Page 23 of Kavan

He laughs. It isn't loud and it doesn't last and I would rebuild the entire data core by hand to hear it again.

At 0310 I put my finger on the junction where the maintenance ring meets the spine approach, and we let the silence sit, because it's four days of walking and a shooting war between us and that junction and we both already know.

"That's the way in," I say.

"Yes."

Our hands are next to each other on the plan. He turns his over, palm up, and waits, and doesn't look at me while he waits, and I put mine in it.

CHAPTER 16

KAVAN

Twenty people. That's the number I have left, and at 0600 I put all twenty to work, because idle is how you lose them before the shooting starts.

Neris takes the drone lattice and the two remaining relay units. Marchant takes geology and the charge inventory, nine kilos we won't be using on any control run but will absolutely be using on a door. Halloran takes water. Auclair takes the wounded, which means Ferreira on an improvised litter and Mirek's arm rebound properly, the first time anyone has managed it since Convergence. Vesk takes the rear element and picks his own four.

Then Sophie stands up on a crate in a Precursor redoubt with her hair scraped back and rock dust worked permanently into the creases of her knuckles, and briefs twenty exhausted people on the end of the world.

She doesn't soften it. That's the correct decision and I never had to tell her.

"The island is the weapon," she says. "Not the city. The city was where the crew slept. Forty-one housings across the chain, and the largest is plugging the caldera throat under our feet, and the network is currently running at four-twelfths of capability. Everything that has hunted us is what this place does at a third power, half awake, with no orders."

Somebody swears quietly. She lets it happen.

"We cannot destroy it. If we sever the control runs, containment fails and the caldera opens, and that is no metaphor, that is Eli's arithmetic checked twice. What we can do is stand it down. There's a recognition protocol in the core itself. It isn't a code, it's a proof, and the master copy sits at the spire, and I'm the only person in this city who can read it."

"And Rourke?" Marchant asks.

"Rourke believes he's stealing a gun."

"Is he wrong?"

"He's wrong about which end he's holding."

I take the crate after her.

"Two things. First: from this hour, Doctor Larkin's authority isn't limited to Precursor systems. If she gives an order that contradicts one of mine, hers stands, and you won't wait for me to confirm it." I look at Vesk, who has known this was coming since the gutters and has chosen to be dignified about it. "Second: if I go down, she has command. Not Sergeant Vesk. Her. Sergeant Vesk will run the fighting, and he'll run it well, and he'll do it under her."

Vesk says, "Understood, sir," in the flattest voice available to him, which is how he shows approval.

"Why?" Halloran asks. Not challenging. She has earned the question on a ledge above a vent floor.

"Because getting out of here isn't the mission anymore," I say. "Standing the gun down is the mission. Everyone in this room can be replaced on it except one person, and command should sit with the irreplaceable. None of that is sentiment either. Ask her what geometry means."

Somebody laughs. It's the first one in three days and it's worth more than the briefing.

At 0900 the forward scouts come back and the day gets worse.

Corporal Deyan Mirek can't climb but he can still watch, and what he watched from an inspection port on the tenth was an Ostmark element of nine moving west along the transit spine in full order, with two shrouded crates on a powered dolly and a man walking in front of them in a coat.

"A coat," I say.

"A long one, sir. Clean."

Eleven days underground and Cassian Rourke is wearing a clean coat. That means a supply line, which means an entrance we haven't found, which means he can leave whenever he likes and has chosen not to.

"How far ahead?"