Chapter Ten

TEN MINUTES IN, AND ALREADY THE DAY WAS NOT GOING WELL FOR SIMON Roderick. He had eschewed taking over President Strauss’s ceremonial office for the Third Fleet’s tenure on Thallspring. That would be too clichéd, he felt. In any case, it was General Kolbe who was the official Z-B liaison to the planetary executive; he should be the one visible to the public. So while the hapless general tried to placate a bitter and resentful press and populace, Simon had found himself a comfortable office in the East Wing of the Eagle Manor, ousting the flock of presidential aides who had clustered around their chief, offering advice, analysis and general chicanery.

The Eagle Manor itself was situated on a slight rise at the center of Durrell, which provided Simon with a broad view out across the city. Normally, the mornings brought a brilliant sunshine beating down on the impressive buildings and lush squares of the capital. Today, thick, dark cloud was clotting the azure sky. A weak drizzle smeared the wide panes behind his desk, blurring the crisp lines of the distant skyscrapers. Vehicles on the circular highway ringing the Eagle Manor’s expansive grounds were all using their headlights, nova-blue beams shimmering on the wet tarmac.

As soon as he arrived, his personal AS produced the summaries he used to monitor the state of life in the capital. Overnight, production at the factories designated for asset acquisition had fallen several points. That corresponded to a high number of staff failing to show up for their shifts and reduced supplies of raw material. Even traffic within the capital was light that morning, though when he glanced out of the window at the radial of wide avenues leading away from Eagle Manor’s circular highway he couldn’t notice any decrease in the volume. There were still lines at every junction. Then the indigo script of the medical alert file scrolled up.

He sat perfectly still in his high-backed leather chair as he read the reports. “Tuberculosis?” he asked incredulously.

“That is the diagnosis,” his personal AS replied. “And there is little margin for error. Seventy-five cases have been identified in Durrell already; the projection is for double that by the end of the day, and rising after that. Reports of possible contagion are now arriving from outlying districts and other provinces across the planet. The strain appears to be a particularly vigorous one.”

“Do they have a history of it here?”

“No. There has been no recorded case of tuberculosis since first landing.”

“Then what the hell is the cause?”

“The preliminary conclusion by local doctors and public health officials is that we are the source of the infection.”

“Us?”

“Yes. After conferring with our medical AS, I agree the conclusion is logical.”

“Explain.”

“This particular strain is the product of several hundred years of combating the disease with increasingly sophisticated medical treatments. Every time human scientists developed a new and stronger antibiotic to treat the tubercle bacillus, the bacillus evolved a resistant strain. By the early twenty-first century tuberculosis had evolved into one of the so-called superbugs; it was effectively resistant to all antibiotics.”

“Which if I remember correctly was countered by the new metabiotics.”

“That is correct. Metabiotics held the superbugs at bay for nearly a century. Eventually, of course, they developed resistance even to them. By that time, genetically engineered vaccines were readily available. They have provided an effective treatment ever since. For every new strain the bacillus evolves, we can simply read its genetic structure and provide a specific vaccine. This has produced a stalemate in terms of widespread contagion.”

Simon stared out at the wet city with the somber realization of where this was leading. “But we still haven’t eradicated the bacteria.”

“No. That is not possible. Earth’s cities remain a fertile breeding ground. Local health authorities are constantly alert for the emergence of new strains. When such cases are discovered it is possible to manufacture a vaccine within thirty hours. In this way, epidemics have been averted for two hundred years.”

“And prevented on the colonies as well?”

“Colonists were rigorously screened for a broad spectrum of diseases before departure. If any of them were infected, they would be vaccinated. In all likelihood, the tubercle bacillus was never transported across inter-stellar space, at least not in an active state.”

“So they don’t have the same kind of health program in operation here?”

“No.”

“In other words, we did bring it here.”

“It is the obvious conclusion. The most probable scenario is that one of our personnel was exposed to an advanced bacillus, and was himself immune through vaccination, or he could have received germline v-writing, in which case his immune system would be enhanced and highly resistant. But he would still be carrying it. If that is what happened, then it was spread around the entire starship he was traveling in. Everybody on board will now be carrying and spreading the infection.”

“Don’t we screen everybody before a mission?”

“Not for specific diseases. Such a screening schedule was deemed too expensive given that the fleets were no longer used to found colonies. The platoons undergo constant medical monitoring from their Skin suits. So far, that has been considered adequate.”

“Shit.” Simon let his head sink back onto the seat’s rest. “So it’s not just tuberculosis, it’s a superbreed of tuberculosis, and nobody on this planet is going to be immune.”

“The medical AS believes the section of the population that received germline v-writing will prove resistant.”

“Percentage?” he snapped.

“Approximately eleven percent have received germline v-writing, of which half are under fifteen years old.”

“Okay. What does our medical AS recommend?”

“Immediate production and distribution of a vaccine. Isolate all confirmed cases and begin enforced medication treatment.”

“Is it curable?”

“There are precedents. The medical AS has templates of metabiotics that have proved successful in the recent past. We can also combine that with lung tissue regeneration virals. Such a procedure will be neither cheap nor quick.”

“Estimated time?”

“For full recovery: two years.”

“Damn it. What about the time it will take to implement the vaccine production?”

“Production can begin within twenty-four hours once you issue a priority authorization. To produce it in sufficient quantities to inoculate the entire planetary population will take three weeks.”

“What the hell will that do to our asset-production schedule?”

“An appraisal is impractical. There are currently too many variables.”

His desk intercom bleeped. “President Strauss is here, sir,” his assistant said. “He’s demanding to see you immediately.”

I bet he is, Simon thought. “Show him in.”

“Sir.”

“And ask Mr. Raines to come in as well, please.”

When it came to someone who would soothe the way for asset realization and make sure Z-B’s staff integrated well with the planetary legislature and civil service, President Edgar Strauss was not your man. The usual threats and coercion seemed to have almost no effect. He was rude, stubborn, uncooperative and in some cases actively obstructionist. Simon had even refrained from using any of his family for collateral: if they took after him they would probably welcome martyrdom.

Strauss stormed into the office with the same inertia as a rogue elephant. “You motherfucking fascist bastard! You’re killing us. You want this planet cleaned out so you can stuff it with your own families.”

“Mr. President, that’s simply not—”

“Don’t give me that, you little shit. It’s all over the datapool. You’ve released tuberculosis; some v-written type to boost its effectiveness.”

“It is not v-written. It is a perfectly natural organism.”

“Crap!” Edgar Strauss’s gray eyes glared out of his hard, reddened face. “We’re absolutely defenseless against it. You committed genocide, and condemned us to a long painful death. You should have done it with the gamma soak, you bastard, because this gives us the opportunity to slice your throats one by one. What use is your collateral now, huh?”

“If you’ll just calm down.”

The door opened again, and Braddock Raines slipped in. He was with Third Fleet intelligence; in his mid-thirties, the kind of man who could normally blend into the background of any scene, allowing him to assess what was happening with a minimum of interference from local officials. It was the simple knack of invoking trust in people. Everyone who talked to him would always say how pleasant he’d been, the kind of guy you’d enjoy talking to over a beer. Simon knew he could always be relied on for an accurate report of the most difficult situations.

“Who’s this? Your executioner?” Edgar Strauss asked. “I know you’ll never let me live now that I know the truth. Too scared of me. How are you going to do it, sonny, knife or a nice messy bullet to the brain?”

Braddock’s jaw dropped. For once he was too shocked to respond.

“Shut up or I will have you shot,” Simon snapped.

President Edgar Strauss sneered contentedly.

Simon took a long breath and sat down, waiting for his blood to cool. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper. But the man was quite intolerable. How typical of a primitive, backward planet like Thall-spring to elect a blunt man of the people like Strauss. “Mr. President. I have only just been informed of this terrible outbreak myself. I am of course shocked and dismayed that such a thing could happen on this beautiful planet. And I would immediately like to go on record to assure you and the entire population that Zantiu-Braun will be doing everything we can to assist the local health authority to combat the disease. Templates for a vaccine and relevant metabiotics will be made available immediately. If all the necessary planetary resources are given over to dealing with the situation, then we’re confident of a swift and effective end to the problem.”

“It’ll take a month before we can make enough vaccine to go round, sonny. How many people will die in the meantime?”

“We estimate three weeks maximum for a sufficient quantity of the vaccine to be produced. And with the correct procedures, nobody who has contracted the disease will die. However, that will require complete cooperation from your authorities. Are you going to assist with that? Or do you want your people to suffer needlessly?”

“Is that why you introduced this, to help subdue us?”

“It was not introduced by us,” Simon ground out. “The tuberculosis bacilli have a long history of evolving new and unpleasant variants. Nobody knows where this particular one has evolved. Only a fool or a politician would seek to blame us for this.” His personal AS informed him the president was receiving a stream of files from the datapool, all encrypted. Updating him on tuberculosis, no doubt.

