They made landfall not long afterwards, the yacht settling on to a cushion of shaped fields just a few kilometres from the mouth of the cache. Dakota pulled off the standard-issue jumpsuit she had been wearing, and folded it into a wad before dropping down from the yacht's open hatch, relying once more simply on her filmsuit for protection.
Her black-slicked toes kicked up a cloud of dust as she hit the ground, before she took a few bounding steps in the low gravity. She glanced behind her in time to see Nancy hit the ground only to be immediately swallowed in another billowing dust cloud that coated her pressure-suit in grey.
Dakota took a look around her. Outcrops of granite rose from a sea of dust that extended to the north, only coming to an end at the ridge-wall of a crater about ten kilometres away. To the west, and in the direction of the cache itself, the ground rose and fell in gentle inclines, like waves sculpted in stone. The overhead sun was bright enough to blot out the stars.
Trader emerged last, followed by the spider-mechs. One by one, the spiders skittered around the edge of the hatch, in an eerily lifelike way, before jumping down and flexing their elongated legs as they scanned the horizon. They looked very different in a gravity environment: they now used most of their limbs to walk on, with just one set raised above them, so that they now looked more like six-legged mechanical crabs than spiders.
Trader led the way, his brine-filled bubble hugging the curve of a nearby slope up to its peak. Dakota trudged through the dust after him and on up the side of the hill.
‹I was unaware we would have company,› he sent to Dakota as she came abreast of him.
Dakota glanced back at Nancy, who had just reached the foot of the hill. Her pressure-suit clearly made the going harder for her.
Officially, she's here to give us a hand. Unofficially, I'm top of their list of suspects for Olivarri's murder. She waited a beat. After yourself, of course.
The alien swivelled within his field bubble to study Schiller more closely as she struggled uphill, the spiders racing past her towards the peak. ‹So she is here to watch over us.›
Did you kill Olivarri, Trader?
The Shoal-members manipulators writhed beneath the wide curve of his belly. ‹How could I possibly carry out such a crime, seeing I have not even been allowed to board the frigate itself? Perhaps your inquiries should first turn to those who accuse you? I am sure Olivarri was not the only one with secrets.›
Dakota frowned. What secrets?
‹Ah.› The manipulators writhed again, and Dakota couldn't help but wonder if he was laughing at her. ‹Perhaps you were not aware Olivarri was secretly employed by the Consortium's intelligence division?›
Dakota actually took a step back. What? Where did you get this from?
‹That, I'm afraid, must remain with me. I have my sources.›
If you're lying to me-
‹Spare me your empty threats, Dakota.›
Trader moved off again, his bubble following the contours of the incline as he descended the other side of the hill. Dakota stayed where she was, staring off across the hilltops and brooding.
Who else, she wondered, was something other than what they appeared to be? She knew almost nothing about most of the Mjollnir 's contingent, particularly Perez, Driscoll and Nancy Schiller herself-all strangers to her until she boarded the frigate. They had each been vetted personally by Corso, but if Trader turned out to be telling the truth, what did that mean about the rest of them?
Who else might not be who they seemed?
Nancy finally came abreast of her, closely trailed by the spiders; her faceplate had polarized until it was nearly opaque beneath the bright glare of the sun overhead.
Dakota followed in Trader's path, soon leaving Nancy and the spiders behind once more. From the top of the next hill she could make out a low dome squatting on the wide flat plain surrounding the mouth of the cache, several hundred metres away. The dome's grey colouring made it almost invisible against the surrounding landscape, and there were the ruins of other buildings all across the plain.
Looking closer to hand, she saw Trader forging ahead of her, and jogged down into the next valley to catch up with the alien halfway up the next rise.
That dome. Is that where we're heading?
‹Most assuredly.› Trader turned in his bubble to look back towards Nancy, still making her way down the slope of the hill behind. ‹Our companion appears to be getting left behind. Perhaps it would be amusing for us to hide and see how she reacts?›
Dakota ignored this remark as she watched Nancy laboriously make her way towards them.
That's not the way to do it, Dakota sent to her. Run on your toes, like you're skipping.
‹I'm doing just fine.›
Then you won't mind if we leave you behind.
Nancy swore, then pushed up and off the ground with both feet. She came sailing back down in a low arc and landed on her hands and knees. Dakota watched as she picked herself up and tried again. This time it looked like she tripped over in slow motion, but managed to catch herself on the way back down.
I'm surprised you're having such a hard time. You were pretty nimble during the hull repairs.
‹Yeah, well, that's different,› Nancy replied.
How?
‹It just is, okay? I'm almost there.›
Dakota followed Trader downhill, herself bounding in long, low, skipping strides. Despite her mood and the shock of Trader's revelation, not to mention Nancy's seemingly boundless hostility, a part of her was actually beginning to have fun. She made good time, looking behind her once or twice to check on Schiller, who was trailing huge dust clouds behind her.
She could see the dome more clearly from the next hilltop, beyond which lay only level plain stretching towards the cache's abyssal pit. She saw now that, mixed in with the ruined buildings, there were what appeared to be the remains of a huge spacecraft broken into several sections and half buried in the dust.
