CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Morning did indeed start early. An hour before sunrise, to be exact.
And not just early, but quick. From the time Dent prodded us awake to our departure from Sleepy Hollow was no more than ten minutes.
The day was basically a duplicate of the previous one. We tromped through the grass, avoided trees and the occasional vine tangle, paused whenever our muscles and joints demanded, and endured Dent’s complaints about our lack of woodland skills. The ground continued the gradual uphill slope it had started the middle of the day before, but now it had also become more undulating, with lines of small ridges and the occasional hill. We endured the former and, mindful of the possibility of aerial surveillance, avoided the latter.
It was early afternoon when we reached the edge of the first scree field.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Dent commented as we skirted the edge, staying under cover of the trees as much as we could. “The geologists figure a series of groundquakes a few hundred years ago ripped off the side of Mount Traxx and sent it shattering downhill. That big rock pile is the result.”
“There are several of them, aren’t there?” I asked.
“Eight to ten, depending on how you count them,” Dent said, giving me an odd look. “You an amateur geologist?”
“No, just a very amateur hiker,” I said. “When you said we were going to be walking from wherever we parked the Ruth I made a point of checking out all the places I wanted to avoid. The scree fields were one of them. Or eight to ten of them, depending on who’s counting.”
“We won’t have to cross any of them, will we?” Selene asked, her pupils wary as she gazed at the rock field.
“In those shoes?” Dent asked scornfully. “You’d better hope to hell not. You really need to start carrying some real survival gear in your ship. You have to do a hike like this again without a guide and you’ll be toasted wheat.”
“Did you see a lot of free space on the Ruth?” I countered. “Bedrolls, travel mattresses, and backpacks take up a lot of room.”
“You’re thinking like a tourist,” Dent said. “Do what the professionals do: Skip the bulky stuff and go with some mesh hammocks, collapsible shoulder bags, multitools—that sort of thing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “the next time we bring aboard someone wanted by the Patth.”
A flicker of emotion crossed Dent’s face. “You think the Patth are after me?”
“You saw all those Iykams,” I reminded him. “As far as I know, the Patth are the only ones they work for. So what did you do to them?” I tilted my head. “Or what do you have that they want?”
He locked eyes with me. “I’ll talk to Icarus,” he said. “No one else.”
I hesitated. I could make that happen, of course. All I had to do was take Dent to the Aerie StarrComm center and punch in my Icarus Group contact number. Graym-Barker would be furious, but depending on what Dent could tell him that anger would probably blow over.
Assuming he actually knew anything. That still hadn’t been established. “Fine,” I said. “But I can’t walk you in cold. I need some idea what it is you’re sitting on.”
For a moment I could see an echo of my own hesitation. He wasn’t any more trusting of me than I was of him. I waited, cultivating my patience.
And then the mask went back up. “I’ll think about it,” he said, turning away and continuing along the edge of the scree field. “And no, we won’t have to go across the rocks. Come on—we need to pick up the pace a little.”
* * *
The second part of the day went pretty much the way the first part had, except that now we had the additional challenge of avoiding the increasingly frequent rocks as we kept close to the edge of the scree field. Finally, as the sky began to darken, Dent found us another more or less comfortable camping site. We made our individual sleeping arrangements, ate our last meal bars of the day, and settled in to sleep.
Or Selene and Dent did. Once again, I instead settled in to wait for Ixil’s summons to compare notes and plan for our imminent arrival at Trailhead.
Or so went my plan. Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on two solid days of unaccustomed exercise separated by a too-short night’s sleep. One minute I was focused on the sound of Dent’s breathing; the next, I was startled awake by a hand shaking my shoulder. “Gregory, wake up,” Ixil’s voice murmured in my ear.
“I’m awake,” I murmured back, blinking my eyes furiously to drive the sleep out of them and propping myself up on one elbow. If Dent woke up and saw Ixil leaning over me—
I muttered a curse. No fear of Dent seeing Ixil, because Dent was no longer here.
“Yes, he’s gone,” Ixil confirmed. “My fault—I hadn’t expected him to leave so soon, and so hadn’t instructed Pix to return to me immediately when he did.”
“How much of a lead does he have?” I asked, looking over at Selene. She was awake now, too, her nostrils and eyelashes sampling the air.
“Nearly an hour,” Ixil said grimly. “I know the direction he took”—he pointed in the direction we’d been going before we bedded down for the night—“and I’ve sent Pix and Pax after him. But they have to tag-team in order to keep us informed. Depending on how fast he travels we may not be able to catch him.”
“Do we have to catch him?” Selene asked. “I assumed we were mostly interested in the portal.”
“If the portal is here,” Ixil warned. “We still don’t know for sure.”
“Yes, we do,” Selene said, pointing in a direction a few degrees off the one Ixil had indicated. “It’s that way.”
