Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Tej parked the rented groundcar and stared dubiously around the dim underground garage. After yesterday’s dance in the park, and some sharp debate over city maps, Pearl had found this place‑by the simple method of walking around and looking‑under one of the few commercial buildings near ImpSec HQ, which was otherwise mainly ringed by assorted stodgy government offices. This building housed mostly offices as well: attorneys, a satellite communications company, an architectural firm, a terraforming consultant, financial managers of various sorts. The two layers of garage were packed during the day, but relatively clear after hours and on the Barrayaran weekend, which this was.

This commercial building lay on a corner across the street from the backside, as it were, of the security headquarters. The far side, unfortunately, from the little park that had indeed been found to top Grandmama’s old lab site, or most of it; some of the lab had been mapped to run under the street fronting the headquarters. If ImpSec’s subbasements had been dug two dozen meters farther southeast, back in Mad Yuri’s day, they’d have cut right into the lab’s top corner. Tej didn’t see how they could have missed detecting it, but the Baronne claimed they must have. Dada…was perhaps persuading himself to believe.

As Tej, Amiri, and Grandmama exited the groundcar, Pearl detached herself from the shadow of a pillar and waved them over. Amiri removed a hefty valise from the trunk and followed.

“It’s looking good,” said Pearl. “Seems to be a storeroom for garage maintenance, in use, but no one has been in or out since I’ve been monitoring. I’ve adjusted the lock for us.”

She glanced around and led the way into a small, utilitarian chamber lit only, at the moment, by a cold light set on a metal shelf. The chamber and shelves seemed to contain stacks of various traffic barricades, buckets of paint, a ladder, and encouragingly dusty miscellanea. Pearl cracked a second cold light, doubling the eerie illumination.

“We need to leave it looking like no one has been in or out, too,” said Amiri. “At least for now. Where should we start?”

“Let’s shift these two shelves,” said Pearl. “We can shift them back, after. Here, Tej, take one end.”

Tej dutifully lifted her half of the grubby thing. When they were done, a large patch of concrete flooring lay exposed in the chamber’s corner.

From the valise, Amiri handed out breath masks, all marked with logos from the jumpship line the Arquas had traveled in on. Tej was under the impression that such safety devices were supposed to be handed back at the end of the voyage, but oh well. Waste not. He then donned biotainer gloves and removed a bottle from the valise; everyone else stood well back as he squatted and trailed a line of liquid in a smooth circle about a meter in diameter over the concrete, which began to bubble.

While the cutting fluid worked, he laid out other objects, including a long, mysterious padded case. Then they all stood back and stared for a while.

“All right,” he said at last, and he, Tej, and Pearl combined to lever the concrete slab out of its matrix and shove it aside. Revealed was a layer of pressed stones.

Pearl trundled up a waste bin, and she and Amiri and Tel then knelt and began prying up rocks‑by hand. “You might have brought a shovel,” Tej grumbled.

“There should only be about a half a meter of this before we hit subsoil,” Amiri said. “Maybe less, if the contractor stinted.”

“Many hands make light the work,” Grandmama intoned, watching. At Tej’s irritated glance over her shoulder, she added, “It’s an old Earth saying I picked up.”

“No wonder everybody left the planet,” muttered Tej. Hired grubbers with power tools seemed a better deal for lightening a load to her.

“I would feel more secure if we could have found a place to rent or buy,” said Amiri. “Really proof against interruptions.”

“But this leaves no data trail,” said Pearl, perhaps defending her find.

This squabble continued intermittently until Tej found herself at the bottom of a half‑meter‑deep hole levering rocks out of identifiable dirt. Grandmama leaned over, shone the light down, and said, “That’s probably enough.” At least Amiri gave Tej a hand out. She pulled down her mask and sucked on a bleeding fingertip where her nail had broken.

Amiri brought the long box to the lip of the hole, took a deep breath, and knelt to open it.

“You don’t have to handle it like a live bomb,” Grandmama chided. “It’s quite inert until it’s activated.”

“If the stuff eats dirt, won’t it eat us?” said Amiri.

“Only if you are foolish enough to get it on yourself while it’s working,” said Grandmama. “Which I trust no grandchild of mine would be, especially after how many years of expensive Escobaran biomedical education?”

Amiri sighed and redonned his gloves. Tej ventured nearer to look more closely into the box.