Kandara studied the map that splashed across her lens. Three different portal doors, with one inside the silicon refinery’s small pressurized control center and two outside the main section. “How good is that last known position?” According to the intel, Cancer was beside one of the material processing cores, almost at the center of the refinery.

“She was there as of three minutes ago,” Jessika confirmed.

“Okay. I’m entering the hub now.” Kandara didn’t say what her exit point was going to be. Maybe basic training, maybe paranoia; but Cancer had compromised Onysko’s data network. She might even be listening in to the secure channel.

“I think she’s using the same black routing that they used to get into our networks originally,” Oistad said. “The Bureau Turings are reviewing traffic packages for encrypted Trojans. I’ll try to isolate them.”

“Okay,” Kandara said. “In the meantime, download me whatever real-time intel you can from inside the refinery. I also want you and the Turings to access every sensor in the area. If she goes external, I need to know.”

“Understood,” Tyle said.

Kandara went through the first hub door and turned right straight away. She could feel her heart rate increasing. So many law enforcement and security teams had confronted Cancer over the years, and there weren’t many survivors. Every time, Cancer fought as if she was invincible, and with the ferocity of somebody who had nothing to lose.

Now she was going one-on-one, with no real backup. The only way to do that was fight fire with fire.

Four hubs—and twenty-three steps—brought Kandara to a long, tubular airlock designed for ten people. The hatch swung shut behind her, and she triggered the emergency vent. Air screamed around her, turning to white vapor; she could even hear it through the helmet insulation. The noise barely lasted a couple of seconds as the vanishing atmosphere buffeted her with the ferocity of mountaintop wind. Fifteen seconds later, she was in a hard vacuum. The circular hatch in front of her unlocked and swung open, revealing a star field above the crinkled gold surface of Bremble’s huge industrial station.

“Low-gravity environment ahead,” Zapata warned.

Kandara raised her left arm and fired a wide-pattern fusillade of smart sensor pellets at low velocity. The image they splashed across her lens showed the different industrial modules arranged like city blocks, with a grid of deep metallic canyons between them. The airlock was on top of a storage sector, with fifteen big spherical tanks bunched together, along with their piping and heating mechanisms. They were crowned by a broad circular platform, used as a landing and parking bay for small engineering pods. Five of the little craft were docked to it, their systems plugged into stumpy umbilical pillars.

“Jessika, disable those engineering pods.”

“Way ahead of you. Three are locked down, and I have secure remote access to two of them if you need it.”

“Thanks.”