Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [36]
The change also cost them some faith in their tracer team. Tyria was an old enough hand to have managed her temporary partner, Elassar, but Lara’s abilities to handle an unknown quantity like the new pilot were unproven.
Face shrugged. It was done. It would do him no good to worry.
Lara placed the fourth transmitter-marker against the knee-high barrier that served as inadequate warning to people that they should not go over the edge and fall off the roof. She activated it and watched it run through its self-test. Then she pulled back away from it in a crouch, making it more difficult for people at street level to see her.
Elassar was already four meters back from the edge, seated, popping something that looked suspiciously like candy into his mouth. “All done?” he asked.
“Not quite. I’m going to take a holo of the rooftop and surrounding area, then show on it where the markers are and transmit that to the Rogues. That’ll give them a visual reference to go with their sensor readings. Why don’t you make yourself useful? Or is that unlucky?”
He smiled at her, showing his fangs. “Not unlucky. I’ve done everything I can for this mission in the field of luck. I’ve cast all the charms I could manage, and unlike the rest of you, I’ve refrained from doing anything unlucky. And I’ve made myself useful, too. I found something out.”
Lara readied her holocam, held it steady before her eye, and began a slow, careful 360-degree turn. Once this special surveyor’s holocam caught the panoramic image she wanted, she would be able to mark points on the image and type in numeric values related to their relative altitude and distance from one another. Then the gadget’s internal computer would generate a proportionally correct image that any navigational computer, such as an astromech, could look at from any relative altitude. “What did you find out?”
“Well, that whole network of infrared beams over Northwest Two. I looked at it through your infra-goggles. The posts that the beams are coming out of are years old. They’re well kept-up, but there’s corrosion on them, and I can see where one of the posts has had to be straightened and realigned when it was knocked over or something.”
“So?” Lara finished her turn and knelt with the holocam. On its built-in screen, she brought up the image she’d just taken. She slid a stylus from the side of the device and began marking her reference points.
“So the roof surface over there is brand-new. It’s not brand-new here or on any of the places we’ve been walking, but it’s brand-new there.”
Lara looked up, suddenly disturbed. “Show me.”
There was no marker to indicate the border between Northwest Two and Northwest Three, but they stopped a meter short of the first post that they knew held the infrared devices. Elassar knelt and Lara followed suit.
“See, here,” Elassar said. He stretched a finger up almost to the point protected by the infrared. “A seam.”
Lara couldn’t see, so she risked a moment’s illumination with her glow rod. Elassar was right: there was a score, straight as a laser beam, running along the roof between the two building sections. It was so thin as to be nearly invisible even in good light.
She switched the rod off. “So the roof material was laid down in sections. It looks just the same as the roof here.”
“Yes, it does. It has been walked on and scuffed a lot, just like the roofing here. But it smells different. Much sharper. It’s new.”
Lara sighed. This had to be some new-pilot prank. But, obligingly, she leaned back and sniffed at the roofing they’d been walking on. It smelled faintly of industrial chemicals. Then she leaned forward and sniffed again at the other section.
The smell was stronger, crisper.
From her wrist sheath she pulled her vibroblade. She did not power it on. She dug at the seam between the two roof sections, prying the new section up. It was a gummy mass perhaps two centimeters deep and resisted her efforts,