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“Reasonably intact. Kulu supplied the hardware about eleven years ago; hardly top grade but it’s still functioning. The embassy has an over-the-shoulder feed from the Tonala defence force headquarters.”
“So if the Organization spaceplanes approach Harrisburg you’ll be able to warn us.”
“No problem.”
“Good, that ought to give us a couple of minutes breathing space. Next question, did you find her?”
Adrian pretended offence. “Of course we found her,” he said, grinning. “We’re the ESA, remember?”
“Right; truth is always worse than rumour. Where is she?”
Adrian datavised the officer running the surveillance mission on Mzu. “She booked in at the Mercedes Hotel, or rather Voi did, as soon as they arrived. They made very little effort to cover their tracks; Voi used a credit disk registered under an alias, but it’s still got her biolectric pattern. I mean, how amateur can you get?”
“They’re not even amateurs, they’re just kids,” Samuel said. “They eluded us on their home ground because we were rushed. Out here they’re completely defenceless against any professional agency.”
“Voi did approach a local security firm,” Adrian said. “But she hasn’t followed it up. Her request for bodyguards was cancelled. They seem to have linked up with some locals instead. We’re not sure who they are. There certainly aren’t any Garissa partizan cadres on Nyvan.”
“How many locals?” Monica asked.
“Three or four, we think. As we don’t know who they are, it’s hard to be sure.”
“Any interest from other agencies?”
“There have been three probes launched into the hotel’s computer system. We couldn’t get an origin on any of them. Whoever it was, their blocker programs are first rate.”
“Is Mzu still at the Mercedes?” Monica asked.
“Not at this exact moment; but she is on her way back there from a meeting with the Opia company. Her group is passing themselves off as representatives from the Dorados defence force, which gives them a valid reason to buy armaments. I should be receiving a report on the meeting from our asset in the company any minute.”
“Fine,” Monica said. “We’ll intercept her at the hotel.”
“Very well.” Adrian gave her an edgy glance. “The local police won’t appreciate that.”
“Sad, but irrelevant. Can you load a priority flight clearance authorization into the city’s air defence network?”
“Sure, we supplied it, we have the ultimate authority codes.”
“Fine, stand by to do it for the Edenist flyers. We’ll use them to evac as soon as we’ve acquired her.”
“The Kingdom will probably get expelled from this entire system if you pull a stunt like that,” Adrian said. “If there’s one thing Nyvan’s nations hate more than each other, it’s outsystem foreigners.”
“Mzu wanted somewhere that was dishonest and greedy enough to supply her with weapons on a no-questions-asked basis. If this planet had built themselves a decent civilization in the first place, she wouldn’t even be here. They’ve only themselves to blame. I mean, they’ve had five centuries for God’s sake.”
Samuel groaned chidingly.
Adrian paused, not meeting Monica’s stare. “Um, my second surveillance team leader is reporting in. I’ve had them following that Calvert character, as you asked.”
“Yes?” There was a sense of grudging inevitability in this moment, Monica thought.
“The captain contacted a data security expert as soon as he landed, a Richard Keaton. It would seem Keaton has done a good job for him. In fact, he probably origined one of the probes into the hotel computer. They’re currently in a car which is heading in the general direction of the Mercedes Hotel. He’ll get there before you can.”
“Shit! That bloody Calvert.”
“Do you want him eliminated?”
“No,” Samuel said. He stopped Monica’s outburst with a firm stare. “Any action at the hotel now will draw the police to it before we can get there. Our interception will be difficult enough as it is.”
“All right,” she grumbled.
“My team could intercept Mzu for you,” Adrian said.
Monica was tempted—anything to get this resolved. “How many have you got on her?”
“Three cars, seven personnel.”
“Mzu has at least four people with her,” Samuel said.
“Agreed,” Monica said regretfully. “That’s too many, and God knows what they’re carrying, especially these unknown locals. We have to guarantee first attempt success. Tell your team to continue their observation, Adrian, we’ll join them as soon as we can.”
“Do you think she’ll resist?” Adrian asked.
“I would hope not,” Samuel said. “After all, she is not stupid; she must know Nyvan’s situation is decaying by the minute. That may well make this easier for us. We should start with an open approach to fly her outsystem. Once she realizes she has to leave with us, either willingly or by force, it would be logical for her to capitulate.”
“Easier?” Monica gave him a pitying look. “This mission?”
“Mother Mary, why ?” Voi demanded as soon as the five of them crowded back into the penthouse lift. “You can’t sell out now. Think of what you’ve been through—Mary, what we’ve done for you. You can’t hand it over to Capone!”
Her impassioned outburst stopped dead as Alkad turned to stare at her. “Do not argue with one of my decisions ever again.”
Even Gelai and Ngong were daunted by the tone, but then they could sense the thoughts powering her.
“As Baranovich made quite clear, the Omuta option is now closed to me,” Alkad said. “Worthless piece of trash though he is, he happens to be right. You cannot begin to imagine how much I resent that, because it means the one thing I never allowed myself to think in thirty years has become real. Our vengeance has become irrelevant.”
“Nonsense,” Voi said. “You can still hit the Omutans before the possessed do.”
“Please don’t display your ignorance in public, it’s offensive.”
“Ignorance, you bitch. Mary, you’re giving the Alchemist to Capone. Giving it! You think I’m going to keep quiet about that?”
Alkad squared her shoulders; with an immense effort she spoke in a level voice to the ireful girl. “You are a simple immature child, with an equally childish fixation. You have never once thought through the consequences should your wish be granted, the suffering it will cause. For thirty years I have thought of nothing else. I created the Alchemist, Mary have mercy on me. I understand the full reality of what it can do. The responsibility for that machine is mine alone. I have never, nor will ever, shirk that. To do so would be to divorce myself from what remains of my humanity. And the consequences of the possessed obtaining it are very bad indeed. Therefore I will accept Baranovich’s offer to leave this doomed planet. I will lead Capone’s forces to the Alchemist. And I will then activate it. It will never be available for anyone to study and duplicate.”
“But—” Voi looked around the others for support. “If you activate it, surely . . .”
“I will die. Oh, yes. And with me will die the one man I ever loved. We’ve been separated for thirty years, and I still love him. That purely human entanglement doesn’t matter. I will even sacrifice him for this. Now do you understand my commitment and responsibility? Maybe I will come back as a possessor, or maybe I will stay in the beyond. Whatever my fate, it will be no different to any other human being. I am afraid of that, but I don’t reject it. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can cheat our ultimate destination.
“Gelai and Ngong have shown me that we do retain our basic personality. That’s good, because if I do come back in someone else’s body, my resolve will remain intact. I will not build another Alchemist. Its reason for being is gone, it must go too.”
Voi bent her knees slightly so her eyes were closer to Alkad’s face, as if that would give her a deeper insight into the physicist’s mind. “You really will, won’t you? You’ll kill yourself.”
“I think kamikaze is a more appropriate term. But don’t worry, I’m not going to dragoon you two along. I don’t even consider this to be your fight, I never did. You’re not Garissans, not really; you have no reason to dip your hands into blood this deep. Now be quiet and pray to Mother Mary that we can save something from this pile of shit, and get the pair of you as well as Lodi out of here. But be assured, I still consider you expendable to my goal.” She turned to Gelai. “If either of you have any objection to this, then speak now, please.”
“No, Doctor,” Gelai said. There was the faintest smile on her lips. “I don’t object. In fact, I’m rather glad it won’t be used against a planet by you or Capone. But believe me, you don’t want to kill yourself; once you’ve known the beyond, the pressure Capone can exert by promising you a body is going to be extraordinary.”
“I know,” Alkad said. “But choice has never played a large part in my life.”
Tonala’s state of emergency had drastically reduced the volume of road traffic in the capital. Normally, the churning wheels of the afternoon gridlock would turn the snow to mush and spray it over the pedestrians. Now, however, the big flakes were beginning to accumulate on the roads. Harrisburg’s civic mechanoids were losing their battle to clear it away.
The transport department considered the effects such an icy blanket would have on brake response time, and ordered a general speed reduction to avoid accidents. The proscription was datavised into the control processor of individual vehicles.
“You want me to neutralize the order for this car?” Dick Keaton asked. Joshua gave the data security expert an edgy glance as he tried to decide. The answer was yes, but he said, “No,” anyway, because speeding when you’re a suspect foreigner in a nation on the brink of war and being followed by two local police cars is an essentially dumb thing to do.
Thanks to the general lack of cars, their tail was a prominent one, keeping a precise fifty metres behind. Its presence didn’t have much effect on Joshua and his companions. The two serjeants were as vigilant as mechanoids, while Melvyn stared out at the city covered in its crisp grey mantle, the opposite of Dahybi who sat hunched up in his seat, hands clasped and paying no attention to their surroundings, almost as if he were at prayer. Dick Keaton was enjoying the ride, a pre-teen excitement which Joshua found annoying. He was trying to balance mission priorities at the same time as he reviewed what he was going to say to Mzu. A sincere but insistent invitation to return to Tranquillity, point out the shit she was in, how he had a starship waiting. It wasn’t that he was bad with words, but these were just so damn important. Exactly how do you tell the semi-psychotic owner of a doomsday device to come along quietly and not make any fuss?
