“No more movement from the orcs,” Djuro reported.
“Take her down, Jock,” Heikki said, quietly. “But don’t shut down till I tell you.”
Nkosi grinned, clearly enjoying the challenge, his big hands easy on the controls. He brought the jumper down slowly, easing it into the space between the wall of trees to the west and the debris of the wreck, so that the craft seemed almost to float toward the ground. The wheels touched at last with a barely perceptible thump, so that Heikki had to look at the contact indicators to be sure they were down.
“Nice job,” she said, and saw her admiration reflected in Sebasten-Januarias’s eyes. “We’re here,” she went on, more loudly, and looked at Nkosi. “Jock, I want you to stay at the controls. Keep the engines running and ready to lift, just in case the sonics don’t work. Jan, Sten, Alexieva, you’ll come with me. Rig the detectors to warn us if the orcs start this way, Sten, and patch that into Jock’s console.”
“Do we go armed?” Alexieva asked flatly, and Heikki paused. She hadn’t really considered the question, had simply assumed that the wreck would be what it so obviously appeared to be, abandoned and empty—and that, she thought irritably, could’ve been a really stupid mistake.
“Yes,” she said aloud. “See to it, Sten. And break out the full-scan cameras.”
“Right,” Djuro answered.
The whine of the rotos eased a little, steadying on a note half an octave lower than its normal pitch. “I have us stabilized,” Nkosi announced. “Shall I open the forward hatch?”
“Yes,” Heikki answered, “and close it again—leave it on the latch—when we’re gone.” It wasn’t much protection for the pilot, but at least it should be good enough to keep out orcs—if it came to that. She put the thought aside, and scrambled back down the ladder to the main bay. Sebasten-Januarias followed silently, wrapping his headscarf around his face as if to hide his thoughts.
Djuro was waiting with the two full-scan cameras and the heavy gunbelts, Alexieva at his side. The surveyor was carrying a blast-rifle at portarms—not part of my equipment, Heikki thought, and glanced at Djuro. Before the little man could answer, Alexieva said, “I figured it’d be safer.”
“All right,” Heikki said. Like most salvage operators, she was not fond of heavy weaponry—too often, it caused the very trouble a glib tongue could easily avert— but in this case she had to admit that the other woman was right. She accepted her own belt, and fastened it around her waist, very aware of the warmth of the blaster against her hip. She checked the spare power packs automatically, then shrugged on the camera harness. Djuro plugged the leads into the power pack, and turned for her to do the same for him.
“All set,” he said, and Heikki nodded.
“Let’s go.”
The downdraft from the rotos raised a low cloud of dust even from the heavy soil, and swirled what was left of the grass into twisted knots. Heikki ducked through the blasting wind, then turned slowly, letting the camera record the clearing and the jumper. The row of lights glowed green in her lens: all the systems were running, recording the scene at half a dozen levels. She nodded to herself, and switched the camera to automatic, leaving her right hand free for her blaster.
“Crawler tracks!”
Heikki looked up quickly at the sound of Sebasten-Januarias’s voice. The younger man was standing to one side of the clearing, almost inside the range of the nearest sonic. He made an eloquent face, but he did not move away. Heikki moved to join him, wincing as she, too, came within the sonic’s arc. The beam was inaudible, tuned as it was to affect a nonhuman nervous system, but she could feel the almost-vibration, an unpleasant pins-and- needles tingling, on her exposed skin.
“See? There,” Sebasten-Januarias said, and pointed.
To his right, running from the forest into the clearing, the familiar marks of a track-crawler showed stark against the dark mud. Automatically, Heikki turned the camera on them, panning slowly along their entire length, then crouched to examine the tread patterns more closely.
“It looks like a standard machine,” she said aloud, as much for the record as for the others’ benefit. “An Isu, maybe, or a Tormacher.”
“Lo-Moth uses both of them,” Sebasten-Januarias said.
Heikki looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”
The pilot shrugged. “The company uses them, and then sells them used. There’s a lot of them on planet.”
No, Heikki thought, that may be true, but that’s not what you mean. That I’m sure of. She filed her questions, grimly determined not to let them go this time, and stood up, grunting under the weight of the camera. “We’ll check out the gondola.”
The metal teardrop lay crumpled against the half uprooted tree, the once-smooth curve of its nose smashed inward. Heikki made a face, dreading what she would find, but kept the camera running as she circled the tail and its broken rudders to the main hatch. The thin skin around it was scored by drill beams; the hatch itself dangled from a single exploded hinge.
“Christ—” Djuro began, and bit off whatever he would have said.
Heikki took a deep breath, a familiar coldness settling over her. She had dealt with sabotage before, with hijackings, violence, and death; it could be no worse than the job on Galilee, or the time on Kavanaugh when she’d had to kill the poacher. She swept the camera over the burn marks, lingering on each one, and then on the broken hatch, saying in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, “I note for the record evidence of forced entry, probably effected by means of a standard issue laser drill.”
Behind her, she heard Alexieva say something choked and inarticulate, but ignored it. She braced herself instead, hooking her hand carefully over the rough metal, and pulled herself up into the gondola. The floorplates, left unsecured to allow access to the cargo and ballast in an emergency, had been jarred loose by the crash, and lay at crazy angles like smashed paving stones. She balanced herself on the solid plate just inside the hatch, and panned slowly across the compartment. This had been an ordinary cargo latac; she was standing in what had been the main hold, between the tanks that should have held the gas for the envelope. That meant the distillery was underfoot, in the lower curve of the hull. The tanks had not ruptured, despite the gondola’s dented frame. She glanced at the dials, and saw her guess confirmed: both the tanks had been almost empty at the time of the crash. They must’ve been trying to keep the envelope inflated, she thought. With those holes burned in it, meters-long, they could run the distillery at full, and still go through both tanks in no time, and crash…. She stopped that train of thought abruptly. There was still no proof that the ripped envelope had been destroyed before the crash; it was just as possible that it had been destroyed to help hide any sign of the wreck.
“I’m going forward,” she said aloud, hearing still the coldness in her voice. “Jan, see if you can find the matrix.”
“What’s it look like?” Sebasten-Januarias asked. He made no protest at being left behind, and Heikki was remotely grateful.
“It should be in a quarter-crate,” she answered, and at the same time Alexieva sketched a shape a meter or so square. “It’ll be heavily padded.” Sebasten-Januarias nodded, and Heikki turned away, starting across the rocking floorplates before she could change her mind.
The midships hatch was intact, dogged open against the unbroken bulkhead. She studied it for a moment, then methodically turned the camera on it.
“You think it was opened after the crash?” Djuro said, coming up behind her.
“I don’t know,” Heikki answered. “The stress analysis will tell us.” But I’d bet it was, she thought, and stooped to examine the hatch frame more closely. Sure enough, the dull beige paint was scuffed and chipped, as though the hatch had been levered out of its seating. She recorded those marks as well, and ducked through the hatchway.
The technical compartment was as empty as the rest of the ship, though the buckled floorplates and broken screens betrayed that the frame had been twisted out of true. The crews’ seats stood empty, trailing webs of safety harness; papers had blown around the compartment like leaves, and lay drifted in one downhill corner. The only other sign of life was a canvas shoe lying beside the hatch that led to the control room. She bent to pick it up, curious, and saw the glint of bone and the purpling flesh still in it. She straightened, her emotions shutting down completely, and heard Djuro say, “Heikki, look at this.”
She turned as slowly as a sleepwalker. Djuro held up two pieces of a safety harness. “This was cut.”
“Record it,” Heikki said, and turned toward the control room. Remotely, she dreaded what she would find
