Crean and Travis reached the grounded gravcar well ahead of Gorman and Spencer. Meanwhile, Cormac urged the shuttle out over the spaceport, checked his position on a terrain screen called up in a frame in one corner of the subscreen, then set the shuttle grav-planing towards the terraforming plant.
Now he asked, "Sadist, can you do anything about the ion drive in this shuttle from up there?"
"I have sent an alignment program," the ship AI replied. "It will take two minutes to take effect."
He could turn on the drive immediately and have the shuttle speeding to his destination, but running such drives dirty never did them much good. They also tended to be noisy, and he guessed that Spencer would not want him creating a racket while she and the others were creeping about down there. He decided to wait.
Crean studied the chalky ground about the gravcar, a visual program clearly outlining footprints for her. There were numerous patterns, so obviously Carl had been tramping about this area for some time, but most of them led to a single door in the nearby building. In a second Crean and Travis were over by the door.
"No booby-traps or sensors evident," sent Travis, obviously having used his Golem senses to scan through the wall.
The moment she arrived, Spencer twisted the door handle and she and Gorman entered. Crean and Travis followed them in, pulse rifles up against their shoulders as they scanned the gloomy interior. From Crean's perspective, Cormac observed twisted and collapsed pipework, and big ceramic vats, some cracked or shattered. He observed frames picking out various points within that area and understood she was making threat assessments. Meanwhile, Gorman and Spencer reached double swing-doors through the further wall, one of the doors hanging by only one hinge. Now they covered the area behind them as Travis and Crean sped over.
"Your ion drive is now at optimum function," Sadist abruptly informed him.
Had only two minutes passed? It seemed like hours. Cormac held off engaging the drive as he gazed at the screen. Crean and Travis went through the doors, Gorman and Spencer coming through behind them to cover the area they now hastily crossed. Here lay a long, low room walled with chainglass through which ran many transparent pipes; some sort of control area with numerous consoles were attached along those same walls. The area terminated against the curve of a silo, where a hole had recently been cut through. Using her infrared vision, Crean detected heat beyond, inside. Travis dived through the hole ahead of her, while she turned to cover the other two as they approached. Then she dived through, rolled and came upright in the cathedral space inside.
"No one here," said Travis, out loud, as Gorman and Spencer now entered.
"The heat source?" Spencer snapped.
Travis gestured to a large crate with some fleshy-looking substance seemingly growing over it like a fungus. Crean, focused on this, detecting the heat signature inside the crate. They all walked over to inspect it. Cormac felt both disappointed and glad as he engaged the ion drive to accelerate towards their location. He certainly wanted Carl apprehended, but he wanted to be there when it happened.
"Shit!" Spencer exclaimed.
Cormac returned his attention to the screen, and saw that Crean was now gazing down at the face of Marcus Spengler. The stuff strewn over the crate was syntheflesh: Carl's syntheflesh disguise. Then the face spoke.
"Ah, you're here at last," it said. "Say bye bye cruel world."
The face winked.
"Run," said Spencer, and chaotic images ensued—too fast for Cormac to follow.
Then a light ignited on the horizon, and he looked up. A fireball expanded, so bright it seemed to eat into the Earth. He just stared, utterly understanding what had happened, yet still unable to accept it. When he looked back at the screen, it was blank.
The crash of the explosion arrived shortly after its glare, and it sounded as if the world was being smashed in half. The shockwave struck just as Cormac slammed the shuttle into an emergency landing, lifting the vessel off the ground, pointing nose down. It automatically fired stabilizing thrusters and Cormac felt a strange wave run through his body as the grav-motors tried to realign too. Immediately the surrounding air filled with white dust, blotting everything from view. He concentrated on bringing the craft level and landing it properly, but it still came down hard, and as its systems wound down into silence, he listened to the patter of some sort of hail against the hull.
"Gorman?… Crean?… Travis?… Spencer?"
No response over his aug, just static. The electromagnetic pulse from the blast might well have screwed up his aug… might have screwed up their augs…
Feeling numb, he unstrapped himself and headed for the side door of the shuttle, stood before it for a long moment, then went off to search the craft's lockers for some goggles, which he found—they were Gorman's. Opening the door he stepped out, then immediately stepped back inside when falling cinders burned his bare arms. After a further search he found an envirosuit which, with painful slowness, he began to don. When he finally closed it up he just sat exhausted, not quite sure how to proceed. Then came a query for linkage through his aug, and he realised, recognising the source, that the device had lost all its previous settings. He approved the query and a com channel established.
"Are you alive?" Sadist enquired.
It seemed a stupid question but then, for all the ship AI knew, it was opening a communications channel with a still-functional augmentation attached to a corpse.
"I'm alive," Cormac replied.
"Are you injured?"
"Got a pulse shot through the arm."
"I know about that," said the AI, sounding irritated. "I wanted to know if you sustained further injuries as a result of the CTD blast."
On some level he had known that's what the explosion had been, but never really admitted it consciously. Carl had left a nice little booby-trap for anyone who came hunting him, with the final touch of that syntheflesh head winking at the victims.
"They're gone," he said abruptly, but the words did not seem to make any sense.
"At present I can detect no signals either from Travis and Crean or from the augmentations belonging to Gorman and Agent Spencer," said Sadist didactically. "However, it is quite possible that the EM pulse knocked out all their com hardware—you will have to go and look."
Cormac jerked himself to his feet and headed outside, where he found that the cinders had stopped falling and the dust had cleared enough for him to see about ten feet ahead.
"I am now within scanning range," Sadist informed him. "I cannot as yet penetrate the ionization around the site, but I can see you, Cormac. Might I enquire why you are outside the shuttle."
Cormac just stood gaping into the dust, his brain seemingly running on neutral. Why had he stepped outside, what purpose was served by him walking the twenty-odd miles to the terraforming plant?
"Bit of a glitch," he said, and returned to the shuttle.
"Are you sure you are uninjured?" Sadist enquired.
"I think it's what might be described as shock."
"Then take an antishock med," said the AI.
Standing inside the shuttle, Cormac gazed across at the first aid kit, then abruptly turned and smashed his left fist into the wall. "Fuckit!… Fuckit! Fuckit!" Then he forced himself into motion, taking the pilot's chair and re-engaging the shuttle's systems. He glanced at the blank subscreen and abruptly reached out to key the controls that expanded the location map to cover it, then jerked the shuttle into the air. He did not want to take antishock meds; it seemed like a betrayal.