That was a question he himself brought up with Mina when he had been hauled in to the discussion of who the Rus wanted to do the job. While he had gotten into trouble before, it had never been serious and Gurminder had always been able to extract himself somehow. Often he himself couldn’t exactly explain exactly how. Maybe he’d been lucky.

“We need that kind of luck,” Mina stated.

“But this is a 100 kiloton nuclear device,” he said, even knowing himself the kind of backlash that would come down on the clans from such a theft. “They have to have them locked down them under the highest levels of security.”

“Which is why we’ve gathered the best we have, as well as what moles within Marsec that can be called upon to provide us with what we need.”

The others agreed on this, but in private, in bed, naked and perhaps vulnerable Mina had been more honest with him about their reasons. Perhaps it was a better position to get him to agree, perhaps be the fall guy if things went wrong.

And he had gone along with it. Maybe he could not say no to her, not now. The things she’d let him do to her. Mina Varlamov, the daughter of the Big Man Varlamov. That meant something. It made him someone, even if it was just between him and her.

“They’re killing us,” she confessed. “All of us. You’ve heard that they’ve been shutting down communities, forcing borneheres into their colonies, separated and erased. It’s only a matter of time before there are none of us, one way or another. The clans are desperate. It’s the only weapon we will have against them. I need you.”

And so he had agreed.

“You’re thinking about your girlfriend,” Tory accused.

“No I’m not,” he shot back.

How could she know anything about that anyway? She was just a kid.

“I’ve seen that look, I heard how you talk to each other,” the girl told him. “I thought it was weird, but I’ve seen it before. I know what’s going on.”

“You don’t really know what it is until you’ve done it,” he snarled. “Until then you’re just a kid with a big head who thinks she knows everything. And that’s not a survival trait on this planet!”

“What about the nuke?” she continued to needle. “Why do you want to steal it?”

“I don’t want to steal it,” he told her. “But the Clan Council does. Because it’s time we had a weapon of our own that can make ColCorp renegotiate the agreements. Something to force MarsCorp and ColCorp to take us seriously, to treat us the way we need to be treated and stop stealing everything we have. Your people seem to forget the Clans explored this world for the Old Nations back before ColCorp even existed, proved humanity could survive here, could thrive, they owe us respect, they owe us our claims. You all owe us everything you’ve taken! And if we have to bomb you to do it, then we’ll bomb you! If you make us!”

That shut her up for a couple minutes as her face went through a few contortions as she absorbed the threat, tried to work out what it meant.

”Oh,” Tory replied. “This is war then. You’re going to force us off the planet. Blow up-!”

“No! No, that’s not it, not yet anyways,” he protested. “We need Earth. At least for now. Its insurance. Something we can use to deter them from burying all of us, destroying our homes, forcing us into some second class labor in your colonies. We want to stop the colonization, stop us from being erased. Turn it back, even. At least slow it down.”

“Send people like me home!” she replied excitedly. “How can I help?”

He stared at her. Tory Ciarelli was categorically insane, he decided.

“There’s got to be guards, security,” she added. “There has to be so much of it. How are you going to get past it all? Unless you have the codes to get in. How Gur?”

”You should know by now what happens on Mars when someone is motivated enough,” he told her raising his eyebrows.