‘But what can I say, what reason? And there’s the spacecraft traffic, yes? They’ll need guidance updates from flight control.’
‘I was just coming to that. Turn back all vehicles on their way up from Earth, their docking clearance is revoked as from now. Keep the local communication frequencies open, of course, we don’t want any accidents with the commuter pods and tugs. But the direct relays to geostationary platforms must go; tell them it’s solar flare activity, or the exchange ’ware has crashed. Nobody will believe it, but cover yourself. It’s only until tomorrow.’
‘I suppose I could,’ he said unhappily.
‘You’re my representative up there, you’ve got the authority. I’ll take full responsibility. But unplug New London, now.’
Victor was waiting on the lawn outside the library’s French windows as she hurried out, still sealing the front of her topaz-coloured shipsuit.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘No use. Clifford’s scared of me. But he’s more scared of losing out on atomic structuring.’
‘Pity.’
They walked over to the CHO-808 Falcon spaceplane sitting between the two Pegasus hypersonics. It looked like a stretched version of the executive jets, slightly fatter, a lead grey in colour, with a single induction ram intake protruding from the underbelly. There was something coldly daunting about its lines, an impression of hidden power.
Event Horizon produced the marque: it was a rapid response vehicle for the RAF, and the Greater European Defence Alliance. They used it primarily to investigate new satellites, checking to make sure they weren’t kinetic harpoons. It could also carry six technicians and a two-tonne payload up to geostationary orbit.
Might as well concrete the lawn over, she thought as she went up the Falcon’s composite airstair. It’s used as a landing pad more than anything else.
The small cabin had seating for seven including the pilot, Maria Garrick. She was an ex-RAF officer who had flown Julia around for eight years, highly competent, and loyal. Julia liked her, one of that rare breed, like Victor, who gave an honest opinion when asked.
Julia ducked her head to avoid the low ceiling as she walked over to the seat behind Maria. The Falcon had none of the padding and trimming of commercial spaceplanes, apart from the active cushioning of the seats. A functional composite cave.
‘Take us straight up to New London,’ Julia said. The seat cushioning flowed round her legs, gripping them like a vice made of sponge.
Maria twisted round, giving her a bright stare. ‘How straight?’
‘Fast as we can, please.’
‘Right-oh, one purple corridor coming up.’ Maria turned back to the graphics on the heavily shielded windscreen slit.
Pilots were all the same, Julia reflected, can’t resist a dramatic race against time.
The cabin hatch slid shut, its actuators drowned out by the sound of compressors winding up. They lifted with a jolt, the cabin tilting up thirty degrees. Acceleration pressed Julia down into the seat, rising quickly to two Gs. The Falcon was already doing Mach two when it passed over Yaxley and charged out over the Fens basin.
There was a rush of giddiness when the induction ram cut off abruptly, dropping Julia into freefall; with her eyes closed she could believe she was diving headlong through space. There was nothing to be seen through the curving windscreen, a few stars and the diffuse rose-pink glow of the friction-heated nose. It faded to nothing as she watched.
‘I can’t establish a datalink with New London,’ Maria said. ‘Inmarsat says their microwave antennas have shut down. Solar flare activity.’ She turned her head, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘That’s pure bullshit, you know that.’
‘Yes,’ Julia said. ‘Use the company security link, you’ll get through that way.’
‘You’re the boss.’
‘Did you unplug New London?’ Victor asked.
‘Yes. I want the alien isolated until we’ve made contact.’
‘It might not like that.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in it?’
‘If it exists, it might not like that.’
Somehow Julia couldn’t raise a smile. ‘I don’t like the way it’s messed me around.’
Twenty-five thousand kilometres up, and the Earth was a gibbous white and blue apparition beyond the windscreen. Julia watched the terminator crawl across Italy and Africa, igniting a multitude of city lights in its wake. Apart from the equatorial band, she noted. That remained ominously dark.
‘We’ve got company,’ Maria said.