“Oh yeah,” Edgar Strauss said. “You and it arriving together is just a complete coincidence. What kind of screening procedures does Zantiu-Braun use on its strategic security personnel before departure? Huh? Tell me that, sonny. The people who come from Earth’s big cities, where TB has been breeding away for centuries. You check them all out, do you?”

From the corner of his eye, Simon saw Braddock Raines wince. He kept his own face impassive. “We employ the same procedures that every starship leaving Earth has always used, as mandated by UN quarantine law. We wouldn’t be allowed to leave Earth orbit without them. Didn’t the Navarro house starships use them?”

“Of course they damn well used them. We’ve remained uncontaminated until you bastards started invading us.”

“Then why didn’t it happen last time we were here?”

Edgar Strauss’s glare deepened. “So this vaccine is another improvement you want us to adopt. Another product that is more sophisticated than anything we have.”

“And your problem with that is… ?”

“You’re fattening us up for next time. That’s what all this fallacious generosity is about. You even turn our misfortune to your advantage. These vaccines and metabiotics will be available for you to harvest on your next violence-crazed invasion, along with all the other advances. I’ve seen how many new designs you’ve released to our companies and universities. Neurotronics, software, biochemistry, genetics, even metallurgy and fusion plant design. You’ve made it all available out of the kindness of your heart.”

“We want our investment in Thallspring to be successful. Naturally we help you in upgrading your technology and science base.”

“But only for your profit. If we were still producing old-fashioned systems next time you come, you would reap no dividend.”

“You think that?”

“I know that, and so do you.”

“Then all you have to do is not use them. Go right ahead.” Simon gestured expansively at the city beyond the window. “Tell them that, Mr. President. Persuade them they don’t need the latest version memory management software, tell them they don’t need next-generation brakes on their cars. Best of all, tell them they don’t need better medicines.”

“You’ll lose in the end. You know that, don’t you? There are fewer starships this time. Where did they go? Why didn’t you build replacements? One day you’ll come here and we’ll be strong enough to resist. We grow while you wither away like every other decaying society in history. This is our time that’s dawning. An end to starflight will bring an end to tyranny.”

“Did your speechwriters dream that slogan up, or did you actually manage to think of it for yourself?”

“My grandchildren will dance all over your grave, you little shit.” Edgar Strauss turned on his heel and marched out. He whistled the first few bars of Thallspring’s anthem as he went.

Simon watched the door swing shut behind him. “My grave doesn’t exist,” he whispered to the president’s back.

“That was fun,” Braddock said stoically. “Would you like him to have an accident?”

Simon permitted himself a dry laugh. “Don’t tempt me.”

“So why am I here?”

“We’re going to have to start this vaccination program that the medical AS recommends. I want you to supervise inoculating strategically important personnel: everyone who is critical to continued asset production. Start with the factory staff, but don’t overlook people who work at the power stations and other ancillaries. I want to keep any disruption to our schedule to an absolute minimum.”

“You’ve got it.”

The pump station was unimpressive—a flat-roof box of concrete measuring twenty meters on each side, tucked away behind a chain-link fence, itself surrounded by a hedge of tall evergreen thorn bushes. It was in the corner of a small industrial estate on Durrell’s outskirts, invisible from the trunk road outside, ignored by the estate.

At night, it was illuminated by tall halogen lights around the perimeter. One of them was off, while another flickered erratically. Maybe it was the angle of their beams, but they seemed to show up more cracks in the concrete walls than were visible during the day.

From his sheltered position in the hedge, Raymond studied the gate in the fence. A simple chain and padlock was all that held it. Although they’d studied long-range images, they’d never been quite sure if that was all. Now he could confirm it. One padlock.

Security wasn’t a large part of the water utility’s agenda. Enough to discourage local youths from breaking in and causing petty damage. To that end, there were a couple of alarms and sensors rigged outside—at least, they were the only ones listed in the station’s inventory.

Prime was probing every aspect of the little station’s internal data network, examining each pearl and circuit for hidden traps and alarms. And not just the station: the local datapool architecture was being scrutinized for inert links leading to the station, secondary trip alarms that would link into the datapool only when an intruder activated them. If they were there, the Prime couldn’t find them.

Caution could only be taken so far before it became paranoia.

Raymond told the Prime to go to stage two. Images from the visual and infrared sensors around the station’s door froze as the software infiltrated their processors, although their digital timers kept flipping through the seconds, making the feed appear live. Another routine inserted itself into the lock. Raymond heard it click from where he was hiding.

He slipped out of the shadows and scrambled up the fence. A quick gymnastic twist at the top, and he landed on the unmown grass inside. It took another three seconds to reach the door and open it. Total elapsed exposure time, seven seconds. Not bad.

His d-written eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness inside, a tiny scattering of light gleaned from LEDs glowing on the equipment boards. There was only the one room. He could see the pumps, five bulky steel cylinders sitting on broad cradles. Thick pipes rose out of the concrete beside each one. Their heavy throbbing filled the air with a steady vibration.

He took the pack from his back and removed the explosives. Working quickly, he moved along the pumps, securing the small shaped charges directly above the bearings.

His retreat was as quiet and efficient as his entry. The lock clicked shut behind him. As soon as he was back over the fence, the door sensors resumed their genuine feed. The Prime withdrew from the Durrell datapool, erasing all log traces of its existence as it went.

The red-and-blue strobes were visible long before the pump station itself. Simon could see them through the car’s windshield as they turned off the main road and into the industrial estate, throwing out planes of light that flickered off the walls of buildings. Over a dozen police vehicles were drawn up around the pump station. Electric-blue plastic Police Crime Boundary barriers had been erected, forming a wide cordon outside the shaggy evergreen hedge. Uniformed officers were standing around it, while forensic personnel and robots carried out a slow centimeter-by-centimeter search of the ground.

Skin suits moved around inside the barriers like guards overseeing a chain gang, never physically mixing with the forensic team. A crowd of reporters was jostling the blue plastic, shoving sensors forward. There must have been twenty direct feeds diving into the datapool, delivering the operation direct to the public in every visual and audio spectrum acceptable to human senses. Even laser radars were being used to map out the scene in 3D. Questions were shouted at police and Skins, regardless of rank. A constant harassment, deliberately pitched to provoke a response of any kind.

Simon’s DNI was providing him with technical results from the forensic team as soon as their sensors acquired it. The grid of indigo tables and graphs was depressingly devoid of valid data.

“Can you believe this?” Braddock Raines said. He and Adul Quan were sharing the car with Simon. They were both staring out at the rest of the spectators. Staff from the factories and offices on the estate had gathered outside their respective doorways to observe the police operation firsthand. They shivered in the early morning chill, stamping their feet and swapping gossip and rumor, most of it invented by themselves.

Braddock took over manual control of the car and slowed it, steering around the clumps of people standing in the road. Most of them seemed oblivious to traffic.

“You want to go in, Chief?” Adul asked. “It won’t be very private.”

Simon hesitated for a moment. True, i-holograms could provide him with the scene of the crime to peruse at his leisure. And he had an inbuilt reluctance to be identified as any sort of important figure—especially here. Yet there was something about this whole act of sabotage that unsettled him. He just couldn’t work out why. Whatever he was looking for, it wouldn’t be in a hologram, no matter how high the resolution.

“I think we’ll take a look.”

“Okay.” Adul started to inform the platoon sergeant they were arriving, while Braddock parked the car as close as possible.

Reporters saw them pull up. Half a dozen made their way over as the doors opened. Three police officers and a couple of Skins moved to intercept them and clear a passage for Simon.

“Are you guys Zantiu-Braun’s secret police?”

“Will you use collateral necklaces in retaliation?”

Simon kept a neutral expression in place until they passed through the cordon. When they made it inside the pump station his nose crinkled at the sight. Then he realized he was standing in a couple of centimeters of water.

Each of the pumps had been torn apart, their impellers bursting out of the casing. Chunks of metal were embedded in the concrete walls and the ceiling. No piece of machinery was left intact; even the control boards were buckled and shattered.

Simon’s gaze swept from side to side. “Competent,” he murmured. “Very competent.” He saw the senior police officers, five of them huddled together. The sight amused him. He’d visited a great many crime scenes over the years, and anyone above the rank of lieutenant always sought out and stuck with his or her contemporaries. It was as if they were afraid they’d get mugged by the junior ranks if they were alone.

His personal AS interrogated the police AS and discovered the officer in charge. Detective Captain Oisin Benson. He was easy enough to identify: no other senior officer had hair that unkempt.

Oisin Benson caught sight of him at the same moment. He gave his colleagues a knowing look and came over.

“Can I help you?”

“We’re just here to take a preliminary look, Captain,” Simon said. “We won’t get in your way.”

“Let me phrase that better,” Oisin Benson said. “Who are you, and why do you think you have the right to be here?”

“Ah. I see. Well, we’re from the president’s office, and we’re here by the authority of General Kolbe. And the reason we’re here is to determine if this was an anti–Zantiu-Braun act.”

“It wasn’t.”

“You seem to have come to that conclusion remarkably quickly, Captain. What evidence have you got for that?”

