Surface Detail

The Me, I’m Counting Displaced Yime Nsokyi into the window-less suite at the rear of the very grand hotel near the centre of Iobe Cavern City, Vebezua, while it kept station overhead, just beyond the atmosphere, arguing with the Planetary Near Space Traffic Authority.

The boxy ship-drone serving as escort to her and Himerance switched on all the lights. The bedroom was vast, palatial, unoccupied.

“The secret passage is hidden under the bed,” Himerance said. The drone activated the relevant motors and the giant circular bed sank out of sight. They went to the edge and watched it drop.

“That leads to the tunnel that ends up in the desert?” Yime asked. She was dressed properly, in her tunic, at last, for the first time in days. She was still not fully healed, and still somewhat delicate, but her hair was tidy and she felt… regained.

“Yes,” Himerance said. “Veppers might have been absent for days, though officially he never left here. He probably left on a Jhlupian ship, but nobody’s sure. His entourage supposedly arrived back on Sichult this morning, but there’s no confirmation he’s with them. This is the last place we can be absolutely sure he was.”

The drone dropped into the hole left by the descending bed. Himerance produced a scroll screen, letting it unroll and hang in the air in front of them, displaying the view the drone had as it made its way up the short corridor beneath the room, heading into the cliff. A small underground car shaped like a fat bullet sat in front of a dark tunnel.

“Getting anything?” Yime asked.

Himerance shrugged. “Nothing much,” he told her. “There is a variety of surveillance tech in here. Place is like a history of bugging through the ages; whole tiny networks of linked spy-tech and outdated eavesdropping gear splattered about the entire suite.

Lot of stuff that’s probably lost, forgotten about. Many tiny dead batteries in here. Ancient stuff.” The ship, only a couple of hundred kilometres over their heads, was targeting one of its main Effectors on the city, the hotel and the suite. If there was anything useful here, it would find it.

“Most recent is equiv-tech stuff,” Himerance said, relaying what the ship was finding. “Passably… NR stuff.” He looked at Yime.

“NR?”

“Probably. It’s recent,” Himerance said, “and working; it’d be relaying what we’re saying now if I wasn’t blocking it. Synched into hidden hotel cameras and comms-intercept gear too.” Himerance nodded at four different points in the room. “Sprayed on: in the wall hangings, drapes, on the surfaces of paintings and embedded in the rugs.”

“Anything recorded?”

“No; and no idea where it would have transmitted to either,” Himerance admitted.

“Would it have registered Veppers using his sinking-bed escape route?”

“Maybe not,” Himerance said, gazing up at the great thick fold of curtains which could envelop and surround the bed. “Not if these were drawn.” He squinted. Yime could almost feel the ship overhead shifting the focus of its Effector by minute fractions of a degree. “No spray-on surveillance on those,” Himerance confirmed. “And they’re a lot more hi-tech than the simple organic woven material they look like. Shield you from most interference once they’re drawn right round.”

Yime sighed. “I don’t think he’s here,” she said. “I certainly don’t think she is.”

Stopping here had been an easy enough decision; the direction they’d approached the Sichultian Enablement from, Vebezua had been almost directly en route. Sichult itself still seemed the best place to find both Veppers and Lededje Y’breq, but taking a quick look at the last place they had a definite fix on Veppers had seemed to make sense and cost them only a couple of hours.

“I’m still not getting what’s going on with the Restoria mission,” Himerance said, sounding puzzled. “Some sort of comms blackout

now. Something’s happening out there, at the Disk.”

“Smatter outbreak?” Yime asked.

“Those fabricaria ships are more than smatter,” Himerance said as they watched the drone retrace its flight back down the tunnel towards them. Yime knew the ship already felt torn between taking her where she wanted to go, and joining in whatever action was taking place out at the Tsungarial Disk.

“There’s some sort of full-on battle going on out there,” Himerance said, frowning now. “Beyond the Disk, on the fringes of the Enablement; way too hi-tech for mere smatter. I do so hope that isn’t the Abominator class arriving. If it is we may genuinely have a full-scale war on our hands.”

The drone reappeared in the hole the bed had left; Himerance snapped the scroll-screen closed again and tucked it inside his jacket.

“What about the explosion on Veppers’ estate?” Yime asked.