‘What sort?’ Victor asked sharply.
‘Spaceplanes. One is three thousand kilometres behind us, the other another ten behind them. Both on a New London intercept trajectory. I wouldn’t mention it, but neither had clearance, not with Inmarsat’s linkage still down.’
Open Channel to Falcon Command Circuitry. Access External Sensor Feed.
The starfield wrapped itself around her, Earth dominating one quadrant, the silver splash of New London directly opposite it. There was the beginnings of a faint necklace in geostationary orbit, bright sequins strung out in a fragmented loop, the vast commercial communication dishes interspaced with strategic defence platforms from all five major defence alliance networks.
The high-orbit platforms were an act of mass political paranoia which always rankled, despite the fact that Event Horizon earned a great deal of money from supplying the Greater European Alliance with platforms, and components to all the other networks.
Over half the global armaments budget was spent on low Earth orbit SD platforms to guard against the possibility of sneak attacks. Since the West African slamdown war, kinetic bombardment from space had been the number one public bogeyman. Anybody with a spaceplane could launch harpoons at any target on the planet. A ten-tonne projectile protected against re-entry ablation, travelling at orbital velocity, was a thousand times cheaper than nuclear or electron-compression weapons. And there was no worry about radioactive fallout if the intended victim was a neighbouring country.
It resulted in the five independent defence networks, assembled more or less along regional groupings rather than the political combinations which dominated the previous century. A triumph of practicality over ideology, Julia always thought, with nominally hostile neighbours co-operating. She had drawn a lot of comfort from that at the time; political commentators were hoping it would lay the foundations for a more stable world order. There were even discussions of combining some of the networks into a single global defence system under the control of the UN. But so far nothing had come from them.
The geostationary platforms were a good reminder that for all the progress made in defusing the worst international tensions, there was still a long way to go. There was so much commercial hardware in geostationary orbit, along with national military communications satellites, that the aerospace-force generals and marshals had worried about harpoons being hidden among the antenna platforms. Squadrons of sensor satellites from the Asian-African Pact and the Greater European Alliance had been positioned in geostationary orbit to watch for clandestine harpoon launches. They were swiftly followed by similar spysats from the Chinese and Eastern Federation Co-Defence League, and the Pacific Treaty Nations. The Southern and Central American Defence Partnership brought up the rear three months later. And after the sensors came the weapons platforms. Strictly for defensive interception duties, the network chiefs said.
Julia observed them glimmer in the raw sunlight with a feeling of sad resentment. How little the politicians change. Watching you watching me; the old Cold War slogan resurrected and given fresh respectability. It was bandied about quite a lot on the current affairs ’casts these days. Pure governmental machismo.
As well as the capability to attack other systems in geosynchronous orbit the high-orbit platforms could also launch an assault on New London. She had seen confidential intelligence assessments about New London and the other four asteroids currently being manoeuvred into Earth orbit.
Military intelligence was always defined in terms of potential, and what was worrying the generals was the sheer mass of rock available: enough to flatten every city on the planet a thousand times over if it was ever flung down.
Potential.
Possible threat.
Theoretical capability.
I was right not to warn the government about Royan’s alien.
Superimpose Radar Return.
Two stars turned red, and the ’ware assigned them five-digit codes, followed by velocity readings, size, and projected course vectors.
NEGATIVE TRANSPONDER RESPONSE, the Falcon’s ’ware reported, printing it over the image.
‘They don’t want us to know who they are,’ Maria said.
Exit Falcon Command Circuitry.
Julia looked over at Victor. ‘Coincidence?’ she asked archly.
‘There’s no need to get nasty. The question is, which two?’
‘Clifford Jepson and Leol Reiger are tied in together, so one of them has to be carrying Reiger. Whether Clifford would come up with him, I don’t know. He was pretty desperate for that generator data.’
‘I’m not having Reiger inside New London,’ Victor said flatly.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Maria, can I have a communication channel to Sean Francis, please.’
