Rogue(99)

I watched the time tick on her screens. Assuming he came back out, we were now twenty-two hours apart.

“He’s back out of the hotel.”

“Understood,” I said. I ran from my end. Another hour.

“He walked into the industrial and service areas.”

“Really,” I said. “Interesting.”

“Hiding? Or shopping for weapons?” she asked.

“Either.”

I ruled out two more flights. Nineteen hours.

She said, “I have his chip code. Stand by.”

She tapped and pointed and scrolled, and said, “He did not leave using that code.”

“I’ll keep looking,” I said. “He might have faked one. Also scrolling back from right now.”

We had location and time narrowed down. Then I got past the most recent starship, and the cross-system transfers.

“He’s insystem,” I said.

“Confirmed,” she said. “I think he’s still on station, too.”

“Still running shuttle docks,” I replied.

Twelve hours. We were close.

I kept running back, she ran forward. We crossed.

Simultaneously, we said, “Still here.”

I said, “Try to find any departure he’s got scheduled or reserved.”

“Yeah, kinda obvious, already have,” she said with a high level of snip.

“Sorry. Excitable loner.”

“Understood.”

“Okay, he’s still here, and in the maintenance areas. I think I need to go take a look. I’ll grab a disposable phone—”

“Bought four,” she said, and pointed.

“I’ll take one of them,” I said, snagging it and letting her copy the code. “I’ll call if I need to.”

“Be safe. You know what he can do.”

“Yes. He doesn’t know what I can do,” I said. I threw on a dull blue shirt and found my notepad. I grabbed my chip and walked out.

It wasn’t hard to get into the maintenance areas. I just walked. My concern was that I was tracked by this stupid necklace and someone might notice. What I recalled from my last mission here was that not all were tracked all the time; only specific events triggered even an AI monitor, and very rarely a human one. As most of the people here would be transients, and the cops would be busy with drunken Mtalis who left their chips in lodging, I should be okay.

No one stopped me at once. The corridors were paneled except where they met the outer rock hull. Gravity here was .63.

It was a familiar environment. This was the works of the station: power conduits, service corridors, safety hatches, controls. The environment units, attitude jets and power plants were secure, with redundant checks and gates. That was reassuring. I wouldn’t want him taking out the station. I recalled they’d been fairly well equipped during the War, which is one of the reasons most of our attacks were on the surface.

I got a message buzz and looked. Silver said, “Departure confirmed for 1500 Station time.”

So, now I knew the stupid dogfucker really was headed groundside on Earth.

Unless, of course, he either held over for the next flight, headed for another ship, or had some business here.

This area handled maintenance shipments. They were rolled in here from the dock near the passenger gate where we’d debarked. Here they were opened, accounted, sorted, separated, packed and sent around this station, the jump point control post, and other support elements. Had he arranged to send himself something? Like another chameleon, explosives, comm gear?

It was actually rather quiet, this being third shift, and I tried to skulk while looking semiofficial. I wanted to be unseen if possible, discreet if not.

I peered around crates, pallets, shelves, belts. I walked past two offices, nodding and waving the notepad at the occupants of one. They nodded in return and went back to their games or nodes or actual work.

Some stuff I identified by smell—industrial machinery, solvents, food—all came through here and then moved out in the quiet hours. There were limited service corridors in the main station, so lots of stuff had to be broken up small.

Nothing. If he was here, he was doing a good job of hiding from me, and from the internal, separate security net here, run by the contracting companies.

I took the search up one of the other corridors, which led to the rear of several businesses. Up this way were cheaper lodging, some restaurants that catered to the staff, and some light industry such as packaging, gas transfer and tool maintenance.

It also housed a few homeless people.

That’s one thing our stations in the Freehold get a lot of. People manage to scrape up a transit fee or stow away, or jump off a ship at the stations, hoping to wangle transit insystem. There’s no government interested in helping them, so if they don’t have a marketable skill, their odds are zero. Our safety officers round them up occasionally and ship them on any national carrier we can match them to. Otherwise they’re disposed of when they die. Ugly, but unavoidable.