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IX. darvell: the citadel; darvell nearspace

Beka pushed Nivome torward the gap the collapsor had made in the wall of the Citadel. The floor ended an inch beyond the toes of her boots, and she didn’t like to think about how far below her the ground might be. Somewhere out in the smoke, the aircar purred closer.

She still had her prisoner in the come-along grip. He was too groggy from the stun-bolt to protest much, even if the blaster pressed against his spine had left him any choice.

“If I pushed you right now,” she said, just in case, “you’d fall a long way down before you bounced.”

The Rolny didn’t reply. Sometime in the past couple of minutes, he’d apparently decided that Tarnekep Portree was too crazy to reason with.

Funny thing about that, thought Beka, as the approaching aircar gradually became visible through the smoke. He’s right.

The aircar flew past the side of the building, close enough for her to see that the cargo door gaped open. Then the craft veered off into the smoke and came circling back toward the Citadel to make another pass.

The drone of its engines changed to a ragged growl as the pilot reduced speed.

“Not so slow,” she muttered. “You’ll lose lift.”

The aircar came in close . . . closer . . . if the wall had still been there, the aircar’s right wingtip would have broken against it. The open cargo door yawned like a cave-mouth, only yards away and drawing nearer every second. She could see the leap she’d have to make, several feet out and a long step down if she missed.

If I were an Adept, she thought, I’d just grab hold of the currents of the universe, and hitch a ride on over. But I’m not an Adept, so

“You’d better hope I’m lucky,” she said to Nivome, and pushed him ahead of her as she jumped.

Beka felt a split second of weightless panic. Then she was falling hard against the far wall of the cargo compartment as Ari banked the aircar left. Nivome landed under her; she still had his arm up in the come-along. She thumbed the blaster in her other hand back down a notch to Heavy, put the muzzle behind his ear, and shot him again. He went limp and slid down onto the aircar’s decking.

Behind her, the cargo door slammed shut with a clang. She scrambled over and dogged it down, then clambered forward and collapsed into the copilot’s seat.

Ari looked around from the controls. “Strap in, baby sister. Where do you want to go?”

She stared at him. A bruised and bleeding gash marked the right side of his jaw, his left eye had puffed almost shut, and his hands on the control yoke were red-knuckled and swollen.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.

“I got in a fight,” he said. “Where’s the Professor? Still taking care of things in the cargo compartment?”

“That’s Nivome back there.” She leaned her head back against the seat cushions. Her right side was hurting her now; it felt like someone had shoved a burning torch into it. “The Professor won’t be coming.”

“Dead?” Ari asked.

She closed her eyes. “That’s right.”

“I’m sorry, Bee.”

“The hell with sorry,” she said. “Where’s Jessan?”

She heard her brother sigh. “I don’t know.”

“Dammit, Ari, I told him and Llannat to take the aircar up and go looking for you—don’t sit there saying you don’t know where he is!”

“All right. I won’t. Now tell me where you want to go.”

“Set a course back for Warhammer,” she said without opening her eyes. “They’d head there if anything went wrong.”

The aircar droned on in silence for a few minutes. Her side throbbed in rhythm with the engines.

Ari exclaimed something under his breath. She dragged her eyes open again.

“What is it, big brother?”

“Look up ahead,” he said. “I think we’ve found them.”

She pushed herself away from the seat back and looked out the front window. Yes, there was the aircar that should have been their getaway craft. One of the Darvelline atmospheric fighters was on its tail, getting lined up for a firing pass.

Dodge him, you Khesatan idiot—dodge him! Frantic, she searched the copilot’s side of the console for weapon controls. “Bloody hell, Ari—aren’t there any guns on this damned ground-hugging boat of yours?”

Ari pulled the aircar up and added throttle. “Don’t worry about it.”

She bit down hard on her lower lip, and watched in silence as Ari began to sneak up on the Darvelline fighter from behind. Another moment, and he was in tight beside the Darvelline, flying with his left wing under the right wing of the fighter.

Ari put the aircar into a hard bank, and the left wing tilted up to strike the underside of the wing above it. The fighter flipped down into a vertical spin.

“Not bad,” she said as the Darvelline spiraled earthward.

Her brother looked pleased with himself. “I told you not to worry.”

