“I have three possible routes to Bremble for you,” Jessika said. “Coming through now.”
Kandara studied the map that splashed across her lens. Three different portal doors, with one inside the silicon refinery’s small pressurized control center and two outside the main section. “How good is that last known position?” According to the intel, Cancer was beside one of the material processing cores, almost at the center of the refinery.
“She was there as of three minutes ago,” Jessika confirmed.
“Okay. I’m entering the hub now.” Kandara didn’t say what her exit point was going to be. Maybe basic training, maybe paranoia; but Cancer had compromised Onysko’s data network. She might even be listening in to the secure channel.
“I think she’s using the same black routing that they used to get into our networks originally,” Oistad said. “The Bureau Turings are reviewing traffic packages for encrypted Trojans. I’ll try to isolate them.”
“Okay,” Kandara said. “In the meantime, download me whatever real-time intel you can from inside the refinery. I also want you and the Turings to access every sensor in the area. If she goes external, I need to know.”
“Understood,” Tyle said.
Kandara went through the first hub door and turned right straight away. She could feel her heart rate increasing. So many law enforcement and security teams had confronted Cancer over the years, and there weren’t many survivors. Every time, Cancer fought as if she was invincible, and with the ferocity of somebody who had nothing to lose.
Now she was going one-on-one, with no real backup. The only way to do that was fight fire with fire.
Four hubs—and twenty-three steps—brought Kandara to a long, tubular airlock designed for ten people. The hatch swung shut behind her, and she triggered the emergency vent. Air screamed around her, turning to white vapor; she could even hear it through the helmet insulation. The noise barely lasted a couple of seconds as the vanishing atmosphere buffeted her with the ferocity of mountaintop wind. Fifteen seconds later, she was in a hard vacuum. The circular hatch in front of her unlocked and swung open, revealing a star field above the crinkled gold surface of Bremble’s huge industrial station.
“Low-gravity environment ahead,” Zapata warned.
Kandara raised her left arm and fired a wide-pattern fusillade of smart sensor pellets at low velocity. The image they splashed across her lens showed the different industrial modules arranged like city blocks, with a grid of deep metallic canyons between them. The airlock was on top of a storage sector, with fifteen big spherical tanks bunched together, along with their piping and heating mechanisms. They were crowned by a broad circular platform, used as a landing and parking bay for small engineering pods. Five of the little craft were docked to it, their systems plugged into stumpy umbilical pillars.
“Jessika, disable those engineering pods.”
“Way ahead of you. Three are locked down, and I have secure remote access to two of them if you need it.”
“Thanks.”
Half of the smart pellets had struck the refinery module walls, sticking to the flimsy foil surface. They scanned back across the gulf, seeking the signature of Niomi Mårtensson’s space suit.
“Looks clean,” Kandara said. “Moving out.”
“Just—” Jessika hesitated.
“What?”
“Be careful,” Tyle said.
“Always am.” Kandara moved to the back of the airlock, then ran at the open hatch—and jumped. The airlock itself was still inside Onysko, while its hatch opened into a portal door that was on the top of the Bremble storage tanks. As soon as she crossed the threshold she was immediately subject to the asteroid’s minute gravity field. She grinned savagely at the sensation of flying superhero-style above the platform and out across the gulf between the tanks and refinery. When she passed over the edge, tiny thrusters on her suit torso flipped her upright and pushed her course down slightly. She released two mini-grenades from her left bracelet.
The refinery module was built around a cluster of long, cylindrical material processor cores and their ancillary equipment, all encased in a thin shell of gold-skinned metallocarbon that was discolored from more than two decades of vacuum exposure. It was almost fifty meters tall, and seventy wide, sitting on top of a squat extractor rig the same size. Struts and odd mechanical protrusions stuck out into the dark canyons surrounding it, illuminated by tiny lights that drove down to a black vanishing point where the asteroid’s surface was hiding.
The mini-grenades exploded in silence, violet light flaring in perfect intersecting hemispheres, consuming the fragile shell. A swarm of fizzing shards twirled out from the impact. Then the glare was fading, and Kandara’s suit sensors revealed the irregular hole seared into the side. Her thrusters fired again, refining her trajectory, and she soared through the narrow gap, wincing as she went past the still-glowing jags.
There was no light inside other than the weak illumination seeping through the grenade rent. Her sensors switched to infrared, revealing a three-dimensional matrix of machinery and cables and pipes rendered in green and black. Directly in front of her was a narrow curving gridwork, approaching fast. She grabbed a crosspiece and jerked to a halt, straining her deltoid muscle. The refinery machines were producing a constant vibration, which she could feel through the gauntlet. High-voltage cables gleamed sunset orange as the sensors picked up their magnetic field.
“I’m in.”
“We’re getting sensor glitches on level seventeen,” Jessika reported. “That’s two below the control center she was in.”
“Okay, going down.”