“No slogans painted here. No statement released by freedom fighters. None of your people or operations were targeted. This is purely a civil matter.”

“Are there a lot of terrorist explosions on Thallspring?”

Detective Captain Oisin Benson leaned a fraction closer and smiled coldly. “They’re about as rare as tuberculosis, Mr. Roderick.”

So much for being unobtrusive, Simon thought. “Actually, Detective, our operations were targeted by this. The pump station provides several factories with water. All of them will have to curtail their operations until supplies can be restored.”

“Out of the seventeen factories supplied by this station, only five are being forced to provide your tribute. The utility company that owns this station, on the other hand, is the subject of several lawsuits concerning toxic spillage brought by the families of those afflicted. It’s a court battle that is taking a long time to resolve, and the company so far has not made any interim payments to the victims.”

“Has the company been threatened?”

“Their executives have received a great many threats, both verbally and in e-packages; they’re normally directed against them personally or their families, but there have been a considerable number made against the company itself.”

“How convenient.”

“You don’t like the truth, do you, Mr. Roderick? Especially when it doesn’t coincide with your own agenda.”

Simon sighed, resentful that he had to get involved in a public squabble with this petty official. “We’re going to look around now, Detective. We won’t take up any more of your time.”

“How considerate.” Oisin Benson stepped to one side and made a sweeping welcome gesture with his arm.

Simon splashed over to examine the first of the ruined pumps. He could feel the water seeping through his shoes to soak his socks. Two other people were studying the mangled machinery: an engineer who wore the utility company’s jacket and a technician from Z-B. The technician gave the three security men a slightly forced nod of acknowledgment. The engineer appeared completely indifferent to them as he ran a small palm-sized sensor over the wreckage.

“Anything of interest?” Simon asked.

“Standard commercial explosive,” the technician said. “There are no batch code molecules incorporated at manufacture, so I doubt the police will ever be able to trace it. Apart from that, I’m guessing they were all detonated simultaneously. That implies a radio signal. Could have come from outside, but more likely a timer placed with them. Again, very simple components. Universally available.”

The engineer straightened up, pushing a hand into his back. “I can tell you one thing. Whoever did it knew what they were about.”

“Really?” Simon said. “Why is that?”

“Size and positioning. They used the minimum amount of explosive on each pump. This station building is like all our others, the cheapest covering you can build, basically it just keeps the rain and wind off the pumps. Concrete panels reinforced by tigercloth, that’s all this is. And the whole thing is still standing. Six explosions in here last night, and the only damage is to the pumps. I’d call that a remarkably controlled explosion.”

“So we’re looking for an expert, then?”

“Yes. They knew plenty about the pumps, an’ all. Look.” He tapped a section of casing that resembled a tattered flower, fangs of metal peeled back. “They went for the bearings each time. Once they were broken, the impellers tore the whole thing apart from the inside. They spin at several thousand RPM, you know. Hell of a lot of inertia bottled up there.”

“Yes, I’m sure there is.” Simon consulted a file his personal AS was scrolling. “How long will it take to get the station back online?”

The engineer sucked his cheeks in, making a whistling sound. “Well, you’re not looking at repairs, see. This is going to have to be completely rebuilt. I know for a fact there’s only two spare pumps in our inventory. We’ll have to contract the engineering firm to build us the rest. You’re looking at at least six weeks to build and install. More likely eight or nine, what with things the way they are right now.”

Back in his office, Simon waited until his assistant had served himself and the two intelligence operatives with tea before he asked: “Well?”

“Clever,” Adul said. “And on more than one level.”

“There’s definitely no evidence to justify using collateral,” Braddock said.

“I doubt we’ll be able to use collateral for some weeks to come, not with this wretched TB outbreak,” Simon said gloomily. “It’s going to be tough enough keeping control with the locals blaming us for that. Put collateral executions on top of contagion, and we’d be in serious danger of losing overall control.”

“We can hardly leave ourselves wide open to them,” Adul protested. “They could pick off our asset factories one by one.”

“Humm.” Simon settled back in the deep settee and sipped his tea. “This is what’s bothered me since I realized how well executed this attack was. Just exactly who is ‘they’?”

“Government,” Adul said. “Strauss put some clandestine group together and provided them with all the equipment and training they needed. It can’t be anyone else: look at the level of expertise involved. Just enough to mess us up, and always short of invoking justifiable retaliation.”

“I’m not so sure,” Simon said. “It seems… petty, especially if Edgar Strauss is involved. Which he would have to be to authorize the formation of some covert agency. He favors the more blunt approach.”

“Good cover,” Braddock said ruefully.

“No,” Simon said. “He’s not that good an actor.”

“It’s worse, he’s a politician. One of the most slippery, conniving species of bastards the universe ever created.”

“It still doesn’t ring true,” Simon said. “Whoever they are, they know exactly what they’re doing. Yet they’re not doing anything except letting us know that they exist. List all the anti–Z-B acts here in Durrell since we landed,” he told the office AS. “Category two and above.”

The three of them read the file headings as they scrolled down the holographic pane on the table. There were twenty-seven, starting with the destruction of the spaceport’s hydrogen tank during the landing, moving on to include a couple of riots aimed at platoon patrols, squaddies targeted for fights when they visited bars and restaurants at night, a truck driven into the side of a Z-B jeep, industrial technicians beaten up while the accompanying squaddies were lured away, power cables to factories cut and reserve generators shorted out, production machinery wrecked by subversive software, raw material vanishing en route and finally the explosion at the pump station.

“Twenty-seven in three weeks,” Adul said. “We’ve seen worse.”

“Categorize them,” Simon said to the AS. “Separate out the incidents that have affected production of assets.” He examined the results. “Notice anything?”

“What are we looking for?” Braddock asked.

“Take out the two times our staff were hospitalized by thugs at the factories, and the road crash that wrecked the cargo of biochemicals on its way to the spaceport.”

Braddock ran down the list again. “Ah, the rest is all sabotage, and nobody has been caught. There are never any leads.”

“Last night’s attack on the pump station has the same signature. Whoever it was went through the door alarms and sensors as if they weren’t there. There is absolutely no record of anyone breaking in.”

“Could have been an employee at the last inspection.”

“Eight days ago,” Simon said. “And there were three of them. That would mean they all had to be involved.”

“How effective has this sabotage been?” Adul asked the office AS.

The holographic pane displayed several tables, which rearranged their figures.

“Jesus wept!” Braddock exclaimed at the total. “Twelve percent.”

“That’s very effective sabotage,” Simon muttered. “Catalogue any slogans at the scene or radical groups claiming responsibility.”

“None listed,” the office AS replied.

“The other incidents,” Simon said, “the riots and fights, catalogue slogans and claims of responsibility.”

The list scrolled down the pane again. A complex fan of lines sprang out from each file, linking them to other files. Simon opened several of them at random. Some were visual, showing graffito symbols sprayed on the wall in the aftermath of riots and fights, most of them with daggers or hammers smashing Z-B’s corporate logo, while the rest were crude messages telling them to go home in unimaginative obscenities signed by groups who were mostly initials, though someone calling himself KillBoy was quite common. Others were brief audio messages, digitally distorted to avoid identification, that had been loaded into the datapool for general distribution, declaring that various “acts” had been carried out in the name of the people against their interstellar oppressors.

Simon felt a brief glimmer of excitement at the results. The notion of the chase beginning. And most definitely a worthy adversary. “We have two groups at work here,” he said, and indicated the list on the pane. “The usual ragbag rabble of amateurs keen to strike a blow for freedom and clobber a couple of squaddies into the bargain. And then someone else.” The AS switched the display back to the sabotage incidents. “Someone who really knows what they’re doing and doesn’t seek to advertise it to the general public. They also know where we’re the most vulnerable: financially. There’s a small margin between viability and debt on these asset-realization missions. And if our losses and delays mount up, we might not break even.”

“I have a problem with this,” Adul said. “This sabotage group might keep their activities secret from the rest of Thallspring, but we were always going to know.”

“We know, but we can’t prove it,” Braddock said. “Like the pump station, none of them are directly attributable as anti–Z-B acts. There are always other, more plausible, explanations. And they have covered their tracks well, especially electronically, which I find disturbing.”

“We know,” Simon said. “And we were always going to know at some stage. They must have realized that.”

“That’s why they keep their attacks nonattributable.”

“There’s something missing,” Simon said. “If they are this good, then why aren’t they more effective?”

“You call twelve percent in three weeks ineffective?”

“Look at the abilities they’ve demonstrated. They could have made it fifty percent if they’d wanted.”

“At fifty percent we would have used collateral, no matter what plague is killing the population.”

“My God,” Adul said. “You don’t think they cooked up the tuberculosis as well, do you? That’s going to have a huge effect on asset production.”

“I won’t discount it altogether,” Simon said. “But I have to say I think it’s unlikely. Suppose we didn’t have templates for metabiotics and vaccines? They’d be exterminating their own people. That doesn’t seem to be their style.”

“But we are going to take a serious reduction in viability from their activities so far. They’ve been tremendously effective.”

