Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE}

At the first delivery stop after leaving Weekes City, two hours down the road, a Stevens-Vatta employee came out and opened the rear door. “Anybody named Ky in here? Message for you in the office.”

Ky went in and used the secure ansible connection to call Grace. “It’s the Commandant,” Grace said. “Kvannis. He called down AirDefense on our plane. The sergeant major just reported the flight is continuing.”

“Call Rodney. Tell him it’s a signal change. Option 4-C.”

“You have a Plan C?”

“Of course. And further down than that. Do that, Aunt Grace, and then… who was that good guy in Transport that Morrison knew about?”

“Major Carson and Colonel Higgs.”

“Tell Higgs to contact me. Without telling anyone else. Say the sergeant major needs some help.”

“What are you going to—”

“Leaving now. New schedule. Rodney can tell you.”

Every plan should have branches. Aunt Grace had taught her that long ago. What if, and what if that, and what if the other thing. Rafe, looking at her plan back in Port Major, had complained that it looked like a huge tree, far too many branches to be workable. Ky had ignored him. Now, with the original plan in shreds, she was glad her first what-if had been “What if the person at the top on the other side finds out what we’re doing before we get the first five to Port Major?”

“What are we going to do?” Rafe asked.

“We’re going to make it work. We have the nice complicated plan. And we have sufficient armament.”

“But not bodies.”

“We do if we move them around.”

“But the plane…”

“Rodney took care of it.”

“But they’re not at Port Major.”

Ky felt her mood rising with every objection. “I know. They’re nowhere near it. What they are near is the cache of toys Rodney’s best friend Hawker placed at intervals along the plane’s route.”

“Toys. Like drones?”

Ky nodded. “Equipped with a nice variety of devices.” Devices the sergeant major had obtained, after some persuasion, as well as those in various district armories. She checked the time on her implant. “Best get ready. We intercept in eight minutes.”

“What about the sheep?”

“Not happening. Already called off. This will be… rougher. They know something’s going on; Kvannis will have had someone warn the truck they’re in, and they’ll be trying to slip our tail, have us go on ahead. That’s why we have the second truck behind us now.”

“Possible target in behind a shopping mall,” the special ops man riding shotgun in the cab said. “Parked.”

“Block it,” Ky said. Their truck turned at the next corner. She stood by the window, where she could see out the front of the cab. “We stop behind that angled wall. Be ready for the call when we pop their lid. Then come in right behind them.”

She came out the side of the truck wide open, followed by the rest of the crew, including Rafe. The wall gave them cover for most of the way; the target vehicle was tucked in behind it, right up against some store’s loading dock. That would cut its crew’s visibility. She held up her hand. “We’re going over,” she said.

“Over!”

“Satpic from Rodney. They put themselves in a corner—listen, that’s our backup team pulling across to block them in. We can land on their roof.”

It was not that easy, with two team members—herself and Rafe—shorter than the others. “Could wish for low-g,” Ky muttered, dragging her stomach up on the wall. But there below her was the top of the truck, pulled up close to the loading dock. The backup team had a high, distinctive truck, and one of them had already gotten out, banging on the side of the target and yelling.

“Hey! You’re blocking the dock! We got a delivery! Move that thing!”

Its driver came out the off side of the cab, equally furious. “You’re blocking us in! Get out of here.”

“I need this dock. Delivery! Are you deaf? Move it!”

Ky let herself down on the roof of the target and flattened. Rafe dropped onto the backup truck, with a perfect angle to the inside of the target’s cargo space. Another team member used his line to drop all the way to the ground between the two trucks; he looked up, and Ky dropped the door opener to him. He touched it with the charger and the lock sprang open; then he flipped the latch and pulled the door wide and continued around the side to attack the target’s driver.

Rafe fired before she could move. “One. Clear.” He slithered over the side of the truck he was on, and dropped to the ground. Ky swung sideways, where she could watch the parking lot. So far no one seemed to have noticed anything. Early afternoon, midweek, and the shopping mall didn’t look that prosperous anyway. Most of the cars were clustered on the other side, near the entrance.

Their other truck came around the wall, turned, and reversed toward the next loading dock, blocking more view of the target. Its driver got out, climbed up on the dock, opened the back of the truck, and set four boxes on the dock. He closed the back, going through the cargo area, and opened the side door, which faced them. Then he went around, climbed into the driver’s seat, and picked up a compad, like any driver reporting a delivery to his company.

Ky slid down the front of the target truck and walked around to see Rafe finish off the driver. “This vehicle—what do we do with it?”

