Victory Conditions by Elizabeth Moon Page B

had to know if he could get out that way.
    Wait…if he could access the hardwired connections of the medpad, could he then infiltrate all the wiring, via the monitors the medpad reported to? Was there any way—? What had Rafe taught him about the simple way some ansibles had been disabled?
    Simple in concept, difficult in execution. His implant could trace and identify circuits. Sure enough, a standard magnetic lock. His implant could not create, on its own, the kind of electromagnetic pulse that would disable the lock. But medical monitors had devices to multiply the signal, and these devices were software-controlled.
    With the local circuitry in his implant, Toby knew exactly what to tweak and how, using the medpad’s access via the medical monitors. Could he now call for help past the shields? Not without detection. Would there be backsplash into his implant? Not if he disengaged in time. The really tricky thing would be getting his door’s magnetic lock open after he’d fried the circuits.
    He set up the commands, put them on a timer, checked his biological status—drug almost completely metabolized, only a light dose still helping him lie still as if paralyzed. It would clear in seconds…and then he would blink.
    He felt the growing excitement, a mix of nausea—quickly suppressed by his implant—and glee. Then he blinked, and the lights went out. He blinked again. Still dark. Utterly dark. Not even a gleam of light…he sat up, blinking. He had imagined everything except how dark it would be.
    His implant threw up a ghostly visual of the room. Toby stood, amazed at the quick response of his body, the steadiness of his stance. But this was not the time to stand still. He took the two quick strides to the door. Locked, of course. Without his usual tool kit, he had no way to open it easily, not with the whole system down.
    Ky wouldn’t stand here like an idiot. She would do something…and he’d heard about crawl spaces and ventilation spaces all his life. Toby stood on the bed and reached up. He could touch the ceiling…and the ceiling panels shifted as he pushed. It was harder than he’d expected to move one aside…and then he had to jump, with only the virtual light of the implant’s view of the room. His fingers scrabbled on the frame that held the panels. What if it wasn’t strong enough? What if it gave way and he fell back and broke something?
    Voices in the corridor outside…angry voices. “I don’t care—we have to be sure—blow the damned door!”
    He had to try. He leapt up, flailing for the framework, caught hold, and hung a moment, legs kicking wildly, before he levered himself up into the cold, machine-smelling space above. He felt around in the dark, and pushed the panel he’d dislodged back into place. It probably wouldn’t confuse them, but it might slow them down…though that was the only logical way he could’ve gotten out.
    Even as he thought this, he was crawling along the framework, careful to put weight only on the frame itself. The implant gave him a peculiar fuzzy view a short distance ahead; it was detecting different materials with one scan method and distances with another, and he had to keep looking down so it could define the framework well enough for him to stay on it. How far did he have to go? How far had he come?
    Behind him, he heard a crash, and a brief spurt of light revealed ahead of him a line of gleaming material that looked like a solid barrier. The light went out; he smelled acrid burning…if they did that to the framework, he’d fall through.
    “He’s got to be up here,” a voice said. It sounded faint, though, not like someone in the same space. “I can’t tell which way…”
    Toby flattened himself as much as he could, holding his breath.
    “We’ll need a light,” said another voice. “But he can’t get far. The firewall’s only twenty meters inboard.”
    Firewall. Of course. Toby’s heart sank. He had moved in the right direction, inboard,