Sixty-nine

 

DeRicci had managed to stay on her feet during the dome sectioning. She didn’t want to sit down, she didn’t want to cover her head, she didn’t want to hide.

Not from anything or anyone.

Several others in the room dropped when she gave the order. She didn’t look at them.

Instead, she watched the screens, listened to the sounds that came through her links.

Once, just once, she glanced at her desk, and thought of Flint. The thought had built-in conflict: She wanted him here because she wanted his help, and she hoped he made it to Aristotle Academy without trouble.

Then she looked away. She instructed Popova to compile a casualties list in real time. DeRicci wanted to know how many were injured, how many dead, and how many of those injuries and deaths came from the domes sectioning, how many were collateral damage from stopping the Peyti clones, and how many were due to the clones themselves.

She could see, at a glance, that all of the domes had survived.

All of them.

She considered that a huge victory. One she would not celebrate, of course, because there had been casualties. But personally, privately, she pumped a tiny mental fist of joy that none of the domes disintegrated.

Somehow, her people had worked together. Somehow, even the idiots had risen above their petty politics and had managed to do something within a short space of time. Somehow, everyone managed to neutralize the threat before any of the bombs went off.

“Chief?” someone spoke behind her. She didn’t like the tone.

She turned.

A young man, one of the techs whose name got lost in the chaos of the day, had paled. He clutched a pad.

“There was an explosion about half an hour ago,” he said.

Her heart sank. She hadn’t seen it. Nor had any of the government officials contacted her.

“Where?”

“In one of the Growing Pits twenty kilometers from Armstrong,” he said.

“And another one,” said one of the middle-aged female techs, “in a mining company near Tycho Crater.”

“And a third,” said an older male tech, “in a resort not too far from Gagarin Dome.”

DeRicci let out a breath, the feeling of jubilation gone. Somehow the links hadn’t failed in those places, the domes hadn’t sectioned—

What a minute. She blinked, her brain working again. “All three of those businesses, were they outside domes or inside domes?”

“Outside,” the younger tech said.

“There were Peyti clones outside the domes?” asked another tech.

“Lawyers work everywhere,” Goudkins said drily.

“When the links went down, they knew something was up,” DeRicci said. “So the clones activated their bombs, and no one in the companies knew what was coming.”

She had known that they would miss. Only this one was on her. She hadn’t thought about all the businesses outside the domes. She didn’t dare speak her next thought either, but she had been lucky: Considering how many businesses did operate outside a dome, the fact that only three had exploded was amazing.

“Send help to all of these sites,” she said. “And get eyes on them. I want to know the extent of the damage.”

“That Growing Pit company was obliterated,” the first tech said.

“Some of the mines collapsed,” the female tech said, “but that didn’t mean deaths, just a loss of equipment.”

“Only one building in the resort blew,” the third tech said. “I have no idea how big that building was or how many casualties there were.”

DeRicci let out a small breath. She had been through this before. She would not rest until she had answers.

Only now, she had five hundred suspects in custody, five hundred Peyti who knew something, even if it was only the name of the person or organization that ordered this massive attack.

This attack on the Moon.

This wasn’t an attack against the Earth Alliance. This was an attack against the Moon, just like Anniversary Day had been. Someone wanted to obliterate Earth’s moon.

And she would find out who. She wasn’t going to ask for help from the Alliance, especially since it looked like they were involved in some way. She would learn from Flint.

She would use any resources she had, from the police forces all over the Moon to criminals like Luc Deshin to non-security personnel like Flint himself.

She would find whoever—or whatever—was behind all of this, and she would make them pay.