"Okay. Go on."
"Next obvious source was a squaddie on training who slipped away. It can happen in the field easily enough. There were eighteen platoons undergoing training in Skin suits today. The nearest training ground to Kuranda was sixty-five kilometers. All the Skins arrived there this morning, and my AS queried every platoon leader to do an immediate head count this afternoon when I started investigating."
"Nobody missing?"
"Not one. I even got a list of squaddies who weren't actually on the training ground this afternoon. Three of them were injured; the hospital confirms where they were. Two had suit faults and got sent back to base; the armory confirms their location."
"Interesting."
"So I checked with skyscan." He nodded at the holographic panes. His DNI routed the file images for him.
Simon watched the picture form in front of him. Kuranda's main street from directly above, reproduced in a slightly washed-out color. He recognized the roof with the graffito open eye. From there it was easy to work out which building was the bar. A couple of pickup trucks were using the street; a few people were scattered about. A white cursor ring began flashing around one man.
"That's our man," Adul said. "And God knows what he looks like."
Simon ordered an image expansion and smiled, rather enjoying the way this was turning out. Worthy opponent, and all that. The image quality left a lot to be desired. The little spy sats that Z-B used to monitor the entire Earth's surface were intended to provide only a general review cover. Their designated function was real-time coverage, where they could be programmed for full-focus resolution. But even so, the memory capacity was adequate for this; he couldn't mistake what he was seeing. "A big hat."
"Yes, sir. I backtracked the time index and followed him from the moment he stepped off the train at Kuranda station. He's wearing it the whole time, and he never looks up."
"What about the man he was meeting?"
"Same problem." The picture changed, with a time index eight minutes earlier. It showed a snap-motion image of a four-wheel-drive jeep pull up at the back of the bar. Someone got out and walked inside.
"Shopkeepers are obviously doing a roaring trade in these hats," Simon muttered. He leaned forward, peering at the frozen picture. "Isn't that one of our jeeps?"
"Yes, sir," Adul said heavily. "The skyscan got its number five-eight-six-seven-ADL-nine-six. According to the transport pool inventory, it was parked here all afternoon. I even used skyscan to track it leaving and arriving back at the base. It used gate twelve on both occasions, and I have the exact times. No record in the gate log."
"Is the gate log e-alpha guarded?" Simon asked sharply.
"No. Nor is the transport pool inventory. But it does use grade-three security encryption."
"They're good, then." Simon nodded approvingly at the holographic pane. "I'll bet you won't be able to backtrack the shooter getting on the train down at Cairns, nor off the sky-cable terminal, either."
"My AS is working on it."
Simon dismissed the image and swiveled his chair so he was facing the wall-window again. The impressive sunbeams had gone from the hills, leaving just stark silhouettes jutting against the fading sky. "They know how to avoid skyscan, and they can help themselves to equipment from the base without leaving any trace. That means they're either officers with high-level access codes, or very experienced squaddies who know the system from the inside. That waitress said she thought they were squaddies."
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would a couple of squaddies go to all that trouble just to have a drink together? They bust over the wire every goddamn night to get down to the Strip."
"Good question. They obviously thought it was worthwhile."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Keep working on it. But if that last backtrack doesn't produce any results, don't bust a ball. Oh, and keep in touch with dear Captain Finemore. I doubt she'll come up with anything, but you never know; we might see a miracle yet."
"So they get away with it."
"Looks like it. Whatever 'it' was."
CHAPTER TWO
It had rained steadily overnight, leaving memu Bay's stone-block streets slippery with water early in the morning when everyone was trying to get to work. Soon after, when the tropical sun rose above the ocean, the pale stone began to steam, boosting the humidity to an intolerable height. But by the afternoon everything had cleared, leaving a sweet cleanliness in the air.
Denise Ebourn took the children outside to enjoy what remained of the day. The playschool building was mostly open to the air, with a red clay tile roof standing on long brick pillars. Vigorous creepers swarmed up the pillars, crawling along the roof and clogging the gutters with diamond cascades of purple and scarlet flowers. Staying underneath the eaves wasn't exactly arduous, but like her little charges Denise wanted to be outside with the freedom it represented.
They raced out across the walled garden, cheering and skipping about, amazingly full of energy. Denise walked between the swings and slides, checking that they weren't overexerting themselves, or daring each other into anything dangerous. When she was happy they were behaving themselves as well as any five-year-olds could, she put both hands on top of the chest-high wall and took in a deep breath, gazing out across the little city.
The bulk of Memu Bay occupied a crescent of alluvial land at the end of a mountain range, a perfect natural sheltered harbor. Its more expensive homes clung to the lower slopes of the grassy hills: Roman villas and Californian-Spanish haciendas with the long steps of terraced gardens spilling down the slope in front of them. Sometimes a glimpse of shimmering turquoise betrayed a swimming pool lost amid palisades of tall poplars and elaborate rose-twined columns that surrounded broad sundecks. However, the majority of the urban zone sprawled out around the base of the mountains. As with all new human cities, it had broad tree-lined boulevards slicing clean through the center, fanning out into a network of smaller roads that made up the suburbs. Apartment blocks and commercial buildings alike were all painted plain white, dazzling in the bright afternoon sun, their smoked-glass windows inset like black spatial rifts. Balconies foamed over with trailing plants. Flat roofs sprouted sail-like solar panels that turned lazily to bake themselves in the intense light: they cast long shadows over the silver-rib heat dissipater fins of air conditioners that sprawled horizontally below them. Several parks broke up the city's aching glare, verdant green oases amid the whiteness; their lakes and fountains sparkled in the sun.
Denise always found the terrestrial vegetation a peculiar color, paradoxically unnatural. If she squinted inland, she could see the boundary just visible against the large mountains in the far distance. Terrestrial grass had pushed right up to the edge of the area sterilized by the gamma soak. Beyond that, Thallspring's indigenous vegetation swept away into the haze horizon. A more resolute color, reassuringly blue green; plants out there had bulbous, heavier leaves and glossy stems.
She'd grown up in the hinterlands—Arnoon Province, where human colonization had little impact on native life. Valleys of settlers escaping the restrictions of the majority civilization, as can be found on any human frontier. They lived amid alien beauty, where the vegetation could prove harmful to the unwary. Thallspring's botanical chemistry didn't produce the kind of proteins people or animals from Earth could digest. However, Arnoon's highland forests did cultivate the willow web, which the settlers harvested. When woven correctly it formed a silky waterproof wool that the city dwellers valued. It wasn't a fabulously profitable activity, but it allowed them to sustain their loose community. They were a quiet folk whose chosen life had given Denise a happy childhood, benefiting from the kind of rich education that only a starfaring species could provide while remaining firmly rooted in the nature of her adopted world. A life that was more secure than she ever realized because of their private cache of knowledge, subtly enforcing every core value of their lifestyle.