Silver

There's nothing better than the smell of oil and fuel.

I stood in the garage of Anvil Gate surrounded by Packhorses and a handful of 'Dills and Centaurs; Dizzy's assault derrick had a corner to itself towards the back. Two trucks were pulled out of the orderly line and suspended on jacks, legs sticking out from each undercarriage. I already knew they would have nothing for me to do if I asked, so I let them work. They seemed to know what they were doing; if the trucks were still in working order, I couldn't complain, right?

I walked between the rows of vehicles and spotted the few civilian trucks they'd transported from Vectes. They were rigged with spare plate armor attached to the grill. If it were up to me, I'd have issued full skirts for every vehicle. That'd keep the polyps from getting underneath the wheels. It was disgusting how many vehicles we lost on Vectes but Bernie said the Lambent rarely bothered them out here; it was the Stranded who were the biggest threat. Yeah, when is that ever a surprise?

One of the trucks I passed was leaking oil and I stooped to try to get a better look. Shit. The puddle had splashes of luminescence that was definitely imulsion.

"Hey, one of you under the trucks," I called. "Did Hoffman authorize imulsion in the civvie trucks? I thought they could only run vegetable oil."

Wheels squeaked and one of the sappers' heads popped up above the line of hoods. "If you came to stir up trouble, you can scoot your ass out of my garage, Corporal."

Crap, it was a woman. Whoever it was, she seemed to know me and that was never a good thing. She wiped her hands on her overalls as she marched over to the truck beside me and scowled.

"This thing has a puddle of imulsion under it," I said. "Look for yourself. I don't make this shit up."

She crouched, balancing herself with a hand against the truck. She immediately cursed and stood with a sigh.

"I'm telling ya, this stuff is bad news," I said. "You should get it siphoned out immediately."

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard all your theories. Thanks for bringing it to my attention but now I'm going to be a lot busier—kindly get the hell out." She turned and pressed her finger to her ear. "Hadley, get down here. I've got a civvie truck full of imulsion and I need it gone before the engine's eaten clean through."

Well, I knew when I wasn't wanted. I made my way out to the courtyard where men and women worked in their gardens. A few waved and I returned it, unsure of their names. I barely recognized the faces now.

"There you are, Blondie." I looked up to the inner gantry to find Bernie leaning on the rail. "Anya got the console hooked up. You ready to air some dirty laundry?"

I'd almost forgotten about the disc. A2897 had become a large part of my life after Hoffman handed it to me; it was so bad even after I returned it, I still believed it was snug under my mattress on Sovereign. I'd sometimes catch myself checking my inner pocket, making sure an imaginary disc was still there. I made sure to give it back to Hoffman, just in case someone else had a bright idea but even the Gorasnayan ex-spook couldn't crack it. The disc was completely impenetrable until Prescott personally handed us the key.

"I'll be there in a minute," I called. If I can remember the way. "Try to contain your excitement and wait for me, okay?"

"Vic's bouncing out of his boots already so no guarantees." She waved and pushed away from the rail.

I found the gantry steps and climbed the two rickety levels toward the command room. It was weakly thrown together in the upper levels of the fort where it had once been outfitted with the highest COG technology during the Pendulum Wars; now it had a few computers, the last remaining Hammer interface, and a broken long-range comm unit. Yeah, definitely a downgrade.

When I stepped in, Marcus hovered over Anya as she continued working at the console; Hoffman wasn't far with Bernie by his shoulder. Whatever we found, I hoped she could control his blood pressure. Now that I got a good look at him, Hoffman was looking old and beaten. If there was a tropical island out there without grub influence, he deserved to take a vacation soon.

Hoffman reached inside his armor and produced the disc already fit with the encryption key. "Baird, impress me. I want to know every last speck of data on this disc."

I accepted it with a grim smile, sat beside Anya, and popped it into the console. The screen blinked with pixelated text.

"How old is this thing?" I groaned, slapping the monitor. "Someone jiggle the display cord, will ya?"

Anya stood to play with it and after a few minutes, the screen leveled out to show the text I was so familiar with. I used to see it in my dreams, wishing and praying the magic code would reveal itself. This time, however, there was real data.

I'd been terrified that this thing would turn out to be a bust. What if it really was a waste of time? What if it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know or it was just Prescott's memoirs that he wanted published in the new world order? Seeing the information now—jumbles of code, schematics, and plenty of coordinates—I wanted to go find Prescott's body at sea and kiss his boots.

Yet none of it seemed to make sense. As I scrolled through the data, nothing jumped out at me; it was all nonsense. A bigger code for something different.

"Well I'll be a leviathan's uncle," Hoffman murmured, leaning over my shoulder. "That bastard finally threw us a bone."

"Kind of," I replied.

"What do you mean?"

I hated to dash the old man's hopes but, hey, I was the resident jackass. When someone wanted bad news, I got to deliver it. "Well, sir, to put it bluntly—he's dicking with us. Yeah, he gave us the encryption key but he probably knew we don't have the technology to view this thing correctly. It's all code. It needs a holo-projector."

"Shit."

"But there is a location—coordinates buried in the code." I scrolled through the mass of numbers and letters again, searching for the correct numbers that I'd spotted not moments ago.

Anya pointed at the screen after a moment; she found them. "That's out in the ocean."

"And we don't have any boats left," Bernie said. "He really does expect us to die."

The idea that Prescott had pulled one of his usual tricks really pissed me off, and Marcus and Hoffman didn't look much happier. But I wanted to believe that he finally coughed up the encryption key because he was trying to make amends. He knew he was dying; he had nothing left to lose. And he sounded pretty serious when talking about this Azura place. Couldn't say he didn't try.

"Colonel," Anya said, breaking the gloom and defeat in the air, "didn't you have a projector out here?"

Hoffman rubbed his face in a rare, weary moment. "Nothing as fancy as being holographic, but yeah, we had a small protector in the war room. It's still there but most of it's been scrapped for parts."

Anya touched my shoulder. "I know physics isn't your thing, but are you up for another challenge?"

The confidence in her eyes was terrifying. Could I really make a holographic projector out of scraps of metal? Normally it would require an entire science team with top of the line equipment—and Anya was sure I could do it without any of that. Shit, she had more hope in me than I thought.

I shrugged. "As long as someone names a city after me as the greatest man to ever live, I'll do whatever you want. When I was barely sixteen, I made a laser just because I was bored. I'm sure I can rig something up in a few weeks."

When people looked at me, I wondered if they thought I was a miracle worker with machines. Sure, I played it up, made it seem like I was able to create or fix anything, but even the brightest stars burn out eventually.