“Anti-aircraft,” Kris said.
“Shouldn’t we be watching the news? Surely someone—”
“Power’s out in the city,” Kris said. “We’ll probably lose power here, too.”
Saranife had never experienced a full power outage; Port Major had been built with redundancy in mind. Both the Palace and Government House had emergency generators as well. A night without streetlights? Without lights and heat in the house? She opened her mouth to ask and shut it again. She had never felt so inadequate.
“This is ridiculous!” Cassidy pushed Billy aside and lunged to his feet. “I’m not going to sit here helplessly like a baby in a crib.”
Irene opened her mouth; he shook his finger at her. “You’re just a dog doctor; what do you know? Hester, if you’re too scared to take charge, I’m not. I’m going out there, and back to the city, where I can do some good.”
Hester tried to sit up straighter, but Suzy now had half her furry body across the President’s lap. Cassidy strode across the living room, out to the front porch, and slammed the door. “Men,” Irene said, with feeling. “I suppose we should—”
“Let him go, is what we should do,” Kris said. She smiled at Saranife. “Now that he’s gone, would you like to come down to the bunker? Suzy, go easy.”
The dog slid off Saranife’s lap and stood with waving tail as Saranife clambered up, a little stiff. Kris led the way to a concealed door, and then down a stairway into a basement lined with wine racks and shelves of supplies. Another door, a shorter stairway, another door, and they entered a large room, very quiet. Bunks were built in on one side; a door at one end led to a shower, toilet, and sink. “You’ll be safe here with the dogs,” Kris said. When Saranife looked back, Irene was coming down slowly with Ginger, helping the dog navigate the stairs.
“Do I have to be alone?”
“No—I’m going back up to fetch your guard detail.”
“What about Joram—Cassidy?”
“He won’t make it to the city.” Kris’s look chilled Saranife to the bone. “He’s on the other side,” Kris said gently. “Your guard will take care of him.”
Grace Vatta watched the battle from the clubhouse of her residence tower, though the blowing snow obscured it almost completely. The sound of explosions carried through, muted by snow and the double-glazing. Nearly all the inhabitants of the tower crowded in, like scared cattle Grace thought. Her excuse was more reasonable.
After the streetlights below went out, some residents followed the emergency instructions to return to their apartments. Corridors had emergency lighting and every apartment had at least two, but the clubhouse had gone dark. Those who did not obey clustered near the windows, not sure what they were looking for. Then a column lit by chemlights appeared first as a long blue-green glow, then as individual lights making their way toward the tower.
“Rector—get away from the window. Uh… please?” Cadet Price had not developed any command voice yet.
“They can’t see me,” Grace said. “With the snow, they’re going to have trouble counting floors.”
“Yes, Sera—Rector—but we want you down in the basement level for your own safety.”
Grace gave him a look that had withered stronger men, but realized it didn’t do any good in the dark. “I need to go by my apartment first.”
“I’m supposed to take you directly—”
They were in the hall now and she gave him the look; sure enough he wilted a little. “Apartment first; I have classified materials there. In case they scale the back side of the building and break in through the windows.” Unlikely, but war was war. In her apartment, Grace picked up her two light bags and handed the one with clothes and snacks in it to him. “Don’t drop that; it’s important.” She had the classified bag herself. The elevators weren’t working of course. They took the stairs—she more slowly, because she still did not have her full strength back. Cadet Price galloped ahead, pausing at each landing to wait for her.
When the exit door at ground level opened just as Price reached the landing above it, Grace had no time to say more than “Look—” before two armed men in the wrong uniform barged in and fired on Price, who fell. Grace had paused on the landing above him, trying to get her breath. She opened the door beside her and found herself in the building’s administration section. The keys she’d insisted on having from day one let her lock the door and she moved quickly down the passage, past Accounting, Maintenance, and Service to lock the service stair door as well. Then she called the guard unit in the basement.
“Rector?”
“Enemy is in the building, ground level, and has access to the stairs. I’m on level two, Building Administration. I’ve locked two staircases into this level; I’m heading for the others. Cadet Price was shot and killed below me on the stairs.” She ended the call and headed for the far end of the building, where another bank of nonworking elevators and two staircases were. This level had few windows, which was good, but she knew it was a trap if they got in. Maybe resistance elsewhere would keep them busy.
She was able to lock the other two staircases before any intrusion, so she found a convenient office that provided multiple hiding places, opened her case of classified materials and devices, and considered trying to find a shredder. Every office had a shredder. But even if she could bypass the lockouts to emergency power, a shredder would make noise, and data cubes and sticks merely jammed shredders. She picked up the shielded communicator Rafe had given her and called him.
“I’ll get help,” he said.
“Not you,” Grace said. “But if you could get word to Ky…”
“Stay alive,” he said, “or I’ll never hear the end of it from your niece.”
And that was that.
Michael Quindlan had heard nothing from Benny. Had Benny not gone home? He wasn’t in the Quindlan headquarters; he wasn’t at the Quindlan warehouse. Though in either case the downtown power outage might be to blame. Frustrating that the progress of the battle wasn’t available on the vidscreen. He peered out the window of his elegant three-story home, seeing nothing now but heavy snowfall.
When his skullphone pinged, he tongued it open.
“Michael—get out!” That was Derrin Malines, his counterpart in the Malines family and his ally in everything.
“What’s wrong?” Ally or not, Derrin did have a tendency to overreact to problems.
“It’s all over. They’re all dead.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know where that bitch got the troops, but our people—I have hundreds dead in the street. Caught in crossfire. There were drones—planes—I thought we had the planes! Isn’t that what Kvannis told you?”
“We did—we do.” Michael tried to sort it out. Something had gone wrong but surely not everything. “Ordnay air base—ours, I’m sure of it. Lots of planes—where are these other planes coming from?”
“How should I know? The whole center of the city is dark, my people are pushed back into the warehouse district, the ships just blew up and sank—”
“What? What do you mean the ships blew up?”
“Michael, they’re just hulks in the water, and the other dockies are ambushing my people—they have weapons, Michael. I didn’t know they had weapons!”
The phone on the desk rang. Michael muted the sound in his skullphone and picked up the handset. “Yeah?”