The ice-feed chamber was a broad cylinder that sprouted five branches, which then went on to branch again deeper into the extractor rig, like some ancient tree that had long been entombed by machinery. As Kandara approached, an access hatch near the base slid aside. She eased herself in.
When Jessika shut down the ice flow, the extractor rig had continued to swallow the chunks of ice already inside the feed chamber. Now the cylinder which minutes ago had been packed with a constant stream of crushed ice was empty apart from a tenuous mist of twinkling particles. Kandara pushed off cautiously and sent several smart pellets on ahead. They revealed very little, just more curving metal walls, which was the mirror image of the extractor rig end; the harvester supplied the ice through more than a dozen smaller pipes. But her sensors couldn’t detect any other sensors watching for her.
No more calculating risks. No more doubts.
She pushed off hard, zipping through the portal. Verby’s one-fifth standard gravity abruptly tugged her down. She landed with a shoulder roll, springing up fast, which sent her rising off the floor. At the same time she held her left arm out and moved it in a smooth arc, firing armor-piercing rounds as she went. The munitions blasted through the feed chamber’s walls on either side and above her, exploding inside the harvester. Her feet were pushed down by the rifle’s impulse. She could feel the harvester juddering beneath her soles as it ground to a halt.
“Do you know how much those cost?” Tyle asked dryly.
“I thought you guys didn’t lower yourself to talk money?”
“In terms of resources, and time to replace it.”
“You wanted an accountant to do this job? Should’ve hired one.” The ruined feed chamber began to split asunder; she stood directly under the slowly widening gap and jumped. In the low gravity, her gened-up muscles pushed her an easy five meters upward, landing precariously on a warped and splintered section of the upper bodywork toward the rear of the machine. “Now close down the last portals on Verby. Nothing apart from the data links, and if they’re above ten centimeters in diameter, cut them too.”
“Already done,” Jessika said. “There’s no way off that moon.” She paused. “For either of you.”
“You hear that?” Kandara asked, raising her voice despite how foolish that felt.
No answer. But then she hadn’t expected one. She started to pick her way along the twisted bodywork as the broken harvester swayed about, settling ponderously.
It was a huge vehicle. The blade scoop at the front was thirty meters wide, cutting a five-meter-deep channel through the frozen ocean as it rolled forward. Power blades along the lower edge could chop through granite if they ever encountered any—not that this moon had any rock even approaching that level of toughness. The harvester fleet operated on the bottom of a pit the size of a small sea they’d gouged out over the last twenty years. In the distance, she could see vertical cliffs an easy three kilometers high.
When she looked up, Lanivet formed a vast crescent that filled a third of the sky. Its seething cloud bands were pale pink, streaked with white, with occasional slashes of cobalt blue squirting up from the unknown depths. A myriad of cyclones churned arrogantly through them, though nothing the world-swallowing size of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The waning gas giant radiated a pastel light that shaded the sparkling ice a gentle damask.
Kandara clambered up the harvester’s twisted metal and composite bodywork to the highest point and scanned around. “She’s either got the greatest stealth technology ever built, or she’s still here.”
“Can you see any footprint tracks leading away?” Tyle asked. “There’s no stealth that can cover that up.”
She studied the surface a little more closely, moderately impressed with Tyle’s suggestion. Five kilometers away another harvester was slowly braking, with high fantails of ice grains rising in sluggish arcs from either side of its scoop blade. The constant deluge from all the harvesters had coated the pit’s surface of solid ice with several centimeters of ice granules, as neat and uniform as a Zen garden. “I can’t see any tracks,” she reported. “Jessika, can you get me any images of Cancer coming out to Bremble today? Specifically, what space suit she was wearing.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this. Hang on.”
Kandara moved down the harvester several meters; being perched on top would make her a splendid target.
The whole situation was making her jittery, gnawing at her resolution. Cancer wouldn’t hold back.
“Get me a schematic of the harvester,” she told Zapata. “She’s got to be inside somewhere.”