Kell, Tyria, and Phanan waited in the shadow of a metal sculpture that depicted, in abstract form, a dance of spirits in Storinal's mythological past. A block away, Grinder, dressed in black, huddled at the base of the Inst.i.tute wall just by the hatch leading into the waste-disposal flue.

"Is he actually any good at this?" Phanan asked. "I've never seen his record. Never heard of him before joining the Wraiths."

Kell shrugged, realized no one could see it in the gloom. "I don't know.

But he was good enough for Commander Antilles to pick him."

Phanan snorted. "Well, if he's as good a code-slicer and intrusion expert as he is a pilot, he's, well, mediocre. Sort of warms your heart, doesn't it? To know our lives are in the hands of a mediocre slicer?"

"I think," Tyria said, "that you left the profession of medicine because it's your nature to make everyone feel worse about everything."

"Ooh." Phanan's tone was admiring. "I've been skewered. I will now take seventeen hours to reevaluate my life."

It was an unpleasant entryway.

The flue opened a full two meters above the sidewalk. In opening it, Grinder had spilled out a dozen blocks of compressed garbage, each a meter on a side and smelling of rotted organic material. By the time the other Wraiths arrived, Grinder had stacked them into crude steps leading up to the flue opening.

The flue itself smelled like the blocks, only worse. More concentrated.

The Wraiths put on their air-filter masks, spattered with perfume by a thoughtful Tyria, before proceeding.

Phanan was first up the steeply angled metal shaft, not because he was at home with intrusion, but because he was in charge of the powerful spray with which he coated every visible surface of the flue. The spray was not antibacterial, antiviral, or antianything; it was a powerful and fast-setting sealant that he believed would prevent the transmission of any disease agents that might be clinging to the flue's surfaces.

They gave the stuff a mere minute to set, then began climbing. Once all four were in, they closed the door behind them. Grinder reset the latch, showing the other Wraiths how to unlatch it, and Phanan continued upward, spraying down the sides of the flue.

This shaft took them first into the hard-sided chamber that acted as a trash compressor. A single ill-timed command to the building computer would cause the sides to come together, squeezing the Wraiths into new cubes of garbage, but no such command came. The hatch out of the top of the chamber led to a larger vertical shaft into which trash apparently poured from every floor of the Inst.i.tute. "See all the ash?" Phanan said.

"Most of the accesses into this shaft are through incinerators. So dangerous wastes will be nice safe ash when they're dropped for disposal."

One floor up, a hatch gave them access into a small mess featuring a table for six and a food-delivery wall unit.

By agreement, Tyria took point; she was to stop whenever she reached a portal or change in flooring so Grinder could check it for sensors.

Grinder was second, with Phanan following and Kell bringing up the rear.

The mess gave way to a hallway. The third door down opened into a terminal room, and Grinder insisted that they crowd into the small chamber so he could try to slice into the building records.

Despite Phanan's earlier a.s.sertions of his mediocrity, the task only took Grinder a few minutes. "Level A-Four," said Grinder, "that's Aboveground Four for those of you who haven't been paying attention to Storinal nomenclature, is where all test subjects and experiments are kept. A sort of tiered security system. Outermost of three tiers is basically a warehouse of animal subjects, animals not especially dangerous. The middle circle holds more dangerous creatures, like toxic reptiles and ex-doctors from Rudrig."

Phanan muttered, "Much the same thing, really."

"The inner chamber is where they store what we want. Kell, you'll be interested to learn that there's a plasma bomb array there. The sensors detect a leak and it may trigger-the Inst.i.tute's way of keeping the world safe from plagues."

Kell said, "Can any of your intrusion efforts trigger the bomb?"

"Sure. If I'm sloppy."

"Wonderful."

Grinder stood. "Let's go. There's no time like the dark of night."

Getting up two floors by a back stairwell was not difficult. Slightly less easy was penetrating the security door from that stairwell into the secure outer circle, but this took Grinder no more time than getting through the trash hatch.