Jessan’s voice came over the comm link. “Is that the Terror of the Spaceways back there?”

“None other,” said Ari. “Get on the deck—we have to switch to your aircar. This one’s just about had it.”

“No trouble. Taking it down.”

A minute or so later, Beka felt the aircar settling to the ground. She unstrapped the safety webbing. The movement pulled at the wound in her side, making her head spin.

How much blood have I lost? she wondered. Just let me get Warhammer into hyperspace before I go under, that’s all I ask.

She pushed open the cockpit door on her side and started climbing out. “You get Nivome,” she told Ari over her shoulder. “Damned if I’ll carry the bastard.”

She heard Ari muttering under his breath and then his footsteps clunked back toward the cargo compartment.

She leaned her forehead against the side of the aircar. How long have we got before somebody else shows up to shoot at us? The Professor would have known . . . the Professor . . . damn you, Nivome, I hope your Citadel burns to the ground.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said a familiar voice at her elbow.

“Jessan!” she exclaimed, turning.

He embraced her, hard; she hugged him back, harder, in spite of what that did to the pain in her side. He must have noticed something, though, because he let go and stepped away to look at her.

“If I ask whose blood that is on your shirt,” he said, “will you pull a knife on me again?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s all mine, this time.”

“Bad?”

“It’ll keep until we make the jump,” she said, and turned back toward the cargo compartment. “Ari!” she called. “Have you got our passenger yet?”

The door clanked open behind her. “I have him, Bee,” said her brother, emerging with Nivome slung over his shoulders like a rolled-up rug.

“Good.” She moved away from the side of the aircar, heading for the armed craft Jessan had set down not far off. “Let’s get out of here before the law shows up.”

Minutes later, the getaway aircar lifted with Ari at the controls. Beka sat beside him in the copilot’s seat that had held Llannat Hyfid not long before.

She didn’t know what was wrong with the Adept, only that she was out even colder than Nivome. Ari and Jessan had argued diagnoses the whole time they’d been strapping Llannat into one of the fold-down cots in the back, and Beka had gotten the impression that they didn’t know either.

“Massive internal bleeding?” she’d heard Jessan wondering aloud at one point. “Or is this some weird Adept thing they didn’t teach us about in class? You tell me what’s normal for somebody who pops out of nowhere and moves aircars around just by thinking about it hard enough . . . ”

The console readouts were blinking; she glanced at them, then at the screens for confirmation.

“We’ve picked up a tail,” she said aloud.

“How many?” asked Ari, from the pilot’s seat.

“Just one, so far. Can you lose him?”

“I can do better than that,” Ari said. “Watch.”

He banked hard left and put the aircar into a dive. Beka saw a Darvelline fighter below them and climbing. Their energy guns went off with a zinging whistle, and the fighter exploded.

“Got you!” crowed Ari as their own aircar rocked in the turbulence.

“Big brother, you amaze me sometimes.”

“Compared to everything else I’ve done today,” Ari said, “that was so easy it ought to be illegal. Now the real fun starts.”

He banked again to a new heading, tilted the aircar’s nose up, slid the throttles all the way forward, and flipped on the thrust inducers. The roar of the engines changed to a high, tooth-aching whine, and inertia pressed Beka down into the seat cushions. Her side hurt; she could feel it bleeding again.

Ari cut the engines back to minimum throttle. The pressure on her chest and her wounded side disappeared as the aircar went into free-fall.

She heard a yell from the cargo compartment. “Lords of Life, what are you two doing up there?”

“Taking the quickest way home,” she yelled back. “We’ve just gone ballistic.”

“Coming into final approach,” Ari said. “So far, so good.”

Beka shook her head. “Too good, big brother. It shouldn’t be this easy.”

Dazzling white light filled the front window as she spoke. She shut her eyes.

“Massive energy strike,” said Ari’s deep voice next to her. “Right about where our calculated landing place should have been. Somebody must have figured out we had a spaceship hidden somewhere, and decided to take it out before we could get his boss on board.”

Decided to take it out. My ship. Just like that. She pulled the knife out of her sleeve, and started to unstrap.

“Bee, what the hell—”

“If the ’Hammer is gone, I’m not waiting any longer. The Rolny buys it right now.”