As Dakota jogged down to the edge of the plain, she realized the dome was a lot bigger than it appeared at a distance. It had to be at least a hundred metres across, but no more than twenty in height, and it had presumably been designed to withstand whatever forces had destroyed the buildings surrounding it. Trader was well ahead of her by now and, as she started to make her way across the level ground, she saw him pass inside an entrance in one side of the dome, the sparkle of his field-bubble faintly illuminating the interior of the passageway beyond.
She soon reached it herself and stepped into its interior, noting how the relatively tiny inner space emphasized just how thick the walls were.
Dense drifts of dust gradually began to appear out of the gloom, as the filters over her eyes adjusted for the lack of light. She saw waist-high racks stretching from wall to wall in orderly ranks, with wide aisles running between. Identical flat, smooth plates were mounted in haphazard order within the racks, though, at a glance, less than a third of the racks contained them.
Is this what we're here for?
Trader guided his bubble down a side aisle, his huge eyes swivelling from left to right. ‹These are modular shaped-field generators designed for use in battle situations. One must assume the colony here was wiped out before they could be used.›
Dakota turned in time to see the spiders were now threading their way in through the entrance, sending brilliant beams of light cutting through the darkness. Nancy followed them in soon afterwards.
‹I want to ask something,› Nancy sent. ‹What did for all those ruins out there? I saw what looked like the remains of some kind of ship.›
The Meridians slaughtered each other over possession of the cache, Dakota replied. But it all happened a long, long time ago.
Nancy merely watched at first as Dakota started pulling the disc-shaped field devices out of their slots, dropping them to the ground for the spiders to collect. Then she started to help, pulling the discs loose and placing them where the spiders could get to them easily. Trader meanwhile simply hovered in his bubble; in truth there wasn't much he could do but watch them.
‹Here's something else I've been wondering,› said Nancy after they'd been working away for a few minutes. ‹You said you detected some more of those… drones here, right? Like the ones you turned on those corvettes back home?›
What about them?
‹How many of them are there?›
A couple of dozen, Dakota sent back. Why?
‹I saw the playbacks of what those other things you found did to those corvettes. Don't you think its kind of weird the Meridians would leave weapons that powerful lying around here? Doesn't it make more sense if they left them here for a reason?›
Why are you so suddenly keen on giving me your opinion?
Nancy stopped working and stared over at Dakota. ‹I'm just saying there was obviously some kind of a fight here, right?›
A long time ago, Nancy.
‹Yes but, even so, why were they just left here? Are they guarding something? Just waiting for something? What?›
Dakota directed an angry glance towards her. They were at war. Shit happens.
‹I'm just not crazy about the idea of just walking in here without carrying out a thorough reconnoitre,› the other woman replied, ‹and, besides, we're obviously dealing with seriously fucking advanced technology. I'd just like to be sure we're not going to get caught out by something nasty while we're digging through some dead alien's discarded trash.›
Dakota picked up one of the field-generators and studied it for several moments, thinking.
Trader, when I met you on that other world, were the drones you gave me… guarding anything?
‹I have no idea, Dakota. Perhaps they were once but, if so, whatever that might have been is long gone.›
You said you didn't hear back from some of the probes you sent down into the cache. Any idea why?
As Trader floated in his bubble, his manipulators remained immobile for at least half a minute. ‹Perhaps I should investigate further,› he replied.
The discs were a lot heavier than they looked, and Dakota's implants had picked up faint queries coming from them, which were interpretable thanks to the Meridian command structures Trader had given her. Once she had built up an idea of their internal structure, she transmitted this data back to Lamoureaux on the Mjollnir.
Ted, take a look at this. What do you make of it?
His reply came barely a moment later. ‹Like I'm an expert in shaped-field tech? The real question is how hard or easy it's going to be to integrate something like this into our existing defences. Is it even possible?›
According to Trader, it is. And the interface seems to be straightforward enough, so it shouldn't be a huge problem setting up an interface with the Mjollnir's defence stacks.
‹Okay, I'll talk to Ray about them. Leo would have been your man, but now he's gone the next-best expert is probably Nancy, I'm afraid. Have you asked her yet?›
Hang on, I'm going to try activating one myself first.
Dakota lugged the device over to a clear spot between two rows of racks, and triggered it by depressing a button on one side. The shaped field that surrounded her a moment later sparked and crackled with light.
The effect was so startling that Dakota almost dropped the device; the field was far brighter – and therefore more powerful – than anything she had so far encountered. It had started out as a sphere about four metres across, centred on herself, but then it began to shrink, slowly at first but with increasing speed. She quickly deactivated it before it could shrink any further and crush her to death.
‹Be careful,› Trader warned her, from where he hovered near the dome's entrance. ‹These are much more powerful than the field-generators you're used to.›
‹What happened?› Lamoureaux asked.
Two aisles over, Dakota could just make out an expression of shock on Nancy's face through her faceplate.
I think it's safe to say they work just fine, she sent back.