The outer-tier warehouse was a large area occupying most of the fourth floor. Some areas of it were well lit, thick with cages holding live, alert animals from all over the galaxy; their noise level increased as they became aware of the Wraiths moving in the chamber, but the human guard as - signed to the floor did no more than approach them and shush them. The Wraiths stayed low, then moved away, deeper into the chamber's more shadowy regions.

Pausing against a stack of plastic-sheathed boxes, Grinder was startled to feel something scratching-actively scratching-at the other side of the surface he was leaning against. Peering down, he saw that he was propping himself up against a stack of small containers labeled STORINI GLa.s.s PROWLER. The picture on the container showed a translucent arthropod that walked upon two legs and apparently seized its prey with the other two in a nearly humanoid fashion. Whatever was inside one of those containers was trying to claw its way out, hence the scratching sensation.

He allowed a slow smile to spread across his features. An exotic insect from a faraway world-he could use such a thing. Glancing around to make sure none of his companions was watching, he used a fine set of scissors to cut through the plastic netting holding the cartons together, then slipped the carton with the active inhabitant into his tool bag.

"So," Falynn said, "I got about four hours of sleep. Two just snoozing on top of the bunker, and two lying in a heap along the south wall."

Janson whistled. "And no one spotted you."

"I a.s.sume not. I'm not in prison." She shrugged, then winced at the pain the maneuver caused her.

Atril scowled at her. "Be still." She returned to painting a healing agent onto the largest of the cuts on Falynn's forehead. Janson continued, "How did you get out?"

"When I woke up, it was still a couple of hours before dawn. The little garrison's personal vehicles were all lined up on the north wall, and I figured that they wouldn't put pressure sensors along the wall where all their own people would move all the time, just out in the open area around. So I just walked around, picked the biggest of the groundskimmers, and picked the lock to its storage compartment. Got a little more rest there, too, under a blanket and some boxes before his shift ended and he came out. He stopped in at some place to eat and I crawled out there, the glorious image you see before you." Falynn's hair was plastered to her head by sweat, she had sc.r.a.pes on her forehead, and she walked, when they let her, like a woman who'd avoided a fall's worth of broken bones but stocked up on bruises and muscle pulls by way of compensation.

Janson said, "I'll get your information to Wedge. And you get some real sleep." He rose.

Atril rose and added, "The painkillers should start firing off pretty soon. You'd better be horizontal when they do." She shrugged. "Sorry I can't do more. I wish Dr. Phanan were here."

"It's fine," Falynn said.

Janson and Atril left her quarters, but Donos lingered, kneeling beside her chair. "You're sure you're all right?"

"I'm going to stab the next person who asks me that." But she kept her tone light and there was no sting in her words.

"You scared me to death. Falling and not moving. I was getting a retrieval team in position when you reached me via comlink."

"I'm sorry." She reached out to stroke his chin, felt the harsh stubble of a day's worth of beard there. And she began to laugh.

"What's funny?"

"That mustache. You look like a complete idiot."

"Oyah." He bobbed his head in an exaggerated nod and kissed her on the third bob. Then he rose. "Like they said, sleep. We've got more planned tonight."

"Someone else gets to climb." A wave of tiredness washed across her. She half rose, unwilling to straighten completely up and suffer the muscle pulls such a motion entailed, I and crawled onto her bed. "G'night."

Plague Group returned from Scohar tired but triumphant. They met with the mustachioed idiots of Yokel Group in Wedge's hostel quarters.

"Effortless, as I predicted," Grinder said. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "My companions, inspired by my sheer versatility and competence, themselves showed acceptable performance-"

Kell glared at him and he shut up. "We got in," Kell said, "we got out with the goods, and the only thing we did that would indicate someone was there was spray a sealant all over the inside of a trash flue. I even reconnected the plasma bomb."

Wedge came upright. "The what?"

