Slowly, he put his hand up, burning from the pitying grins Ellici and Tilliana were directing at him. But the light from the Avenging Heretic exploding eclipsed both of them.
‘Well, that was conclusive,’ Kenelm said. ‘We will attempt to lure the Olyix to the neutron star.’
What the fuck have we just said yes to?
London
10th December 2206
There were parts of Connexion’s Greenwich security operations centre that were just accumulating dust now. It was another thing that told Kohei Yamada how bad things were. In the time before Blitz2, the circular chamber was conserved to operating-room standards. Small cleanez would slide around, vacuuming and polishing every surface, and the aircon filters would remove any stray particle. But without regular servicing, the little machines became impaired then inevitably failed. And Connexion’s Greenwich tower now operated on a skeleton staff with just two functions: those who supervised the vital interstellar portals that supplied London with electricity and food, and the security division who watched over them. Janitorial services and the maintenance department had been suspended for ‘the duration’.
The wide arms of Kohei’s chair were stained with rings from his teacups. He brought a thermos flask in with him every shift, along with a pack of biscuits or sandwiches. Crumbs were building up in the edges of the leather cushioning. However, none of the grime was affecting the systems yet, which made him suspect most of the hardware would last longer than Blitz2.
His team’s job was to coordinate with London’s Special Branch and Alpha Defence, monitoring the ongoing sabotage by Olyix operatives. Thanks to some amazingly good intel coming from Yuri, they’d managed to stop eleven attempts in the last two years, ranging from physical assaults on shield generator stations to darkware infiltration of the interstellar portals that brought electricity to London. The only downside was the restrictions Yuri put on rounding up the kingpins afterwards. Kohei could see the logic behind it, not tipping the Olyix off to just how much they knew, but that didn’t stop it from being as frustrating as hell. It also meant spreading their attention wide, tracking associates of associates to try to gain insights into whatever scheme was being planned next.
That morning he arrived at the centre early as normal; what served as his apartment used to be a middle-management office on the tower’s seventh floor. Kohei did a long shift every day; there was nothing else to do. He’d managed to get his (fifth) wife transferred to the safety of the Puppis system, where she’d been assigned to Bodard – the first of the exodus habitats completed by the industrial stations orbiting Malamalama. She was using her sixty-year-old botany degree to help stabilize the habitat’s biosphere, which occupied her for long hours every day. They talked most days, him with the glum news of how London was coping with Blitz2 while she filled him in on the gossip from Nashua habitat, where all the branches of the Zangari family had fled to – which was like listening to the byzantine plot of some interactive soap opera with too many characters.
He settled into his chair and reviewed the log. Nothing outstanding. A small-time nethead crew from Balham was trying to access files from Connexion’s Waterloo transtellar hub. They’d given up trying to use solnet a week ago and were now scouting the streets outside the cordoned-off station to see if they could physically splice into the data cables. It’d been sold to them as a power heist – which made a kind of sense, as Waterloo was where a power feed from 82 Eridani was coming in, and electricity was wealth in Blitz2 London. But in reality, it was a malware infiltration mission for the Paynors, put together and run through a convoluted route of lieutenants and in-the-dark underworld soldiers, giving the major family distance from the sharp end. Except it wasn’t the family; Alpha Defence wasn’t even sure if any of them were still alive. Nikolaj remained in their Kensington house, maintaining a front for the family’s criminal activities while she organized an ongoing barrage of sabotage.
What Kohei didn’t get was how Yuri always seemed to know about the sabotage plans before anyone in London did. But he just wrote that off as being part of the Yuri Alster legend. Who else would have some kind of spy in the Olyix arkship?
He sipped his tea slowly. Real loose-leaf tea from India, which he’d carefully scavenged from the kitchenettes on the tower’s abandoned executive floors in the weeks after he’d moved in. There was enough left for maybe another seven months. In the meantime, he enjoyed the last taste of civilization as a self-awarded bonus for keeping London safe. He smiled as he drank, watching the Balham crew hanging around the barren Jubilee Gardens, trying to sneak their synth mice into a sealed manhole cover. Special Branch had them completely surrounded with plainclothes officers, while five military ground drones waited in the utilities duct below the manhole.