“There’s a transport nexus about six kilometers on down that road,” their ally said. “Huge parking area, trucks and vans and buses coming and going all the time, but some park there for hours, waiting for a connection. It’s not much worse than a car to drive, this one.” He looked back and forth from Ky to Rafe.

“Let me look at the controls,” Rafe said. Ky looked back at two of the ops team carrying a slack bald body in the usual prison outfit over to their truck. It seemed to take a long time; she went to the back and saw that the remaining two were far more sedated than the first load. It took even longer to get both of them into the truck. Ky had to stay with them, had to leave Rafe driving the wrong vehicle, with no legal ID and with two dead bodies in the back. If he were caught—she pushed that thought away and concentrated on the task at hand. They would switch trucks at the next warehouse, and since the Weekes City airport wasn’t safe, they’d have to drive different roads to a different warehouse, switch their passengers into a different truck again. Even—if things went very wrong—split them up. She was not going to give up on trying to rescue them all.

The truck moved away from the dock, turned, backed again, then went forward. “We can pick him up at the transport nexus. How are they?”

“Inside and alive. I’ll check with the medic.”

The medic looked worried. “The reversal drug’s not working; it may be more than a simple sedative, or not the same one they used before. Likely they were drugged again.”

Ky looked at the three flaccid bodies, still in their clinic clothes. She could not recognize any of the faces, and set her implant to do an analysis. “Vital signs?”

“Two are fine on that. This one—” She pointed to one; Ky’s implant suggested Yamini with a question mark beside it. “This one’s got problems. Without a full diagnostic unit I can’t be sure what’s going on, but he’s sliding in and out of irregular breathing patterns; I’ve put him on oxygen. There’s a drug that can cause that, but there’s no easy reversal; we’ll have to hope his liver can get the job done in time. The records we yanked have them as Yamini, Lakhani, and Riyahn.”

The truck moved on, slowed in traffic, sped up again. Ky felt chilled; the medic said, “You’d better rest while you can. We can deal with them.”

When she woke from a brief nap, it was almost dark outside, and Rafe was not in the truck. She felt colder, though the cargo compartment was warm enough. They were a half hour from the next warehouse. Yamini, if it was Yamini, was still alive, but still unresponsive. The other two had roused enough to give their names and drink a little water, but could not walk or change their clothes yet.

Rodney, when Ky contacted him back at the Weekes City Vatta warehouse, was not encouraging. “Rafe had trouble at the transport nexus. He says he’ll meet you later and not to contact him.”

“Is he hurt?”

“He didn’t say. Your first five made it to Port Major. The plane had to dodge around a bit.”

They were safer, but were they really safe yet? She knew they would be taken to Joint Services Headquarters, and Morrison had assured her it would be safe, but she still worried. She wanted to know they were protected from the conspiracy determined to kill her, her family, her people. And she wanted to know where Rafe was, and what was happening.

“Your friends—” she began.

“They’re fine. Set up in another location just in case.” He sounded wistful. “Wish I’d been with them. Hawker said the range beam punched through the clouds so fast—they never use full power in training—”

“You had a long-range beam weapon? I thought you were using drones—”

“Well, they had drones, but Hawker said they decided not to take chances—”

Ky could imagine what it must have looked like. On full. “Do you still have a lock on the other two groups?” she asked, pushing aside the thought of any satellites in the way when the beam came on.

“Yes. One is two hours east, still coming. They stopped for a half hour several hours ago; we didn’t have anyone in the area, though, for a visual ID or a communications tap. The other is closer, but it’s been driving in circles for the past hour. Which backup vehicle do you want to use?”

Ky ran through the options she’d set up again. “They may be planning to convoy, or they may be just hoping we’ll do something stupid. Let me talk to Blind Dog Two.”

“Need to grab ’em as soon as possible, separately,” that team commander told her. Both’ll likely be a hard stop. Could be injuries—”

“If those crews panic, there’ll be dead prisoners,” Ky said.

“Right. So we’ll need that backup aircraft—” Not a Vatta scheduled flight, but Inyatta’s father’s friend’s small plane. “—and Weekes City’s emergency services will lend us one of their ambulances.” That was new. Who had been talking to them? But too late to worry.

“Take whatever you need,” Ky said. “I’ll be jumping to another truck in about twenty minutes, heading back your way for the stragglers.”

