I wait a minute or two to see if the heat signatures will change course. They don't, so I leave the soal-destroyed circular base room and head back to the crack in the hallway. I've got to get clear of the area before whoever's coming can see me. But when I reach the jagged piece of afternoon sunlight in the hallway ceiling, I lean my visor against the wall. Though I can't open the comm link now, for fear of showing up on any tech the approaching people may have on them, I can imagine what Core would say right now with perfect clarity.

You should've secured your exit before you entered.

I'm one-metre-six tall in my boots. The hallway is close to three. 

I don't waste any time trying to jump or climb. The tiles are slick, for all their age, and even with my prod I can hardly reach the crack's opening. I'll have to either find another way out, or something that can give me a boost. I quickly switch my visor's scanner to night vision, and everything turns shades of green. Another quick scan to check the stability of the hallway floor, and I start down it again, away from the base room. 

Patches of the roof sag and some sections have even fallen in, nearly filling the hallway with cracked rock and soal remnants. Bits of broken glass and even some oddly shaped corners and lengths of metal poke out from among the rubble. Dust drifts thick in the air. There's not much else to see. Looters across generations must have picked this place clean long ago. The only interesting thing I notice are the black-and-white plaques beside what doors are still accessible among the wreckage. I don't recognize the characters, but the numbers I do understand. They're written like rooms in a hospital or university, and the numbers are big. Lots of rooms. This base must have been top-shelf back in the day. 

The majority of the doors sag on their hinges or are gone altogether, opening up into more dark rooms full of rubble, now. What few glass panels are still intact in them reflect back my headlamp in eye-stinging flashes whenever I turn the night vision off to see things from a different perspective now and then. I count the doors as I go. Who knows how far in this tunneling maze I'll have to go before I find another way out. 

The hallway turns to my left after I pass ten intact doors. I turn to follow it, squeezing between two massive chunks of dropped ceiling, and the faint light through the crack behind me fades. It's just me and the night-vision, now. I haven't used it much since leaving the academy, however, so I stretch my arms out in front of me, and after a few careful steps over the twisted remains of what look like lockers, they bump into something solid and unyielding. A slab of rock crosses my visor as a solid mass of green. The way's blocked. 

My visor pings again.

Two heat signatures, ten kilometres off and closing. 

They're moving quickly. Too quickly for horses – they must have transports, maybe monos. They're definitely Guild. Who else would come out here now? 

I wriggle back through the rubble at once and return to the main hallway. My chances of getting clear of the area before these newcomers arrive are shrinking. I don't have time to try and find an exit. I've got to utilize the one I've got. Maybe I can pile up some rubble and use it to climb out the crack. 

But before I can haul over my third chunk of cement, I catch the distant bass-toned buzz of engines. The echoing flutter of my horse whinnying drifts through the crack, and I give up on the cement and pull a prod out of my boot. Those Guild'll find my horse, and come looking for me. I don't want to fight them if it can be avoided, though.

I take my position five metres to the left of the crack, back against the wall, and clear my visor of all functions to divert energy to the heat scanner and sound sensors. At first, I catch nothing but the wind outside and the snarl of engines. The cold of the tiles behind me seeps through my hair and trousers and raises bumps on my neck and arms. Then the heat signatures on my visor enter the ruins. My horse whinnies again, a shrill, faint sound against the grinding of machinery, then the engines are cut and voices drift through the valley. They sound tinny but crisp through the sound sensors, and so seemingly close I have to resist the urge to look over my shoulder. I don't use my sound sensors much, since in more populous areas they can blow your eardrums in seconds. But they're perfectly suited to a remote place like this. I heard the Guild's every word.

"Oi, it's the one that Nose rode out of town a few hours back." 

A string of expletives. "What's she doing out here?"

"Snooping around where she ain't wanted. No way Mama's gonna want her broadcasting about this place." 

