The maintenance hatch was exactly where she expected it to be.
Bari spun the outer wheel, pulled the hatch open, and tucked herself into the small crawlspace backward so she could close it again. Once the hatch was sealed, she tried to turn around and discovered that, with the pack on her back, she couldn't. “Oh, great,” she muttered.
[Everything okay?]
“It's just smaller than I expected.”
[Or you're bigger than it expected.]
“Thanks,” she said, then under her breath, “you bit‑fried hunk of space flotsam.”
[I heard that.]
She scooted backward through the tight space until she came up hard against the inner lock. Now what? she thought. As best as she could, she laid down flat, her pack an uncomfortable wedge under her back, and studied the upside‑down lock controls. Then she pried open the security panel, pulled out two leads, and shorted them. The hatch slid open with a whoosh as air filled the small crawlspace, and she scrambled out and into the maintenance space on the far side.
This area was only marginally bigger, but it was enough that she could turn around and, squatting, pull herself upright. Also, it had atmosphere. Her suit's supply was down to fifty‑two percent so she set it to recharge automatically from the surrounding air.
It took her a minute to get her bearings, and then she moved through the tunnels as quickly as a need for quiet could afford. Several turns and intersections later, she found herself at another small hatch, with what appeared to be a small butter knife wedged into the control panel. She touched it gingerly, as if it could shock, but it was inert, a dead relic of another's past.
At least I know I'm in the right place, she thought. “I'm going in.”
She emerged into a cramped and dusty storeroom filled with boxes, crates, and stacks of miscellaneous junk, the lighting dim. She took several deep, calming breaths as she unloaded from her vest pockets the next set of items she'd anticipated needing. As soon as she felt back under control she reached out an arm and slipped it past the chip reader. The doorlight turned green and admitted her into the main corridors of Aurora's Outpost One.
The senior staff would be in the situation room, monitoring the fighters as they looked for signs of their enemy, while security spread out throughout the decks, watching the airlocks and the docking rings, watching their own population for any sign of internal insurrection. The Auroran warlord would be doing much the same from his seat back in the central enclave, watching everyone, trusting no one. Out of Bari's grasp, but not beyond her touch.
A stunner took out the door guard. She shorted out the lock into the situation room the same way she had the hatch's internal airlock, and stepped inside. The room was dark, wood‑paneled at ridiculous expense, displays overheard showing the still‑expanding search party in vivid red tracery. Heads turned, hands reached for weapons, but before anyone could draw she was at the chair of the outpost's commander, her gloved hand lightly laid under his chin, across his neck, above the silver embroidery of a jacket nearly the same as her own. There were three other men in the room, all frozen where they stood, assessing, waiting.
“Who are you?” the commander barked.
“You don't remember me, Karilene?” she said.
He stared at her face, then at the jacket she wore. “I don't know you.”
She hesitated, then reached up and peeled off the biomask she'd worn for nearly half a year, nearly coming to accept that face, the face of “Ms. Park,” as her own.
The commander stared, and his gaze lost none of its sharpness, but after a moment the single “Ah” that passed his lips was like the last, faint breath from a dying man. He straightened, his arms folded carefully, fingers entwined, on the console board in front of him. “Bariele. You've grown into that jacket at long last, I see. You've come for revenge.” It was statement, not question.
“No,” she said. “Business.”
“You're an assassin, then?”
“A facilitator. In this case, the difference is minor.”
“Who sent you? Not Glaszerstrom, surely?”
“No, not them.”
“Then who?”
“You were in someone's way, and presented them with a difficulty they wanted resolved.”
He laughed. “My brother and I built Aurora out here in the Sfazili Barrens so that we would not be in anyone's way, and no one would be in ours. You know that.”
“And yet.”
“The ambush was cleverly done. I hope you got a good price.”
“I did.”
“He'll rebuild Outpost One, even if it takes years and years. It's not like him to let anything go. And he'll hunt you across the entire Multiworlds if he has to.”
“And I expect he'll find me, sooner and closer than that.”
As if sensing that something was about to happen, the others in the room began to shift and move, but before anyone could act she'd grabbed the short handle protruding from her pack, drawn out the thin, sharp blade that lived there, and moved it down in one swift, graceful motion. The old man jerked twice in his seat and then was still.
A young man toward the back of the room let out a cry, fumbling for his pistol, and abandoning her blade where it was she drew a small, cruel knife from the sleeve of her suit and skewered him through the neck from across the room. “Anyone else?” she asked, unholstering at last her own pistol. The remaining men stared at her angrily but relinquished their weapons. “Neither of you are half the man Karilene was. If you want to live, leave this room now and get off this station.”
She stood, blade in one hand, pistol in the other, as the two men walked carefully around her and out. “When you report what happened here,” she told the second man, “be sure to tell my father I send my regards.” Then she closed and sealed the door.
Removing her jacket, she laid it over the old man's body like a shroud, or a calling card, or perhaps both. Where she was going she could not take it, and she knew — and he would know — that she left it only because she'd be back for it.
“It's done,” she said into her suit mic.
[The fighters have turned and are heading back to the outpost at top burn, and there's activity at the Enclave itself,] Omi said. [Not to rush you, but you need to get out of there.]
“I'm on it.” She sat at Karilene's console and slid in the small chip. Immediately systems began shutting down and scrapping themselves as the Outpost's general evacuation alarm sounded. She positioned her last three EMP mines beside the console and set the failsafe to detonate if they were interfered with. In a short while, the entire base would be defenseless, uninhabitable, scrap. It would be abandoned until it could be secured and rebuilt, which wouldn't happen until Aurora's warlord had made some determination of who had sent her. And that was something he would never resolve.
The same paranoia that would keep him away from this border until he understood what had happened here was now her own way out. She went to one wooden panel, felt around the trim until her fingers found the tiny catch, and the panel swung open. From there, metal rungs set into the narrow tube led her up and into the very top of the station where a small ship lay cocooned as insurance against the worst.
The escape craft had dust on the console but was fully charged, waiting. She left the outpost in a roar of speed only seconds ahead of the EMP explosion that crippled the station.
Setting the tiny ship on a wide arching course for the far side of Beserai, she engaged the auto‑pilot. By the time the Auroran pursuers caught up and blasted the ship to pieces she'd long since abandoned it as well, floating curled in a ball in space, invisible.