Behind the cluster of rocks was a confused knot of trails. Carialle and Keff flew back and forth, trying not to destroy the delicate veins, as they read the order of the events that had gone before they arrived.
"Looks like they were here before," Keff said, thoughtfully, sitting at the console with his chin in his hand. "Then they went away and came back again. Where did they go?"
"I think this is where they waited to ambush the DSC-902," Carialle said. "Look at that mass of exhaust particles. Those three ships accelerated to get there, then sat a long time before kicking out. They did it twice, the second time when they came after us. They did grab the ship with a Core-look at the hard thruster emissions from two ships."
"But what happened to the DSC-902's emissions?" Keff asked, studying the starchart.
Tall Eyebrow let out a little gasp and planted both hands firmly over his mouth and nostrils.
"That's it," Carialle said. "Suffocation. They sealed it up in a forcefield like TE's shield, and carried it away."
"But where did it go?"
Carialle bracketed the traces that led away from the cluster. "If I follow the tangle correctly, they went galactic clockwise."
Not far from the original point of contact, the celestial fragments grew larger, until the belt alongside which they were traveling looked like a gigantic string of brown-red pearls. The spider webbing of ions led from every direction to the largest one. Even from a distance, the artificial structures there were apparent.
"A base!" Keff exclaimed. "Give us a closeup, Cari."
The facility looked like a travesty of the spaceport on Cridi. What must have been a small fuel depot huddled beside a prefabricated dome of extreme age. Both were riddled with pockmarks from meteor strikes. Around them lay debris Carialle recognized with a sinking heart as sections from destroyed or dismembered spaceships. The most recent wreck was frosted white. The residual moisture from the life support system of the DSC-902 had not yet had time to leach away in vacuum. Its hatch and all the cargo bay doors stood open, unspeakably lonely and vulnerable. Lights were on inside.
"Oh, no," Keff whispered. Tall Eyebrow murmured a tiny, sympathetic creak.
"The hull shows half a dozen breaches," Carialle said, pulling a closeup of the imploded hull plates, showing black holes partially opaqued by the film of ice. "You can see what happened. They held it in place, and they peppered it with laser fire. See how rough the holes are. They were using a mining laser, not weapons grade. I'm getting no trace of radiation from the engines. It looks like our three friends stripped out the drives. No signs of life."
"Bodies?" Keff asked.
Without a word, Carialle magnified a small section of the asteroid's surface. What Keff had taken for a heap of short lengths of tubing in the faint light from the distant sun were half a dozen human bodies. The expression on the staring faces was that of surprise. Keff swallowed hard.
"Those bastards."
"There's more," Carialle said. She shifted focus to another one of her cameras. They were above the base now, able to see the ruins on the other side of the structures. Carialle showed them pieces of tiny ships, strewn like discarded toys.
"Even their Cores couldn't protect them," Carialle said.
"Cridi? They did not crash?" TE asked, smashing one of his long hands down on the other.
"They did not crash," Carialle replied grimly. She showed them the parts of the ships. On extreme magnification the pair in the main cabin could see that the pieces showed little damage, except where the laser holes were evident.
"And the crews?" Keff asked, subvocally.
"Dead," Carialle said, without elaborating, but she made a comprehensive recording of the pathetic scatter of small bodies in protective suits near the landing pad. Carialle wished she could not see them. At least she could spare Keff and TE that, and showed them the bodies from a distance. Keff and TE fell silent.
"I hope we blew up the ones carrying the Cores," Carialle said. "This is what the CenCom should see: what happens when that extraordinary power falls into the wrong hands."
"Four ships," Keff said sadly. "All destroyed."
"More," TE signalled suddenly, pulling handfuls of air towards his chest.
"What do you mean?" Carialle asked.
The Ozranian leader tapped the side of his head. "Observation. Please put the pieces in the air for me. Like the puzzle."
"Ah, I get you." Carialle blew up the parts of the ships and placed them in holograph form before him. With lightning speed the Frog Prince reconstructed three small ships from which pieces were missing, but there were parts left over that could not possibly belong to any Cridi ship. Among the leftovers Carialle recognized a nose cone and landing fins of an obsolete model of a human-made ship. She constructed a hologram of the completed ship around the screen image. Keff gawked at Tall Eyebrow.
"How did you do that?" he asked.
The Ozran shrugged modestly. "Observation," he repeated.
"That spatial talent of his," Carialle said. "Extraordinary. I'd like to see his people engaged in engineering design work with ours."
"But, see what is left," TE continued. "It is like yours, but not like."
"It's old," Carialle said. "Do you recognize the model, Keff? It dates from fifty or seventy years back. About the time that Cridi got bottled up."
"So a Central Worlds explorer might have found the Cridi before now," Keff said thoughtfully. "These pirates destroyed them before they could get back to report on their findings."
"Maybe they didn't find Cridi," Carialle said.
"What do you mean?"
"These thieves don't live on this rock," she said. "They can't. There's no facilities, no supplies, barely any air. They didn't simply intend to destroy the ship, or they would have left the hulk floating where it died. These unknowns are ambushing and robbing starships. This is a chop shop, a staging area. They come from somewhere else. They go somewhere else, with the stolen booty. Doesn't it make sense that it's right here, in the system?"
Keff's teeth showed in a feral grin. "It does. We'll find them. We can't let these brutes get away with mass murder." He poked a finger at the shining strands in the holotank. "Shall we see if those ley lines from the engines lead anywhere?"
Chapter Nine
"Planet Five," Carialle said, turning all her video screens to the view of the dark hulk silhouetted by the distant sun. "The traitors live right here in the Cridi system."
"Let's take them," Keff said, leaning forward and slamming his fists together. In the navigation tank, strands of ion emission joined hundreds more in a skein around the black sphere, like webs tying up a fly. That was the center. So close, and yet no one knew it was here.
"Have you brushed your teeth and said your prayers?" Carialle asked, interrupting his concentration. "We can't destroy a base by ourselves, let alone a planet."
"No," Keff sighed, sitting back. Reason had been restored. "But we can get data to instruct a CW fleet. Let's see what's down there."
Keeping in the widest possible orbit, the ship circled around to sunside. It looked an inhospitable place, but there were sure signs of habitation, and the three moons, each the size of Old Earth, could have concealed fleets of pirates. Carialle listened on the frequencies she had observed the three assassins using. She picked up a familiar drone.
"Landing beacon," she said, putting the sound on audio for the others. "So far, nothing else. If there are detection devices out there I'm risking having another force come boiling after me, so I'm keeping thrusters ready to run back toward Cridi if necessary."