Sarah was strapped into one of the cooling chairs at the ranch, next to Michael. They were about to begin an evening session of mapping out the Aeons’ network infrastructure.

Unexpectedly, the holophone integrated into her TacWave began ringing. She saw that the caller was Nick Lal and felt a surge of excitement. “Sorry, Michael, duty calls.”

“Another call from your Aeon boyfriend?” Sarah ignored the edge in Michael’s voice. He needed to get over the fact that her job was to date Nick Lal.

“Just go in first, Michael, I’ll be along in a second.”

She switched on the holophone emulator in her TacWave. Though she was standing in a room full of secret government computer equipment, to Nick it would appear that she was sitting on a luxurious leather couch and sipping a glass of wine. “Hey there, how’s it going?”

“OK, I guess.”

“You look kind of glum, Nick. You sure everything’s ok?”

“Just some dumb arguments with my parents.”

“Sounds normal.”

“I’m really angry this time though. I don’t think I’m going to speak to them again.”

Sarah felt a stab of sadness that someone who was lucky enough to still have parents would turn away from them, even after the worst of fights. But this wasn’t a pain she could share with Nick, not when her undercover persona had parents. “What was the fight about?”

“My company. You’ve probably seen it on the National News Network by now. It’s Sparkwise.”

“You’re involved in Sparkwise? The news said the names of the owners were being held confidential while the investigation proceeded. I had no idea that was you…”

Sarah’s mind was racing while she thought through how this conversation might play out. She would have to play dumb until she was sure of why Nick was discussing Sparkwise with her. If he indicated any willingness to cooperate with the government, she could hint that she could help him. But she still couldn’t reveal her true identity to him.

Her train of thought was interrupted by an urgent message from Michael that cut across her holophone feed. “Sarah, I’ve found a hole in Sparkwise’s firewall. Get in here and help me.”

###

Nick was working up the courage to admit to Sarah that he thought some of the allegations against Sparkwise might be true and wanted to find a confidential way to cooperate with the government. But his holophone feed was drowned out by an emergency MindWave message from Laura. “Nick, our firewall is being infiltrated. Get in here and help me defend it.”

“By the government?”

“Can’t be. They would have to show a warrant. It must be some damn nat hacker.”

Nick reluctantly decided he would have to help defend the firewall. If he was going to turn state’s witness against Sparkwise, he would need to keep Laura’s trust for as long as possible. In fact, he’d have to increase her trust in him, so that she’d give him access to the most secret files.

He switched back to his holophone call with Sarah. “Hey don’t go anywhere. I’ve got another call I have to take.”

“It’s all right, I have the same problem,” Sarah responded. Her voice sounded distracted and strained. “Keep the line open and give me a shout when you’re done.”

###

But duty called.

She appeared in the multinet at Michael’s location, a large stone-walled rectangular room, about one hundred feet long, fifty wide, and thirty high. In the center of the space, a four by four array of steel safes floated in the air. Each safe was a three foot cube. The lowest row of safes hovered about an inch off the ground. Each of the three rows above it was suspended two feet above the one below. Likewise, each column was spaced two feet distant from the ones to its left and right. There was a ledge that ran around the room at about the same height as the third row of safes. The only other features in the room were doorways at either end.

Michael was crouched over a prone polar bear near one of the doorways. Sarah saw that he was busy binding the bear with thick ropes. In addition to the martial gear he had worn to the Five Mile Creek server, Michael now wore a ninja-style face mask that hid his identity. Sarah conjured a stretchy leather ski mask and pulled it over her head, leaving only her eyes exposed.

Michael gave a final tug on the ropes and stood up.

“You think you can bind me, jou bliksem?” roared the polar bear.

Michael kicked the bear and said “Meet Jakobus Van der Merwe, also known as Kobus.”

“Next time you say my name you’ll be on your knees begging for mercy!” The animal turned its head and leered at Sarah. “En jy sal wees op jou rug en bedel vir meer.”

Michael ignored Kobus and turned to the floating array of steel safes. “This is the secure Sparkwise server room.”

“How did you get in here?”

“The Aeons have expanded their systems so fast I guess they just made a mistake. There was one firewall in the Aeon Avionics email server that wasn’t correctly installed, and the email server had connections to a data-pooling system with Sparkwise, and from there I could get to here.”

“What should we do now? Report back to base?”

“No, this is a one-time chance.” He gestured at Kobus. “They clearly know the vulnerability exists now and will close it.”

“OK. But do you really think we can break into the safes?” Sarah didn’t want to move aggressively now. If they uncovered proof of Sparkwise’s crimes before Nick could confess to them, he would never get a chance to avoid arrest. She just needed a few more minutes of talking to him.

She switched back to her holophone conversation. “Nick, are you there? It really sounded like there was something you wanted to discuss and I don’t want to leave you hanging.”

“Yeah,” Nick answered. “I do have something to talk about. Just as soon as I’m free.”

“I might have to go soon, Nick.”

“Sorry. I’ll hurry.”

Sarah resisted the urge to curse at him and switched her consciousness back to the Sparkwise server.

“We don’t have the encryption key to unlock the safes,” Michael was explaining. “But we can always try a brute force attack.”

“I thought the best encryption was unbreakable.”

“Well they don’t have the quantum encryption systems we have. And even if they did, it would still be vulnerable to brute force. It’s just a matter of having enough force.” Michael pulled a huge sledgehammer from out of his sash and passed it to Sarah.

“How the hell do you carry all this stuff around in your sash?” Sarah muttered.

“You better hope he has a fokkin tenk in there,” growled Kobus.

“And why don’t you carry a muzzle, too?” She took a few reluctant steps towards the nearest safe and began lining up a swing.