A notification splashed across his tarsus lens. The department’s G8Turing was registering an abnormal activity pattern in the Royal Victoria Docks area. Frowning, Kohei used his altme to call up supplementary files. Special Branch had set up a secondary observation there, centred on the Icona apartment block. Without the dedicated sensors and a secure hardline, that whole area would have been unobserved. Solnet coverage was poor and the civic sensors trashed. More associated files: The surveillance existed because Karno Larson lived there. When Kohei queried that, he saw the man was classed as a person of interest – a financier with ties to several of the major families, including the Paynors.
‘Give me a visual,’ he ordered.
Sensors showed him a young white man with a longish nose cycling slowly eastwards along Western Gateway’s clear path. When he reached the low green zone barrier around the huge exhibition building, he wobbled off across a dirt square that used to be grass, then started back along the wide path down the side of the dock, steering around the ancient cranes preserved as monuments to the original port. The Icona apartment block was one of the buildings he passed, overlooking the big dock.
There was almost no one else around. The exhibition centre played a strong role in deterring residents and visitors alike. A month into the siege, it had been designated an official green zone refuge for cocoons. To begin with, mobs had attacked and killed any cocoons they could find – those out in the open or unprotected by families. Then, when it slowly dawned that cocoons weren’t contagious and that the victims were still alive, in a twisted, bizarre fashion – that the alien cells were preserving them – the government created green zones where they could be brought and kept safe. Kohei knew there were more than eighty thousand cocoons in the Docklands exhibition hall; sensors were showing him the dark, glossy guard drones patrolling the perimeter. Thick blue plastic pipes pumped water out of the dock to supply the cocoons inside. After two years, they’d reduced the water level a couple of metres. And like the residue of the Thames outside, the surface had been smothered in a ragged mat of dark green algae – about the only vegetation that had survived in the whole city.
The cyclist avoided the few pedestrians who were heading towards the angular glass crystal building at the west end of the dock, where the civic nutrition agency had set up a public kitchen. When he reached the end of the riverfront path, he turned back onto the Western Gateway and repeated the circuit. It was the third time he’d been around that morning. Kohei watched as he dismounted just before reaching the bulky Icona block again and wheeled his bike along. There were times when the man bent over – to pick something off the bicycle’s tyres, to lean against the wall for a moment to take in the sight, standing beside a crane, holding the thick iron struts. So casually, so naturally. The sensors watched him place a button-sized bug each time, all of them aligned on the Icona building.
‘He’s scouting for something,’ Kohei announced to the other three operatives sitting around the display bubble. The G8Turing had already run facial recognition, with no result. ‘Deep analysis,’ he ordered.
The observation sensors weren’t quite top-of-the-line, but with several of them focused simultaneously they began to work through a detailed inves
tigation. The first anomaly was the difference in skin colour between his dark hands and white face. The cyclist was wearing a fleshmask. Which was when Kohei started to take a serious interest.
The G8Turing captured every feature and movement of the fleshmask, then carefully started a virtual deconstruction. Kohei watched, fascinated as always by the process, as layers of lies were peeled away to leave a very different reality beneath.
‘Ho boy,’ he muttered as Ollie Heslop’s file splashed across his lens. He knew the name anyway – the one member of the Southwark Legion they suspected of escaping the Lichfield Road raid two years ago. ‘Where have you been hiding, Ollie, and what are you up to now?’
Puppis Star System
10th December 2206
Loi was overseeing Strikeback’s warship portal deployment when the call from Eldlund came through. He sighed at his friend’s timing, but couldn’t help the short smile at what it meant.
‘We’re ready,’ Eldlund said. ‘The turtles have reached the end of the lakebed.’