Iskin Kvannis knew from the first frantic call about the missing personnel that he had been right and his associates wrong: they should have killed the survivors sooner. Just do it, he’d told them; that would be the quickest, surest way. But they had refused. He’d called Ordnay and Molwarp; they’d scrambled the interceptors. Surely that would take care of some of the survivors. As he went through his daily duties, immaculate in his white Commandant’s uniform and to outward appearance untroubled and confident, his mind rehearsed all the careful plans he’d made.

But the style of the rescue bothered him. Quick—and no one was supposed to have known of the date or hour of that truck’s travel except those loyal to the cause. Could the Vattas possibly have hacked his communications? He’d warned the other sites of the first interception; he trusted they would be careful. But then the second shipment had been snatched, this time not on an isolated road but in a busy town, by daylight, leaving two bodies behind and—most telling—Rafe Dunbarger’s ID and money hanging over a rail-yard fence. That proved it was Ky Vatta’s doing.

About the same time, he learned that the interceptor flight had vanished, and a satellite scan showed the heat signature of a beam weapon from a previously unmarked site shortly before. The Vatta flight landed safely in early afternoon, met by General Molosay’s car and several others in convoy, and the nine passengers—which must include the three who’d escaped on their own and an escort—were transported to the Joint Services Headquarters without incident.

Molosay had not called him. That in itself was worrying. If the interceptor pilots had revealed the authorization, which was of course fake, then Molosay might know he was a traitor. Time to enact his own survival plan, the one he had made at the very beginning of this mess.

Safely back in the Commandant’s office, all the doors closed, he unlocked his safe, took out his secured documents case, set it on the desk, and then relocked the safe. The documents case already contained the papers he wanted from the safe. To that he added all the ready cash from the cashbox in his desk drawer and a selection of papers from those filed in another drawer. He didn’t care which, just that it was a big enough wad to hide the other from casual inspection.

A skullphone call pinged him: Quindlan. “Someone’s identified Ky Vatta as being on one of the enemy trucks.”

“Of course she is,” Kvannis said, just managing not to snarl. “Where did you think she was, reading in bed?”

“You can’t talk to me—”

“Yes, I can. Get to the rendezvous—”

“But this isn’t what was supposed to happen! You said it would be—”

“I said we would be damned lucky if it worked. It didn’t work. Now we have to deal with it.” Quindlan made a loud noise and cut the connection. Kvannis took a deep breath. Quindlan had talked tough for years, pushing for action, but like too many civilians he fell apart when the time came. Well, he’d either make it to the rendezvous or not.

He himself had, he thought, at least six hours to finish up, and then two to do the final packing. He left his office on time, went to the Commandant’s Residence, smiled and nodded as usual to staff, and went upstairs, claiming a headache and little appetite. In the next two hours he cleared his residence office, packed the few clothes he would take from his closet. He lingered over the presents he’d bought for his daughters, but left them. Then he went back to his main office to finish up there.

It was later than that, after all, when he left, past midnight. Too many things had needed to be burned, and burned without detection—something possible only after the Academy’s document shredder and incinerator weren’t likely to be heard. He’d long made a habit of wandering about in the evening when no event was scheduled, and that did make it easier.

And then… that last quiet descent of the stairs with his two small cases, disarming the alarm, going out to meet the waiting car, the polite pause at the gate, the excuse—a family matter at his city home—and they were off in the quiet dark for the small airfield mostly limited to private aircraft. From there, crammed into the backseat, he stared at the darkness below, the pattern of the lights that pierced it. By local dawn in Port Major, he was over a thousand kilometers away, in a roomful of fellow conspirators. He looked them over. Nervous, perspiration gleaming on their faces, all but the military ones. He put aside thoughts of his family back in Port Major, and the life he had known, and prepared to do what he could to salvage the revolution.

The rest of the day, for Ky, was a mad scramble to reposition her assets, avoid those of the opposition, and maintain contact with the rescue teams. The second group, she heard, had also made it safely to Port Major after she left them. The third, shepherded by half the team the sergeant major had put together, was somewhere in the northeast now, making ground in that direction. There’d been a brief firefight; one of the survivors had been hit, but not fatally. No names were mentioned in these updates. She had made her interception of the fourth group, successfully retrieving Lundin, Gurton, and Droshinski. Most of the third special ops team had stayed back to delay pursuit, but Philo had come with her in case of trouble. They were now far behind the original schedule, traveling for the moment in a farm truck headed home from a cattle auction. The truck smelled strongly of cattle and bounced as if it had never had springs.

