The trains came in at Compression Space Transport’s planetary station on the north side of the capital, Ridgeview (pop 43,000). They arrived through a wormhole which provided a direct link back to EdenBurg, an industrial planet, owned by the Halgarth Dynasty, and one of the major junctions in CSTs interstellar transport monopoly. None of the trains went any further than the station: Nova Zealand didn’t have the kind of road and rail network common to most Commonwealth worlds. All medium- and long-distance travel was by plane.
It was mid-morning when the train from Hifornia pulled in at the station. The first three carriages were for passengers, while the last two were vehicle carriers. Once it drew to a halt, large malmetal doors on the vehicle carriages retracted and ramps extended out from the platform. The sound of highly-tuned engines firing up was unusual enough to turn the heads of the ordinary passengers as they disembarked. Five customized cars growled their way out onto the ramp. The first a glowing orange Jaguar roadster, with faint blue flames stuttering out of its exhaust pipes as the engine revved. With a final roar of power it sped off the bottom of the ramp with a showy wheel spin. Second was a silver Cadillac that was half bonnet, with front scimitar fins and a rear variable-camber spoiler; then came an eight-wheeled stretched limo; followed by a hundred-year-old V-class Mercedes; and finally a brutish Lexus AT PowerSport, hydroskis retracted against its burnished gold sides.
The convoy raced off out of the station, a show of casual affluence and arrogance which brought grimaces of contempt from those watching. After a discreet minute, the rest of the party’s vehicles slid quietly out of the carriage; seven long luxury vans which carried the necessary domestic staff and assistants, along with luggage and sports equipment. The Dynasty members never travelled without their home comforts close by.
Ridgeview’s airport was five miles from the planetary station; a disappointingly short journey for the owners of the custom cars, hardly far enough for them to jostle and race along the road. They drove over to the waiting Siddley-Lockheed CP-450, a subsonic cargo/passenger combi plane operated by a local tour company. Inside the vast cargo hold, electromuscle clamps curved out of the floor to secure the fancy cars. Doors opened, and the brash young things sauntered out, filling the air with overloud taunts and calls to each other. Their girlfriends accompanied them, tall slender beauties, terribly young to be dressed in such sensual couture. Stewardesses smiled impassively at the braying sexual harassment they were casually subjected to, and showed their haughty passengers to the upper deck’s Imperial Cabin.
The vans purred smoothly into the plane. Staff found their seats in the mid-deck lounge. Within ten minutes, the big rear doors swung shut and the plane taxied onto the runway.
Ridgeview air traffic control cleared them for takeoff to Nova Zealand’s arctic continent. It was a nine-hour flight that would take them to the notorious Fire Plain, a hundred-kilometre circle of wet swamps just short of the pole itself, whose abnormal climate was created by a ring wall of active volcanoes. Visitors to the resort could watch glowing lava flowing into the constricting cliff of the polar glacier, spurting out phenomenal jets of superheated steam all the way up to the ionosphere. While down in the weird wetlands of giant ferns, huge dangerous creatures left over from an earlier geological era wallowed in the mud and ate anything which moved.
The Siddley-Lockheed CP-450 rose into the air, folding its undercarriage away neatly. It curved towards the north through a clear azure sky, bright blue-white sunlight shining on its green fuselage. Below it, the harsh scrub desert fell away to the sea in long rumpled folds and sharp ravines.
Five minutes after takeoff the plane was climbing through ten thousand feet as the pilot watched the flight management array throttle the duct fans back to cruise power. At which point one of the Dynasty heirs decided it was time to renew his membership of the mile high club. It wasn’t in his nature to retire discreetly to the washroom. The rest of the party gathered round his reclining couch to cheer as his obedient girlfriend stripped off. Scandalized stewardesses peeked from the galley, trying not to giggle.
