Domi had thought their relationship was sexual in nature, but it eventually settled down that she had found a father figure. When Cerberus was a much smaller staff, before the influx of lunar staff, she had finally found her family. The added freezies from the Manitius Base had made her uncomfortable, intruding on her sense of community, which only drew her closer to Grant, Kane, Brigid and Lakesh.
Brigid didn’t want to think of the pain Domi would be in if Grant was gone forever.
“We know roughly when he was transported,” Brigid said. “And this place has none of the traditional indications of a Sumerian crypt.”
“So not cemetery,” Domi muttered, looking around. “Not much temple.”
“Not now, but we have millennia of erosion and deterioration that’s removed most of what this place used to be,” Brigid answered.
“Erosion?” Domi asked. Her face screwed into a mask of skepticism. “Or bombed.”
Brigid frowned as she looked around. “We’ve only been digging for a few minutes—we can’t tell.”
“Snake-faces ruled here,” Domi mentioned.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that,” Brigid answered.
“Never forget anything,” Domi agreed. “But didn’t say so.”
“You’re trying to say that I’m keeping information from you?” Brigid asked.
Domi looked away from the sleeve, the first time in the several minutes since they’d discovered the armored garment. “No. Softening news. Maybe. Not say lying.”
Brigid rested her hand on the diminutive albino’s shoulder. “We would have found skeletal remains if he was killed here. This was just a memento…buried and lost in time.”
“Too hot for long coat here, even then?” Domi asked.
“Absolutely,” Brigid answered.
“News is getting better,” Domi said, recovering some of her language skills, stress lessening.
“Plus we’re not even sure he’s going to be tossed through time just this minute,” Brigid said. “It could be some time in the next thirty years, for all we know. Or even Grant’s son, if he has one.”
Domi snickered. Brigid tilted her head.
“Remembered line about assumptions,” Domi said. “You make an ass out of you and umption.”
Brigid nodded.
“Because, you know, I’m pretty big, too,” Edwards interjected from his overwatch of the temple dig. “Grant could have lent me his coat.”
“Too fat,” Domi replied.
Edwards grimaced. “That’s muscle.”
“You want to get punier?” Domi asked.
Mariah Falk let out a sigh. “Brigid, I thought that you wanted to see the chamber that this coat seems to be walled into.”
Domi tilted her head.
Brigid explained for her friend. “That device she has is a sonar locater. It registers echoes off loud noises returned from objects of heavier density.”
Domi smiled with comprehension. “So when Mariah set off the boom stick on the ground, she was looking through the sand.”
“When did you start getting so smart?” Edwards asked.
“Boyfriend cuts holes in universes as shortcuts,” Domi noted. “Brigid friend is living encyclopedia. Six years hanging around with them, knowledge rubs off, newbie.”
Edwards smirked. “Attitude rubs off, too.”
“It’s not attitude if you can back it up,” Brigid countered. The archivist walked over to Falk, who had put another image on her portable tablet computer. “You’ve double-checked this?”
“I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with in this time, but I didn’t get assigned to Manitius by being sloppy and second-rate,” Falk answered.
“Point taken,” Brigid said. “My apologies.”
“None necessary,” Falk replied. “I just wanted you to know who you were working with.”
“How deep is that pit supposed to be?” Edwards asked.
“From ceiling to floor, we’re looking at thirty feet,” Falk explained. “The overall floor space looks to be the size of four football fields blocked together, with pillars that could easily be five feet in diameter.”
“Football fields?” Edwards asked. “Say it in postapocalyptic terms for those of us without a frame of reference.”
“Two hundred yards long, and we’re looking at about fifty yards wide,” Falk translated. She snorted with amusement.
“What’s so funny?” Edwards asked.
“First time I knew more about football than someone who is so stereotypically a jock,” Falk said. “Football was a game full of men who wished they were as big as you or Grant.”
Edwards smirked at the obvious compliment. “You know, instead of fucking around with knives and shovels, why don’t we blow a hole in the side of this thing?”
“We want to see what’s inside, not collapse the whole damn place,” Brigid explained.
“The roof’s thick, easily two yards,” Falk said. “And the support pillars are thick and intact according to the sonar.”
Brigid frowned as she thought about it.
“I’m not talking about a nuclear blast,” Edwards said. “A controlled, focused explosion. Back when the Magistrates had to get into a place without bringing down the whole shantytown, we used loops of detonation cord that cut through walls without a blast wave that would level huts around our target.”
“Kane generally just throws grenades,” Brigid mused.
“He also was a pilot on a Deathbird gunship,” Edwards told her. “Firepower is its own solution for those guys.”
“I guess the old saying is correct,” Brigid said.
“There’s no problem that can’t be solved with the application of high explosives?” Edwards asked.
Brigid nodded. “And not to judge a book by its cover.”
Edwards shrugged his huge shoulders. “Don’t attribute it too much to brains. Just a good memory and some damned impatience.”
“Do you have that kind of explosive power?” Brigid asked.
Edwards scooped up his war bag. “I can roll my quarter kilogram blocks of plastique into det cord.”
“Why
