"Shit," said Gorman. "Why didn't it stay on him?"
"The camera," Spencer replied, "was positioned on a nearby water tower and just following a program to record new arrivals. It picked up this before our informant knew to look out for this ship and Thrace, or rather 'Marcus Spengler. »
"So, do we know where he is now?" asked Travis.
"Enquiries have been made and are still being made," said Spencer. "He stayed in a local hostelry where he met with the local leading light of the community, then rented a car and headed out of town." With her hands on her hips she gazed round at the three of them. "That same leading light, an unpleasant individual called Tarren, will be our point of entry."
Cormac felt the Sadist shift underneath him and heard a change in an engine note he had not even been aware of until then, and guessed the ship had now fallen into orbit about Shaparon.
"We can't land this ship," he observed.
Spencer shook her head. "We take a shuttle down—the one aboard is old and battered enough to fit in."
"Well, thank you," said Sadist.
Spencer continued as if the ship AI had not spoken. "No one will know where it came from since we're now geostat on the other side of the world and running chameleonware." She paused, gazing for a moment at Cormac. "No need for complications on this world, and not much need to use Cormac here as bait. Our informant tells us that Tarren is guarded, but not heavily. We go in, we make a few pertinent queries, then we go find where Carl has gone. Any questions?"
"Do we even have to pretend not to be ECS?" asked Gorman.
"As a precautionary measure, yes. Tarren might be some small-time hoodlum, but Carl Thrace is not. He might have methods in place to warn him should we be too overt. We'll just play the part of bounty hunters who are after Marcus Spengler and are prepared to pay for information. It might even be that we won't have to kill anyone."
"What about scanning for Carl's location?" asked Cormac.
"Double-edged sword," said Spencer. "Sadist's chameleonware is not the best, hence our present geostat positioning, and using wide-scale active scanning, which will be what's required since he's had over a week now to lose himself down there, further reduces the ware's efficiency, and such scanning might also be detected by Carl."
"If he is even here," Crean observed.
"Yes, if he is even here," Spencer agreed. "All the departures from the spaceport, since his arrival, have been uploaded here. If we don't find him down there then it's back to searching. Now get yourselves kitted-out appropriately and get down to the shuttle bay."
As Spencer had opined, the shuttle would certainly not look out of place. It was a battered brick of a vehicle with a bubble cockpit to the fore and two ion drive nacelles at the rear which, after a bit of a tweak by Sadist, immediately started coughing and spluttering and burning dirty. It was also dented, scratched, and there was a large repair patch welded just behind the cockpit where, so Sadist informed them, someone had tried to cut the craft in half with a particle cannon.
Cormac sat back in his seat behind the cockpit and tried to feel comfortable in his jeans, enviroboots, sleeveless shirt, weapons harness and assortment of well-worn armament. He was supposed to look like a bounty hunter but felt more like an extra in some Old West VR fantasy. Crean and Travis wore similar attire and Gorman wore fatigues, a bomber jacket and baseball cap. Spencer, who sat at the shuttle's controls, had not changed her clothing, her cool-killer long leather coat perfect for the role.
The vehicle started rattling the moment it hit atmosphere and flecks of burning matter began shooting up over the chainglass cockpit. Cormac wondered if they might be bits of atmosphere seal, or maybe burning wiring. Shaparon loomed ahead: a white orb streaked with umber and black scars. There were no oceans down there and only nitrogen and a few trace gases comprised the atmosphere, hence the breather mask depending from Cormac's belt attached by a long thin tube to a high-pressure oxygen bottle, and hence the reason the place had never been heavily colonised. Apparently, that had been due to change, for the residents had started building terraforming installations, but then the Prador had attacked.
After a little while the rattling ceased and the world dropped from view as the craft bellied in. Now they were deep in the atmosphere, Spencer engaged antigravity and put them in a spiralling glide down towards the spaceport. They descended through darkness then into day as the glare of the white sun broke over the horizon. The day cycle here was just over fifty-two solstan hours and they would be landing five hours after dawn. Peering over Spencer's shoulder, Cormac observed, on a subscreen, the view below of folded gutlike mountains rendered in the colours of cream and butterscotch, then all at once the shuttle was over a plain, and when the human settlement slid into view it was a bewildering splash of colour on a white sheet. Spencer banked their craft and brought it steadily lower, and it was only when they were right over the settlement did Cormac recognise the spaceport.
"No control tower, then," Gorman observed.
"It's hardly a busy place," Spencer replied.
Their dust-down was suitably bumpy for such a craft and in a moment they were unbuckling their safety harnesses and moving back through the cramped interior to the single door. Cormac donned his mask, as did the others, though of course the two Golem did not require them, then Travis undogged the door and pushed it open.
"Remember," said Spencer over com. "All you've got to do is stand around looking mean unless the shit hits."
"Thanks for the detailed briefing," said Gorman.
Spencer shot him a look, but it was difficult to tell what it signified now that she wore a breather mask across her mouth. She stepped outside after Travis and the rest followed, Cormac coming last. He stood there for a moment blinking in the glare, and feeling a momentary stab of pain in his forehead, as if his earlier headache was searching for a way back in.
"Here," said Gorman, handing him something.
Why hadn't he himself thought of that? These completed the image. With some relief he put on the sunglasses, then set out as Spencer, gesturing for them all to follow, moved off. However, the sunglasses didn't help too much as another spear of pain penetrated his forehead and lingered, twisting every now and again.
The spaceport was not enclosed and there was no security of any kind, unless you counted the two individuals who stepped out of one of the nissen huts to silently watch them traipse by. Beyond the huts and the fuel silos, on a ridge, stood the water tower upon which the camera must have been positioned. Studying his surroundings, Cormac realised that, though this was an airless world, there was still life here. The ground of the spaceport had been mainly compacted white dust, showing here and there chemical spills from the spacecraft, and nothing else. Here the ground was scattered with white and grey rocks either formed from that same bland dust or what had been ground up to form it, and lying amidst them were green globules spreading networks of fibrous brown roots or mycelia over the ground about them. There were also arthropods here that looked like large, black four-legged termites, and other things with shells like terrapins but far too many legs.