Simon shook his head. “They’re holding back.”

“Chief, the only thing they haven’t done is declare all-out war.”

“I want to think this through: they always knew we would uncover what they’re doing, yes? That much is obvious. Very well, by clever deduction we discover there is a well-organized covert group intent on sabotaging our asset-acquisition schedule. What is our response going to be?”

“Hunt them down,” Adul said.

“Of course, and?”

“Step up our security.”

“Yes, which is going to tie up a great deal of our capacity, both in AS and human time.”

“You think that’s going to leave us open to their real attack? That this is all just a diversion?”

“Possibly. Though I admit I could be overestimating them.”

“If what we’ve seen so far is just a diversion,” Braddock said, “then I don’t want to think what their main attack’s going to be like.”

“Their ability is worrying, yes,” Simon said. “But I’m more concerned by their target. Our presence here is tripartite: personnel, starships and financial. They’ve already struck at our finances. If they wanted to render asset-realization inviable, they could have done it.”

“They’d face collateral,” Adul said.

“Santa Chico faced collateral. It never deters the die-hard fanatics. Consider it from their point of view: five hundred, even a thousand people dead, in exchange for ridding themselves of us for good. Wars of national liberation have rarely cost so few lives.”

“So you think it’s either us or the starships?”

“Yes. In which case, my money’s on the starships.”

“They’ll never get them.”

Simon smiled at the younger intelligence operative. “I know. That’s where all our faith is placed, our most impregnable fortress, as secure as e-alpha. The starships are invulnerable. We can detect and destroy any missiles. Our AS’s will prevent any subversive software from infiltrating on-board networks. And nothing gets past spaceport security. We deep-scan every gram of cargo. And no natives are ever allowed to dock.

“But just imagine they did get through, or that somehow they have acquired Santa Chico’s exo-atmospheric armaments.”

“How?” Adul demanded. “Santa Chico’s thirty light-years away. Even if they sent a maser message with the schematics, it couldn’t have reached here by now. Besides, we haven’t seen any of the spin generators in orbit.”

“We always assume that Earth is the only source of starships, or even portals. If anybody else can construct them, then it will be Santa Chico.”

“Dear God, if the Chicos are organizing resistance to the asset-realization missions…”

“Precisely. But I’m not convinced of that myself. I was on Santa Chico. Interstellar revolution doesn’t fit with their societal goals. And in any case, that planet is closed to spaceflight now. I’m simply using them as an example, a warning against complacency. We are totally reliant on our starships. If they are eliminated, then we are effectively dead. Our nonreturn would damage Zantiu-Braun’s interstellar operations permanently, possibly even to the point of shutting them down. That would be a catastrophe we cannot permit to happen. For all their ability to sustain themselves, the new worlds are dependent on us bringing them technological advances. Earth remains our race’s intellectual and scientific powerhouse. However unwelcome our links are, they cannot be severed.”

“Sir, I think you’re overreacting,” Braddock said, grinning nervously. “It’s one thing to blow up a couple of water pumps. And I acknowledge they did it flawlessly. But from that to shooting down or blowing up starships… It’s not going to happen.”

Simon considered the operative’s insistence. He’d known he would have trouble convincing them how serious this intangible threat was. Everyone in Z-B placed their trust in the dogma of the invulnerable starship, even Quan and Raines, by nature and profession the most suspicious members of the Third Fleet. Safeguarding this mission was going to test his skill and authority in ways he hadn’t envisaged when they embarked.

He held up a hand, a soft smile of understanding on his lips. “Humor me for the moment. If nothing else we need to disprove the notion.”

“Sir.”

They both nodded eager agreement, relieved by his mild reaction. “So, let us consider our strategy. We definitely need to tighten up security in the industrial sector. Parallel to that, we need to keep a close watch on possible sabotage routes that can lead to the starships. I’m open to suggestions.”

The population of Memu Bay was giving the platoon more space as they moved along their patrol route. Odel Cureton had been on enough patrols now to notice the difference. Before today, the locals had never really bothered much with them. The adolescents had shouted and spat, adults ignored them, nobody ever moved out of the way on crowded pavements. Pretty standard behavior. He’d seen it on every asset-realization mission (Santa Chico excepted). Today it was as if he had some invisible force field projecting out around his Skin, snowplow-shaped, moving people aside as he approached. One thing hadn’t changed: the stares of hatred and contempt; if anything they’d grown more intense.

A day after the TB warning, and their demon status was now irrevocable. Not only were they here to steal Memu Bay’s hard-earned wealth, their very presence endangered everyone. Demons with killer breath, every exhalation releasing a new swarm of lethal bacteria into the town’s humid, salty air.

He turned down into Gorse Street. Hal was on the other side, keeping level. There were no police with them today. The assigned constables simply hadn’t turned up. Odel didn’t care; he knew he could rely on Hal out here on the streets. For all the stick he took, the kid was actually a good squaddie. As he watched, he saw the kid’s head turn slightly as a couple of teenage girls walked past. He smiled to himself, imagining the kind of sensor imaging that the kid was requesting from his Skin. Not that he needed much enhancement. The girls weren’t wearing a whole lot to begin with.

It was about the hottest day since they’d landed. Not a cloud in sight. Every whitewashed wall seemed to reflect the full force of the sun. Several sections of his display grid were indicating just how the heat was affecting his Skin. The weave of thermal fibers underneath the carapace was working at high capacity, radiating the heat generated by both his own and the Skin’s muscles. His gill-vents were siphoning heat from the air before he inhaled. Even the carapace had adopted a light shading, partially reflecting the sun’s rays.

Tactically, it put him in shitty shape. A glowing beacon to just about every sensor going. Odel had never got the memory of Nic out of his head.

They reached the end of Gorse Street. “Sector eight clear,” he reported in. There was a lot of comfort to be had from routine these days. None of the platoon bitched about the sergeant’s insistence they stuck to the protocols. If anyone could get them through this and out the other side, it would be Lawrence Newton. After the last few missions, Odel knew his faith wasn’t misplaced.

“Roger that. Continue the sweep,” Lawrence told him.

“Got that, Sergeant.”

Odel and Hal crossed the road and started off down Muxloe Street. It was another row of small shops sitting under tall, austere apartment blocks, most of them claiming to be general stores and packed to their dirty ceilings with junk. But the road was wide, with a constant stream of traffic. The sergeant had quietly dropped side streets and narrow alleys from their itinerary over the last few days. Busy streets and plenty of people made ambushes and booby traps difficult.

Pedestrians melted away with sharp, rancorous glances. One woman pulled her two young children to one side, shielding them with a protective arm, their high voices chirping questions as he passed by.

He had a strong impulse to stop and remonstrate with her and anyone else who was listening—to reason logically, to explain, to prove he was a good chap really. The sergeant had done it with a bunch of children playing soccer the other day. But Odel knew he could never pull off anything like that. He didn’t have the words, and people laughed at his accent.

He kept on walking down the street. Tactile sensors flashed up numbers in their designated grid, telling him how hot the pavement slabs were under his Skin soles. He’d heard of people frying eggs on rocks heated by sunlight. These weren’t far off.

Several of Muxloe’s shops were shut, or closed—five of them together in a dilapidated block whose concrete panel walls were crumbling away in big broken blister patches. Gray-green fungus thrived in the cracks. Their windows were covered with bent, rusty roller blinds. Paint on the signs above the doors was fading, leaving little indication of what they had once sold. Polyethylene waste bags and weathered boxes had been dumped along the outside wall. Near the far end was a big glass bottle full of a bright scarlet fluid. A green T-shirt had been tied to the fat neck.

Odel was almost past the derelict shops when he stopped and spun around. Nearby civilians stared at him fearfully, wondering what they’d done. The Skin helmet’s visual sensors zoomed in, the T-shirt filling his vision.

“Sergeant!” he called. “Sergeant, I’ve found something. Sergeant, come and see this. Sergeant!”

“What is it?”

“You’ve got to see this.” Odel untied the T-shirt. The white lettering on the chest read Silverqueen Reef Tours Cairns.

Inside his hot Skin, Odel started shivering. He switched his sensors back onto the bottle. The liquid inside…

Lawrence waited in the anteroom as various aides scurried in and out of the mayor’s study. Every time one of them slipped in he wanted to barge past, to demand Ebrey Zhang’s attention. Forty-five frustrating minutes so far.

Captain Bryant had finally lost patience with him after a fruitless hour in the barracks, which they’d spent arguing. “You’ve had my answer, Sergeant,” he snapped. “I cannot authorize any further action at this point.”

“Then who can?” Lawrence asked. Given the way Z-B’s strategic security force was structured, you simply couldn’t be more insulting to your senior officer. Both of them knew it.

Captain Bryant took a moment to compose himself. “You have my authority to raise this with Commander Zhang. Dismissed, Sergeant.”

No matter how the meeting with Zhang went, Lawrence had blown it with Bryant. He found himself smiling on the walk over to Memu Bay’s town hall. He couldn’t give a flying fuck about Bryant and the report he would now be getting from the captain at the end of the campaign. He’d just gone and committed himself. Up until that moment his own private little asset-realization mission had been theoretical. The pieces were in place, but still he had held back from initiating anything. Then that one heated question had relieved him of any conscious decision-making.

