After the Bezovnik crisis, he’d come back to his desk in a panic, knowing that he would never get the signal processor reprogrammed in time. He’d flipped through page after page of electronic manual before he found the right section. Then it was almost an hour before he could modify the sample code into something remotely usable and test it on an emulator.
It was buggy. And all it did was find a leak, not stop it.
When Edvardsen came stalking over, he’d been expecting the axe to fall. He simply didn’t have anything to report yet. But instead she announced Orosco’s death, and Eccles had sagged with relief.
Bezovnik still wanted the patch, she said. Eccles had nodded obediently, then flipped the computer off as soon as her back was turned. Maybe the scientists could work these insane hours on academic adrenaline, but he had no reward except greasy potato chips and a steady stream of gripes. He wasn’t about to invest hours in a pointless monument to somebody’s paranoia. Not if the spy was dead.
But now the whale had spit Jonah out again, and Eccles was in deep, deep trouble. He started to pull up his source code, then changed his mind and opened a direct channel to the control interface on the signal processor. First plug the leak and then worry about a permanent fix. The time stamp on his alert was only about three minutes old, so the problem had barely resurfaced. Maybe nobody would ever know.
After a quick glance through the documentation, he tapped his way tentatively through several menus, and manually dumped the unwanted signal. That would stop it as long as the piggyback used its current frequency.
With scarcely a pause in his keystrokes, he switched to an admin session on the satellite. Here he was on slightly more familiar ground; it was a matter of a couple minutes to hunt up the record of the unwanted signal and purge it. Unless a snooper had compromised the system and was downloading from the cache in real time, they’d never see whatever that brief three minutes contained.
That reminded him: he ought to go purge the whole cache and check the security logs on the satellite, as soon as he had the program written and could breathe a little easier.
He reactivated his compiler and got to work, hoping feverishly not to see Edvardsen or Bezovnik until he was finished.
47
Oristano deactivated the viking link and peeled layers of electronics from her face.
The truncated clip they’d managed to download was not very long, but it was scary. Underneath, her skin was ashen. Panic filled her eyes. She felt a tremble from her lips.
Now she knew what Bezovnik was hiding.
Of course, a long career of blackmail and corruption had always meant flirting with fire. If she got caught and they could prove it, she’d spend years behind bars. But somehow the thought had never worried her much. Experience showed that even apprehended, she might buy her way out; isn’t that what her clients did? Or she could wiggle free by exchanging dirty little secrets in the best blackmailer tradition.
Aliens were a whole different story.
In the entire history of civilization, nobody had gambled with bigger stakes. What if the aliens showed up tomorrow and took offense at squatters? What if Bezovnik’s crew unwittingly triggered a signal that alerted a hostile army, and Erisa Explorer was traceable back to Earth? What if Bezovnik smuggled some harmless-looking artifact home—he had to be planning that, if he had any imagination—and it was a bomb or a viral vector?
She had been letting him get away with it.
If anybody found out, there would be no hope of walking away from the powder keg; she’d be at ground zero. They’d lock her up and throw away the key, if she wasn’t executed for treason or eaten alive by some unquarantined plague or cooked by a killer ray under the direction of nonhuman eyes.
There was only one way to salvage things. She had to bust MEEGO immediately.
If not sooner.
48
“It’s me again, Agent Geire. Sorry to interrupt your lunch.” Julie’s voice was quivering with tension.
Geire waved dismissively and pushed aside the half-wrapped sandwich on his desktop, his jaws working to finish a bite. He swallowed and wiped his lips with a crumbled napkin. “That’s fine, Mrs. Orosco. I was just about done, anyway. I imagine you’re calling for a status update.”
Julie nodded. “That, and to give you an update of my own.”
“Well, I’ll go first, but I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. We’re monitoring MEEGO now, but not with any particular success. Agent Oristano is supposed to be calling in a report later in the day.”
“I think I may know what MEEGO is up to, now.”
He raised his eyebrows politely.
“They’ve found aliens.”
Geire’s smile was a trifle condescending. “Intelligent aliens are about as probable as mermaids and flying horses, according to most biologists.”
“Before you write me off as a nut case, let me send you something.”
“What?”
“A clip from my husband’s implants.”
“From before the stampede?”
“After.”
“Then they got some clips before he fell off the skimmer?”
Julie looked confused. “When did that happen? Not in the last few hours.”
“No, no. This was almost thirty-six hours ago.”
“Well, my clip is only half an hour old.”
“But that’s impossible...” Geire caught himself. “MEEGO claims he fell on the way back to their new base camp, and they’re running up big fines stalling the release of routine viking clips from anyone. It means we can’t verify their story one way or another.”
“They’re lying. Rafa’s still broadcasting.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve got his transmissions.”
“How could you do that?”
“Remember the stuff my hacker friend found?”
“In the signal cache? That doesn’t hold viking broadcasts.” The FBI’s own unadvertised stream lived there, but surely she wouldn’t know about that. Even if her hacker friend had found it, the encryption was pretty bullet-proof.
“I have no idea how or why, but every so often the cache gets a new chunk of data. It’s always garbled and encrypted, and it doesn’t use the standard viking codec, but it’s definitely from Rafa.”
