“All set, big B,” Maj said.
“Ready, Bob—”
“Let’s do it, already!”
“Seven for seven,” Bob said. “Go. Go. Go.”
Nine Arbalest fighters fell at ever-increasing speed toward the surface of Didion. From the backseat of one of them came a yell of pure and not entirely inappropriate joy, and in the front seat, the pilot smiled, settled one arm deep into the field that handled the firing controls, and got ready to show her houseguest a good time.
Six thousand miles away the major was sitting in business class on a domestic flight to Vienna, from which she would have to catch yet another flight to Zurich, the nearest spaceplane port. She much disliked having to pass through Switzerland, but at the moment it was unavoidable. Speed was of the essence, and she had other things than the wretched Swiss on her mind.
“He has not left the house, Major,” said the voice down the hushed and scrambled Net link she was using from the booth at the back of business class.
“Good. A small blessing, if nothing else. What are his hosts doing?”
“Having a quiet day at home, it would seem. The mother has been working in the garden. The father has been in the household Net mostly, not out in the public Nets at all. The daughter and the boy are in the Net as well.”
“In the boy’s accounts?”
“No. Though they could be at any time. His father had his son’s account information installed on a North American server.”
“Well, that should hardly be a problem for us. Break into the accounts. I want them completely searched.”
“Unfortunately,” said her contact, “the server is not the one to which they were originally moved. The new server is one which is used by several U.S. government agencies…and it is regrettably extremely well protected. We cannot get at it.”
She muttered something rude under her breath. “Well, at the very least I want the boy watched and listened to wherever he goes in the public Nets. He’s likely enough to drop some useful information where it can be heard.”
“But, Major, except for the Greens’ household Net, he has been nowhere except in a proprietary system — and that as a guest on the professor’s daughter’s account. And the proprietary systems routinely have top-flight filters which keep outside access limited to registered subscribers—”
“Well, subscribe!”
“We did. But it takes twenty-four hours to approve the credit. And besides, our country’s domains are blocked. We had to go in through a Transylvanian domain address, and for that we had to get the usual clearances—”
Bureaucracy, she thought in anguish and covered her face with one hand. It had its uses, but most of them rarely did her any good.
“Just do it,” the major said. “Once inside the proprietary system, you should find a fair amount of information about the girl — her habits, how often she uses the system, and so on. I want a complete report on that. Meanwhile, how is the search for the father doing?”
“There is good news there, Major. The techs working on one of his research associates have produced some results. They said he had gone north for holidays several times in the last year, even though as far as they knew, he had no family or friends up there. His excuse was that he had been fishing.”
“I daresay he had…though I think it more likely that the kind of fish we have in the lakes up there were not what he had in mind.”
“Perhaps not. He made some mention of the places he had gone. We are questioning people in those towns now…and one woman there says she thinks she saw him two days ago.”
The major smiled. “The increased surveillance at the borders may yet pay off. Increase the searches in the north, then…. Also, find out if any of our own people know anything about fishing.”
There was a silence at the other end. “Excuse me, Major?”
“You heard me. I want them kitted out with appropriate equipment and sent up north. Darenko may actually have been fishing. In fact, he may be doing it now. A capable fisherman can live for a good while in the countryside without needing to set foot in a town where anyone can see him….”
“Uh, yes, Major, I’ll take care of it.”
“Do so first thing in the morning. Then get into the Net and see what the boy is doing. I will have to be ready to move shortly when I get there…and I want as much information on hand as possible to guide me.”
“Yes, Major.”
“Now, what about the professor? You had leads you were still researching.”
The response sounded somewhat nervous. “He has ties to Net Force.”
Her breath hissed out. “We knew about that. His daughter is in the Net Force Explorers, after all.”
“No, Major. Closer ties than that.”
“I see. Can you be more specific?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No.”
“I’d suggest I will contact you before I leave Zurich.”
She closed the connection down, took a moment to compose herself, and headed out into the cabin again. Twelve hours or so, she thought, and I will be there. And after that…we will go about the business of taking back what is rightfully ours.
The major settled herself in her comfortable seat again, smoothing down the handsome businesswoman’s skirt suit which was her “uniform” for this particular mission. Poor little Laurent, she thought. Enjoy yourself while you can. There will be little enough enjoyment for you when we get you home….
5
Maj woke surprisingly early. It was what her mother referred to as “happy wake-up,” the kind that happens when you’ve successfully finished a job and your whole system knows it. You wake up completely rested and feeling ready for anything, though the hour is patently absurd. On this particular morning, dawn was just turning things pink and gold at the edges in the eastern sky when Maj wandered out to the kitchen, enjoying the blessed stillness before the rest of the family really got moving.
Classes felt as if they were half a day away, though in reality she would have to be ready to leave in an hour and a half. She started the kettle, then slipped into her work space, leaving it “open” to the kitchen so that she could see if Laurent or the Muffin surfaced all of a sudden.
E-mail immediately appeared all over the desk, which was — in this overlapped merging of reality and virtual reality — stuck to the kitchen table. A quick reconnoiter of the contents revealed many congratulatory notes from the other members of the Group. The Group of Seven had done spectacularly last night. Part of it, truth be told, was just Bob’s good planning. He had a twisty mind, that one, and made a good squadron leader in a fighter-group situation. But the rest of it was so much a matter of teamwork that Maj hardly knew where to start praising the others — Shih Chin’s go-for-broke courage, Kelly’s chilly accuracy with the pumped lasers, Mairead’s eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head that missed nothing happening around her, whether to friend or foe. They had done well from the standpoint of scoring. All of them got in, shot up a goodly portion of Didion’s insides, and they all got out again before the cluster nuke went off inside the station.
There had been disappointments. They had not been involved in the final attack that fought its way in to emplace the nuke. They had not made it as far into Didion’s tortuous insides as Maj had hoped they would. Weapons charges ran low, and the Group of Seven had had to beat it out of there before the Black Arrows caught up with them and minced them all. Still, the retreat had been orderly, and they had been on hand for the Big Bang, and had been included in the distribution of bonus points for those involved in the planet’s destruction. The Archon would think twice about trying to establish a base so close to the Cluster Rangers’ home space again. And now the Rangers could get back to concentrating on carrying the battle deeper into the Archon’s space, working slowly on the master plan to force him out of the galaxy entirely….