Both voices have the almost lisp-like brush accent, and I don't recognize the first, distinctly raspy as it is, like chaff's caught in his throat. The other, however, I do recognize. I recognize it and instantly am battered by memories of bent metal, blood, screaming emergency icons, and Core, my big brassy Core, falling into silence. It's Savel. I press my free hand hard against the wall behind me, focusing on its slick, cold texture, to keep from punching it.

Boots crunch on scree. The click and slide of weapons being primed tap the steep ruin walls with echoes. Sweat collects on my lip. 

"Your visor have a heat-signature scanner in it, Savel?" the other Guild shouts, and my stomach twists into a knot. The Guild having restricted and highly sophisticated tech grafted into their agents? Should have seen that coming. 

"It might. Give us a minute."

"What d'you mean, 'give us a minute'? You not know how to work your own visor?" 

"I only been in training for six months, mate. Timetables got moved up, not everyfing was covered 'fore we had to move out again. Don't blame me." 

So there are more like Savel out there posing as Fire-keepers. Swell. At least they're incompetent. 

"Busting your ship, though  – that's on you."

"That's on that damn Fire-keeper dame. I won't just shoot her down next time. Next time, I rip her out of her ship wiv my own two hands and finish the job."

Just you come and try it, darling. I'd like my fist to meet your face real soon. 

"You better, kid. Cargon ain't impressed with you. Charon either, for that matter."

"Like I don't know? That's what I come out here wiv you for. I did learn how to track soal, real well. All the old nests 'round here make reading a bit difficult, interfere wiv the scans, but this next fall's three hours off, tops, and projected landing is in the northeastern corner." 

My concern over Savel's potentially pinning me down with a heat-signature scanner fades. 

But I can't bring up my scanners now. Any spikes in energy might get picked up by Savel's own visor.  

"Yeah, this fall's fine. But tomorrow's? It's gonna land in the Far-Flung territory, and if the blokes back at the forge ain't got your ship operational by then, we'll lose it. Can't afford that. Word from Charon this morning is that Alltown and Essenmark have both declared emergency states of low energy. We got a high demand to meet." 

"It a city this time? Or do we always just hit little piles of shite like Griswold here?"

"You not paid to ask questions, kid. So just keep your head down and look for that Nose. Time burns energy and energy is money." 

My eyes dart across the rubble-filled hallway, trying to pick anything from among the grey shadows that might help me. But tiles and cement are not exactly an arsenal, so I inventory myself. 

One pair rented boots with bad cobbling. One pair rented trousers. Two prods. One pistol, soal-powered. Six rounds. One ugly tweed jacket. One silk scarf. One blouse. One set bulletproof undergarments. 

One purse containing one recording –

Oh no.

My auntie always said a woman should never be without her purse. I hated it when she said it back then and I still hate it now. And I especially hate, for once, that I didn't follow that unasked-for advice.

I close my eyes and take a very, very long breath as my chest begins to throb with rising adrenaline.

"You. Idiot." 

I left my purse on the saddle. My recording device is in there. All my hard evidence of the Guild presence in Griswold. But I can't just run for it, blazing all six of my bullets, and swing on my horse and away. I can't even get out of this hallway. My only hope right now is that, when they find it, they won't think to listen to it right away. 

Oh, Core how I wish I could hear you right now. 

Wait. Listen. 

I ended my inventory too early. I have a visor, and all the wonderful functions it includes, the best of which is, undoubtedly, communication - the ability to share information with other parties. I actually snicker. Yes, my visor's data history was damaged during the crash into the Ocean of Trees, but all data since then is backed up and ready for retrieval. I just have to prep to move, and get my timing right. 

The heat signatures of both Guild are still a good ways off on either side of the ruins, and ever since Savel was told to dry up, both have been quiet. Checking on their locations often, I begin pushing pieces of rubble onto the ground beneath the crack. The light turns orange and slants to hit the opposite wall, turning the blue tiles a warm green. Savel and the other Guild (who I learn is actually Lake, Cargon's second-in-command) snap at each other occasionally as Savel attempts to access his hastily-installed visor's more complicated functions. He doesn't get the heat signature scanner operational, but he does keep tabs on the approaching soal. It's reached the exosphere by the time I've got enough big ancient bricks piled up to be able to reach my hand up to the crack. The movement of wind against my bruised fingertips is welcome. Even with the temperature cooling with the westerning sun, it's stuffy down in the half-collapsed hallway, and I've worked up quite a sweat. 

