FALLEN DRAGON (97 page)

"Ah," he murmured contentedly. He tented his fingers and rested his chin on the apex. A pane on his desk lit up to show the image that the AS had generated from the descriptions of the lovelorn diving instructors. "Is this her?"

"If I don't know her, then I can hardly identify her, can I?"

"But you did know her. And it's what you think that is interesting."

Mrs. Potchansky's face remained perfectly composed. Alarm shivered through her mind.

"Did you know what she was connected with, which resistance movement?" His DNI was scrolling the woman's file.

"If this farce is over I'll be going home now. I trust you'll take me back with the same alacrity with which I was brought here."

"Sit down!" Simon barked.

Mrs. Potchansky fussed around with the chair, deliberately taking her time. Her thoughts were settling into a steely determination.

"When did you last see her?" Simon asked.

"You know this person's name, yet you're not sure what she looks like. That's very odd."

"Very. Especially if you were to check your school's records, because she's not in any of your files. Nor is she in any file we can trawl out of the datapool."

"That must make it difficult for you to persecute her."

"When did she leave? Please."

"No."

"Very well, you're free to go. I'll have a car take you home."

Mrs. Potchansky gave him a suspicious look. "Why?"

"Because you're obviously a tough old lady who isn't going to tell me anything."

"Why?"

"After the car drops you off it'll pick up someone who will be more cooperative." The indigo file scrolled down across his view of Mrs. Potchansky. He picked a name. "Jedzella, perhaps."

"What a pathetically crude attempt at blackmail. You'll do no such thing."

"We killed your son. I expect you think of us as barbarians who answer to no one on this world. You would be correct in that; I'm not even accountable to anyone on Earth. And I am desperate to find this girl. Truly desperate. The children will tell me who she is and where she came from. Do you want to put them through that? Because I will ask them if you make me."

"I haven't seen her since the weekend," Mrs. Potchansky said.

"Thank you. Now tell me all about her."

* * *

The huge Pan-Skyways cargo jet taxied slowly through the miserable gray rain that was saturating Durrell Spaceport. It turned onto the parking apron and braked to a halt. Steam shimmered off the nacelles as the spinning fans wound down to a stop.

A robot tractor nuzzled up to the front-wheel bogie and engaged its locking clamps. It began to tow the plane into a nearby hangar. The doors slid shut behind it, and it stood all alone in the enclosed space, dripping on the concrete floor. Pan-Skyways hangar staff brought a pair of airstairs up to the cabin hatch, and the two flight crew emerged. They were followed by Lawrence Newton in his full sergeant's uniform. He paused on the top step, conscious of the cameras dotted round the hangar. Z-B required any asset cargo flown by a civilian airline to be accompanied by a company representative. The AS would be checking his face and matching it with his file and the assignment orders issued by Ebrey Zhang's office.

Colin Schmidt waited for him at the bottom of the airstairs, a small smile playing over his face. "Welcome to Durrell."

Lawrence put his arm around his old friend's shoulders. "Good to be here."

They walked along the side of the fuselage to the rear of the plane. "I thought you were joking when you called," Colin said. "A whole RL-thirty-three pod. Holy crap! This I have to see for myself."

The clamshell doors that made up the aircraft's tail section were hinging apart. Colin ducked under them to stand in the widening gap. The cargo pod filled half of the cavernous fuselage, a long pearl-white composite cylinder resting on a cradle.

"I guess you weren't joking," Colin said. He looked around to make sure none of the civilian hangar staff were nearby, then lowered his voice. "Okay, what the hell is in it?"

Lawrence opened the flap on his breast pocket and took out a gnarled lump of rock. It glinted dully in the hangar's lightcones. Colin took it from him, examining the lump gingerly.

"It's argentite," Lawrence said. "That's a silver mineral."

"Silver," Colin said. He looked from the little chunk in his hand to the cargo pod, then back to Lawrence. "You are joking."

"No. What we have here is about forty tons of argentite with a very high silver content."

"Where in God's name did it come from?"

"Out in the hinterlands. I thought I saw it last time I was here. Nobody else in the platoon recognized it, so I kept quiet."

"Shit." Colin was laughing, hand over his mouth. "You old fraud, Lawrence, you told me we'd need to smuggle a backpack up to orbit."

"If I'd said a fully loaded Xianti you would never have agreed. Now you have an incentive. Can you get this into orbit?"

"Yes." Colin was still laughing. "Oh, God, yes. Forty tons of silver! Lawrence, you are goddamn unbelievable."

"Forty tons of silver mineral. We'll have to refine it when we get back to Earth."

Colin nodded, suddenly sober. "Of course. I'll have to make sure it's flown down to Cairns; after that we can get it offbase easily enough. But, Lawrence, I don't know how you get this mineral stuff refined. What do we need?"

"One step at a time. Let's focus on getting it up to the
Koribu
for now, shall we? Have you got me my pilot?"

"Yes, yes, Gordon Dreyer, he's our man. Needs money, and smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it afterward."

"Fine. What about getting the cargo pod through security? Its contents are on file as fusion reactor parts. It can't go through any sort of scanner."

"I can handle that. There are hundreds of these identical cargo pods coming in and out of the spaceport. It's just play
i
ng the shell game, but on a much bigger scale, that's all. I've got the verification codes, I can enter a full clearance file. The AS will never know the difference."

"Like going over the fence again, huh?"

"Like going over the fence." Colin was staring at the pod again, his expression hungry. "Damn it, Lawrence, I already know the house I'm going to buy with this. I saw it once, on the Riviera, it was a white stone mansion with gardens over a hundred and fifty years old. Fit for a Board member."

