There’s no guarantee I won’t be detected. The technology hasn’t been invented that can defeat every form of surveillance. And relying on just one form of stealth is for pikers. A professional would never make that mistake. You want to put together a suite of concealment strategies to blanket your opponent’s surveillance spectrum. This can be challenging, but if you want real stealth it’s the only way to go.
The trip profile was a bitch to input, but it gives me time for more important things, such as assembling the components I brought
along into something useful—a weapon.
The rifle I’m holding doesn’t compare with even a basic sniper rig, but it’s more than good enough for this mission. If someone shoots you, you don’t care what kind of gun they used. Dead is dead. All the parts were made in little workshops on Mars to my specs, ordered and paid for by Gong-ru Yang. If you want to get hold of a weapon here, you can’t be in a hurry and you have to be
inventive.
I look the assembled weapon over carefully. The main component, the barrel, is unrifled. Rifling a barrel is something you don’t ask a workshop to do. No matter what kind of line you feed them, you’ll blow your cover in two seconds. Anyway I can get along without it. Bullets don’t generate much drag in this thin of an atmosphere. With the right-shaped projectile and tight tolerances close-range
accuracy is no problem.
The cruiser stops on schedule at my chosen location for some sighting-in. I suit up and carry the bullets and the rifle out onto the surface. I need to test the rifle first, make sure it performs as designed. The cruiser has brought me to an ancient streambed several
hundred yards across. Its walls are about three vertical meters.
I stick a big blob of silicon on the rock wall, smear it out until it’s apple-sized. That’s the target. I walk about a hundred meters away, affix my crude weapon to a tripod. Hit a switch and I’ve got a heads-up display on my visor, an aiming system complete with
crosshairs. Check the safety and fit the magazine.
The gun fires bullets using an internal reservoir of liquid propellant, a supervolatile hydrocarbon cocktail. Making a gun is simple. It’s the cartridges—case, primer, and powder—that are tough. You can’t fool people into making them for you. You don’t even want to try. You have to go to specialists usually, ammo manufacturers.
That’s where your cover’s going to crap out on you.
But there’s a workaround. If you have a good gas seal between bullet and barrel, you can use liquid propellant and dispense with cartridges altogether. Just feed bullets straight into the barrel and
send them on their way with a puff of burning propellant.
With the gun set to go, I walk back to the target. I stand to one side, release the safety remotely, put the crosshairs in my heads-up
display on the target, and thumb the firing switch.
The first round grazes the edge of the target. I adjust the sighting parameters and fire again. Other side this time. Split the difference. Fire again. The silicon splatters across the rock.
Sighting-in complete.
Now I’m officially armed. I load the rifle into the land cruiser and enter fresh coordinates into the guidance system. Destination: Phase Three.
Minus 26 Hours 30 Minutes
“Did she actually identify herself as Ryoko Kashiwazaki?”
A video link to the leasing agent was projected on the floating display. The agent responded dutifully, “Yes, her web confirmed it.”
“And she rented a land cruiser for a week?” In one corner of the screen data for the vehicle scrolled past on its way to everyone in the team. “Did you notice anything unusual about her?” Shiran posed the question casually, but it was crucial. Given that most of the transaction was automated, there might not have been much
reason to remember the small details of a particular customer.
“Well, it’s just that she was very particular about the condition of the vehicle, even though I told her I’d checked it twice personally.
She didn’t seem to trust me at all.”
This was unusual. On Mars and throughout AADD, work was the fulfillment of personal potential, a critical prerequisite for acceptance in the collective. People earned respect from their peers through attention to detail and professionalism, regardless of the
work they did.
Terrans didn’t quite seem to understand this. Ryoko Kashiwazaki’s demeanor alone was enough to mark her as an outsider. For her to openly doubt the agent’s competence was tantamount to a deliberate insult. The agent had not responded in kind only because
her customer was from Earth.
“I can’t say I noticed anything else unusual—except she had a very large photo gear case with her.” The agent described the case and held up her hands to indicate its size. Several possible matches
appeared on the white board.
“Did it look like one of these?”
“Yes, that one on the left.”
“Well, thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” said Shiran. “Please
let us know if you remember anything else.”
“I will. Helping is a citizen’s duty.” The agent disappeared, replaced by an analysis of the footage from the leasing agency’s
security camera.
“Professor,” said the imaging officer, “the IR scanners show her using a different spoofing pattern from the one she used on the elevator. The visible-wavelength footage, however, confirms that Ryoko Kashiwazaki is Rahmya. Still, it’s going to be hard to trace her.”
“Hard but not impossible, right?”
“Well… yes, of course. We’ll do our best.”
“I’m relying on you. Use your discretion and I’ll back you up.”
“Okay, Professor. We’re on it.” The board went blank.
“I still don’t like this.”
“Why not?” said Mikal.
“Why did she leave Kobe? She went to a lot of work to slip past us so she could assassinate Tetsu. Why does she keep moving away
from the target? What about the surveillance satellites?”
“Surveillance is ongoing. But it isn’t foolproof—there has to be
something for them to see when they pass overhead.”
“Still, it should restrict her movements quite a bit. There are a
lot of satellites up there.”
“Do you think she might be planning to sabotage one of the mines?” Mikal sent a map of known mineral deposits from his web to the floating rectangle.
