as expected, our infallible Face doesn’t miss the cue in my tone. She turns her attention back to the Ace beside her.
“Why should they have all the fun?” Scarlett asks, suddenly grabbing Cat by the hand, pulling her out into the crowd.
Cat’s spluttering, and Scarlett’s laughing, and despite the tension zinging through me, I grin, too. Scarlett has a great laugh. And now she’s sweeping our pilot into her arms, and dipping her over backward in an extravagant move.
There are so many different species here that everyone’s dancing in their own way. In ones and twos and tens, hands linked, bodies intertwined or not touching at all. After five years at Aurora Academy, the hallways only ever populated by Terrans, Betraskans, and recently the odd Syldrathi, I’m not as used to this kind of mixing bowl as I used to be. I grew up with my grandparents on a station like this, and I love it.
I’ve missed it.
Scarlett and Cat have struck up the most ridiculous dance now, joined hands pushing out in front of them.
“What are you doing?” I laugh down the line.
“A tango. Traditional Terran dance, very romantic,” Scarlett tells me, though Cat’s laughter makes me wonder if they’re even close to how it’s supposed to go.
Goldenboy and Aurora really don’t know how to dance together, but they’re both picking it up by sneaking looks at the crowd around them, and it’s kind of satisfying to see there’s something he’s not instantly on top of. But more importantly, they’re getting closer and closer to one Casseldon Bianchi.
“Okay, you need to get near enough for me to snatch the signal,” I tell them as I sweep the cameras again, looking for trouble. “Not so close that those goons decide to bite your head off. Remember—”
“One meter,” Ty and Auri chorus together.
“They can be taught!”
Zila speaks up on comms. “Finian, is this appropriate positioning?”
I flick my gaze across to my other screen. Crap, they’re at the grav-generators already. I gotta keep juggling, gotta keep all my balls in the air.
Heh, balls in the air.
“That looks good,” I say. “Charges need to go on the secondary buffer.”
“I am aware,” Zila agrees.
“There’s a second patrol heading in your direction,” I say, “You might wanna have a plan to deal with them in case they notice those missing guards and stick their heads into the gen room. A distraction of some kind, maybe.”
“Kal, did you brush your teeth this morning?” Tyler asks over comms.
“Thankfully I do not think it will come to that,” Kal replies.
Tyler laughs in answer and I hear Auri ask him what’s so funny. I make a mental note to ask him myself. Later. For now, I’m busy.
“Set remote detonators and leg it back here,” I tell Zila and Kal.
I glance to my other screen to check Goldenboy and Aurora’s progress. They’re getting close now—I can see Bianchi on their micro-cams. There’s just two rows of masked dancers between them and their quarry. They’re weaving through his security, lost in the swirl of light and color, so close now to the magical meter. The guards look wary, but not bitey. I’m guessing Ty and Auri look just the right flavor of pretty and gormless, grinning at each other like idiots.
But they might just pull this off.
My fingers are poised over my uplink, ready to jump the signal if Bianchi’s hand touches his bio-key. I dunno if I’ll manage it; there’s already a ton of traffic in that room. Snatching a specific stream is going to be like catching a knife while a thousand others are thrown at me, and I was never a very good catch in school.
Good thing we’re not in school anymore.
“Okay, just a litt—”
The door of the den bursts inward off its hinges, smashing into a stack of Dariel’s junk and flinging it in every direction. The leaves of the flic vines burst into bright light at the sudden impact around them, and a stalactite breaks off the ceiling, missing me by a hair’s breadth before it shatters on the ground.
Adrenaline kicks me in the gut, and I lunge without thinking for the cables connecting my makeshift rig, yanking them free. All my screens cut to gray static, and my view of the team is gone.
A squad of goons burst through the breach, weapons up and locked. They’re in unmarked tac armor, but it’s hard to miss the fact that every one of them is Terran. Military haircuts. The physiques of humans who spend a lot of