A sharp turn, lurching and bouncing on gravel that crunched beneath them, and then the screech of brakes. “We’re home,” the driver announced. He pulled open the side door. Ky got up, jumped down, and helped the others out. “Mama!” she heard the driver call. “Got folks to feed!”

Unlike farmhouses Ky had seen farther west, mostly built of stone, this one was brick. Ky shed her muddy boots on the porch and the others followed suit. Inside, the wood floor was polished, the walls plastered a pale cream. The farmer, Jacob Arender, introduced them to his wife, Anna, and the children, Barry and Luisa. “First we have supper,” Arender said. “Then you can take the car and go into the city. You won’t have a problem.”

Ky didn’t believe that last. But they were less than 150 kilometers from the city, with good communications. She took herself off to the bathroom and called Rafe on her skullphone. Still no answer. Well—he could be somewhere without coverage. She reached Rodney. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’m tracking several military search parties. And there are roadblocks on every highway into Port Major. It’s been on the news—attempt to prevent dangerous contagious disease getting into the city. You’d better get a disguise.”

Ky’s mind went blank for a moment. They’d gone to such trouble to bring ID and uniforms for the survivors—and how could they find disguises out here, at night? Businesses would have closed in the nearest town.

“What’s the word?” Arender said when she returned to the kitchen.

“Roadblocks,” Ky said. “And a few chase parties trying to find where we are.”

Arender frowned. “Don’t want to lose my car because they spot you in those uniforms.”

“They don’t have to stay in those uniforms,” Anna said. She grinned. “I’ll go with you. Drive the car and then I can drive it back. It’s almost the holidays; we can go as a group for the dance festival.” She looked at Ky. “I used to go every year with my friends. I have all my old costumes.”

“Anna! You can’t leave the children—”

“You’ll be here.” Her eyes sparkled as she turned to Ky. “It will be fun, like old times. You’ll see.”

Arender threw up his hands. “No use arguing, I can see. When Anna makes up her mind, what’s said is done.”

While they ate, Anna rummaged in the storage room for costumes. Ky stared at the armloads of stripes in garish colors, ruffles, lace, ribbons that she piled on the bed. “It’s a district thing, stripes,” Anna said. “In those days, we all matched, but what I saw the last time I went is that some didn’t. So it’s all right if you don’t. Here—try this one.” It fit, even over her other clothes. Ky looked down at herself, trying to keep a polite smile on her face, but the green, purple, and orange combinations were almost too much for her.

Anna looked them over as they headed out the door, uniforms hidden under voluminous skirts, ruffled blouses, and shawls. She stopped Ky. “That hair—you can’t have it like that.” She reached up and unfastened Ky’s braid, pulling her hair loose until it was a dark cloud around her face. “That’s better. Means you’re not married; the rest of you, with scarves and earrings, are betrothed.”

The ride to Port Major, Ky crammed in the backseat with the survivors, the special ops team member now wearing the farmer’s best dress shirt as well as a felt hat with a feather, and carrying a drum and three tambourines on his lap in the front beside Anna, was, as Anna had predicted, fun. They had to stop at two roadblocks—one to get on the highway, and one nearer Port Major. Both times Anna had them singing a country song she’d taught them.

The second roadblock took much longer, because a long line was ahead of them, including freight trucks. Uniformed men opened every truck and trailer; some were waved over for more complete searches. When it was finally their turn, the men in uniform asked Anna where they were going, and her confident “To Port Major, of course, for the winter dance festival. Can’t you see?” Lights flashed in their faces, and one of the men said, “Can you believe it? How far back in the hills did they come from?” Then he gestured. “Go on, go on, don’t hold us up.”

Rafe hoped Ky was away safely with the three new rescues. He also wished he knew anyone on the planet but Ky’s family and immediate associates. The transport center had been a near disaster. He’d parked on the wrong side, in the lot for those with season passes. The out-gate had a guard checking those passes. He realized just in time, and walked off to the train station, where he’d hoped to mingle awhile and come out by another door. But the truck itself must have interested the guard—perhaps because it had no sticker in the window—because when he looked back from just inside, he saw the man walking around the truck, and then pulling at the back door.

