"This house?"
"A retirement place. A family estate close to the bulk of his investments."
Falk sighed. Water lapped.
"And then?"
"Until about two years ago, things were clearly going well for Ocean Exploratory. They were developing relationships with several large corporate entities, both US and Bloc, probably looking for the right tender to set up a coventure and start to exploit the land Seberg and his partners had secured."
"So playing both sides?"
"Nothing unusual there, either. Seberg was feeling out Bloc and US mining companies alike, surveyors, extraction engineering firms. His company was also talking to two Chinese processing consortia. They were auditioning for the best partners to get into business with."
Falk lay back on the dirty bed, listening to her voice.
"Two years ago," Cleesh said, "the trouble started. Small stuff at first. Several pieces in the Shaverton newsfeeds claiming Seberg had used propriatorial data acquired during his years at RP to inform his choice of territories. RP and two of the big US mining companies up at Marblehead were going to sue him for abuse of privileged information. Seberg went on record and said it was hard to stick a pin in a map of Eighty-Six and not strike something worth mining, and he was simply embodying the settlementeer ideal of entrepreneurial yadda yadda. But then it all gets weird."
"By which you mean…?"
"It all goes quiet. Ocean Exploratory shuts shop. Seberg disappears from the picture, and all the development in that area comes to a halt. If you lift the lid and inspect the records, like I just did, you can see why. The SO stepped in. First they accused Seberg and Ocean of developing parcels before formal approval and permissions had been granted or ownership formally transferred. Then they slapped a Strategic Development Order on the whole lot."
"Harsh. What do we read from that?"
"What would you read, Falk?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"The US bias on Eighty-Six is particularly obvious. Maybe Seberg was getting too friendly with a Bloc partner and various US rivals didn't like it."
"That sounds credible, right?"
"Well, there would be a lot at stake," he replied. "Trillions, perhaps, long term, from extraction? Depends what he had here. A couple of big US corps think they're going to lose out, apply a little pressure to the SO, which then comes down on Seberg. I suppose if Seberg and his partners hadn't filed their claims impeccably, the SO might have found some technicality to exploit, and turned that into grounds to formally disallow all of Seberg's pending bids."
"Which, on top of everything else, would leave a bunch of very disgruntled Central Bloc partners north of the border, grieving over their ruined deal and failed investment."
"Indeed it would," he said.
"It's a serious story," said Cleesh.
"It's a major, major story," Falk replied. "Are you kidding? The SO displaying blatant bias and using its powers and influence to favour US interests, and in so doing light off the first ever post-global war? Our names will look very good on the awards."
"They will. Bari says–"
"Listen, Cleesh. I think we have to tread very carefully here. Bari is GEO, and GEO is not without a vested interest. Can he hear me saying this?"
"No."
"It's true. GEO is very much a US corporation."
"Agreed, except that GEO is a principal investor in the Eighty-Six settlement, and has been since the early days, and has no particular interest in a mining remit. Even if the SO's bias was pro-US, a war on Eighty-Six is going to hurt GEO in fundamental ways. Bari wants this out there as much as we do. If it can do anything to break the deadlock and bring this conflict back from the brink, we have his full support."
There was a distant thump, a hollow sound. Someone had knocked against the outside of the Jung tank, and the kettle drum echo had rolled through the water to him.
"It would be very useful to get some hard evidence this end," he said.
"What are you thinking?" she asked. "I'm filling some pretty fat files here. Seberg. Ocean Exploratory. The parcel bids. The business courtships. The Strategic Significance Order."
"Yeah, but that'll be official record. The SO and the favoured corps will have covered anything untoward very carefully. We'd need contract lawyers to comb the evidence, and even if we did find an irregularity, it would probably be some very subtle thing that lacked any newsweight."
"I can get a team on it," she replied. "Bari can bring in some specialists."
"Hold off for now. It will sell better if we retain an independent firm to do the searches. GEO's thumbprint would not be helpful."
"Well, gee, Falk, I don't know what a hotshot like you has got in the bank," she said, "but I can't afford that kind of retainer. We need Bari for this."
"No, we need an outlet. We need to decide how we're going to break this story and handle it. That means a really respectable agency or network. Give it some thought. Between us, we've got plenty of links."
Someone gently banged against the metal tube of his tank again.
"So the evidence your end?" she asked.
"I don't know. It would be useful to know if a specific or unusual deposit was at the root of the dispute. It would be good to find Seberg or any of his partners."
"Oh, about that," she said. "It may not be much, but the employment records for the Eyeburn depot listed an asset manager called Reed Popper. That's double-pee-ee-are. He'd been there two years and was still listed at the time the place went silent."