Typical, he told himself wryly. Every major turning point in my life is decided by flashes of temper.

Thirty minutes into his wait, the City Hall lights flickered and went out. They were getting used to cuts in the hotel that the platoon had adopted as its barracks. The power supply failed most evenings when someone burned the cable, or lobbed a Molotov at a substation. But the fusion plant itself was always left intact: after all, the town would need that after Z-B left. It wasn’t just the barracks that suffered; power to the factories was interrupted. Internal rumor had it that they were over 20 percent behind on their asset-realization schedule.

Lawrence smiled to himself as shouts of alarm and annoyance echoed around the spacious cloisters. The overhead lights glowed like dim embers for a minute; then about a third of them slowly returned to full brightness as the emergency power supply came online, leaving the rest dark. Shadows swelled up out of the ornate arches and alcoves. If City Hall was anything like the hotel, the cells wouldn’t have managed to fully recharge since the last time. Their swimming pool had been emptied a week ago because of the power drain that the filtration and heating element placed on the hotel’s reserves.

One of Ebrey Zhang’s aides called him in. Lawrence pulled down the bottom of his dress tunic and went through the open doors. He halted in front of the big desk and saluted. All of the study lights were on.

“Sergeant,” Ebrey Zhang acknowledged with a wearied tone. A hand waved the aide out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. Ebrey moved back in his seat, picking up a desktop pearl to play with. He smiled. “You’ve been giving Captain Bryant a hard time, Newton.”

Lawrence had been hoping for the easy routine. He remembered Ebrey Zhang from a couple of campaigns ago, when he’d been a captain. The man was a good enough officer, a realist, who understood the principles of command. Knowing when to be a ballbuster and when to listen.

“Sir. It’s one of my men, sir.”

“Yes, I know that. But leave off Bryant. He’s new, and young, and still finding his feet. I’ll have a word with him this time, but that’s all.”

“Thank you, sir. And Johnson?”

“I know.” Ebrey sighed reluctantly. “But be realistic, Newton, what can I do that Bryant hasn’t done already? If you can give me any hint where to search, I’ll chopper ten platoons there immediately.”

“He’s dead, sir. There’s no point in searching. We have to show them they can’t get away with that. None of us will be safe unless you do something.”

“Ah. They. I take it you mean this KillBoy character?”

“Yes, sir, it seems likely. It’s his group that is organizing all this. You have to turn the citizens against them. Make everyone understand that he’s going to get them killed if he doesn’t stop. Without their support he’s nothing.”

“KillBoy, the conveniently phantom enemy.”

“Sir, we’ve been shot at, booby-trapped, maimed, injured, put in the hospital. We’re almost clocking up as many casualties as we did on Santa Chico. Half the platoons are scared to set foot outside the barracks. He’s no phantom, sir.”

“You really think it’s that bad?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“I know it’s tough on the street right now, Newton. But we’ve faced tougher. I have a lot of confidence in people like you to get the squaddies through this and lift intact at the end of it.”

“Do my best, sir. But we need help to keep people in order.”

Ebrey turned the rectangular desktop pearl over a couple of times, staring morosely at the furled pane. “I do understand what you’re saying, Newton. However, I have a problem right now. It’s going to be very difficult to use collateral when this TB threat is still ongoing. Thallspring’s population sees us killing them anyway with the disease. I have to be totally convinced that they have murdered Jones Johnson before I can activate a necklace.”

“Sir. It’s his blood. Four liters of it. DNA checks out one hundred percent.”

“And that’s my problem. Where’s the rest? You see, he can survive that loss easily enough. Infusing artificial blood isn’t even a difficult medical procedure. Any teenager with a first-aid proficiency certificate could manage it. So what happens after I flood the datapool telling Memu Bay that we’re retaliating for them murdering one of my squaddies, and then he turns up alive after the necklace is activated? Have you thought of that? Because that’s the situation here. This KillBoy can organize snipers and mysterious accidents. He can certainly hold on to a captive for a couple of weeks until we screw up. I simply cannot allow that to happen.”

“He won’t turn up, sir. They killed him.” There were other things Lawrence wanted to mention. Like how the killers knew where to leave the bottle of blood in the first place. No one outside of Z-B knew the patrol route that the platoon would take, not even the local police. It was planned out in the operations center ten hours before they went out. Even he didn’t get briefed until an hour beforehand. To his mind, e-alpha was totally compromised. Yet for all Ebrey Zhang’s apparent reasonableness, he could imagine the commander’s reaction if he blurted that out. Right now, it would be one conspiracy too many.

“You’re probably right,” Ebrey Zhang said. “And I’ve had personal experience on what it’s like to lose a platoon member. More than one, in fact. So I know how you all feel right now. But I simply cannot take the risk. I’m sorry, Newton, genuinely sorry, but my hands are tied.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you for seeing me, anyway.”

“Listen, your platoon’s had two casualties now. That will be making the rest edgy. Am I right?”

“They’re not happy, sir, no.”

“I’ll speak with Bryant, have him assign you some extra relief time.”

“Sir. Appreciate that.”

“And you can tell your men from me: one more incident like this, and I won’t hesitate in using collateral. They’ll be safe on the streets from now on.”

If he felt any irony at the time that he’d chosen, Josep Raichura didn’t show it. One o’clock in the morning, and Durrell’s spaceport was illuminated by hundreds of electric lights, making it seem as though a small patch of the galaxy had drifted down to the ground. White-pink light shone out from deserted office windows. Stark white light, with a bleed-in of violet, drenched the giant arboretum at the center of the terminal building. Vivid sodium-orange cast wide pools along the loops of road that webbed the entire field. Blue-star halogen fans burned out from the headlights of the very few vehicles driving along those roads. Dazzling solar cones were embedded within the tall monotanium arches that curved above the parking aprons like the supports of some missing bridge, illuminating huge swaths of tarmac where the delta-shape spaceplanes waited silently.

An embroidery of dapples, overlapping in some areas, leaving others in somber darkness, and none of them revealing any activity. The universal indication of human installations dozing through the night shift. It was home only to the basic maintenance crews closeted in the big hangars, tending the myriad machines in readiness for the dawn and its surge of activity. Moving among the inert structures, and even fewer in number, were the Skins—the ones who’d drawn the bad duty—surly inside their private, invulnerable cocoons, resenting the tedium that came from walking the empty perimeter, the boredom of checking with the crews hunched over diagnostic instruments, the frustration of knowing that even when their duty did end they’d be too tired to enjoy the day (as much as any of them could in the hostile capital). Sticking with it nonetheless, because they knew this was the one place that had to remain secure if any of them were ever to get off this godforsaken planet and return home.

The spaceport at this time, then, was a little enclave of doleful and miserable people, serving their designated hours with an efficiency well below par. A time when human body-cycles were at their lowest; the classic time for nefarious raids and excursions. A time of vulnerability recognized as such by every guard commander since before the fall of Troy. And still they remained unable to install any sense of urgency and heightened alert among the men they led.

So Josep, armed though he was with his d-written body and Prime software, kept with tradition and history and used the small hours to make his exploratory foray. The perimeter was easy enough to breach. There was a fence, and lights, and electronic alarms that certainly never suffered from the human malaise during the night, and sentry Skins. Had he wanted to, he could have wriggled through it all like a special forces commando, with even the nocturnal animals unaware of his passing. But, frankly, when there’s a huge front gate, why bother?

At noon, he rode his scooter up to one of the eight main road barriers, his little machine jammed between a juggernaut full of biochemicals and a convoy of cars belonging to afternoon-shift workers. He swiped his security card through the barricade’s slot and took his crash helmet off for the AS to run a visual identity check. Every received byte tallied to the profile that his Prime had loaded into the spaceport network the previous day, and the red-and-white-striped barrier post whisked upward, allowing him through.

He drove carefully around the small roads linking hangars, warehouses and offices on the northern side of the sprawling glass and metal starfish that was the terminal building. Thallspring didn’t possess a huge space program, but the respectable number of projects and commercial ventures it did have were all supported by Durrell’s spaceport. Fifteen standard low-orbit (six hundred kilometers) stations circled above the equator. Twelve were industrial concerns, churning out valuable crystals, fibers and exotic chemicals for the planet’s biggest commercial consortiums; the three others were resorts, catering to very rich tourists who endured the rigors of surface-to-orbit flight to marvel at the view and enjoy zero-gee swimming and freefall sex (occasionally combined) in heavily shielded stations. A small flotilla of interplanetary craft were maintained, principally to support the scientific research bases that the government had established on several planets. And orbiting a hundred thousand kilometers above the equator was the asteroid, Auley, which had been captured eighty years ago, to which clusters of refinery modules were now attached. Thousands of tons of superpure steel were produced there each month, then formed into giant aerodynamic bodies that were flown down through the atmosphere to feed Thallspring’s metallurgical industry. In addition hundreds of other, more sophisticated, compounds that could be formed only in microgee conditions were extruded from the asteroid’s raw ores and minerals and shipped down by more conventional means. In total, all this activity had developed to a stage where a fleet of over fifty spaceplanes were required to sustain it.

