Alexieva let out a sigh of relief. “Let’s go,” she said, not taking her eyes off the orcs. The second survivor was sniffing at the corpse now; with a snarl, the first cuffed it away and began to feed.
Heikki lowered her blaster, and sprinted for the hatch, Alexieva at her heels. Djuro hauled them both into the jumper, and dogged the hatch behind them. “Get us out of here, Jock,” he ordered, and Heikki echoed him, “Yeah, do it.”
The engines whined up to lifting pitch, the sound rising a little more quickly than usual. Heikki, starting to struggle to her feet, felt the jumper lurch into the air, and sank back onto the padded floor plates until Nkosi had stabilized the craft. The jumper shot upward, tipped at a slight sideways angle, and did not steady until they were well above the forest canopy.
“Is everything all right down there?” Nkosi said, after a moment.
“Just fine, Jock,” Heikki said, rather sourly, and Alexieva said, “I’m all right.”
“Good,” Nkosi answered. Heikki sighed, only too aware that she was shaking, and was glad to accept Djuro’s hand to help her to her feet.
“Back to Lowlands, Jock,” she said, and was too tired to care if the others heard the revulsion in her voice. “Take us home.”
CHAPTER 6
The flight back to Lowlands seemed interminable despite the fact that this time they took the most direct route. Heikki did her best to concentrate on the numbing task of editing the cameras’ data into a preliminary report, but by the time they landed at the Lowlands airfield, gliding down through the last of the afternoon’s rain, she had barely pulled together a crude precis. She shook her head, collected the disks, and followed Djuro from the jumper.
The field was sunlit again, despite the stray raindrops, light lancing through gaps in the slowly dissipating clouds. A warm wind ruffled the surface of the puddles, and set the jumper’s wings creaking faintly against their braces. Heikki looked toward the tower, shading her eyes against the low sun, and frowned. A low-slung car was sitting in the tower’s shadow, its windows blanked against the sun. A familiar figure— FitzGilbert, Heikki thought—stood beside it, her hands jammed belligerently into the pockets of her long overcoat.
“What the hell?” Djuro said, softly, and Nkosi said, from the jumper’s hatch, “Heikki, the tower says that Dam’ FitzGilbert is waiting to speak with you.”
“I see her,” Heikki said, without inflection. “Did the tower say what she wants?”
“Of course not,” Nkosi answered. “Did you expect they would?”
It wasn’t an unreasonable question, Heikki thought, irritably, but said nothing. She stared instead at the waiting car, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. The two Iadarans, emerging from the jumper, started to say something, and then fell silent, watching her. Heikki made a face, fully aware of the others’ stares, and jammed her hands into the pockets of her shift. “Wait here,” she said abruptly, and started across the hot-metalled strip toward the car, heedless of the wind that whipped the shift’s freefalling panels around her boottops.
FitzGilbert came to meet her, scowling, hands still buried in her pockets. “We got your message,” she called, as soon as her voice could be expected to carry across the space between them. Heikki raised a hand in answer, but said nothing until they stood almost face to face. FitzGilbert was wearing corporate uniform beneath the overcoat, the well-tailored high-collared jacket and loose trousers seeming oddly out of place on the airfield. Her hair was braided up and back, held in place by a filigree net, invisible except when the sunlight caught it. Heikki was suddenly aware of her own disarray, of the undershift she’d slept in and the crumpled, well-worn shift, and her hair held back by a twist of cloth. She put that old inferiority aside, and made herself speak briskly.
“Then you know we found the latac.”
“So you said. Did you find the matrix?”
Heikki raised an eyebrow. “No. What do you mean, ‘so you said’? Has Lo-Moth lost so many craft that it can’t keep track of the wrecks?”
FitzGilbert had the grace to look abashed. “Our— principal—oh, hell, our parent company—wants to be sure it is the right craft before they spend the money. They’re being overcautious, but that’s their right.”
It was as close as FitzGilbert was likely to get to an apology, but Heikki was not appeased. “The serial numbers match, the crash site is damn close to the projected spot, and probably the foot we found can be matched to somebody’s medical records. I should’ve brought that with me.” FitzGilbert grimaced, and Heikki’s temper snapped. “Jesus, do you think we’re stupid, or just criminal?”
“I don’t think either,” FitzGilbert retorted, goaded, and stopped as abruptly as she’d begun, glancing over her shoulder toward the car. “You said you didn’t find the matrix?”
Heikki shook her head. “Whoever brought down the latac smashed everything moveable, but I think they took the matrix with them.”
FitzGilbert made a face, a tight movement on her lips that might have started out to be a bitter smile. “Our principal is taking the position that your job is done, now that you’ve found the site,” she said, her voice once more under tight control.
“My contract with Lo-Moth,” Heikki said, “hired me to analyze the wreck as well. And I think you might need that, considering.”
“What do you mean?” FitzGilbert’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Heikki allowed herself a crooked smile. “Like I said, your latac was shot down, FitzGilbert. There were burn marks on what was left of the envelope, and on the gondola. Somebody ripped a hole in their balloon, and watched them crash, then went in and smashed everything, possibly including the crew. Or else the orcs got them.”
FitzGilbert shot her a look that would have melted steel, and Heikki was suddenly ashamed of herself. There was no point in taking out the day’s frustrations on FitzGilbert, no point and any number of reasons not to. She made a face, trying to frame an apology, and the other woman shook her head. “All right,” she said. “Did you find anything else?”
Heikki looked curiously at her, not knowing what she wanted, and FitzGilbert made a face. “Tracks, anything? Any trace of who?”
“There was one patch that showed crawler tread,” Heikki answered, trying by the honesty of her answer to match the other’s capitulation. “It was a standard make, probably an Isu or a Tormacher, nothing I could ID any better just by looking. We may be able to tell more when we’ve had a close look at the tapes, and at the wreck itself.”
FitzGilbert swore under her breath, and turned away. “That’s just what you won’t be able to do,” she said, and turned back toward the other woman. “Tremoth wants you to hand over your data and go home.”
Put so baldly, the sheer ridiculousness of the request struck Heikki dumb. She stared for a moment, unable to believe what she had heard, and then, when FitzGilbert did not deny it, drew a slow breath. “Do you mean to tell me that we’re being fired?”