Next to her, Ari chuckled. “Relax and strap back in. I deliberately overshot when I plotted this thing. There was a whole mountain peak between that blast and the ’Hammer.

“Dadda would be proud of you,” she said, sliding the knife back. “Uh-oh . . . more contacts on the scope. Big ones, low and slow, matching course.”

“Troop carriers,” Ari said. “They’ll wait until we set down, then try to run a rescue.”

“Burn them.”

Her brother shook his head. “No good—they’d just send more. Groundside’s probably tracking us from one of those spy satellites we saw on the way in.”

“Damn.” She bit her lip, and watched the winking points of light on the scope. “Ari, you packed the first-aid kit for this aircar. Did you throw in anything strong enough to bring someone out of heavy stun in a big hurry?”

She saw him frown. “It’s taking a chance on turning his brains to scrambled eggs.”

“I don’t care what he thinks with,” she said. “Just so he can walk.”

She turned her head and shouted back into the cargo compartment. “Jessan! Crack open the first-aid kit and bring the prisoner round! Ari, set us down a little way outside Defiant’s cloaking field.”

“Got you, Bee. Going down.”

By the time Ari got the aircar grounded, the troop carriers were closing. Beka could see one of them from the cockpit window, hovering on high-step nullgravs not a hundred yards away. She unstrapped the safety webbing and stood up, grimacing as the motion pulled at her wounded side.

“Get Llannat,” she said to her brother. “Jessan!”

“Captain?”

“Status on the prisoner.”

“He’ll walk.”

“Good.” She was in the cargo bay by the time she finished speaking, and saw that the Khesatan had been as good as his word. He had Nivome on his feet and semiconscious, hands bound behind him with tape out of the first-aid kit.

Her brother already had Llannat out of the other cot.

The Adept looked like a child cuddled next to Ari’s broad chest. Beka tried to reconcile the picture with Jessan’s comment about moving aircars around by force of will, and had no luck.

“She still with us?”

“In and out,” Jessan said. “She keeps waking up and looking for something that isn’t here.”

“Her staff, you idiot,” growled Ari. “You don’t think she left it behind on purpose, do you?”

Beka pulled the Professor’s staff out from under her belt, and gave it to her brother. “Here. Give her this if she asks again. It’s not the same, but maybe it’ll help. And I sure haven’t got any use for it.”

Ari looked unhappy. “Bee, you don’t have to—”

She ignored him. “All right. We’re going out the cargo door and heading for the ship. Ari, you’re in the middle with Llannat. Jessan, get out your blaster and bring up the rear.”

She undogged the door and slid it open. Then she pulled her knife. “The Rolny and I are going first, just to make a nice show and impress the dirtside troopies.” She twisted Nivome’s bound hands up behind him, and put the point of the knife at the juncture of his throat and jaw. “Walk, you.”

Nivome obeyed. Outside, she could see another troop carrier hovering not far from the first. Foot soldiers in blast armor had already formed up into a skirmish line outside the vehicles. At the sight of Nivome, they held their fire.

She pitched her voice to carry. “You know who I’ve got here. One funny move, and I start cutting pieces off of him. I want an armed spacecraft and safe conduct into hyperspace, and I want them now!”

She crossed the few yards of open ground between the grounded aircar and the trees with her dagger’s point nuzzling the Rolny’s throat every step of the way. She didn’t dare look back to see whether Ari and Jessan had followed her—not until she’d marched Nivome well into the woods, and passed with him through the area of visual distortion that marked the edge of the cloaking field.

Only after she’d confirmed that the ’Hammer and Defiant still waited for them unmolested did she let herself look around. Ari was there, holding Llannat and looking grim, and Jessan, reholstering his blaster. The Khesatan gave her an encouraging smile.

“You menaced them most convincingly, Captain.”

“It helps if you mean it,” she said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll waste some time trying to talk us into coming out of the woods with our hands up. Let’s get on board and lift ship.”

She watched as Jessan, the only member of the party with a free hand, punched the security codes into the ’Hammer’s entry panel. “I hate to leave Defiant for those bastards to take apart,” she said, “but it’s going to take all of us just to get the ’Hammer up and into hyper.”

The ramp came down. She prodded Nivome up it with the tip of her knife.

