Dakota stared at her, speechless.
'Look,' Nancy went on, 'if Commander Martinez wants you on board with us, that's up to him, not me, but I don't have to pretend I like you, or that I trust you, or that I'm not sure you had something to do with Olivarri's murder. Are we clear on that?' 'As daylight,' Dakota replied through gritted teeth. After that, Dakota kept her mouth shut and her eyes fixed on the projections all around. Nancy crouched in a similar pose, her helmet resting nearby. They had a spectacular view of their approach to the cache-world: the curving limb of the planet rose towards them at a terrific speed and, as they drew nearer, Dakota studied with interest the great rifts and valleys and ancient impact craters that spoke of a violent past. The mouth of the cache became visible as a perfectly round circle of black punched through the tiny world's outer crust.
Dakota felt the tug of something familiar from the surface below.
'There's more drones here,' she muttered out loud.
Nancy shot a glance at her. 'What?'
'More Meridian drones. Trader! Where the hell are you, Trader! There's-'
‹I am here.› Trader replied to her directly through her implants. ‹Are you certain?›
Very certain. I'm picking them up right now.
‹An unexpected surprise, then. Do you have a location?›
Close to the mouth of the cache, about where the field-defences are. They've buried themselves deep in the ground.
'Who are you talking to?' Schiller demanded.
'I'm talking,' Dakota replied testily, 'to Trader.'
'Did you know your mouth moves when you talk in your head like that?'
'It does?'
Schiller nodded slowly. 'Makes you look like an idiot.'
Chapter Twenty-nine
They made landfall not long afterwards, the yacht settling on to a cushion of shaped fields just a few kilometres from the mouth of the cache. Dakota pulled off the standard-issue jumpsuit she had been wearing, and folded it into a wad before dropping down from the yacht's open hatch, relying once more simply on her filmsuit for protection.
Her black-slicked toes kicked up a cloud of dust as she hit the ground, before she took a few bounding steps in the low gravity. She glanced behind her in time to see Nancy hit the ground only to be immediately swallowed in another billowing dust cloud that coated her pressure-suit in grey.
Dakota took a look around her. Outcrops of granite rose from a sea of dust that extended to the north, only coming to an end at the ridge-wall of a crater about ten kilometres away. To the west, and in the direction of the cache itself, the ground rose and fell in gentle inclines, like waves sculpted in stone. The overhead sun was bright enough to blot out the stars.
Trader emerged last, followed by the spider-mechs. One by one, the spiders skittered around the edge of the hatch, in an eerily lifelike way, before jumping down and flexing their elongated legs as they scanned the horizon. They looked very different in a gravity environment: they now used most of their limbs to walk on, with just one set raised above them, so that they now looked more like six-legged mechanical crabs than spiders.
Trader led the way, his brine-filled bubble hugging the curve of a nearby slope up to its peak. Dakota trudged through the dust after him and on up the side of the hill.
‹I was unaware we would have company,› he sent to Dakota as she came abreast of him.
Dakota glanced back at Nancy, who had just reached the foot of the hill. Her pressure-suit clearly made the going harder for her.
Officially, she's here to give us a hand. Unofficially, I'm top of their list of suspects for Olivarri's murder. She waited a beat. After yourself, of course.
The alien swivelled within his field bubble to study Schiller more closely as she struggled uphill, the spiders racing past her towards the peak. ‹So she is here to watch over us.›
Did you kill Olivarri, Trader?
The Shoal-members manipulators writhed beneath the wide curve of his belly. ‹How could I possibly carry out such a crime, seeing I have not even been allowed to board the frigate itself? Perhaps your inquiries should first turn to those who accuse you? I am sure Olivarri was not the only one with secrets.›
Dakota frowned. What secrets?
‹Ah.› The manipulators writhed again, and Dakota couldn't help but wonder if he was laughing at her. ‹Perhaps you were not aware Olivarri was secretly employed by the Consortium's intelligence division?›
Dakota actually took a step back. What? Where did you get this from?
‹That, I'm afraid, must remain with me. I have my sources.›
If you're lying to me-
‹Spare me your empty threats, Dakota.›
Trader moved off again, his bubble following the contours of the incline as he descended the other side of the hill. Dakota stayed where she was, staring off across the hilltops and brooding.
Who else, she wondered, was something other than what they appeared to be? She knew almost nothing about most of the Mjollnir 's contingent, particularly Perez, Driscoll and Nancy Schiller herself-all strangers to her until she boarded the frigate. They had each been vetted personally by Corso, but if Trader turned out to be telling the truth, what did that mean about the rest of them?
Who else might not be who they seemed?
Nancy finally came abreast of her, closely trailed by the spiders; her faceplate had polarized until it was nearly opaque beneath the bright glare of the sun overhead.
Dakota followed in Trader's path, soon leaving Nancy and the spiders behind once more. From the top of the next hill she could make out a low dome squatting on the wide flat plain surrounding the mouth of the cache, several hundred metres away. The dome's grey colouring made it almost invisible against the surrounding landscape, and there were the ruins of other buildings all across the plain.
Looking closer to hand, she saw Trader forging ahead of her, and jogged down into the next valley to catch up with the alien halfway up the next rise.
That dome. Is that where we're heading?
‹Most assuredly.› Trader turned in his bubble to look back towards Nancy, still making her way down the slope of the hill behind. ‹Our companion appears to be getting left behind. Perhaps it would be amusing for us to hide and see how she reacts?›
Dakota ignored this remark as she watched Nancy laboriously make her way towards them.
That's not the way to do it, Dakota sent to her. Run on your toes, like you're skipping.
‹I'm doing just fine.›
Then you won't mind if we leave you behind.
Nancy swore, then pushed up and off the ground with both feet. She came sailing back down in a low arc and landed on her hands and knees. Dakota watched as she picked herself up and tried again. This time it looked like she tripped over in slow motion, but managed to catch herself on the way back down.
I'm surprised you're having such a hard time. You were pretty nimble during the hull repairs.
‹Yeah, well, that's different,› Nancy replied.
How?
‹It just is, okay? I'm almost there.›
Dakota followed Trader downhill, herself bounding in long, low, skipping strides. Despite her mood and the shock of Trader's revelation, not to mention Nancy's seemingly boundless hostility, a part of her was actually beginning to have fun. She made good time, looking behind her once or twice to check on Schiller, who was trailing huge dust clouds behind her.
She could see the dome more clearly from the next hilltop, beyond which lay only level plain stretching towards the cache's abyssal pit. She saw now that, mixed in with the ruined buildings, there were what appeared to be the remains of a huge spacecraft broken into several sections and half buried in the dust.