Her arms stopped flailing and she started to weep. Aaron shook his head in dismay; he’d thought she was more capable than this. He reached the lift and his biononics produced a small disruptor effect. The lift doors cracked, their glossy surface darkening as if he was watching them age centuries in every second. They crumbled away into dust and flakes, pouring away down the shaft where they pattered on to the top of the lift as it stood waiting on the ground floor. Aaron tightened his grip on Corrie-Lyn and jumped down the shaft. She screamed as the darkness rushed past her, a genuine terrified-for-her-life bellow of fear.
His integral force field expanded, cushioning their landing. Another disruptor pulse flashed out from his biononics and the top of the lift disintegrated beneath his feet. Two very startled police officers were looking up as he fell through on top of them. Both of them had force field webbing, which protected them from the impact. The weapons enrichment in Aaron’s forearm had to increase its power level by two orders of magnitude to puncture the webbing with a stun pulse. He walked out, still carrying a now-silent Corrie-Lyn. There were several police officers in the corridor between the lift and the welcome hall. They shouted at him to stop, which he ignored. A barrage of energy shots smacked across his force field, encasing him and Corrie-Lyn in a screeching purple nimbus. It didn’t even slow him down. He emerged into the welcome hall to see Clerics and visitors running for cover, yelling for help vocally and digitally. Police were taking cover in the archways to three corridors, their weapons peppering him with shots. He fired several low-power disruptor pulses at the hall’s ceiling. Thick clouds of composite fragments plummeted down, filling the air with cloying particles; steel and carbon girders sagged, emitting dangerous groans. Police officers flinched, retreating away from the collapsing hall. Aaron walked on towards the main entrance while Corrie-Lyn gasped and moaned in martyred dismay at the chaos raging around them.
Outside, the city cybersphere was broadcasting distress and warning messages to anyone within two blocks of the fane. People were scurrying out of the plaza, an exodus which Aaron’s tactical programs decided worked against him. Sentient police software was downloading into the district’s cybersphere nodes, taking charge, safeguarding the local network from any subversion he might try and activate, suspending capsule and ground traffic, monitoring sensors, sealing him in.
Aaron’s u-shadow went for the unguarded systems managing the plaza’s fountains, changing the direction of the ingrav effect on the angled rings. The tall jets began to waver, then suddenly swung down until they were horizontal. They slashed from side to side, hosing everyone in the plaza like giant water cannon. People went tumbling across the stone floor, buffeted by thick waves of spray. Aaron reached the fane’s entrance and began sprinting across the plaza, partially obscured from the police by the seething spume clouds. His biononics strengthened his leg muscles, the field effect amplifying and quickening every movement. He covered the first hundred metres in seven seconds. Flailing bodies washed past him as the jets continued to play back and forth. Police officers were singled out for merciless drubbing. Their force fields did little to protect them from the powerful deluge, and they toppled easily from the soaking punches. Those that did fire energy shots into the furious spray simply created crackling vortices of ions that spat out curlicues of scalding steam. Victims on the ground scrabbled desperately out of the way as the dangerous vapour stabbed out, screaming at them to stop shooting.
The fountains began to run out of water when Aaron was two thirds of the way across the plaza. Two energy shots hit his force field, throwing off a plume of sparks. The strike made him skid on the wet stone.
‘Slow down,’ Corrie-Lyn yelped as he regained his footing. ‘Oh, Ozzie, NO!’
Aaron’s sensory field scanned round. The fane was starting to collapse, folding in on itself and twisting gently, as if in mimicry of the pattern of its fluid-luminary surfaces. ‘I must have damaged more than I realized,’ he grunted. Dust and smoke were flaring out of the entrances like antique rocket engine plumes, billowing over the plaza.
