The box of stolen vaccines was still in his hand.
Leo put it down, opened his own lockbox, and began adding everything in it to the gear he already wore. Isabelle was still talking to him, but he wasn’t listening until she stood in the doorway, trying to bar him from leaving. “Are you going after them? Lamont and Berman? What is he going to do? It’s the call-back device, isn’t it? He wasn’t interested in going after Claire and Austin until we told him Austin had that in the mountains and… No. He still wasn’t interested, not until Marianne told him about the virophage. Leo—what is going on?”
“Get out of my way.”
“Wait till I get dressed—I’m coming with you!”
Leo said, “You’re not. You’d slow me down, give away my position, and distract me with keeping you safe. Isabelle, if you follow me, I’ll disable you with a shot to the foot. Do you understand?”
Her eyes widened. She saw that he meant it. Leo lifted her by the waist and set her aside so he could pass through the doorway. Over his shoulder he said, “Don’t tell Kandiss that I’ve gone, if he asks you. Go back to bed and pretend you never saw me.”
She didn’t answer. Leo let himself out the kitchen door, scaled the garden wall, and followed Zoe and Owen’s tracks toward the mountains.
The sky turned orange and red.
Leo lay flat behind a slight rise. The Rangers weren’t in any hurry, and catching up to them had been easy. Periodically Zoe scanned behind them but she wasn’t expecting to be followed—certainly not by Leo—and keeping out of sight wasn’t difficult even in this relatively open country.
How far was Owen willing to go? Leo had a pretty good idea of how Owen would breach the supposedly impregnable mountain fortress, but depending on the setup inside, it might kill the Terrans as well, including Dr. Patel, who was one of Owen’s protectees. And if Zoe objected—?
Zoe would not object. She was a Ranger: superbly trained, completely loyal to her unit, honed for just this kind of quick raid. I will complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. A good creed—except when somebody’s mission wasn’t what everyone else’s was.
Was that why Owen had pulled strings to get Leo on this mission? It had never really made sense to transfer Leo to the Friendship at the last minute; the Rangers had their own snipers. Had Owen thought that Leo wouldn’t cross him, no more than Zoe or Kandiss would? If Leo was right and Owen was some kind of Army infiltrator from a xenophobic cult, if Owen had kept his hatred of the Kindred secret for years, then Owen was even smarter than Leo thought. Smarter than Leo, who’d spent years not thinking.
He would have to think now.
Owen had more knowledge, popbite, fanaticism, Zoe.
Leo had surprise.
They were moving again, hiking toward the mountains. As the terrain got rougher, it was easier for Leo to get closer to them and still stay hidden. If they talked, he couldn’t hear it. Well, duh—they had left their wristers behind. One of the Terrans who’d designed this survivalist bunker was a physicist; who knew what he could detect with monitors inside.
Leo buried his wrister. He began to scan carefully for cameras, motion detectors, maybe drones.
At least nobody here had surveillance satellites in orbit.
In Brazil, Leo had shot Sullivan straight in the face.
Austin slept on a pallet in the middle of the central cave, along with Graa^lok, Tony, and Beyon-mak. The nine women had taken all the curtains and strung them together to make a new alcove, with all the best pallets. Austin had been pleased to see that Kayla had perked up a little with the arrival of Claire and the other women, even though she could talk only to Claire.
A noise woke him. At first he thought it was part of a dream, but then he came fully awake and the loud pinging continued. Graa^lok snored loudly. Beyon-mak was shaking Tony’s shoulder.
“Get up, Tony. They’re here.”
Tony was on his feet so fast that his knees cracked. Austin sat up in the dim biotorch light. “Who’s here?”
Neither man answered him. They went to the “monitor”; Beyon-mak did something; the pinging stopped. Austin moved quietly—maybe they wouldn’t notice him—to stand behind them.
The screen, normally a flat blank rectangle set into a big wooden box, showed a picture. It was… it was the outside of the cave! Austin blurted out, “How did you do that?”
They ignored him. Beyon-mak was fiddling with knobs and muttering, “Fucking primitive system…”
Austin stared, fascinated. A word from his mother’s laments for Terra jumped into his mind: television. But Kayla had described moving stories on television, not something real, right outside Haven. Austin looked at Beyon-mak with awe, which immediately changed to anger. Did Graa^lok understand this technology but not tell Austin that it even existed?
The picture went away in a flurry of white dots and another appeared: two Rangers walking toward Haven. The images were blurry, but Austin recognized both their walks: Lieutenant Lamont and Ranger Berman.
He said, “They want Claire!”
Tony half turned. To Austin’s surprise, Tony grinned. “They won’t get her.”
“But… they’re Rangers!”
“Who have no idea what we have here. Nada. Zilch. Haven is both impregnable and weaponized. Now be a good kid and go wake Graylock in case Nate needs him. And then keep the women away from here; they’ll only get in the way.”
“How do I—”
The grin vanished. “Any way you can!”
“Okay, yes,” Austin said, although he didn’t think he could keep Claire away from anywhere she wanted to go. And maybe not Graa^lok’s oldest sister, either. He remembered her from when he’d played at their lahk as a child. Sher^llaa was sort of an Isabelle, and she had never seemed to like Austin much.
He went to wake Graa^lok.
Leo lay flat, camouflaged with brush he’d cut with his knife, studying the situation. He had circled around Owen and Zoe, moving faster, and was now between them and an abruptly rising, big, forty-five-degree hill. Or maybe it was a small mountain. It was where the tracks stopped, in front of dense brush fringing the base of the mountain. Through his scope, Leo could see the churned-up mud where people had gone into the brush and, he presumed, into a cave. Austin’s “fort.” Leo lay above the entrance and to the south.
Zoe and Owen had stopped to confer five hundred yards from the mountain base. No pipe gun could reach that far. But the two rogue Terrans had been inside for a long time, bringing in all kinds of equipment, and Beyon was some sort of fucking genius or something. They could have anything in there. Owen would know that. Also, the cave entrance would be fortified and maybe small. Zoe could maybe breach it, but not enter without being picked off like a rat in a barrel.
They were moving again. Zoe went south, Owen north, and they began to climb. Scoping out the terrain, or searching for a second entrance… No. Leo knew what they were doing.
Zoe climbed toward him. Silently, Leo slid in the other direction, careful not to dislodge any small stones. A few yards away was a shallow crevasse. Leo wriggled into it, pulling brush over him. He held his breath, rifle pointed upward between twigs, and waited.
He heard her boots on the rock.
She muttered, “Fuck.”
Her shadow fell over him. If she looked down carefully enough, she’d see him. If she stepped wrong, her foot would go through the brush and she’d land on top of him. But she was testing each step carefully with her boot before shifting her weight, not taking her eyes off the terrain but not looking down, either…
Shit! Her boot felt the edge of the crevasse and her head swiveled…