Maria unclipped a handset from her chair, and handed it back to Julia.
‘Yes, ma’am?’ Sean Francis said.
‘There are two spaceplanes on a rendezvous trajectory with New London.’
‘Yes, we know. We’ve been tracking them.’
‘Open a datalink to them, and order them to stop outside your flight-control zone. If they come inside, use the defence systems to kill them. Under no circumstances are either of them to dock with New London.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good enough?’ she asked Victor.
‘Yes. I wish we could find out if Reiger really is on board one of them.’
‘Not without X-ray sight.’
‘Can you get an ident on the type of craft?’ Victor asked Maria.
‘I’ll run a comparison program on the nearest, see what the ’ware’s best guess is. But the furthest one is well outside sensor definition range.’
The handset bleeped.
‘Yes?’ Julia asked.
‘No reply, I’m afraid,’ Sean Francis said.
‘Put the message on repeat, and keep sending it until they violate New London’s flight-control zone.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘No good,’ Maria said. ‘It’s jamming the sensors. I can’t burn through their ECM at this range.’
‘Well, that confirms they aren’t legitimate,’ Victor said mordantly.
‘Yes, there is that,’ Julia said. But it did clear up a lingering doubt about ordering Sean Francis to use New London’s defences.
34
There was more to Julia’s cautious walk than the one-third gravity field. Victor knew her well enough to see how shaken she was by the two unidentified space-planes following them up to New London. By now every major player would know the alien was in the asteroid. Isolating New London bought Julia some time, but there was the question of what the opposition would do next.
The confined titanium airlock tube gave way to the VIP reception room; noise, light, smells, and people registered again. It was a sharp transition from the isolation of the Falcon’s cabin. Sean Francis, Lloyd McDonald, and three hardline bodyguards were waiting for them.
‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ Sean Francis asked. He was even more hyper than usual, pale and anxious.
‘Yes, thank you, Sean.’ Julia gave him a tired little smile.
‘What are the spaceplanes doing now?’ Victor asked Lloyd McDonald.
‘The first one altered its trajectory as soon as our target acquisition radars burned through its ECM and locked on. It matched orbits with New London, and it’s holding station five and a half thousand kilometres ahead of us. Outside the defence perimeter, you’ll note. We identified the model as an Alenia COV-325; so with its capacity it could be carrying up to thirty hardliners. The second spaceplane is fifteen thousand kilometres out, and closing. And just to add to the situation: all five Strategic Defence networks placed their geostationary platforms on amber alert status as soon as we targeted the Alenia and powered up our weapons platforms.’
‘Have there been any transmissions from the spaceplanes yet?’
‘None. We’re monitoring continually, of course.’
‘Good. I need to know who’s on board. If Reiger is in one of them he must be snuffed immediately.’
‘Difficult,’ Lloyd said. ‘We don’t have any kinetic harpoons; our platforms are all equipped with energy weapons. It really is a defensive system.’
‘Politically expedient not to base offensive weapons here,’ Julia said with a hint of regret. ‘Sorry, Victor.’
‘Five hundred kilometres beyond the defence perimeter,’ Victor mused. ‘That’s not much of a margin for them.’
‘We’re geared to halt incoming hostiles,’ Lloyd said. ‘You start shooting outside the perimeter and you run slap bang into the inverse-square law. The nearest platform to the COV-325 is over a thousand kilometres away, the lasers wouldn’t even melt plastic at that distance.’
‘So move one of the platforms in range,’ Victor said automatically.
Lloyd looked at Sean, who nodded thoughtfully. ‘Could do, yes?’
‘OK,’ Lloyd said. ‘But the platforms aren’t equipped with high-thrust engines. It’ll take time.’
‘Time we have plenty of,’ Victor said.
‘Just as long as they can’t get in,’ Julia said.
‘They won’t,’ Sean said. ‘Our hardware is the best, yes?’ He gestured to a waiting lift. ‘Greg and his people are in the security centre. They’ve just got back.’