I wasn’t all that good with Kalixiri expressions. Even so, Ixil’s surprise was pretty obvious. “It is here?” he asked.
“Yes, and very close,” Selene assured him. “No more than a kilometer away. I can take us there right now if you’d like.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Pack whatever you need and we’ll go.” He stepped past me to Dent’s former sleeping spot and pulled a slip of paper from beneath a stone. “Oh, and he left you a note. Pix saw him writing it.”
“What does it say?” I asked, cinching up the pack with the rest of the meal bars and slinging it over my shoulder.
“Sorry to cut out on you, but it’s obvious you’re unwilling or unable to help me,” Ixil read. “Head due west from here, and in an hour you’ll hit the Scree View trail. Turn left and follow it about a kilometer and you’ll reach Trailhead. Sorry about the armband.”
“The armband?” I asked as Ixil handed me the note.
“The alien armband,” Selene said. “He took it from my bag before he left.”
“At least he didn’t hurt you,” I said, wincing. Yet another opportunity missed by my unintended nap. As my father used to say, The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is usually in charge.
“Or completely abandon us,” Selene said. “He could have just left us here instead of telling us how to get back to Trailhead.”
“Assuming the directions aren’t a lie,” I warned, glancing over the note and then stuffing it into my pocket. “You said the portal’s a kilometer away?”
“Yes,” Selene said. “Dent’s somewhere in that same direction, but the breezes are too variable for me to get a firm location.”
“He’s got to be heading for the portal,” I said, fastening the tool pouch with the water bottles around my waist. “Let’s see if we can head him off.”
“You two go,” Ixil said, drawing the little DubTrub 2mm he’d shown me before and pressing it into my hand. “I need to follow behind Pix and Pax or they’ll get lost.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll meet you there. Come on, Selene.”
With Dent on the loose and undoubtedly watching for signs of pursuit, I was hoping to avoid using my flashlight. But the footing was increasingly treacherous, and after one too many near falls I gave up and made us a small spot of light. Gripping the DubTrub tightly, hoping Dent wasn’t twitchy enough to shoot on sight, we continued on through the darkness.
And then, suddenly, we were there.
“He’s moved the stones beneath it,” Selene said softly. “You see?”
For those first few seconds I had no idea what she was talking about. Then, across the moonlit scree field I spotted a small but clearly visible section of smooth wall framed by lines of the more jagged stones above it and on both sides. The bottom edge, though, was more of a semicircular dip, indicating that Dent had indeed done some clearing of that area.
“Probably needed to move them to get access to the hatch,” Selene continued. “I wonder how he opens it.”
“Good question,” I said, frowning. We’d seen various open portal hatches, but as far as I could remember we’d never seen one of them actually being opened. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
“No,” Selene said. “He’s not here anymore. He’s either used the portal or continued on to Trailhead.”
I scowled. Terrific. “Well, Ixil probably knows how it works. Can you find him?”
“He’s fifty meters that way.” She pointed. “I think Pix and Pax are with him.”
“Okay,” I said, turning away from the stones and the half-buried portal. “Let’s go.”
With no reason to be circumspect now that Dent was gone, I cranked up my flashlight to full power, and in the brighter glow we were able to cover the uneven ground faster and far more safely. With maybe ten meters to go I spotted Ixil’s own flickering light, and half a minute later we rounded the last tree and were once again together.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“We found the portal,” I said. “But it looks like Dent’s already flown the coop. I hope you know how to open the front door.”
“You press against the hatch’s trigger and it pops open,” Ixil said absently, stepping to the side and gesturing. “First, tell me what you think of this.”
I frowned. Sitting beside him, pressed against a thick tree trunk and nestled beneath its branches, was probably the last thing I would expect to run across in an alien forest: a meter-tall Brinx-Chakrar safe. “Well, Dent did say he’d stashed some stuff out here,” I reminded Ixil. “I don’t suppose Pix or Pax was in time to see him work the combination.”
“Pax did in fact arrive as he approached it,” Ixil said. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t any combination for him to witness.”
I frowned, looking closer. There was the usual rectangular keypad block set into the door beside the handle. But now that I was focusing on it I saw that the spot was empty.
“The door simply popped open as he came within a couple of meters,” Ixil continued. “Apparently, he’s reconfigured the mechanism for remote control.”
“Great,” I growled. Remote-trigger codes, even rolling-river ones, could be captured and analyzed, and in a lot of cases successfully hacked. Unfortunately, Pax had apparently neglected to bring the necessary five kilos’ worth of equipment with him. “Well, I do have Floyd’s blast ribbon with me.”
“Sadly, I don’t believe even that much explosive will do us any good,” Ixil warned. “I’ve dealt with Brinx-Chakrars before, and they’re incredibly resistant to everything in a safecracker’s arsenal.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” I said. “Do we know what Dent took out of it?”
