For a moment he looked like he was thinking of adding something, but then appeared to change his mind, stepping back from the console.
'He's crazy,' said Perez.
'I agree,' said Martinez. 'He's clearly lost his mind.'
'I'm not so sure,' said Dakota.
Lamoureaux pointed upwards. 'There's more.'
Dakota looked back to see that Whitecloud had splayed one of his hands across the surface of the console, while the other gripped a knife with its blade aimed at one of his fingers.
Jesus and Buddha, she thought, horrified but unable to look away. Whitecloud kept shaking badly, muttering under his breath and clearly in great distress.
He stood like that for several seconds, then his behaviour changed abruptly. His face grew expressionless, in a way that sent cold prickles of horror up Dakota's spine. He stared towards the lab entrance, which was out of sight of the console's recording lens, then himself stepped out of view, the knife still clutched in one hand.
'Talk about timing,' Perez muttered. 'This must be when Ray turned up.'
'Yeah, I think you're right,' agreed Corso. 'Whitecloud killed him before he could see what was happening to the artefact.'
'No, Trader killed him,' said Dakota, turning to eye him pointedly. 'The fact that it was Whitecloud's hands actually holding the knife doesn't mean anything. You saw the way he was struggling with himself
'I'll move it forward by a few minutes,' said Lamoureaux, and Whitecloud reappeared overhead once again. He was now covered in blood that was not his own, and he was panting hard, his chest rising and falling. Ray Willis would not have been an easy man to kill, even if caught by surprise.
Dakota watched Whitecloud pull the Mos Hadroch out of its cradle and stuff it into a bag. There was something monstrous about his eyes, as if they had been drained of any humanity.
'Does this mean he had the command structure for the Mos Hadroch the whole time?' asked Perez, in a subdued tone.
'There's a bit earlier on where he describes finding it hidden deep inside the stacks. How it got there, he doesn't know.'
Something clicked into place inside Dakota's head. 'I know,' she said, thinking furiously.
Corso stared at her. 'How do you know?'
'By putting two and two together. I don't have a shred of doubt anymore that he's under Trader's control. But here's the thing. We didn't let Trader come on board because we didn't want him getting anywhere near the Mos Hadroch, right? At least, not in person.'
'So he used Whitecloud to get to it?' said Lamoureaux, his eyes widening.
'And used him as well to run his own experiments on the artefact,' Dakota continued. 'He transferred copies of the command structure into the lab, where he could test it out and see if it worked. But, somehow, Whitecloud stumbled across the command structure and figured out what was going on.'
'But why take the Mos Hadroch now? Why not before?'
'I don't know,' Dakota admitted. 'But once Trader discovered Whitecloud had distributed copies of the command structure throughout the ship, he'd have realized we wouldn't need him any more.'
Martinez stood up, his expression grim. 'Which means right now Whitecloud is on his way to Trader's yacht – if he isn't there already.'
He stepped over to a console and a moment later a wire-frame of the frigate appeared above them. 'We'll resume the search, but this time we'll focus exclusively on the aft airlocks, and on every access route leading to the main hold and Trader.'
'But he could be there already,' said Perez. 'He probably went straight there after killing Ray.'
'Not necessarily,' said Corso. 'As soon as we found Ray, I programmed the surveillance feeds to send me an alert the moment Whitecloud showed up on a camera.'
'Except that the cameras don't cover the whole ship,' Martinez pointed out. 'Just the main passageways and bays.'
'But including every access point leading directly to the hold,' said Corso, nodding in agreement. 'Except we haven't caught him on camera yet, which means he – meaning Trader – is staying away from the parts of the ship under surveillance.'
'Then he must still be hiding somewhere on board the ship,' said Dakota.
'Listen,' said Perez, 'there's something else you have to keep in mind before we go running off looking for him. Right now we're down to less than fifty per cent jump capacity. There are also hull defects that need serious attention. We'd be at a huge disadvantage if we tried to jump into the target system right now.'
'Dan's right,' Dakota said to Martinez, 'and I understand you want to let the spider-mechs hunt for Whitecloud on their own and free the rest of us up for essential work, but we've still got a much better chance of catching him if you let me or Ted run the spiders. No amount of repair work is going to make a damn bit of difference if we don't have the Mos Hadroch when we reach that cache.'
Martinez closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath before opening them again. 'All right, fine. I guess we don't have any choice.' He fixed Dakota with a look. 'As long as you understand we're running out of time.'
Dakota nodded gravely. 'I understand. But maybe once we've got enough spider-mechs out and looking for Whitecloud, we can flush him out sooner rather than later.'
Chapter Thirty-four
‹Got him,› Lamoureaux sent to Dakota, just a couple of hours later. ‹We just picked him up making for an ancillary airlock on Deck D. That's the good news.›
Dakota herself was standing in the entrance of a deserted engineering bay close by the main hold, watching as three spider-mechs boosted themselves through its echoing empty space on puffs of gas, their lights swinging from side to side, reflecting off bulkheads and machinery, making the shadows around them seem that much deeper by contrast.
You're saying there's bad news too?
‹We're picking up traces of Emissary tach-net communications that are definitely in our neighbourhood. Small, scattered but numerous.›
Shit. Scouts?
‹Can't confirm yet, but that's my guess. Don't know if they've spotted us yet, but we're going to make the next jump before they do. I'm forwarding the video-capture of Whitecloud to you now.›
She saw Whitecloud making his way rapidly down a corridor, a heavy satchel slung over one shoulder. A sign pointing towards an airlock facility was visible behind him as he passed the hidden security lens.
Where the hell's he going? she sent back. That's nowhere near the main hold.
‹Ask him when you see him. You're closer to that airlock than any of the rest of us. Do you think you can handle him?›
She turned her back on the engineering bay and grabbed a rung, using it to boost herself through the air, kicking off walls until she began to pick up greater speed. I've come up against things a lot worse than Whitecloud. How long before our next jump?
‹Twenty-five minutes.›
Got it.
‹Do what you can, Dakota. And good luck.› She made her way towards the bow, moving away from the hold until she reached the same passageway in which Whitecloud had been sighted. She barrelled her way towards the airlock complex at record speed, but it still took her a good ten minutes.
When she got there, she noticed a suit was missing from the racks. Whitecloud was already in one of the airlocks, but still cycling through.
She kicked off from a wall and landed square on the airlock door. She peered in through the glass panel and saw the back of Whitecloud's head. He was wearing a helmet, his bag slung over the shoulder of his suit.
She slammed her hand against the glass repeatedly until Whitecloud finally turned to look at her. Something in his face made him look eerily different. How long, she wondered, could Trader maintain his hold on him?