Zapata splashed up a schematic of the refinery. Kandara started to haul herself along, using cables or support girders, whatever she could grab. Sometimes the equipment was packed so tight she could barely get through the gaps; then she’d be in empty spaces bigger than her apartment. Finally she found an accessway—a tube made from a composite grid allowing mechez and humans easy transit. There were dozens of the tubes winding their way around the interior of the refinery, as if some piece of rogue cybernetics had dug itself a warren. Looking at it all, she’d never felt more like a field mouse lost in a construction site.
“All the refinery’s sensors just failed,” Tyle said, a strong hint of panic in hir voice. “I’m working to restore them.”
“She’s still in here then,” Kandara said, pulling herself along inside the accessway. The size of the refinery was going to give Cancer a huge advantage, she realized. Without sensors, they could spend a week moving around trying to find each other—and that was assuming Cancer would seek a confrontation. “She’s going to want to escape,” she said. “If she goes down into the extractor rig below, will she have a better route out?”
“Not particularly,” Jessika said. “The extractor rig and refinery where you are have a physical gap between other modules. She’ll have to cross that gap somehow.”
“We’ve got active sensors on all sides of you,” Oistad said. “If she makes a break for it, we’ll know.”
“And if she switches them off, as well?”
“I’m hardening the network,” Tyle said. “But if she does disable some, at least that’ll give us an indication of where she might be.”
Three minutes later Kandara was at level seventeen. If it hadn’t been for Zapata’s guidance graphics, she wouldn’t even have known which way was down, Bremble’s gravity was so slight. She gripped one of the accessway’s struts and held herself motionless. Her helmet sensors scanned around on their maximum magnification. Nothing.
“Do the G8Turing have control over the refinery’s mechez?” she asked.
“No, I shut them out when I restricted the network. We’d have to open up a lot of bandwidth for that,” Oistad said. “That’ll give Cancer more channels to route a call out.”
“Who’s she going to call?
” Kandara muttered. “All right, this is how we play it. Reopen the network as much as you need and move every mechez on the refinery inventory to level fifteen and level nineteen. I want every accessway physically blocked, so no one can get through those levels. Are there enough of them to do that?”
“Yes,” Oistad said.
“Right. Once that’s done, start moving them in to this level. Get the noose around her, and start contracting it.”
While the team started organizing the remotes, Kandara snaked along the accessway. Every time she reached an intersection, she left a drone, then moved on. The one place she didn’t venture into was the control center. She was worried Cancer might have booby-trapped it. In fact, she was surprised there were no smart mines concealed somewhere in the accessways.
Or perhaps there are, and I just haven’t come into trigger range yet.
The thought made slithering along inside the dark, winding accessways a nervy experience. She didn’t usually suffer from claustrophobia, but this was pushing her close.
“Kandara, we might have a problem,” Jessika said.
She froze, surrounded by misty green thermal outlines, with the power cables forming an irregular glowing web around her—none of it real. The refinery’s vibration was still present in the strut she was holding. No sign of a human heat signature. “What?”
“Something’s blocking an extractor rig ice-feed chamber. Eight levels below you.”
“You mean a feed inside the extractor rig?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said there’s no way out down there?”
“Oh, shit. The feeds, they bring in ice.”
“Ice?”
“Yes. The refinery process uses a lot of water.”
“Where the hell does ice come fr— Oh, fuck! I said shut down all the portals.”
“One of the harvesters on Verby is malfunctioning,” Oistad said. “The ice feed has shut down. Sensors are offline. I can’t see the damage.”
“The damage is her, going through,” Kandara realized. “Where the hell is Verby?”
“It’s one of Lanivet’s moons,” Zapata informed her. “The surface is covered with extensive ice oceans. The water has a low mineral content, and is therefore an excellent resource for both industrial systems and habitat biospheres.”
“Mother Mary. Jessika, give me a route down to the ice-feed chamber. Fast!”
“Coming through now.”
Kandara started to haul herself along the accessway, following the glowing purple route line now splashed over her lens. “Is there anyone on Verby?”
“No, just the G7Turings controlling the ice harvest. The operation is completely automated.”
“Good. You know the drill. Shut down every portal. Properly, this time.”
“Kandara,” Oistad said, “the ice feeds are essential to half of Bremble’s industrial systems; and the habitats need water, too.”
“How many people does she have to kill before you listen to me?” she shouted. “Shut the fucking ice feeds down!”
“Powering them down now,” Jessika said. “Listen, that harvester she went through, it has three ice feeds into the extractor rig. I’ve stopped the other two.”
Kandara smiled to herself. Clever girl, she thought. The locations of the other two feed chambers were suddenly splashed across her vision. She changed course and went for one Cancer hadn’t used to reach Verby. Most likely the diabolical woman was waiting on the other side, or worse, a drone would be watching, and she’d blow the power while Kandara was halfway through.
Unless she’s bluffing our bluff. She shook her head, angry with herself. Too paranoid.
The ice-feed chamber was a broad cylinder that sprouted five branches, which then went on to branch again deeper into the extractor rig, like some ancient tree that had long been entombed by machinery. As Kandara approached, an access hatch near the base slid aside. She eased herself in.
