“Sure thing.”

The hub was deserted. Kandara stood in the entrance, running a final check on her medical vitals. She took a breath. Switched her weapon systems to active. “Okay, Kruse: initiate.”

Zapata’s display showed her the portal doors powering down, reducing their twin links to a null-space entanglement. The three hub portals in front of her maintained their integrity. “Tyle?”

“Ping is active.”

“Got them,” Jessika cried.

Zapata splashed the results across her vision. Arntsen and Fasan were together inside a lab in the Eóin research block on Onysko’s other endcap. Cancer was on Bremble, in a silicon refinery module.

A route to Eóin splashed across her tarsus lenses. She moved fast, running through the first portal door, turning sharp left in the next hub, another door. People milling around in confusion as portal doors started to shut down. One remained open. “Nice job,” Kandara muttered as she sprinted through. Twist left again. Four fast steps. And she was out into Eóin’s central oval atrium, lined with a broad ramp that spiraled up from the black-and-white marble floor, looping around eight stories of laboratories and offices.

“Eóin network suspended,” Jessika reported. “All portal hubs closed.”

“Can you seal the laboratory doors?” Kandara grunted as she hit the ramp and started sprinting. Arntsen and Fasan were in lab five on the second level.

“I think so.”

She could see several people on the spiral, leaning over the white balustrade, frowning as they looked around to see what the problem with the hubs was. Several doors were opening, more people coming out. “Do it fast. There’s too many people exposed here.”

“The police are on their way,” Kruse said. “They’ll help clear the area.”

“We’re way past that point.” Kandara said. Her sensors caught hir, with Zapata’s feature recognition routines confirming. Kruse was walking out onto the black-and-white tiles of the floor below.

“What are you doing?” Kandara snapped furiously. Sie must have followed her from Gloweth.

“I’m responsible for this operation,” Kruse replied levelly. “I’ll supervise the police and start evacuating civilians.”

“Fuck’s sake! Just stay the hell back.”

Two people on the ramp ahead of her turned to gaze in astonishment at the squat armor-clad figure pounding toward them. Surprise and fear rose on their faces in a near-comic slow motion. Then Kandara had barged past, with only one half circle of ramp left before she reached lab five.

Her helmet sensors picked up a drone descending fast down the center of the atrium. It was a standard bracelet shape, twenty centimeters wide, with internal contra-rotating fans. She instinctively knew it was wrong. “I thought you’d killed Eóin’s network?”

“I have,” Jessika said. “The only channel in is this secure comm.”

“Then why is there a remote drone in here?”

“What drone?”

Kandara reached level two, the door to the lab seventeen meters ahead, and the drone was drawing level. Her right arm came up and target graphics closed on the little machine. A gamma beam sliced into it.