“Sabotaging a mine is too big a job for one person. What do
you think was in the case?”
“Something light, small enough to be carried on a shoulder sling. She didn’t have it when she got off the elevator—which means she bought it somewhere. I’ll run a check of the retail outlets. But, Professor, let’s say the case contained a weapon she obtained from somewhere. That means she has to get within range of Tetsu. In other words, she has to return to the elevator at some point.”
“And try to reach Deimos.”
“That’s the most reasonable assumption—she’ll try to return to
Deimos to execute her plan.”
“But how’s she going to do that? She can’t get there without using the elevator, and she must know she can’t keep pulling the
same trick to get past the scanners.”
They began to review the evidence yet again. An hour later the imaging officer suddenly reappeared in Shiran’s retinal feed. “What,
did you find her already?” asked Shiran.
“Not yet, unfortunately. It’s about the contents of the case. We
found something interesting.”
The display board reappeared showing footage of Rahmya at the leasing agency, the case slung from her shoulder. She put it on the floor, walked slowly around the vehicle, then hoisted the case to her shoulder again.
“What’s new about this?” said Shiran.
“Based on her movements we can estimate the weight of the case. It’s not light, that’s for sure. What’s interesting is, the center of gravity is unstable.”
“What does that mean?”
“First of all, whatever’s inside, it’s not anchored. Her movements and center of balance tell us that the case contains something long and metallic. Also, we took the audio and asked another team to see if they could profile it.”
“Auntie’s group?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“I’m surprised she made time for us.”
“You know those guys, Professor. With easy stuff, you better take
a number. Ask for the impossible and you get priority service.”
“Well, if the profile’s coming from Auntie’s team I’m sure it’s
solid. What’s the verdict?”
“They were able to isolate the sound of objects in the case striking each other. They think there’s a hollow metal tube, interior diameter at least five millimeters, and a number of cylindrical
objects, same diameter.”
“A disassembled weapon and—what, cartridges? Bullets?”
“Bullets, according to Auntie. The acoustic characteristics of the tube are unusual, like hardened steel. And there are definitely bulletlike objects striking each other when the case moves. She thinks they’re using some nonstandard propellant system. Gas or
liquid, maybe.”
“How did she get all that from the acoustics alone?”
“When bullets strike each other they sound different from cartridges. But bullets by themselves are useless. It makes sense, in a way. Cartridges wouldn’t make it past security and you can’t have them order-made—the end use is too obvious, the propellants are too specialized. But with the right shape, a bullet could easily be
passed off as some kind of machine component.”
“That’s first-rate work. Okay, let’s assume Rahmya is armed. If the weapon is in pieces she probably ordered the parts from different suppliers. Once this is over we’ll have to do something
special for Auntie.”
“I thought you’d say that, Professor, so I’ve already made reservations.
Auntie’s pushing for Tuesday.”
“Then it’s settled. And that’s one more incentive to get this off
our plate by Tuesday.”
Of course, everything had to be resolved before Tuesday. The target was arriving on Deimos in thirty-eight hours.
Minus 13 Hours 30 Minutes
With all this backtracking and detouring it’s taken me a long time to get here, but I made it on schedule, arriving at night. A quick check of AADD Net confirms the targets are waiting.
There you are… present and accounted for.
With my night-vision binoculars I can see one of AADD’s prospecting teams milling around in front of a vehicle like mine but much larger. Their van doubles as a research station and habitat. They’ve got a small trailer hooked up to it, a mobile power generator. They need a lot of juice, both for their ground-penetrating radar
and for melting the permafrost layer.
Antiproton production is rising fast now that the artificial accretion disk is going through its shakedown trials. That generator they’re running uses antiprotons from Kali. It puts out a huge amount of juice for its size. Reliable too. Antiproton-powered generators
use pretty robust designs.
I hear this high-pitched whine through the thin atmosphere. They’re probably running an oxygen/methane synthesizer, drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their vehicle’s got an internal combustion engine, so they’d need to synthesize fuel now and then
with the generator.
It also looks like they’re doing an equipment check, maybe evaluating samples. They’re totally oblivious to my presence; I’m certain they don’t see me. No lights around the vehicle. The light amplification circuits in their webs project images directly onto
their retinas, so starlight is more than enough to work by.
Their camp is at the bottom of a shallow depression, so I’m in luck. Makes it easier for them to work, but also easier for me to set up without being seen. I carefully extend the tripod and configure the weapon. Sighting system is good to go. I walk back to my vehicle. The Martian horizon is pretty close. Parked three kilometers back, they won’t see the cruiser till I want them to.
So I saddle up and drive into camp like I’m half lost, lights blazing so they see me as soon as I top the horizon. Then I’m in the
camp and out of the cruiser.
“You’re Gong-ru,” says one of the prospectors. Must be the leader.
“Yes, I am. I’m so sorry to arrive after dark.”
“Oh that’s quite all right. Anything to show the people of Earth how the mines of Mars are helping humanity. We welcome
journalists.”
These guys are pros. Turns out they’ve done a lot of prep for Gong-ru’s visit. All four of them gather around me without the slightest fear. Maybe they’ve never seen a journalist before. Or
maybe they’ve never seen someone from Earth before.
“Listen, everyone, could you all line up together? I’d like to start by taking your picture.”
Actually, I’d like to start by shooting you.
“Let’s
take it with that crater in the background.”