His communications block accepted Ashly’s secure datavise and relayed it straight into his neural nanonics.
“New development,” Ashly reported. “The Edenist flyers just activated their ion fields.”
“Are they leaving?”
“No sign of that yet. They’re still on the ground, but they’re in a rapid response condition. Their agents must be close to Mzu.”
“Bugger. Any news from orbit?”
“Not a thing. Lady Macbeth isn’t due above the horizon for another eight minutes, but the spaceplane sensors haven’t detected any low-orbit weapons activity yet.”
“Okay. Stand by, we’re approaching the hotel now. I might need you in a hurry.”
“Do my best. But if these flyers don’t want me to lift off, it could get tricky.”
“Lady Mac is your last resort. She can take them out. Use her if you have to.”
“Understood.”
Dahybi was leaning forward in his seat to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes Hotel as the car swept along the last two hundred metres of road.
“That park would make a handy landing spot for Ashly,” Melvyn commented.
“Acknowledged,” Joshua said. He squinted through the windscreen as the car turned onto the loop of road which led to the hotel’s broad portico. There was a car already parked in front of the doors.
Joshua datavised a halt order into their car’s control processor, then directed it to one of the parking slots outside the portico. Tyres crunched on the virgin snow as they pulled in.
The two police cars stopped on the road outside.
“What is it?” Dick Keaton asked, he was almost whispering.
Joshua pointed a forefinger at the car under the portico. Several people were climbing in.
“That’s Mzu,” one of the serjeants said.
After so long on the trail, so much endured, Joshua felt something akin to awe now he could finally see her. Mzu hadn’t changed much from the visual file stored in his neural nanonics during their one brief encounter. Features and hair the same, and she was wrapped up well in a thick navy-blue coat, but the flaky professor act had been dumped. This woman carried a deadly confidence.
If he’d ever doubted the Alchemist and Mzu’s connection to it, that ended now.
“What do you want to do?” Dahybi asked. “We can stop her car. Make our pitch now.”
Joshua held up a hand for silence. He’d just noticed the last two people getting into the car with Mzu. It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain. “Oh, Jesus.”
Melvyn’s electronic warfare blocks datavised a warning. He accessed the display. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want to alarm you guys,” Dick Keaton said. “But the people in the next car are giving us a real unfriendly look.”
“Huh?” Joshua glanced over.
“And they’re aiming a multiband sensor at us, too,” Melvyn said.
Joshua returned the hostile stare from the two ESA agents in the car parked beside them. “Oh, fucking wonderful.”
“She’s leaving,” one of the serjeants called.
“Jesus,” Joshua grumbled. “Melvyn, are you blocking that sensor?”
“Absolutely.” He gave the agents a broad toothy smile.
“Okay, we follow her. Let’s just hope she’s going somewhere I can have a civilized chat.”
The five embassy cars carrying Monica, Samuel, and a mixed crew of ESA and Edenist operatives disregarded the city’s new speed limit altogether as they raced for the hotel. All the security police did was follow and observe; they were anxious to see where this was all leading.
They were still a kilometre from the Mercedes Hotel when Adrian Redway datavised Monica to advise her that Mzu was on the move again. “There’s definitely only four people with her this time. The observation team launched a skyspy outside the hotel. It looks like there’s been some sort of fight in the penthouse. Do you want access?”
“Please.”
The image from the small synthetic bird hovering above the park filled her brain. Its artificial tissue wings were flapping constantly to hold it steady in the middle of the snowstorm, producing an awkward juddering. A visual-wavelength optical sensor was scanning across the penthouse’s broad windows. One of them had a large jagged hole in the middle.
“I can see a lot of glass on the carpet,” Monica datavised. “Something came in through that window, not out.”
“But what?” Adrian asked. “That’s the twenty-fifth floor.”
Monica continued her review. The living-room doors had been smashed open. Long black scorch marks were chiselled deep into the one lying on the floor.
Then she switched focus to a settee. There was a foot dangling over the armrest.
“No wonder Mzu was in a hurry to leave again,” she said out loud. “The possessed have tracked her down.”
“Her car isn’t heading for the spaceport,” Samuel said. “Could the two locals with her be possessed?”
“Possible,” Monica agreed hesitantly. “But the observation team said she seemed to be leading the others. They didn’t think she was being coerced.”
“Calvert has started following her,” Adrian datavised.
“Okay. Let’s see where they’re all so eager to get to.” She datavised the car’s control processor to catch up with the observation team’s vehicles.
“Someone else has now joined us,” Ngong said. His voice was split between amusement and surprise. “That makes over a dozen cars now.”
“And poor old Baranovich said to come alone,” Alkad said. “Is he in one of them?”
“I don’t know. One car certainly has some possessed in it.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Voi asked.
Alkad sank down deeper into her seat, getting herself comfortable. “Not really. This is like old times for me.”
“What if they stop us?”
“Gelai, what are the police thinking?”
“They’re curious, Doctor. Make that very curious.”
“That’s okay then; as long as they aren’t going to stop us we’re all right. I know the agencies, they will want to know where we’re going first before they make their move.”
“But Baranovich—”
“They’re his problem, not ours. If he doesn’t want me followed then it’s up to him to do something about it.”
Alkad’s car navigated itself along Harrisburg’s abandoned streets at a doggedly legal speed. Despite that, they made good progress, leaving the closely packed buildings of the city centre behind to venture out into the more industrial suburbs. Thirty minutes into the journey, the last of the urban clutter was discarded behind them. The slightly elevated roadway cut straight across a flat alluvial plain that was open all the way to the sea eighty kilometres away. It was a vast expanse of huge fallow fields from which tractor mechanoids and tailored bugs had eradicated any unauthorized vegetation. Trees were stunted and bent by the wind that blew in from the shore, standing hunched along the line of the drainage canals which had been dug to tame the rich black soil.
Nothing moved off the road, no animals or vehicles. They were driving across a snow desert. Large, stiff flakes were hurled horizontally against the car by the wind, taxing the guarantee of the lofriction windshield to stay clear. Even so, that didn’t prevent them from seeing the fifteen cars which were now following them, a convoy that made no attempt to hide itself.
Adrian Redway had settled himself into one of the chairs in the ESA’s operation centre and datavised his desktop processor for a filter program to access the station’s incoming information streams. Even with the filter he was almost overwhelmed by the quantity of data available. Neural nanonics assigned priority gradings. Sub-routines took over from his mind’s natural cross-indexing ability, leaving his consciousness free to absorb relevant details.
He focused on Mzu, principally through the observation team, then defined a peripheral activity key to alert him of any incoming factors which would affect her situation. The rate at which external events were developing on Nyvan made it unlikely he would be able to secure Monica much advance warning, but as a veteran of twenty-eight years ESA service he knew even seconds could change the entire outcome of a field operation.
“It has to be the ironberg foundry yard,” he datavised to Monica after they had been driving over the farmland for twenty uneventful minutes.
“We think so, too,” Monica replied. “Are the foundry’s landing pads equipped with beacon guidance? If she’s looking for a spaceplane pickup, they’ll need a controlled approach in this weather.”
“Unless they have military-grade sensors. But yes, the foundry’s pads have beacons. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their reliability, mind. I doubt they’ve been serviced since the day they were installed.”
“Okay, can you run a data sweep of the foundry? And if you can access it, a security sensor review would be helpful. I’d like to know if there’s anyone there waiting for her.”
“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, that foundry is big. But I’ll put a couple of my analysts on it. Just don’t expect too much.”
“Thanks.” She gave Samuel a forlorn look. “Something wrong?”
The Edenist had been accessing their exchange via his bitek processor block. “I am reminded of the time she left Tranquillity. We were all following after her rather like this, and look what happened that time. Possibly we should be the ones taking the initiative. If the foundry is her intended destination, she may well have a method of eluding us already in place.”
“Could be. But the only way of stopping her now is to shoot the car. That would bring the police storming in.”
Samuel accessed the ESA operations centre computer and reviewed the security police deployment status. “We are a long way from their designated reinforcements; and we can have the flyers here in minutes. Hurting the feelings of the Tonala government is an irrelevance compared to securing the Alchemist. Mzu has done us a favour by coming to such a remote place.”
“Yeah. Well, if you’re willing to bring your flyers in to evac us, I’m certainly prepared to commit our people. We’ve got enough firepower to stomp on the police if—” She broke off as Adrian datavised again.
“The city air defence network has just located those missing Organization spaceplanes,” he told her. “They’re heading right at you, Monica; three of them coming in over the sea at Mach five. Looks like you were right about the foundry being a pickup zone.”
“My God, she is selling out to Capone. What a bitch.”
“Looks that way.”
“Can you direct the city network to shoot the spaceplanes?”
“Yes, if they get closer, but at the moment they’re out of range.”
“Will they be in range at the foundry?” Samuel asked.
