“Malfunction,” the Third insisted. Voice listless. “Analytic parameters . . . exceeded.”

Soukup’s mouth fell open as he stared at the Third’s face. “That can’t happen,” he cried. “She can’t do that!”

Fen turned, looked at the Third’s delicate face with the fine cheeks and petite chin. Tears were leaking from the woman’s blue eyes. “So much . . . pain,” the woman mewed in a broken voice.

“Sir!” the Fourth snapped. “Get us the hell out of here. Now!”

“Aguila,” Soukup growled as he followed behind Fenn. “Something she should have diagnosed and fixed on this bucket. I’ll get to the bottom of this.” Then louder. “Mister Bogarten, assuming my Four come back online, I want to see Tyson Station. Talk to these, what are they? Irreconciled?”

“Yeah,” Fenn said from the side of his mouth. “In a quetzal’s ass.”

That’s when he saw himself, just a glimpse, dressed as he was, walking down the corridor, leading the IG, and . . . The image vanished.

Fucking Freelander.

Chapter 45

  45  

The ancient chair in Kalico’s office in the Admin Dome should have been taken out and burned. In places, the duraplast had been polished to a sheen from posteriors, arms, and thighs dating back who-knew-how far, through various administrators, directors, then Clemenceau’s reign, hers, and even a fortunately very short stint by Tamarland Benteen.

A lot of historic asses had contributed to that chair’s worn status.

Not that the office, overall, was much better with its dilapidated shelving along one wall. The window—set into the dome’s curvature—had dirty glass, a view of the chain-link, and the green streak of terrestrial mold that crept down from the leak in the age-hardened seal.

The floor looked the worst, discolored, gouged, scuffed, and abused by the years.

Nevertheless, this was Kalico’s official bastion in Port Authority, though, truth be told, she did more business from her barstool down at Inga’s. She studied the com monitor where it perched on the even-more-battered sialon desk. On its screen, yes, screen—the holoprojector had ceased to function a couple of years back—the contractee manifest was displayed along with the duty assignment she’d made for each individual. Thirty-one were earmarked for Corporate Mine, another twenty-nine for Southern Diggings. They’d go just as soon as the fence was up and the prefab barracks and domes were downloaded from Turalon’s cargo hold and erected so they had a roof over their heads.

The rest, including the medical techs, electronics technicians, com experts, and the like, she was leaving here, at Port Authority. What good did it do her to put a scanning electron microscopy technician at Corporate Mine when the equipment—long-mothballed for lack of spare parts—was here at the hospital?