“Lot of history here.” Shig seemed to read her mind.

“Yeah. Thanks for coming. Liz would have appreciated the gesture.” Tal pulled her hat up as the misty drops began to turn into a more spirited rain. “Buy you a drink?”

Shig gave Liz’s grave a last look and donned his wide-brimmed hat. Thumbs stuck in his belt, he matched pace with Talina as she wound her way through the graves. “With Turalon coming in, we’ll send Liz’s diamonds back. As I recall, she had family back on Earth. The Corporation should have some record of their whereabouts.”

“Think the pus-licking Corporation’s actually going to deliver a wealth of uncut diamonds to Liz’s family? Be more like those puffed and perfumed Boardmembers to confiscate the lot of them as some sort of compensation or according to some farfetched technicality.”

“They might. Who knows? But something tells me that Turalon’s arrival is going to give us a whole new perspective on The Corporation. Two Spot has been in communication with Captain Abibi. While she hasn’t mentioned that The Corporation has sent a replacement Supervisor, she has hinted that she has bigwigs aboard.”

“Kalico know this?”

“I sent word. She’s down on the southern continent, taking a look at the big terbium and palladium deposit that Lea Shimodi has been mapping. I guess they’ve also got a vein of almost pure copper mixed with aluminum that she wanted to check out. She’s got a hyperlink on the shuttle. She can talk directly with Vixen. Torgussen can patch through on the photonic com to Turalon.”

“She hasn’t been around nearly as much since they finished that adit on the Number Three,” Talina reminded him as they slogged past the high stack of shipping containers that formed a seven-high fortress-like wall around the landing field. Talina kept a wary eye on the nooks and crannies, the places where a quetzal might be waiting in ambush. All of Port Authority had been on alert since she’d determined that Whitey was back in the area. Not that anyone ever got lazy when it came to keeping the town safe, but knowing that Whitey was around had galvanized the locals to double vigilance.

They slogged past the PA shuttle where water dripped from its sleek lines and passed the loaders and forklifts where Pamlico Jones—who oversaw the shuttle landing field—had parked them.

The perimeter fence that surrounded Port Authority was an ugly thing, patched together with mismatched sections of woven and welded wire that rose some fifty feet into the air. While the big cargo gate was closed, the smaller “man gate” that allowed people to pass stood open. Wejee Tolland—the outline of a rifle visible beneath his slicker—gave her a big grin where he stood guard. Atop his bushy red-blond hair, the hat brim was pulled low and dripped rain.

“You get Liz taken care of?” he asked.