“No. The network doesn’t have any missiles, it’s all beam weapons. Tonala relies on its SD platforms to kill any threat approaching from outside its boundaries.”
“The flyers,” Monica asked Samuel. “Can they intercept?”
“Yes.” Launch please, he instructed the pilots.
Monica datavised her armour suit management processor to run a readiness diagnostic, then pulled her shell helmet on and sealed it. The other agents began checking their own weapons.
“Joshua, the flyers are all leaving,” Ashly datavised.
“I was wondering about that,” Joshua replied. “We’re only about ten kilometres from the ironberg foundry now. Mzu must have arranged some kind of rendezvous there. Dick’s been running some checks for us; he says that sections of the foundry electronics are glitched. There could be some possessed up ahead.”
“Do you need an evac?”
Joshua glanced around the car. Melvyn and Dahybi weren’t giving anything away, while Dick Keaton was merely curious. “We’re not in any danger yet,” one of the serjeants said.
“No. But if it happens, it’s going to happen fast; and we’re not in the strongest position.”
“You can’t pull out now. We’re too close.”
“You’re telling me,” he muttered. “All right, we’ll keep on her for now. If we can get close enough to make our offer, well and good. But if the agencies start getting aggressive, then we back off. Understood, Ione?”
“Understood.”
“I may be able to offer some assistance,” Dick Keaton said.
“Oh?”
“The cars in this convoy are all local models. I have some program commands which could cause trouble in their control processors. It might help us get closer to your target.”
“If we start doing that to the agencies, they’ll use their own electronic warfare capability on us,” Melvyn said. “That’s if they don’t just use a TIP carbine. Everybody knows what’s at stake.”
“They won’t know it’s us,” Dick Keaton said.
“You hope,” Melvyn said. “They’re good, Joshua. No offence to Dick, but the agencies have entire departments of computer science professors writing black software for them.”
Joshua enjoyed the idea of screwing up the other cars, but the way they were driving further and further into isolation was a big mitigating factor. Normal agency rules of minimum visibility wouldn’t apply out here. If he upset the status quo, Melvyn was probably right about the reaction he’d get. What he really wanted was Lady Mac above the horizon to give them some fire support, although even her sensors would struggle to resolve anything through this snowstorm, and she wasn’t due up for another forty minutes. “Dick, see what you can do to strengthen our car processors against agency software. I’ll use your idea if it looks like she’s getting away from us.”
“Sure thing.”
“Ashly, can you launch without causing undue attention?”
“I think so. There has to be someone observing me, but I’m not picking up any active sensor activity.”
“Okay, launch and fly a low-visibility holding pattern ten kilometres from the yard. We’ll shout for you.”
The four Edenist flyers picked up velocity as they curved around the outskirts of Harrisburg, hitting Mach two thirty kilometres from the coast. Their smoothly rounded noses lined up on the ironberg foundry. Snowflakes flowing through their coherent magnetic fields sparkled a vivid blue around the forward fuselages, then vaporised to fluorescent purple streamers. To anyone under their path, it appeared as though four sunburst comets were rumbling through the atmosphere.
It was the one failing of Kulu’s ion field technology that it could never be successfully hidden from sensors. The three Organization spaceplanes streaking in from the sea spotted them as soon as they lifted from the spaceport. Electronic warfare arrays were activated, seeking to blind the flyers with a full-spectrum barrage. Air-to-air missiles dropped out of their wing recesses and shot ahead at Mach ten.
The Edenist flyers saw them coming through the electronic hash. They peeled away from each other, arcing through the sky in complex evasion manoeuvres. Chaff and signature decoys spewed out of the flyers. Masers locked on and fired continuous pulses at the incoming drones.
Explosions thundered unseen above the farmland. Some of the missiles succumbed to the masers, while others followed their programs to detonate in preloaded patterns. Clouds of kinetic shrapnel threw up lethal blockades along the trajectories they predicted the flyers would use. But there were too few missiles left to create an effective kill zone.
The flyers stormed through.
It should have ended then, a duel between energy beam weapons and fuselage shielding, the two opponents so far away that in all probability they would never even see each other. But the snow forbade that; absorbing maser and thermal induction energy, cutting the effective strike range of both sides to less than five hundred metres. Flyers and spaceplanes had to get close to each other, spiralling around and around, looping, twisting, diving, climbing. Aggressors desperate to keep their beams on one point of their target’s fuselage; targets frantic to keep moving, spinning to disperse the energy input. A genuine dogfight developed. Pilots blinded by the snow and clouds, dependent on sensors harassed by unremitting electronic warfare impulses. Given that both the flyers and the spaceplanes were multi-role craft, the manoeuvres lacked any real acrobatic innovation. Predication programs were the true knights of the sky, allowing pilots to keep a steady lock on their opponents. The flyers’ superior agility began to pay dividends. The spaceplanes were limited by the ancient laws of aerodynamic lift and stability, restricting their tactics to classical aerial manoeuvres. While the flyers could move in any direction they wanted to providing their fusion generators had enough power.
The Organization was always going to lose.
One by one, the crippled spaceplanes tumbled out of the sky. Two of them smashed into the frozen soil outside the foundry yard, the third into the sea.
Overhead, the flyers closed formation and began to circle the vast foundry yard in anticipation of claiming their prize.
Urschel and Pinzola slid up over the horizon. Warned by the screams of souls torn back into the beyond, they knew what to look for. X-ray lasers stabbed down four times, their power unchecked by gravid clouds or swirling ice crystals.
The docking cradle rose out of the spaceport bay, exposing the fuselage of the Mount’s Delta to a blaze of sunlight. At this juncture of a normal departure, a starship would spread its thermo-dump panels before it disengaged. Quinn told Dwyer to switch their heat exchange circuits to an internal store. Umbilical feeds withdrew from their couplings in the lower hull, then the hold-down latches retracted.
“Fly us fifty kilometres along Jesup’s spin axis,” Quinn said. “Then hold us there.”
Dwyer flicked a throat mike down from his headset and muttered instructions to the flight computer. Ion thrusters lifted the clipper-class ship clear of the bay, then the secondary drive came on. Mount’s Delta accelerated away at a fifteenth of a gee, following a clean arc above the surface of the counter-rotating spaceport.
Quinn used the holoscreens surrounding his acceleration couch to display images from the external sensor suite. Nothing else moved around the gigantic asteroid. The surrounding industrial stations had been shut down for days and were now drifting out of alignment. An inert fleet of personnel commuters, MSVs, inter-orbit cargo craft, and tankers were all docked to Jesup’s counter-rotating spaceport, filling nearly every bay.
As soon as the starship rose away from the apex of the spaceport, Quinn switched the optical sensors to track the other asteroids. Dwyer watched the screens in silence as the three deserted asteroids appeared. This time there was movement visible, tiny stars were closing on the dark rocks at high velocity.
“Looks like we’re just in time,” Quinn said. “The nations are getting upset about losing their ships.” He spoke briefly into his mike, instructing the flight computer.
Four secure military-grade laser communicators deployed from the starship’s fuselage. One pointed back at Jesup, while the other three acquired a lock on the abandoned asteroids. Each one fired an ultraviolet beam at their target, its encrypted code requesting a response. In answer, four similar ultraviolet beams transfixed the Mount’s Delta . Impossible to intercept or interfere, they linked Quinn into the equipment his teams had been setting up.
Diagrams flashed up on the bridge screens as modulated information flooded back along the beams. Quinn entered a series of codes and watched in satisfaction as the equipment acknowledged his command authority.
“Ninety-seven nukes on-line,” he said. “By the look of it, they’re rigging another five as we speak. Dumb arseholes.”
“Is that enough?” Dwyer asked anxiously. Loyalty would probably not be any defence if things weren’t going precisely to plan. He just wished he knew what that plan was.
Quinn’s grin was playful. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
“No survivors,” Samuel said. “None.” His dignified face betrayed a profound sorrow, one hardened by the grey light of the snow-veiled landscape.
For Monica the loss was heightened by the terrible remoteness of the event. A few swift diffuse flashes of light lost among the occluded sky above the convoy, as if sheet lightning were flaring amid the snowstorm. They had seen and heard nothing of the decimated flyers crashing on the eastern edge of the foundry yard.
We have the pilots safe,the Hoya told Samuel and the other Edenists. Fortunately the flyers’ shielding held out long enough for the transfer to complete.
Thank you, that’s excellent news,samuel said. “but not their souls,” he whispered under his breath.
Monica heard him, and met his gaze. Their minds were a unison of grief, less than affinity but certainly sharing awareness.
“Practicalities,” he said forlornly.
“Yes.”
The car gave a fast unexpected lurch as the brakes suddenly engaged, then cut out. Everyone inside was flung forwards against their seat straps.
“Electronic warfare,” shouted the ESA electronics expert who was riding with them. “They’re glitching our processor.”
“Is it the possessed?” Monica asked.
“No. Definitely coming through the net.”
The car braked again. This time the wheels locked for several seconds, starting to skid across the slushy road before an emergency program released them.
