Domino

10 Meld

"He's doing what?!" Lannister almost yelled as he turned away from the crew of the Skimmer after congratulating them on their skills during the fractious return from Helios, and then heard Ariana's words advising him why the Doctor could not be in attendance within the Commander's office.

Ariana visibly took a backward step from the furious Martian as she shrugged and returned his ire with a defiant look of her own.

"Hey! Don't shoot the messenger! I've babysat whilst they tinkered, ran messages back and forth and now have you venting at me in-front of these guys up here."

"You're right," Lannister replied almost apologetically, curbing his frustration in light of his unwarranted outburst at Ariana. It wasn't her fault in the slightest and was totally unfair of him to apportion blame to her when, in all fairness, the whole notion when he had left was to help Sarah realise her lost memory. In that light, he could not fault the Doctor's efficiency in seeking a remedy to bring it about. "She's dangerous though," he added in a softer tone than moments before, although there was a concerned undercurrent to his words. "Walk with me, we need to get down to the recovery room."

Ariana fell in step alongside Lannister as he almost double-timed from the platform to the lift car which was waiting to transport them down the many levels of their garrison building to the lower levels within which the recovery room resided.

"You might like to know," Ariana remarked as she entered the lift in advance of Lannister, pausing briefly for him to enter the car also and select the appropriate floor before turning to face her directly. "I did as you asked and checked out the gear she was brought in wearing, and it is basically a prototype version of our own flight gear. The on-board smart system was pretty beat up, but I managed to retrieve some information from it in the form of visual imagery and a voice log."

Lannister raised his left eyebrow quizzically, intrigued in the find as the voice log itself may give them an idea of how Sarah behaved prior to the explosion, possibly giving them insight into what they could expect if the Doctor was successful.

"What did you find out?" He asked.

"Well, if I were to summarise everything, I'd have to say that the whole area was neutralised before she even made landfall, there were no records of activity above ground, either on her sensor record or on our own daily logs from the monitors we have dotted about. Didn't have cause to question it before as we've been busy with other things, but now after I've taken another look with Sarah in mind, the lack of activity is obvious and stands out like a Mercurian in a Venusian dancing troupe."

Lannister couldn't help the grin that broke out on his face at the mental imagery. The thought of a more stocky lady taking part in any routine amongst the more lithe and slim counterparts of Venus was quite clear to understand as he'd seen one of their twisting and turning routines whilst dangling from silken drapes above the stage at the last command level gathering within Coprates on Mars.

"The tunnels too," Ariana pressed on, not having failed to notice the Commander's mirth, "were abnormally devoid of Moles. It's as if someone went through that area and swept the zone clear in preparation. Point I'm making is that I don't think she was there to set the explosion, rather to be consumed and buried in it and the resulting cave in."

Lannister nodded in agreement.

"I've just come from a pleasant chat with two people about our young friend," he related as the lift car came to a halt and the doors opened to allow them to exit. "First of all was the freighter Captain who smuggled her through our grid so she could do a sub-orbital drop to her target area, but he was a bit aggrieved to discover she was blown up. She was meant to rendezvous with him on the return to exit the scene with her objective, so that's more evidence that she intended for this not to be one way."