"They had a high-temperature device set to trigger if any of the disease agents breached their security seal and threatened to escape the complex.

The thing would have instantly incinerated the Inst.i.tute and a few city blocks around it - which I a.s.sume they consider an appropriate measure to keep some of those diseases in check." Kell shrugged. "I bet that little safety feature is a secret to their neighbors. Anyway, I disabled the array so Grinder could foul up if he liked-"

"Never happen," Grinder said, his voice a growl.

"And then, once he was very, very sure everything was safe, reconnected it."

"Where's the plague?" Wedge asked.

Phanan held up two plastic cylinders, each no larger than a standard comlink.

"Will those... containers... hold?"

The doctor nodded. "Yes. But to be safe, I'll be inoculating all of us and the rest of the Night Caller crew against these little bugs. Kell is going to help me mount these containers in little detonation units, nothing explosive, they'll puncture the sides with a needle. All we have to do is get them into the shuttles' air-circulation gear."

"Good." Wedge leaned back and tried to relax. "We go tonight, then. The sooner we're offworld, the sooner we can get out of these mustaches."

Tyria quirked a smile. "Not to mention the lavender short pants."

"Not to mention them, Flight Officer Sarkin." Wedge pulled his wide-brimmed hat down over his eyes. "Or else."

They drove at a slow pace toward Bunker 22-Aleph-slow so Piggy, pacing them on foot, could keep up. Not that the Storinal-made refueling and maintenance skimmer was a particularly speedy craft, but it could still outrun a fully armed and armored Gamorrean.

The two human guards and one leather-clad Gamorrean at the bunker's main entrance came on attention as they neared. In the skimmer's cab, Kell fingered his blaster to make sure it was still snug in its holster.

Beside him, Tyria gave him an amused look and refrained from doing the same. Back in the skimmer's main bed, hidden among the refueling hoses and swing-out platforms containing diagnostic gear, Janson, Phanan, and Grinder would be making sure the blankets and covers over them were still tied down tight... and making sure their blasters were charged to full.

Kell kept a bored expression on his face and brought the skimmer to a stop about a meter from the point at which he was sure the guards would bring their weapons to bear. The senior human guard stepped forward.

"Orders." Kell handed him his forged datacard. "That's work orders, not orders. We don't take orders. Not like s.p.a.ceport security boys." He gave Tyria a grin he knew to be irritating I and c.o.c.ksure.

"These shuttles aren't due to be serviced until the morn-ing," the guard said. "They depart tomorrow afternoon."

"It's a slack period," Kell said. It was true; otherwise they wouldn't have been able to find and temporarily steal a maintenance skimmer. There had been others lined up, unused. "Control wants us to get a little ahead before the work piles up tomorrow."

The guard gave him a sour look and stepped back to slip the card into the door reader.

Now, their first test. It would have been far too much work to forge a proper set of work orders allowing them to work on the Hawkbat's shuttles-a set that would get proper authorization from the s.p.a.ceport's main computer. It would have been a mission all by itself to get through that computer's defenses; security on that system was extremely tight to keep malicious code-slicers from doing things like rerout - ing cargo craft to pirates' landing zones or causing craft to crash.

So Grinder had tried to run completely around the wall of defenses. Just after nightfall this evening, he had climbed to the hangar's roof and sliced into the little retransmitter there. Now, the module he'd planted in that comm device would be intercepting the request for authorization of Kell's codes, waiting an appropriate amount of time, and sending back the authorization... all without bothering the s.p.a.ceport computer. The Wraiths had no plans to retrieve the module; it would interfere with no other requests and would let the retransmitter operate normally. It would probably not be found until the next time the transmitter was serviced, whether days, weeks, or months from now.

The guard returned. "You're clear to work. Under the eye of a s.p.a.ceport guard."

Kell gestured toward Piggy. "I thought that was what Smiley there was for."