‘I’m on my way.’ Loi cancelled his secure channel to the station’s G8Turing, which was controlling the deployment, and the immersive display encircling his chair slid away like wind-torn mist. He was sitting on one of three couch-chairs in a small hexagonal chamber, its only illumination coming from a display bubble in the middle, projecting a million-kilometre-wide globe of space, with Earth nestled at the centre. Tiny amber icons glided around the besieged planet like a cloud of fireflies – each one an Olyix ship, with the Salvation of Life a malign red blemish at L3, directly opposite the moon. The arkship had flown there after the invasion began, settling into a stable parking orbit where it received the transport ships bringing up the newly cocooned. Two hundred thousand kilometres further out, green icons were slowly drifting into position, as yet undetected by the Olyix.
When its primary base on the moon was destroyed by Olyix Deliverance ships, Alpha Defence had dispersed to a series of secondary locations. The secure station in the Puppis system was designated as the operations centre for the Strikeback operation’s forward positioning office. It was logical; Puppis was where a great many industrial systems were based, originally in expectation of the planet’s terraforming project. They’d all been taken over for the exodus habitat project – a major component of which were the new expansion portals that Connexion scientists had developed from the Olyix machines captured during an engagement in London. Unlike the old fixed-size portals that had to thread up, these could now enlarge themselves. There were limits, of course; a ten-centimetre-diameter portal couldn’t be expanded up to a hundred metres. But a fifty-metre portal could certainly increase to half a kilometre. The latest generation currently under development were designed to expand out to six kilometres – large enough for a habitat to pass through.
As the rebuilding phase of the Avenging Heretic project had wound down, Loi had moved on to the deployment team, who supervised the covert positioning of Strikeback’s expansion portals above Earth. This stage wasn’t dangerous or difficult, just overseeing the G8Turing that handled the flight vectors. And as an added benefit, it was what his mother assumed he’d be doing during the Strikeback itself. Having her in the Puppis system working on the exodus had proved both a blessing and a bit of a nightmare. She got to see him regularly, which helped put her mind at rest – and it played into the story that he was still working as Yuri’s assistant (which was partially true). Even though she was one of the leading figures in managing the exodus habitat manufacturing programme, and had frequent Strikeback briefings, the Avenging Heretic was classified way above her pay grade. Loi was thankful about that – because if she ever discovered what his actual mission was during Strikeback, there would be hell to pay.
He stepped through the portal into the Knockdown team’s ultra-secure office. Given it was the most critical aspect of Strikeback, only five people were allowed access. It was almost identical to the room he’d just left, except there was only Eldlund sitting in a chair in front of the display bubble. The projection here was bleak – a flat, desolate landscape smothered in grainy mist and illuminated from above by bright flickering light.
‘Looking good,’ Eldlund said, smiling brightly at Loi.
‘Uh, yes. Thank you. You, too,’ Loi replied. ‘Did you come here straight from a party?’ His friend was wearing a flowing dress of crushed purple velvet with an exceptionally long split up the side of hir skirt. He wondered briefly who the lucky date was.
Eldlund laughed. ‘You’re very sweet. So, ah, how’s Gwendoline?’
‘She’s okay. Busy. Like all of us.’
Eldlund’s interest in Loi’s mother was something Loi couldn’t quite get his head around. Sure, she was lovely, but she was his mother. He and Eldlund had become close over the last two years, which made what he assumed was a crush even harder to deal with.
‘Not quite like us,’ Eldlund teased. ‘Given where we’re heading . . .’
‘Yeah, but she’s not to know. She’d go into a massive panic, and I couldn’t take that.’
‘Absolutely. The stress is getting to me, too.’
‘Hey, we’ll be fine. Our suits are the best, and I’ve got your back. Always, okay?’
‘I know. Reciprocated, by the way.’ Hir face became sober. ‘Our intruders are out of Gilbert Bay.’
