suspecting. But it’s a lot more difficult to conceal flights in and out of Yellowstone. They must have looked on it as a temporary holding point until they could prepare somewhere else in the Band. But then Aurora made her move.”
“This is good work, Tom,” Aumonier said.
“But the point still holds. Neither Panoply nor the local enforcement agencies have the resources to comb the whole planet looking for a secret hideaway, especially not now.”
“We don’t have to comb. I think I know exactly where they are.” Dreyfus indicated the night-time face of Yellowstone in the Solid Orrery. It was almost entirely black, except for a cold blue flicker of frozen lightning at the southern pole.
“Saavedra’s ship was stealthed, but nothing’s truly invisible, not even a nonvelope. To avoid being pinned down, Saavedra had to move quickly and exploit gaps in CTC’s tracking, just like any prefect on sensitive business.”
“How does that help us?”
“It means her options were limited when she hit atmosphere. I’m sure she’d have preferred to come in slowly, but that would have meant spending too much time in near-Yellowstone space. So she came in hard and fast, using the atmosphere itself as a brake.”
“And we got a hit,” Aumonier said.
Dreyfus smiled. Jane was one step ahead of him, but he liked it that way. He felt as if the two of them were a double act, feeding each other lines so that they both looked better before the other prefects. The others must have thought that the whole performance had been rehearsed.
“The cams detected this flash,” Dreyfus said, letting the Orrery scroll forward to the point he had tagged. A tiny pink spot of light waxed and waned near Yellowstone’s equator.
“It matches the expected entry signature for a cutter-sized vehicle moving at about the same speed Saavedra had just before she dropped out of range. It’s her, Seniors.”
“Ships are coming and going from Yellowstone all the time,” Clearmountain said.
“But not that fast. Most ships come in slow, settling down into the atmosphere on controlled thrust. And there’s hardly been any routine traffic since the supreme prefect polled for the use of emergency powers. People are keeping their heads down, hoping this will all blow over.”
“But an entry point is just an entry point,” Baudry said.
“Agreed. I can’t rule out the possibility that Saavedra travelled a lot further within the atmosphere. But if she did, planetary traffic control didn’t pick her up. I think she came in hard and fast close to her destination.”
“But there’s nothing there,” Baudry said. She craned her head slightly.
“I can see the weather pattern over Chasm City, on the sunward face. Unless my knowledge of Stoner geography’s seriously flawed, Saavedra came in thousands of kilometres from any other settlements.”
Dreyfus sent another command to the Orrery.
“You’re right, Lillian. The nearest surface community would have been Loreanville, eight thousand kilometres to the west. But Firebrand wouldn’t have been interested in Loreanville, or any of the domed settlements: there’d have been too much local security for them to continue their activities.”
“So where was she headed?”
“Clear to surface,” Dreyfus told the Orrery. The quickmatter envelope of the planet’s atmosphere dissipated in a puff, revealing the wrinkled terrain of Yellowstone’s crust. It was an icy landscape riven with fissures and ridges, spotted here and there with simmering cold lakes, lifeless save for the hardiest of organisms capable of enduring the toxic chemistry of the methane-ammonia atmosphere.
“There’s still nothing there,” Baudry said.
“Not now. But there used to be.” Dreyfus gave another command and the surface became dotted with a dozen or so vermilion symbols, each accompanied by a small textual annotation.
“What are we looking at, Tom?” Aumonier asked.
“The sites of former Amerikano colonies or bases, predating the Demarchist era. Most of these structures and digs go back three hundred years. They’ve been ruins for more than two hundred.” There was no need for him to labour the point: Saavedra’s entry trajectory had positioned her directly above one of the abandoned colonies.
“Now, this could be coincidence, but I’m inclined to think otherwise.”
“What is that place?” Aumonier asked.
“The Amerikanos called it Surface Operations Facility Nine, or Ops Nine. If they had another name for it, we have no record of it.” Dreyfus shrugged.
“It’s been a long time.”
“But not so long that there isn’t still something there.”
“Firebrand wouldn’t have needed a fully operational base, just somewhere to hide the Clockmaker and keep an eye on it. An abandoned facility would have served them adequately.”
“But is there anything there at all, after all this time?”
“Not much on the surface according to the terrain maps, but the old records say Ops Nine went down several levels. This is quite a stable area, geologically speaking. The subsurface areas may still be relatively intact: even to the extent that they’ll still be airtight.”
Clearmountain blew out slowly.
“Then we’d better get a task force down there immediately. There may be nothing in this, but we can’t take that risk. Our top priority is to secure the Clockmaker.”
“All due respect, Senior,” Dreyfus said, “but I wouldn’t recommend any kind of visible response to this intelligence. Since nothing’s happened so far, we can be reasonably sure that Aurora hasn’t made the same deductions we have. But if we start retasking assets—sending deep-system vehicles into the atmosphere—Aurora’s going to see that and wonder what’s got us so interested in an abandoned Amerikano base.”
“And I wouldn’t expect her to take long to put two and two together,” Aumonier said.
“No: Tom’s correct. We need to respond, but it has to be a covert approach. We need to secure and protect the Clockmaker before Aurora even has a hint as to what we’re up to. That rules out any mass concentration of assets or personnel.” She paused heavily.
“But someone will still have to go in. I’d volunteer to do it—I’ve already survived direct contact with the Clockmaker—but for obvious reasons my participation isn’t an option.”
“We wouldn’t risk you anyway,” Dreyfus said.
“You were a field when you encountered the Clockmaker back then. It’s still a field’s job to go in now.”
“But it doesn’t have to be you.”
“This has been my case from the moment I spoke to that Ultra captain. I propose talking with it.”
“It doesn’t talk. It kills.”
“Then I’ll just have to find some common ground. A negotiating position.” Clearmountain looked appalled.
“Even if that means giving it something in return?”
“Even if.”
“I won’t permit it.”
“Then I suggest you start looking into alternative career options. I don’t think Aurora’s going to have a lot of use for senior prefects when she takes over.”
Someone knocked at the door. Dreyfus recognised the girl—she was the operative who’d informed the tactical room of the hostile action taken by the first four habitats claimed by Aurora.
“Bad news for us again?” he asked.
“Sirs, I’m not sure,” she said, looking nervously at the strained faces of the seniors.
“I was asked to bring this to your immediate attention. There’s been a development in the House Aubusson situation.”
“What kind of development?” Dreyfus asked, secretly dreading her answer.
“Sirs, I have imagery obtained by the deep-system cruiser we have on monitoring standby near Aubusson.” With shaking hands, she placed a compad on the table.
“There’s been a pressure breach, a major one. Air’s blasting out through a hundred-metre-wide hole in one of the window bands.” Dreyfus snatched the compad across the table, flipping it around to face him. He made out the
