Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER TWENTY}

“Where’s your friend?” Daran Vatta asked as Teague came through Morningstar’s docking tube.

“With Rector Vatta,” Teague said. “Or rather, in her house. I’ve got his instructions.”

“And I’ve got hers,” Captain Vatta said.

Teague nodded. “Captain.”

“Call me Ginny, now we’re on the same mission. How’s your transform coming?”

“I’m in the part where I’m making up for lost awake time. It feels like my bones are moving inside the soft tissue.”

The captain wiggled her shoulders. “I wouldn’t like that. You want the big ansible first?”

“Yes—Rafe says we should start with that.”

“Strap in, then. We’re going to use the hot button.”

Slotter Key had only one ansible platform, carrying both a general communications and a financial ansible. Teague had easily absorbed Rafe’s information about what might need to be done—or look like it had been done—and after a series of hard-G shoves, he suited up and checked everything Rafe had told him to check. The automatic system that had reported to ISC when it was turned on had then reduced capacity by 5 percent; Teague had the code to bring it back up to 100 percent and keep it there.

Then another transit back to low orbit around the planet, moving from one repeater satellite to another. These were much smaller, though larger than Slotter Key’s own weather and communications satellites, all painted bright white with the ISC logo typical of ISC installations.

When they had matched orbit with the first of five, Teague suited up, hooked in his tether, and went out the courier’s air lock, monitored by Daran. He laid one of the patches Rafe had given him against the maintenance hatch of the repeater and peeled it away carefully, stowing it in the pouch Rafe had labeled EVIDENCE 1, then recorded that repeater’s serial number in video. He tucked the pouch in a carry bag and opened the hatch. Rafe had said the software to make the repeater refuse to accept calls to, or incoming from, a segment of the planet’s surface would have to be plugged into the repeater’s control panel, not uploaded from below.

He looked the panel over carefully. This—and this—and all those—were normal, standard ISC installation. But that, plugged into a jack on the lower right, was not. He used his suitphone to call Rafe; the signal bounced to the repeater in a better position to relay the call to Grace Vatta’s house.

“Found it,” he said, when Rafe answered. “Take it out now?”

“Run Analytics 27a-14,” Rafe said. “The big one?”

“What you thought. Slowed down, but the code worked; it’s at a hundred percent now.” Teague used the control panel keypad to enter the code for that Analytics string. Rafe, he knew, could now access the same data he was getting. He waited for Rafe’s response.

“It’s going to trigger something if you pull it or fry it,” Rafe said finally. “You can’t—I couldn’t, unless I took the thing inside and took it apart very carefully—keep it from signaling. But you can restore function. Pull it.”

“Done,” Teague said, pulling out the little yellow-tipped device.

“Enter 72RZ459. That’ll give us directional control of video scan from down here. How long to get them all done?”

“Captain says several hours to get from one to another if you don’t want them bumped out of orbit.”

“Fine. Sleep when you need to. Pull all those components, bring them back here—though they may self-destruct so ask if there’s a good solid vault in the ship. Same codes for each, run the same Analytics before you pull ’em.”

“I’m okay. See you when I get back.”

Teague closed the maintenance hatch gently and wiped the surface with a cloth that left a slight glaze on the shiny paint. Maybe someone else would like to contribute trace data.

Back in the ship, he asked about safe storage for something that might blow up or melt or otherwise self-destruct.

“Safe? That would be throwing it into a star. How big is it?”

Teague pulled it from the carry-bag. “This.”

“Oh, well. And there’s more than one? They’ll all fit in the ammo storage; it’s supposed to withstand all the ammunition blowing at once. Never tried it, though.”

He looked at her and did not ask. He had seen no signs of weapons aboard Morningstar. “You’re cold and you’re still in trans,” Daran said. “Sit here and I’ll fix you some tea. Strap in; Gin’s going to shove us again.”

Teague did as he was told; Daran fixed him tea and handed him a couple of ginger biscuits, then headed aft. Through the open cockpit door, Teague could see the captain wiggling the handset gently, easing them away from the repeater before throwing them at the next. He sipped the tea, realizing he was in fact cold and hungry, and had finished one of the biscuits when Daran came back with a thick-walled box.

“This should do it, unless they’re really suicidal,” Daran said. “And we can monitor what’s going on inside.” He pointed to a readout on one side. “Put it in there, and I’ll put this back in the vault.”

Teague dropped the little object in the box; Daran closed it, carried it back aft… Teague thought better of looking around the corner to see exactly where. He himself was neither Vatta nor ISC. And he wished his bones would quit writhing around.

Three hours later, they were hanging about three meters off another of the repeaters, and Teague suited up again, readying his carry-bag. The procedure was the same, except that he did not call Rafe this time, and he came back aboard feeling more tired than he expected, until he added up the hours since he’d slept last. “I need to rest before the next one,” he told the captain. “My hands aren’t steady.”

“We’ll go back to the station,” the captain said. “Only safe place to hang out, close in like this. Bunk in Vatta’s crew overnight quarters, start again in eight hours. You can catch some sleep now, if you want.”

“No thanks. Knowing I’ll have to get up and walk steadily when we reach the station, I’d better stay up until then.”

“Hang on, then, it’ll be rough.”

Teague had never imagined a pilot of anything—water-boat or spacecraft—taking such delight in pushing a vehicle near its limits. Then he considered what little he knew of the Vattas, the few he’d met and those he’d heard about. Apparently they liked a kind of danger he hoped never to encounter.

By the time they reached the station, he felt nauseated as well as exhausted. Captain Vatta steered him firmly into the hands of the Vatta section’s medbooth, where he got a shot of something to settle his stomach and a tab for sleep. “You’d best stay here,” the medic said. She was entirely too cheerful, he thought, but he was asleep before he knew it.

Grace arrived home to the news that Teague was bunked in on the station, and Rafe had confirmed the blocking of scans over Miksland, and unblocked them.

“We can expect whoever did this to notice,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t unblock normal communications channels, just the satellite visual scan. If Ky’s people found out their comunits were working, they might give the other side too much info.”

“What about your special link?”

“Nothing yet. Here—I’ve got the scans loaded up for you. I can block them again, from here, with the changes Teague made.”

“Very resourceful,” Mac said.

“My code still gives me access to all ISC equipment,” Rafe said.

The scans came up on Grace’s main screen. “That cloud will pass,” Rafe said. “There—you can see the coast—that bay—that orange dot on the white?” He froze the image. “Zooming. It looks like some kind of fabric.”

“Part of a life raft, it could be,” Mac said. He glanced at Grace. “So they made it that far.”

“Now heading away from the water,” Rafe said, “you can see shadows on the terrain—and there are the buildings. And the runway.”

“What’s the tower?”

“I don’t know, but it’s there. Those two look like hangars, and these two look like ordinary military prefab huts. Guard post, maybe?”

“If they could get there—” Grace did not finish the sentence.

“Somebody’s there.” Rafe reached over and tapped out a code. The display darkened, but the two smaller buildings glowed. “Heat signature. If the bad guys can snag the scans—and they probably can—they’ll know someone’s there. That’s why I want to turn the scans off, now that we know for sure they’re there.”

Grace nodded. “Do it.”

Rafe tapped in another series of commands. “It’s blocked. We have these to look at—some from their night, a few from their day. But I’m still sure they have an automatic warning to let them know someone’s been tinkering with the satellites.”