“Everybody aboard. Ari, you strap Llannat down for lift-off and then start warming up the engines. I’ll be up to the cockpit as soon as Jessan and I get Dadda’s birthday present secured belowdecks.”

Ari headed forward, still carrying Llannat. Beka thumbed the ramp closed.

“Cover him,” she said to Jessan, and stepped away from Nivome to open one of the ’Hammer’s cargo holds. She gestured toward the opening with the point of her dagger. “You—Nivome—get in there.”

The Rolny obeyed. She dogged the airtight hatch back into place and straightened up again. This time she couldn’t help the stifled noise she made as the hole in her side opened and bled afresh. Again, Jessan reached out a hand. She moved away.

“It’ll keep until we make hyper, I tell you,” she said, throwing the compartment’s external lock switch as she spoke. “Let’s get forward.”

In the cockpit, Ari was bending over the copilot’s couch and fastening the safety webbing across Llannat’s unconscious form. Beka checked the control panel (Automatics well advanced on the lift sequence) and the view outside the cockpit (Still no troopers in the clearing) before turning to her brother.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“You know a better-cushioned place to strap someone in for lift-off?” He straightened, and gave her an appraising look. “You’d better take a gun and let me lift ship, Bee—you look like they forgot to bury you.”

She shook her head. “Like hell you’re flying my ship. You go shoot.”

“Bee, you’re hurt bad and you know it. If you pass out we’re all in trouble.”

She felt her temper rising, and held on to the back of the pilot’s seat with both hands. Gently, she told herself. Gently. “Listen to me, Ari. You’re hell on wings in atmospheric craft. I admit it. But I fly spaceships for a living, and you don’t.”

“She’s right, Ari,” said Jessan.

“Damn it, Nyls, look at her!”

“I know,” said the Khesatan. “I know. Just pass me the first-aid box. Now, Captain, if you’d let me take your coat . . . good . . . you sit there and finish running down the checklist, and I’ll see about doing a patch-and-go job that’ll hold you together until we make hyperspace.”

She took the pilot’s seat and started flipping switches, only half-aware of Jessan still murmuring to himself as he cut away the blood-stiffened fabric of her shirt and probed the blaster wound with skilled fingers.

“Looks like it missed all the major organs . . . but it is a nasty one, no two ways about that. Straight into the healing pod as soon as we get home, and no argument . . . lend me a hand here, Ari? . . . thanks. There. That pressure bandage ought to keep the bleeding under control—let me get you some fluids before we lift.”

She shook her head and pointed out the window. Darvelline troopers, several squads of them, burst into the clearing and started firing.

“No time,” she said. “Get to battle stations—I’m lifting in thirty seconds whether you’re in place or not.”


Jessan counted under his breath as he and Ari ran aft for the guns.

“ . . . twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two . . . ” The captain had been generous with her estimate. On “twenty-three” he felt the ’Hammer’s forward nullgravs tilting the ship’s nose upward, and on “twenty-five” the acceleration hit.

He made it the last few feet to the Number Two gun position in an uphill fight against gravity. He found the Arm switch after a moment’s panicky search, pushing it left-handed while his right hand worked the straps on the safety webbing.

Something exploded, down below. The white flash filled the gun bubble, and after the light faded he could see an angry red ball mushrooming upward toward them.

“What went off dirtside?” he called over the internal comm as he settled the headset into place.

He heard Beka’s unsteady laugh. “That was Defiant blowing herself to pieces. I guess the Professor didn’t want anybody else messing around with her, either.”

Outside the gun bubble, the sky was going from blue to black. A few stars came out, and a brighter disk-shaped spot appeared against them.

Satellite, Jessan thought. Over the headset, he heard Ari’s voice muttering something about gratuitous violence, and then Number One gun fired.

“Keep doing that and they’ll spot us as hostile for sure,” Jessan said.

“If they don’t already have us down as hostile,” came Ari’s reply, “then they never will.”

What the hell, Jessan thought, and picked out a satellite of his own to shoot at. I could use the practice.


A beam of energy streaked forward past the bridge from the dorsal gun bubble. Trigger-happy lunatics, thought Beka, as the ’Hammer emerged from atmosphere. They’re not going to hit a damned thing at that range.

