Joining the dots was an activity Brackenshaw was not looking forward to.

The first steps of her enquiries had been straightforward enough, and there was nothing untoward in Parsher's deployment orders at first glance. All signed off by the regimental commanders, along with a hundred others that same day, to assign Parsher to her expedition out to the liaison post. He just one soldier in the mass of Brekka's military, unremarkable in every way.

It made him the perfect man to carry out the attack, she supposed. Whoever was helping him had left nothing behind to give them away.

Except for one loose end.

Someone had signed off the Mammoth's cargo before it carried its deadly payload south. A bomb big enough to do what had been done at the Liaison Post would have had to be transported in a decent-sized crate, particularly if, as Aurelia suspected, the device was home made.

She walked calmly through the bustle of Stamm Basin's main hangar, exchanging nods and greetings with subordinates and salutes with superiors as she passed them. Officially she was here just as Lieutenant Kaydie Brackenshaw, just inspecting the skiffs of her platoon, making sure her underlings were ready to deploy when the word came.

Nobody paid much attention to her beyond that.

But when she reached the point in Stamm Basin's grid of tram lines where she would normally have turned left, she turned right and headed off towards the Mammoth armament yards. The acrid smell of fuel washed over her, a chemical tang stinging the back of her throat she drew closer to the grumbling thunder of the machines.

A huge avenue bisected the hangar's southern quarter, wide enough for a whole squadron of Hunter-Killers to march in a single rank, fed by the Mammoth yards. Brackenshaw stuck to the clearly marked out pedestrian walkways, and saw a pair of the lumbering behemoths pass by, looming over her like great armoured whales. Gun turrets faced forward, and she could just see the small shapes of the command crew high in the armoured cupola of the driver's station.

Give me a skiff any day, she thought as the Mammoths crawled off on their deployment. Brackenshaw couldn't imagine trying to drive something so cumbersome.

She checked her data slate as she closed in on the main yards. Her Mammoth was an older model, a three-decker brute designated simply as 'MDV-108' that had been in service for more than a decade. Currently it was getting patched up, having taken a beating in the retreat from the Liaison Post.

She passed several other stationary Mammoths with engineers crawling all over their massive hulls. Replacement plates of armour were swung into place by broad-armed cranes, and the air sizzled with the flare of welding torches. Brackenshaw winced as one of them clanged thunderously off a Mammoth chassis, swung in a little too quickly by an overzealous operator.

She stalked on through the resulting cloud of swearing from the other engineers, and into the next bay, where MDV-108 squatted, its great, rust brown hull lit up by floodlights. The broad, flat bulldozer blade on its front had been scorched with the unofficial name: STEADYWEATHER.

A man in Engineering Cadre overalls stood with his back to her, half inside one of the Mammoth's forward wheel housings. He had a heavy wrench in one hand, the other reaching inside to tug and yank at some mechanism she couldn't see.

She checked her slate again. Looked at the man; looked back at the file she'd pulled. Then she braced herself for a possible confrontation, and opened her mouth.

"Corporal Bryner?" Brackenshaw called.

The man jerked; the wrench he was holding slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor. He rounded on her, and spat out a foul curse just before he noticed the rank bars on her uniform. Then his face went rigid and he saluted sharply.

"Apologies, ma'am!" he barked. "I... you startled me."

Brackenshaw eyed him up and down, trying to get a measure of the young man. He didn't look much like a rebel collaborator. He couldn't have been much older than twenty, with dark skin and a neat goatee, and his brawny frame filled out his Engineering Cadre overalls with ease. According to his file, however, he had also lost two siblings in the Scraegan war, one younger and one older.

The chance of revenge could make people do a lot of crazy things.

"As you were," she said carefully, making a show of examining her data slate. "You're Corporal Jaden Bryner, 65th EC Heavies?"

"Yes, ma'am." A prideful smile glimmered on Bryner's face. "Lookin' after the biggest and the best."

