Source: Engaging The Armorers

The fabrication is being done by a secondary plant in Helios, the next shell to the south, so Clu Sherrill reserves a supersonic rail at what for her is a very early morning hour. She rides one of hundreds of balloon ferries to the suntube terminus at the pole, leaning against the window as the floor of the world drops away, and the complexity of the tube looms larger and larger above. The other ferries are visible to each side, riding their separate cables, and she sips a cold sweet envelope of Pecta to start her mind working.

Two thousand miles of clouds, sea, and land unreel below the train. She reads volumes and scribes into her journal. She watches the flowing landscape, and the tiny aircraft below. At one point a trans-shell freight rocket passes upward in the distance.

Here the suntube offers a day with sunrise and sunset, and as she steps from the terminal, the light source is near the far end of the tube, casting deep reddish light across the pavement and the waiting airpacks. Her contacts complete negotiations with the local systems, and she passes over funds for her rental. She steps into the clear plastic airshield of a human model, and the pack clicks into position. The engine pods spool up with a swift whine and then she is airborne with the faint backwash reaching for her hair, heading for the ruby blaze at the far end of the suntube. Her destination and every flying obstacle is visible on her contacts.

It is nearly dark by the time she settles outside the hotel. But like most Prometheans, she is inured to time variations and lives by her own watch. Lunch waits in her room, and she enjoys the view out over the bustling industrial district, with its trees, lights, fields, streaming ground vehicles, and the strobes of slow moving cargo blimps.

In its way, it is a shock to her as pronounced as her first week in Prometheus. Day, and night. Sunset and reaching shadows. Something that had been replaced for months by the rapid change of suntube shadow and the eerie light of the far side still getting its light. Now the pitch blackness of the sky, with its scattering of stars that are the lights of man and man's companions seems strange and bottomless.

At the fabricator, a plant field purchased from a failing spaceframe company, most of the workers are automata, some controlled remotely from worker's homes, others independent. The local manager, Inron Tempo de Vries, meets her at the entrance to the vast flat building. He is a tall man whose reddish face is sharply planed and lined with an unusual appearance of age. His hair is black, greying in an odd asymmetrical streak back from his forehead. He walks her through the huge rooms filled with brightly colored machines, some moving on their own errands, others fixed in location, swinging back and forth as they operate on large workpieces.

"That's a new 1233 we're working on for Tharronen. The hull's out here, as far as it's finished..."

They step through into a vast pit, a mile or more across, that seems to descend infinitely toward the core of the world. Its walls are lined with machines and scaffolding, and the tiny bright flares of welding lamps flicker amidst the gleaming bars and the huge, half skinned arches of the vast spaceframe. But Clu can see there are many vacant areas which could also hold work She realizes that the activity is only a tiny fraction of the capacity of even this one work area.

"Seems a little quiet," she remarks.

He leans against the railing on his elbows and looks down, face impassive. "Could be better. This Hermes product, though, we're hoping for great things from it. B'nia'arr Tafalbe Drive Systems is leveraging their normal business to come into spaceframes, and we're having a hard time fighting it out without some competitive drive system. The Hermes itself is one thing, but the idea of cutting back on the power requirements and size of a gravitic system is what really makes this exciting. Drives are thirty percent of the typical cargo packet liner or passenger hull, and every bit of that is unprofitable space for the lines. Help them with that, and you own the market."

Clu nods. Marie had made this clear, but it was good to see that it was understood here as well. "Let's see the prototype."

Then, as they walk away, she can't help but cast a longing glance back at the 1233. It is the kind of vessel Cocteau can't build any longer, and she had always wanted command of a factory that was capable of it. Now, in a way she had that, but in the current context, compared to a tiny personal disk aeroform, it was meaningless.

They walk through a maze of corridors whose ceiling is glass, and whose walls at first seem to be another corridor. Someone walks by on that wall and waves. de Vries waves back. "That's Bilho. He's over in Ytteract. We keep a shared virtual corridor here to keep the two plants in better touch, though nowadays Bilho and I are almost the only ones that bother to come in physically. He's probably on his way home." She wonders if he would rather be home, too, based on the faint reluctance in his voice.

The prototype is in a brightly lit room walled in pale green, filled with quiescent machines of various types. A cluster of mobile remotes is leaning over the openings, extending flexible metal tentacles into a hatch, and, for a moment, she remembers Nimshi, and cannot prevent her eyes from darting suddenly around the room to enumerate the entrances and exits.

