He glanced at Hera’s empty desk. “Ah, does anybody know when Deputy Graciano’s due back?” he asked the room in a raised voice.
Everybody stared at him; nobody answered the question, though. It struck Huber that all this was out of the locals’ previous experience with the Slammers. When Captain Cassutt was director, there hadn’t been troopers with personal weapons standing in the middle of the office.
“Sir?” said Kelso from the back of the room.
“What?” said Huber. “Via, if you know something, spit it out!”
“Yessir,” said Kelso, swallowing. “Ah, I don’t know when the deputy’s coming back, but she went out as soon as I gave her the information you requested, sir.”
“Information?” Huber repeated. For a moment he didn’t know what the local was talking about; nonetheless his stomach slid toward the bottom of an icy pit.
Then he remembered. “You mean the previous employment data.”
“Yessir!” said Kelso, more brightly this time. “None of those techs had worked at the places they put down. Not a soul remembered any one of the three!”
Huber opened his mouth to ask another question, but he really didn’t have to. He’d given Kelso the full applications including the applicants’ home addresses. That’s what Hera had seen, and she wouldn’t have had to check to recognize the address of her brother’s townhouse. The fact that the men’s listed employment records were phony would be a red flag to anybody with brains enough to feed themselves.
“What’s the matter, sir?” Tranter said.
“I screwed up,” Huber said. His face must’ve gone white; he felt cold all over. “It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”
Hera could’ve gone to her father with the information; she could’ve gone to the civil authorities—though Huber wasn’t sure the United Cities had security police in the fashion that larger states generally did; or she could even have gone to Colonel Hammer. Any of those choices would have been fine. The possibility that scared Huber, though, was that instead—
His helmet pinged him with an Urgent call. Huber wasn’t in a platoon and company net, so the sound was unexpected. He locked down his faceshield to mute the conversation and said, “Fox three-six, go ahead!”
In his surprise—and fear—he’d given his old call signal. Somebody else was leader of platoon F-3 nowadays.
“Arne, this is Doll,” said Lieutenant Basime’s voice. “We don’t exactly monitor the civil police here, but we are a signals liaison section. Ah—”
“Say it!” Huber snapped.
“There was a police call just now,” Doll said mildly. She was a solid lady, well able to stand up for her rights and smart enough to know when that wasn’t the best choice. “There’s an aircar down west of town. The driver and sole occupant is dead. Initial report is that it’s your deputy, Hera Graciano.”
“Right,” said Huber. He felt calm again, much as he’d been as he watched the stern of the blazing dirigible slide slowly into the terminal building. The past was the past; now there were only the consequences to deal with. “Can you download the coordinates of the crash site?”
“You’ve got ’em,” Doll said. There was an icon Huber hadn’t noticed in the terrain box on his faceshield. “Anything more I can do, snake?”
“Negative, Doll,” Huber said. “I’ll take it from here. Three-six out.”
He broke the connection and raised his faceshield. “Trouble, El-Tee?” said Sergeant Tranter. Tranter had been in the field, but he didn’t have a line trooper’s instincts. Deseau and Learoyd stood facing outward from their former platoon leader; their feet were spread and their sub-machine guns slanted in front of them. They weren’t aiming at anything, not threatening anybody; but they hadn’t had to ask if there was trouble, and they were ready to deal in their own way with anything that showed itself.
The civilian clerks looked terrified, as they well should have been.
“Tranter, I need a ride,” Huber said. “West of town there’s been an aircar crash. I’ll transfer the coordinates to the car’s navigation system.”
“We’re coming along,” Deseau said. He continued to watch half the room and the doorway, while the trooper watched the clerks on the other side. “Learoyd and me.”