"Right." The guard waved at the two remaining at the hangar doors, and a moment later those doors were rolling open. Maintaining his air of boredom, Kell moved the skimmer through and Piggy paced them in. The Gamorrean guard said something in its own language as they pa.s.sed and Piggy grunted a reply.

As the doors shut behind them, Kell maneuvered the skimmer to be directly beside the c.o.c.kpit of one of the shuttles. When it was in place, he lowered the landing struts and shut off the repulsors. Now, the craft would be braced for its mechanical duties. He and Tyria clambered out of the cab and into the aft machinery, Kell swinging a diagnostic module up against the hull of the Hawkbat's Perch.

The others didn't emerge from hiding, but Grinder's voice did. "I'm reading one visual-only scanner, up somewhere in the northwest corner."

Kell resisted the urge to look. "Can you disable it?"

"From here? Don't be stupid. Wait a second. Unless I miss my guess..."

Kell and Tyria chimed in together, "Which never happens..."

"Shut up. Unless I miss my guess, it's piping its data straight through that same retransmitter... Yes! Give me a second. Everybody hold still.

I'm recording a few seconds of its transmission... looping it... blending the seam. Now all I have to do is transmit it constantly to my module on the retransmitter and have the module hold the real feed... Done!"

Grinder emerged, looking sweaty but triumphant.

Janson and Phanan came out from beneath their respective hiding places.

Janson gestured to the side of Hawkbat's Perch. "Why isn't that panel open yet?"

"Because we don't actually have authorization, remember?" Kell felt, once more, the faint surprise that came when Janson's sudden arrival failed to cause him to tense up. "I need Grinder to run a bypa.s.s on it."

"And on the ramp control."

Kell shook his head. "It occurred to me as we were driving over here that we can just put the stuff in the air intake scoop. They'll be running on real air for the first few thousand meters, until they can't ram it fast enough in to supply adequate air pressure. That's when they switch to canned air." He smiled. "We don't even have to break in."

Phanan c.o.c.ked his head to listen. "We read, Joyride." With his built-in equipment, he didn't have to hear the buzzing of his comlink and bring the thing on-line; he was always receiving. "Good news, Joyride. Plague out." He looked at the others. "Runt is counting down for his run from the moon. If everything goes well, he'll finish his terrain-following run and be here in about an hour."

"That's our time limit," Kell said. "Don't forget, we actually have to service these shuttles."

Joyride Group couldn't rely on the help of a pa.s.sing vendor's skimmer.

With four people needing transport and a narrow time frame, they had to make something happen.

Of all the vehicles crowding Revos's s.p.a.ceport, none were as prevalent as cargo-hauling skimmers, used for transporting everything from standard bulk containers weighing several tons to piles of pa.s.sengers' personal bags. It wasn't difficult to find one unattended, wasn't even difficult to get it running and move it off a few dozen meters into the deeper shadow thrown by an unoccupied hangar. But what they were planning next would be tricky.

"How's it coming?" Wedge asked. He and Face were guards on this operation, keeping blasters at the ready and attention on their surroundings; they didn't often look back at what Falynn was doing.

"How do you think? Slow!"

Wedge heard an electronic crackle and a curse from her. "The trick," she continued, "is to fry the circuits controlling braking without wiping out everything else on the same board. Then I've got to do the vehicle programming you want. Tricky stuff. The jump at the end, the self-erasure, and the data you want left behind-well, I wish Grinder were here."

Wedge managed a smile. If Grinder knew how much his particular skills were appreciated and needed right now, he'd be insufferable. He managed to ride pretty close to insufferable most of the time.

Atril spoke up. "I handle ship's programming all the time, particularly navigation. Let me do a rough cut on the program and you can fix it up in less time than it would take you to do it from scratch."

"Please."

Wedge's comlink beeped. He held it up to his ear, heard the message, said, "Thanks, Six." He turned back to the others. "Thirty minutes and counting."

"We have a problem," Phanan said.