He knew what would happen when the man looked inside and didn’t wait to watch. He left the station by a side door, then went around the corner toward the tracks. A train waited; passengers crowded the platform. Could he just get on a train, pay for a ticket once aboard? But he saw a crowd of passengers, a conductor checking tickets. Ky would be furious—worried—when he wasn’t waiting to be picked up, but he could call from the train. He eeled through the crowd, most of them taller than he was, aiming for the locomotive. Surely one car wouldn’t have a guard—but they all did. Between cars he could see a second track, then a tall fence and then rising ground. He reached the locomotive and ducked around it. Another train was approaching—would hide him once he was across that track. A warning blast from the moving train—he was already bolting for the fence. He felt the wave of air pressure that meant he’d cut it dangerously close. But the train now blocked him from any pursuers. He leapt for the fence, pulled himself up, sacrificed his heavy outer jacket to the barbed wire at the top and rolled over, landing neatly, then bounded up the slope beyond, where coarse bushes gave some cover. And remembered that all his ID—the ID that would get him arrested and deported as an illegal alien—was still in that jacket’s pocket. He couldn’t go back. It took him hours to climb the hill—it felt like a mountain—as the clouds thickened, the light dimmed, and the temperature dropped. Initially he was sweating from the effort, feet slipping on the steep slope, and didn’t notice the cold.

It had been full dark awhile when the slope finally eased; he stood panting there, unable to see anything but a dim glow back the way he had come. He checked his skullphone—a signal, but weak—and called Rodney. “Tell her I had a problem and not to worry. Keep right on. I don’t know when I’ll get back, but I will.” He wondered if the opposition already knew he was on this mountain.

Surely if he just kept going down, he would come to a road or a house or something. It wasn’t long before a cold drizzle chilled him and then the drizzle turned to sleet.

Any sane person would be inside a warm room eating supper. He was hungry, cold, and completely lost. He’d made it over that hill, but he didn’t know where “that hill” was in relation to any road, let alone one that would lead him to shelter and reliable communications. He couldn’t see any lights anywhere. He had to move slowly, careful of each step; the ground sloped mostly down but had unexpected humps and holes in it.

“This sort of thing was a lot easier on a space station,” he said aloud when he’d arrived on softer ground that squished under his shoes. He was answered by a loud breathy sneeze and the sound of hooves squelching away. What made that kind of noise? He had no idea. It sounded big. Did it bite? Kick? Stick you with sharp horns? But he couldn’t stand there all night, not in this weather and with his shoes leaking. He wished he’d kept his jacket. He had to keep moving. He remembered that from the books he’d read as a boy.

Eight steps later, he ran into something large and wet and hairy. Even as he reached out to feel it, understand it, something hard took him in the ribs and knocked him flat. The mystery attacker let out what sounded like a vast groan and squelched away, still groaning. He clambered up as fast as he could. Other groaning animals joined it; the noise of hooves rose around him; the ground trembled. Someone yelled in the distance, below him, and dogs barked in two different tones. He had no idea what to do, and stood there until one of the creatures knocked him down and he hit his head on a rock.

An hour later he was sitting in a warm kitchen, steam rising from his wet clothes spread on wooden chairs, and an entire family of farmers, all taller then he was, arrayed on the other side of a large table, staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and hostility.

“You were lucky I sent the dogs out and didn’t just shoot into the dark,” the taller man said. “I could’ve, ya know. Nobody ’round here’d blame me for shootin’ a stranger out there messin’ with the stock in the middle o’ the night.”

“I wasn’t—” he started, and then shrugged. “I don’t know this area. I came up that hill on the other side; I didn’t know what was on this side; I didn’t know about the livestock. I ran into one in the dark.”

“You got no light?” That was the shorter man, two shades lighter than the taller one, gray eyes instead of brown.

“He’s got one,” the gray-haired woman said. “I found it in his pocket, put it there on the chimney ledge.”

“So you got a light and didn’t use it… skulking along like a thief, eh?”

“A fugitive, anyway,” Rafe said. He was naked under the blanket the farmer had wrapped him in, and had bruises all over his torso from the monsters—cattle—that had knocked him down and—at least two legs of them—stepped on him. His feet were still cold, resting on a thin rug over a stone floor. His wet clothes were hanging on a string; his weapons had been collected and tucked into a drawer in the sideboard. His head ached savagely.

“What you done?”

“Made some people very angry,” Rafe said. Killed some, but that wouldn’t help his cause. He sifted through the facts to see if he could come up with a viable narrative.

“Just tell the truth,” the gray-haired woman advised. “It’s always best.”

Rafe knew better than that, but the way his head felt he had no alternative, if he said anything. “What do you know about the Spaceforce shuttle crash last spring and Admiral Vatta’s survival on Miksland?”

“This got a connection?” The taller man took a swig from his mug and set it down hard.

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

“Well, then: we know the shuttle crashed in the ocean and everybody thought they were all dead until a few weeks ago. But they all caught something and are terribly sick, in quarantine; they think Admiral Vatta might die. Do you know her?”

