SIXTY-ONE

 

 

DERICCI STOOD IN front of her gigantic screen, looking at the hole where Nyquist’s image had been. Her stomach clenched. This new bombing would have been worse than four years ago, but Nyquist had prevented it.

Nyquist, who couldn’t help her now.

And if DeRicci went to Popova, she had no idea if Popova could help. DeRicci would waste precious time. Hänsel was useless. None of the leaders of the Moon could talk to her. Getting someone in authority in the Earth Alliance up to speed would take forever. Flint was working on the bigger picture—whoever was behind the clones—and she needed him there. He didn’t know what she could do as Security Chief. Hell, she didn’t know what she could do sometimes.

Flint came into the room unannounced, followed by Talia. DeRicci wished she could talk to Flint without his daughter, but she also knew that Flint didn’t want to let Talia out of his sight.

“Have you got anything?” DeRicci asked.

“I thought you wanted to pick my brain,” he said.

“I do,” she said, “but I’m half-hoping there’s more information.”

He shrugged. “The only new information I have is strange.”

She felt more irritated at him than she should have been. He wasn’t withholding information from her, but she hated the way he dragged this out.

“And it is…?”

“Nineteen others arrived with our assassin,” Flint said.

DeRicci frowned. “Twenty clones?”

“Yeah,” Flint said, “and they weren’t hiding.”

“Twenty.” She swallowed hard. “Twenty.”

Then she looked at him. His gaze met hers. He seemed to be waiting.

But Talia wasn’t. “Have there been twenty assassinations today?”

Her question seemed breathless.

“No,” DeRicci said, “but several have failed.”

But what if a few quit? Or didn’t make it to their target? Failures she didn’t even know about.

And Nyquist had told her that the attacks were diversions, that each assassin had a facilitator, an insider. At least one of those insiders—Palmette—had a secondary assignment.

Flint was still watching her. “What?” he asked.

“Each one of these assassins had a facilitator,” DeRicci said. “Someone connected who got him near his target. The Armstrong facilitator was supposed to blow up the port.”

Talia started, but DeRicci ignored it. Flint glanced at his daughter, his mouth in a grim line.

“We caught her,” DeRicci said. “We got this information from her.”

“Do you think she was unusual?” Flint asked.

“I don’t know,” DeRicci said.

“You have to assume she isn’t. That these other facilitators have a secondary job.”

“I know,” DeRicci said. “But what can I do? It doesn’t feel like Anniversary Day. It feels like the day of the damn bombing….”

That last bomb, four years ago, it had been a nightmare. She had been in her office at the Armstrong Police Department, and then everything fell apart, lights out, building shaking, environmental controls off. And things got worse when the dome sectioned. Its protective walls came down and…

Her breath caught. She knew now. She knew there would be an attack. She didn’t know where the attacks would be, but she knew they would be bad, and they would be in every single dome on the Moon.

“Noelle?” Flint asked.

She held up a single finger, silencing him. Then she sent a highly coded Extreme Emergency message through her links to every single authority in every single dome: Section your dome. Now! We have a credible threat that your dome will explode within minutes. Section your dome.

She set the message on repeat. Then she hurried across her office, pulled open the door, and pointed at Hänsel. “I’m sending you a message now. Send it to the Earth Alliance on my authority, and keep sending it until you get a response.”

That message—simple: All domes on the Moon under attack. Warn domed communities throughout the Alliance. We have no overt threat to them, but just in case, they need to be on alert.

Then she turned to Popova. Popova’s hair was a mess, but her eyes were bright, as if this new emergency had reawakened her.

“Make sure our dome sections. Now!” DeRicci said. “Then monitor the other domes here on the Moon. They need to be sectioning. I need to know what’s going on. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Popova said, sounding like her old self. Her cheeks filled with color as she started to work.

Flint stood near the door. “You’re sectioning the domes?”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” DeRicci said. “Brace yourself. This won’t be fun.”

She stepped past him, and went back into her office. She sent the messages again, then made sure the message went to everyone who worked for the governor-general. DeRicci had no idea if the same woman that Nyquist had been working with had facilitated the governor-general’s attack, but just in case that attack had a different facilitator, DeRicci made sure they were warned.

“What can we do, Dad?” Talia asked.

“Sit down,” he said, pointing her to one of the chairs. Talia sat. So did Flint. But DeRicci didn’t.

Then a loud bang echoed throughout the building, and it shook, hard. DeRicci grabbed onto her desk, but it slid across the floor. Flint and Talia’s chairs slid too. Neither said anything, but Talia looked terrified. Flint seemed grimly determined.

The dome was sectioning, just like DeRicci had ordered.

It wouldn’t stop an attack, but it would minimize the damage. Not counting, of course, the damage to the ground because of the sectioning. There hadn’t been a lot of warning. She hoped no one got hurt.

Then she didn’t think about it any more. She watched feeds from the other domes. Some were sectioning. Others hadn’t yet.

She checked her message, re-sent it, added as much urgency as she could.

If Nyquist was right, and the attack on Armstrong was going to be first, and he’d been working on this woman for a few hours, then the other attacks were imminent.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” DeRicci muttered. She felt completely out of control. She stared at the images. Then she had a terrible thought: How many domes could section? They had all been built to section, but they had balked at the order from the governor-general shortly after DeRicci’s hire to check the sectioning mechanism. Too costly. Too difficult.

She clenched her fists and sent a prayer—or maybe a command—out into the universe.

Please let it work. Please let it work. It has to work. It has to work now.