Before she could strike, a figure ran into the room. He was dressed in baggy white pants held up by an orange belt, and a billowing navy blue top. A high black turban covered his head. In his hand, he carried a curved scimitar-like blade.

It was Nick!

“It’s about time you got here, bra! Don’t worry, I got your back!” called Kobus.

As Nick brandished his sword and turned towards Michael, Sarah switched back to her holophone. “Nick I need to talk to you now!”

“Almost done,” he said breathlessly.

Inside Sparkwise’s server, Michael was parrying Nick’s sword blows with a long spear with red feathers near its tip. The two whirled around each other in furious circles.

Michael jabbed with his spear at Nick’s head six times in rapid succession. Nick diverted the first five strikes with his sword and on the sixth dodged down and forward, aiming a vicious swing at Michael’s knees. Michael leaped over Nick’s sword while spinning backwards. As he landed, he brought his spear point down in a wide arc as if it were a hammer. But Nick saw the attack coming and spun away to the left, aiming a backhand blow back at Michael as he completed his turn. Luckily Michael moved behind the shaft of his spear, which he used to block the blade.

The two warriors parted for a moment and circled each other, looking for weaknesses.

As Sarah watched the combat, she felt herself filling with fury. Just when she’d thought Nick was ready to confess to her about Sparkwise, he was actually acting to defend the company. When she had defended Nick to Willy and Colonel Jaeger, when she had believed in him, she had been proving herself a fool.

She realized now that she’d fallen in love with Nick. All the times she’d rushed to his defense, she’d been deceiving herself about her reasons. She wasn’t just protecting him because he was a potential intelligence source. She was trying to protect him because of how she felt about him. And the excitement she’d felt in his presence wasn’t simply the innocent thrill of the hunt. It was the tension of being in his presence at all.

But the depth of her feelings just made her realization that she’d been wrong about him all the more painful. Indignation, shame, and rage all boiled up within her. She was going to get revenge.

When Nick’s back was to her, she flung her hammer at him. It twisted slowly as it flew through the air, and then impacted him right between the shoulder blades. He let out a gasp and felt to the ground.

“Jammer! I guess I didn’t really have your back, bra,” exclaimed Kobus from the ground.

She switched back to her holophone. She spoke as sweetly as she could. “How are things going over there, Nick? Are you done yet?”

“Um, I hit a bit of a snag, Sarah.”

She let the sweetness drain out of her voice. “I bet you did.”

She switched back to Sparkwise, and drove her knee into Nick’s back to hold him down on the floor. She grinned as she heard him cursing over the holophone audio link, and then cut the holophone connection.

While she held down Nick, Michael retrieved the sledgehammer and strode up to the nearest of the floating safes. “Like I said, it’s just a matter of having enough force.” He wound up and let loose a swing so powerful he nearly lost his balance. The hammer head impacted the safe’s lock with a resounding clang, leaving a deep dent. Michael recovered his footing and took another wild swing, and then another. “Just a matter of force” he repeated between his grunts.

Finally, the safe burst open and an avalanche of paper documents burst out of it and fell scattered on the floor. “Score!” said Michael happily.

“Jy bliksem, dit is my goed!” cried a visibly upset Kobus. “Ek gaan rip jou skrotum af en gebruik dit vir 'n sleutelhanger.”

“Get out of my server!” the woman’s voice was deep and powerful. Sarah turned her head just in time to see the same red-haired warrior that had overpowered her at the Five Mile Creek server striding towards them, sword and shield at the ready. This time, Sarah knew the woman was Laura Mayer. Laura was flanked by two enormous lionesses.

“Sarah, hold them off while I collect some of this data!”

Sarah got off of Nick’s back. She had a sword and dagger in her belt, but she knew Michael’s spear would be a better weapon to hold off the cats. She quickly retrieved it from where Michael had set it on the ground.

The two lionesses roared and pounced towards her simultaneously. One came right at her throat. Sarah held the spear firmly and gored it through its mouth. The cat’s momentum was so great that it travelled all the way up the shaft of the spear, killing itself but still slamming into Sarah with enough speed to knock her on her back. Sarah hit the ground hard and struggled to push the dead weight of the feline off of her.

Before she could budge it, the other cat bounded up and leaned over her face, its maws gaping open to reveal a row of jagged teeth. She struggled and got a hand free, pulled the knife from the sheath on her belt, and stabbed the beast in the side. The cat roared in fury and backed off of her. She turned to Michael to ask for help.

But Michael was engaged in one-on-one combat with Laura. Unable to swing fast enough with his unwieldy sledgehammer to parry her furious sword blows, he was backing up steadily, looking for an opening to strike. He was circling as he backed up, so that he wouldn’t be forced into a corner. But his circling was taking him right towards—

“Michael watch out!” she screamed.

But it was too late. Nick had crawled to his knees and Michael had backed right into him. Nick seized Michael’s legs, holding him immobile. Michael pulled away and used the flat of his hammer to knock Nick in the ribs, sending him sprawling onto the pile of papers that had spilled out of the broken safe.

But now Michael’s back was turned on Laura, who unleashed a brutal diagonal sword stroke that sent Michael’s head rolling away down the length of the room.

Kobus roared “She got your head, maar jou skrotum is myne!”

Laura turned towards Sarah to finish her off. Sarah was still trapped under the dead lioness. She weakly flung her knife at the approaching Aeon. The weapon fell short and skittered across the stone floor, until Laura used her sandal-clad foot to stop it. “I’ve seen you before,” said Laura as she approached. “You escaped me at Five Mile Creek. But this time I’m going to find out who you really are.”

But before Laura could reach her, Sarah’s connection to the multinet was cut off.

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