“Go to manual,” Monica instructed. She could see other cars in the convoy twisting and slithering across the dual roadway. One of the police vehicles hit the safety barrier and shot down the embankment into a frozen ditch, spraying snow as it went. Another of the big embassy cars thumped into the rear of Monica’s car, crunching some of the bodywork. The impact spun them around. Monica’s armour suit stiffened as she was shaken from side to side.
“It’s not affecting Mzu,” Samuel said. “She’s pulling away from us.”
“Disable the police cars,” Monica told the electronics expert. “And that bloody Calvert, too.” She felt a sincerely unprofessional glee as she ordered that, but it was perfectly legitimate. By separating herself and Mzu from the police and Calvert she was reducing the opportunity for interference in the mission goal.
Their driver finally seemed to master the intricacies of the car’s manual controls, and they shot forwards, weaving around the other disorientated cars. “Adrian?” Monica datavised.
“With you. Nobody here can origin that electronic warfare outbreak.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re on top of it.”
“Calvert’s in front of us,” the driver said. “He’s right on Mzu’s tail, this hasn’t affected him at all.”
“Shit!” Monica directed her shell helmet sensors to switch to infrared, and just caught the pink blob of Calvert’s car hidden by snow a hundred and twenty metres ahead of them. Behind her, two embassy cars were already pulling away from the stalled police vehicles, while another one was creeping along the verge, trying to get around.
“Adrian, we’re going to need an evac. Fast.”
“Not easy.”
“What do you fucking mean? Where are the embassy’s Royal Marine utility planes? They should be on backup, for God’s sake!”
“They’re both liaising with the local defence force. It would have been suspicious if I’d called them back.”
“Do it now!”
“I’m on it. You should have one there in about twenty minutes.”
Monica thumped an armoured fist into the seat, splitting some of the fabric. The car was racing on through the snow, surprisingly stable for one under manual control. Four sets of headlights were visible behind them. A fast datavised review informed Monica they were all embassy cars, which gave her some satisfaction.
She put her machine gun down and picked up a maser carbine, then undid her seat belt.
“Now what?” Samuel asked as she leaned forward to get a better view through the windscreen.
“Joshua Calvert, your time is up.”
“Uh oh,” said the electronics expert. He looked up in reflex.
Ashly approached the ironberg foundry yard from the west, following five minutes behind the Edenist flyers. The spaceplane’s forward passive sensor suite revealed the basics of the missile launch and dogfight. Then the X-ray lasers had fired from orbit. He held his breath as the sensors reported a microwave radar beam sweep across the fuselage. It came from the starships seven hundred kilometres above.
Now is not a good time to die. Especially as I know what’s in store if I do. Kelly was right: screw fate and destiny, just spend the rest of time in zero-tau. I think I might try that if I get out of this.
Nothing happened.
Ashly let out a shudder of breath, finding his palms sweating. “Thank you whoever thought up low-visibility profiling,” he said out loud. With its top-grade stealth systems active, the spaceplane was probably invisible to any sensor on, or orbiting, Nyvan. His only worry had been an infrared signature, but the thick snow eradicated that.
He ordered the spaceplane’s computer to open a secure channel to Tonala’s net, hoping no one with heavy weaponry would detect the tiny signal. “Joshua?” he datavised.
“Jesus, Ashly, we thought you’d been hit.”
“Not in this machine.”
“Where are you?”
“Thirty kilometres from the foundry yard. I’m about to go into a holding pattern. What’s happening down there?”
“Some idiot used electronic warfare on the cars. We’re okay; Dick hardened our programs. But the police are out of it for the moment. We’re still on Mzu’s tail. I think a couple of embassy cars are behind us, maybe more.”
“Is Mzu still heading for the foundry yard?”
“Looks like it.”
“Well unless the cavalry comes up over the hill, we’re the only pickup she’s got left. There’s nothing flying within my sensor range.”
“Unless they’re stealthed, too.”
“You’ve always got to look on the bleak side, haven’t you?”
“Just being cautious.”
“Well if they’re stealthed, I . . .” Ashly broke off as the flight computer warned him of another radar sweep emanating from the starships. The beam was configured differently this time, a ground scan profile. “Joshua, they’re hunting you. Get out! Get out of the car!”
Every electronic warfare block in the embassy car was datavising frantic alerts.
We are being targeted by the Organization frigates,samuel told Hoya and Niveu. There was little he could do to conceal his rising panic. Once, the knowledge that his memories would be held safely in the Hoya would have been enough for him. Now he wasn’t so sure that was all that mattered. You must stop them. If they kill Mzu, it’s all over.
The snow-lashed sky behind the car flashed purple.
After tens of kilometres of entirely passive pursuit across the tundralike farmland, the Tonala security police had been caught out badly by the sudden electronic warfare attack. Of all the cars, theirs came off worst, leaving them scattered across both roadways as their surveillance suspects, quite infuriatingly, dodged around them as if they were nothing more than inconvenient roadcones. It took time for them to rally; processors had to be disengaged to allow the manual controls to be activated, officers from cars that had gone over the embankment or smashed into the barrier sprinted for cars that were still functional, swiping huge gobs of crash cushion foam from their suits. Once they had reorganized they began to drive fast after their quarry.
It meant that their cars were still bunched together, supplying the Organization starships with the biggest target. Oscar Kearn, uncertain which one contained Mzu, decided to start there and eliminate the other cars one at a time until her soul was claimed by the beyond. With that, they would have won. Bringing her back, one way or another, was all that mattered. Now the spaceplanes had been destroyed, she would have to die. Fortunately, as an ex-military man himself, he had prepared his fallback options. So far Mzu had proved amazingly elusive, or just plain lucky. He was determined to put an end to that.
The ironberg foundry yard pickup had been planned in some detail with Baranovich, its location and timing quite critical. Although Oscar Kearn hadn’t actually mentioned how critical to the newly allied Cossack, nor why. But he was satisfied that if things went bad for the Organization on the ground, Mzu would never survive.
Firstly, the frigates would be overhead, able to initiate a ground strike. And if she somehow escaped that . . .
While the Organization starships were docked with the Spirit of Freedom they had gained command access to the tugs delivering Tonala’s ironbergs for splashdown. A small alteration had been made to the trajectory of one tug.
Far above Nyvan’s ocean, to the west of Tonala, an ironberg was already slipping through the ionosphere. This time, no recovery fleet would be needed. No ships would be employed to tow it on a week-long voyage to the foundry yard.
It was taking the direct route.
The first X-ray laser blast struck the police car which was lying down the embankment, hood embedded in the ditch. It vaporized in a violent shock wave, sending droplets of molten metal, roasted earth, and superheated steam churning into the air. All the snow within a two-hundred-metre radius was ripped from the ground before the heat turned it back into water. The other car abandoned on the road was somersaulted over and over, smashing its windows and sending wheels spinning through the air.
The first explosion made Alkad wince. She glanced out of the rear window, seeing an orange corona slowly shrinking back down into the road.
“What the hell did that?” Voi asked.
“Not us,” Gelai said. “Not one of the possessed, not even a dozen. We don’t have that much power.”
A second explosion sounded, rattling the car badly.
“It’s me,” Alkad said. “They want me.”
Another explosion lit up the sky. This time the pressure wave pushed at their car, sending it skidding sideways before the control processor could compensate.
“They’re getting closer,” Eriba cried. “Mother Mary, help us.”
“There’s not much She can do for us now,” Alkad said. “It’s up to the agencies.”
The four voidhawks were in a standard five-hundred-kilometre equatorial parking orbit above Nyvan when Hoya received Samuel’s frantic call. Their position allowed them to shadow the Organization frigates which were strung out along a high-inclination orbit. At the time, only the Urschel and the Pinzola were above the ironberg foundry yard’s horizon. Raimo was trailing them by two thousand kilometres.
Although it was four thousand kilometres from the Urschel and Pinzola, Hoya ’s sensors could just detect the brilliant purple discharge in the clouds below the Organization frigates as they fired on a fourth car. The voidhawk began to accelerate at seven gees, followed by its three cousins. All four went to full combat alert status. A salvo of fifteen combat wasps slid out of Hoya ’s lower hull cradles, each one charging away in a different direction at thirty gees, leaving the voidhawk at the centre of an expanding and dimming nimbus of exhaust plasma. After five seconds, the drones curved around to align themselves on the Organization frigates.
Urschel and Pinzola had no choice but to defend themselves. Their reaction time was hardly optimum, but twenty-five combat wasps flew out of each frigate to counter the attackers, antimatter propulsion quickly pushing them up to forty gees. The frigates broke off their attack on the cars, realigning their X-ray lasers ready for the inevitable swarm of submunitions.
Raimo launched its own salvo of combat wasps in support of its confederates, opening up a new angle of attack against the voidhawks. Two of them responded with defensive salvos.
Over a hundred combat wasps launched in less than twenty seconds. The glare from their drives shimmered off the nighttime clouds below, a radiance far exceeding any natural moonlight.
Despite the continuing electronic warfare emission from the SD platforms, none of the orbiting network sensors could miss such a deadly spectacle. Threat analysis programs controlling each network initiated what they estimated was an appropriate level of response.