He reached the entrance to the arcade. People had been crowded round, watching the spectacle in the plaza. When Aaron appeared out of the chaos and started charging towards them they’d backed away fast. Now they scattered like frightened birds; no one in the Commonwealth was accustomed to civil trouble, let alone Riasi’s residents. As he paused on the threshold, at least five police officers were given a clear line of sight. Energy slammed into his force field, producing a fearsome starblast of photons, its screeching loud enough to overwhelm Corrie-Lyn’s howls. Unprotected surfaces around him started to blister and smoulder. He fired three bolts of his own, hidden in the mêlée, targeting structural girders around the archway. The crystal ceiling began to sag, huge cracks ripped through the thick material. Behind them, the fane finally crumpled, the process accelerating. Chunks of debris went scything across the plaza to impact the surrounding buildings. Tens of thousands of glass fragments created a lethal shrapnel cloud racing outwards. The police officers stopped shooting as they sought cover.
Corrie-Lyn was sobbing hysterically at the sight, then the arcade’s archway started to disintegrate. She froze as giant daggers of the crystal roof plunged down around them. Fire alarms were yammering, and bright-blue suppressor foam started to pour down from the remaining nozzles overhead. Aaron dived into the third store, which sold hand-made lingerie. A slush of foam rippled out across the floor as it slid off his force field. Two remaining assistants saw him and sprinted for a fire exit.
‘Can you walk?’ he asked Corrie-Lyn. His u-shadow was attacking the police programs in the arcade’s nodes, interfering with the building’s internal sensors, and trying to cut power lines directly. It sent out a call to one of the parked taxis, directing it to land at the back of the arcade.
When he pulled Corrie-Lyn off his shoulder all she could do was cross her arms and hug her chest. Her legs were trembling, unable to hold her weight.
‘Shit!’ He shunted her up over his shoulder again, and went into the back of the store. There was a door at the top of the stairs which led down into the basement stockroom, which he descended quickly. His field scan showed him a whole flock of police regrav capsules swooping low over the plaza, while a couple of hardy officers were making their way over the tangle of archway girders. They seemed to be carrying some very high-powered weaponry.
It was cooler in the stockroom, the air dry and still. Overhead lights came on to reveal a rectangular room with smooth concrete walls, filled with ranks of metal shelving. The far end was piled up with old advertising displays. His u-shadow reported that it was having some success in blocking the police software from nearby electronics. They would know he was there, but not what he was doing.
The big malmetal door to the loading bay furled aside, and he went out into the narrow underground delivery road which served all the stores. It was empty, the police prohibition on all traffic was preventing any cargo capsules from using it. Ten metres away on the other side was a hatchway into a utility tunnel. His u-shadow popped the lock and it swung open. He sprinted across the delivery road and clambered inside pushing an unresisting Corrie-Lyn ahead of him. The hatch snapped shut.
Aaron scanned round. There was no light in the tunnel other than a yellow circle glowing round the hatch’s emergency handle. It wasn’t high enough for him to walk along, he’d have to stoop. Corrie-Lyn was sitting slumped against the wall just beside the hatch.
‘There are no visual sensors inside the tunnel,’ his u-shadow reported. ‘Only fire and water alarms.’
‘Water?’
‘In case of flooding. It is a city regulation.’
‘Typical bureaucratic overkill,’ he muttered. ‘Corrie-Lyn we have to keep going.’
She didn’t acknowledge. Her limbs were still trembling uncontrollably. But she moved when he pushed at her. Together they shuffled along the tunnel, hunched over like monkeys. There were hatches every fifty metres. He stopped at the sixth one and let his
field scan function review the immediate vicinity outside. It didn’t detect anyone nearby. His u-shadow unlocked it, and they crawled out into the base of a stairwell illuminated by blue-tinged polyphoto strips on the wall.
‘The building network is functioning normally,’ his u-shadow said. ‘The police sentients are currently concentrating their monitor routines on the fane and the arcade.’
‘That won’t last,’ he said, ‘they’ll expand outward soon enough. Crack one of the private capsules for me.’
He pulled Corrie-Lyn to her feet. With one arm under her shoulder, supporting her, they went up a flight of stairs. The door opened into the underground car park of the old ministry building. His u-shadow had infiltrated the control net of a luxury capsule, and brought it right over to the stairwell.
