‘Why d’you think she didn’t kill the two prisoners?’ asked Zaphir, as the flyer began its short hop to the city.
‘Perhaps she’s developing a conscience,’ said Bache, staring down at the lush green countryside as it flashed by beneath them.
‘I hardly think so,’ said Nexen. ‘More like her perspective that it’s her decision whether this human race lives or dies.’
‘So, she thinks she’s one of the ancients now?’ Zaphir said, giving Nexen a quick glance.
‘Who knows?’ replied Bache. ‘But she does seem to think of us as inferior and expendable.’
‘An incorrect supposition I intend to rectify sooner rather than later,’ said Nexen, as the flyer pilot turned and looked over his shoulder at them.
‘They’ve just reported the military truck they stole had a tracker,’ he said. ‘It went silent at the spaceport.’
‘Go there,’ said Nexen, peering out of the front screen as the pilot swung the craft over towards the eastern side of the city.
‘Have any ships left the port for space since the truck got there?’ Bache shouted across to the pilot.
‘Negative.’
‘What other methods of transport leave the port?’
‘Autocabz, city monorail, privately chartered flyers as well as plenty of private ground vehicles,’ the pilot called over his shoulder.
Bache caught Nexen’s eye as he scowled and exhaled noisily in frustration.
‘We need to see the video footage from inside the public areas,’ said Zaphir, pointing at the tablet Bache was clutching.
‘Shit, yeah,’ said Bache, quickly touching the screen to wake it up. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
Zaphir and Nexen craned their necks to peer at the small screen as the pilot spoke to port security and got Bache’s tablet patched in to the feeds. He took the recordings back to the time the truck disappeared and concentrated on the main concourse.
‘They might have found the tracker, disabled it and driven away to leave a false trail,’ said Zaphir.
‘That’s always a possibility,’ said Nexen. ‘But I don’t suppose the military make those trackers easy to find.’
‘They didn’t disable it,’ said Bache. ‘They parked it underground down there.’ He pointed to a sign indicating subterranean parking levels.
‘How d’you know that?’ Zaphir asked.
Bache panned the camera feed in to two females exiting the stairs who were quite obviously shielding their faces from the camera. They watched as they split up and went shopping, meeting up minutes later to board the monorail wearing different clothes and wide-brimmed hats.
‘Ah, crap, they’re in the city,’ said Zaphir. ‘That makes things more difficult.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said the pilot, watching over his shoulder. ‘There are cameras everywhere. If you give me a minute, I’ll ask the transport authority to patch us in to the monorail train that left the spaceport at that time.’
Moments later, as the flyer sat hovering over central Cantore Say, they watched as the two girls alighted the train.
‘That’s Dallengur Jast station,’ said the pilot. ‘It’s the largest station in the city and all the intercontinental lines branch out from there.’
‘Can we see where they go?’ asked Nexen, glancing up at the pilot.
The pilot nodded and held his hand up while he spoke quickly over the communications.
‘I’d pre-prepared,’ he said, once his brief conversation on the radio had finished. ‘The transport authority were just waiting for us to identify the station, the correct feed should be with you in a few seconds.’
It didn’t take Bache long to find them. The hats certainly hid their faces, but backfired by making them conspicuous in the crowd.
‘They’re reading the map,’ said Zaphir.
‘Well, at least we know they don’t seem to have a plan,’ said Bache. ‘That indicates they’re making it up as they go.’
‘It’s only just over two hours ago?’ Nexen said, indicating the feed time on the top of the image. ‘If they take a train that has a journey time of more than that, we might be able to stop the train somewhere remote and corner them.’
They watched the androids discuss their options before one of them approached a public computer terminal, while the other shielded her.
‘What’s she doing now?’ Nexen asked.
‘Hacking the ticket allocation server probably,’ said Bache. ‘That’s why the other girl’s covering her.’
‘I have a call from a Dion Nexen,’ said the pilot, handing the commander a headset.
While Nexen talked to his distant cousin, Zaphir and Bache watched the two androids wander slowly through the station, eventually approaching and stopping on platform 22.
‘The next train on that platform goes to the Tylat Archipelago, up in the north of the continent,’ said Bache, showing Zaphir a map.
‘What’s up there?’ she asked. ‘It looks like the middle of nowhere and a string of tiny islands.’
‘The Tylat Archipelago?’ questioned the pilot, turning suddenly, a look of concern on his face.
Bache and Zaphir glanced at each other and nodded back at him.
‘Why, is that a bad thing?’ Bache asked.
‘Only the biggest concentration of military bases on the planet,’ he said. ‘Enough munitions to wipe out every living thing on the planet too.’
‘Ah, crap,’ said Zaphir, again. ‘It’s never good news, is it?’
‘What good news?’ said Nexen, mishearing what Zaphir said as he finished his conversation with Dion.
Zaphir grimaced and looked at Bache.
‘What?’ Nexen asked. ‘Do we know where they’re going?’
‘The Tylat Archipelago,’ said Bache, raising his eyebrows and leaning back in his seat.
‘Hmm,’ grunted Nexen. ‘There used to be a nuclear strike base there in my day and an awful lot more bugger-all. It’s one of the remotest areas on the planet.’
‘Was,’ said the pilot.
Nexen’s face turned a shade of white when the pilot filled him in on what was up there now. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he said. ‘How long’s the train journey up there?’
‘Three and a half hours,’ said Bache, reading from the tablet.
‘Get that train stopped,’ said Nexen. ‘Animals on the track or something, anything that sounds legitimate and won’t spook them.’
‘D’you want me to set off in that direction, Commander?’ the pilot asked.
‘Hold just one second,’ Nexen said, putting his hand up to the pilot and turning to Bache. ‘Fast forward to make sure they board that train and it’s not a ruse.’
Sure enough, the two androids jumped aboard and no one disembarked before it left the station.
‘It’s a non-stop service,’ said Bache. ‘So, they’re still on it.’
‘Right,’ said Nexen, nodding at the pilot. ‘Get us there as fast as this contraption can go.’
The pilot put the call in to the transport authority to have the train halted and at the same time pushed the throttles to their stops.