Dragon and Liberator

Alison felt her stomach tighten. Frost and Neverlin were here? She'd assumed both had slipped out during the Malison Ring raid on the Chookoock estate twelve days ago and escaped off-planet.

If she'd only known. But it was too late to worry about that now. "ETA?" she asked.

"Maybe two minutes before they pop the door and see your handiwork," Jack said.

"Taneem, get down to the hangar floor," Draycos ordered. "And hold your breath—the sopor mist may not yet have completely dissipated. Alison, the west door won't be visible to them as they enter. Go out that way and head south—we'll circle around and pick you up."

Alison looked back under the shuttle's drive nozzles toward the three vans and the north door beyond them. Draycos was right—two minutes would be enough for her and Taneem to make their escape out the west door.

But if they left now, they'd never get another crack at that safe.

"Alison?" Jack asked. "You copy that?" Alison came to a sudden decision. "We're trying the safe first," she said, getting out from underneath the shuttle and sprinting for the van. The rope hanging from the ceiling twitched violently as Taneem finished her slide onto the hangar floor. "Come on, Taneem."

"Alison—"

"We've got a minute and a half," Alison cut him off as she reached the van and climbed inside. "Maybe more if Frost sees the carnage and decides to take it slow."

"Are you crazy?"

"Probably," Alison conceded, crouching in front of the safe as Taneem crowded into the van beside her. "Now shut up and let me work."

The MixStar was nearly finished. "Let's check out the fail-safes," Alison said, holding out her hand.

Taneem touched the hand with her paw and went two-dimensional, vanishing up Alison's sleeve. As she did so, the comm clip popped off her ear. Alison caught it in midair, stuffing it into a pocket as she turned around and pressed her back against the door of the safe. The K'da had a special trick in their 2-D form for looking "over" walls that would let her see into the safe.

She felt the subtle wriggling as Taneem adjusted herself. A moment of stillness, then a second wriggle, and her head slid around over Alison's right shoulder. "The third and fourth indentations," Taneem whispered.

"Got it," Alison said, glancing at the display strip on the inside of her mask. "Don't worry about breathing—the mist has dissipated."

The MixStar had finished its work. "Combination is three-seven-twelve-nine-twenty," Alison said. "We're opening it now. Taneem?"

Lifting a paw from Alison's forearm, the K'da stuck two of her toes into the third and fourth indentations in the safe's sidewall. "Hurry it up," Jack said. "They've reached the door and stopped. Probably wondering why no one's opening it for them."

"Fifteen seconds," Alison promised. She keyed in the combination and pulled the break bar.

To her relief and satisfaction, the door swung quietly open. "Got it," she announced. Reaching in, she scooped up the handful of data diamonds lying on the safe's floor and shoved them into her side pocket along with Taneem's comm clip. "And we're out of here," she added, getting a grip on the break bar and starting to close the heavy door.

And without warning, the hangar was rocked by a thunderous explosion.

Alison gasped, grabbing the edge of the safe as the blast lifted the van an inch off the floor and then slammed it back down again. Someone was shouting into her ear, but for those first few seconds she couldn't hear anything but a loud ringing.

But at least she was still conscious. If she hadn't been inside the van when the concussion blast went off, she'd be flat on her back right now.

Abruptly, the ringing cleared. "—blew the door and are coming in," Jack was saying urgently. "All of them, and they're spreading out to cover the whole hangar."

"I'm coming in," Draycos added, his voice dark and grim. "Find somewhere to hide until I get there."

"You'll never make it," Alison said quickly. She could hear the widely separated sounds of squealing brakes as the cars came to a halt in four different parts of the hangar. "They're too spread out, and there's no cover. They'll kill you."

She heard a sudden whistling sound from the comm clip as Draycos left the car and sprinted through the night air. "My life isn't important," he said over the whistling. "The data diamonds you've obtained are all that matter."

"No, they're not," Alison snapped, looking frantically around her for inspiration. "How do we convince StarForce this is on the level without a genuine K'da to show them?"

"You have Taneem."

"Who was born and raised on Rho Scorvi," Alison countered, knowing that she was running out of time. The first thing Frost would check once his men declared the area secure would be his precious safe.

The safe.

And with that, she knew what she had to do. "We're getting into the safe," she said, grabbing the MixStar. Crouching down, she stepped into the big metal box.

"You're what?" Jack demanded. "Alison—"