It took them another five hours, but they were smiling when they returned to Simon's office. "We found it," Quan announced. He had the confident tone of every underling bringing good news to his boss. "Dudley was murdered, and that's only the start of it." His DNI routed the first set of files to the big wall-mounted pane opposite Simon's desk. A time-synchronized split image appeared. On the left was the recording from a camera overlooking the spaceplane parking apron. On the right was a skyscan picture of the same location.
Simon sat back in his seat watching as a man emerged from the bottom of the Xianti 5OO5's airstairs at the same time Dudley Tivon walked out of the maintenance hangar. On the left Dudley continued across the apron into another hangar. On the right, the two men confronted each other, and a second later Dudley was dead.
"I don't know how they did it," Braddock Raines said in admiration. "But there isn't a trace of software subversion anywhere in the spaceport's network. I even had one of our people go out there and physically pull the memory circuits for the cameras around the parking apron so we could go over them here. Nothing. So we know they can play that network like a maestro. Whatever they've got, it's damn impressive."
"Is that camera memory e-alpha protected?" Simon asked sharply.
"No, although it is protected by some excellent encryption. However, the backup memory in the AS is inside an e-alpha fortress," Raines said. "But we think that the subversion occurred at the camera itself, or at least its connection to the network. They had to have their own AS online to generate the false image in real-time. In itself, that's interesting. They subverted four cameras that we know of, and that takes up a lot of bandwidth. Our AS should have picked up that quantity of subversive dataflow within the spaceport network. The fact that it didn't is highly suggestive."
"You mean e-alpha is compromised?"
Raines screwed his face up, unwilling to make a commitment. "It is possible to do what they did without breaking through e-alpha forts. But it's difficult. Of course, so is subverting e-alpha. If they can't actually do that, their capability is close enough to make very little difference to us. The fact that their man got into the spaceplane is proof of that." He ran an earlier skyscan file, showing the intruder walking across the apron and straight into the airstair. "No record of any entry during the night," Raines commented as the figure approached the big delta-shaped spaceplane. "And there, see, when he arrives at the airstair he doesn't need to physically tamper with the security lock. The software's already been configured to admit him."
"You drew up a timeline for the intruder, of course," Simon said.
The two intelligence operatives swapped a mildly worried glance. "We tried. We couldn't even establish when he entered the maintenance hangar, let alone when he arrived at the spaceport. The only sensor data we can trust is from sky-scan, and that's too limited to build up any kind of detailed profile."
Simon cursed quietly. There had been many times down the years that he'd suggested a greater satellite surveillance capacity during asset-realization campaigns. It had never moved past the proposal stage. If he was honest with himself, even he couldn't justify the expense of such coverage. He was just used to having that resource available. But Earth with its swarms of low-orbit satellites was unique. Out here, the best Z-B could offer its strategic security forces was enough satellites to provide constant coverage of the most strategic sites. Inevitably that meant the spaceport and the headquarters in the capital. The ground footprint did allow some overlap around each zone as the satellites orbited overhead, but not much. Looking at the fuzzy image of the intrader's head, he was thankful that the small skyscan flotilla had gone unnoticed by the resistance group. So far, it was turning into Simon's sole advantage.
"You must have tracked Tivon's car leaving the spaceport."
"Yes," Raines said, happy to appear positive again. He directed the requisite files onto the pane. Skyscan showed a small cargo robot trundle along the deserted parking lot at five o'clock. The intruder was walking toward Tivon's car from a completely different direction. They arrived at it simultaneously. The intruder opened the trunk and the robot deposited a sealed crate into it before rolling off along its route. Elapsed time was five seconds. The robot had barely halted.
Simon watched the intruder close the trunk and get into the car.
"He sat in there for forty minutes before he left," Raines said with respect. "Driving out at five might have drawn attention to the car. So he waited and left a few minutes ahead of Tivon's usual time. How's that for keeping your head?"
Simon kept staring at the pane. "Car profile?"
"It left the skyscan footprint twelve kilometers beyond the spaceport. He just kept driving along the main highway without stopping."
"Do you have an image of his face?"
"Not really. He tended not to look up; I'd guess he's quite surveillance-smart." A picture appeared on the pane, looking down on the intruder in the parking lot. He had tipped his head back slightly to study something a little higher than he was. It expanded into a collage of blurred pixels the size of golf balls. "And that's with AS enhancement. It drew us several possibles from that." Five high-resolution faces appeared on the pane, each time a man under thirty, and all with the same general bland features.
"They won't be any use." There were disappointingly few distinguishing features in the extrapolations, Simon thought, even the characters in AS-generated i-soaps were more real than this. "And he's not even wearing a hat," Simon said thoughtfully. He gave Adul Quan a pointed look. "Remember the last time we had an incident like this?"
"The bar in Kuranda," Quan said. "Just before we left Earth. Do you think they're related?"
"Difficult to see how. Anyone who wants to keep below our horizon must invariably use the same tradecraft." He grimaced at the row of five impassive faces, impressed at the audacity and resourcefulness of the intruder. In all the campaigns he'd been on, Simon had never encountered a threat quite like this one. He couldn't help wondering why Thallspring of all places should produce this style of quietly lethal resistance movement. "No, I'm not quite ready to believe in interstellar conspiracies. We need to focus on the immediate threat. How long was he in the Xianti for?"
"Seventeen minutes," Quan said.
"Long enough for anything. Has it flown today?"
"Yes, sir. It took a cargo up to the Norvelle this morning. Landed at thirteen-thirty-five. No problems filed with flight control. It's undergoing standard preflight checks and refueling ready for another cargo run, scheduled for eighteen-twenty." Quan looked directly at Simon. "Do you want us to stop it?"
"No. Which starship is it scheduled to dock with this time?"
"The Chion, sir."
"Change it to the Norvelle again. If it has taken anything hostile up there, I want any possible contamination to be as restricted as possible."
"Yes, sir."
"After it's unloaded its cargo I want a mechanical fault declared, something that entails its docking in the Norvelle's maintenance bay. Braddock, I want you to get up to the Norvelle on the following flight. You are to carry instructions from me directly to the captain. Once you're up there, I want you heading a small army of the best technicians we've got. You're to rip that damn spaceplane apart, take it down to its individual molecular strings if you have to. But I want to know exactly what our friend was doing in there, and what he's left behind. Understand?"