Lawrence felt a surprisingly large twinge of guilt as he listened to his friend's daydream. But the choice had been made back when he was dreaming the dragon's dreams. All his old loyalties were over now.

Gordon Dreyer arrived six hours before his flight was scheduled to take off. Lawrence hadn't met him before, but he knew the type well enough: late forties with a highly secure job that sounded glamorous but was actually routine, and wasn't going to take him anywhere careerwise. Two marriages behind him, Colin said, and the courts diverted a big slice of his salary to pay for them. He was bitter about the rulings. He partied hard. Drank a little too much. Gambled above his credit limit In the flesh, Dreyer's weight was pushing the upper limit permitted by Z-B's fitness requirement. His dark hair was meticulously cut and styled to hide its thinness—v-writing follicle treatments were currently beyond his means. He shook Lawrence's hand firmly enough, and played it cool when the deal was explained. Only the eagerness with which he accepted betrayed his true character.

As with all pilots, Dreyer shadowed the flight preparation. It started with a review of the Xianti's flight-engineering file, ensuring its performance was up to the specified levels and that standard maintenance had been carried out. His authorization was added to the flightworthiness log, which would allow the spaceplane to be moved to the next stage: cargo loading.

Gordon Dreyer went to inspect the cargo pod in the preflight integration hangar. Colin Schmidt was the lieutenant in charge of the logistics that morning, meeting all the pilots who were readying their craft for the daily flight up to the starships. They walked along the row of sealed cargo pods, discussing any problems or special requirements. At the end he presented them with the security verification file, detailing the inspection process for each item of cargo. Dreyer added his authorization to the file and thanked Colin for doing his job.

The RL33 pod was loaded into the Xianti, which was then towed out to its fueling bay. Gordon Dreyer went off to the pilot's locker room to get ready while the cryogenic tanks were being chilled down, then filled with liquid hydrogen.

Lawrence and Colin rode over to the makeshift medical center in the terminal building.

"The hospital's been off-limits since the blast," Colin explained. "They're taking care of some senior officers from fleet intelligence in there. Security won't allow anyone else near the place."

They found an empty room and began sticking medical modules to Lawrence's torso. His arm was then covered by a dermal membrane sheath, with more modules stuck over it.

"I wish you didn't look so healthy," Colin complained. "You're supposed to be a priority medevac case."

"I heard that in old wars soldiers used to eat the gunpowder from their bullets. It made them look really sick."

"You want some energized explosive to chew on?"

"No, thanks." He pulled on a medical division coverall. With its short sleeves, everyone could see the membrane and small modules. It should convince the ground crew who saw him embarking. Prime entered his record files in Memu Bay, implanting an attack during an urban patrol, which had burned through his Skin, leaving him unfit for duty.

The fueling bay had a small operations center with a rank of darkened glass windows that looked out over the big delta-shaped Xianti. Stairs in one corner of the center led down to the covered bridge, which had extended out to the spaceplane cabin's airlock.

Gordon Dreyer was already in the center when Lawrence and Colin entered. He was talking to a security officer, who handed him the flight's communication key.

"Do you need any help with that arm?" Dreyer asked.

"No, sir," Lawrence said. "I can manage, thank you."

A camera was fixed to the top of the bridge entrance. Lawrence could feel the sweat on his forehead as he walked underneath. At least it added credibility to his supposed injury. Dreyer was impressively calm as they walked along the bridge.

The cabin hatch slid shut and Lawrence let out a sharp breath of relief. Sneaking around like this wasn't his arena.

Give me head-to-head combat any day.

"Home free, eh?" Dreyer said. "Sit yourself down, and leave the rest to me."

Lawrence chose a seat directly behind the pilot, where he could see the console displays. Dreyer was absorbed by the final checklist. Three minutes later he agreed with the space-plane's AS pilot that they were ready to lift off. The Rolls-Royce turbojets came alive with a resonant thrumming, as much felt as heard, and they rolled out of the fueling bay. The flight to orbit was identical to every other Lawrence had been on, though it was interesting to see the console displays and have a genuine view out through the narrow windshield rather than a camera image on a seatback screen.

"Eighty minutes to rendezvous," Dreyer announced as the two tail rockets finished their injection burn.

"Sounds good." Lawrence picked one of the medical mod
u
les off his arm, leaned forward and pressed it to Dreyer's neck.

"What arr—" The pilot lost consciousness. His body remained in the seat, held by the safety straps, but his arms gradually floated up until they were hanging above the console;

Lawrence used his d-written neural cluster to establish a link with the Xianti's network. Prime went active and erased the AS pilot program, assuming complete control of the spaceplane.

"Are you all right back there?" Lawrence asked.

"I
never knew freefall was this awful," Denise replied from her hidden nest in the cargo pod. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Try not to be, try very hard."

"Any more advice you want to give?"

"Let's get you out of there, I need to suit up." Prime relayed a camera image of the payload bay to one of the flight console panes. The cargo pod almost filled it, leaving only a two-meter gap between itself and the cabin bulkhead. Lawrence saw a circle of plastic peel back on the end of the pod. Something moved inside. A human figure in a silver-gray leotard of a spacesuit crawled out with very slow, uncertain movements.

"Nothing moves right," Denise complained.

Lawrence hoped she wasn't linked to a cabin camera; she'd see him grinning. "You'll get used to it. Just remember inertia is still the same up here."

A short, flexible tether clipped to her harness attached her to the fat box containing his Skin. Once she was out of the pod and anchored in the short gap, she began to pull it out after her. Lawrence told Prime to open the outer hatch of the payload bay airlock. It took Denise several minutes to maneuver the box inside. There wasn't enough room for her as well, so Lawrence cycled the airlock and pulled it out into the cabin while she waited in the payload bay.