It's
time. Mara nudges Fir. The light of a tablet screen splits the
darkness, almost painful after so long. Fir goes to work.
Fir's
a good man. He was in the militia in the last war – unemployed
Hivers with underpowered rifles and no armor, little more then nuke
fodder. The experience left him with few illusions and a lot of
questions, questions he found answers to in the Cause. And,
critically, he was trained in electronic warfare.
Mara desperately hopes she's not about to get him killed.
“I'm
in,” he murmurs. So the master code was good after all.
Thirty seconds later: “Patch uploaded. Time to go.”
Mara
unlatches the lid of the box. They're still in darkness, but
there's a bit of light trickling in from under a doorway, revealing a
store room packed with boxes. Mara's legs are wobbly as she stands,
blood returning painfully after hours of sitting. They're
dressed in the gray jumpsuits of palace maintenance techs, bags slung
over their shoulders. They don't have long before someone notices
their illicit software update – maybe an hour, if they're lucky,
probably less. Maybe a lot less.
Mara
walks to the door, opens it, and strides out into the hallway, Fir
following. They're in one of the servants' halls, linking the
vehicle airlock, the storage rooms, and the kitchen. The dimly lit
corridor might be in any industrial complex; the only sign they're in
one of the official centers of Autarchial power is the
ceiling-mounted cameras every few meters. Mara is careful not to
look up at them, careful not to betray any sign she doesn't belong as
she strides purposefully down the hall towards the generator room.
-
- - - - - - -
“So
nice of you to come visit.” MuniPrix Sara Ludei smiles politely.
She doesn't mean a word of it, but she's lived too long in the royal
court to show it. “I'll let you get changed and washed before
dinner, shall I?”
Iskander
Iskandrus smiles back. “I look forward to seeing you there.”
He doesn't mean it either. He keeps smiling until the door hisses
shut behind MuniPrix Sara, and then the smile vanishes like a
flashlight being turned off.
Iskander is
standing in one of the guest rooms of the Urban Palace. It's
exemplary of the Palace's architecture as a whole: at first glance,
unspeakable luxury; at closer inspection, dust and wear. The room
is a good twenty meters long and ten wide, with red marble floors
covered in thick rugs made of naturally-grown wool, and high arching
walls covered in the paintings of dead ancestors, and an enormous
glass skylight letting in bountiful natural light. There's a bed
so deep you could drown in it, a personal bath that doubles as a
small pool and jacuzzi, and shelves lined with bric-a-brac
accumulated by generations of Ludeis and related clans. But if you
look closely you can see that the marble is scarred with age, and the
skylight needs to be cleaned, and there's dust on the shelved
trinkets.
Iskander's
about to take off his clothes and try out the pool when his earpiece
chimes, and he pales. He'd expected to have more time to get ready
– much more time. But an Iskandrus always rises to the occasion, he tells himself, as he strides purposefully towards the door.
-
- - - - - - -
“There,”
Mara says. She's standing next to the backup reactor's generator,
maintenance panel open. Ten kilograms of thermite are carefully
arranged on top of the casing for the stator, wired into the main
circuit bus. She closes the panel and locks it, then turns to Fir,
who's standing guard by the door. “Let's get moving.”
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