"Hmm," de Vries muses, "who's working late tonight?" He shares a portion of his personal view space with her, and a horrifying multilateral creature with a squat, almost helmet like head appears - a simulacrum, she knows, not an actual picture. "Derneha, how's it progressing?"

"Going is well, but behind I am. Can't let Phasics in tomorrow unless I finish the conduit attachment tonight it is."

"Meet Clu Sherril, she's the product director from the main plant."

An appendage waves and the machines freeze in mid motion. "You how are? Meet you I am glad."

In the corner of her eye she can see the signal of the language in use and she does not recognize the reference. She chooses to speak more plainly than she might otherwise, to avoid translation difficulties. "I am glad to meet one of the people on whom the project depends. How do you like the work?"

"Very well, though I am disgusted at falling behind."

"What is your specialty?"

"Close quarters fittings, and miniwelds. I have been doing it for about ten years."

Clu walks over to the opening and the machines obligingly move aside. A gesture increases the sensitivity to infrared, and she can see the interior with more clarity, and the spots which are the recent welds. Another gesture brings up the zoom and she thinks hard to recall the desired appearance. She leans back out and the enhancements fade automatically. "You seem to have done some good work. I'll be inspecting more carefully tomorrow, and I look forward to examining your work. Perhaps you heard about the crash of the prototype?"

"Yes. You were the pilot."

"There was no mistake, but there was a design flaw which let the error prior to the incident go unnoticed. Please be vigilant for any such situations and make sure you inform Inron of anything which might be a problem."

She senses pleasure in the tone. "I will."

de Vries steps in. "We'll let you get back to it, then. Send me when you're done for the day."

By the end of the tour, five hours later, Clu is exhausted, though she keeps it to herself. They had discussed and worked through many of the fabrication issues, bringing in other members of the staff for virtual conferences as needed. They finally walk out onto the broad glass enclosed plaza in front of the factory just as the first light of the suntube is forming at the pole, a faint reddish glare across a half thousand miles of air.

"Inron, Lantee has told me that his people have detected thirty attempts at intrusion on the Hermes worker data streams. That's one of the reasons I'm here. Face to face is the best way to keep security tight. It's obvious someone wants in, and equally obvious they won't stop at spying on things. I realize this is annoying, but starting tomorrow morning, I don't want anyone working from outside the plant, and I want you to have your security chief isolate all of the Hermes data streams to the immediate neighborhood of the workroom. Also, every personal log is to be disabled at the start of the day, inspected, and reflushed on departure. The powerplant is coming from Field by chartered hyperrail the day after tomorrow, and no one is to have any opportunity to reveal any exact data about it."

de Vries considers her for a moment. "It seems draconian, if you ask me."

She squares her shoulders. "This is Lantee's recommendation, and I agree. Unless you have a more secure idea, I'd appreciate your taking care of everything before mainshift."

"There'll be some slowdown because of the commute."

She clasps his shoulder. "That's all right. I'll see you all in about eight hours. Do the job."

Clu awakens in the room just before noon. A moment, then she rolls out of bed and fades the window to clear. Large rocky hills loom beyond, studded with the spikes and clusters of oddly formed turquoise vegetation. The shadows are odd, not quite cast vertically. "Oh, yeah," she mutters, and heads for the small bathroom, to wash her face.

She dons her practice harness, and calls up a synthetic opponent. The system schematizes the room, and then the combat begins. She struggles with the moves of her opponent, as the harness tugs at arms and legs, and strikes blows to the stomach, side, and head. She strikes back and the pace of the moves increases until she is sheened with sweat and her breath is a harsh pant. Finally, she gestures, and her opponent is gone. The frame unlatches and she tosses it down on the bed, still breathing hard, but feeling satisfaction at the reported score. She showers, and touches the faint soreness of an incipient bruise on her thigh with some concern. Maybe I'm pushing too hard, she thinks for the thousandth time as the hot water streams down her, relaxing her tense muscles. Maybe not. She thinks of the possibilities for harm on Cocteau.

In the main part of her room, the image of Lan waits for her on the table by the window. Her eyes mist briefly, but then she has to turn to the agenda of the day.