A red star alert flared in the pilot’s virtual vision. The plane’s array was issuing a proximity alarm. It took the pilot a shocked couple of seconds to analyse the data which the radar was presenting him with. An object barely a metre long was streaking towards them at mach five. Disbelief froze him for another second as he struggled to admit he was seeing a missile. He managed to yell: ‘Mayday!’ into the open channel as he slammed his hands down onto the manual control pads. For someone who hadn’t physically flown a plane for over two decades he managed his evasion manoeuvre remarkably well, ramming on the power and initiating a steep dive. It delayed impact by a good three seconds, long enough for everyone on board to realize something was disastrously wrong.
The missile struck the fuselage just below the port wing root. Not even modern super-strength materials could withstand the blast. The wing was ripped off, sending the fuselage into a fast spin. It began to disintegrate immediately, scattering fragments and bodies as it plummeted out of the sky.
Before the first pieces even hit the ground, a shotgun message entered the unisphere, attempting to infiltrate the address stores of every person who had an access code – about ninety-five per cent of the human race. The carrier format was new enough to avoid the majority of commercial sentinels, though the unisphere’s node-management programs soon adapted to the intruder and blocked its progress. Before that happened, it managed to reach several billion people who were annoyed to find the small file slipping into their stores. Most were unisphere-savvy enough to have their e-butlers delete the pest. Those that did open it were shown a simple text.
The Free Merioneth Forces announce the eradication of more Dynasty parasites. Our team on Nova Zealand have today successfully struck against our oppressors. Until our planet is liberated from the financial bonds which the Dynasty leaders have shackled it with, our campaign will continue.
We urge all Dynasty members to exert your influence and compel your leaders to negotiate with our government. Failure to comply with our requests for freedom and dignity will result in the further elimination of your worthless kind. We will no longer tolerate our taxes being spent to uphold your decadent lifestyle.
*
Senior Investigator Paula Myo’s e-butler deleted the shotgun as soon as it reached her unisphere interface; it was the newest adaptive version with a real-time update facility to the Serious Crimes Directorate RI, so it knew what it was dealing with. At the time she was trying to be polite with the decorator who was gazing round the lounge of her new apartment, shaking his head as if he’d been confronted with restoring the Sistine Chapel.
‘Next month?’ he suggested with a typical Gallic shrug.
Paula was only surprised he wasn’t wearing a beret and smoking a cigarette; he’d certainly polished the rest of the Parisian indifference routine to stereotype perfection. ‘That’s fine.’ She’d been in the apartment a week, and even she acknowledged it needed sprucing up. It wasn’t much: bathroom, bedroom, and a lounge with a tiny kitchen alcove. The building was a typical Paris block, centuries-old with a pleasant central courtyard. She really didn’t care about the aesthetics, all that counted was its proximity to the office.
‘What colour scheme?’ he enquired.
‘Oh . . . whatever: white.’
‘White?’ From his blatant dismay she must have deliberately insulted his French ancestry all the way back to the royal era.
‘Yes.’ A priority communication icon popped up into her virtual vision. She touched it with a virtual hand she’d customized to a red skeletal outline; her physical fingers twitched in mimicry as parallel nerve impulses ran along the organic circuitry tattoos on her wrist.
‘Grade one case coming in,’ Christabel Agatha Halgarth said. ‘The Director wants us on it immediately.’
‘On my way in,’ Paula replied.
‘No don’t. I’m going for a car now; I’ll pick you up. Three minutes.’
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‘All right, transfer the case files over.’ Paula dismissed the decorator. Perhaps it was because of her carefully controlled mix of Filipino and European genes which had given her such a delightful face he assumed he could bluster and intimidate as he usually did with single female clients. The stare she gave him froze the protest after just a couple of words. He nodded compliance and retreated, counting himself lucky she hadn’t actually said anything.
Paula pulled on a grey suit jacket and picked up her small shoulder bag, moving instinctively as the files from the Directorate slipped into her virtual vision. She read the scant details on the plane crash as she hurried down the worn stone stairs to the courtyard below.