The capsule slid up out of the park’s chuteway at the back of the building, and zipped up into the nearby traffic stream. Police sentients queried it, and Aaron’s u-shadow provided them with a genuine owner certificate code. Corrie-Lyn stared down at the sluggish mass of boiling dust behind them. Her limbs had stopped trembling. He wasn’t sure if that was the mild suppressor drug he’d given her finally flushing the aerosol out of her system, or if a deeper level of shock was setting in.
A small fleet of civic emergency capsules and ambulances was heading in to the fane.
‘They just shot at us,’ she said. ‘They didn’t warn us or tell us to stop first. They just opened fire.’
‘I had jumped down a lift shaft to try and get out,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s a reasonable admission of guilt.’
‘For Ozzie’s sake! If you didn’t have a force-field web we’d be dead. That’s not how the police are supposed to act. They were police, weren’t they?’
‘Yeah. They’re the city police, all right.’
‘But we did get out,’ she sounded puzzled. ‘There were how many … ten of them? Twenty?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘You just walked out like nothing could stop you. It didn’t matter what they did.’
‘That’s Higher biononics for you. The only way standard weaponry can gain an advantage is overwhelming firepower. They weren’t carrying that much hardware.’
‘You’re Higher?’
‘I have weapons-grade biononics. I’m not sure about the culture part of it. That way of life seems slightly pointless to me, sort of like the pre-Commonwealth aristocracy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Very rich people living a life of considerable ease and decadence while the common people slaved away into an early grave, with all their labour going to support the aristocrats and their way of life.’
‘Oh. Right.’ She didn’t sound interested. ‘Inigo was Higher.’
‘No he wasn’t.’ Aaron said it automatically.
‘Actually, he was. But he kept that extremely quiet. Only a couple of us ever knew. I don’t think our new Cleric Conservator is aware of his idol’s true nature.’
‘Are you—’
‘Sure? Yes, I’m sure.’
‘That’s remarkable. There’s no record of it; that’s a hell of an achievement these days.’
‘Like I said, he kept it quiet. No one would have paid any attention to a Higher showing them his dreams, not out here on the External Worlds. He needed to appear as ordinary as possible. To be accepted as one of us.’
Aaron gave an amused grunt. ‘Highers are people, too.’
‘Some of them.’ She gave him a meaningful glance.
‘Was Yves the other Cleric who knew about Inigo?’
‘No.’ She drew a short gasp, and glanced back. ‘Oh, Ozzie, Yves! He was unconscious when the fane collapsed.’
‘He’ll be all right.’
‘All right?’ she yelled, finally becoming animated. ‘All right? He’s dead!’
‘Well, he’ll probably need re-lifing, yeah. But that’s only a couple of months’ downtime these days.’
She gave him an incredulous snort, and leant against the capsule’s transparent fuselage to gaze down on the city.
Shock, anger, and fright, he decided. Mostly fright. ‘You need to decide what to do next,’ he told her as sympathetically as he could. ‘Team up with me, or …’ He shrugged. ‘I can give you some untraceable funds, that should help keep you hidden.’
‘Bastard.’ She wiped at her eyes, then looked down at herself. Her red sweater had large damp patches, and the lower half of her trousers were caked in blue foam. Her knees were grazed and filthy from the inside of the utility tunnel. Her shoulders slumped in resignation. ‘He used to go somewhere,’ she said in a quiet emotionless voice.
‘Inigo?’
‘Yes. This isn’t the first time he took off on a sabbatical and left Living Dream covering up for his absence. But none of the other times were for so long. A year at most.’
‘I see. Where did he go?’
‘Anagaska.’
‘That’s his birthworld.’
‘Yes.’
‘An External World. One of the first. Advancer through and through,’ he said significantly.
‘I’m not arguing with you.’
‘Did he ever take you?’
‘No. He said he was visiting family. I don’t know how true that was.’
Aaron reviewed the files on Inigo’s family. There was very little information; they didn’t seek publicity, especially after he founded Living Dream. ‘His mother migrated inwards a long time ago. She downloaded into ANA in 3440, after first becoming …’
‘Higher, yes I know.’