The Galaxycruisers were an indigenous design, so claimed the Thall-spring National Astronautical Corporation, a consortium of local aerospace companies that built them—though anyone with full access to Earth’s data-pool would have noticed a striking similarity with the Boeing-Honda Stratostar 303 that had first flown in 2120, of which eight had been shipped to Thallspring. Whatever the origin, the scramjet-powered spaceplanes were a success, boosting forty-five tons to low orbit, and capable of bringing down sixty tons.

Zantiu-Braun had diverted several of them from normal operational duties to lift its plundered assets up to the waiting starships. Given that most of the spaceplanes were already used to support the industry that provided the most high-value manufactured products of all, in the orbital stations, the number that could be taken out of scheduled flights was sorely limited. In any case, there were not enough passenger spaceplanes to lift the entire invasion force back up to the starships at the end of the campaign. So Z-B had brought forty-two of their own Xianti 5005 spaceplanes to augment the indigenous capacity.

It was these newcomers that interested Josep. He ate lunch in the maintenance staff canteen, sitting beside one of the picture windows that overlooked a parking apron. Only two cargo-variant Xiantis were parked there, with Z-B’s own crews and robots working on them. The rest were flying. He chewed his food slowly, taking the time to examine the area, note where crates had been stacked, the shortest distance from spaceplanes to a building, location of doors.

After lunch he kept moving, either walking through the terminal or riding between sections on his scooter. People who look like they have a purpose can go unnoticed in the most security-conscious environments. All the time, he was correlating the physical reality of the parking apron layout with the electronic architecture that his Prime had trawled out of the datapool. He even risked sending it into the Z-B AS that had been installed in the spaceport command center to run their groundside operations, including security. Details of the alarms and sensors installed themselves in Josep’s vision, a ghost diagram of cables and detectors locking into his visual perception, threading their way in and out of buildings and underground conduits. Schedules, timetables and personnel lists followed. He began to work through them all, slowly reducing options, finding the best-placed spaceplane, best route to it, optimum time, multiple escape routes. Afternoon faded into evening, and the spaceport lights came on as the gold sun sank below the hills fencing Durrell. There were fewer takeoffs now and more landings as the big machines returned home for the night.

By one o’clock all flights had ceased. Josep walked along the rear of a vast maintenance hangar, whose arched roof covered five Xiantis and three Galaxycruisers, and still had four empty bays. Inside, there was less illumination than there was outside; the lightcones fixed to the metal rafters were bright, but their beams were well focused, splashing the concrete floor with intense white circles. Beyond them, shadow embraced over a quarter of the hangar’s volume. His path kept him on the fringe of the lighted areas, and well clear of the bays where crews were working. A couple of Skins were inside the hangar, wandering about at random, so he had to be careful there was nothing suspicious about his movements. Keeping out of the lights altogether would have drawn their attention.

Josep reached one of the unoccupied bays and moved forward. Just to the side of the massive sliding doors at the front was a smaller door. He reached it and put his palm on the sensor plate. The lock buzzed, and he pushed it open.

Twenty meters away, the sculpted nose of a Xianti pointed at the maintenance hangar. Solar cones shone far overhead, glinting off the pearl-white carbon-lithium composite fuselage. There was a service truck parked on either side of the spaceplane, with hoses plugged into various umbilical sockets along the underbelly. An airstair led up to the forward airlock.

Josep walked over the tarmac, concentrating more on the icons being relayed from the spaceport network than his eyesight. Four cameras covered the spaceplane. His Prime had infiltrated each one, eliminating his image from the feed to Z-B’s AS. Three rings of sensors were arranged concentrically around the sleek machine. None of them registered his presence as he walked across them. No Skins were within five hundred meters.

The airstairs were protected by both a voiceprint codeword and a biosensor that registered his blood vessel and bone patterns. It was an effective security device, but only ever as good as the patterns that were loaded into the system’s e-alpha fortress. Josep’s codeword and body map corresponded to one of those on file, and the airstair door slid open. He took the steps two at a time. The airlock at the top had a simple manual latch. Pull and turn.

Secondary lighting came on, illuminating the small cabin with an emerald glow. This Xianti was one of the cargo variants. Its cabin was cramped, with minimum facilities and room for up to five seats for the systems officer and payload managers. At the moment there were only two bolted to the floor, with the brackets for the others covered in plastic sleeves. Josep went forward and sat in the pilot’s seat. The curved console in front of him was surprisingly compact, with three holographic panes angling up out of it. The two narrow windshields allowed him to see down the length of the nose, but showed very little else. He could understand that. Technically there was no need for any controls or windshields at all. The human pilot would always be fitted with a DNI. And that was only used for efficient communication with the AS pilot, which really controlled the spaceplane. The console and its displays were emergency fallbacks, although many people preferred pane graphics to the indigo icons of DNI. Windshields were there purely for the psychology.

Josep took a standard powered Allen key out of his belt pouch and hunched down in the seat to examine the base of the console. There were several inspection panels underneath. He opened two of them and found what he was looking for. The neurotronic pearls that housed the AS were sealed units buried deep in a service module, but they still had to be connected to the spaceplane systems. He wormed his dragon-extruded desktop pearl into the narrow gap toward the fiberoptic junction, and waited while the little unit morphed itself, extending needle probes into the unit. Prime flooded in.

They might have managed to infiltrate a spaceplane AS pilot through a satellite relay, but the risk of detection was too great. It was a single channel, easily monitored for abnormalities by secure AS’s on the starships. Either they attempted to take over every Z-B AS, or they established a direct physical link. The first option wasn’t even considered.

The dataflow reversed, dumping the entire AS pilot program into the desktop pearl. They would examine it later, learning the minutiae of ground-to-orbit flight in the strange vehicle. Its communications traffic. Docking procedures. When the time came, Zantiu-Braun would never know that someone and something else was on board until it was far too late.

The desktop pearl card informed Josep that it had copied the entire AS. Prime began to withdraw from the spaceplane’s pearls, erasing all evidence of its invasion. Needle probes slid out of the fiberoptic junction and melted back into the casing. Josep replaced the panel and tightened it up.

Despite all his preparation, planning and caution, the one thing they all accepted was that there could be no protection against chance.

Josep had already opened the secure door at the bottom of the airstair when his relay from the cameras around the parking apron showed him a man emerging from the maintenance hangar. He was dressed in the loose navy-blue coveralls worn by all the spaceport’s engineering maintenance staff. Prime immediately ran identification routines. Dudley Tivon, aged thirty-seven, married, one child, employed by the spaceport for eight years, promoted last year to assistant supervisor, fully qualified on Galaxycruiser hydraulics. He didn’t have DNI, but his bracelet pearl was on standby, connected into the spaceport network. Prime moved into the communication circuit, blocking his contact with the datapool.

There was a moment when Josep could have ducked down behind the airstair, out of Dudley Tivon’s sight. But that was an unknown risk. He didn’t know what direction Dudley Tivon would walk, or how long he would be milling round outside. Every second spent crouched down was a second of exposure to anyone else who came along from a different direction. There were three Skins currently in the vicinity.

Instead he walked straight for Dudley Tivon. That reduced the outcome to two possibles. Either Dudley Tivon would assume he was just another night-shift worker going about his business, and do nothing. Being seen didn’t concern Josep. So far his visitation had left no traces. Z-B didn’t even know they had to look for evidence of anyone penetrating their security. Or Dudley Tivon would question what he was doing. In which case…

For a few seconds, as he drew close, Josep thought he’d got away with it. Then Dudley Tivon’s pace slowed to a halt. He frowned, looking first at Josep, then back to the foreign spaceplane.

Prime in the surrounding cameras immediately began generating a false image, showing four different viewpoints of Dudley Tivon walking on uninterrupted across the parking apron.

“What are you doing?” Dudley Tivon asked as Josep drew level.

Josep smiled, nodding at the hangar. “Gotta get over to bay seven, Chief.”

“You came out of that spaceplane.”

“What?”

“How the hell did you get in it? You’re not from Z-B. Those things are wired up eight ways from Sunday. What were you doing in there?” Dudley Tivon began to raise the arm on which he wore his bracelet pearl.

Information trawled from the datapool came into Josep’s mind. Dudley Tivon’s wife had been fitted with a collateral collar.

The assistant supervisor was making an issue of seeing where Josep had emerged, and he could never allow acts of sabotage or dissent against Z-B. It might well be his wife’s collar that was activated in retaliation.

“I was just—” Josep’s right arm shot out, stiffened fingers slamming into Dudley Tivon’s Adam’s apple. The man’s neck snapped from the force of the blow. His body lurched back, but Josep was already following it. He caught the limp figure as it collapsed and lifted it effortlessly over his shoulder.