She brought the acceleration up as high as she dared—Don’t want my gunners blacking out on me—and divided the rest of her attention between the sensor readouts and the realspace vista out the cockpit windows. Neither view looked encouraging. On the control panel, the ’Hammer’s sensors were showing multiple transmissions on frequencies usually used by fire control and homing mechanisms. And outside, the sky was full of tracking devices, most of them pointed straight at her.

Time for the jammers, she thought, and flipped the newest addition to the array of switches on the control panel. That’s one more thing I owe you, Professor.

Another touch, and airtight doors throughout the ship sighed closed. She rotated the ’Hammer about her axis once to look for a clear route out, found a line that had fewer ships along it than the rest, and set the navicomps to work checking for a jump point.

“Don’t get picky on me now,” she muttered. “Just put me in the galaxy someplace. I can find my own way home.”

The guns hammered out a quick burst, and a flash of light erupted nearby, “Where the hell did he come from?” she demanded, as shrill pippings from the control panel warned of lock-on. She switched on the ’Hammer’s range gate pull-off transmitter in an attempt to divert any missiles homing in, and checked the sensor readouts again.

“Damn,” she muttered. “Damn, damn, damn . . . ” One of the satellites below was spinning, bringing its weapons to bear.

A bolt of fire streaked out, and within seconds the blackness of space around the ’Hammer turned into a wire cage of crossing beams. She increased velocity and changed course again, gasping as the force tore at the wound in her side.

Another alarm shrilled in her ears: loss of internal pressure in the forward cargo hold. The bulkheads can hold it. She slapped the siren off.

A ship the size of a Space Force cruiser came into visual range behind and beneath her, dropping off one-man fighters as it came. Look at the good side, she told herself, increasing the velocity again. You made it past the orbital stuff.

The cruiser was falling behind now, dwindling out of visual—the ’Hammer’s outsized engines had done the trick again. “That’s a girl!” Beka crooned to her ship. “Fastest pair of legs in the galaxy . . . oh, damn!”

The ’Hammer’s guns beat out their staccato rhythms, and more silent explosions lit up the blackness. Another cruiser had left its picket duty to come up ahead of her.

She checked the navicomps. “Come on, come on! Give me a jump point, will you?”

But the “working” lights kept on flashing. All this twisting and dodging keeps changing the equations. I need to get clear of these warships and take a straight run.

She cut hard left and spiraled again to get clear of the warship in front of her. Energy bolts traced across the ’Hammer’s ventral surface as a fighter sped by. Fire from her own guns followed him as he ran.

“You’re doing good,” she called over the internal comm to the gun bubbles. “Just keep them off me while I head for jump.”


Nyls Jessan slewed Number Two gun around to take aim at another incoming fighter.

“I hear you, Captain,” he said to Beka over the headset, and to himself, Keep cool. Pretend it’s a simulation. He fired, and the fighter blew up.

“Not bad,” Ari said through the earphones.

Jessan fired again. A miss, this time. “I’ll have you know that I’m a graduate of the Space Force Gunnery Familiarization Program.”

He heard the sound of Number One firing, and then Ari’s voice again. “You mean the course that teaches medics how not to accidentally blow up the guys on their own side?”

“That’s the one.”

Something out there beyond the armor-glass exploded in a dazzle of white light. Jessan fired blind, letting the targeting computer swing the gun position around for him.

If it moves, it’s hostile. Simplifies things a lot.

He heard a noise like a thunderclap—Lords of Life, that was close!—and felt the ’Hammer shudder. Over the headset, he caught Ari muttering something in the Forest Speech that the big Galcenian saved for serious cursing. Something must have gone wrong.

A second later, he realized just how wrong.

The sound of the engines had stopped.


Now we’re really in trouble, thought Beka. A hit aft from one of the fighters screaming by had prompted the engine-room damage-control systems to take over and cut power. The ’Hammer kept on moving forward with her speed intact, but the readouts on the cockpit control panel showed that the ship was no longer accelerating.

Using the realspace engines now would mean a chance of burning them out. On most ships, DC systems couldn’t be reset until repairs were made, anyway. But the ’Hammer isn’t most ships, thought Beka. And we’ll never make it up to jump speed like this.

She reached up above her head and cut in the overrides.

The ’Hammer surged to the side before picking up her forward acceleration again. Beka frowned: the engines were a bit skewed.