But this is no time to take a break. Soal will be pounding this place in an hour, and I've no wish for death-by-nest. Gripping the edge of the crack with both hands, I haul myself upward and swear at my screaming muscles and all the trainers who told me I didn't push myself hard enough. My arms are shaking as I hitch an elbow up over the edge and haul my torso out into open air again. But it worked. I'm almost out. On to phase two. 

I can't see either Savel or Lake, but their heat signatures are only about one hundred metres south of me. I could probably hear them without my sound sensors, but I keep them on to catch every word I possibly can. 

"Little more than an hour left, now," Savel is saying. "I don't see nothing of that Nose – what do we do?"

"You keep tracking that soal, kid, and prep those strongboxes. I'll find the Nose."

That's okay. I can do one-on-one. Savel is the easy out, anyway.

My horse is still where I left it, reins tied to a metal pole beside one of the ramps leading down into the ruins, but beside it are two grey monos with dented windshields and dust-splattered sides. The backs of both are loaded with soal strongboxes, and one has a double holster loaded with a pair of rifles. Core would've known exactly what they were. To me, they're just potential backup, and that's good enough. 

Just then, the heat signatures on my visor split up – one deeper into the ruins, the other towards the monos and my horse. Phase two time. 

Rolling out of the crack, I rise to my feet and, hunched over, begin weaving through the rubble towards my horse. I won't make it there before Savel. But that doesn't matter. 

The smooth-faced pistol appears among the stumps of rubble to my right a few heartbeats later, and before he can catch my motion I close my sound sensors and open my visor's sonar, instead. I select the sonar recordings from right after the soal-fall in the Ocean of Trees. Rocketing up the playback volume and speed, I select 'send to nearest recipient' on the options, and stop still to wait. 

"Oi, Lake! I've got an incoming comm, might be something –" is as far as Savel gets before he starts screaming.

Sonar is pretty shrill. He'll probably have a headache for a day or so. 

I sprint for my horse. Lake starts shouting, hardly discernible from the echoes of Savel's sobs, and my horse balks as gunfire cracks the air. Jerked by instinct, I swerve and dodge as bullets kick up dust and ricochet of rusted metal around me. Then I'm at the ramp and grabbing my horse by the reins. Bullets smack into its chest. Blood spurts from the wounds and I leap away from only just in time as the horse collapses with a ragged bellow. But I've got my purse. Vaulting onto the rifle-loaded mono, I pull Core's pistol from my belt and fire point-blank into the second mono's vaporizing unit. A plume of fire shoots up to join the orange late-afternoon light. The blast almost throws me from astride the mono as I race up the ramp, but the soal strongboxes protect my back from shrapnel and a few last parting bullets from Lake. 

It's done. I'm roaring towards Griswold again and the Guild behind have no way to follow. And, with my visor thus safe for use again, it picks up the four gleaming dots in the exosphere that Savel and Lake now have no way to prepare for or gather. They've got their hands full. But Lake will have a comm on him. Word will travel fast. 

Core, our timetable is moved up. Prep for launch now. 

Viridian? What? We aren't exosphere-worthy, the engine –

Will it hold through one launch and one landing?

Yes, but –

That's good enough. Head for the extraction site. Now. We don't have time.

The white streaks of atmospheric reentry scratch the softening evening sky behind me as I roll into town, and townsfolk on their way home from their affairs stop on the boardwalks and stare at me. Dust-caked and bloody, I leave the mono running underneath the flickering glow of Strony's neon, and with pistol on eye-level, kick open the door. 

"All right, Melna and Wolf, party of two – time to go! Everybody else, sit tight, make yourself comfortable. The recorodion's not bad entertainment when it feels like working."