A Campaign of Distraction (P. II)

Not much thought entered his head when he first let the information out. He thought it would give a good stage to play on - the starting of a long drawn hike. But then, Arshad finally realized that if a really good picture and a few words were enough to motivate you, you probably had an easy job.

That wasn't the case right now. Markus was one of the most skilled snipers in the Black Hawk Army, and also the most cryptic. He had connections with Arshad's old friend and enemy, Marian Cross. In fact, he was the man's foster child.

Marian trained Markus to be himself in every way, only better.

Which ticked Arshad off, because that meant it would be almost three times harder to locate Markus in all the ruckus that was going on with the Oracina and the Alliances. It also ticked him off that Amanda went straight to Markus as her first line of defense against him from finding the girl - the one with a P.I. of 37.

Thirty-seven. The highest ever recorded for a human from Old Earth was four, and the maximum thought achievable by any human was ten, and only one other human had that psi index. But she's been dead for years now.

How this magnificent freak number popped up fascinated Arshad. How the person with that high a psi index is still alive made him want to find out everything possible about this person. So far, he knew the person was female. She was from Old Earth, and was teleported to Azeroth in a warp-drive accident.

He also happened to know that that particular person came from a small island nation in an archipelago off the coast of the old mainland of South East Asia - the area now blanketted with highly reactive and almost mature deposits of Ichor.

It occured to him that the deposits may have caused a mutation. But Ichor that mature usually killed anyone within a few hundred yards around them, much less create a mutation in a solitary human.

"Pioneer Team 14 calling back," the speaker rang.

Arshad reached from his chair to a small red button under the screen. He pushed some buttons and began to try to trace out Markus in New Antioch. The coordinate lines sprung across the satellite image of the continent.

Slowly they moved across, laying on more than one position, a small cursor blinking at each point with a specific number of psionic influence - in this case, an influence higher than ten. Each place corresponded to a red marker, which then formulated lapsed time and practical positioning over real surface by time and distance.

Eventually, it came down to one place. The southern edge of New Antioch - the edge nearest to Port Sarim.

And it was nulled.

Arshad cursed and kicked the table. Then he slammed his head on the keyboard, trying to figure a way around Markus' seemingly ghost-like identity. He always seemed to fizzle in and out of existance - a feat Arshad had tried once with Holuhot, a human with the unique strand of 'Assailant' DNA in him that allowed him to displace space without time - that is, teleport at will.

But this was too much. Marian had trained Markus too well in the art of sublety and covert operations. He was so good that even Steven and Arshad - the two original Traveller-59 strand holders - could not even begin to track the guy down.

Arshad looked up suddenly and observed the port that the cursor was hovering at, and an idea popped into his mind.

Maybe Markus, Mira, Amanda and the girl weren't on New Antioch anymore.

Maybe they went back to Jein-Tol.

Arshad smiled. Time to spring the trap.