“Yes,” Rafe said. “But she’s not sick, or in danger of dying from anything caught in Miksland.” Except information someone wanted no one to have.

“That’s not what it said on the news,” the gray-haired woman said. The other woman, younger and darker with a thick head of unruly curls, was leaning against a counter and watching him over her mug. She had startling green eyes. He’d seen another pair of eyes like that, recently… who had it been?

He dragged his mind back to the present: what to say? In for a credit, in for a hundred. “Admiral Vatta is my… we’re going to be married,” he said.

The teenage boy burst out laughing; the tall man flicked him on the head and said, “Quit. Or go to bed now.” The boy stifled the laugh with his hand, but his eyes crinkled with amusement. Rafe wanted to smack him.

“We met years ago,” he said. “Then there was the war, and I was on Nexus and she was in space—”

“Wait a minute,” the younger woman said. “You said she wasn’t sick… what about the others? Nobody’s seen or heard from them since they were rescued. Mally told me—” She stopped and glanced at the taller man.

“Mally’s her cousin,” the gray-haired woman said. “Married to one of them—”

“McLenard. Andrew Hugh McLenard. He’s a sergeant. D’you know if he’s alive?”

“Yes,” Rafe said. “At least, he was when we got him out of the transport.”

“You’ve seen him? Does Mally know yet? I have to call—”

The older woman stepped back and caught her hand. “No, Saneel. Not until we know more. Might not be safe.”

“I don’t know if your cousin knows yet,” Rafe said. “I was with the admiral; she had the whole plan but I didn’t, so I couldn’t be made to tell it. I do know she intended everyone to know, as soon as they were all safe.”

“And they aren’t sick?”

“No. Did you hear about the base on Miksland?”

“Base? There was some kind of mine or something they got into, right?”

“Military base,” Rafe said, saving the other part for later, if ever. “Could I have another mug please? My throat’s dry.”

“Be a wonder if you don’t catch your death,” the older woman said. She poured from a pot on the stove and handed him the mug. “Hungry?”

“I could eat—” He stopped himself from saying a cow and finished with “just about anything.” He had been smelling the food since he came to, and his stomach wanted it immediately.

She laughed. “That’s good because this stew has got just about anything in it. If you’re warm enough you ought to change into real clothes; eatin’ in a blanket isn’t handy.” She left the room and returned with a knitted pullover that looked like nothing Rafe had ever seen, a pair of rough trousers, and a pair of thick gray socks.

“That’s my—” the boy started, and got another flick to the head.

“Strangers in need,” the tall man said. “He sure can’t wear mine or Harley’s.”

“Thank you,” Rafe said.

“Come, Saneel,” the woman said. “And you, too, lad, while he changes.”

The men showed no signs of moving. Rafe stood up, let the blanket fall, stepped into the trousers, and yanked them up; they were only a little big. The shirt had only two buttons; he put that on, and then the pullover, then sat down and put the socks on.

“M’wife, she knitted that sweater,” the taller man said. “Wool from our sheep. Socks, too.”

“It’s beautiful,” Rafe said, taking a closer look at the pattern of light and dark wool. “And I’m already warmer. My feet, too.”

The taller man nodded, then glanced at the shorter one. He tipped his mug up, emptying it. “Well… the dogs didn’t eat you, and you have a story I’ve never heard, so I guess you can stay the night until your clothes dry and then we’ll figure what to do.”

“I need to find Ky—Admiral Vatta—and find out what’s happened. I’m supposed to help—”

The shorter man tipped his head to one side. “What you should want most is not to be found by whoever was chasing you.”

Rafe nodded. His head still hurt.

“And you got run over by at least one critter and hit your head on that rock. So you don’t need to be running around in the dark getting worse hurt, and if we go down the market road on a night like this, people will talk. Some of the people who will listen may be the ones you ran from.”

“You don’t have any way to call anyone?”

“Not until they put in more towers, and those so-called reps we got don’t want to spend money on us way out here. An’ yeah, there’s the ISC ansible, but that costs too much per call.”

“You still haven’t given us a name,” the taller man said just as the two women and the boy came back into the kitchen. “You’ve heard some of ours. Let’s hear yours.”

“Rafe,” he said. “Rafe Dunbarger, of Nexus Two.”

“Anselmo.” The tall man pointed to himself, then to the shorter man. “Enver.” He pointed at the boy. “Gill. Enver’s oldest.”