"He was RP?"
"No, he was a contractor, but he was paid through RP. I was wondering if he was your 'Popa'. Right place, right time, probably knew Seberg."
"Probably."
"I tracked him back, and let's just say his identity record is not great. It's not entirely clear who Reed Popper is, where he came from, or when he arrived on Eighty-Six."
"See what you can do to track down Seberg or any of his key associates," said Falk. "The real prize, I suppose, would be proof that a US corp is exploiting any of the resources that Seberg claimed in this area."
"Because they shouldn't be?"
"Exactly because they shouldn't be. The SO snatched all the land rights away from Ocean. Do we know the grounds of the Strategic Significance Order?"
"They're not obliged to disclose the terms," Cleesh replied. "I'll go through it closely to see if there are any hints. It's usually either to protect the security of a sovereign state, or it's about protecting an area of singular scientific interest or an exceptional natural environment."
"Right, so technically, all the parcels should have reverted to SO protection. Like they did with the western veldt on Seventy-Seven? The habitat of those herding grazers?"
"Yeah. And like that bulk refinery the Chinese tried to build on that island off the Bloc settlement on Twenty-Six. That whole fuss, Falk, remember?"
"I do. So, if there's a commercial US operator or operators at work anywhere on what used to be Ocean holdings, even in a preliminary fashion, it's smoking-gun evidence that the SO strong-armed commercial competitors out of the way, cleared the region and let US national interests in through a back door. It would be primary evidence of prejudicial misconduct."
"In that case I lay real money it's connected to the Heligo thing," said Cleesh.
"The thing on the clip?"
"Yeah. You've run the clip since I patched you, right?"
"No, I–"
"Freek®, Falk! Get in the game! The translation I got off your sound-for-sound version pretty much makes it clear that Heligo is the thing. Whatever Heligo is."
"Shit. Okay. I'm going to play it back now and–"
The booming came again. Somebody kicking the outside of the tank.
"Nes! Nestor!"
Falk scrambled up, eyes open. Valdes blundered into the bedroom, urgent.
"You gotta come, man! You gotta see!"
TWENTY-EIGHT
Outside, night had fallen, a cold, hard nigh
t full of meantempered rain. Falk followed Valdes through to the palatial living room. Everyone had gathered there to stare out of the expensive ribbon windows towards the west. Even Bigmouse, slumped on the couch, had opened his eyes and propped himself up a little.
Beyond the edge of the woodland, three or four miles away, the landscape was alight. Great shock flashes of orange glare lit up the low clouds, huge, trembling lights. After each, time-lapsed, came the distant thump of detonations. Each thump sounded like someone kicking the outside of a theoretically conceptual metal box.
It was an artillery duel, an armour clash of significant size, running down the line of the highway and across the area where the depot lay. The quick, flickering flashes, burps of combusting gas, were the signatures of main armour weapons firing. The bigger, slower blooms of radiance were detonations. The fireballs of hi-ex shells. The brief, vast explosions of something going up as its magazine or powerplant was hit. The neon-spark showers of detonating munitions or shattering armour hulls. Falk could see flurries of tracers and the occasional odd, jump-strobe blister of hardbeam fire.
"Fuck," whispered Preben. They could all see the amber reflection of their own appalled faces in the window glass, lit by the distant fires. The sealed-unit glass shivered in its frame with the more significant shockwaves. Tal had Lenka pulled tight against her.
"What's happening, Falk?" asked Cleesh.
"The SO counter-offensive has begun," he said. "Ground forces coming right up the valley and the highway run, meeting Bloc units head-on."
"We can all fucking see that, you moron," said Rash.
"Sorry, I–" said Falk. "Sorry."
Falk could see small firefly lights, dodging and darting around the boiling lightshow. Hopter gunships on ground attack, visible because of the glittering discharge of their weaponpods.
"The fucking forest is on fire," said Valdes, pointing. "The fucking forest."
Over to their left, two miles from the house, a large section of the treeline was burning hot yellow, almost incandescent. Falk could see the black stripes of tree trunks in the brightness of it, realised that streaming smoke from the fire, black on black, was masking a whole section of the malevolent night sky. Something had gone astray, hit the trees, or maybe something had shot at a target using the forest cover. H-beams, probably, roasting and igniting vegetation like that.
They were all staring at the forest fire when the big one came. They felt it shake the building, and the flash was so bright they all cried out and winced away. An immense sheet of flame spread up into the sky, seething and ferocious. It was like some supervolcanic catastrophe. The blaze didn't die back, it grew. The night became a lurid, amber day. Flames rose half a mile into the air, wet orange fire that rolled and folded into hellish black smoke.
