SURMOUNTING THE FENCE at the Pareo plant was a simple climbing exercise. Franc reached the top, noting the perimeter relied only on the physical obstacles of height and a monofilament barricade atop the wall for security. His own vibroknife answered in kind, severing the guy pylons for the nearly invisible guard wires. Something short-circuited when he did so, stays surrendering to his blade in a shower of sparks. Filaments concertinaed out of his way, and he dropped to the ground on the inside.
Ahead was Janus’s car, absent of passengers, parked near one of the side entrances on this flank of the building.
I’ll try the obvious way first, he thought.
He smiled when he saw the palm-pad by the side of the door. Access tell-tales glowed green on its surface. He touched the door enough to ease it open a crack, and it moved effortlessly under his hand. “Idiots,” he muttered. Whoever had biometric access to this place had walked right in and forgotten to lock up behind themselves—or, more likely, touched something accidentally that disabled the lock reset, effectively latching the door open behind them. The biggest flaw in any security system always was the human factor.
Fine by me, he thought. The quicker I catch up with you, the sooner our fun can begin.
He slipped inside the door, leaving access pad and latch just as he’d found them. He paused in a wide hallway to get his bearings. He saw no one, heard nothing. A dark warehouse space yawned open to his right; offices to his left glowed with the westering sun; artificial light came from rooms on the far side of an empty storage bay straight ahead.
He triggered a relay and switched on the aural amplifier he wore in his left ear. He didn’t use it often; preternatural hearing in only one ear could be very disorienting. He’d thought to have it in two, but the model he could afford would interfere with the comlink in his right mastoid bone. At some point in the future, after another bonus, he could get better tricked out. For now, though, it served its purpose: suddenly he heard sound throughout the building as if he were a living high-gain microphone. Nothing stirring in the warehouse area; likewise nothing in the offices. Chat and footsteps from the workspaces in the center of the building, dead ahead.
He paused for a moment and considered his comlink. Check in with the boss? No, not yet: he had a location, but still couldn’t report what Janus was up to here. He pulled out the needlegun instead, not planning to use it, but preferring to have it in hand when sneaking around in the shadows. He turned the gain down on his augmented hearing, but left it several notches higher than normal human acuteness. All the better to scout out what lay ahead.
Franc ghosted through the shadows of the storage area, moving deeper into the building.
“WE’RE CERTAIN THAT’S Janus’s floatbike, right?”
“Yes, Domna Arcolo,” Commander Obray confirmed.
“Then who in the hells is that on it? He’s up to no good or he wouldn’t be stealthed and going over the perimeter like that.”
“Identity unknown. We picked up the bike in Jenes Dome at Cutter and Jadeway. Police report a man dead in a parking structure near there. The victim is one of Janus’s household staff. I think we can assume—”
“This tracker killed the cartel man and took his bike—yes, I get the picture. But why? And where’s Janus?” She was on her feet again, shooting irritated glances at the street map display and the annoying stationary ping splash that marked the Pareo plant where the bike had come to rest.
“Whose car is that in the lot? And is this building occupied now?”
She waited for updates. All the while her wild psi and her intuition were prodding her to an inescapable conclusion.
“Waiting for vehicle ID from planet security. We can’t get a direct life sign reading from satellite scans here, Domna Arcolo—”
“Damn backwater.”
“—but we can move our own spyflies to the location. They’re not there yet, though.”
Raem, she thought to her construct. Confirm: Janus onsite?
Possible, came the response.
Not probable?
Chance still outside of one standard deviation on the probability curve.
She made a sour face at Raem’s statistical equivocation. She knew better than to argue intuition with her enhanced left-brain functions. But this time—
This time she was going with her gut.
“Obray: keep your teams ready to deploy and put a squad on that block to back me if I call for it. You continue the search for our fugitives and their hostage.”
“You’re going into the field, Domna Arcolo?”
“You bet your ass I am.” She was already moving for the door. “Send your updates to Teo; my line is live if you need me direct.”
Obray offered a bow from his command chair, but she and her matasai were out of the ops center by time he’d done it.