“So if the Organization spaceplanes approach Harrisburg you’ll be able to warn us.”
“No problem.”
“Good, that ought to give us a couple of minutes breathing space. Next question, did you find her?”
Adrian pretended offence. “Of course we found her,” he said, grinning. “We’re the ESA, remember?”
“Right; truth is always worse than rumour. Where is she?”
Adrian datavised the officer running the surveillance mission on Mzu. “She booked in at the Mercedes Hotel, or rather Voi did, as soon as they arrived. They made very little effort to cover their tracks; Voi used a credit disk registered under an alias, but it’s still got her biolectric pattern. I mean, how amateur can you get?”
“They’re not even amateurs, they’re just kids,” Samuel said. “They eluded us on their home ground because we were rushed. Out here they’re completely defenceless against any professional agency.”
“Voi did approach a local security firm,” Adrian said. “But she hasn’t followed it up. Her request for bodyguards was cancelled. They seem to have linked up with some locals instead. We’re not sure who they are. There certainly aren’t any Garissa partizan cadres on Nyvan.”
“How many locals?” Monica asked.
“Three or four, we think. As we don’t know who they are, it’s hard to be sure.”
“Any interest from other agencies?”
“There have been three probes launched into the hotel’s computer system. We couldn’t get an origin on any of them. Whoever it was, their blocker programs are first rate.”
“Is Mzu still at the Mercedes?” Monica asked.
“Not at this exact moment; but she is on her way back there from a meeting with the Opia company. Her group is passing themselves off as representatives from the Dorados defence force, which gives them a valid reason to buy armaments. I should be receiving a report on the meeting from our asset in the company any minute.”
“Fine,” Monica said. “We’ll intercept her at the hotel.”
“Very well.” Adrian gave her an edgy glance. “The local police won’t appreciate that.”
“Sad, but irrelevant. Can you load a priority flight clearance authorization into the city’s air defence network?”
“Sure, we supplied it, we have the ultimate authority codes.”
“Fine, stand by to do it for the Edenist flyers. We’ll use them to evac as soon as we’ve acquired her.”
“The Kingdom will probably get expelled from this entire system if you pull a stunt like that,” Adrian said. “If there’s one thing Nyvan’s nations hate more than each other, it’s outsystem foreigners.”
“Mzu wanted somewhere that was dishonest and greedy enough to supply her with weapons on a no-questions-asked basis. If this planet had built themselves a decent civilization in the first place, she wouldn’t even be here. They’ve only themselves to blame. I mean, they’ve had five centuries for God’s sake.”
Samuel groaned chidingly.
Adrian paused, not meeting Monica’s stare. “Um, my second surveillance team leader is reporting in. I’ve had them following that Calvert character, as you asked.”
“Yes?” There was a sense of grudging inevitability in this moment, Monica thought.
“The captain contacted a data security expert as soon as he landed, a Richard Keaton. It would seem Keaton has done a good job for him. In fact, he probably origined one of the probes into the hotel computer. They’re currently in a car which is heading in the general direction of the Mercedes Hotel. He’ll get there before you can.”
“Shit! That bloody Calvert.”
“Do you want him eliminated?”
“No,” Samuel said. He stopped Monica’s outburst with a firm stare. “Any action at the hotel now will draw the police to it before we can get there. Our interception will be difficult enough as it is.”
“All right,” she grumbled.
“My team could intercept Mzu for you,” Adrian said.
Monica was tempted—anything to get this resolved. “How many have you got on her?”
“Three cars, seven personnel.”
“Mzu has at least four people with her,” Samuel said.
“Agreed,” Monica said regretfully. “That’s too many, and God knows what they’re carrying, especially these unknown locals. We have to guarantee first attempt success. Tell your team to continue their observation, Adrian, we’ll join them as soon as we can.”
“Do you think she’ll resist?” Adrian asked.
“I would hope not,” Samuel said. “After all, she is not stupid; she must know Nyvan’s situation is decaying by the minute. That may well make this easier for us. We should start with an open approach to fly her outsystem. Once she realizes she has to leave with us, either willingly or by force, it would be logical for her to capitulate.”
“Easier?” Monica gave him a pitying look. “This mission?”
“Mother Mary, why ?” Voi demanded as soon as the five of them crowded back into the penthouse lift. “You can’t sell out now. Think of what you’ve been through—Mary, what we’ve done for you. You can’t hand it over to Capone!”
Her impassioned outburst stopped dead as Alkad turned to stare at her. “Do not argue with one of my decisions ever again.”
Even Gelai and Ngong were daunted by the tone, but then they could sense the thoughts powering her.
“As Baranovich made quite clear, the Omuta option is now closed to me,” Alkad said. “Worthless piece of trash though he is, he happens to be right. You cannot begin to imagine how much I resent that, because it means the one thing I never allowed myself to think in thirty years has become real. Our vengeance has become irrelevant.”
“Nonsense,” Voi said. “You can still hit the Omutans before the possessed do.”
“Please don’t display your ignorance in public, it’s offensive.”
“Ignorance, you bitch. Mary, you’re giving the Alchemist to Capone. Giving it! You think I’m going to keep quiet about that?”
Alkad squared her shoulders; with an immense effort she spoke in a level voice to the ireful girl. “You are a simple immature child, with an equally childish fixation. You have never once thought through the consequences should your wish be granted, the suffering it will cause. For thirty years I have thought of nothing else. I created the Alchemist, Mary have mercy on me. I understand the full reality of what it can do. The responsibility for that machine is mine alone. I have never, nor will ever, shirk that. To do so would be to divorce myself from what remains of my humanity. And the consequences of the possessed obtaining it are very bad indeed. Therefore I will accept Baranovich’s offer to leave this doomed planet. I will lead Capone’s forces to the Alchemist. And I will then activate it. It will never be available for anyone to study and duplicate.”
“But—” Voi looked around the others for support. “If you activate it, surely . . .”
“I will die. Oh, yes. And with me will die the one man I ever loved. We’ve been separated for thirty years, and I still love him. That purely human entanglement doesn’t matter. I will even sacrifice him for this. Now do you understand my commitment and responsibility? Maybe I will come back as a possessor, or maybe I will stay in the beyond. Whatever my fate, it will be no different to any other human being. I am afraid of that, but I don’t reject it. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can cheat our ultimate destination.
“Gelai and Ngong have shown me that we do retain our basic personality. That’s good, because if I do come back in someone else’s body, my resolve will remain intact. I will not build another Alchemist. Its reason for being is gone, it must go too.”
Voi bent her knees slightly so her eyes were closer to Alkad’s face, as if that would give her a deeper insight into the physicist’s mind. “You really will, won’t you? You’ll kill yourself.”
“I think kamikaze is a more appropriate term. But don’t worry, I’m not going to dragoon you two along. I don’t even consider this to be your fight, I never did. You’re not Garissans, not really; you have no reason to dip your hands into blood this deep. Now be quiet and pray to Mother Mary that we can save something from this pile of shit, and get the pair of you as well as Lodi out of here. But be assured, I still consider you expendable to my goal.” She turned to Gelai. “If either of you have any objection to this, then speak now, please.”
“No, Doctor,” Gelai said. There was the faintest smile on her lips. “I don’t object. In fact, I’m rather glad it won’t be used against a planet by you or Capone. But believe me, you don’t want to kill yourself; once you’ve known the beyond, the pressure Capone can exert by promising you a body is going to be extraordinary.”
“I know,” Alkad said. “But choice has never played a large part in my life.”
Tonala’s state of emergency had drastically reduced the volume of road traffic in the capital. Normally, the churning wheels of the afternoon gridlock would turn the snow to mush and spray it over the pedestrians. Now, however, the big flakes were beginning to accumulate on the roads. Harrisburg’s civic mechanoids were losing their battle to clear it away.
The transport department considered the effects such an icy blanket would have on brake response time, and ordered a general speed reduction to avoid accidents. The proscription was datavised into the control processor of individual vehicles.
“You want me to neutralize the order for this car?” Dick Keaton asked. Joshua gave the data security expert an edgy glance as he tried to decide. The answer was yes, but he said, “No,” anyway, because speeding when you’re a suspect foreigner in a nation on the brink of war and being followed by two local police cars is an essentially dumb thing to do.
Thanks to the general lack of cars, their tail was a prominent one, keeping a precise fifty metres behind. Its presence didn’t have much effect on Joshua and his companions. The two serjeants were as vigilant as mechanoids, while Melvyn stared out at the city covered in its crisp grey mantle, the opposite of Dahybi who sat hunched up in his seat, hands clasped and paying no attention to their surroundings, almost as if he were at prayer. Dick Keaton was enjoying the ride, a pre-teen excitement which Joshua found annoying. He was trying to balance mission priorities at the same time as he reviewed what he was going to say to Mzu. A sincere but insistent invitation to return to Tranquillity, point out the shit she was in, how he had a starship waiting. It wasn’t that he was bad with words, but these were just so damn important. Exactly how do you tell the semi-psychotic owner of a doomsday device to come along quietly and not make any fuss?