The boy gaped at Rafe, ignoring the introductions. “You’re—you run ISC!”

“Not anymore,” Rafe said. “My sister Penny’s the head of it now.”

The tall man—Anselmo—had scowled at the boy, and turned back to Rafe, all the friendliness gone again. “So you’re one of those rich city boys, never did a lick of real work—bring in more money a day sittin’ at a desk than everyone in this sector together makes in a year.”

“Not quite,” Rafe said, keeping his own tone friendly. “I was thrown out on my own—family wouldn’t have me. Never worked on a farm, true, but had to make my way.”

“What’d you do to get shunned?”

“Killed two men who wanted to kill me and my sister, one night when my parents weren’t home.” He didn’t want to tell the whole story again. His head hurt worse now.

“They kicked you out for that? How old were you?”

“Eleven. First they sent me for therapy, then the therapist said I needed a special school for violent offenders. A prison, essentially.”

“At eleven?” The older woman set a large bowl of some steamed grain on the table, then another of stew. The younger woman went around the table, passing out plates, and put one in front of Rafe. The tall man shook his head. “If a son of mine managed that at eleven, I’d have been proud of him. Saved your sis’s life, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Rafe’s mouth was dry again, his throat tight. “It’s—it’s different there. None of their friends’ sons would do something like that.”

“Huh. Better get some of that food down you. You still don’t look too good.”

He waited until everyone was seated, despite the invitation, and the older woman had handed him a spoon. “Grooly first, then the stew,” she said. “That’s how we do it here.” Then she piled a spoonful of the grooly—whatever it was—on her plate, and used the same spoon for the stew, before passing it to the tall man. Rafe did the same, passing the spoon to the younger woman, who now sat on his left.

Memory and headache had cut off his appetite, so he took small bites until his stomach agreed he could keep going. No one talked. The grooly tasted bland; the stew was spicy, tingling in his mouth. He put his utensils down before he finished. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s delicious; it’s just my head—” He felt nausea knot his stomach; his vision wavered.

The tall man looked across at him and pushed back from the table. “You’re green. Luisa, help me.”

Rafe locked his teeth, hoping not to spew at the table. Every movement hurt, and the first sour-salty taste came into his mouth. He felt them grab his arms, lift him up; someone pulled the chair away and they were half dragging him down the kitchen to a door. He tried to walk but his legs weren’t cooperating. They made it to the next room before he couldn’t help spewing. Someone wiped his mouth after.

“It’s his head,” the woman’s voice said. “I shouldn’t have let him eat so much.”

“We can’t call the doc; he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Sorry,” Rafe said. It came out weak. He could scarcely stand, even with support.

“We’ll bed him down in Chan’s room. With a bucket. Think he’s done?”

Rafe felt himself falling, then caught. Muttered curses, grunts of effort; he passed out then, and woke hours later to darkness and silence. His head didn’t hurt until he turned it, when his neck seized, then half the muscles in his back. He lay still, teeth gritted, until the cramps let go. He didn’t feel nauseated anymore, but he certainly wasn’t completely well. When the neck spasm eased, his head was pounding, though less than before.

The next he knew, dim daylight, cold and gray, came through a gap in the curtains onto his face. He could hear noises in the distance, and the ticking of more sleet on the window. He was inside, dry and warm. A good start to any day, he told himself. His implant informed him of time, date, “no location,” and “no contact” when he accessed his skullphone. The room was square, the walls painted cream. The curtains at the window were white with a pattern of red and yellow flowers at the top. A table and chair were in the left corner across from him, and a chest with a small square mirror on top in the right corner.

A few exploratory moves in the bed made it clear he was stiff, sore, but able to move without immediate cramping. He still had on the clothes he’d been given the night before. When he tried sitting up, his head swam for a few moments, and the ache intensified, but he was sitting, socked feet on a rug made of some animal skin on the floor.

A knock came at the door to his right, and it opened before he could answer, his voice being stuck somewhere in his throat.

“Good,” the gray-haired woman said. “You were too sick last night to notice, most like. My name’s Luisa. How’s your head?”

“It still aches, but less,” Rafe said. “I’m sorry I’ve been so much trouble.”

“We’ve done nothing yet we wouldn’t do for anyone,” she said. “There’s breakfast in the kitchen, or I could bring you a tray—but I don’t know what’s best for you to eat.”

“Little,” Rafe said. “Some bread, maybe? Toast? And I should get all the way up.”

She offered a hand, and he took it, unfolding painfully in sections.

“What kind of livestock ran over me?”