“There was a rectangular box that looked like a jewelry container,” Ixil said. “Also a couple of small cylinders. Unfortunately Pax wasn’t close enough to obtain details on either.”
“Okay, so a blast ribbon won’t get us in,” I said. “What will?”
“Specialized drills and saws,” Ixil said. “Heavy ones, requiring power supplies and trained operators.”
“None of which are likely to be found in Trailhead or Aerie?”
“I would say not,” Ixil agreed. “Even if they did, getting them out here would be a massive and very public undertaking.”
I put my hand on the safe’s corner and gave it a tentative push. The box didn’t even quiver. “And we’re not going to lug it somewhere more convenient.”
“Not a Brinx-Chakrar, no,”
“I have a question,” Selene spoke up. “What’s it made of?”
“High-end safes like this are typically compressed titanium,” I told her.
“Which this appears to be,” Ixil added.
“Right,” I agreed. “It may also have a lead-swirl liner to block X-rays.”
“Is there any woven nylon in it?” she asked.
“I don’t remember seeing anything like that listed in the specs for high-end safes like this,” Ixil told her.
“I see,” Selene said thoughtfully. “A moment, please.” She started off slowly around the safe, circling it and the tree it was backed up to.
Ixil gave me a questioning look; I shrugged and went to catch up with her. I didn’t know where she was going with this, but when she got all thoughtful and mysterious it was always worth seeing where she ended up.
In this case, she ended up exactly halfway around the safe. There she stopped, gazing at the back of the tree, her eyelashes fluttering. Then, she stirred. “There,” she said, moving her pointing finger to a spot in the center of the trunk. “And there,” she added, lowering her finger to point twenty centimeters farther down. I trained my flashlight on the first spot she’d identified.
There, practically invisible amid the whorls of the gnarled bark, was a broad-headed screw, dug into the tree directly behind the safe. Shifting my beam, I found a second screw in the other spot she’d marked.
Both screws made of woven nylon.
“Well, now, isn’t that cute?” I said, trying to decide if I should be mad at Dent or just impressed.
“I don’t understand,” Ixil said, sounding confused. “What do those screws mean?”
“They mean that Dent’s a fraud,” I said. “Or at least his fancy safe is.” I tapped the upper screw head.
“Are you saying he bolted it to the tree?” Ixil asked, sounding even more confused. “Why?”
“Because it’s not a Brinx-Chakra,” I told him, allowing a little smugness into my voice. As my father used to say, People who say virtue is its own reward have probably never tried gloating. “I’ve seen this before. It’s some cheap tin or aluminum box plated with a thin layer of titanium and with a company logo slapped onto the front. The whole façade is designed to scare off potential thieves before they even try to take a crack at it.”
“Only the box’s lighter weight would be a dead giveaway if any of those thieves tried nudging it,” Ixil said, finally catching on. “So he fastened it to the tree with long bolts to enhance the illusion.”
“Right,” I said. “Actually, we should have figured it out the minute we saw the damn thing. How could Dent have lugged half a ton of metal out here in the first place? Even if his brother had been on hand to help?”
“How indeed?” Ixil agreed. “Well. Now, I believe, getting a look at what’s inside should be fairly straightforward. The blast ribbon, if you please?”
“Not sure this is a good idea,” I warned as I unwrapped the ribbon from my arm and handed it over. “There are some tactical advantages to knowing something your target doesn’t know you know. Blowing the front off his supposedly secret stash kind of violates that principle.”
“Trust me,” Ixil said, glancing at the info bar along the ribbon’s edge and then pulling out his multitool. “My skills at subtlety aren’t limited to hiding in Trailblazer ship crawl spaces.”
* * *
He started by slicing off razor-thin pieces of the blast ribbon and laying them out neatly along the top of the safe. Once a dozen or so were ready, Pix and Pax hopped off his arms onto the safe, presumably at his silent command, and began taking the strips one by one to the back wall of the safe. There, using their long claws, they delicately tucked the strips into the almost invisible seam where the titanium plating on the top of the safe folded over onto the plating on the back. Ixil continued cutting pieces, and the outriders continued stuffing them into place, until the entire seam was full, with the strips also extending a few centimeters down the rear side seams.
“Good,” Ixil said briskly, checking the outriders’ handiwork. “Let’s see if this works.”
Putting his palms on the safe, he snapped his fingers, bringing Pix and Pax scrambling up his arms and back onto his shoulders. To me, they looked rather pleased with themselves, but I was pretty sure that was just my imagination. Motioning me back, he pulled out an igniter and gingerly touched it to the closest strip.
