“Well, I don’t see that anyone can expect us to stick around if it’s going to turn into some kind of range war,” Shayne declared. “Our contracts didn’t say nothing about anything like that.”
Lou nodded uncomfortably. “I think I have to agree with that.”
“Don’t go getting yourselves all jumpy too hasty,” Zeke told them. “That’s just what they want. Things aren’t gonna get like that anytime soon. Folks out here might like their independence, but they have a way of acting together real quick when someone starts getting too heavy-handed. These Zorken people might be mean, but they’re smart enough to know that. It’ll be talk and bluff for a long while.” Kieran wasn’t so sure he agreed, but any advice not to panic was good advice. He let it ride.
Nailikar, who was watching the c-com unit mounted on the wall at the end of the table, looked around suddenly. The screen was showing the view from an outside camera trained on the parked Mule a few hundred feet away. “They’re coming out now,” he announced. Conversation ceased as everyone moved to get a better view. Two suited figures were descending the Mule’s access steps. Nailikar brought up a zoom window showing their heads and shoulders in close-up as they began walking back toward the expedition’s camp. Trevany was not looking happy behind the visor of his helmet; Jean, about the same. “Base here, Walter, we’re reading you,” Nailikar said. “How’d it go?”
Trevany shook his head. A heavy sigh came over the audio. “We tried, guys. Offered to give them a tour. The upshot is they think it’s quaint, but they’re not interested—it’s just a pile of old rocks. Their orders from head office are to wheel in some persuasion if we don’t move. I don’t know what we do now. I’m new here. Wait until Hamil and the others get back up from the Hole, I guess.”
But even from where he was sitting, Kieran could read the dejection written across his face. This wasn’t a situation that these people were equipped or experienced to handle, he could see. As Katrina had said, trying to match force with force wouldn’t be Hamil’s way; furthermore, a group such as this, divorced from Terran scientific orthodoxy, would have little recourse to institutions or political connections capable of initiating some defense from that quarter either.
It was a job, then, he decided, for the Knight.
11
The first requirement of any job was adequate information. While the scientists went into a cycle of debating around repeating circles, Kieran ensconced himself in the Juggernaut and began familiarizing himself with as much as was publicly on record concerning Zorken Consolidated’s plans for the area. To his surprise, it turned out that the project to develop a spaceport at Tharsis was on hold indefinitely. The results of the pilot survey were stated as deeming the site unsuitable, although no further details were given. Zorken had already filed intentions to proceed with investigating possible alternative sites. And that made Kieran immediately both curious and suspicious. If they were no longer interested in the Tharsis site for the original reasons, then what did they want it for? It might help, he decided, to know something more about the kind of people that Banks had brought with him.
A code that Donna at Triplanetary had supplied him with a while ago gave him access to the spacelines’ passenger lists of recent arrivals on Mars. Kieran located the Zorken group without much difficulty, all on tickets charged to the corporation: Justin Banks; Gertrude Heissen; Tran Xedeidang; Clarence Porter. Whoever else was with the Mule—crew, more employees, agents and consultants—must have been brought in locally. That was all that the spaceline records could tell him. Building meaty bodies around such scanty bones was part of the magic that June excelled at. In any case, it gave Kieran a reason to call her. She answered from her apartment in Nineveh.
“Well, hi! A face from the wilderness. I was beginning to wonder if you’d decided to take up a life as an ascetic recluse out there.”
“Oh, there are times when it sounds tempting, but fortunately they don’t last,” Kieran replied. “How are things in the vast metropolis?”