His communications block accepted Ashly’s secure datavise and relayed it straight into his neural nanonics.
“New development,” Ashly reported. “The Edenist flyers just activated their ion fields.”
“Are they leaving?”
“No sign of that yet. They’re still on the ground, but they’re in a rapid response condition. Their agents must be close to Mzu.”
“Bugger. Any news from orbit?”
“Not a thing. Lady Macbeth isn’t due above the horizon for another eight minutes, but the spaceplane sensors haven’t detected any low-orbit weapons activity yet.”
“Okay. Stand by, we’re approaching the hotel now. I might need you in a hurry.”
“Do my best. But if these flyers don’t want me to lift off, it could get tricky.”
“Lady Mac is your last resort. She can take them out. Use her if you have to.”
“Understood.”
Dahybi was leaning forward in his seat to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes Hotel as the car swept along the last two hundred metres of road.
“That park would make a handy landing spot for Ashly,” Melvyn commented.
“Acknowledged,” Joshua said. He squinted through the windscreen as the car turned onto the loop of road which led to the hotel’s broad portico. There was a car already parked in front of the doors.
Joshua datavised a halt order into their car’s control processor, then directed it to one of the parking slots outside the portico. Tyres crunched on the virgin snow as they pulled in.
The two police cars stopped on the road outside.
“What is it?” Dick Keaton asked, he was almost whispering.
Joshua pointed a forefinger at the car under the portico. Several people were climbing in.
“That’s Mzu,” one of the serjeants said.
After so long on the trail, so much endured, Joshua felt something akin to awe now he could finally see her. Mzu hadn’t changed much from the visual file stored in his neural nanonics during their one brief encounter. Features and hair the same, and she was wrapped up well in a thick navy-blue coat, but the flaky professor act had been dumped. This woman carried a deadly confidence.
If he’d ever doubted the Alchemist and Mzu’s connection to it, that ended now.
“What do you want to do?” Dahybi asked. “We can stop her car. Make our pitch now.”
Joshua held up a hand for silence. He’d just noticed the last two people getting into the car with Mzu. It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain. “Oh, Jesus.”
Melvyn’s electronic warfare blocks datavised a warning. He accessed the display. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want to alarm you guys,” Dick Keaton said. “But the people in the next car are giving us a real unfriendly look.”
“Huh?” Joshua glanced over.
“And they’re aiming a multiband sensor at us, too,” Melvyn said.
Joshua returned the hostile stare from the two ESA agents in the car parked beside them. “Oh, fucking wonderful.”
“She’s leaving,” one of the serjeants called.
“Jesus,” Joshua grumbled. “Melvyn, are you blocking that sensor?”
“Absolutely.” He gave the agents a broad toothy smile.
“Okay, we follow her. Let’s just hope she’s going somewhere I can have a civilized chat.”
The five embassy cars carrying Monica, Samuel, and a mixed crew of ESA and Edenist operatives disregarded the city’s new speed limit altogether as they raced for the hotel. All the security police did was follow and observe; they were anxious to see where this was all leading.
They were still a kilometre from the Mercedes Hotel when Adrian Redway datavised Monica to advise her that Mzu was on the move again. “There’s definitely only four people with her this time. The observation team launched a skyspy outside the hotel. It looks like there’s been some sort of fight in the penthouse. Do you want access?”
“Please.”
The image from the small synthetic bird hovering above the park filled her brain. Its artificial tissue wings were flapping constantly to hold it steady in the middle of the snowstorm, producing an awkward juddering. A visual-wavelength optical sensor was scanning across the penthouse’s broad windows. One of them had a large jagged hole in the middle.
“I can see a lot of glass on the carpet,” Monica datavised. “Something came in through that window, not out.”
“But what?” Adrian asked. “That’s the twenty-fifth floor.”
Monica continued her review. The living-room doors had been smashed open. Long black scorch marks were chiselled deep into the one lying on the floor.
Then she switched focus to a settee. There was a foot dangling over the armrest.
“No wonder Mzu was in a hurry to leave again,” she said out loud. “The possessed have tracked her down.”
“Her car isn’t heading for the spaceport,” Samuel said. “Could the two locals with her be possessed?”
“Possible,” Monica agreed hesitantly. “But the observation team said she seemed to be leading the others. They didn’t think she was being coerced.”
“Calvert has started following her,” Adrian datavised.
“Okay. Let’s see where they’re all so eager to get to.” She datavised the car’s control processor to catch up with the observation team’s vehicles.
“Someone else has now joined us,” Ngong said. His voice was split between amusement and surprise. “That makes over a dozen cars now.”
“And poor old Baranovich said to come alone,” Alkad said. “Is he in one of them?”
“I don’t know. One car certainly has some possessed in it.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Voi asked.
Alkad sank down deeper into her seat, getting herself comfortable. “Not really. This is like old times for me.”
“What if they stop us?”
“Gelai, what are the police thinking?”
“They’re curious, Doctor. Make that very curious.”
“That’s okay then; as long as they aren’t going to stop us we’re all right. I know the agencies, they will want to know where we’re going first before they make their move.”
“But Baranovich—”
“They’re his problem, not ours. If he doesn’t want me followed then it’s up to him to do something about it.”
Alkad’s car navigated itself along Harrisburg’s abandoned streets at a doggedly legal speed. Despite that, they made good progress, leaving the closely packed buildings of the city centre behind to venture out into the more industrial suburbs. Thirty minutes into the journey, the last of the urban clutter was discarded behind them. The slightly elevated roadway cut straight across a flat alluvial plain that was open all the way to the sea eighty kilometres away. It was a vast expanse of huge fallow fields from which tractor mechanoids and tailored bugs had eradicated any unauthorized vegetation. Trees were stunted and bent by the wind that blew in from the shore, standing hunched along the line of the drainage canals which had been dug to tame the rich black soil.
Nothing moved off the road, no animals or vehicles. They were driving across a snow desert. Large, stiff flakes were hurled horizontally against the car by the wind, taxing the guarantee of the lofriction windshield to stay clear. Even so, that didn’t prevent them from seeing the fifteen cars which were now following them, a convoy that made no attempt to hide itself.
Adrian Redway had settled himself into one of the chairs in the ESA’s operation centre and datavised his desktop processor for a filter program to access the station’s incoming information streams. Even with the filter he was almost overwhelmed by the quantity of data available. Neural nanonics assigned priority gradings. Sub-routines took over from his mind’s natural cross-indexing ability, leaving his consciousness free to absorb relevant details.
He focused on Mzu, principally through the observation team, then defined a peripheral activity key to alert him of any incoming factors which would affect her situation. The rate at which external events were developing on Nyvan made it unlikely he would be able to secure Monica much advance warning, but as a veteran of twenty-eight years ESA service he knew even seconds could change the entire outcome of a field operation.
“It has to be the ironberg foundry yard,” he datavised to Monica after they had been driving over the farmland for twenty uneventful minutes.
“We think so, too,” Monica replied. “Are the foundry’s landing pads equipped with beacon guidance? If she’s looking for a spaceplane pickup, they’ll need a controlled approach in this weather.”
“Unless they have military-grade sensors. But yes, the foundry’s pads have beacons. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their reliability, mind. I doubt they’ve been serviced since the day they were installed.”
“Okay, can you run a data sweep of the foundry? And if you can access it, a security sensor review would be helpful. I’d like to know if there’s anyone there waiting for her.”
“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, that foundry is big. But I’ll put a couple of my analysts on it. Just don’t expect too much.”
“Thanks.” She gave Samuel a forlorn look. “Something wrong?”
The Edenist had been accessing their exchange via his bitek processor block. “I am reminded of the time she left Tranquillity. We were all following after her rather like this, and look what happened that time. Possibly we should be the ones taking the initiative. If the foundry is her intended destination, she may well have a method of eluding us already in place.”
“Could be. But the only way of stopping her now is to shoot the car. That would bring the police storming in.”
Samuel accessed the ESA operations centre computer and reviewed the security police deployment status. “We are a long way from their designated reinforcements; and we can have the flyers here in minutes. Hurting the feelings of the Tonala government is an irrelevance compared to securing the Alchemist. Mzu has done us a favour by coming to such a remote place.”
“Yeah. Well, if you’re willing to bring your flyers in to evac us, I’m certainly prepared to commit our people. We’ve got enough firepower to stomp on the police if—” She broke off as Adrian datavised again.
“The city air defence network has just located those missing Organization spaceplanes,” he told her. “They’re heading right at you, Monica; three of them coming in over the sea at Mach five. Looks like you were right about the foundry being a pickup zone.”
“My God, she is selling out to Capone. What a bitch.”
“Looks that way.”
“Can you direct the city network to shoot the spaceplanes?”
“Yes, if they get closer, but at the moment they’re out of range.”
“Will they be in range at the foundry?” Samuel asked.
“No. The network doesn’t have any missiles, it’s all beam weapons. Tonala relies on its SD platforms to kill any threat approaching from outside its boundaries.”