One of the Directorate’s dark sedans pulled up outside the block’s main entrance. The gull-wing door pivoted forward, and Paula got in. Christabel was sitting on the rear bench, a brunette with an Asian ancestry a lot stronger than Paula’s clinic-manufactured heritage. She was Paula’s deputy; they’d known each other since their training academy days.
‘Wow, you look great,’ Christabel enthused. ‘Positively jailbait. I’d forgotten how pretty you are when you’re young. You shouldn’t wait so long between rejuvenations.’
‘I can’t spare the time,’ Paula said automatically. Her hand went up to sweep her raven hair away from her face. With rejuvenation returning her biological age to late-adolescence her hair had grown very thick again. Every time she was tempted to have it trimmed to a shorter style. But this fitted her, along with the simple-cut business suit and plain black shoes she always wore to work, defining what she was. It was as much her identity as her modified genes.
‘Welcome back,’ Christabel said with a knowing smile. ‘How are your inserts settling in?’
Paula held up a hand, flexing the fingers. The OCtattoos were invisible against her skin. It was still a relatively new technology, with development houses finding new applications each year. The ones she’d had before rejuvenation were a lot cruder; they’d been eradicated by her treatment, so the last week had been spent at a Directorate facility augmenting her body with the new generation of insert gadgets.
‘A couple of glitches left. I’m due a final formatting session on Saturday. Things have come on a long way since I had my last installation.’
Christabel held up her own hand. Threads of intense blue light appeared, pulsing along her fingers. ‘You didn’t fancy the latest versions then? Function and fashion combined. Not bad, huh? I paid for the customization myself. I can get you a good deal if you like, I’ve still got contacts in my Dynasty.’
Paula gave the glowing strands a curt look. ‘No thank you.’
Christabel laughed.
‘We don’t seem to have much on the Free Merioneth Forces,’ Paula said as she continued to open case files.
‘No. They’re relatively new. Emerged while you were in rejuvenation. This is their fourth strike in five months. Very effective. We haven’t arrested anyone yet.’
*
The Directorate sedan drove across Paris to the huge CST station where it boarded a trans-Earth loop train, taking it through a series of wormholes linking the old world’s major cities. From Paris the loop led to Madrid, then London before crossing the Atlantic to New York; four more stops, and twenty minutes later the train pulled in at the massive LA galactic station, where they drove over to the Intersolar terminal and onto a direct train to EdenBurg.
Eighty minutes after Paula got into the sedan, it was driving off a vehicle carriage at the same platform which the Dynasty party had used less than three hours earlier. The car’s array took them round the Ridgeview ring road, and out across the scrub desert to the north. Paula watched in surprise as a group of wild camels sauntered across the hard-packed sands. They’d been gene-modified to digest the local cacti-equivalent vegetation, but even so it was a harsh environment. After five miles, the track vanished, and the suspension rose up to cope with the rocky ground.
‘Hope you brought a hat,’ Christabel said. She was squinting out of the window at the blazing noon sun. Ridgeview was about as far south as the planet’s climate would allow. After another couple of hundred miles the scrub desert gave way to true desolation. Nova Zealand’s entire equatorial zone was bare rock, baked by the intense blue-white star; the heat even repelled clouds, leaving the land in a permanent shadowless summer where the daily air temperature rose far above boiling point.
The crash site perimeter was still being established by the local police. Wreckage had so far been spotted over seven square miles. The Directorate car delivered them to a cluster of police vehicles parked together above a wide sandy gully. Helicopters droned slowly through the clear sky above.
Paula reluctantly dug a wide-brimmed hat from her little bag. The door opened, and she immediately held her breath as oppressively hot air swept in.
‘Hellfire,’ Christabel groaned. ‘Literally.’
They climbed out. Paula put on a pair of sunglasses which opaqued up to their highest level. Then she took her jacket off, feeling sweat prickle her bare arms. The arid desert air was burning its way down her throat, drying her sinuses.