The powerplant is dropped by lifting body from the hyperrail when it passes far overhead. She stands with de Vries and the wranglers at the edge of the landing area as the tiny silver speck descends through a fine and variegated net of cirrus, flying a switchback course to defer a natural plummet. Before long it is a blunt triangle, and it sweeps through an arc above them to settle out over the field, with a roar and gleam of thrusters that suddenly rolls to silence.

Marrifaw/Tireldi and Offspring are the best makers of combat prosthetics in Prometheus. Celine's work with them on a variety of projects has provided Clu with a recommendation. The carpeted salon reminds her momentarily of a clothing store, except the animatronics which line the walls and stand in on the floor are not modelling sheer dresses or suits, but a variety of adaptive camoflage covers for specialized and powerful augmentors.

The proprietor is a tall dark man with a deep chest, hollow waist, and a bullet head capped with a startling shock of brilliant white hair. A thin mustache is penciled above his thick lips, and a tuft of white hair tips his chin. He beams at her, and holds out his hand. "Doctora Sherril - that's the correct term, isn't it? - I'm so glad to have an opportunity to offer our wares to you. I am Bagor Graeme, product manager for Marrifaw/Tireldi."

She smiles. "And the offspring, too?"

He enfolds her hand with massive knuckles and palm. "Of course."

"Has Marie mentioned what I need?"

"In general terms. I'm pleased you could visit us, though. It's a fortunate coincidence that mixes business and... other business. This will allow us to perform a much more detail autonomic and voluntary inventory so we can find both the best rack for you and ensure a good fit and performance. Come along, then, and I'll introduce you to Rampag/Tireldi, our fitter, who will start the process."

After an uncomfortable period of probes and touches which seem to itch and slam her nerves, followed by careful measurements and strength tests, and completed with a long a tedious session of selection and adjustment of the rack to her body, she sits in the waiting room, watching the scenes of Marrifaw/Tireldi prosthetics in action that are displayed on the wall. The pain and damage generated by a single user is both frightening and heartening.

A touch on her shoulder brings her back to herself. "Excuse me, ma'am, we're ready to try the first fit."

Two days later, after a succssful initial systems test, and a harrowing security inspection by Lantee, Clu is back out to the Marrifaw/Tireldi facility to receive basic training. Surpringly, to her, it is Graeme who provides it.

They stand in the midst of a devastated valley which has obviously been used for this purpose many times. Graeme briefs her on the suit.

"As you know, this is our Discreet Penetration Stealth cover. The helmet and undersuit are completely transparent to standard intensity visible light, and are non-reflective. As long as no one tries to touch your face or hands, they will not realize you are protected. Your air supply is completely isolated and recirculated in combat mode, as is the liquid reclamation system."

Clu makes a face. He grins.

"Naturally, you have a full set of filters and purifiers for non-combat modes, guaranteed to protect against a full spectrum of chemical, biological, and nano agents. You can also split the hood and reassemble it automatically with a single gesture to the frame control area, which is iconized there, and which is opened to tenth view this way, quarter view this way, and full view like so, with all the normal reshaping gestures recognized. The undersuit will conceal your IR profile, and will work with the cover and your boots to emit your body heat in random bursts of varuious sizes and shapes, or into the ground or objects you touch."

She nods, a little uncertain, glad to have her personal logs recording this for later review.

He continues. "The frame rides on the undersuit, and is completely capable of reading your autonomic and voluntary nervous impulses and offering appropriate amplification. We're going to work on how to control that both with gestures and through movement and situation profiling. It will allow everything from static support and micro-coordination of your fine motor systems, to upright sleeping and vigilance, to five ton leveraged lifting with appropriate support for your foot frames. You'll be able to crush a man's hand, run at sixty miles an hour, and smash through a pecrete wall with a blow. Or you could lift a vehicle over a rock.

"The cover rides on the frame, and it's capable of both color selection and automatic camoflage. You can style it for any preprogrammed civilian patterns, and I'll show you how to program those patterns from any wardrobe. This control puts it into reactive camoflage, so that it will copy the scene from on side of your body to the other. With the hood and gloves on, you are effectively invisible.

"You have a quark refuser here and here in the frame, which draw material from the outside, mostly air. We produce electrons directly from any baryonic matter in the atomosphere, and we use that to run the frame. You have some capacity to store this energy, and the refusers are overpowered, so the suit should never go low on power, even in a full combat situation. The only limitation is if you use the refusers as particle beam sources, which can be accomplished with this window and this one. Stick with one weapon at a time, and you can have the backup refuser operate the frame. Use both at once and risk a shutdown when the capacitor discharges.

