Bess and her team picked their way over the debris to where she knew there was the highest probability of survivors near the surface. Without heavy equipment, the first teams on the scene were moving rubble with shovels and their hands. Later, there would be excavators but by the time they arrived it was usually too late to do anything but retrieve bodies.

They were working against time, and asphyxiation in the case of victims trapped without air. Bess's senses were hyper alert to any sign of life in the rubble pile. They pulled survivors out of sections that still stood, walls upright amongst the rubble surrounding them. The first couple of hours were the most fruitful, but the operation continued long after the last rescue.

It turned into a long day of heavy lifting for meagre results, which made Bess feel very grateful. The residents of Bedabun city were used to bombings and this time they had warning. Bess had heard air raid sirens still going off as she arrived. The streets were filled with able-bodied survivors who now found themselves homeless. She tried not to think of it. She had a job to do and the less sorry she felt for these people, the easier it would be to keep calm.

The ethics of man-made disaster were beyond her anyway; something Academy prefects studied, not search and rescue specialists like her. Bess's personal policy, and the policy of most like her, was to save lives first and let the Academy ask questions later. She would pull out an enemy if one got trapped. It was the human thing to do.

Still, sometimes Bess thought the Eurasian Axis acted less interested in destroying military targets, than in making the territory unusable to the New Union States. It was either that or they wanted to scare the locals into changing alliances. As if that could ever happen. Bess shook her head at the incomprehensibility of it all and kept digging.

By the time the sun was fading in the sky, the signal had delivered nine hormone boosts to Bess:

· three for energy

· four for pain relief

· two for morale

None of the search and rescue specialists knew exactly how the signal from Academy net went to a receiver in their bodies and released these hormone cocktails. It was top secret, known only to Academy doctors. All Bess knew was that after hours of digging and searching for survivors her success rate had flat-lined. If it weren't for boosts they would have all been too exhausted to go on.

It had become a twilight recovery job now, with no hope of saving another life. She was shaking with fatigue but the emotional letdown was worse. She craved another morale boost, except requesting more would look bad on her evaluation. Her instructors were always probing, looking for signs of weakness or overdependence. She would just have to hold on a bit longer, despite her melancholy.

Which meant she felt as chipper as a wrung-out washcloth by the time medics signalled their last run. There was nobody left to save, and as far as they knew, no bodies left to take away for burial. Bess resisted the temptation to sit down on a nearby concrete block and close her eyes. Leaders weren't supposed to nap on the job.

Capt. came up behind her and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You look like crap."

Bess turned and smiled at him through gritted teeth. "I feel great, Tom."

"That's Capt. to you."

"Sure, I can call you anything you like." She hated the military-sounding nickname he gave himself. "Just don't pretend to be in charge of my mission."

"'Course not. Just looking out for you, little sis." He tried to touch her shoulder again but she stepped back.

She hated the way he joked around as if she were the baby of the family and he was the big brother. She had grown up with plenty of adopted brothers — the Academy was her family — but none of them put her down.

"You need a shower," said Bess. She was about to say his stoked-up cyber metabolism made his armpits stink worse than a locker room of nervous new recruits when she heard something. She froze.

A tiny wail like a kitten's, coming from somewhere deep in the rubble.

Capt. hadn't heard it. He was still winding up to serve her a putdown.

"Wait." Bess dashed off to where she heard the sound. At the same time, she sent a message — on a delay — for Cherry. Bess could hardly wait to see the glow in her friend's eyes if she saved a baby. Cherry was fearless, and she was Bess's friend, but the delay was a necessary precaution to buy Bess a few minutes.

It was as if Cherry's brain hadn't caught up with her augmented muscles and reflexes. She acted like an impulsive greenhorn who could jeopardize a rescue, which was why people called her Cherry instead of Sharon. Bess rushed to the spot before Cherry could blunder in like a newborn fawn.

She climbed the mountain of rubble gingerly, sensing for a heat signature, the sound of a cough or breath, anything that would confirm human life.

Her infrared was useless in this segment of the rubble. With buried pockets still smouldering, the cement and girders poking up like stubble on Capt.'s chin hid deep pockets of warmer and cooler debris. That meant everything was too hot or too cold when Bess was looking for Goldilocks.

The only thing for it was to get down on her hands and knees and start shifting cement. Only three metric tons to go, she thought. Another person might call her efforts futile but the memory of that tiny wail drove her on. Without requesting a stimulant, she felt energized.

Cry baby, cry. All she needed was one more little whimper to track it down. She had reached the spot where the sound came from, or as close as she could figure. Bess stood still, turning her head slightly this way and that. Nothing. Not a sound. It was so frustrating.

What if, in her exhaustion, she had imagined it? Hallucinations happened. Until she heard another sound, Bess was afraid to start digging. She needed to locate the right spot and make sure her tired mind hadn't been playing tricks on her. Also, it could have been a cat.

The little wail had sounded human but stories of trapped felines went around the dormitories like urban legends. If she kept her exhausted team working all night to dig out a cat, Capt. would be sure to mention it. Every day. For the rest of her life.

A little crunch.

A faint shifting of debris deep below her feet.

Was there something alive down there?

It could just be rubble settling. Bess closed her eyes and aimed her heat receptors downward. If there were something still alive under there, it was getting cold.

"Waaaa." The tiny wail was all she needed. Pinpointing the spot, she sent out a signal to tell one ambulance to stay. Like a samurai drawing an Ōdachi, she drew a shovel from the sheath on her back and started to dig.

And dig.

Cherry came and they dug together.

It was dark now. She could see only by the lamp attached to the front of her helmet and her augmented muscles strained and shook with exhaustion. There were hundreds of pounds of cement chunks piled up behind her and a crater forming in front, but there was no more sound. No heat. The baby should be close now but Bess feared it was too late. Babies are normally hotter than adults but this one wasn't. How was it breathing under all that concrete anyway?

By the time she and Cherry had moved a house's worth of bricks she was losing hope. Illuminated in the lamps of their helmets, she held up a hand to keep the team back. Sometimes, even with the virtual spaces they could share, a simple gesture was best.

She and her team had grown up together in the Academy school. They knew she had the best ears on campus. They recognized that her frozen posture meant she was listening. Eyes closed, Bess opened herself to any whisper... Nothing.

Careful. She shared a new virtual space with the security cybers, this time revealing her mental map of where the baby should be. At this point she was willing to share her intel fully and let everyone, even Capt., dig in. The baby was gone. This had become another recuperation mission. She had been so close. If only she hadn't been so tired and her muscles so worn out, the child might have been saved.

Instead, she was tired and too slow, especially working without the security cybers. She had been too proud to share her discovery with them, too certain of her powers. Now her bad judgment had cost a child its life. She wasn't proud of herself for bringing in the whole team now, knowing it was too late. She was just a coward who couldn't face finding its cold body alone.

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