Wasteland of flint

Gretchen, wondering why her mouth tasted so foul, managed a 'Huh?'

Maggie looked off-screen for a moment, her ears pricked up. 'The Midge houses a comm array in the upper wing, a big, broad surface. A great transmitter and receiver. So Russovsky changed her messaging configuration here on the ship – I found where she broke into the system and tweaked some access settings – so her Midge could connect to the Palenque on a maintenance channel and transmit her messages. The burst I intercepted was big – because it's filled with video from the cameras on the ultralight – and she uploads every morning.'

Gretchen blinked. 'Wait – so she's keeping a record of where she flew during the day?'

'Better,' Maggie grinned, and this time she didn't bother to hide her fangs. 'She's transmitting all of her data from the geosensors on the Midge; each day she flies, she's mapping the planetary surface, taking gravity measurements, even spectroscope of exposed rock formations…everything she can pick up.'

'Ah.' Gretchen felt her mind begin to work, sleep-rusty gears ticking over. 'But her data doesn't go through a known channel – and nothing that Clarkson would notice. So everything's stored in Palenque main comp?'

The Hesht's ears flicked and a queer, pleased gleam spilled into her eyes. 'Not at all. The Midge sends the data here with a tail-twister of a routing header – notes on where the message should go, who it's intended for – to sit on the t-relay until main comm traffic is low. Then Russovsky's message wakes up and sends itself to Ctesiphon Station. She lets it break up into sections if need be, so if there's a lot of traffic, her entire message won't get through for a couple hours. But once at the big emitter on Ctesiphon, it gets forwarded all the way to the University of Aberdeen, on Anбhuac!'

'She's sending the data to herself, at home, in her lab.' Gretchen made a face. Her tongue tasted strange. I am never drinking Blake's 'special' vodka again. Ever. No matter how much he begs. 'That's very clever. She's not paying for the transmission time, is she?'

Maggie laughed out loud, a rumbling, crackling cough. 'The accounting system here, and on Ctesiphon, always allows a certain amount of synchronization traffic between relays. Each station has to identify itself and make sure messages are passing properly between them. Russovsky's data goes over in the checksum of the synchro packets, or attached to other messages. If anyone pays, it's the Company.'

'Fine. Fine.' Gretchen didn't really care about the technical details. 'The comm array has to get a fix on her transmitter then, right?'

The Hesht nodded. 'I have a fix, to the centimeter, of where she set down at sunrise today. She's flying tonight, I suppose, but when she transmits in the morning…'

'Tell Fitzsimmons and Bandao to gear up,' Gretchen said, lying back down, the sleepbag helpfully curling up around her shoulders. 'They need to be ready to drop shuttle one as soon as you've got a fix and pick her up. Bring her back to the ship. Parker and I will come up in the other shuttle as soon as we can.'

Maggie nodded, but Gretchen was asleep and snoring softly before the channel flickered closed.

Hummingbird's eyes opened and he looked expectantly at his display. A moment later there was a chiming sound and a v-pane unfolded with the results of his search. Smalls had been capturing an enormous amount of data – the entire planetary surface in visual, plus air temperature and density scans – for weeks and weeks. Scanning such a volume, looking for the silhouette of an ultralight flying a low altitude, proved far more time consuming than the tlamatinime expected. Now he unfolded himself from a waiting posture and tapped the first of the search results.

A highview shot of a Midge sitting on the landing field at base camp appeared.

'No…' Hummingbird flipped through the rest of the results. None of them were useful, though each picture was – with clouds, dust and other interference scrubbed away – a fine picture of a Midge-class ultralight seen from above. 'Strange. Why only base camp? Oh, I see…'

Smiling at his own naivetГ©, Hummingbird expanded his search criteria to include an aircraft in flight, one where the silhouette changed as the ultralight banked or turned, or the recorded image was only partial due to heavy clouds or sandstorms. The search started again and he began reciting a long memory chant to pass the time.

'Even if a man were poor, lowly,' he sang, 'even if his mother and his father were the poorest of the poor, his lineage is not considered. Only the matter of his life matters, the purity of his heart, his good and humane heart, his stout -'

Another chime interrupted, which made Hummingbird frown suspiciously. 'That's too quick!'

He tapped up the image, expecting to find a sand dune or rocky flat. Instead, the glittering shape of an aircraft wing catching the sun was frozen in the satellite picture. Hummingbird blinked in surprise, then zoomed the image. And again. At first the image was blurry, barely the shadow of an angular shape against a field of shattered black lava, then the display panel kicked in and the view sharpened. The tlamatinime pursed his lips. He'd found an aircraft – but not Russovsky's ultralight – or one of the Javan Yards shuttles from the Palenque. Something else, something without Company markings.

'Show me the rest,' he muttered, dialing forward. Far below, in Smalls's lab, one particular c-storage lattice woke to life, reeling off snapshots of the planetary surface taken weeks before. On Hummingbird's panel, a jerky series of images spun past. But the mysterious shuttle was already gone. He backed up, frame by frame, then realized with disgust that Smalls's satellites were only shooting an image every half hour – more than enough time to track a storm, but not swift enough to capture more than an instant of a shuttle's swift passage through the atmosphere.

'Where did you go?' Hummingbird began composing a more detailed search. At the same time he kicked the one image to the Cornuelle's main comp for identification. Then he waited, pondering the grainy, low-def image on his v-pane. The ident came back moments later and Hummingbird nodded, unsurprised, at the identification.

'A Valkyrie,' he read from main comp's concise, clipped summary. 'Mining shuttle, one hundred fifty tons displacement, four engines, sub-light capable. Usually paired with a Tyr-class mobile refinery.' A schematic of the spacecraft was attached – a huge assemblage of ore tanks, drives and shuttle bays. Hummingbird was not familiar with the class of ship – he rarely devoted his attention to navy matters – but the manufacturer was well known to him from certain other business. His lip curled. 'Ship design and construction by Norsktrad Heavy Industries, Kiruna system. A Swedish ship…'

The destruction of the ancient Kingdom of Swedish-Russia on Anбhuac in the previous century had not prevented tens of thousands of Swedes and Russians from leaving the homeworld for the colonies. Indeed, strict Imperial control of their home provinces had probably precipitated the exodus into the outer worlds. Entire companies – some once no more than Swedish governmental departments – had moved offworld as well. Two cold, desolate worlds – yet still habitable – orbiting Kiruna Prime were the center of a thriving manufacturing and shipbuilding industry.

No one, particularly not the Voice of the Mirror, could say the Kirunan companies engaged in treacherous acts. Such an event would have precipitated the destruction of both the colonies and their orbital habitats. Despite this – despite a scrupulous and timely payment of taxes and every outward sign of loyal service to the Empire – far too many Kirunan-built spacecraft found their way into the hands of pirates, rogue miners, Communards, and insurrectionists of all kinds.

'Hummingbird to the Cornuelle,' he said, tapping open his comm. 'I need to speak with Chu-sa Hadeishi immediately.'

The Cornuelle

Finally.

Hadeishi nodded sharply to Hummingbird's image and closed the channel. He swung his command chair to the threat-well at the center of the bridge, a speculative expression on his face. 'Sho-sa Kosho, ship to alert status one. All hands to stations.'

Immediately, even as the captain's words faded from the air, the exec's slim finger stabbed a double-size glyph on her control panel. A sharp hooting sound rang out through every pressurized space on the light cruiser and every comm flashed an attention signal. Kosho was unable to keep a fierce smile from her face, though the cultured, exact voice issuing from the comm was perfectly devoid of emotion. 'All hands to battle stations. All hands to battle