They both started to crawl up the side of the cargo section toward the axis. After twenty meters, they were level with the top of the wheel. Raymond's suit had to increase its visual sensitivity, the gap between the cargo section and the wheel was so gloomy. Hardly any light was reflected off the wheel's coating of foam.
Once he had a reasonable field of vision, Raymond fed his location into the suit's function control pearl and then entered the wheel's relative velocity. He let go of the cargo section's metal framework and drifted over to the edge of the life support wheel. When he was barely a meter above it, the jacket nozzles fired again, accelerating him in the same direction as the wheel's rotation. From his point of view, it seemed as if the wheel was slowing as he moved in toward it. There were innumerable protrusions amid the foam: conduits, pipes, even ladders. He grabbed at one, a thick metal loop, and the bogus gravity took hold, pulling him abruptly down onto the top of the wheel. A sixth of his weight had returned, holding him securely.
He saw Denise had landed a quarter of the way around the wheel behind him. She gave him a thumbs-up. Raymond stood, taking care not to make any fast movements. He had a very clear impression that beyond the edge of the wheel was now down. If he slipped, centrifugal force would fling him clear of the starship and into its sensor field. He took a few careful steps in toward the middle of the wheel and examined the structure below his feet with deep senses. Particle resonance located a clear patch, and he took a loop of energy focus ribbon from his jacket. When it was laid out on top of the foam, the ribbon formed a circle about two meters in diameter.
A hundred meters around the wheel, Denise was doing the same thing. Raymond stood away from the ribbon and activated it with a pulsed code. The foam underneath the ribbon flash-vaporized along with the carbon titanium alloy below. A two-meter circle of the wheel fuselage slammed upward, punched by a seething column of air. Bright white light shone up out of the hole. Paper, clothing, electronic modules and wildly oscillating sprays of liquid filled the column of air, hurtling into the darkness of the axis far above.
Raymond waited until the blast died down, then hurried forward and dropped down into the wheel. He was in some kind of lounge, with the detritus from the decompression swirling senselessly around him. Bright red strobes were flashing. The emergency airlock panel had sealed the hatchway. His suit pearl found the wheel's internal network frequency, and Prime poured into the nodes.
He walked over to the emergency airlock panel and used the Prime to override its safety locks. It slid open and he stepped into the chamber beyond. The panel slid shut behind him, and the hatch opened in front. Starship crew were running round in chaos. Prime shut down all other internal communications, then extinguished the lights. It didn't make any difference to Raymond: he could see equally well in infrared and laser radar. He brought up an EC pistol and started killing.
After the i-simulation Josep and Raymond opened their eyes, grimacing against the bright afternoon sun pouring through the botany lab's windows. Josep got up first and stretched elaborately.
"Not bad," he said. "I think we should start running more adversarial versions, though."
"Yeah. I guess so. It is a little easy at the moment"
"We can begin with you being spotted when you leave the spaceplane."
"Oh great."
Josep grinned and checked his watch. "We've got a couple of hours until Michelle gets back."
"How's that going?"
"Fine. Being an activist has sharpened her outlook. She likes courier duty: it makes her feel she's achieving something. How about Yamila?"
"I could never get her involved, not even at basement level," Raymond said. "She's too timid. Even suggesting it would frighten her off and I'd be left looking for new cover."
"Not at this stage, we can't afford it."
"I know. As it is, she thinks I might be seeing someone else. All those nocturnal absences."
"Speaking of which..."
"Yes." Raymond filled two cups with water and dropped a tea cube in each before sliding them into the microwave alcove. "We need the communication keys." It had come as a surprise to them when they analyzed the data from the Xianti. They'd known that the spaceplane communication traffic was encrypted, although they'd never bothered to examine it before. Had they done so they would have found that not even Prime could decrypt it. Theoretically, given enough processing power and time, any code could be broken, but Z-B used a particularly strong four-dimensional encryption technique for its spaceplanes and changed it every time. Even with the resources Raymond and Josep had available, they could never crack it inside the timeframe they needed for a successful operation.
"Shame the keys are physical. Z-B seems to take its space-flight security very seriously."
"Prime keeps trawling up obscure references to Santa Chico," Raymond said. "I don't know what happened there exactly. But it's possible they may have lost a starship to some kind of weapon."
"No wonder they're protective. Onetime dimensional encryption indeed." Josep shook his head in admiration. "I'll collect them from the spaceport in a few days."
"Has the fuss over Dudley Tivon blown over?"
"Just about. The police have downgraded the case to a level-five resource funding. Prime picked up some activity in Z-B's security AS; it was flagged for senior staff attention. I presume they were interested because Tivon worked at the spaceport. But there was never any follow-up."
"We're in the clear, then?"
"Looks that way."
"Good. From what Denise has been saying, things are just about ready at her end."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The first time Lawrence Newton visited Thallspring he already considered himself a campaign veteran. By then his attitude was relaxed enough to allow him to enjoy the planets that Zantiu-Braun sent him to. In this case, it helped that the population put up no serious resistance. He didn't even mind being assigned to Memu Bay rather than the capital. The coastal town was small enough to be easily controlled and large enough to boast extensive leisure facilities. Z-B's platoons had made full use of the clubs and bars along the marina since the first week after they landed. Even the locals had reluctantly started to welcome their spending power in the absence of the regular tourists.
The campaign had all gone reasonably well up until the fifth week when some lunatic rebel had firebombed two of the local food production refineries. Now the Z-B governor had been forced to impose rationing on everyone and activate three collateral necklaces in retaliation. The mood in town had soured, although the biochemical factories that were being asset-realized hadn't been affected.