“Cattlelope, properly,” she said, letting go his hand as he steadied. She moved out into the passage; he followed. “We mostly call them cattle. Pretty standard large herbivore for meat and milk production issued to colonies. Slotter Key has old cattle now—bovines, not the hybrids—but we’ve stuck to the cattlelopes because they do well here.”

He’d eaten cattlelope steaks and roasts all his life but had no idea what a cattlelope looked like. He followed her down the hall to the kitchen. In daylight, the same gray daylight, he could see details that had escaped him the night before. The stone floor had a border, a ring of darker stones, about half a meter from the walls. Around the big table were children smaller than the boy the night before: five of them. Luisa had no implant, and neither had the men, he remembered. Nor the boy, nor any of the children. Were these Miznarii? His own implant was obvious…

Luisa smiled at him. “You’re right, we don’t have implants. But we’re not anti-humods. I got a prosthetic eye when I lost one to a stone chip.”

The food on the table smelled wonderful. Luisa set a plate in front of him and put a piece of toast on it. “Try this first. If it doesn’t make you queasy there’s eggs and sausage.”

It didn’t make him queasy. Neither did the eggs and sausage. The thunderous knocks on the door did.

“Go back to bed,” Luisa said. “You’re my cousin Jules. You’re sleeping off a drunk. And you children, go to the schoolroom and get to work on your books.”

Rafe couldn’t really hurry to the room, but he made it there before Luisa opened the outside door, fell into the bed, pulled the covers over, and was asleep again before he knew it. When he woke, hours later, sun had broken through the clouds. He stayed under the covers until he heard Luisa call the children.

“Yes, come on,” she said, looking down the hall. More quietly, as he came closer. “Some fellow in a military-looking uniform, said he was looking for dangerous fugitives. Described a couple of bald men. I said my cousin had a full head of black hair, a lot of bruises from stumbling and falling in the pasture in the dark, and wasn’t at all dangerous when sleeping off too much liquor. He looked into the room, and there was the back of your head with black hair, and you were snoring like anything, then he left. You know any bald men?”

“Bald men and bald women,” Rafe said. “They kept the survivors from Miksland shaved bald and drugged, so they’d look sick and damaged. We were getting them out.” He hoped by now they were all safe in Port Major. The last interception should have been the night before. He needed to get in touch with them.

Luisa showed him the rest of the rambling, one-story house, gave him a heavy jacket, and took him outside to see what had run over him. A line of them were watching over a stone wall, ears wide, noses sniffing. They had long pointed horns curving up from their heads, and a ruff of longer hair down the neck, broad bodies covered with a thick hair coat, white lower legs and bellies, tails with a tuft of longer hair on the end. And the attitude of animals that expected feed to appear shortly. Behind them, up the slope of the hill, stones broke through the meager grass. A few of their kind grazed higher up, but turned as Luisa shut the house door and started downhill.

“Those are cattlelope. Daresay you’ve eaten some in your life.”

“They’re… pretty,” Rafe said. Their coats were splotched and striped with dark brown and white; no two looked quite alike.

“They’re extremely useful animals,” she said. Then grinned. “And pretty, yes. Ours are considered one of the best herds in this area.”

Dogs barked in the distance; the cattlelope all lifted their heads to stare toward the barking.

“Back inside,” Luisa said. “That’s Tag and Porro; they’ve found a stranger.”

Inside felt much warmer. Luisa motioned Rafe back toward the room he now knew as his. The bed was a tumble of sheets and blanket; he straightened it out, went to the desk in the corner, and sat in front of it, head in his hands. It did still hurt some, though not too badly.

The stranger turned out to have been from the town, hoping to pick up news. Luisa sent him away, after questioning him. “I didn’t entirely trust him,” she said. “He’s local enough, knew the right names, but I heard that family’s had some bad eggs in their basket.” She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked out the window for a moment. “He did have news you’d better know. They found your ID and money in a jacket on the rail-yard fence.”

“I thought that might be trouble. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to change pockets until I was partway up the hill,” he said.

“Did you kill those men in the truck?” Her gaze pinned him in place.

“One of them, yes.”

She nodded. “Higgens said there was a news message about it, and about the survivors being mistreated, and some men stopped it, smashed the transmitter station. But enough got out people are riled up.”

If they’d released the news about the rescue, then everyone must be back in Port Major. “Anything about Ky—Admiral Vatta?”

Her expression softened. “No, not that Higgens heard. And we’ll get you to where you can call, but we’d best think how to do it, now they’re looking for you in particular.”