"With me so far?"

She nods. "It sounds like I'm invulnerable."

His voice is a kindly baritone. "As far as Cocteau is concerned, you're a superhero. Now, external weapons can also be racked on the frames, and we'll go over that another day. Obviously, the capacity is limited, the weapons are special and light, and they are expensive, so you need to be careful in picking a load and dispensing it. Today, though, we're just going to work on basic operating modes, manuvering, and low level strength training. I'm wearing an instructor's frame, and your frame knows how to avoid damage to mine, so let's get started."

For the next three days, she falls into a routine - supervising the powerplant integration in the morning, practicing with the frame at Marrifaw/Tireldi in the afternoon, a cigar break in the Marrifaw/Tireldi lounge with the militia members who are training there, then a short dinner, an inspection at the plant with de Vries, a light dinner at the hotel, a call to Ivo, or Celine, or Marie, or a security update from Lantee in an encrypted mail packet, a martial arts session with her practice harness, a shower to wind down, time with a book, some cello music, or an episode of The Arbiter, and then bed, for a tossing, turning, dream-laden sleep. Each morning she awakens with her contacts showing the image of Lan on the table, so that she can remember what all this effort is for. On the last afternoon, she walks from the smoking lounge at Marrifaw/Tireldi, runs at fifty miles an hour back to the hotel, and finishes her day with a leisurely camoflaged walk on the ridge behind the hotel. When she looks down at her arm, she cannot see it, and it leaves her with an odd sensation of disembodiment.

There is a fanfare from the company band as the Hermes is rolled out onto the field in a massive envelope of packing material. Clu smiles and waves at the crowd of workers as she follows it up the ramp into the hold. Then the four engines, at the tips of their respective wings, spool up and in a few minutes, the cargo aircraft lifts from the ground with a shuddering dark roar and heads for the clouds above. Clu watches the works receed below and behind and realizes she will miss this place and these people. Then they are enveloped by the clouds, where the turbulence shakes the wings with unpredictable frequency and strength.

Clu leans back in her seat, tired with the exhaustion of a suspnsion between tasks. As the turbulence jars the aircraft, her weapon digs briefly into her left breast, so she adjusts the holster - as a much larger jolt rings through the airframe. A klaxon sounds from the cargo compartment. She leaps to the door as the klaxon suddenly stops. Momentarily, she pauses. Lantee pushes up behind her. "What was that?" he demands. She shakes her head and opens the door.

Onto a roaring of wind.

In the middle of the floor, the Hermes is partly exposed as a group of beings use tools to tear at its covering. In the wall to the left, there is a burned open circle leading into a tunnel, and Clu has only a moment to process her confusion. Then she is looking at three weapons pointed toward her, and, as she has been trained to do, she draws her pistol, slaps her other hand around it, taps the safety with a thumbtip and lines up the sight with the chest of one of the thieves. She pulls the trigger and the wind is filled with the stench of propellant. Her target falls and as Lantee takes a shot, Clu hurls herself back into the passenger cabin out of the line of fire, followed in less than a moment by a desperate Lantee. They can feel the aircraft yawing wildly and can hear the pilots shouting from the flight deck, but there is no time to wait. Lantee gestures to the floor and joins her. They crawl to the door. Two intruders are thrashing on the floor, and the third cannot be seen. Suddenly the tunnel is gone, and beyond is an empty void of deep blue - a void filled with the screaming of rapidly departing air.

The force of the wind snatches at their feet , and threatens to flip them over. Suddenly the aircraft pitches with an impressive and disconcerting violence, and Clu sees Lantee's hands leave the doorframe as his feet come up on a journey that can only take him out the hole in the fuselage. Without a moment of thought, she finds her hand on his collar, even as time slows. Her shoulder slams into the door, and her right hand strikes out to the restraining belt of her seat, even as her feet start to follow Lantee out the door into the cargo bay. The klaxon starts to scream over the departing air, which slackens into an icy rarity, muffling the sound. Her chest is heaving as her feet hit the floor, and then Lantee is upright, swinging the door as fast and hard as he can. She only has a second to understand she is in the way and to leap into the footspace between her seat and the one ahead as the door slams shut. They are both gasping and wheezing, but there is a roar of heated air, and the survival masks have sprung from the seat arms. She seizes one and claps it over her nose and mouth. A desperate gasp brings a briefly burning torrent of cold oxygen to her throat and her lungs, and she no longer feels as if she is drowning.