She nodded, trying to decide how on edge she should be. Was there a violent zealot hiding beneath those overalls? Or had someone simply bribed him to smuggle the spare container aboard? Brackenshaw let her gaze wander up to the Mammoth, examining it more closely. She could see the soot black impacts of furnace cannon rounds against the outer armour, and three engineers were up on a scaffold, hacking a warped chunk of metal loose with their torches.

"Took quite a beating, eh?"

"Nothing the old girl can't handle." Bryner clapped a hand against the hull, then stooped to pick up his wrench. "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

"I understand you were deployed with MDV-108 to the Liaison post. You were there when the fighting started?"

Bryner nodded, his cheery demeanour quickly evaporating. "Everflowing, yeah. Was lucky to get out of there in one piece. What a mess, eh?"

"What a mess," Brackenshaw agreed.

"They got any idea what happened?" he asked, making a gesture to his surroundings. "People are saying all kinds of crazy things."

"Oh, we have a pretty good idea." She glanced past him briefly where other engineers in his platoon bustled. "Hate to leave your friends short-handed, corporal, but you and I need to talk."

"Talk?" A nonplussed expression flashed across his face. "What about?"

Brackenshaw managed a smile. "Just a little security matter. I could use your help to clear up a few things."

Bryner looked at her for a moment, then shrugged, stuffing his wrench back into his belt and spreading his hands. "We gonna talk about this here?"

"No." She stepped to one side and swept one arm back the way they'd come. "After you, Corporal."

*

The room Aurelia and Yanfoukis had given her use of was a small, private place, in a small private corner of Stamm Basin. Behind the main hangar, it was in a tertiary storage house, jammed to the gunnels with spare parts for all manner of Brekkan war machines. Most of the time it wasn't even manned – there was no one to confront her when she punched in her access code and led Bryner inside.

She could feel him getting more and more skittish the further they got from the Mammoth, but she ignored it. Right now she had a job to do, and all the signs were pointing to this unassuming young man as a traitor.

"I... err, what is this about, ma'am?"

"In there, please," Brackenshaw said, ignoring the question and pointing to the storehouse's diminutive admin office. He gave her a nervous look, but she simply smiled, trying to be disarming.

Not something she'd had much practice with, but it was enough to get Bryner moving again.

He slouched inside and she followed him, sitting down at the room's single, white table and gesturing for him to take the chair opposite.

"Take a seat, Corporal."

Bryner sat, now looking like he might make a break for it any second. Part of her hoped that he would. That would put a swift end to this piss-damned subterfuge and confirm his guilt nicely.

No such luck.

He sat there, hunching with unease.

"Try and relax, Bryner," she told him flatly, lounging back and resting the data slate on the table in front of her. "I didn't bring you out here to do you any harm. We're talking about sensitive security matters – that's all."

"About the bomb, at the Liaison Post?"

"Yes indeed."

"Ma'am, I don't know anything about that," he blurted quickly. "I mean we've all heard that it was, you know, a buster that caused it all. And about that guy – Parsher. But I just work the Mammoths. When those rapids hit we just saddled up and got the hell out of there."

"I'm aware of that." Brackenshaw's tone hardened and she lowered the data slate, letting it rest on the ground as she looked him in the eye. "The thing is, Private Parsher was assigned to your Mammoth as part of Scout Cadre security detail."

"I – what?"

"Corporal, I've read your service record," she snapped. "So please don't pretend that you're stupid. We all know better."

Bryner cleared his throat nervously. "Ma'am, I don't understand what this has to do with me."

"You were in charge of clearing the Mammoth's cargo on departure," Brackenshaw continued. "Someone helped Parsher smuggle that bomb out of Brekka and all the way to a high security outpost halfway across the badlands."

"Woah, now wait a second!" Bryner jerked up in his seat, sitting up straight. "You're not saying you think I did that?"

"Parsher could not have done this alone, and the bomb he detonated was too large to be transported covertly. You let him bring it on Stamm Basin, and off again at the Liaison Post, until he was able to find his chance to plant it."

"What – no, ma'am, this is all a mistake!" he exclaimed in horror. "Lieutenant, I wouldn't. I swear by the Watching Lords, I'm just an engineer! I don't want to fight the Scraegans! I would never, ever do something like this."

