Part 21 (1/2)
She followed his gesture, then glanced down at the puddle of rainwater still forming at her feet. She gave him a twisted grin. ”Through that.”
He looked more sharply at her face, then hair. ”Guide.”
She raised her eyebrows in a silent question.
He shrugged. ”Short hair. No darkeyes, and you stand... differently.” He made a small gesture over his shoulder. ”Grunts are already down in the tubes, working on the tunnels. The rest of us have three bacts -bacteria biologicals, to you-”
”I'm familiar with the term.”
He nodded. ”-to set up before we can come in and talk. You want to bring your meres in now?”
There was no surge in her biogate as he mentioned the meres-no heightened sense of danger in his odor. She nod-ded. ”We'll start contract as soon as you like, but we need to use your scame right away.”
He tapped out a message on the com. ”Thought you meres carried scames wherever you went.”
She shrugged and motioned with her chin at the panel. ”How long has the node been down?”
”Since dawn. Been using manual corns to keep in touch with the grunts.” He pointed down the right
corridor. ”Just turn in there. Puts you in the rec room-it's our main hall. All our med gear is on the left bank of panels, along with our manual corns.”
”We'll need a manual map-some kind of overlay-for the layout of this place.”
”Not much to see. There's the warren, the storerooms, and the labs for each type of bact.”
”Quarters?”
”In the second hut. Mina will show you, once you've checked in with Laz.”
”Laz-not you-is supervisor for this stake?” She did not hide her faint surprise.
He eyed her thoughtfully. ”I should be flattered-I think. Laz programs our corers. I'm supervisor here.”
”Ah. You have a sensor net?”
”Uh-huh. But our nodie won't be able to get it active again until the node comes back up.”
”Why not? Manual scans should still be working.”
”Had an accident a couple days ago. Fried part of the net and one of our grunt-techs with it. Node maintenance wasn't finished with the repair before it shut down again. So, no scans.”
”You have skimmers and tracs?”
”Five tracs. All in the warren.” He paused for a second. ”You ask a lot of questions for a guide.” He
watched her carefully, but she merely waited. ”Three,” he said finally. ”Out on M-deck-the maintenance deck, to you.”
Her blue eyes glinted. ”I'll bring the others in.”
”I'll be down in the warren. Call me-Bishop-on two-four if you need anything you can't find. Laz is
finis.h.i.+ng up right now. He and Mina will meet you in the rec room in about half an hour.” He made a formal gesture. ”You're on-contract as of now.”
”On-contract,” Tsia acknowledged.
She recrossed the tarmac warily and rejoined the other meres. ”Seems clear,” she said in a low voice to Nitpicker. The pilot's eyes glinted at the unspoken implication. ”But,” she added, ”they had an accident a few days ago. Damaged the sensor net.”
From beside the pilot, Doetzier's eyes narrowed. ”Anyone hurt?”
”One grunt-tech. Dead.”
His eyes shuttered, and he seemed to withdraw, but his biofield flared with energy. Tsia could almost hear him thinking. Puppets, she thought as she looked at the meres. And the puppet master was somewhere nearby, arranging his sticks and strings. She shook herself, then led Wren, Bowdie, and Kurvan across, while the other three waited behind. With only one manual scanner to work with, it took Bowdie twenty minutes to declare the rec room clean.
”No weapons,” he said, as he closed his handscanner down and tucked it back in his harness.
Tsia eyed him blankly for a moment. There was something in this room, some scent that caught at her attention. Feline? Marine? It was an odor she ought to recognize, but it was so faint that it refused to trigger her memory. Bowdie gestured again toward the door, and she nodded slowly, then went back for the others.
Each time through the filter field, Ruka cringed, and Tsia found herself flinching as she never had before. Her skin almost crawled with the tingling field, and she finally realized that it was the cougar's muscles bunching and twitching that translated to her as the s.h.i.+vers. It was not until the fifth time through that the cougar began to get used to the sensation. Tsia tried to shut out the flinching, but found it almost impossible. Ruka seemed to insert himself deeper into her mind each time she opened her gate.
The rec room doubled as a staging area and meeting hall.
There were three tables at one end, and a stack of ma.s.sive crates at the other. Color bars in the painted designs delineated different sport courts; the grav plates set into both floors and ceilings alternated with the mag plates and bars in snaking diamond patterns. Two doorways led to the outer loading bays; two more led to the warren and labs. The wall behind the tables was a bank of panels, screens, and manual equipment. Three screens were active, the others blank. Doetzier was already seated by the scame. His arm, still cast in the thin sheet of hardened metaplas, glowed under the medical gear's scans as Striker activated it manually.
Tsia, jittery, shrugged away from Wren and paced toward the outer doors. That scent-it was still here, in this room. And it was cat, she realized, not cougar. When Ruka took in the odor through her biogate, he snarled and bristled until she rubbed her own neck to smooth down her hairs. Cat, but not cougar-a local creature? She didn't think so. She tried to concentrate, but exhaustion hit like a fist, and abruptly, she leaned against the wall. Even Striker's face, angular and flat as she moved across to speak with Nitpicker, looked drawn so tight that the skin was stretched like a drum across her cheekbones. Wren's tanned face looked sallow in the light. Where Bowdie's bent legs had seemed to carry the weight of the world, his face now looked as tired.
Wren, standing near her, pulled a pouch from his harness and popped a few nolo seeds in his mouth.
”Get rid of the cub yet?” he murmured, spitting a husk sharply into the hisser bin on the wall.
”No.”
”Better do it soon. Nitpicker will catch on sooner or later-”
”She already knows.” Tsia glanced over at Kurvan and Bowdie where they unpacked the two packs that had survived the hike. She motioned with her chin. ”Didn't come out of this with much, did we?”
”Uh-uh.”