They exchange looks and both turn toward the flight deck forward, its door closed now. When they open the door, they can see one pilot in his mask struggling with the aircraft, while the secondary pilot is slumped forward, a bloody crease across the back of his head, pointing to a small hole in the viewdome through which a vicious and icy wind is blowing like water from a firehose. Clu's eyes leap to the altimeter - clearly they are heading down to warmer, thicker air, but equally, they are heading down into congested lower levels. Clu looks at Lantee and gestures him to help her get the secondary pilot out of his seat. The primary pilot looks up for a panicky second and then returns his attention to the hard emergency displays.

Clu slides into the seat and ignores the blood and traces of bone on the hard stick. She tries to tie into the secondary pilot displays, but she is locked out by the safeguards. So she grabs the hard stick and tries to hold the course. Instantly, the primary pilot realizes what she has done, and pulls his hands off his hard controls, to start gesturing wildly for the local systems. The aircraft is banging and rolling, and Clu can feel the floor shove up under her one moment and drop away endlessly the next.

But something is happening. The forward speed is slowing drastically, and she can see from the hard displays that the primary pilot is rotating the engines to attain hover. She concentrates on maintaining stability even as she abandons attempting anything other than level flight. Finally, the wings stop flying, but now the aircraft is jostled by uneven convection as it hovers.

"I have the emergency pod on, they can see us now," her companion calls. "Do you know how to handle the systems if I open them up to you?"

"What do you want me to do?" she replies. Now the pressure is whistling loudly as it escapes through the window.

"Call Intrashell Rescue, get some help. Tell them where we are."

"OK."

Her contacts show the availability of the aircraft interfaces so she calls them up and quickly pages through to the comms section. "Where do you want to take us down?" she asks. He throws a map onto her windows, and rubs his face indecisively as he tries to orient. Finally he points. "Here. It's farmland, but it's close and it's near a road."

"Intrashell Rescue, how can I help you, Victor 10-9?"

She stands beside the grounded aircraft and tears off her mask. Her face is raw and reddened, and she coughs with the sudden richness and moisture of the air. In the distance, she can see three figures flying in formation toward them. They flash overhead, and she draws her pistol. One shot gone, eight left. She looks up at the various distant contrails. One of them may belong to their assailant for all she knows. Lantee steps down the ramp, eyes her weapon. "I don't think they'll try again."

"Maybe not," she replies. "But if I had more experience with the weaponry I'd strap on that augmentation and if they tried anything they'd be a hole in the ground."

The three who had flown over settle to the ground in front of them, and Clu can see the Intrashell Rescu blazons on their shirts. One of them is a dramatically armored chitinoid whose shirt is painfully tight over a variety of painfully sharp projections. They pause at the sight of her weapon. Lantee touches her arm gently. "I've checked them out. They're OK." She sighs and lowers her weapon. Her hand is suddenly shaking. Nerveless, and she can almost not feel the grip. Slowly and carefully she replaces it in her holster.

An air ambulance screams overhead and hovers, then slowly lowers itself to the ground near the rear of the cargo bay. Clu sinks down on the cargo aircraft landing pad gasping, as one of the rescuers comes to examine her with a professional care and thoroughness.

The next visitors, a half hour later, are a security team from Grisham's, hired as a result of a quick exchange by Lantee with the main office. The officers form a perimeter, while Lantee negotiates with the farmer for compensation over the crops destroyed by the landings. Clu sees a number of small objccts flying outside the perimeter, and wonders if she is seeing things, but Lantee rejoins her and follows her gaze. "Reveres," he breathes contemptuously. "Just what we need. Hey!" he hollers toward one of the Grisham force, "keep that thing as far off as you can, will you?" His voice lowers. "They're going to know you and I were here. This will be all over the contents in a minute."

Clu's shoulder starts to throb, but the medtech is already wrapping it with a repair skin. "Strained," it says in a grating voice that matches its shiny armored skin well. "Not sprained. Leave this on for a week. You'll be fine."

In the distance, a large transport appears, flying low toward them. "Pickup crew," Lantee tells her. "I didn't get to thank you."

"That's OK," she replies numbly.

