Kiem’s scattered thoughts realigned in a new, cold direction and then slowed to a halt. Bel was wearing a grim smile. She was having the same thoughts.
“Usually,” Bel said, “you stash your weapons as close as you can to where you plan to use them.”
Kiem’s skin was numb, like they had plunged into hard vacuum after all. “I would know,” he said. “The Emperor would—she wouldn’t marry me to Jainan just to turn around and invade Thea, that’s—” He looked around at the military hardware hiding on the Kingfisher refinery. “That’s not … possible.”
“Coup?” Bel suggested. “Does the Emperor have to know?”
Gairad wasn’t looking at either of them. She was moving among the piles, pulling aside coverings to check what was beneath. She looked down at the abstract silver emblem printed on a storage rack. “Prince Kiem,” she said, in a preoccupied tone. “What is a kingfisher?”
“Oh—they got culled into extinction,” Kiem said, his mouth on autopilot as he ran his fingers over the side of what he now recognized was a tank drone. It was the last one of a whole row. “Two-meter wingspan. Venomous. The bioengineers didn’t realize their prey instinct would include humans.” He looked over and saw Gairad’s expression. “There were some weird design fashions around the time Iskat was terraformed.”
“What the fuck,” Gairad said. “Who names their operation after something like that?”
“The military?” Kiem said. He squinted into the distance, trying to see how far the row of tank drones stretched. “Fairly standard. Something macho.”
Gairad turned around to glare at him, but for once Kiem didn’t feel it was directed at him personally. “There is something seriously wrong with Iskat.”
Kiem took his hand away from the tank as if it were suddenly hot. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to think you’re right.”
Bel emerged from a shadowy aisle between the stockpiled weapons. “Model 46–5 fluid disruptors, various reaper-grade missiles, gas launchers,” she said. “And that’s just scratching the surface. Can the military invade an allied province with no excuse? At least on Sefala the congloms were already racking up the body count.”
Gairad’s face turned sallow. “Oh, sweet God. The protest.”
“What protest?” Bel said sharply.
“There are protests scheduled for Unification Day,” Gairad said. “Our student society was coordinating with some other activist groups. Sit-ins and marches, nothing violent. But I guess”—she swallowed, her face an even more unhealthy color—“I guess an outsider could start something, if they wanted. We wouldn’t vet everyone who joined.”
Kiem exchanged glances with Bel. He thought about strategic comms, and about Aren, who had known so much about fringe newslogs on Thea. He forced himself to reason it through. “You have to tell them,” he said. “Call it off. Tell them the Empire’s sent saboteurs—they’ll believe that, right? Tell them you think Kingfisher has been feeding inflammatory news to your press.”
“You won’t get any comms out from here,” Bel said. “Take the shuttle—no, leave the shuttle for me and Kiem. Take an emergency pod.”
Gairad pressed a hand to her face, looking between the rest of the warehouse and the door. “We still haven’t found Jainan.”
“You don’t even know if he’s here,” Bel said brutally, making the tearing feeling in Kiem’s chest worse. “I wouldn’t keep a prisoner with the weapons. He may be in the uncloaked modules.”
Before Gairad could reply, something clanked in the distance. It came from the depths of the warehouse, away from the door, and was followed by the sudden absence of a background hum that Kiem had taken to be part of the warehouse environment. Then, worse: smaller noises that were too intermittent to be mechanical. Someone was moving around farther in the warehouse.
All of them went still. Kiem nearly stopped breathing. They must have been heard; they hadn’t been quiet enough for stealth, and they had the flashlight. Gairad reflexively stifled it with her hand and plunged them into darkness.
Bel reached for her capper and started toward the source of the noise, her shoes making no sound at all. Kiem followed, slower, praying he didn’t make an incautious movement.
Another loud clank. The hum started up again, quieter this time. Now Kiem was listening for it he could triangulate its direction a bit better. They rounded the last of the tanks while Kiem and Gairad tried to minimize the scuffing of their footsteps, and a gap in the stockpiles showed a pool of light.
Before Kiem could see much in the light, a solitary trooper stepped out from behind a pile of crates, a helmet under her arm. She was peeling white nonconductive gloves away from her hands.
“Don’t shoot yet!” Bel shouted, already at a flat run across the space. Kiem belatedly remembered he had a capper.
The trooper stumbled back, dropping the helmet. Her eyes were unfocused as if she’d just come out of a simulation. “Who are—”
Bel grabbed the trooper’s arm. Gairad passed Kiem from behind and threw herself into the struggle. Kiem backed off; he found himself raising his wristband, but of course that was useless. The trooper drove her elbow at Bel’s stomach; Bel twisted, Gairad yelled, and a few brutal seconds later they had the trooper in a headlock between them. Blood was streaming from Gairad’s nose, and her wrist was at the wrong angle.
“Sorry,” Kiem said to the trooper. She was in some kind of technician’s uniform, but she seemed to have taken off her rank and division badges. “We’re just passing through. Do you happen to have seen—”
“Oh, fuck,” Bel said softly, looking behind the technician. Something about her tone of voice made Kiem break off. “Kiem. Over there.”
Kiem stepped around the crates so he could see the lighted area she’d come from. The technician tried to break away again— she hadn’t shouted for help yet—but he didn’t really have time to think about that, because now he could see the makeshift cleared area, and the form lying on a medical bed, strapped into a helmet like the one the trooper had just dropped. Jainan.
It shouldn’t have taken Kiem as long as it did to reach him. It felt like gravity had doubled. He leant over Jainan when he reached his side and touched his shoulder to wake him up. But Jainan wasn’t asleep. Through the view panel on the medical helmet, his eyes were wide open in a fixed rictus, his face drained and frozen. A wire ran from his skull underneath the helmet to a transmission spike. His shoulder under Kiem’s hand was as stiff as a board, and little tremors went through his taut muscles.
“Jainan. Wake up.” Kiem hadn’t ever felt fear like this, fear that gripped his back and shoulders like a paralyzing current. He loosened the straps that held down the helmet. “We’re here.” His voice cracked on the last word. Jainan didn’t show any sign he’d heard. Kiem grabbed the wire running from his head, but he came to his senses just in time. He was not a medic. He would do damage. You’ve done enough damage already, he thought, and turned to look for the technician.