“And you say one of these chunks shows little green men?” Geire pulled out a drawer and began to rub lotion onto his cracking palms. His voice still sounded disbelieving.
“Not live aliens. A city, half-buried in jungle. See for yourself.”
Geire looked up as a jumping, static-filled picture flickered on his screen. He watched in silence for almost two minutes. When it was over his hands were frozen, and his face was very, very blank.
“See what I mean?” Julie asked, her face returning.
Geire shook himself and assumed a brisk, businesslike demeanor. “I’m sorry if I came across a bit rude, Mrs. Orosco. It’s just that this turns all sorts of wisdom on its ear.”
“Does this give you what you need to go in and protect Rafa?”
“We can’t let MEEGO cover up something this big. That doesn’t mean we’re going to provide bodyguards for your husband, but I think it’s a safe bet we’ll have agents visiting company headquarters both on Earth and the planet, in fairly short order.”
A wave of relief shot through Julie. For the first time she allowed herself to imagine a peaceful end to this bloody, violent mission. How would it be to hold her husband again?
Of course, if she wanted that to happen, she had to bring up another question as well.
“You were right about MEEGO being dangerous. Someone tried to kill us on Wednesday.”
“Us?”
Julie realized her slip. She’d been trying to keep Satler’s name out of this, so hard questions about illegal hacking didn’t trace back to him. Well, too late now. “Mike Satler. He was going to drive me to the shuttleport, and the skimmer blew up.”
“Not a mechanical problem
?”
“This was an explosion. It was deliberate.”
“Is that why you’re routing this call through an anonomizer?”
Julie nodded. “It spooked us both pretty bad, so we went into hiding. We’ve been paying for everything off his aunt’s card.”
“Would you like some protection till this is all over?”
Julie’s face flooded with relief for the second time in a minute. “Is that possible? You don’t think I’m imagining things?”
Geire replaced his lotion bottle and smiled grimly. “I’d be pretty stupid to say something like that, after the clip I just saw. Tell me where you’re staying, and I’ll send somebody down.”
“I’m not much on Houston geography. I think it’s called the Regal Inn.”
“That’s enough. I’ll get the address and get someone going. It might take an hour or two, though; can you hold out that long?”
Julie nodded eagerly. The whole nightmare was coming to an end; maybe she’d even get a chance to speak to Rafa soon. The sense of liberation was palpable.
“Good. I’ll have my man page you from the lobby when he gets there.”
“Me?”
“The page will be for David Rosales. Is that okay?”
“Yes, but how will I recognize him?”
Geire frowned thoughtfully. “You like apples?”
“Sure.”
“He’ll be reading a novel with an apple in his lap. Walk up and mention it, and he’ll ask if you want a bite. That sound okay?”
“Sounds wonderful.”
49
Rafa opened his eyes feeling totally disoriented. It was pitch dark in the tent, and breezes rolling off the pounding surf twitched the styrocil near his cheek fitfully.
How had he known this was a tent?
Where was he?
What woke him up? He was uneasy for some reason.
The ferocious pain that had seared his ankle and heel unceasingly since the accident on the deck of the skimmer was dull and subdued now. Rafa flexed his knee experimentally, and felt a strange heaviness. No stabbing agony. No sense of contact with the sand beneath his back.
A cast. His foot was in a cast. And so was the arm that had been damaged in the stampede.
He dug strong brown fingers into the sand near his hips, finally registering the gritty texture of the soil.
It all came flooding back to him. He remembered seeing the crew, down on the beach. But they’d looked like they were leaving, and he’d shouted himself hoarse up on the strangely carved alien stairway.
They must have seen him.
Searching his memory, he identified a vague impression of being hauled onto a skimmer deck. A murmur of voices, heavy with incredulity, and a prick on his arm. Then long nothingness, a brief resurfacing to night, Chen’s voice whispering something—something urgent—then more nothing.
His grip on consciousness was still tenuous. A juggernaut of vertigo swept over him. As he battled nausea and disorientation, all went black again.
* * *
Heward approached at a crouch, moving with a catlike grace born of training and long habit. The blade in his hand was a fang that merged almost invisibly into the darkness.
A desolate howl floated from the apron of the jungle.
He smiled.
If anybody remembered that in the morning, it would make the official account of this attack all the more believable. He intended to dispatch Orosco quickly, while he was still sleeping off the sedatives from Chen’s amateurish surgery. Then he’d shred the tent a bit and drag the body down to the water, leaving just enough tell-tale bloodstains and fake howler footprints to pin the blame on a carnivore.
It would be a poor job of camouflage, no doubt, but only minimal plausibility was required. Nobody planetside was about to risk their necks nosing into a private vendetta, and he had no worries about MEEGO’s potential interest in the tragedy.
With luck he’d have time to smuggle out a third load of artifacts, before someone discovered the accident as the shift began.
Bezovnik had set up the looting operation as soon as they arrived. Each night after the crew went to sleep, Heward took a catnap and a monstrous dose of sleep retardant. Then it was off to the ruins, scouring for the choicest articles to sell on the black market.
