Skater shifted in his seat. "It's going to be tough. The place is maxxed out on security right now." Kestrel had turned up quite a bit of information on the current situation. "At least the perimeter stations are. Knight Errant is handling the account. But they're not being let inside. NuGene is taking care of its own internal security."

"Meaning Ellard Dragonftetcher."

"Yeah. The only option we've got is kidnapping one of NuGene's researchers and using him or her to get through the outer defenses."

"That's risky."

"Depends on how much the person we get wants to live," Duran said, "I'm pretty good at convincing someone their life is on the line."

"I've got another idea. When Torin Silverstaff was first building up the company, he constructed as cheaply as possible." Archangel tapped a key and transferred an image to the plane's large vidscreen so the team could see. A datapic of the NuGene building formed, all hard lines and angles. "He knocked down pre-existing buildings, scraped the rubble out of the way, and built on top of them. But he had to use the existing foundations and utility hookups."

The building image became translucent and remained sitting at the side of the street. Below it, a schematic of the foundation formed with grids in red lines and in yellow.

"The red lines are the current architecture," Archangel said, "and the yellow is where the previous buildings were." Skater studied the schematic. "They've put up some false walls and floors."

Archangel tapped more keys. "The construction crews who rebuilt NuGene weren't able to completely incorporate the pre-existing foundations. They had to sink some new support columns."

"But there may be some pockets inside the foundation that aren't covered by Knight Errant or the internal sec-systems." Skater peered at the gridded sections of the building's two foundations, excitement flaring to life inside him. Using one of the R amp;D people as a means of getting into the building hadn't been his preference, but it had seemed executable. "If we can get into those lower levels-"

"We might be able to tap the computer lines without them ever knowing we were there," Archangel said. "Next best thing to a zipless frag," Duran said. "They could have filled in the holes," Skater said, playing the devil's advocate.

Archangel shook her head. "I went over the blueprints I raided from the Portland City Commissioner's Office. Putting that much concrete in the ground near the river for a purely cosmetic reason would have cost serious nuyen in environmental taxes."

"The elves were already pushing for a back-to-nature movement then." Duran commented. "I guess they worry about other contaminants corps might want to hide in something built along the lines of a tomb."

"With good reason," Trey said. "Toxic waste is expensive to get rid of through legitimate means."

"There were letters from Silverstaff requesting that the Commissioner's office waive the tax," Archangel said, "but they turned him down. Silverstaff didn't invest the capital because the pouring was expensive as well."

"Is there a way to get to the foundation?" Skater asked.

“The city's been honeycombed with drainage systems to help prevent flooding." Archangel hit more keys and more lines took shape on the screen. "I found two likely prospects. Both of them come in from the river."

On the screen, the NuGene building reduced in size as the rest of the city came into view around it. An eyeblink later, two green tubes raced in from different positions along the curvature of the Willamette River, coming together at a juncture almost at NuGene's doorstep.

"From here," Archangel said, "we should be able to cut through the drainage tunnel into one of those pockets under the building. The other tunnel I found here"-a yellow tube formed on the screen almost touching the green joint and extended under NuGene-"has been abandoned."

"You don't know if it's clear?"

"No." Archangel looked at Skater. "We won't know that till we're there."

"How big are the tunnels?"

"The ones coming from the river, we can walk through. Even Elvis."

The troll stroked his silver-capped tusk. "That's good news."

"The downside is that they'll be patrolled by maintenance drones that could alert security. But I think I've got a utility that'll get us by them." Archangel touched the yellow line on the screen. "This tunnel, though, is less than a meter across."

"Crawlspace," Skater said.

Archangel leaned back in the bench seal. "At best."

"Then that's what we'll do. Can you print out a copy of those schematics? I want to overlay them with the maps I've got."

In seconds, she handed him the hardcopies. Briefly, their hands touched and she met his gaze. "Don't start feeling responsible for me being here," she said softly, in a voice the others couldn't hear. "I was bitchy when I caught up with you at the warehouse. That wasn't how I really feel. I'm just scared. Haven't had any sleep, and I've been running on kaf and sheer nerves. I came along for myself. Life may not be great in the sprawl, but at least it's mine and no one else's. It means a lot to me to be able to say that."

Before Skater could respond, she turned back to her deck and immediately became absorbed in working on it. He watched her for a moment, checking the throb along her neck, then faced forward again.

Abruptly, sheets of rain fell across the amphibian's nose and blotted out a discernible view of the sky. The roaring winds buffeted the small plane. Skater studied the maps and the hardcopy as the light in the Fiat-Fokker's cabin dimmed intermittently. Lightning blazed a ragged rip of color and heat only a few meters from the right wing, drawing a curse from Duran.

Wheeler juked the controls to bring the amphibian back on-line. "And to think," the dwarf cracked in the silence that had filled the plane, "this is the easy part."

Even watching the power of the storm envelop them, Skater knew it was the truth.

"Look alive, chummers," Wheeler said over the radio two hours later. He sounded like he was far away. Jacked into the amphibian's controls, he was the plane. "We've been tagged. Portland Border Patrol has given us a knock-knock, wants to know who we are and do we know we've violated Portland airspace."

Skater roused himself and glanced out the window, which showed him they were still enmeshed in roiling black clouds.

They'd ridden the edge of the storm into the area, sometimes bucking hard, alternately losing altitude, then climbing frantically to regain it. All of them had stayed buckled into their seats while the cargo shifted in the hold.

"How far out are we?" Skater asked over the headset.

"Seven kilometers," the rigger answered.

"How soon will we be there?"

'Three minutes, give or take. If this drekking storm isn't shoving us forward, it's sucking us back in thermals."

"The next time there's a good jolt of lightning," Skater said, "shed some altitude and make it look like we're having a harder time than we are." He leaned forward in his seal, captured by the harness.

"We catch another near one," Wheeler said with genuine feeling, "it might not be play-acting."

The signal from the Portland Border Patrol was garbled and broken up. A glance at the altimeter showed Skater they were at something over three thousand meters. He shifted his attention to the sweep of the arm across the radar screen. Two green blips appeared and the Fiat-Fokker's navigational computer began tracking them, showing their increasing altitude in rapidly changing red numerals. 'They've got two away." Skater said over the headset. "I feel them out there. They won't hesitate."

"Fiat-Fokker," a harsh voice barked over the radio, "be advised that you are on the verge of entering Tir Tairngire airspace. Identify yourself and your business, or be shot down." The message was repeated in Sperethiel.