“Jump speed,” she told the ship. “That’s all I ask.”

Another warship showed in the forward screen, coming up fast toward visual range. She checked its position.

Hell. It’s sitting right on our jump point. She cut and spun left and downward to find another point. Give me room to run and I won’t care about the calculations—I’ll jump blind if I have to, just let me get velocity!

The maneuver flashed more alarm lights from the engine readouts: Tube One was fluttering on the edge of burnout already. Another Darvelline fighter zipped past, shooting as it went. The power-level indicators for the ’Hammer’s weapons bobbled in reply.

At least we’re still shooting back.

The starboard engine went out, then cut back in at half-thrust. She bit her lip in frustration, and cut power in the port engine to keep from spinning out of control with the off-center push. Once more, the acceleration readout slowed.

She bit her lip again, harder. I have to do something. The engines aren’t good for more than a few seconds longer, and I’m nowhere near up to jump speed.

Any time now, she knew, one of the Darvelline cruisers would come alongside, match speeds, and pull Warhammer into a docking bay with tractor beams. Then they’d cut through the hull, there’d be a brief fight on board the ’Hammer , and everything would be over.

But they won’t get me alive. Or Nivome. She shifted a little in her seat—even that small movement made her wound throb—and patted the blaster at her side. ‘He has little enough time,’ the Prof said. He just didnt tell me I wouldn’t have any more than Nivome did.

“We’ll make it.”

Beka startled. The voice had come from the copilot’s seat. She glanced over at the Adept. Llannat’s eyes were still closed and she sounded bone-weary, but she looked nowhere near as close to death as she had only a few minutes before.

“We’ll make it,” Llannat repeated. “I met myself, and I was older.” The Adept exhaled on a long breath, and her features relaxed into the smoothness of sleep.

Wonderful, thought Beka. At least I know it can be done.

She looked out the cockpit window at the stars. The idea taking shape in her mind made her skin prickle. I think I am crazy. But they can’t block that jump point, for sure. Now all I need is the velocity.

Beka spun the ’Hammer around on its vertical axis, and fired the engines one more time.

The readouts flickered and went red. She pushed the throttles farther. The frame of the ship began to shake and vibrate, but the control panel showed acceleration picking up.

More throttle. The rear sensors started coming up with garbage—shards of metal, that would be, sloughing off the engines. All around her, the ship started to make a strange, almost subaudible noise, one no spacer should ever have to listen to: the sound of realspace engines destroying themselves from the inside out.

Beka felt like crying. Instead, she looked at the velocity readout. Yes, there it was, an increase that was more than the crippled engines could account for.

She looked ahead. It was going to be close. But already the central star of the Darvelline system was taking up more and more space in the cockpit window. No warship would sit on her jump point this time.

“Bee!” shouted her brother’s voice over the internal comm. “Bee! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She laughed aloud. “Just one more crazy stunt, big brother—maybe the last one ever. Put the guns on automatic and come on up front for the ride.”

By the time Ari’s heavy footsteps and Jessan’s lighter ones sounded on the cockpit deckplates, she’d already blacked out the windows against the Darvelline sun’s increasing light. “Can’t do that for the bubbles,” she said without turning her head away from the velocity indicator. “Gunners like their visuals too much. But anybody who’s still with us now is only following along to watch us fry.”

“Just what are you doing, Bee?” her brother growled from somewhere close behind her.

“I’m getting an assist from gravity,” she told him. “We’re doing a tight parabola around the sun. Either we make it to jump speed before we burn up, or we don’t.”

“Where are we jumping to?” That was Jessan, on his knees beside her; the Khesatan was already busy changing the bandage he’d put on her just before lift.

Glad somebody besides Llannat thinks I’ll be around long enough to need it, she thought, and shrugged one shoulder. “We’ll know when we get there.”

Jessan finished changing the bandage and stood up. “What if you’ve miscalculated?”

Beka turned her head just long enough to look at him. “Then I’m sorry I dragged you along to a family party,” she said. “But what the hell—it was fun while it lasted.”

She turned back to the velocity readouts. Another five seconds . . . three seconds . . . one second . . . now! She reached out her arm for the hyperdrive enable.

“And whatever happens, Nivome the Rolny is dead.”



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