“Good to see you, El-Tee,” called the trooper behind the front tribarrel. The driver watched from his hatch, but the two wing guns were unmanned; they continued to search the sky in air defense mode under detachment control. “You guys earned your pay at Rhodesville, didn’t you? Curst glad it was you and not us in F-2.”
“I don’t know that I feel the same way,” Huber said; but even if he’d shouted, he couldn’t have been heard over the rising howl of drive fans as the combat car shifted sideways to open the passage. Tranter drove through the gate in surface effect.
Central Repair would’ve been much safer against external attack if it had been located within Base Alpha. It remained separate because of the greater risk of having so many local personnel—well over a hundred if combat operations persisted for any length of time—inside the Regimental HQ. Losing Central Repair would be a serious blow to the Regiment; the sort of damage a saboteur could do within Base Alpha wouldn’t be survivable.
The warehouses had been placed following the curve of the land instead of being aligned on a grid pattern. Tranter followed the access road meandering past the front of the buildings. Three of them were empty, held against future need. The sliding doors of the fourth from the gate were closed, but light streamed out of the pedestrian entrance set beside them.
Three troopers looked down from the warehouse roof as Tranter pulled the aircar over. Huber waved at them with his left hand; he held the 2-cm powergun in his right.
Chief Edlinger met them at the door. “Good to see you again, Huber,” he said. “Tranter, you need a hand?”
“I haven’t forgotten how to carry a toolchest, Chief,” the sergeant said, lifting his equipment out of the back of the car with a grunt. And of course he hadn’t, but his mechanical leg didn’t bend the way the one he’d been born with had; balance was tricky with such a heavy weight.
Huber had offered help when they got into the car. If Tranter wanted to prove he could move a toolchest or do any other curst thing he wanted without help, then more power to him.
“I appreciate this, Buck,” Huber said as he entered the warehouse. The air within was chilly and had overtones of lubricant and ozone; it was a place which only tolerated human beings. “I’d like there not to be a problem, but—”
“But you think there is,” Edlinger completed grimly. He was a wiry little man whose sandy hair was more gray than not; he’d rolled his sleeves up, showing the tattoos covering both arms. Time and ingrained grease had blurred their patterns. If even the chief could identify the designs, he’d have to do it from memory.
Huber laughed wryly. “I think so enough that if we don’t find something, I’ll worry more,” he admitted. “I won’t believe it isn’t there, just that we didn’t find it.”
“That looks like the lady,” Tranter said, striding purposefully across the cracked concrete floor. There were two other combat cars in the workshop, but Fencing Master wore like a flag across her bow slope the marks of the buzzbomb and the welding repairs. Iridium was named for Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, because of the range of beautiful colors that heat spread across the metal.
Tranter and the chief spent the next two hours taking off panels, running diagnostics, and sending fiber optic filaments up passages that Huber hadn’t known were parts of a combat car’s structure. He stayed clear, sitting mostly on an empty forty-liter lubricant container. The techs worked with the natural rhythm of men who’d worked together often in the past; they spoke in a verbal shorthand, and they never got in one another’s way.
It struck Huber that the chief must really have regretted losing Tranter from his section. Huber hadn’t known the sergeant very long, and he’d bloody well miss him if something happened.
“Hel-lo, what have we here?” Tranter called, his voice echoing out of the iridium cavern into which he’d crawled. He’d removed a hull access plate beneath the driver’s compartment; only his feet showed outside the opening. “Chief, what d’ye make of this? I’m sending it on channel seven.”