"It's more than that, and you know it. Listen, I have to get to work. Ride back with the pickup crew. I'll detail some Grisham's to stay with you until our team gets here. That'll take about three hours. There'll be nothing to worry about the rest of the way. Grisham's hasd mustered some air cover for the rest of the trip."

She nods, slowly, sore and tired. "What about you?"

"I'm going for a warrant, and then I'm going to track the bad guys down."

The Grisham command post is beside the far side of the cargo carrier, and it is there that Lantee finds the supervisor. "I'm going to need access to your warrant service. Also, did you get those personal logs from Sherril and the pilots?"

"Grisham Warrants. Your account?"

"Field 1074, Hikaru Lantee, Chief of Security for Field Aeroforms."

"Warrant basis?"

"See the attached personal logs. Charges are attempted air piracy, assault with intent to kill, negligent homicide."

"I see the material, please standby while I run them past the in-house Marshal, sir."

As her image slips down to a tiny speck at the border of vision, he turns to the supervisor. "I need you to get a high speed armed aircraft with room for at least a pilot, yourself, and three other experienced officers and a full defense and capture kit."

"Yes, sir. Where are we heading?"

"I'll know as soon as I get the warrant."

The image resurfaces. "Sir, I have approval for general warranting. Is this a pursue and detain warrant?"

"Yes. And I'll need an informational warrant for the accident tracking near my current location, with a cascade provision for any further tracking. We have a high-performance aircraft to get after."

"Please standby." He waits. A Grisham pops his head in and hands a tall container to the supervisor. The supervisor pours a cup of steaming ja and hands it to Lantee. Lantee nods gratefully.

"Yes, sir. I have approval for you. The tracking ID is attached. I'm required by company policy to remind you that you are specifically enjoined against the initiation of force beyond that required to detain and bind over the suspects, and that your company bond is in force for this pursuit. You assume all expenses for property and personal damage to non-offenders until conviction, and assume the burden of demonstrating that your detainees are indeed offenders or accomplices, at the risk of your bond and personal imprisonment. Also, I am required to remind you that any initiation of force on non-offenders remains open for complaint and criminal action under local, urb, shell, or Promethean Federal Law. Do you understand these conditions as I have described them?"

For Lantee, there are few more thrilling moments than hearing these words and feeling the responsibility descend like a cloak to his shoulders.

"I do."

"Then you are hearby authorized to pursue and detain the subjects and their accomplices relative to evidence registry marked this date, time and account, and to access the appropriate information resources needed for a successful arrest. Good hunting, sir."

"Thanks." He dismisses the window. Then he looks up at the supervisor. "How soon?"

"Ten minutes."

"Good, I'll need your help getting to the local Accident Registry and finding the trace we need."

Grisham's interceptor is a late model Dart that takes the sky at a laminar Mach 2. Lantee can feel the post-event shock starting to run up the back of his neck, so he briefs the supervisor on his intent.

The trace from the Accident Registry shows the piracy as a mid-air collision. Both converged paths can be traced, and they are now closing with the current location of the pirate, despite an apparent use of countermeasures to throw off the accident tracing - itself an illegal act for an accident participant.

Thin clouds stream past outside, as the others check the status of weapons and review the evidence.

The pilot waves, signaling that he can see the other aircraft. Lantee leans over the back of the pilot's seat and can see the contrail above and at its distant tip, a speck gleaming from the suntube light.

"They know we're here," the pilot announces, thin grey hands waving in the control areas. "I don't think they can get altitude on us - they don't think so either. They're trying to get down."

The pirate's contrail streams briefly across the viewpanes. Lantee feels the floor drop beneath his feet.

"Better strap in, folks," the pilot announces. "We're doing rough manuvering here for a bit."

The pirate airfoil sits under the foliage at the corner of the small private landing pad, driven there in an apparent effort at concealment. Lantee and the Grishams spread out around it, but it is clearly deserted.

"Careless," the forensic tech announces, dropping from the elevated hatch of the pirate. "Cell debris, skin oils, exhalation profiles. We've got the whole thing."

"Yeah," Lantee replies. "Except we just have to find them. All right, they could have had a car or aircraft waiting here." He looks to the supervisor. "Get one of your guys onto Accident Tracking to find out if we have a departure in the time window. Now if it was a car, we don't have much chance, but let's get the interceptor into the air and do a spiral outward to 20 miles. Image everything in that space."