He didn’t follow the point; but for someone to convert to Higher without leaving any record was essentially impossible. Corrie-Lyn must have been mistaken. ‘There’s no record of any brothers or sisters,’ he said.
Corrie-Lyn closed her eyes and let out a long breath. ‘His mother had a sister, a twin. There was something … I don’t know what, but some incident long ago. Inigo hinted at it; the sisters went through this big trauma together. Whatever it was drove them apart, they never really reconciled.’
‘There’s nothing in the records about that, I didn’t even know he had an aunt.’
‘Well now you do. So what next?’
‘Go to Anagaska. Try and find the aunt or her children.’
‘How do we get there? I imagine the police will be watching the spaceports and wormholes.’
‘They will eventually. But I have my own starship.’ He stopped in surprise as knowledge of the starship emerged into his mind from some deep memory.
Corrie-Lyn’s eyes opened in curiosity. ‘You do?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sweet Ozzie, you are so strange.’
Seventeen minutes later the capsule slid down to land beside a pad in Riasi’s spaceport. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn climbed out and looked up at the chrome-purple ovoid that stood on five bulbous legs.
She whistled in admiration. ‘That looks deliciously expensive. Is it really yours?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Odd name,’ she said as she walked under the curving underbelly of the fuselage. ‘What’s the reference?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ His u-shadow opened a link to the Artful Dodger’s smartcore, confirming his identity with a DNA verification along with a code he abruptly remembered. The smartcore acknowledged his command authority.
‘Hang on,’ Aaron told Corrie-Lyn, and grabbed her hand. The base of the starship bulged inwards, stretching into a dark tube. Gravity altered around them and they slid up inside the opening.
*
Sholapur was one of those Commonwealth planets that didn’t quite work. All the ingredients for success and normality were there: a standard H-congruous biosphere, G-type star, oceans, big continents with great landscapes of deserts, mountains, plains, jungles, and vast deciduous forests, handsome coastlines and long meandering archipelagos. The local flora had several plants humans could eat; while the wildlife wasn’t wild enough to pose much of a threat. Tectonically it was benign. The twin moons
were small, orbiting seven hundred thousand kilometres out to produce the kind of tides and waves that satisfied every kind of marine sports enthusiast.
So physically, there was nothing wrong with it. That just left the people.
Settlement began in 3120, the year ANA officially became Earth’s government. It was the kind of incentive which flushed a lot of the remaining political, cultural, and religious malcontents out of the Central Worlds. The greatest machine ever built was obviously taking over, and Higher culture was now so dominant it could never be revoked. They left in their millions to settle the then furthest External Worlds. At 470 lightyears from Earth, Sholapur was an attractive proposition for anyone looking for a distant haven. To begin with, everything went smoothly. There was commercial investment, the immigrants were experienced professionals; cities and industrial parks sprang up, farms were established. But the groups who arrived from the Central Worlds weren’t just dissatisfied with Higher culture, they tended to be insular, intolerant of other ideologies and lifestyles. Petty local disputes had a way of swelling to encompass entire ethnic or ideological communities. Internal migration accelerated, transforming urban areas into miniature city states; all with massively different laws and creeds. Cooperation between them was minimal. The planetary parliament was ‘suspended’ in 3180, after yet another debate ended in personal violence between Senators. And that more or less marked the end of Sholapur’s economic and cultural development. It was regarded as hermitic by the rest of the Commonwealth. Even the External Worlds with all their attitude of forthright independence viewed it like a kind of embarrassing drop-out cousin. The nearest settled worlds called it Planet of the Hotheads, and had little contact. Despite that, a great many starships continued to visit. Some of the micro-nations had laws (or a lack of laws) which could be advantageous to certain types of merchant.
Five thousand kilometres above the planetary surface, the starship Mellanie’s Redemption fell out of hyperspace amid a collapsing bubble of violet Cherenkov radiation. There was no single planetary traffic control Troblum could contact; instead he filed an approach request with Ikeo City, and received permission to land.