Birds sang and something else was in the air—something electric. Rhita pulled down her covers and listened to the men moving around in the rest of the tent, grumbling. She rubbed sleep from her eyes; she had been exhausted, strained to the breaking point, she realized now. For a moment she simply hung on to the comfort of her bed, refusing to listen to her instincts. Then something exploded not far from the tent and she was on her knees, and on her feet, dressed only in loose-fitting underwear. The air crackled and wind beat the outside of the tent. A few men screamed questions and orders at each other. Demetrios lifted the edge of the tent flap, stared at her, embarrassed, and said almost sternly, “Thunderstorm. It’s going to pour rivers on us any minute.”

“Just what we needed!” She stepped into her pants, not at all embarrassed to be seen by him. In fact, she found the moment slightly arousing—the appraising look in his eye before his politeness made him look down…

“It adds to the excitement,” he admitted, back turned. She looped her shirt closed and zipped up her jacket, then bent down to put on her shoes, buckling quickly. In seconds, she was fully dressed. She brushed past Demetrios and skipped by a kybernetes and a soldier, down the covered gap between two sections of the tent, into the outside.

Oresias and Jamal Atta stood at the edge of the ravine, Oresias with hands on hips, Atta speaking into the mouthpiece of a mobile radio mounted on the back of a soldier. What happened to radio silence? she asked herself. Demetrois came through the tent door behind her, just as big drops of rain splashed on her face and hands and darkened the fabric of her jacket. Atta lifted his hands and shook his head; the last straw, more than any human could bear.

The two beecraft seemed hunched under the onslaught, blades drooping almost to the level of the grass. Soldiers stood in the hatchways, smoke rising from several long pipes as they casually watched the downpour grow more intense. Oresias handed the soldier the mouthpiece and drew his jacket up over his head, running toward them. Lightning flashed to the south, lighting up the canopy of clouds and the steppe around them with cold, pale brilliance.

“There’s disaster in Alexandreia,” Oresias shouted over another crack of thunder. He pushed Rhita and Demetrios back through the door into the tent and threw aside his jacket, running his hand like a comb through his wet hair, rubbing water out of his eyes with his knuckles. Atta remained standing in the middle of the storm, raising his arms now and then, shouting or whispering, they couldn’t tell over the noise.