It whipped around, rainbow-bright colors flashing on its sides as it did. Damn, it was fast for its size. And Dek got a good look at the thing’s front. Three broad inward-curving blades—each maybe a meter in length and topped with a hook—spread wide. The trio of stalk-like eyes were extended, the bottom one sticking straight out toward him from beneath the creature’s belly. The mouth had three jaws that slid sideways, opening like some perverted iris, to expose a nightmare-fraught maw.

“Okay,” Dek whispered to himself. “Bad idea.”

Too late now. Dek pulled up the rifle and shot just as the thing charged.

75

Through that long and disturbing night, Kalico Aguila hadn’t slept. She’d groused about the fact that when it came to Dek—as Michegan put it—she wasn’t any Talina Perez. She obsessed that, for all intent and purpose, Corporate Mine was shut down, running at idle while make-work was attended to. And then, that morning, the shuttle had come in with the first rotation from PA after the cave-in. Corporal Abu Sassi had informed her that Tadeki Ozawa hadn’t bothered to make the return trip, that Makarov had held the shuttle an additional fifteen minutes, and the man had failed to show.

A quick radio call to Two Spot had assured her that Tadeki hadn’t been admitted to hospital, hadn’t run afoul of PA security, or showed up in any way, manner, or form on their radar. That was either good or bad. Maybe the guy was dead in an alley, or he’d wandered out past the gate and been eaten by a quetzal, or maybe he’d deserted. No one had deserted Corporate Mine in years.

So, what am I going to do?

She had standing orders that deserters would be shot. Old orders that hadn’t been needed in years.

“So, do I shoot Tadeki? The guy just lost his wife and unborn child.” Shit on a shoe, that would make good press. “Supervisor murders grief-stricken man mourning the death of all that he loved.”

Needing to get the hell out of Corporate Mine, she’d briefed Ghosh, accessed her com, and ordered, “Makarov, spool up the A-7. I need to go to PA.”

“Roger that, Supervisor.”

“Tadeki is missing,” she’d told everyone. “I’m going to go find him.”

It had made a hell of a good excuse.

So she’d had Makarov run her back to Port Authority. On the way, she’d sat in the cockpit starboard-side passenger seat, one leg up, chewing on a thumbnail as she stared out at the thick carpet of forest and the curve of the Gulf off to the east. From this altitude, she could almost see as far as the Maritime Unit. Almost. As if that tiny dot of white would be visible to her naked eye.

Just thinking of it put her in an even fouler mood.