The Departure

No reply.

‘Miska?’

Var walked round the side of the vehicle to the airlock, scanning for footprints in the surrounding dust but seeing none. She paused for a moment and looked back in the direction of the base. Whoever had shot at this vehicle had done so from a distance, probably from Shankil’s Butte, which reared up from the plain five kilometres away from here, and just three kilometres from the base. Doubtless the killer had used a scoped assault rifle, which would work easily enough at that range in the low gravity here. One of Ricard’s enforcers, undoubtedly.

The outer airlock door opened easily enough and, requiring no equalizing of pressure, the inner one opened at once. Stepping through the small cargo space, circumventing two big reels of optic cable and the cutting tools Gisender had used to obtain it, Var entered the cockpit and peered in through Gisender’s visor, her own stomach tightening with rage and grief.

After Ricard shut down Earthcom and put recent communications off limits, Gisender had ostensibly gone in search of salvage from the old base in Valles Marineris, but had really gone to obtain a copy of those same communications from the secondary signal station up on the lip of Valles Marineris. And here was the result. Though intellectually Var had accepted that her friend might be dead, only now, finally seeing her right up close, could she accept it in her heart. Even in this condition, Gisender still bore some of that Martian look of false health, with the rouge of Martian dust ground into her skin, as it was ground into all of them, but her dried-out features told the truth. Her lips had shrivelled away from her teeth, and her eye sockets were all but empty now that the moisture had been sucked from her eyeballs. That fucker Ricard must have found out, somehow, and had her murdered.

Var really needed to know what was contained in that communication.

Earth

Behind Saul, as he headed out, Janus made the handlerbot that had first emptied the crate now pick it up and carry it over to the cargo lift. Usually these crates only went up as far as ground level, where they were picked up by a transvan from a loading bay at the back of the building. But this one was going right to the top.

‘No problems?’ Saul asked.

‘If there are any problems I will inform you,’ Janus replied – somewhat snootily, Saul thought.

Back in the mapping control room he retrieved his holdall with its waterproof lining and shed King’s lab coat, though he retained the false ID badge, before heading again to the lifts. There he hit the button for the roofport, and was glad to find the lift empty as the doors opened. His heart went into overdrive when it halted only two floors up and a nervous-looking man clutching a laptop case stepped in. But lift etiquette being what it is, the man merely ignored him and jabbed the button to the floor he required, exiting two floors later. Finally the doors opened on to the roof.

Three aircars were parked there and, oddly, a helicopter. It was probably a casualty of the supposedly smooth transition from fossil-based fuels to fusion energy and hydrogen transport, Saul surmised. That smooth transition seemed to be failing along with everything else, with the result that people were dying every day, in their hundreds of thousands. He now made straight for Coran’s vehicle, holding out the implant test unit before him, the car’s locking system responding to it by disengaging. Stepping inside, Saul tossed the holdall on to the back seat and set the tester down beside him. The console arrayed before the single joystick had also unlocked, so he pressed the start button and immediately the aerofans began to hum up to speed.

‘Now we have a problem,’ Janus informed him.

‘And that is?’

‘Coran’s boss is trying to contact him via his fone.’

‘What’s the boss’s name?’

‘Ahkmed Argul – but I suspect the proper form of address in this case is ‘‘Director’’.’

‘Yes, quite. Route him to my fone, and give me voice overlay.’

‘Where have you been, Coran?’ Argul immediately enquired.

‘My apologies, Director,’ Saul replied. ‘The mapping basement of the gene bank here is a fone deadspot.’

‘I see. I’ve also been informed that your bodyguard is out of contact, too. I do hope you aren’t having problems there . . .’

‘Aiden King was being a little unhelpful, so I left Sheila down there to have a chat with him. Beside that, everything is proceeding as per schedule.’

The car’s aerofans up to speed now, he raised the joystick up one notch, to take the machine about a metre off the deck, then eased the car back and round towards the cargo lift, which lay just behind the tail fan of the helicopter.

‘Good. Oversight is anxious to get this done, as resources need to be redistributed fast.’

Interesting. Saul decided to fish for information. ‘Such a tight schedule,’ he observed as he settled the car down again.

Argul made a hacking sound of irritation. ‘Coran, we don’t discuss the schedule over the air, and I think you know why I’m really calling.’

‘My apologies. I haven’t been feeling so good since eating a sandwich from King’s vending machine.’

‘Remiss of you,’ said Argul, ‘but I’m not accepting any excuses. Where is that distribution report for the Straven Conference? You’ve got three days before that’s due to be the main topic of discussion, so make damned sure it’s in.’

‘Yes, sir, at once. I’ve been a bit snowed under . . .’ Saul shut down the car, and climbed out, heading round to the cargo lift.

‘And Coran, if you do another of your disappearing acts, that’ll be another two points taken off your status. That’s not something you can afford right now – you know how difficult it is staying on the shortlist.’

‘Disappearing acts?’ Saul echoed. How very interesting, and what was this shortlist?