Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

dome had exploded.
    Or rather, the part of the dome where his people had been. The fires—the red and orange lights—they were gone, and what remained was like a gray dust, a haze he couldn’t see through.
    Jakande had both fists against the section. He was yelling, but Deshin couldn’t hear his individual voice above all the other voices, screaming and screaming and screaming.
    Deshin took Jakande’s arm and pulled him back. The rest of his team—the remainder of his team—was yelling too.
    His best people, forgetting their primary mission. Not because they were bad at what they did, but because this was unthinkable, so they weren’t prepared for it, none of them had prepared for it, and only one of them knew how to keep a cool head with the universe burning around them.
    Him.
    His team was good, but they were trained . They hadn’t lived through disasters like he had.
    We’re going to the train , he sent. And we’re going to get that fucker out of this city, even if we have to crash through a section. You got that?
    He pulled Jakande away from the section. Deshin repeated the directive and then took off on a run, going around stunned people, startled Peyti, and frighteningly calm Disty, sprinting past vehicles that were landing on top of other vehicles and rubble from buildings that hadn’t been built to code.
    It took forever, but really only a minute or two, to reach the station. It at least was intact. Train doors were open in the passenger sections, but Deshin didn’t go into them.
    Instead, he ran to the front of the bullet train. Pounding on the door, sending codes he shouldn’t have known, codes he had saved from his work with Kerman, and the control room doors eased open.
    Deshin jumped inside, Jakande jumping after him, the woman (God, he’d forgotten her name) joining them, but no other team members in sight.
    Too damn bad.
    Deshin closed the doors, overrode the security protocols, praying that this train was like older bullet trains, because he hadn’t done anything like this in twenty-five years.
    He was actually hijacking a train.
    He had to get out of this city, and waiting for the authorities wasn’t going to work.
    For all he knew, the authorities were dead.
    You can’t go through the dome, Jakande sent. It sectioned here too .
    Dome emergency exit codes are all the same , Deshin sent back. At least they were on the Moon. It was a failsafe, mostly for dome workers, so that they could escape if something went wrong.
    Deshin had learned that when he started working in dome maintenance, and he always kept the updated codes in a personal, easily accessible file, even after he left, when the codes came to him as part of the construction files he got through his various legitimate businesses.
    Make sure the doors are closing , he sent to Jakande. Look—with your eyes not your links to make sure we don’t kill anyone as we start up.
    Deshin flung every emergency code he had at the dome, putting them on a loop, figuring one of them would open this section and let them outside onto the Moonscape.
    If someone was blowing up the domes, he had to get out of them. He had to head home, and he had to protect his family.
    With Soseki dead, no one would figure out how to protect Armstrong’s dome.
    The only thing Deshin could hope for was that these bombs were either on a timer or they were being planted at different times in different places, maybe starting with the cities farthest from Armstrong and working their way back to the port.
    He didn’t know, he didn’t want to ask—not that there was anyone to ask—and he didn’t want to worry Gerda or Paavo.
    He sent her a message now, hoping it would reach her when the links got re-established: Heading home, love. We’re safe here , lying through his damn teeth (his damn links) but he didn’t know how else to do it, and he didn’t want her to panic.
    He wanted her and Paavo out of Armstrong’s dome, but he wasn’t sure if they’d be safe