He had to be careful. Every day, more pieces were studied and cataloged by the crew, under the direction of giddy scientists on earth. He had explicit instructions to avoid anything that made it onto their growing inventory; Erisa Explorer’s records would be scrutinized as soon as the story broke. MEEGO had to demonstrate good faith and lofty principles on paper.
Luckily, there was no shortage of relics to find. Since they’d penetrated the large centrally-located factory-like structure three days ago, he’d been gathering enormous cartons of tools and computer components—that’s what they looked like, anyway—plus the amazingly well preserved wall hangings and weird sculptures—anything that looked easy to carry and was not nailed down. By the time the cataloging work caught up, there would be no way to spot what was missing.
Just like Bezovnik promised, a glowing violet ring blinked them away from the skimmer deck right on schedule every night. Where they went from there, he had no idea—but it was certain that many objects would turn up in black-market auctions on Earth, if they didn’t get snatched by unscrupulous businesses eager to reverse-engineer new technologies.
He didn’t really care.
He was getting paid plenty. And of course he would make much more if he managed to smuggle out the choicest artifacts. His private cache was buried a few hundred meters down the beach. By the time the isolation phase of quarantine came around, he’d have that little trick figured out. Or he could come back later, when comings and goings on this planet were more routine.
A black shape slowly eclipsed a segment of the glowing rings overhead.
Heward studied it unblinkingly. He wasn’t particularly worried about whatever was moaning in the trees; the biologists claimed it was smaller and less dangerous than it sounded, and in a pinch he could use his pistol. But those pufferbellies gave him the heebie-jeebies. They’d been thick as flies for the last couple days; once the whole crew had even had to retreat under the skimmer when one got a bit too close.
He wanted to blast them with the cutting laser they’d been using like a scalpel on the buildings, but even the suggestion had made earthside biologists rabid. “Low-impact observation,” they’d chanted, like so many nutty monks to the priesthood of science. Talk about hypocrisy. Anyway, Heward didn’t know all that much about biology, but he seemed to recall that bees and scorpions and poisonous snakes favored brilliant colors to advertise their lethal weapons; was a little show of mankind’s stinger so out of the biological ordinary?
A gust of air whipped the flaps of the tent. Heward put thoughts of the floating monster out of his head and ducked inside with renewed impatience. Time to get it over with.
* * *
Orosco was lying prone on the clean sand, a long smear of coal on dingy white. His breathing was slow and steady.
With stars and rings blotted out, the darkness was slightly deeper under cloth. Heward went down on one knee and paused for a dozen breaths, allowing his eyes to adjust. He wanted his blade to find a beating heart on the first blow—it would be quieter that way.
Satisfied of the target, his arm flashed up, then plunged with terrific force.
And slammed harmlessly into sand.
A casted arm pulverized Heward’s nose and conjured multicolored stars from his ringing skull, even as Orosco’s torso rolled smoothly under the side of the tent.
Heward vented a vicious oath. He could feel blood streaming down his face from deep cheekbone abrasions and a crushed nasal bridge. A tooth had nearly pierced his mangled lower lip. But he had no time for inventory; Orosco was out of the tent, and if he remained inside, he was a sitting duck.
It was the first time in a long career of street fighting and assault that H
eward had ever felt panicked.
He backpedaled furiously, nearly losing his balance as he stumbled out into starshine again.
Nothing moved.
Cautiously he scanned the beach, blood dripping off his chin in a steady rain of black. Nothing was moving between Heward and the skimmer, which was the obvious destination for someone seeking cover. Anyway, Orosco wouldn’t have had time to make the scramble.
A hundred steps in the opposite direction the domes of the other viking tents crouched in loose formation. Again, too far.
Had Orosco rolled back inside again?
Feeling worried, Heward threw back the flaps, careful to stand well back in case he was rushed.
It took a full ten seconds, staring at the empty tent, before he knew. Then he dashed around the tent and down the wet lip of sand, following footprints that were only half-full of water, cursing his stupidity.
Outmaneuvered at every step. It was pointless to follow; Orosco could be anywhere. The waves jumbled the surface into bubbling regions of ringlight and graduated shadow. A careful swimmer would be almost impossible to spot.
But he had to come back in, sooner or later. Heward scanned the surf line in both directions. Was that a flicker of movement? He took off at a sprint, the knife slashing rhythmic death in his pumping fist. He couldn’t afford to let Orosco skulk around till the others woke up.
Suddenly the lights of the skimmer flashed blindingly. Heward threw up a protective arm from the glare and skidded to a stop, his mind racing through alternatives.
“Stupid, Orosco. Now I know where you are, and I can cover both doors of the cockpit. I’m not such a bad aim with a knife, you know.”
“Is that a fact?” Orosco’s voice sounded calm but tired.
He has to be battling to stay awake, Heward calculated. In fact, that he was conscious at all was hard to believe—let alone that he’d just gone for a dip and then run up the beach with one leg in a cast. The dosage of sedatives he’d received a couple hours ago should have lasted much, much longer—if Chen had truly administered what she claimed.
If she hadn’t, she would pay. But good.
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