‘Wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ a man told them. He was dressed in a loose Arabic-style robe with a deep white hood. ‘Detective Captain Aidan Winkal,’ he said as he offered his hand.
‘Paula Myo.’
‘I’ve heard of you, Investigator. But seriously, if you haven’t put on screening membrane, five minutes exposure in this sunlight will burn your skin down to the bone.’
‘Okay.’ She put the jacket back on.
‘Come on, I’ve got our mobile situation office set up.’
It was a big old van with the Ridgeview police logo emblazoned on the side. Five tall heat-dump fins sprouted out of the roof, glowing a faint rose-pink. Inside, the air was thankfully cool. A bench table down one side was cluttered with various desktop arrays operated by Winkal’s colleagues. Screens and small holographic portals relayed various images from the helicopters and jeeps covering the site.
‘What procedures are you following?’ Paula asked.
Aidan Winkal had pulled his hood back to reveal a weathered face with silver-fox hair cut short. He appeared hesitant. ‘Look, we’re not exactly used to this kind of thing, you know.’
‘We’re not here to criticize,’ Paula assured him. ‘We both want the same thing, to catch the people responsible. The Directorate will assume responsibility for tracking down the group which did this. But site control and recovery is all yours. Now tell me what you’re doing, and we’ll be happy to provide advice.’
‘Okay, thanks. We’re trying to map the debris area. The larger sections of fuselage are easy enough to find, and so far we’ve picked up thirty-seven personal emergency beacons. My squads are escorting medical teams out to them. The bodies we’ve located so far . . . they’re not intact, you know.’
‘I understand. However, their memorycells should be able to survive the impact. They’re designed to withstand a lot worse than this.’
‘Sure.’
‘We have a Directorate forensics team en route. Some of their sensor systems will be able to help your search. I’ll assign them as soon as we’ve identified and recovered the missile. Have you located the launch site yet?’
‘No. I’m concentrating on the crash, finding those poor people. We’re still trying to build a full passenger list.’
‘Fair enough. Christabel and I will work out where it was fired from. I’ll need complete access to the plane’s memory. Have you found it yet?’
‘Yes. It never lost contact with the unisphere. We know where it is but we haven’t actually collected it yet. I encrypted the channel and restricted access.’
‘Good. I’d also like to see the CST station closed to both inbound and outbound trains. We can do without the reporters who are undoubtedly on their way. Secondly, there’s a chance the team which fired the missile is still on the planet. If so, I’d like them confined here.’
‘I
, er, don’t really have that authority. I don’t even think our Prime Minister does.’
‘I’ll contact my chief right away. But you’ll need to post some officers at the station. It might turn ugly once the trains stop running.’
‘Okay.’
*
Paula and Christabel claimed a couple of fold-out chairs at the rear of the van, and got Aidan to open the restricted channel to the plane’s memory. Using the radar data to backtrack the missile’s trajectory was easy enough; it had come from a point approximately quarter of a mile from the coast, five miles outside Ridgeview.
‘Wouldn’t take long to get to the city ring road from there,’ Christabel exclaimed as she reviewed a local map in her virtual vision.
‘Pull Ridgeview’s traffic management records,’ Paula told her. ‘Find out what vehicles if any joined the road from outside this morning. I’ll also want the air traffic records scrutinizing. They might have flown out.’
‘Right away.’
‘What kind of orbital surveillance have you got here?’ Paula asked Aidan.
‘Eight low-orbit satellites for geophysical observation,’ he told her. ‘The resolution isn’t good. You could see the Siddley-Lockheed, and most houses; but a car would be hard to make out, and individual people are too small.’
‘Okay. We’ll see what kind of images the Directorate RI can pull out of the raw data. Right now, we need to get out to the launch site. This sun is degrading our evidence by the minute. Can you give me a helicopter, please?’