A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10), стр. 31

“Guns, guards, supplies and power,” Killough agreed. “Enough to start with, yes?”

“Enough to run deep scans of the area, at least,” Roslyn said. “We’re not landing Marines until we know more.”

The MISS agent snorted.

“May I suggest that there can be at least one step between those two?” he asked delicately. “You and I, for example, can be much less attention-drawing than a platoon of armored boots.”

“Assuming the place is even open right now,” she pointed out. “Let’s get the sensor data first, and then start planning next steps. There might be nothing there.”

Daalman had set her up with access to the ship’s sensors from the same office. It took Roslyn a minute or so to bring up the tactical operating system—and longer than she’d like to find the sensor controls in the new software.

Having Killough watching over her shoulder made her self-conscious of the way the new system slowed her down.

“Let’s start with the basics,” she said aloud. “Overhead.”

The hologram of Nueva Portugal vanished, replaced with a new image of the casino. Vehicles and people were moving around the structure of the complex as the destroyer’s optical sensors trained on it.

Huntress’s computers were already going through the data for anomalies as Roslyn looked at the image herself. It took a moment for the sensors and computers to catch up and build a three-dimensional model of everything they could see, but then they had a nearly perfect visual of the casino at that moment.

“Matches up well to the plans, so far as I see,” Killough noted. “That’s suspicious on its own, to me. Nothing matches the plans.”

Roslyn chuckled as the analysis sweep completed.

“Oddities there and there,” she pointed, highlighting two sections. “Nothing clear that we can resolve without putting drones or boots on the ground, but there’s something off on the north side of the surface parking lot and the north side of the building.”

Killough moved to examine that chunk of the hologram more closely, zooming in with a gesture.

“Looks like a concealed entrance of some kind on the parking lot,” he noted. “Underground access for trucks. Not supposed to be there, though.” He looked at the section of park in question and shook his head.

“I don’t know what the computer is seeing there,” he told Roslyn. “Could just be landscaping. Or a security bunker. Can’t be sure.”

“Bringing up everything else we’ve got for passives,” Roslyn replied. “Thermals and spectrography should give us a bit more.”

The complete lack of anything on thermal at the two points that had looked odd to the computers was probably a sign on its own. They looked perfectly normal in infrared.

The spectrographic analysis, though…

“Yup, definitely a concealed parking entrance,” Killough noted. “They’ve got a good seal on the door, but every time they open it, they mix up the material composition of the dirt around it.”

“And the other anomaly?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Might be nothing. Somehow, though, I think it’s the edge of an underground structure.”

“Well, I guess the question is how good you think their scanners are,” Roslyn told him. “I can do a radar pulse and get a pretty decent map of the underground, but they’re going to know we did it if they have any kind of anti-radiation system.”

“They can’t stop you doing it, but they can know you did it,” he agreed. “And we need to know. Damn.”

“You’re the spy,” she said. “I’m inclined to scan them and let them panic, but it’s not subtle.”

“Um.” Killough looked at the hologram again. “It’s not like we can go poke at holes in the ground without drawing attention, I suppose,” he admitted. “And yet I still feel like a subtle ground mission might be the better idea.”

“Angus…there’s a comatose sixteen-year-old girl dying in our medbay,” Roslyn told him quietly. “Hundreds in the same state on the surface. If we can find out what these people did, we might be able to save their victims.”

The office was silent as Killough studied the hologram.

“Are we still quarantined?” he asked. “If we find something, who do we send in?”

“Good question,” Roslyn admitted. “I’ll talk to Dr. Breda, but my inclination would be that you and I go in first, with Mooren’s squad as backup aboard the shuttle. No need to break up a team that worked, after all.”