‘Did they find Charlotte’s Celestial priest?’ Julia asked.
‘Absolutely, yes. He’s a funny old bird, though. Don’t know what you’ll make of him.’
Julia stepped into the lift. They all crowded in around her, Lloyd talking into his cybofax, organizing the platform realignment.
‘How are you coping, Sean?’ Julia asked as the lift began to move down.
‘Pretty good, considering. I’ve declared an official bio-hazard alert, which I think added to the Strategic Defence commander’s jitters. But it gives me the authority to quarantine the colony without any legal comeback. Shutting down the communication circuits is stretching the principle a little, mind.’
‘But our lawyers can fight it if anyone objects,’ she finished for him. ‘Good. Well done.’
Victor reckoned that if he ever got lost in New London’s southern endcap complex his processor implant would be the only thing to save him wandering through the labyrinth of corridors for the rest of his life. There was a kilometre and a half of rock between Hyde Cavern and the hub docking crater, a termite nest of housing, offices, tunnels, corridors, hydroponic farms, fish farms, light-industry factories, and chambers full of environmental support machinery. It wasn’t that he was claustrophobic, but there was so much smooth featureless rock, and very few windows.
Sean Francis led them through the security centre without any hesitation. But then of course, everything he did was perfection. One of the reasons nobody felt quite at ease with him, not even Julia, and that was quite an accomplishment.
The briefing room had a window-wall looking out into Hyde Cavern. Heavy drops of rain trickled down the glass. All Victor could see outside was a solid sheet of bleak mist, tinted by a slight orange-pink fluorescence.
There were active holograms on the walls, illuminated landscapes, all of them pre-Warming. A circular table of brown smoked glass stood in the centre of the room; most of New London’s furniture was glass and metal. Tourist zones could afford to import wood, the security budget didn’t stretch to that. Suzi and Melvyn stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the mist, talking quietly. Greg, Rick, and Cha
rlotte were sitting in the aluminium-framed chairs around the table; a couple of the crash squad hardliners he didn’t recognize were in the chairs lined up along the wall.
Julia pulled her shipsuit cap off, letting her hair fall loose. Greg gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
‘You found him all right?’ Julia asked.
‘Charlotte’s contact, yes; his name is Sinclair. Royan is proving a little more elusive.’ Greg sighed. ‘I had hoped he’d contact me. He must know I’m here, he’ll have monitor programs loaded into every ’ware core in New London by now. I know Royan.’
‘He’ll know I’m here too,’ Julia said. She turned and gave Charlotte a long stare.
Charlotte dropped her gaze, looking fixedly at the olive-green carpet squares. Victor almost felt sorry for the girl, a cool Julia Evans was a daunting prospect. And of course Charlotte wouldn’t have known not to access any datanets, even at secondhand through the American Express office. The oversight was as much his fault as hers, she should have been fully briefed.
‘Can we get on with the problem in hand?’ Victor said. He pulled a chair out for Julia.
She turned from Charlotte and sat down, giving him a private sly grin. ‘Male hearts and fallen angels,’ she murmured in a tiny voice.
Victor could feel the warmth creeping up his face.
‘Royan used a drone to hand the flower over to Sinclair,’ Greg said. ‘If we want him, he’ll be somewhere in the tunnels and caves the Celestial Apostles use.’
‘Intuition?’ Victor asked.
‘Not really. Royan spent a couple of days with the Celestials, that means he’ll have learnt all about their set-up, what they know about the caves, the ones they use. Once he cross-referenced that with security and police procedures he would have found himself a totally secure location for his trials, safe from anybody interrupting, just in case anything did go wrong. Presumably that’s where the alien is as well.’
‘So what do we do?’ Lloyd asked. ‘Conduct a mass search? I’d hate for any of my people to stumble on this alien. If you say it exists, ma’am, then I’ll believe you. But you’re not going to convince everybody.’