place.”
Niri looks back at him, a slip of black hair curving lightly over her cheek, her eyes seeking his, out of amazement, or for reassurance, he doesn’t know. “I can hear it. I hear it everywhere.”
He presses his lips together, all too aware of those nozzles on the wall, and the cameras glaring down at him, and thinking---knowing---that this is not going to end well.
DUST
BIOSTAT STATION
HANGAR LEVEL
MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225
The hangar’s comm deck is tight, a narrow corner littered with computers, clipboards, and coffee mugs. Gojo has dressed down to fit into some skinny’s chair, unloaded some of his kit, and is now grimacing into a holo screen, scrolling through menus with a quick skim of his gloved fingers. His helmet is off, like all the rest of them because the hangar is cold, and the air is thin, but human friendly.
He shakes his head, black hair pulled into a topknot, sweat glossing his forehead. “Petra’s locator unit couldn’t have powered down. There would be log entry for that, as well as for malfunction, or shut down. But it looks like the signal just phased out, meaning faded to nothing, with no sign of trouble.”
“Interference?” Voss asks.
“Yes, sir,” Gojo says without looking up. “Like jamming.”
Wyatt groans, shifts his weight. “Or the storm, or just rolling slowly into a poor signal area. That can phase out signal.”
“No.” Gojo pulls up different satellite windows, adjusting frames, and scrolling back through time with a slide control. “These are SAT images. They were tagged and encrypted, so extremely hard to access---and we don’t technically have the clearance---so it took a little improvisation. I found an image of her here, at the last point we can see before the storm moves in. She was in a track, coming out of New Beijing, but clearly on the open plain, a flat stretch of terrain that does not get monitored.”
Voss leans forward, catching the grainy thermal outline of a box moving over sand, riding a plume of dust. Where were you going?
“This is all we got before the satellite passed over, and the next image is no good because the dust kicked up.” Gojo pulls the image down and adjusts the coordinates, magnifying it until another blurry object appears. “But you can see here---right here---these are two ships, old delta-wing transports, pretty big, and clearly on an intercept course with Petra’s track. Hard to tell because Red Filter satellites, even the restricted ones, aren’t monitoring for older weapons, but the thermal images of the ships here, and here---and sticking out from under the fuselage there, and there---those look like rockets, and maybe guns. It’s hard to see, like I said, but it’s there.”
Rockets, guns…
Voss stares at it, at this infuriating blur, as if he’s going to catch some detail that Gojo didn’t, something that makes this all go away. But there’s nothing else there. He’s staring into the past, at what already happened, and he’s powerless.
“Get someone out there,” he says, his voice tight. “Have New Beijing dispatch a security team.”
“The storm, sir. No one’s going to fly right now.”
“Then have them send a search vehicle.”
“Visibility is nil.”
“Let me make this easier for you. I don’t care what you have to tell them. I don’t care who you have to threaten, or what you have to threaten them with. You get a team out there.”
Gojo holds his gaze, then nods, as if he understands the depth of it now, even if he didn’t before. “Yes, sir.”
“I want to know the minute we have anything, an image, anything.”
“Roger that.”
“And make sure we have a way to talk to Logan. I want an open channel. I want to know what’s going on down there.”
“Sir.”
Voss backs out of the small space, needing to be out of it. He crosses back into the hangar, away from the others. Experience throws it in his face, images of her dead, dying, hurt, because
Niri looks back at him, a slip of black hair curving lightly over her cheek, her eyes seeking his, out of amazement, or for reassurance, he doesn’t know. “I can hear it. I hear it everywhere.”
He presses his lips together, all too aware of those nozzles on the wall, and the cameras glaring down at him, and thinking---knowing---that this is not going to end well.
DUST
BIOSTAT STATION
HANGAR LEVEL
MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225
The hangar’s comm deck is tight, a narrow corner littered with computers, clipboards, and coffee mugs. Gojo has dressed down to fit into some skinny’s chair, unloaded some of his kit, and is now grimacing into a holo screen, scrolling through menus with a quick skim of his gloved fingers. His helmet is off, like all the rest of them because the hangar is cold, and the air is thin, but human friendly.
He shakes his head, black hair pulled into a topknot, sweat glossing his forehead. “Petra’s locator unit couldn’t have powered down. There would be log entry for that, as well as for malfunction, or shut down. But it looks like the signal just phased out, meaning faded to nothing, with no sign of trouble.”
“Interference?” Voss asks.
“Yes, sir,” Gojo says without looking up. “Like jamming.”
Wyatt groans, shifts his weight. “Or the storm, or just rolling slowly into a poor signal area. That can phase out signal.”
“No.” Gojo pulls up different satellite windows, adjusting frames, and scrolling back through time with a slide control. “These are SAT images. They were tagged and encrypted, so extremely hard to access---and we don’t technically have the clearance---so it took a little improvisation. I found an image of her here, at the last point we can see before the storm moves in. She was in a track, coming out of New Beijing, but clearly on the open plain, a flat stretch of terrain that does not get monitored.”
Voss leans forward, catching the grainy thermal outline of a box moving over sand, riding a plume of dust. Where were you going?
“This is all we got before the satellite passed over, and the next image is no good because the dust kicked up.” Gojo pulls the image down and adjusts the coordinates, magnifying it until another blurry object appears. “But you can see here---right here---these are two ships, old delta-wing transports, pretty big, and clearly on an intercept course with Petra’s track. Hard to tell because Red Filter satellites, even the restricted ones, aren’t monitoring for older weapons, but the thermal images of the ships here, and here---and sticking out from under the fuselage there, and there---those look like rockets, and maybe guns. It’s hard to see, like I said, but it’s there.”
Rockets, guns…
Voss stares at it, at this infuriating blur, as if he’s going to catch some detail that Gojo didn’t, something that makes this all go away. But there’s nothing else there. He’s staring into the past, at what already happened, and he’s powerless.
“Get someone out there,” he says, his voice tight. “Have New Beijing dispatch a security team.”
“The storm, sir. No one’s going to fly right now.”
“Then have them send a search vehicle.”
“Visibility is nil.”
“Let me make this easier for you. I don’t care what you have to tell them. I don’t care who you have to threaten, or what you have to threaten them with. You get a team out there.”
Gojo holds his gaze, then nods, as if he understands the depth of it now, even if he didn’t before. “Yes, sir.”
“I want to know the minute we have anything, an image, anything.”
“Roger that.”
“And make sure we have a way to talk to Logan. I want an open channel. I want to know what’s going on down there.”
“Sir.”
Voss backs out of the small space, needing to be out of it. He crosses back into the hangar, away from the others. Experience throws it in his face, images of her dead, dying, hurt, because
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