A few seconds after the flash and the earth shock, the blast wind reached them, thrashing the trees in the nearby woods, flattening the long grass of the meadow, peppering the long ribbon window with grass seeds, water droplets, grit and twigs. The pelting lasted several seconds before it subsided.
"The depot," said Rash. "The depot just went up."
"No way that was intentional targeting," said Preben.
"No shit," Rash replied.
The colossal fuel blaze filled the western sky like a sunset.
"We should get clear. Get out of here," said Falk.
"Where to?" asked Rash dubiously.
"Into the hills. Away from that."
"Yeah, how?"
"On foot if we have to."
"What about Bigmouse?" asked Rash.
"We carry him."
"We won't get far, then," said Rash.
Falk looked at him.
"I don't think staying here is going to be such a great option for very much longer," he said, and then gestured towards the light show. "Would you like to head that way?"
Rash returned his look.
"Right now, we're fucked whatever we do," he said. "I think we should try the comms again. See if we can raise some friendlies now they're close."
"Yeah," said Preben. "Good chance they've cleared this jamming shit by now."
"Hey!"
They looked around. It was Tal. She was standing beside the couch, looking down at Bigmouse. Her posture was uncomfortable, unsettled.
"What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"What did she say?" asked Rash.
"Shit!" said Falk. He went straight over to Bigmouse, knelt down beside him. The others crowded in behind him.
"He's not breathing," said Preben. Bigmouse had slumped back again, his eyes closed. Even in the firelit gloom of the room, Falk could see the shadow of cyanosis on Bigmouse's cheeks and lips.
"Oh fuck!" he said. "Don't you fucking do this to me, Mouse! Don't you fucking dare!"
"Clear his airway, man!" Valdes cried.
"Yeah, so fucking helpful," snapped Falk. He was struggling to loosen Bigmouse's blate and shirt. The pressure on Bigmouse's bruised torso should have caused a sharp pain response. Mouse didn't stir. He wasn't breathing at all.
"Fuck, come on," Falk said.
"What's happening?" asked Cleesh inside his head.
"None of us are medics," said Falk loudly. "None of us are fucking medics. Times like now, I really wish I knew what to do with someone who had stopped breathing as a result of severe blunt-force trauma to the chest."
"No shit," replied Preben, helping with the blate, "we've got to make him breathe."
"Stand by," said Cleesh. "I'm getting Underwood."
"You got to pump his chest, man," Valdes said, pushing in. "I've seen it. You've got to get his lungs going."
"We have no idea of the injuries," replied Rash. "We start pushing his chest in and out, we could be ramming broken rib down through his lungs. Could collapse them. Or he could have a what, a blood build-up."
"Haemothorax," said Falk.
"Yeah, that. I've heard of chest wall damage where whole sections of fucking ribcage become detached."
"Is there any first aid stuff in the house?" Falk asked Tal in Russian. "Anything at all? Anything you've seen?"
"There is a box in the outhouse. A first aid box for the builders who were here," she replied, eyes wide. "We sometimes took painkillers from it."
"Go and get it. Show Preben where it is," he said. He switched to English. "Preben, Tal's going to take you to get a medical pack from one of the outbuildings. Get it fast."
They left the room together, running.
"Mr Falk, this is Underwood," said a new voice in his head. "What can you tell me?"
"He took several rounds in the body-plating yesterday," said Falk. "Bad bruising, chest pain, now he's stopped breathing altogether."
"What?" asked Rash.
"I'm just thinking out loud," said Falk.
"You're probably looking at severe pulmonary contusion," said Underwood gently. "Is his skin blue? His lips?"
"Yes," said Falk.
"Yes, what?" asked Valdes.
"How long since he stopped breathing?" asked Underwood.
"How long since he stopped breathing?" asked Falk.
"Five minutes?" said Valdes.
"He was okay when we came in here," said Rash. "He spoke to me. Two minutes?"
"Two minutes, you think?" replied Falk.
"You've got four or five at the most before the damage becomes irreversible," said Underwood. Her voice sounded like she was standing on the other side of a locked door. "You need to clear the airway and get him ventilated. You can do CPR?"
"CPR is going to make his injury worse," said Falk.
"Right, right," agreed Valdes.
"Being dead is going to make his injury worse too," said Underwood. "Start CPR. Is there any way you can intubate him? Do you have any medical equipment?"
"Start CPR," Falk said to Rash.
"You think?" Rash looked dubious.
"Yes. Can you do it?"
"Yes," said Rash.
"We've got a medical pack on the way," said Fa
lk.
"I know we have," said Rash, kneeling down beside Bigmouse and looking at Falk as though he wasn't making any sense.