“She’s still in here then,” Kandara said, pulling herself along inside the accessway. The size of the refinery was going to give Cancer a huge advantage, she realized. Without sensors, they could spend a week moving around trying to find each other—and that was assuming Cancer would seek a confrontation. “She’s going to want to escape,” she said. “If she goes down into the extractor rig below, will she have a better route out?”
“Not particularly,” Jessika said. “The extractor rig and refinery where you are have a physical gap between other modules. She’ll have to cross that gap somehow.”
“We’ve got active sensors on all sides of you,” Oistad said. “If she makes a break for it, we’ll know.”
“And if she switches them off, as well?”
“I’m hardening the network,” Tyle said. “But if she does disable some, at least that’ll give us an indication of where she might be.”
Three minutes later Kandara was at level seventeen. If it hadn’t been for Zapata’s guidance graphics, she wouldn’t even have known which way was down, Bremble’s gravity was so slight. She gripped one of the accessway’s struts and held herself motionless. Her helmet sensors scanned around on their maximum magnification. Nothing.
“Do the G8Turing have control over the refinery’s mechez?” she asked.
“No, I shut them out when I restricted the network. We’d have to open up a lot of bandwidth for that,” Oistad said. “That’ll give Cancer more channels to route a call out.”
“Who’s she going to call?” Kandara muttered. “All right, this is how we play it. Reopen the network as much as you need and move every mechez on the refinery inventory to level fifteen and level nineteen. I want every accessway physically blocked, so no one can get through those levels. Are there enough of them to do that?”
“Yes,” Oistad said.
“Right. Once that’s done, start moving them in to this level. Get the noose around her, and start contracting it.”
While the team started organizing the remotes, Kandara snaked along the accessway. Every time she reached an intersection, she left a drone, then moved on. The one place she didn’t venture into was the control center. She was worried Cancer might have booby-trapped it. In fact, she was surprised there were no smart mines concealed somewhere in the accessways.
The thought made slithering along inside the dark, winding accessways a nervy experience. She didn’t usually suffer from claustrophobia, but this was pushing her close.
“Kandara, we might have a problem,” Jessika said.
She froze, surrounded by misty green thermal outlines, with the power cables forming an irregular glowing web around her—none of it real. The refinery’s vibration was still present in the strut she was holding. No sign of a human heat signature. “What?”
“Something’s blocking an extractor rig ice-feed chamber. Eight levels below you.”
“You mean a feed inside the extractor rig?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said there’s no way out down there?”
“Oh, shit. The feeds, they bring in ice.”
“Ice?”
“Yes. The refinery process uses a lot of water.”
“Where the hell does ice come fr— Oh, fuck! I said shut down all the portals.”
“One of the harvesters on Verby is malfunctioning,” Oistad said. “The ice feed has shut down. Sensors are offline. I can’t see the damage.”
“The
“It’s one of Lanivet’s moons,” Zapata informed her. “The surface is covered with extensive ice oceans. The water has a low mineral content, and is therefore an excellent resource for both industrial systems and habitat biospheres.”
“Mother Mary. Jessika, give me a route down to the ice-feed chamber. Fast!”
“Coming through now.”
Kandara started to haul herself along the accessway, following the glowing purple route line now splashed over her lens. “Is there anyone on Verby?”
“No, just the G7Turings controlling the ice harvest. The operation is completely automated.”
“Good. You know the drill. Shut down every portal. Properly, this time.”
“Kandara,” Oistad said, “the ice feeds are essential to half of Bremble’s industrial systems; and the habitats need water, too.”
“How many people does she have to kill before you listen to me?” she shouted. “Shut the fucking ice feeds down!”
“Powering them down now,” Jessika said. “Listen, that harvester she went through, it has three ice feeds into the extractor rig. I’ve stopped the other two.”
Kandara smiled to herself.