Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

“I understand,” Dayuki said.

“I’ll cover you from here, in case anything goes wrong.”

Dayuki only nodded, offering no comment on the double meaning. The guards were not in sight when the four Onjin crept back to the clearing. Dayuki stripped off her spectacles and strode into the open, navigating through the darkness with the aid of a tiny electric torch. McKeon gave Hal one more uncertain look as he unlimbered his compact machine gun and screwed a suppresser onto the barrel. He settled into a sitting position, bracing his elbows against his knees, eye firm against the night scope.

The guards had still not reappeared when Dayuki reached the door; she paced back and forth with an air of irritated impatience until they arrived. The first to round the corner quickly brought his weapon to bear when he saw the torch and called out a challenge. She replied with obvious exasperation and gestured angrily at the door, railing at the guard with a rapid-fire staccato in their common tongue. Hal itched to understand what was said, but didn’t want McKeon distracted with translating.

The second guard appeared at a brisk trot, rifle at the ready, and turned on a moderately powerful hand-held spot light. It illuminated Dayuki and blinded the first guard as well as offering him up as a target. He stepped back into the building’s shadow and shouted at his companion, who lowered the beam to the ground at Dayuki’s feet. The egregious violation of procedure gave her more verbal ammunition and she gestured at both to approach.

They did so with caution, weapons trained on her in such a way that they stood an equal chance of shooting each other as well. Dayuki informed them of their error with an impressive display of official fury, screaming at the inexperienced solders until the instinct to obey a superior overcame their orders and they snapped to attention before her, shoulder to shoulder.

Dayuki sprayed both of them in the face with a single smooth back-and-forth wave of her hand. The soldiers stepped away from her in surprise, then the full effect of the chemical cocktail hit and all expression faded from their faces. Dayuki ordered them to continue their rounds and they wandered out of sight, slouched and unsteady.

McKeon led Hal and Derner to the door where he fit a decoder over the lock. Though high-tech by Minzoku standards, the electronics weren’t particularly sophisticated and the bolt snapped back after only a few seconds. McKeon pulled the door open a few centimeters. Interior illumination cast a shaft of light across the ground, accompanied by the faint hum of fans and compressors.

“Clear,” he said softly. They stepped into a large parking vestibule as featureless as the outside of the building. A roll-up door was set in the wall directly ahead and next to it a second personnel door secured by a lock identical to the one outside.

McKeon’s gadget defeated it just as quickly. He entered first, followed by Hal, with his needle-beamer ready, then Derner and Dayuki. The hallway beyond led past a mechanical room, the source of the noise, then turned left sharply, doubling back the way they’d come. Administrative alcoves and offices, all vacant, lay off the right side of the corridor. The passage turned right and ended at a personnel-sized blast door that presumably emerged on the opposite side of the building from where they entered. The left-hand side of this leg held three blank stainless steel fire doors, all dogged but not locked. The first led to a small warehouse. The second was a transitional vestibule between a clean room and the rest of the building. The third door revealed a control room with a large window looking into the actual laboratory.

“The Minzoku built this?” Derner exclaimed.

“You recognize this?” Hal asked.

Derner sat down at a terminal. “Of course. The configuration is different, but it’s the same equipment we use to produce indium gallium antimonide.” He gestured to the chamber beyond the window. “Three computer-controlled injectors deliver the molecular elements to the press, where they combine to form the crystal. This console monitors the process.”

“Den Tun must be trying to peddle our methodology,” Hal surmised. “His contacts probably wanted proof that he could deliver.”

“Son of a bitch!” Derner tapped carefully at the Minzoku keyboard. Indecipherable text scrolled up, interspersed with chemical equations and molecular diagrams. “We tried this once!” he exclaimed.

“What are you talking about?” McKeon demanded.

“Monoisotopic optical semiconductors!” Derner said, “They’ve done it with a process that didn’t work for us!”

“You said it’s the same equipment we use,” Hal reminded him.

“Yes, to form the actual crystal,” Derner clarified. “The key to producing a monoisotopic version is the discrimination process. I didn’t spot it because they’ve integrated both systems in a single plant.”

Hal decided to wait for a more auspicious moment to tell Derner his life’s work had been sabotaged and stolen by Den Tun’s spies. The look on his face would surely be a sight to behold. “The research you did before,” Hal asked, “does it still exist? Can you duplicate it?”

Derner tapped his head. “What isn’t archived is up here,” he said. “If a bunch of illiterate Minzoku can figure this out, so can I.”

“If we don’t need to preserve this, we should destroy it,” Hal decided. McKeon knelt to open his bag and removed several blocks of plastic-wrapped gray putty. “It needs to look like an accident.”

Derner stood. “I can help with that,” he said. “This process uses chemicals that generate explosive fumes if misused.” The metallurgist found what he needed in the storerooms and went to work with fervent concentration, never once decrying the loss of scientific data about to take place. Like a mountaineer tearing down the remnants of a flag left by an anonymous climber at the summit of an unconquered peak, he chose to destroy the evidence of his predecessor’s success rather than applaud the achievement.

He waited for McKeon to set his charges, and then poured the contents of a large bottle into a noxious brew of chemicals in one of the laboratory’s sinks. Fumes began to rise immediately. “We have to hurry; any kind of spark will ignite the vapors!” He pushed past Dayuki and headed for the exit, leaving Hal and McKeon to close and dog the door before they followed. They caught up with the metallurgist in the vehicle vestibule as his hand closed on the door handle.

“Wait!” McKeon hissed. “The guards—!” Derner swung the door open and skidded to a halt so quickly that Hal and McKeon piled against his back and Dayuki just managed to skip aside without falling.

The Minzoku soldiers stared open-mouthed at the intruders they had no memory of encountering less than thirty minutes earlier. Everyone went for their weapons at once.

Bullets struck on either side of the door at the same moment McKeon fired over Derner’s shoulder and Hal’s needle-beamer cracked. Both guards crumpled and McKeon stepped forward quickly to apply a coup de grace lest one of them survive to inform Den Tun.

“Everybody okay?” the security officer asked.

“Yes,” Hal and Dayuki replied.

“Derner? Derner!”

“He is here!” Dayuki called. The metallurgist lay on his side just inside the door. His eyes stared stupidly into space; the hole above his right eye was surprisingly bloodless. “He is still breathing.”

The ground beneath their feet bucked with an audible thump . Hal stood from examining Derner and looked at McKeon sharply. “Did you—?”

McKeon shook his head, holding up the transmitter, still unarmed. “But if the heat gets to the detonators—” A second more powerful jolt heaved the ground. Dayuki backed away from the building, wide-eyed as the men came to a simultaneous decision: “Run!”