"But you did do it," Brackenshaw growled, shoving the data slate across the table at him and folding her arms. "Take a look, Mr Bryner. Your name is on those logs and there is an extra crate of munitions logged in the Mammoth's cargo manifest. And here's the big twist in the course, Corporal. When we spoke to the Master at Arms, the main ammo depots aren't missing a single solitary bullet. Something else was in that crate."

"No! I..." Bryner grabbed the slate in both hands, looking like he was going to throttle it. His eyes narrowed in disbelief. "No, no, no, this isn't right."

"We were at peace for the first time in a long time," she said. "And you didn't want that. We were going to stop the fighting, so when Parsher offered you a chance to get payback, you took it."

"Payback?!"

"I know about your brothers, Corporal."

Bryner gritted his teeth. "I'm not one of those people, ma'am. Yeah, I've got no love for the Scraegans, but if you think I'm doing this for my brothers, you don't know me at all. If their souls could see me now, they'd drown me if I'd done something like this."

He sounded like he meant it. Brackenshaw cocked an eyebrow. "So you're not carrying any grudges?"

"Aren't you?"

"My fare share. But I know where the line is."

He looked at her beseechingly. "I wasn't on cargo clearance that day. I'm telling you the truth."

Her patience was beginning to thin, and she unfolded her arms, letting one hand rest on the grip of her side arm. "According to the logs, you were."

"No, I swear. Please! I was on duty rotation for the Hunter-Killer squadrons. I wasn't anywhere near the cargo bay!"

The shrill panic in his voice finally gave Brackenshaw pause. She'd been expecting denials, expecting him to claim no knowledge of anything. That had been the whole plan, to let him string himself along before showing him the logs in black and white. But he was digging his heels in deeper, and he seemed genuinely terrified.

Damn it all.

Either Bryner was a very good actor, or there was some truth to what he was saying Brackenshaw clicked her tongue in irritation and nodded at the slate. "Then why is your name there?"

"Someone... someone must have altered the logs." He shook his head again, still staring at the screen. "They must have. I didn't do anything. I didn't sign for anything." Bryner put the slate down, his fingers curling and uncurling fearfully as he looked at her. "I'm telling you the truth."

"Who could switch the logs like that?" she challenged.

"I'm not sure. I mean, they're meant to be hardened against any tampering aren't they?"

"Yes they are."

"But I'm telling you that was not me. I never even met that Parsher guy."

"So, all I've got is your word?" Brackenshaw's brows rose. Shit, she was almost rooting for him now, hoping he might give her something concrete to exonerate himself. Her gut told her that Bryner wasn't their man, but right now the evidence said otherwise.

"I..." Bryner slumped back, hands over his face. A few seconds passed by. Brackenshaw waited as long as she dared, then began to loosen her pistol from its holster. Maybe it was all an act.

Just as she was about to take him off to Stamm Basin's holding cells, however, his hands dropped from his face and he lurched forward, slamming his palms on the table. She almost pulled her gun on him, but stopped herself in the nick of time, meeting Bryner's wild gaze.

"The Hunter-Killer pilot – they can vouch for me!" he blurted "I was running their system check on the Mammoth, when they boarded and when they deployed at the Liaison Post. I was right in front of them while the ordnance was being loaded!"

Brackenshaw eased her hand away from the gun. "Which pilot?"

"It was a Goliath." He squeezed his eyes shut as he desperately yanked the memory to the surface. "I can't remember his name but the callsign was Avalanche."

Her stomach turned. "Avalanche?"

"Yeah, that was it. I'm sure." Bryner slapped the table again in triumph. "Speak to him and he'll confirm it. I was working on his mech. That was my deployment – no matter what that slate says."

Everflowing River and every Watching Lord, give me strength.

So the only person who could corroborate Bryner's story was Brigg 'Avalanche' Alwick, HK-Rupture.

The same HK-Rupture currently on their way to the Scraegar Labyrinth.