“Noted. Thank you.”
There were thousands of people awaiting transit. We rode trams in broad arcs between gates and I looked at them and saw nothing. They were grateful to be released, but I knew they’d be aggravated again at the cargo search and related delays.
More troops arrived on station from their moon Ness and from planetside.
“You’ll need to do an EVA for him in case he’s suited. I’d start evacuating any compartments not in use. Check on manifests for anything that requires life support. He’d hide in a kennel to get down.”
“Seriously?” the captain asked me. “You’d really do all this to exfiltrate?”
“I shouldn’t be sharing this much with you, but yes.”
“There’s no bloody way we can search every craft and every station to this level after every arrival or departure. It’s an impossible level of security.”
“Welcome to my game,” I said.
We, and they, searched cargo, evacuated containers, checked passengers, manifests, contractors and restaurants, engineering spaces, station crew, station lodging. We weren’t going to find him, but I had to go through the motions and we might get lucky. Meantime, we might find a trace elsewhere.
The only positive in all this was that Her Majesty’s intel apparatus were going to be looking for him as well. He could still retire rich, but he had two systems that were harder to operate in, and a slowly closing net. It was in his best interest to sneak off quietly, but I didn’t think he would.
I’d wanted to be in pursuit and out of the system. Instead, I was stuck in low orbit doing searches I knew wouldn’t yield anything.
I told Silver, “My guess is he’ll board back down to the surface and will leave via another route. Or has already.”
“Does that mean we scan another half million passengers?”
“No, because it’s irrelevant. We need to figure where he’s going.”
“What about the DNA traces?”
“They’re going to be on every shuttle. Bet me.”
“No bet,” she said with a shake. “This is tough.”
I half-chuckled.
“This is just warming up.”
She didn’t look happy with that prospect.
They found us what passed as a stationside stateroom. I’m not complaining. It was barely big enough for one, but it had a real bed and a small shower, just big enough to stand in. We took turns cleaning up. I didn’t want to rest, but needed to, so I lay down to the sighing of the vent. I was fully dressed, next to the wall with the emergency masks. Just in case.
I must have been tired. I wasn’t aware I went to sleep until the captain buzzed me.
I grabbed the phone and activated the earbud.
“Yes.”
“Sir, we’re done. He’s away.”
“How?” I asked as I jerked awake, nervous electric tingles running through my legs.
“One of my troops was found trussed in a locker room. We had to mix patrols, which I warned against from an operational perspective.”
“So, he rode down in uniform, unquestioned, with both elements assuming he was with the other.”
“So it seems.”
“How long ago?”
“Twelve hours.”
“Long enough he lifted back on the next shuttle and is now headed out. Or, he found a nice hole groundside. Or, he wants us to think he did, and is already on a flight out. The latter most likely. Can you check each ship as it reaches Jump Point?”
“We can try. I’ll have to run that up the chain, of course. Is it worth it?”
Was it worth it? Would he sneak aboard a station, a military craft, the base on Ness, a research vessel, a cargo craft, a tramp . . . ?
“No, not really,” I said. “You don’t have enough manpower to do it, and there’s no point in a partial job. I’ll tell Her Majesty’s people that.”
“I feel bad about it, sir. We should have checked our own.”
“You did,” I said. “You warned them and they didn’t listen. I’ve seen a lot of that lately.”
I didn’t want to start recriminations. I wanted to pick up a cold trail.
I felt compelled to get a message out to a secure code to Naumann. Randall wasn’t going to search through thousands of messages for this, nor would it tell him anything if he did.
I coded a short update. I wasn’t going to contact you but things have obviously changed. He’s better than I would have expected. He’s had more training. Leads on where appreciated.
I met up with Silver, and we moved to a hotel. We were farther from the operations area of the station, but had more room to lay out equipment. This was a nice area of the station, pretty much hotel quality from axis to rim.