The Skins were still out of sight. Nobody else was outside the maintenance hangar. Josep jogged quickly to the door he’d used on his approach to the spaceplane and slipped through.

There was an office fifteen meters away from the door, shut for the night. He reached it in five seconds, bundled the corpse inside, then checked to see if anyone had noticed. Neither the maintenance crews nor Skins had reacted, and no alarms were screaming into the datapool.

They even had a contingency for an incident like this. Priority had to be given to getting the body out of the spaceport for disposal. No suspicion must be attached to the area.

Josep called up a menu for cargo robots currently in the maintenance hangar.

Camera feeds outside continued to show Dudley Tivon walking across the parking apron. He opened a door into the neighboring hangar and disappeared inside.

“After eight years of flight, Mozark had traveled halfway around the Ring Empire, stopping at over a hundred star systems to explore and learn what he could in the hope of inspiration. He could no longer see his own kingdom; that little cluster of stars was lost from sight behind the massive blaze of gold, scarlet and dawn-purple light that was the core. Few of his kind had ever ventured into this part of the Ring Empire, yet he felt comfortable amid the races and cultures inhabiting this section of the galaxy.

“Mozark might not have seen any of these species before, but everywhere he traveled he was able to communicate with his new hosts and eventually able to learn their separate philosophies and interests and goals and dreams. In many ways this heartened him, that he had so many ideas at his disposal, all of which he was eventually able to understand. Some he regarded as magnificent, and he looked forward to introducing them to the kingdom when he returned home. Some were simply so alien that they could never be adopted or used by his own kind, although they remained interesting on a purely intellectual level. While some were too hideous or frightening even to speak of.”

Edmund immediately stuck his hand up, as Denise knew he would.

“Yes, Edmund?” she asked.

“Please, miss, what were they?”

“The hideous and frightening ideas?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t know, Edmund. Why do you want to know?”

“Coz he’s horrible!” Melanie shouted. The other children laughed, giggling and pointing at the beleaguered boy. Edmund stuck his tongue out at Melanie.

“Enough,” Denise told them, waiting until they’d quietened down again. “Today’s story is all about the time when Mozark meets the Outbounds. Now this wasn’t a single race: like the Last Church, the Outbounds attracted a great many people to their cause. In many ways they were the opposite of the Last Church. The Outbounds were building starships. Not just the ordinary ones that the Ring Empire used for trade and travel and exploration. These were intergalactic starships.” She gave the children a knowing look as they ooohed with wonder. “The greatest machines the technology of the Ring Empire could devise. They were the largest, fastest, most powerful and sophisticated ships that this galaxy has ever known. The effort to build them was immense; the Outbounds had taken over an entire solar system to serve as a construction center. Only a star with all of its circling planets could provide them with the resources necessary. Mozark spent a month there, flying his own small ship around all the facilities, playing tourist amid these tremendous cathedrals of engineering. The Outbounds proudly told him of the ocean-sized converter disks that they’d dropped into the star, where they’d sunk down to the inner layers to settle amid the most intense fusion process to be found within the interior. That was the only place to generate sufficient energy to power the tens of thousands of industrial bases operating through the system. Behemoths in their own right, these bases were partially mobile, allowing them to swallow medium-sized asteroids in their entirety. The rocks were digested and separated into their constituent minerals, which were then fed into refinery towers. Biomechanical freighters that only operated in-system would collect the finished products and ferry them to manufacturing facilities where they would be fabricated into components for the starships.

“The shipyards they were built in were the size of a small moon. Each individual intergalactic ship was miles long, with silver-and-blue hyper-morphic hulls that would gather up every speck of starlight falling on their spinshifted molecules and radiate it away again in a uniform coronal shimmer. When they were parked in orbit, they were smooth and egg-shaped. Then, when their engines came alive, flinging them into the nullvoid at hundreds of times the speed of light, they would instantly convert themselves into sleek rapiers sprouting long, aggressive forward-swept tail fins. It was as though the nullvoid where they now traveled possessed an atmosphere of elementary photons through which only their metasonic profile would fly.

“Mozark, of course, was enthused by the whole project. The Outbounds were the Ring Empire’s final and greatest pioneers. The intergalactic ships were taking colonists to other galaxies. New empires would be born out there on the other side of the deep night. That would be a wondrous future flowering out there amid the unknown, replete with challenges and struggle. Life would not be smooth and complacent as it was amid the Ring Empire.

“He watched the ordinary passenger starships dock, bringing the tens of thousands of colonists who were searching for a new life for themselves and their descendants. They had come from kingdoms right across the neighboring section of the Ring Empire, hundreds of different species united by wanderlust. The first time he saw an intergalactic ship launch itself into nullvoid he felt nothing but envy. They were his soulmates, and he was being left behind. But such was his duty; he had to return home to his own kingdom. There and then, with his own ship still floundering for stability in the energy backwash of the intergalactic ship’s drive, he wanted to bring word of this enormous venture back to his people. He envisaged the kingdom’s resources being turned over to a similar project, carrying them all on a magnificent voyage to the future. It was only after the massive ship had vanished from his sensors that doubts and disillusionment began to creep into his thoughts. He had undertaken this quest voyage to find something that would benefit and inspire all of his people. Yet how many of them, he wondered, would really want to discard everything they had and gamble on a wild trip into uncharted reaches of the universe? Many would: millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. But his kingdom was home to billions of people, all of them leading a relatively happy existence. Why should he make them abandon that? What right could he possibly have to tear them away from the worlds and society they had built, and which served them so well?

“That was when he finally began to understand himself and his own dissatisfaction. Looking out of his own ship at its proud, giant cousins orbiting a nameless barren Outbounds planet he now saw only a difference in scale. Both he and the colonists were prepared to fly away into the unknown in order to find what they hoped would be a worthwhile life. They were probably braver than he, taking a bigger chance with what they would find and where they would end up. But for them it would be the flight itself that was the accomplishment. When they reached that far shore, they would have every ability and material advantage at their disposal that they had in the Ring Empire itself. There were no new ideas waiting for them out there, only space that was—one hoped—a little less crowded. They were taking the primary Ring Empire culture with them in the form of the technology and data that were their heritage. Just as the similarity that pervaded the Ring Empire was due to its monoknowledge base, so these fledgling seeds would sprout identical shoots. If anything, he decided, the colonists weren’t as brave as he was: they were just running away. At least he was trying to help his people back in the kingdom.”

Denise stopped, conscious of the way the children were regarding her with faintly troubled expressions. One or two of them were even resentful and impatient, picking at the blades of grass and throwing the occasional wistful glance out at the white town beyond the wall. This was no longer the story they thought it was going to be, a quest with terrible hardships to overcome and monsters to battle. All they were hearing was how Mozark kept turning his nose up at wonders and sights beyond anything they would ever know. A fine hero he made.

She rebuked herself for losing sight of whom she was telling this to and gathered up her memories of the story. There was much that she could discard: shorn of its abstracts and philosophizing, it could still be made to work for them.

“So when he was standing there in his starship, thinking all these thoughts about the Outbounds and the Last Church, and The City, and even the Mordiff, Mozark suddenly knew what he had to do.”

“What?” one of the girls asked avidly.

“He had to go home,” Denise said. “Because he knew then what he was going to say to Endoliyn, the thing he was going to devote the rest of his life to.”

“What!” the chorus was yelled at her.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Denise said with a mischievous laugh. “You should be out there playing and enjoying it. I’ll tell you what happened when Mozark returned to his kingdom soon.”

“Now!”

“No. I said soon.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Possibly. If you’re good.”

They promised her they were and would always be.

She let them scatter and fling themselves about on the school’s small, protected lawn. There was no need for her to check her big old watch; she knew what the time was. The goodwill soccer game was about to start.

Clusters of d-written neural cells connected Denise with Memu Bay’s datapool. Several reporters were covering the game—not that there was much interest. Public access figures for the game were minimal. They were already lining their cameras up on the pitch, bringing the two teams into focus as they went through their prematch kickabout routines.

Lawrence stopped the ball firmly and tapped it with the inside of his right foot. It bobbled along the ground, rolling to a halt a couple of meters away from Hal, who gave him a disgusted look. The maneuver was supposed to be a deft pass, landing just so for Hal to kick into the defenders’ goal area. Instead, as Hal made a frantic dash for the ball, two of the lads they were playing against tackled him. For a moment Lawrence thought they were playing rugby by mistake. Hal hadn’t quite reached the ball, and they were high, legs lashing out.

Hal yelped as he fell, his shoulder taking the full impact. “Fuck me,” he grunted under his breath.

The ref blew his whistle.

Hal looked up at him expectantly.

“Free kick,” the ref grunted reluctantly.

“What card are you showing them?” Hal asked indignantly. The ref walked away.

Lawrence and Wagner got their hands under the kid’s shoulders and lifted him up. “He’s got to be kidding,” Hal cried. “That was a yellow card at least.”

“Slightly different rules here,” Lawrence said, hoping it would calm the kid down. Hal looked as if he was about to start a fight.

The two lads who’d tackled him were grinning happily. One of them showed a finger. “KillBoy says spin on it.”

