[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"is confined to quarters."
"Yeah, well, after you talk with whatever Bel dragged in, get yourself some
rest, huh, Quinnie? You re unstrung. You almost lost it back there."
Quinn s ambiguous parting wave acknowledged the truth of this, without making
any promises. As Quinn exited, Bothari-
Jesek turned to her station console, to order up a personnel pod to be ready
for Quinn by the time she arrived at the hatch.
Mark rose and wandered around the tactics room, his hands thrust carefully
into his pockets. A dozen real-time and holo-
schematic display consoles sat dark and still; communication and encoding
Page 83
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
systems lay silent. He pictured the tactics nerve center fully staffed, alive
and bright and chaotic, heading into battle. He imagined enemy fire peeling
the ship open like a meal tray, all that life smashed and burned and spilled
into the hard radiation and vacuum of space. Fire from House Fell s station at
Jumppoint
Five, say, as the
Peregrine fought for escape. He shuddered, nauseated.
He paused before the sealed door to the briefing chamber. Bothari-Jesek was
now engaged in some other communication, some decision having to do with the
security of their Fell Station moorings. Curious, he laid his palm upon the
lock-pad.
Somewhat to his surprise, the door slid demurely open. Somebody had some
re-programming to do, if all top-secured Dendarii facilities were keyed to
admit a dead man s palm print. A lot of re-programming - Miles doubtless had
it fixed so he could just waft right through anywhere in the fleet. That would
be his style.
Bothari-Jesek glanced up, but said nothing. Taking that as tacit permission,
Mark walked into the briefing room, and circled the table. Lights came up for
him as he paced. Thorne s words, spoken here, echoed in his head.
Norwood said, The Admiral will get out of here even if we don t
. How carefully had the Dendarii examined their recordings of the drop
mission? Surely someone had been over them all several times by now. What
could he possibly see that they hadn t? They knew their people, their
equipment.
But I know the medical complex. I know Jackson s Whole
.
He wondered how far his palm would take him. He slipped into Quinn s station
chair; sure enough, files bloomed for him, opened at his touch as no woman
ever had. He found the downloaded records of the drop mission. Norwood s data
was lost, but
Tonkin had been with him part of the time. What had Tonkin seen? Not colored
lines on the map, but real-time, real-eye, real-ear?
Was there such a record? The command helmet had kept such, he knew, if
trooper-helmets did too then - ah, ha. Tonkin s visuals and audio came up on
the console before his fascinated eyes.
Trying to follow them gave him an almost instant headache. This was no
ballasted and gimballed vid pick-up, no steady pan, but rather the jerky,
snatching glances of real head movements. He slowed the replay to watch
himself in the lift-tube foyer, a short, agitated fellow in grey camouflage,
glittering eyes in a set face.
Do I really look like that
? The deformities of his body were not so apparent as he d imagined, under the
loose uniform.
He sat behind Tonkin s eyes and walked with him through the hurried maze of
Bharaputra s buildings, tunnels, and corridors, all the way to the last
firefight at the end. Thorne had quoted Norwood correctly; it was right there
on the vid. Though he d been wrong on the time; Norwood was gone eleven
minutes by the helmet s unsubjective clock. Norwood s flushed face reappeared,
panting, the urgent laugh sounded - and, moments later, the grenade-strike,
the explosion - almost ducking, Mark hastily shut off the vid, and glanced
down at himself as if half-expecting to be branded with another mortal
splattering of blood and brains.
If there s any clue, it has to be earlier
. He started the program again from the parting in the foyer. The third time
through, he slowed it down and took it step by step, examining each. The
patient, finicky, self-forgetful absorption was almost pleasurable.
Tiny details - you could lose yourself in tiny details, an anesthetic for
brain-pain.
Page 84
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"
Got you
," he whispered. It had flashed past so fast as to be subliminal, if you were
running the vid in real-time. The briefest glimpse of a sign on the wall, an
arrow on a cross-corridor labeled
Shipping and Receiving
.
He looked up to find Bothari-Jesek watching him. How long had she been sitting
there? She slumped relaxed, long legs crossed at booted ankles, long fingers
tented together. "What have you got?" she asked quietly.
He called up the holomap of the ghostly buildings with Norwood and Tonkin s
line of march glowing inside. "Not here," he pointed, "but there.
" He marked a complex well off-sides from the route the Dendarii had traveled
with the cryo-chamber. "
That s where Norwood went. Through that tunnel. I m sure of it! I ve seen that
facility - been all over that building. Hell, I used to play hide and seek in
it with my friends, till the babysitters made us stop. I can see it in my head
as surely as if I had Norwood s helmet vid playing right here on the table. He
took that cryo-chamber down to Shipping and Receiving, and he shipped it!"
Bothari-Jesek sat up. "Is that possible? He had so little time!"
"Not just possible. Easy! The packing equipment is fully automated. All he had
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]