GioAvanti followed his glance. “A handy device,” she said. “Cuts through static fields like sunlight through a window.” She smiled, and Mallowes didn’t find it the least bit charming. “You just have to know where to point it.”

The second elevator chimed. The courier, bleeding from a cut under his eye but otherwise functional, walked out first. Two guards, carrying a shackled and unconscious Agnes, followed.

GioAvanti glanced at her. “I hope she wakes up soon. We have a lot to talk about.” Then she turned to Mallowes. “In the meantime, though, I’m sure you’ll be interesting enough.”

St. Croix Warehouse, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

20 December 3134

The day of the election dawned gray. Heather wished she knew what Mallowes and his companion were saying, but she’d been forced to leave them soon after bringing them in. Jonah promised he’d notify her immediately if anything relevant to her side of the investigation came up, and she returned to her makeshift headquarters.

Duncan’s eyes lit up immediately as soon as she entered.

“Paladin GioAvanti! Where have you been? I have information on eight groups, all of whose name starts with the word ‘Stone,’ a leadership change in the Brothers of the Blood, rumors of Stormhammers approaching Terra…”

She turned rapidly and was stunned to feel her knees creak beneath her. She was forty-six years old and hadn’t slept in two days—she felt like age was asserting itself.

“I have very limited time and even less patience,” she said as kindly as possible. “I only want to hear about things pertaining to the Kittery Renaissance. Everything else—and I mean everything —will wait.”

“Yes, Paladin.”

“Do you have anything on the KR?”

“No, Paladin.”

“Then find something!”

Watching Duncan scurry away was almost as gratifying as the expression on Mallowes’ face when the elevator opened.

She hurried into the conference room, where Rick Santangelo held a noteputer in one hand, a phone in the other, and was attempting to press a few keys on a desktop computer with his elbow.

“What do you mean there’s a warehouse you didn’t know about? How do you lose track of your own warehouses?” He waited for the other party to speak. “I don’t care if you own them or rent them! I don’t care if you’re stealing the space! You should keep track of where you store your goods!”

Heather extended her arms, palms down, trying to signal to Santangelo to calm down. He noticed her gesture and his voice became a bit less intense.

While he talked, she slipped the noteputer out of his hand and reviewed his notes. Troop availability for the next morning. It was sparse, but would have to do.

After a few moments, he finished his conversation, disconnected the call and took a deep breath.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

Looking at his bloodshot eyes and fevered air, she replied “I think I have some idea. How much time do we have?”

“Just over twelve hours.”

“And how much time do we need?”

“Twenty, twenty-five hours maybe.”

“Just the way I like it.”

The time seemed to move slowly as Heather pushed through the weariness, but when the moment came for her to ascend to the cockpit of her Spider she found herself alert, tense and wishing she could have another hour to prepare.

She powered up the cockpit communications links and checked in. Altogether Santangelo had come up with two squads of hastily borrowed militia infantry—twenty-four troopers, not counting herself and her two Knights—all mounted on hoverbikes and armed with pulse rifles, plus a Shandra scout vehicle and a Fox armored car. Every other police and militia unit was involved with security, crowd control or the pursuit of other rumors.

She patched in to the Geneva law enforcement net—she could eavesdrop, but not talk—and flipped down a police-fire-and-emergency map of the city on her cockpit’s heads-up display. Pinpoints of light on the map showed the location of the Hall of Government, the Senatorial office building, and the Hotel Duquesne, where everyone who was anyone was staying.

Heather and her troopers weren’t the only people up early in Geneva this morning. The map already showed the first spots of political demonstrations. Pink lines swirled on the map, marking their locations. Back at her headquarters, Duncan was probably going out of his head, but these weren’t her concern, except possibly as obstacles to be avoided.

“Paladin, we’ve confirmed an arms cache on the northwest side,” came the voice of Santangelo in the Fox armored car. “Kittery Renaissance material.”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. The location of the cache came up on her display as a pulsing red dot. “Follow my lead.”

She set the Spider into motion, turning from the ’Mech bay out into the street. The sky outside wasn’t yet fully light. They made a strange procession, the thirty-ton ’Mech, a wheeled light vehicle behind and a hover darting ahead.

Thirty tons is thirty tons, and the centuries-old street vibrated with each heavy footfall. Running ’Mechs in Terra’s ancient cities was always a risky business. There was so much buried infrastructure, you never knew when some government’s generations-old poor maintenance might result in the pavement caving in beneath you today. Heather kept the Spider’s steps slow, carefully gauging the path ahead, working carefully through streets designed for lighter, narrower vehicles.

Law enforcement woke up to her presence; she heard chatter on the net, then reports of her movement. Some confusion amid the police, then a voice from higher up: “That’s a Paladin. Let it go. They’re doing what they do.”

“Five minutes to contact,” Santangelo said over the command net. “Rules of engagement?”

“Here are your rules,” Heather said. “Pass the word to the militia: We do not shoot at people, even if they’re shooting at us. We destroy materiel only, and that only if we know it’s Kittery Renaissance stuff.”

“And how will we know that?”

“If a place is on our list, consider the stuff in it KR by definition. Anything else—we’ll know it belongs to the bad guys when people start shooting at us. And repeat, no shooting back; I want to see property damage only. Be careful not to start any fires. I don’t want today to be remembered as the day we burned down Geneva.”

“Lousy terrain for us,” piped up Koss, the junior Knight, who was riding the Shandra. She’d chosen to wear light battle armor for this mission—it would do something to protect her from small-arms fire at least, though it wouldn’t help much against the heavy stuff. “We can get ambushed from on top, from below, or on the sides and back—and we can’t run or hide.”

“Keep thinking cheerful thoughts,” Heather advised. “Foot troops, off your bikes. That’s our target ahead. Koss and Santangelo, take station on the two far corners, keep reinforcements from coming in. Foot troops, in the doors ahead.”

“What are the chances that we have surprise?” Santangelo asked.

“Depends on whether they’re deaf, blind and stupid, I suppose.”

“You mean, ‘nil.’”

“That’s about the shape of it,” Heather said. “The only question is whether they expected a ’Mech to join the party this early.”

“If they were listening to the police bands earlier,” Santangelo said, “then they certainly expect it now.”

“So let’s not wait.” She scorched a marker on the building with a laser set to low power. “Let’s go.”