I froze. This guy knew about what I’d done on the field trip? I suddenly remembered that Erick had said the security drone was manned by GSAF, not Kimbal. Had they been watching me, this whole time?

Maybe Condor showing up on site today hadn’t been a coincidence after all.

He turned to clap a hand on my shoulder. “But if you continue to work with GSAF, I don’t foresee a problem.”

Then he strode away, following Erick and the others out of the trench. I realized that I was alone now, just meters from the arch; but the security drone still buzzed, watching my every movement with its unblinking camera.

I tossed my tools back into my digger’s kit and left Trench 9 behind.

Chapter 7

“This whole thing stinks worse than Paharganj on a Tuesday morning,” Henry announced, propping his feet up on the velvet ottoman in front of him. “I mean, we’re supposed to buy that they shut down the entire site for a broken piece of seventy-five-year-old junk?”

The two of us were in our custom guild hall on Speculus, our favorite hangout. Henry had designed it himself. Some of the decor was loot we’d picked up from the various games we’d played over the years, but most of it was hand-coded by Henry. Programming was second-nature to him—that was how he’d gotten his scholarship to the Academy, and why they kept him around despite his somewhat checkered disciplinary record. There wasn’t a better coder on Mars than Henry, and everyone knew it. Our guild hall was a work of art. What with the VR headsets and our figuscan avatars, it was basically like being there in real life.

Well, except that Henry was wearing chainmail. Not that he wouldn’t dress like that in real life given the opportunity, but I doubted his mom would let him out of the house if he tried.

I said, “Erick claims that it’s because the pieces are the property of whatever Earth government launched the original satellite.”

“Yeah, but who would want it? Space junk is a dime a dozen. Not to mention the fact that half the governments that sent probes and satellites to Mars don’t exist anymore. So why is this stuff so sensitive that they have to kick all the trained excavators off-site to dig it out?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. The whole thing was completely bizarre. And the way that Joseph Condor just popped out of nowhere like a torquing spider weed or something...” I still felt anxious, remembering the way those piercing blue eyes had stared right through me. And had he really been watching me from the security camera? Or was I jumping to conclusions?