Dahl shrugged, and Idina could see the hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth.
Prejudices dispelled once again, Idina thought.
The Artery transit stations in the center of the city were built underground, but only barely. Idina and Dahl walked down the soft and gradual incline that led from the surface of the Philharmony plaza to the main station entrance below. The station had an entrance atrium, and the ceiling of it was also the surface of the plaza above, made from a layered grid of energy-collecting panels that were set to be completely translucent at night. As they walked through the entrance and into the atrium, Idina looked up at the see-through ceiling, where the rain was collecting in puddles that refracted the lights from the nearby buildings and advertising projections.
Even after midnight, the atrium was still bustling with activity. Late-night commuters were making their way through a crowd that seemed to be mostly young Gretians out for nighttime entertainment, socializing inside the covered court while the summer thunderstorm was passing over the city. Half a dozen food vendors were selling snacks and drinks from mobile stations set up at regular intervals. Idina followed Dahl as she walked through the atrium and past the vendors. Someone in a small group of young men standing nearby saw her coming and jokingly offered up his friend for arrest. Dahl declined the offer, and they laughed as she walked by.
“I did not do it, take this one instead,” Dahl said to Idina over the helmet comms. “They all think they are the first ones to think of that joke.”
The Artery was a network of magnetic suspension trains that crisscrossed the city and connected major points of interest. It was one of the Gretian engineering achievements Idina could admire without reservation because it didn’t have a military application. The trains were sleek and white, and they moved over their smooth magnetic pathways in almost complete silence. The only way to tell that one was about to come out of the pathway’s tunnel was the slight change in air pressure right before it emerged. The platform beyond the atrium was divided by color markings, one side green and the other blue. As they walked out onto the green half of the platform, a train glided out of the tube on the blue side and slowed to a gentle stop. Everywhere else in the Gaia system, the screen projections for timetables and directions in transit centers were at least bilingual—the local language plus Rhodian, the de facto common language since the end of the war—but the Gretian signage remained defiantly Gretian only.
“It is now 0032 hours,” Dahl said. “The green-line train from the spaceport is due at 0040. Let us hope he did not miss it. There will not be another until 0110.”
They paced the platform while they waited, drawing occasional looks from passing commuters. Idina’s translator picked up snippets of conversation here and there, background noises of everyday life, mundane and routine. It had taken her a while to shake off her constant fear of another ambush, but she’d always have the professional paranoia of an infantry soldier. This wasn’t quite the hostile territory it used to be, but it was still unfriendly ground. She knew that the minute she let herself forget that fact, fate would remind her of it in unpleasant ways. Police duty required that she let people get closer to her than she’d ever allow a civilian from a former enemy planet in an infantry setting, and it was mentally tiring—watching hands in pockets, scanning waistlines for bumps and bulges that could be concealed weapons, looking for objects that were out of place. Human brains had a practical bandwidth for information, and it wasn’t difficult to probe the limits of it by having to be alert for threats in a place full of people, where an attack could come from anyone and anywhere.
The minutes ticked by slowly, unmoved by Idina’s desire to hurry the minute marker along on its path toward the hour mark on her helmet display’s chronometer.
“Thirty seconds,” Dahl finally said. “He will be on the next train on the green side. Or we will have to make an excuse to spend another thirty minutes down here.”
The train came out of its pathway tube and stopped silently. Idina noted that the doors opened at precisely 0040 and zero seconds.
“Look casual,” Dahl advised.
“I’m wearing light armor that has the word POLICE stenciled on it in reflective letters,” Idina pointed out. “It’s not the best outfit for staying unnoticed.”
“That is the joke,” Dahl said.
“Gretian humor. I didn’t think it existed.”
“We get to make one joke per week. There are ration cards.”
This got an actual laugh from Idina, and Dahl smiled with satisfaction without taking her eyes off the crowd alighting from the train doors. To give her hands something to do, Idina checked her equipment by touch as they waited: kukri, stun stick, restraints, riot shield handle, sidearm.
“There he is,” Dahl said and turned her head to the right. “Green bodysuit, brown vest, orange sling pack.”
Idina followed her gaze and saw the suspect, who was walking off the train while looking at the screen projection of his comtab. Vigi Fuldas had the physique of someone who regularly lifted heavy things for a living. There were stains on his green bodysuit, and his white-and-red hard-shell work boots were scuffed and dirty. She tried to will him to pay attention to his screen just a few moments longer, but as Dahl set herself in motion, he extinguished the screen and glanced in their direction. His face froze in the familiar expression of the unpleasantly surprised, a blend of shock and momentary paralysis. Then he turned toward the atrium and ran.
They dashed after him. He sprinted off the platform and into the wide passageway that connected the transit tubes to the atrium. Once again Idina was amazed at the speed Dahl was able to work up at short