The forensic tech holds up a grey appendage. "We can feed a sniffer off an external vent. It won't be very accurate."

"Is there one left for use on the ground?"

"Yes, the handheld. It's more limited."

"Great. OK, set that up while we're getting the flight information."

The supervisor nods.

The wind is picking up a bit, tugging his short reddish hair.

"OK, let's say they don't have this landing planned. They had to get a car on short notice." He looks around the field. "There's a road over there - that's nearest. If they went overland, they headed for those woods. Can we get an IR kit on someone and get them looking through the woods, and send someone running down the road to see if they anyone's walking? If they were trying to hitch a ride, they could still be out there. That leaves the terminal, if that's what that is. " Again, he looks to the supervisor. "If you'll back me up, we'll see if they tried to rent a car or catch a flight. If we've got anyone left, have them try to get in touch with that terminal and let them know we're coming."

They jog toward the terminal building, weapons readied but low, a plain jersey drawn over the supervisor's Gresham logo. "You go left, in case they try to get out the back."

The supervisor's voice is interrupted by his breath and the running, but he manages. "What do you want to use for a tac signal?" There hadn't been time to arrange a protocol. "How about a cross-window?"

Lantee nods and gestures to his systems. A small window shows the supervisor's view, and he knows the supervisor is seeing his view. It should be enough, and Lantee sees it as a smart improvisation.

They separate at a corner of seamless sandstone slashed with thin green streaks of mirror.

The door curls toward him like a wave in the stone, emitting signs over the network. Then he is at its mirrored surface and it parts, with the sudden indoor cool like an envelope as it closes behind him. He is about to thrust his hand into his pocket to conceal his weapon when he is roughly shouldered aside by a tall, hairy biped in a bulky jumpsuit. For a moment, he is uncertain about pursuit. but he makes his decision and thrusts back out the door.

"Stop!" he yells. "I have a warrant!" But the suspect breaks into a shambling run. Lantee brings up his weapon and the sight locks into his contacts; upon determining that the target is moving away, it suggests a selection which he winks to accept. He fires, and the capture round explodes just sort of his target into a fractal web of adhesive elastic that slaps into its skin and clothing, tightening with sufficent force to spill the suspect onto the ground in a rolling tangle.

There are more, he thinks.

As he steps back to the door, he slips the weapon back into his rig. He assumes a nonchalant attitude, hoping the other suspects will not have seen what just occurred. If they had...

He pushes the door aside and steps into a perfectly normal terminal. A desk at the far wall, seats in a waiting area. A few people of different types, including a thin grey Ilar leaning against the frame of the door that leads to the field, its large dark eyes focused somwhere above the floor, perhaps reading, perhaps dissembling. Lantee sizes up the occupants and then draws his weapon. "Excuse me, everyone, I have a warrant for the arrest of the former occupants of aircraft registry 87492WXG on charges of attempted air piracy, assault with intent to kill, and negligent homicide. Please stay where you are."

They watch him, carefully, and, not for the first time, Lantee thinks that there are an awful lot of weapons in this room.

Suddenly the Ilar bolts for the back door, and a cream colored human starts up toward Lantee.

There is the sound of a large number of weapons being drawn, rounds being chambered, and Lantee has his weapon pointing squarely at the chest of the oncoming human, who at the sound, freezes. "On the floor, son," Lantee orders. And as the man, hands above his head, weapons trained on him from around the room, sinks to the floor, Lantee can see the Grisham supervisor out the back door subduing the Ilar.

He grins. "Now, you are coming with me, and we're going to have a little talk."

The suntube is oddly familiar, and Clu stands on the patio, watching the strollers on the beach disturb small flocks of shore lizards. To her left, the cars and sidewalk skaters proceed at their various speeds. And with a sudden frisson of pleasure and terror at once, she realizes that this has become home.

Inside, she wanders to the kitchen and pours a glass of milk. As she sips, she looks over at the frame where it stands beside the window. She remembers a day under another suntube and the destruction she had unleashed - destruction she hopes will be her protection on Cocteau. She thinks of the fact that all of that is standing here, in her living room.

Her shoulder aches for a moment, and she rubs it, feeling the smooth bandage, almost indistinguishable from skin.

Her calendar reminds her that tomorrow is her meeting with the Board of the Recovery League. Almost time to go get Lan, she thinks.