Chatfield's visit lasted three hours.
'What do you want me to do? Digby asked Paula as Chatfield's ship rose away from the frigid surface at five gees. 'Stay here or follow him?
'Follow him, Paula said. 'I'll investigate the base.
'My sensor drones will engage in another five and a half hours. They should be able to tell you more about the satellites. If they're as bad as I think they are you'll need a Navy squadron to break in.
'We'll see.
The Columbia505's sensors watched Chatfield's ship power into hyperspace. Five seconds later Digby followed him out of the unnamed system. Interestingly, they were now heading for
Ellezelin.
The Alexis Denken flew into the star system seven hours after the Columbia505 had departed. Its smartcore steered it towards the ice moon in full stealth mode. While it was still ten thousand kilometres out, Paula triggered the sensor drones that were now tumbling away from their brief encounter. All the data they'd amassed downloaded into the smartcore, which immediately set about analysing the information.
The orbiting sentries were impressive. Very little of their nature had leaked through the stealth effect, but the drones had managed to piece together a few fragments. What they'd glimpsed was some kind of ship over a hundred metres long, with a strange wrinkled teardrop-shape hull that sprouted odd lumps. Power signature leakage confirmed they were heavily armed. Technologically they weren't as advanced as the Alexis Denken (very few ships were, she acknowledged wryly), but their sheer size and power meant they'd be able to overwhelm her starship's force fields if they ever caught it.
The smartcore took eight minutes to analyse a flaw in their detector scans and configure the Alexis Denken's emissions so that it could pass among them unnoticed. Paula watched the surface of the ice moon grow larger as the Alexis Denken slipped placidly through the big defence sentries. Little attempt had been made to hide the station that sprawled across the fissured ice plain. Electronic and thermal emissions were strong. She saw a broad cross shape of dark metal, with each wing measuring nearly a kilometre long.
'This might just be the proof you need, Paula told ANA: Governance. 'We've never been able to find one of their bases before, let alone intact and still functioning.
'Now we know it exists do you want Navy support?
'No. This is just a reconnaissance trip. If the Navy tries to force its way in here, they'll self-destruct. I want to know what's here that's worth this level of secrecy and defence.
The Alexis Denken descended carefully until it was hovering above the craggy icescape a couple of kilometres away from the base itself. Quantum mass signature detectors built up a comprehensive pattern of the base's layout for Paula. It extended over half a kilometre below the top of the ice. The central section was largely empty, which she judged to be the starship docking bays. Around that, the wings had a much higher density average, reflecting the concentration of equipment inside. Whatever the Accelerators were doing in there, it required eight high-output mass energy generators to supply the power they needed.
Paula directed the smartcore to extend the ship's t-field, which inflated out to a five kilometre radius. A t-field wasn't exactly standard starship gear, not even for ultradrives; but then the Alexis Denken was pretty extraordinary even by ANA's standards. She waited anxiously for a couple of seconds, but the t-field didn't register with the base defence sensors.
For over half an hour the Alexis Denken teleported flecks of ice from directly underneath the bottom of the base. One sliver at a time was taken, to rematerialize in crevices and fissures across the surrounding surface, adding to the coat of slush-gravel that covered the small moon. Eventually, Paula had excavated a cavern slightly larger than the Alexis Denken. The starship teleported itself inside.
The next phase was even more delicate. Paula suited up and went outside, carrying several cases of equipment. She slowly cleared the remaining shell of ice from the bottom of the base, exposing the metal skin. Once that was clean, she applied a segment of molecular nanofilaments which began to worm their way up through the molecular bonds of the metal. The first tips which penetrated scanned round, showing her where to apply the next batch. It took five attempts in total before a set of filaments melded into one of the base's data cables, and gave the ship's smartcore unrestricted access into the network.
Paula's u-shadow assumed direct control over the basement above her, disabling the alarms and subverting the sensors. After the whole Sholapur incident she wasn't taking any chances with her personal safety. She teleported eight combatbots into the room, then materialized at the centre of them.
The chamber she emerged into was empty, and looked like it had never been used. A blank metal room with structural ribbing reinforcing the base's external skin, its floor a simple grid suspended above the curving metal. Thick conduit tubes threaded across it. The only door was a malmetal circle in the ceiling. Paula told her u-shadow to open it. Her armour suit's ingrav units lifted her through after the combatbots. The corridor she came out on to was illuminated by thin green lighting strips on their lowest setting. It ran for almost two hundred metres in both directions before ending in pressure bulkheads. Gravity at this level was a standard one gee field.
She called up schematics which the Alexis Denken's smartcore had extracted from the network. The base's staff quarters and ship facilities were clustered round the centre of the cross, with the lower levels providing utility and engineering support to the big chambers on the upper levels of all four wings. Strangely, the base's network didn't extend into those large chambers, which were linked with an independent web. There was no way of knowing what was going on inside. However, there was one compartment which the network did cover. Twelve suspension cases were inside. Three of the rooms adjoining it were given over to extensive biomedical facilities. Ten of the cases were currently occupied. The network didn't list any personal details, but her instinct gave her a really bad feeling about who they contained.
Her u-shadow swept through the network nodes in the suspension case compartment, creating neutral ghost readings in the sensor systems so she could walk about without triggering any alerts. According to the network, there were five staff at the base, none of them near the compartment. Paula and her escort teleported in.
It was dark in the suspension case compartment. A small polyphoto ball in each corner glowed an unobtrusive lime green, giving the big sarcophagi a sombre shading. The compartment was like some bizarre miniature homage to the Serious Crimes Directorate secure vault. She walked over to the first sarcophagi, and ordered her u-shadow to opaque the lid.
The Cat lay inside, her trim body contained within a silver gossamer web.
Paula stared at her hibernating adversary for a long while. 'Ho Jesus, she muttered and walked over to the next sarcophagi. Her u-shadow opaqued the lid. Another Cat lay inside. She moved on to the third.
Just as Paula looked down to confirm the seventh version of the Cat, her biononic field scan function detected a change in energy patterns at the first sarcophagi. She spun round to face it. Three combatbots deployed their proton lasers to cover the big case.
The Cat sat up on her elbows. An integral force field came on, cloaking her in a ghostly violet scintillation. A field scan swept out from her biononics, attempting to probe Paula's armour suit. 'Who are you?