“The flyers,” Monica asked Samuel. “Can they intercept?”
“Yes.” Launch please, he instructed the pilots.
Monica datavised her armour suit management processor to run a readiness diagnostic, then pulled her shell helmet on and sealed it. The other agents began checking their own weapons.
“Joshua, the flyers are all leaving,” Ashly datavised.
“I was wondering about that,” Joshua replied. “We’re only about ten kilometres from the ironberg foundry now. Mzu must have arranged some kind of rendezvous there. Dick’s been running some checks for us; he says that sections of the foundry electronics are glitched. There could be some possessed up ahead.”
“Do you need an evac?”
Joshua glanced around the car. Melvyn and Dahybi weren’t giving anything away, while Dick Keaton was merely curious. “We’re not in any danger yet,” one of the serjeants said.
“No. But if it happens, it’s going to happen fast; and we’re not in the strongest position.”
“You can’t pull out now. We’re too close.”
“You’re telling me,” he muttered. “All right, we’ll keep on her for now. If we can get close enough to make our offer, well and good. But if the agencies start getting aggressive, then we back off. Understood, Ione?”
“Understood.”
“I may be able to offer some assistance,” Dick Keaton said.
“Oh?”
“The cars in this convoy are all local models. I have some program commands which could cause trouble in their control processors. It might help us get closer to your target.”
“If we start doing that to the agencies, they’ll use their own electronic warfare capability on us,” Melvyn said. “That’s if they don’t just use a TIP carbine. Everybody knows what’s at stake.”
“They won’t know it’s us,” Dick Keaton said.
“You hope,” Melvyn said. “They’re good, Joshua. No offence to Dick, but the agencies have entire departments of computer science professors writing black software for them.”
Joshua enjoyed the idea of screwing up the other cars, but the way they were driving further and further into isolation was a big mitigating factor. Normal agency rules of minimum visibility wouldn’t apply out here. If he upset the status quo, Melvyn was probably right about the reaction he’d get. What he really wanted was Lady Mac above the horizon to give them some fire support, although even her sensors would struggle to resolve anything through this snowstorm, and she wasn’t due up for another forty minutes. “Dick, see what you can do to strengthen our car processors against agency software. I’ll use your idea if it looks like she’s getting away from us.”
“Sure thing.”
“Ashly, can you launch without causing undue attention?”
“I think so. There has to be someone observing me, but I’m not picking up any active sensor activity.”
“Okay, launch and fly a low-visibility holding pattern ten kilometres from the yard. We’ll shout for you.”
The four Edenist flyers picked up velocity as they curved around the outskirts of Harrisburg, hitting Mach two thirty kilometres from the coast. Their smoothly rounded noses lined up on the ironberg foundry. Snowflakes flowing through their coherent magnetic fields sparkled a vivid blue around the forward fuselages, then vaporised to fluorescent purple streamers. To anyone under their path, it appeared as though four sunburst comets were rumbling through the atmosphere.
It was the one failing of Kulu’s ion field technology that it could never be successfully hidden from sensors. The three Organization spaceplanes streaking in from the sea spotted them as soon as they lifted from the spaceport. Electronic warfare arrays were activated, seeking to blind the flyers with a full-spectrum barrage. Air-to-air missiles dropped out of their wing recesses and shot ahead at Mach ten.
The Edenist flyers saw them coming through the electronic hash. They peeled away from each other, arcing through the sky in complex evasion manoeuvres. Chaff and signature decoys spewed out of the flyers. Masers locked on and fired continuous pulses at the incoming drones.
Explosions thundered unseen above the farmland. Some of the missiles succumbed to the masers, while others followed their programs to detonate in preloaded patterns. Clouds of kinetic shrapnel threw up lethal blockades along the trajectories they predicted the flyers would use. But there were too few missiles left to create an effective kill zone.
The flyers stormed through.
It should have ended then, a duel between energy beam weapons and fuselage shielding, the two opponents so far away that in all probability they would never even see each other. But the snow forbade that; absorbing maser and thermal induction energy, cutting the effective strike range of both sides to less than five hundred metres. Flyers and spaceplanes had to get close to each other, spiralling around and around, looping, twisting, diving, climbing. Aggressors desperate to keep their beams on one point of their target’s fuselage; targets frantic to keep moving, spinning to disperse the energy input. A genuine dogfight developed. Pilots blinded by the snow and clouds, dependent on sensors harassed by unremitting electronic warfare impulses. Given that both the flyers and the spaceplanes were multi-role craft, the manoeuvres lacked any real acrobatic innovation. Predication programs were the true knights of the sky, allowing pilots to keep a steady lock on their opponents. The flyers’ superior agility began to pay dividends. The spaceplanes were limited by the ancient laws of aerodynamic lift and stability, restricting their tactics to classical aerial manoeuvres. While the flyers could move in any direction they wanted to providing their fusion generators had enough power.
The Organization was always going to lose.
One by one, the crippled spaceplanes tumbled out of the sky. Two of them smashed into the frozen soil outside the foundry yard, the third into the sea.
Overhead, the flyers closed formation and began to circle the vast foundry yard in anticipation of claiming their prize.
Urschel and Pinzola slid up over the horizon. Warned by the screams of souls torn back into the beyond, they knew what to look for. X-ray lasers stabbed down four times, their power unchecked by gravid clouds or swirling ice crystals.
The docking cradle rose out of the spaceport bay, exposing the fuselage of the Mount’s Delta to a blaze of sunlight. At this juncture of a normal departure, a starship would spread its thermo-dump panels before it disengaged. Quinn told Dwyer to switch their heat exchange circuits to an internal store. Umbilical feeds withdrew from their couplings in the lower hull, then the hold-down latches retracted.
“Fly us fifty kilometres along Jesup’s spin axis,” Quinn said. “Then hold us there.”
Dwyer flicked a throat mike down from his headset and muttered instructions to the flight computer. Ion thrusters lifted the clipper-class ship clear of the bay, then the secondary drive came on. Mount’s Delta accelerated away at a fifteenth of a gee, following a clean arc above the surface of the counter-rotating spaceport.
Quinn used the holoscreens surrounding his acceleration couch to display images from the external sensor suite. Nothing else moved around the gigantic asteroid. The surrounding industrial stations had been shut down for days and were now drifting out of alignment. An inert fleet of personnel commuters, MSVs, inter-orbit cargo craft, and tankers were all docked to Jesup’s counter-rotating spaceport, filling nearly every bay.
As soon as the starship rose away from the apex of the spaceport, Quinn switched the optical sensors to track the other asteroids. Dwyer watched the screens in silence as the three deserted asteroids appeared. This time there was movement visible, tiny stars were closing on the dark rocks at high velocity.
“Looks like we’re just in time,” Quinn said. “The nations are getting upset about losing their ships.” He spoke briefly into his mike, instructing the flight computer.
Four secure military-grade laser communicators deployed from the starship’s fuselage. One pointed back at Jesup, while the other three acquired a lock on the abandoned asteroids. Each one fired an ultraviolet beam at their target, its encrypted code requesting a response. In answer, four similar ultraviolet beams transfixed the Mount’s Delta . Impossible to intercept or interfere, they linked Quinn into the equipment his teams had been setting up.
Diagrams flashed up on the bridge screens as modulated information flooded back along the beams. Quinn entered a series of codes and watched in satisfaction as the equipment acknowledged his command authority.
“Ninety-seven nukes on-line,” he said. “By the look of it, they’re rigging another five as we speak. Dumb arseholes.”
“Is that enough?” Dwyer asked anxiously. Loyalty would probably not be any defence if things weren’t going precisely to plan. He just wished he knew what that plan was.
Quinn’s grin was playful. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
“No survivors,” Samuel said. “None.” His dignified face betrayed a profound sorrow, one hardened by the grey light of the snow-veiled landscape.
For Monica the loss was heightened by the terrible remoteness of the event. A few swift diffuse flashes of light lost among the occluded sky above the convoy, as if sheet lightning were flaring amid the snowstorm. They had seen and heard nothing of the decimated flyers crashing on the eastern edge of the foundry yard.
We have the pilots safe,the Hoya told Samuel and the other Edenists. Fortunately the flyers’ shielding held out long enough for the transfer to complete.
Thank you, that’s excellent news,samuel said. “but not their souls,” he whispered under his breath.
Monica heard him, and met his gaze. Their minds were a unison of grief, less than affinity but certainly sharing awareness.
“Practicalities,” he said forlornly.
“Yes.”
The car gave a fast unexpected lurch as the brakes suddenly engaged, then cut out. Everyone inside was flung forwards against their seat straps.
“Electronic warfare,” shouted the ESA electronics expert who was riding with them. “They’re glitching our processor.”
“Is it the possessed?” Monica asked.
“No. Definitely coming through the net.”
The car braked again. This time the wheels locked for several seconds, starting to skid across the slushy road before an emergency program released them.