There was a drawn-out, stuttering pop as the pieces of ribbon exploded sequentially, each triggered by the explosion immediately beside it. The popping ended, and together Ixil and I stepped in for a closer look.
I’d had my doubts. Not anymore. The multiple mini-explosions had neatly pried up the rear titanium flap, exposing the plain aluminum beneath it.
“Thinner than I thought it would be,” Ixil commented, prying experimentally at the titanium with his multitool. “And it’s not even plated onto the main box.”
“Neither were the other two safes I saw that used this scam,” I told him. “I heard once that compressed titanium doesn’t really bond with aluminum or other cheap metals. You’d have to do an interlace weave, which would kind of defeat the whole cheap part of the cheap replica gimmick.” I poked experimentally at the loosened flap. “Still thick enough to be trouble, though.”
“Only if the plan was to peel it back,” Ixil said. “Fortunately, the aluminum beneath it is just as thin and far more malleable. We should be able to bend it far enough to pop it off, or at least far enough to get access to the interior. I’ll get started while you go find Selene.”
I looked around in surprise. With my full attention on Ixil and the box, I’d completely missed the fact that Selene had disappeared. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“She’ll be all right,” Ixil soothed. “No predators, remember? She headed back the way you just came, so I assume she went to open the portal.”
I scowled. No predators; except possibly Dent if he happened to come back and caught her snooping around. “Right,” I said. Pulling out the DubTrub, I headed into the forest.
“Whistle if there’s any trouble,” Ixil called after me, his attention already back on the safe.
I expected to find the portal hatch open and Selene either already inside or preparing to go in. But as I reached the edge of the scree field I could see in the starlight that the portal hull was still smooth and solid. “Selene?” I stage-whispered.
“Here,” her voice came from my left. The word was calm enough, but there was something in her tone that sent a shiver up my back.
I worked my way through another couple of meters of shrubs and tangled tree branches and found her standing at the edge of a narrow clearing that threaded its way back toward Ixil and the safe in one direction and opened up onto the scree field in the other. “What’s up?” I asked as I came up beside her. “Did you get into the portal?”
“No.” She nodded toward the clearing. “I saw this and stopped.”
I frowned. The clearing was narrow, with a few low undulations like small ocean waves that had been frozen in the dirt and grass. Too low to surf, but high enough to stumble over if you weren’t paying attention to your footing. “Anything in particular that caught your eye?”
“I walked it back,” she said, her tone edging a little darker. “It goes to within fifteen meters of the safe and all the way to the scree field and the portal. It’s a much easier walk than the one we took through the woods.”
“Something handy to tuck away for later,” I said, trying to get a clear look at her pupils in the faint light.
“Yes.” Selene paused. “So why didn’t Dent take it?”
“You sure he didn’t?”
She nodded. “He followed the path you just took. The path we both took when we left the portal and went to find Ixil.”
I looked back at the clearing. So why didn’t Dent want to take the easy road?
And then, I saw it. Undulations in the ground . . .
“Come on,” I said, taking Selene’s arm and turning her toward Ixil. “It’s time we and our resident Icarus professional had a little talk.”
Ixil had said that with the titanium shell breached the safe would be relatively easy to open. It wasn’t until we reached him that I discovered just how much of an understatement that had been. In the short time he’d been alone he’d managed to slide the entire aluminum back panel out of its titanium edging, leaving it fastened to the tree behind it. With the rest of the box unattached, he’d swiveled it around, exposing the interior and four shelves’ worth of odds and ends. We arrived to find him thumbing intently through a short stack of picture-sized cards, his flashlight tucked between his shoulder and Pax’s belly. “That was quick,” I commented as we walked up to him. “Are those more pictures?”
“Yes,” he said. He seemed to hesitate, then selected one of them and offered it to me. “You said Dent showed you a picture of a dead man. Is this him?”
I took the picture and shined my light on it. It was him, all right. Only instead of just a head shot, this one showed his entire body, stretched out limply on a flat gray surface. But he was just as dead. “That’s the guy,” I confirmed. “Who is he?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Ixil said ruefully, taking the picture back. “I’m afraid there’s a lot going on here that we don’t have a handle on.”
“Oh, I doubt it’s quite as bad as that,” I soothed. “Let’s start with our dead man, and the fact that you, McKell, and Graym-Barker all lied about not knowing him.”
“Gregory—”
“I know Selene and I aren’t exactly at the top of anyone’s need-to-know list,” I cut him off. “But we’re sitting on a portal, and there are at least two groups out there gunning for us, and we need to be brought into the picture. Fast.”
Again, Ixil hesitated. “I’m sorry, Gregory,” he said. “But I can’t simply break protocol.”
“How about we work a trade, then?” I suggested. “Something for something. You tell us who the dead man is.”
I looked at Selene. “We’ll tell you where he’s buried.”