When Jessika shut down the ice flow, the extractor rig had continued to swallow the chunks of ice already inside the feed chamber. Now the cylinder which minutes ago had been packed with a constant stream of crushed ice was empty apart from a tenuous mist of twinkling particles. Kandara pushed off cautiously and sent several smart pellets on ahead. They revealed very little, just more curving metal walls, which was the mirror image of the extractor rig end; the harvester supplied the ice through more than a dozen smaller pipes. But her sensors couldn’t detect any other sensors watching for her.
No more calculating risks. No more doubts.
Go!
She pushed off hard, zipping through the portal. Verby’s one-fifth standard gravity abruptly tugged her down. She landed with a shoulder roll, springing up fast, which sent her rising off the floor. At the same time she held her left arm out and moved it in a smooth arc, firing armor-piercing rounds as she went. The munitions blasted through the feed chamber’s walls on either side and above her, exploding inside the harvester. Her feet were pushed down by the rifle’s impulse. She could feel the harvester juddering beneath her soles as it ground to a halt.
“Do you know how much those cost?” Tyle asked dryly.
“I thought you guys didn’t lower yourself to talk money?”
“In terms of resources, and time to replace it.”
“You wanted an accountant to do this job? Should’ve hired one.” The ruined feed chamber began to split asunder; she stood directly under the slowly widening gap and jumped. In the low gravity, her gened-up muscles pushed her an easy five meters upward, landing precariously on a warped and splintered section of the upper bodywork toward the rear of the machine. “Now close down the last portals on Verby. Nothing apart from the data links, and if they’re above ten centimeters in diameter, cut them too.”
“Already done,” Jessika said. “There’s no way off that moon.” She paused. “For either of you.”
“You hear that?” Kandara asked, raising her voice despite how foolish that felt.
No answer. But then she hadn’t expected one. She started to pick her way along the twisted bodywork as the broken harvester swayed about, settling ponderously.
It was a huge vehicle. The blade scoop at the front was thirty meters wide, cutting a five-meter-deep channel through the frozen ocean as it rolled forward. Power blades along the lower edge could chop through granite if they ever encountered any—not that this moon had any rock even approaching that level of toughness. The harvester fleet operated on the bottom of a pit the size of a small sea they’d gouged out over the last twenty years. In the distance, she could see vertical cliffs an easy three kilometers high.
When she looked up, Lanivet formed a vast crescent that filled a third of the sky. Its seething cloud bands were pale pink, streaked with white, with occasional slashes of cobalt blue squirting up from the unknown depths. A myriad of cyclones churned arrogantly through them, though nothing the world-swallowing size of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The waning gas giant radiated a pastel light that shaded the sparkling ice a gentle damask.
Kandara clambered up the harvester’s twisted metal and composite bodywork to the highest point and scanned around. “She’s either got the greatest stealth technology ever built, or she’s still here.”
“Can you see any footprint tracks leading away?” Tyle asked. “There’s no stealth that can cover that up.”
She studied the surface a little more closely, moderately impressed with Tyle’s suggestion. Five kilometers away another harvester was slowly braking, with high fantails of ice grains rising in sluggish arcs from either side of its scoop blade. The constant deluge from all the harvesters had coated the pit’s surface of solid ice with several centimeters of ice granules, as neat and uniform as a Zen garden. “I can’t see any tracks,” she reported. “Jessika, can you get me any images of Cancer coming out to Bremble today? Specifically, what space su
it she was wearing.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this. Hang on.”
Kandara moved down the harvester several meters; being perched on top would make her a splendid target. But I haven’t been shot at. Why?
The whole situation was making her jittery, gnawing at her resolution. Cancer wouldn’t hold back. Did I get her with those first shots into the harvester? Could I be that lucky?
“Get me a schematic of the harvester,” she told Zapata. “She’s got to be inside somewhere.”
The translucent image splashed across her tarsus lenses highlighted the harvester’s internal walkways and small maintenance cubicles. Ninety percent of the interior was solid machinery. Of course, the explosive projectiles had opened up gashes big enough to shelter a human, but not many.
Kandara scattered a dozen microdrones and watched them scurry through the fissures. They’d be able to find her elusive target quickly enough.
“You were right,” Jessika said. “I’m looking at video of her going out to Bremble this morning. She was in a standard-issue space suit.”
“Did she bring it with her from Sol, or is it one of yours?”
“Ours.”
“Ping the beacon.”
Kandara held her breath, but the transponder didn’t respond.
“Sorry,” Jessika said. “She’s wiped the standard routines.”
Or one of my explosive rounds hit her. “Worth a try. But at least it’s not armor.”
“Kandara,” Tyle said. “Are you shooting at the harvester again?”
“No. Why?”
“I’m reviewing the telemetry—what’s left. Systems are going offline in the main power network. It looks like they’re being physically damaged.”
“Show me,” Kandara instructed.
The schematic splashed up the harvester’s power system. A tiny portal supplied power to the vehicle from Akitha’s solarwell electrical grid, but there were several quantum batteries distributed through the big machine as backups, keeping essential equipment active in the case of a power failure. If the harvester cooled below thirty Celsius, it would be a lot tougher for the maintenance teams to restore.