“Go to manual,” Monica instructed. She could see other cars in the convoy twisting and slithering across the dual roadway. One of the police vehicles hit the safety barrier and shot down the embankment into a frozen ditch, spraying snow as it went. Another of the big embassy cars thumped into the rear of Monica’s car, crunching some of the bodywork. The impact spun them around. Monica’s armour suit stiffened as she was shaken from side to side.
“It’s not affecting Mzu,” Samuel said. “She’s pulling away from us.”
“Disable the police cars,” Monica told the electronics expert. “And that bloody Calvert, too.” She felt a sincerely unprofessional glee as she ordered that, but it was perfectly legitimate. By separating herself and Mzu from the police and Calvert she was reducing the opportunity for interference in the mission goal.
Their driver finally seemed to master the intricacies of the car’s manual controls, and they shot forwards, weaving around the other disorientated cars. “Adrian?” Monica datavised.
“With you. Nobody here can origin that electronic warfare outbreak.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re on top of it.”
“Calvert’s in front of us,” the driver said. “He’s right on Mzu’s tail, this hasn’t affected him at all.”
“Shit!” Monica directed her shell helmet sensors to switch to infrared, and just caught the pink blob of Calvert’s car hidden by snow a hundred and twenty metres ahead of them. Behind her, two embassy cars were already pulling away from the stalled police vehicles, while another one was creeping along the verge, trying to get around.
“Adrian, we’re going to need an evac. Fast.”
“Not easy.”
“What do you fucking mean? Where are the embassy’s Royal Marine utility planes? They should be on backup, for God’s sake!”
“They’re both liaising with the local defence force. It would have been suspicious if I’d called them back.”
“Do it now!”
“I’m on it. You should have one there in about twenty minutes.”
Monica thumped an armoured fist into the seat, splitting some of the fabric. The car was racing on through the snow, surprisingly stable for one under manual control. Four sets of headlights were visible behind them. A fast datavised review informed Monica they were all embassy cars, which gave her some satisfaction.
She put her machine gun down and picked up a maser carbine, then undid her seat belt.
“Now what?” Samuel asked as she leaned forward to get a better view through the windscreen.
“Joshua Calvert, your time is up.”
“Uh oh,” said the electronics expert. He looked up in reflex.
Ashly approached the ironberg foundry yard from the west, following five minutes behind the Edenist flyers. The spaceplane’s forward passive sensor suite revealed the basics of the missile launch and dogfight. Then the X-ray lasers had fired from orbit. He held his breath as the sensors reported a microwave radar beam sweep across the fuselage. It came from the starships seven hundred kilometres above.
Now is not a good time to die. Especially as I know what’s in store if I do. Kelly was right: screw fate and destiny, just spend the rest of time in zero-tau. I think I might try that if I get out of this.
Nothing happened.
Ashly let out a shudder of breath, finding his palms sweating. “Thank you whoever thought up low-visibility profiling,” he said out loud. With its top-grade stealth systems active, the spaceplane was probably invisible to any sensor on, or orbiting, Nyvan. His only worry had been an infrared signature, but the thick snow eradicated that.
He ordered the spaceplane’s computer to open a secure channel to Tonala’s net, hoping no one with heavy weaponry would detect the tiny signal. “Joshua?” he datavised.
“Jesus, Ashly, we thought you’d been hit.”
“Not in this machine.”
“Where are you?”
“Thirty kilometres from the foundry yard. I’m about to go into a holding pattern. What’s happening down there?”
“Some idiot used electronic warfare on the cars. We’re okay; Dick hardened our programs. But the police are out of it for the moment. We’re still on Mzu’s tail. I think a couple of embassy cars are behind us, maybe more.”
“Is Mzu still heading for the foundry yard?”
“Looks like it.”
“Well unless the cavalry comes up over the hill, we’re the only pickup she’s got left. There’s nothing flying within my sensor range.”
“Unless they’re stealthed, too.”
“You’ve always got to look on the bleak side, haven’t you?”
“Just being cautious.”
“Well if they’re stealthed, I . . .” Ashly broke off as the flight computer warned him of another radar sweep emanating from the starships. The beam was configured differently this time, a ground scan profile. “Joshua, they’re hunting you. Get out! Get out of the car!”
Every electronic warfare block in the embassy car was datavising frantic alerts.
We are being targeted by the Organization frigates,samuel told Hoya and Niveu. There was little he could do to conceal his rising panic. Once, the knowledge that his memories would be held safely in the Hoya would have been enough for him. Now he wasn’t so sure that was all that mattered. You must stop them. If they kill Mzu, it’s all over.
The snow-lashed sky behind the car flashed purple.
After tens of kilometres of entirely passive pursuit across the tundralike farmland, the Tonala security police had been caught out badly by the sudden electronic warfare attack. Of all the cars, theirs came off worst, leaving them scattered across both roadways as their surveillance suspects, quite infuriatingly, dodged around them as if they were nothing more than inconvenient roadcones. It took time for them to rally; processors had to be disengaged to allow the manual controls to be activated, officers from cars that had gone over the embankment or smashed into the barrier sprinted for cars that were still functional, swiping huge gobs of crash cushion foam from their suits. Once they had reorganized they began to drive fast after their quarry.
It meant that their cars were still bunched together, supplying the Organization starships with the biggest target. Oscar Kearn, uncertain which one contained Mzu, decided to start there and eliminate the other cars one at a time until her soul was claimed by the beyond. With that, they would have won. Bringing her back, one way or another, was all that mattered. Now the spaceplanes had been destroyed, she would have to die. Fortunately, as an ex-military man himself, he had prepared his fallback options. So far Mzu had proved amazingly elusive, or just plain lucky. He was determined to put an end to that.
The ironberg foundry yard pickup had been planned in some detail with Baranovich, its location and timing quite critical. Although Oscar Kearn hadn’t actually mentioned how critical to the newly allied Cossack, nor why. But he was satisfied that if things went bad for the Organization on the ground, Mzu would never survive.
Firstly, the frigates would be overhead, able to initiate a ground strike. And if she somehow escaped that . . .
While the Organization starships were docked with the Spirit of Freedom they had gained command access to the tugs delivering Tonala’s ironbergs for splashdown. A small alteration had been made to the trajectory of one tug.
Far above Nyvan’s ocean, to the west of Tonala, an ironberg was already slipping through the ionosphere. This time, no recovery fleet would be needed. No ships would be employed to tow it on a week-long voyage to the foundry yard.
It was taking the direct route.
The first X-ray laser blast struck the police car which was lying down the embankment, hood embedded in the ditch. It vaporized in a violent shock wave, sending droplets of molten metal, roasted earth, and superheated steam churning into the air. All the snow within a two-hundred-metre radius was ripped from the ground before the heat turned it back into water. The other car abandoned on the road was somersaulted over and over, smashing its windows and sending wheels spinning through the air.
The first explosion made Alkad wince. She glanced out of the rear window, seeing an orange corona slowly shrinking back down into the road.
“What the hell did that?” Voi asked.
“Not us,” Gelai said. “Not one of the possessed, not even a dozen. We don’t have that much power.”
A second explosion sounded, rattling the car badly.
“It’s me,” Alkad said. “They want me.”
Another explosion lit up the sky. This time the pressure wave pushed at their car, sending it skidding sideways before the control processor could compensate.
“They’re getting closer,” Eriba cried. “Mother Mary, help us.”
“There’s not much She can do for us now,” Alkad said. “It’s up to the agencies.”
The four voidhawks were in a standard five-hundred-kilometre equatorial parking orbit above Nyvan when Hoya received Samuel’s frantic call. Their position allowed them to shadow the Organization frigates which were strung out along a high-inclination orbit. At the time, only the Urschel and the Pinzola were above the ironberg foundry yard’s horizon. Raimo was trailing them by two thousand kilometres.
Although it was four thousand kilometres from the Urschel and Pinzola, Hoya ’s sensors could just detect the brilliant purple discharge in the clouds below the Organization frigates as they fired on a fourth car. The voidhawk began to accelerate at seven gees, followed by its three cousins. All four went to full combat alert status. A salvo of fifteen combat wasps slid out of Hoya ’s lower hull cradles, each one charging away in a different direction at thirty gees, leaving the voidhawk at the centre of an expanding and dimming nimbus of exhaust plasma. After five seconds, the drones curved around to align themselves on the Organization frigates.
Urschel and Pinzola had no choice but to defend themselves. Their reaction time was hardly optimum, but twenty-five combat wasps flew out of each frigate to counter the attackers, antimatter propulsion quickly pushing them up to forty gees. The frigates broke off their attack on the cars, realigning their X-ray lasers ready for the inevitable swarm of submunitions.
Raimo launched its own salvo of combat wasps in support of its confederates, opening up a new angle of attack against the voidhawks. Two of them responded with defensive salvos.
Over a hundred combat wasps launched in less than twenty seconds. The glare from their drives shimmered off the nighttime clouds below, a radiance far exceeding any natural moonlight.
Despite the continuing electronic warfare emission from the SD platforms, none of the orbiting network sensors could miss such a deadly spectacle. Threat analysis programs controlling each network initiated what they estimated was an appropriate level of response.