Hal lurched forward, snarling. Lawrence and Wagner just managed to hold on to him. There were a few desultory cheers from the touchline where the locals were gathered.

It wasn’t different rules here at all. For the tenth time since the goodwill game started, Lawrence’s Loafers versus the Avenging Angels, Lawrence wondered if this had been such a good idea after all. The locals saw this purely as a way to legitimately hack Z-B squaddies to pieces with the strangely long studs on their boots and tackles that would make a kung-fu master wince.

Just before kickoff, Ebrey Zhang had come over for a quiet pep talk with the team. After he’d finished spouting on about opportunities and enhanced community relations, he’d said to Lawrence: “We don’t want to cause any sort of commotion here, Sergeant. Let’s just take it easy out there, shall we?”

“Are you ordering us to lose, sir?” Lawrence had asked. He supposed in a way it was flattering, their commander assuming they would automatically win. But he’d seen some of the youths they were up against. Big and fit-looking. It should be quite a tight game.

“No, no,” Ebrey said softly. “But we wouldn’t want a walkover, would we? Bad feeling and all that.”

“Got you, sir.”

“Good man.” Ebrey slapped him heartily on the shoulder and joined the rest of the Z-B supporters.

Goodwill had run out in the first five minutes. Not that the Avenging Angels had ever brought any to the pitch in the first place.

Hal took the free kick, sending the ball in a long arc over to Amersy. The corporal began his run down the wing. Lawrence ran level with him on the other side, two Avenging Angels marking him close all the way. Close enough to mistakenly knock into him when the ref happened to be looking the other way.

Lawrence skidded along the mud, almost losing his balance. Amersy had raced on ahead now, leaving Lawrence hopelessly misplaced to receive a pass. “Damn it,” he growled. His markers were surprised when he elbowed them aside. Fortunately the ref was still watching Amersy as the corporal was tackled.

“Support!” Lawrence screamed at his team. “Support him, for fuck’s sake, you pitiful assholes.”

“Now, Sergeant,” Captain Bryant’s voice carried in faintly from the touchline. “No need for that sort of language.”

Lawrence glared, managing to force out a few words under his breath.

Amersy was trying to lift himself off the ground as the victorious Avenging Angels made off with the ball. The hulking hooligans actually had good ball control, Lawrence admitted grudgingly. They nudged it between them, easily beating their way around the one midfielder who tried to intercept them.

Where the fuck was the rest of the team?

“Defense,” Lawrence shouted desperately. His arms semaphored wildly. At least his backs had some understanding of tactics. Two were coming forward to take on the Avenging Angels with the ball. Three were guarding the goal area. A midfield duo were heading to the other wing, marking the Avenging Angels striker who was dodging forward into position. Lawrence saw one of their midfielders heading for an open space in the center circle and ran to cut him off.

Not such a bad game after all, and his men could play tough too.

The land mine went off under the Lawrence’s Loafer defender on the right of the goal area. It blew him three meters straight up into the air, taking off his legs and shredding his lower torso. Lawrence dived to the ground at the dull thudding boom of the explosion. An eerie moment of silence followed. Then the defender’s upper torso thumped down, lifeless arms flopping about grotesquely from the jarring impact. His head twisted around to stare blankly at the goalmouth. Lawrence recognized Graham Chapell, a squaddie from Ciaran’s platoon. Blood and gore splattered across half of the pitch. There was still no sound; everyone was too shocked even to scream.

Lawrence looked around wildly, seeing the steaming crater that had ripped out of the ground, understanding immediately what had happened. Everybody else had flung themselves down. He watched in horror as the ball rolled on, bouncing and juddering across the rucked grass field.

Stop, he implored it silently. Oh fuck, stop. Stop!

The damn thing was easily big enough to trigger another mine if it passed over one. It was rolling toward Dennis Eason, who was watching it coming, his face drawn into a rictus of terror and fatalistic expectation.

The ball stopped half a meter from him. He let out a sob of relief as his head dropped back to the mud.

People were yelling and screaming now, spectators as well as players; they were all flat on the ground. Z-B personnel were all shouting at everyone not to move, to stay exactly as they were. Help was on its way.

Lawrence clenched his fists, pushing them into the mud, furious at how helpless he was. Waiting with every muscle locked tight in fright and suspense. Supremely vulnerable without his Skin. Open for death from any passing student revolutionary with a whim to be a hero that day. He hated KillBoy right then. Hated this whole fucking world. That had never happened before. Not ever. The best he’d ever come up with before today was animosity and contempt.

All they were doing here was playing soccer, for God’s sake. Soccer. Their own people as well, few of whom were out of their teens. He could hear the young Avenging Angels around him, whimpering in terror, several of them crying.

What the hell was wrong with these people? He wanted to shout it out at them. They’d hear. They’d be here watching, relishing the distress and dread they’d created. Gloating as the knife was twisted.

But all he could do was grit his teeth and lie still, the muddy water seeping into his shirt and shorts. Waiting for the glorious sound of the helicopters.

Seven platoons were rushed to the park where the soccer game was being played. Their helicopters landed on the roads around the outside. The Skins advanced cautiously, sensors probing the ground as they came.

They reached Ebrey Zhang first, leading the commander away down a safe path marked out by beacon tubes that flashed a bright amber. His helicopter thundered away overhead as the remaining Skins spread out over the park, sensors playing back and forth. People were slowly led away one at a time, shaking with relief as they leaned on the squaddies. They reached Lawrence forty minutes after the helicopters arrived. He stood unsteadily, staring around. A confusing grid of amber lights were flashing all across the pitch. Three red lights gleamed bright among them. One was four meters away from where Lawrence had lain.

A medic squad was picking up pieces of Graham Chapell from cleared sections of the pitch, putting him in thick black polyethylene bags.

“Bastards,” Lawrence hissed as the Skin eased him toward the waiting jeeps. “You utter bastards.”

Dean Blanche was ushered into the mayor’s study by one of Ebrey Zhang’s aides. The commander only needed one look at the carefully blank expression on the internal security captain’s face to know it was going to be bad news.

“So?” he asked when the doors were closed.

“They were our land mines,” Captain Blanche said.

“Shit! Are you sure? No, forget that, of course you are. Goddamnit, how could that happen?”

“We don’t understand yet. According to the inventory they’re still in storage. We did a physical check, of course. Eight are missing.”

“Eight?” Ebrey asked in alarm. “How many were planted in the park?” He was never terribly at ease with land mines. Z-B policy required them to be available in case the situation on the ground became troublesome, and the squaddies had to protect strategic areas from outright aggression. Effectively that meant the spaceport during their retreat. He was thankful that he’d never had to order their deployment. The damn things were a lethal legacy that could last for decades, completely indiscriminate in choosing their victims.

“We found five. With one detonated…”

“Oh, Christ.” Ebrey went to the small drinks cabinet on the rear wall and poured himself what the locals laughingly described as bourbon. He didn’t normally drink in front of his junior officers, and certainly not those from internal security, but it had been a long, bad day, and this wasn’t a happy ending. “Want one?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Your choice.” He stood at the French windows, looking up into the night sky. It was three o’clock in the morning, and the stars were twinkling warmly. After today, he was seriously beginning to wonder if he’d ever make it back up there among them. “So we’ve got three mines planted out there somewhere in town waiting for us to step on them.”

“Two, sir.”

“What? Oh, yes. Two unaccounted for. Any chance the platoons could have missed them in the park?”

“It’s possible, sir. I’m going to order another sweep in the morning, when it’s light.”

“Good man. Now how in Christ’s name did they get them out of the armory?”

“I’m not sure, sir.” Blanche hesitated. “It would be difficult.”

“You mean difficult for anyone outside Zantiu-Braun.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t believe one of our own people would do this. There’s no grudge or vendetta worth it.” He looked around sharply at the deeply uncomfortable captain. “Is there?”

“No, sir. Nothing that serious among the platoons.”

“We’re missing somebody. Jones Johnson, the one whose blood they found. Could he have… I don’t know, defected?”

“Possible, sir.”

“Is Johnson capable of getting into the armory?”

“I don’t know, sir. A lot of the squaddies tend to know shortcuts through our software.”

“Damnit. We have safeguards for a reason. Especially on weapons.”

“Sir. I do have one possible lead.”

“Yes?”

“The other mines were on standby, and the soccer teams were running all over that field for thirty minutes before the explosion. It must have been activated just before Chapell ran over it.”

Ebrey brightened. “KillBoy transmitted a code.”

“Yes, sir. If it went through the datapool we can try to trace it. Of course, it could have been an isolated transmitter. In which case, someone had to be close enough to send the code. I can review all the memories from every sensor in the district. The AS may be able to spot someone who fits the right behavior profile. But somewhere in today’s data there should be some evidence.”

“Whatever you need, as much AS time as it takes, you’ve got it. Your assignment has total priority. Just find this piece of shit for me. I don’t care how long it takes, but I’m going to see Mr. KillBoy swinging from the top of this Town Hall before we leave.”