and kept retreating…and the water kept rising. Then our cold lights gave out-”
Ivan Xav, listening, shuddered in vicarious horror, then went over and gave her a quite spontaneous and perhaps not altogether appreciated hug.
“Uh, thanks, Ivan Xav,” Rish said, extracting herself and giving him a bemused stare; she went on with her narrative. “We were down to this little air pocket, when this weird noise and vibration started. It went on forever, starting and stopping. Then it was like someone pulled the plug on the drain. The water went down…we followed it. We were trying to decide whether to attempt to wade the tunnel when the lovely robot probe found us.” She smiled at the engineering tech, who smiled back a bit uncertainly. Beautiful blue-and-gold ladies with pointed ears were not in his prior experience, Tej guessed, nor very many other ladies of any hue. Byerly, who certainly did not share this deficiency, took Rish’s cold hand and rubbed it.
In any case, when the medical evacuation floater arrived-a small one, to fit through the roof hole-Rish and Jet were sent up in the first load. Imola, Inc. were sent up next, each individually with an armed guard with him. The Baronne and Grandmama followed, then Dada and Imiri, then Pidge and Em. Pearl went next, Byerly joining her to keep an eye on his subjects; Tej waited to go with Ivan Xav.
They watched Pearl and By’s floater rise. “You know,” he said, in an oddly faraway voice, “the other thing I wanted to do was take you dancing. We’d never got to it. Thought about that, last night. All the things we’d never got to do, yet.”
Years of things. She began to suspect they would never run out. “I would like that.” Their hands found each other. “I’d like that a lot.”
“It’s a deal, then.” His grip tightened.
When the floater came back, he helped her into it with all the panache of a Vor lord of old handing his fine Time-of-Isolation lady into his carriage. Lady Vorpatril. I could get used to that…
The med-evac floater was little more than a glorified stretcher, designed to hold one patient lying down but, in a pinch, two sitting up, plus its operator in the control saddle. Ivan, sitting cross-legged opposite Tej, stared through the canopy as they angled out the lab roof and ascended through the new access well, which was shaped like a narrow cone, widening at the top. More engineers on floaters were spraying some kind of fixative on the walls to stabilize the dirt, as they rose past.
Circus was an understatement, Ivan realized with a sinking heart as they cleared the lip of the well and briefly gathered more height. The new hole was dug down through what had been the lower end of the little park; the opposite side was now occupied by a conical mountain of what seemed, inexplicably, twice as much dirt, spilling over the park boundaries, the sidewalks, and, on two sides, into the streets beyond, which were blocked with barricades; municipal guards were rerouting traffic, fortunately still sparse on this early weekend morning. The pavement shone with a wet gleam, but it had finally stopped raining.
Heavy military engineering equipment was parked seemingly at random all over the place; soldiers hurried about, or stood and gawked. Portable floodlights on stands, not yet turned off in the pale dawn, shone everywhere. A command post under a temporary tarp roof was set up just beyond the corner of the ex-park, overlooking the excavation and blocking more street. Several medical ground-vans waited beyond it, their emergency lights blinking in a thumb-twiddling sort of way. Above, security vehicles circled; out beyond them, what Ivan guessed were news aircars also circled, telephotos no doubt trained on the bizarre scene.
Even as he watched, a biohazards team arrived, half suited-up, along with a group of older and less-fit fellows, a couple of whom Ivan recognized as senior functionaries from the Imperial Accounting Office, looking a bit out of place on this active, outdoor site. They all went to argue precedence with the engineers.
Beyond its walls and courtyard, the looming ImpSec building overlooked it all. In addition to an increased complement of patrollers at the gate on this side, quite a few officers with, Ivan suspected, no actual reason to be there sat on the upper steps or lingered outside the walls, watching the show. Ivan spotted one companionably sharing a breakfast rat bar with his fellow before the floater descended between the command post and the waiting med-vans.
When the canopy opened, Ivan helped Tej out and waved off a medtech trying to descend on them. When he turned toward the command post, he realized that might have been a premature gesture; a little tactical malingering could have been a better ploy.