Loi scanned the bubble as his altme pulled data from the Knockdown network. At this stage of the mission, their task was to infiltrate portals into the area around Salt Lake City, where Olyix ships were landing in readiness for the city’s shield collapsing. It wasn’t easy to get physically close – not with the kind of sensor technology the Olyix boasted. The bioborgs Kandara had attempted to use as distractions on her failed mission to McDivitt habitat had shown they could detect fake creatures, so the Knockdown team had decided on a biological approach for their intruders.
With eight-letter DNA incorporated in the design, the Knockdown intruders resembled turtles. Measuring forty centimetres long, they’d been grown in vats over three months. But instead of the slow, stumpy legs that the genuine genus possessed, these had long, sinuous limbs that moved like snakes, making them relatively fast. The shell had a hide of chameleon cells, allowing them to blend into the landscape. Loi wasn’t entirely sure that was going to be needed given the environment they operated in, but the biologists had been on a roll, so it passed review unchallenged. Their internal organs were more or less standard, although they could handle climates with a much higher temperature than ordinary animals, and instead of a brain they had a complex network of bioneural circuitry. A five-centimetre expansion portal was held in a cavity just underneath the shell, providing secure communication.
‘Show me,’ Loi instructed the G8Turing. The bubble display switched to a simple map of Salt Lake City, centred around Gilbert Bay. Sensor imagery was patchy; the Olyix had eliminated all the low-orbit spysats, but plenty of Alpha Defence’s stealthed high-orbit systems were functional and provided a decent resolution. Visually, most of Utah was smothered under a Jovian-strength storm-swirl of cloud, with Salt Lake City a turgid violet glow fluorescing at the centre. Lightning forks snapped outwards constantly from the cirrocumulus peak, discharging into the clutter of secondary tornadoes that inundated the lakes and mountains around the city.
Eldlund flinched at the sight. ‘Damn, I’m glad we’re not down there.’
‘We will be soon enough,’ Loi reminded him. He flipped the display to features overlay and zoomed in on the shoreline of Gilbert Bay at the southern end of the Great Salt Lake. It didn’t exist any more. Even in ordinary times, the massive body of water suffered heavy evaporation every summer, shrinking it down. Now with four Deliverance ships bombarding the city shield with intense energy beams, the surrounding super-energized atmosphere had boiled it empty in the first seven months of the siege.
Twenty-five intruder creatures had travelled in from the north, slithering across the warm granules of the lakebed. Now the three leaders were making their
way over the buckled ribbon of asphalt that used to be I-80, with the rest following. Loi activated a direct link and looked through an intruder’s eyes. The land was a jumble of fractured slabs of interstate and desiccated scrub. The image was so badly hazed that he thought the link was faulty before realizing the air was actually clotted with grains of dirt scoured from the land by hurricane-force winds. Low clouds scudded fast overhead, their darkness the shade of wounded flesh. He knew the Oquirrh mountains began to rise up on the other side of the I-80, with Kessler Peak in the distance. But even with the intruder’s enhanced senses, he couldn’t see more than twenty metres.
‘Let’s spread them out,’ Eldlund said, ‘then march them forwards. Those mountains are tough in ordinary conditions, never mind wind like this.’
‘Okay.’ In his mind, Loi could see them as chess pieces advancing across the board – not that the squares were visible, nor the opponent. Somewhere in the maelstrom ahead, the Olyix transport ships were perched along the top of the Oquirrh range, waiting to pounce as soon as the shield fell. Loi directed the intruder forwards, plotting a course to load into its inertial navigation routines. It began to move faster, sliding up onto jagged ridges of exposed rock that marked the start of the foothills. Intermittent streamers of mist streaked down from the slopes above, flowing around it as if it was being sprayed by water cannon, then vanishing as fast as they came. The local air temperature had risen over twenty degrees Celsius.
‘I hope our suits are going to be good enough,’ Loi muttered.
‘Lim has done a great job. We’re going to be pioneers; they were about the first things human-built initiators ever produced. How cool is that?’
‘Scalding, if you must know.’
‘You’re such a miserabilist. Concentrate on good news. There must be some.’
The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.] Page 8