Havoc by Jane Higgins

intel on One City to move against them, but she won’t tell us what
it is.’
    One of the older guys, grumpy looking and restless, tapped his fingers on the table
and muttered, ‘Plans for Moldam. What does that mean?’ He glanced at Levkova. ‘Could
be this Operation Havoc?’
    My ears pricked up. Levkova was shaking her head. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘We don’t know
what Operation Havoc is. Right now it’s just a name fed to us by One City. And they
don’t know what it is either.’
    The girl under the bridge had said something that sounded like Havoc. Before I could
say anything, the grumpy-looking guy turned on me.
    â€˜How has Kelleran got intel on One City?’ He was scowling fiercely, pulling bushy
grey eyebrows together. ‘She must have an agent in there. Eh, kid?’
    â€˜What?’ I said.
    â€˜You heard me. Has she got an agent in there?’
    â€˜How would I know?’
    He turned his scowl on the rest of the table. ‘Look, no one’s prepared to say it,
so I will. Anyone wonder why our comms are so easily compromised these days?’
    â€˜These days?’ Levkova gave a short laugh. ‘We’ve always been leaky, you know that.’
    He pressed on. ‘And who’s been going back and forth between here and One City with
nobody even raising an eyebrow? Hell, isn’t he over there right now? Commander Stais?’
He made scare quotes with his fingers around ‘Commander’. ‘It’s obvious where the
leaks are coming from. Obvious to me, anyway.’
    I rubbed a hand over my eyes, remembering too late what a bad idea that was—they
felt like they’d been blitzed with sand.
    â€˜Nonsense,’ Levkova was saying. ‘But we do need to take this to One City. They need
to know they’ve been compromised. And we need to know about Operation Havoc—what
it is and whether it’s Kelleran’s plan for Moldam.’
    â€˜How are you going to do that?’ asked grumpy guy.
    â€˜Nik will go. He has the language and he knows the city.’
    I opened my eyes. I should have seen that coming, but yes, as things stood, I’d go.
You bet I would.
    The man got to his feet. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said and marched out.
    One of the women said to Levkova, ‘That won’t work, Tasia. We haven’t got a dog’s
show of getting anyone out of Moldam alive right now.’
    And away they went again, round and round the table.
    I looked for an excuse not to listen and found one in the distant growl of thunder
as a summer storm came rolling in from the borderlands. The wind howled in the chimney
and rattled the windows in their frames and big drops of rain lashed the glass. I
hoped the army guys at the wire fences were getting soaked. I hoped Battleby Road
was being washed clean. I wanted to get back there, to be in a crowd that was yelling
and pushing forward, shouting at Cityside that we weren’t going to sit around and
wait for Frieda’s plans to unfold.
    I got up and lit the kero lamps hanging from hooks on the walls. Their oily tang
stung my nose and eyes and made my head pound. I hung one at the fireplace next to
Lanya, but she waved it away. She’d hardly moved since I’d come in. Head on knees,
she could have been asleep or angry or anxious or, most likely, fed up with the lot
of us. I sat back down, closed my eyes and thought about sleep.
    Listening to the talk at the table I realised that I missed Vega’s hard-nosed intelligent
risk taking. He pushed things forward, carried you along, even if it was you that
ended up taking the risk.
    They left at last, not much further forward than when they’d arrived. Levkova turned
to me. ‘Well?’
    I stared at the ceiling. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It makes sense. But how?’
    â€˜That’s for you to work out.’
    â€˜Oh, good.’ I looked at the rain on the windows and