The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Not at the finance offices, no. But the programming team assigned to crack the Crays squirted all the data they pulled out up here to the manor. I thought he must be here.’

  ‘Don’t get it,’ said Suzi. ‘Nothing could happen to Greg, not with that Lady Gee in tow. She’s in-fucking-credible, like nothing happens without her seeing it first. Nothing!’

  ‘Then why did this virus get into the manor’s gear?’ Eleanor said. They all looked at her, faces gusted by random beams of blue and orange light from the vehicles in the distance. ‘Gabriel predicted the second hotrod attack against Wilholm, why not the third?’

  ‘Shit,’ from Suzi.

  ‘OK, so strike Gabriel,’ said Teddy. ‘She and Greg have been zapped—’ he flinched, glanced at Eleanor, started again. ‘Least, we don’t know what’s happened to ’em; same time Wilholm gets burned again. You like maybe see a connection there, Victor?’

  The Security Captain nodded earnestly. ‘I’ll make absolutely sure that you get to the manor right after we debug the defence gear.’

  Teddy snorted. Eleanor was struck by just how menacing he’d become; nothing like the directionless thuggishness of Des, he focused his energy and anger with deadly precision. And she was very glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Victor Tyo was wilting under his stare, unable to look away.

  ‘You’re not reading me right, man,’ Teddy said softly. ‘The answers are in that fancy mansion your lady boss lives in, and we want them. Tonight. Now.’

  Victor spread his arms helplessly. ‘We’re calling in all our security programmers, but it’s the middle of the night. They’ll produce an antithesis, but it’s going to take time. There is nothing I can do that’ll get us in there any sooner.’

  ‘Wrong, man. We’re going in now, and you’re coming with us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it. Security hardliners inside see us coming at them it’s gonna be target-practice time. We need you out in front to show them we ain’t hostile.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ Victor Tyo said. ‘Do you have any idea what kind of hardware is guarding that manor?’

  Teddy grinned and beckoned.

  There were five electric Honda bikes behind the hedgerow. Des was waiting with them, along with Roddy and another Trinity called Jules. All of them wearing the same black jumpsuit. Eleanor began to think it must be more than just a uniform.

  Teddy flipped open a cybofax, showing it to Victor Tyo. ‘See this? List of Wilholm’s defence gear. We know what they’re loaded with, where it is, line of fire. Got our approach all figured out. We can handle the automatics, all we need now is some way of convincing the security hardliners not to shoot after we’ve broken through. That’s you, man.’

  Victor Tyo took the cybofax, holding it gently as he read down the screen, dismay growing on his face. ‘Where in Christ’s name did you get this from? Every byte here is ultra-hush.’

  ‘Snatched right out of your security division cores,’ Teddy said. ‘Now you believe we’re serious?’

  Royan, Eleanor knew. The thought that he was behind them, an intangible general, bolstered her in a way she couldn’t define. She actually began to believe there might be hope after all.

  The Hondas took them across country, heading for the back of the Wilholm estate in a long, flat curve to avoid the police patrols checking the perimeter. Eleanor rode pillion behind Suzi, clinging tenaciously to the wiry Trinities girl, sugar cane beating at her legs and arms. She could see the front wheel-fork’s chrome suspension springs hammering up and down as the bike bounced over the compacted furrows of sandy red soil. They were travelling in single file, with Teddy leading; Nicole was his passenger.

  There’d never been any question over the marine-adept woman joining the break-in team, which irked Eleanor, because Teddy hadn’t wanted to take her along.

  ‘No offence, gal,’ he’d said calmly. ‘But you ain’t used to this kind of heat.’

  ‘So how many times have you broken into a place like this?’ she’d retorted.

  ‘That ain’t the point. My troops, they got the discipline, know weapons.’

  ‘I used shot-guns and rifles at my kibbutz. And I’ll just follow you after you go in.’

  ‘Shit, OK gal, but Greg’ll have my arse if he ever finds out. Guess there’s more to you than – well, you check out neat.’

  More than tits ’n’ ass, Eleanor had filled in silently. But Teddy had stopped objecting after that. Some part of her wished he hadn’t.

  It was Suzi who’d given Eleanor one of the jumpsuits to put on. ‘It’s an energy dissipater,’ she’d explained intently. ‘It can hold out against a hand-laser for a good twelve seconds. But with those Bofors masers they’ve got up at the manor, you’ve got maybe three, four seconds to skip out of the beam before burn through.’

  Along with Victor and Nicole, Eleanor had stripped off before pulling the heavy garment on, its slippery, spongy lining clinging to her skin. When it had adjusted to her figure there was virtually no restriction of movement. A tight cap held her hair down, and a hood with an integral photon amp came over her face, sealing to the collar.

  Once it was on she became appreciably colder, the thermal shunt fibres siphoning out her body heat.

  ‘It’s no use against bullets,’ Suzy went on. ‘Then you can’t have everything. ’Sides, Wilholm only has beam weapons. So Son says. Better be fucking right.’

  The world as seen through the photon amp was a place of ghostly shadows, shaded blue and grey. Eleanor was gradually growing used to it; depth perception was a little misleading, but as long as she remembered that, there’d be no trouble. Suzi had shown her how to up the magnification, bleed in infrared. There was a throat-mike activated graphic overlay, the jumpsuit’s internal gear already loaded with the route Royan had devised into Wilholm. Eleanor ran through an articulation acceptance check, and practised calling up the various data projections.

  The Hondas were riding down a slight incline. Teddy’s bike was slowing up ahead. Eleanor searched her mind, but there was no fear, only determination. A sense of inevitability.

  Teddy pulled up beside a broad fast-flowing stream at the bottom of the slope, sugar cane had given way to thick reedy grass. Suzi braked beside him.

  They all gathered together at the water’s edge. ‘We’ll use a diamond formation,’ Teddy said in a low steady voice. ‘Eleanor and Victor at the centre; you two will carry the Rockwell cannon and its power units, it’s heavy, but we’re gonna need its firepower to take out the manor’s Bofors masers when we get within range. The rest of you are gonna provide us a three-sixty cover. Now you look out for those sentinel panthers, OK? You ain’t never been up against ’em before, but I have. They’re not simple modifications like police assault dogs, they’re gene-tailored. Hazards don’t come any bigger, they don’t behave like animals, they’re smart and sneaky with it. Your AKs can handle ’em, but it’s gonna take more than one hit. OK, now remember, we stick to the water. The estate’s got lotsa ground traps. They’re listed, but in these conditions you’re gonna have trouble matching the graphics to the landscape. The stream bed’s safe, Jules, you stay out here, see to the receiver.’

  ‘Hey, screw that, Father.’

  ‘It’s important, boy. Might all wind up depending on that receiver before tonight’s out. Gotta be done properly.’

  Jules looked away across the fields, anger showing in the set of his shoulders. Eleanor wondered if he was blaming her.

  ‘Radio communications to the manor are out,’ Victor said. ‘There’s a jammer blocking all frequencies.’

  ‘Yeah I know, a Grumman ECM788,’ Teddy said. ‘We got us a tactical message laser, nothing gonna interfere with that. Jules’ll take the receiver up to the top of the valley; Son says we’ll have direct line of sight from there to the manor.’

  ‘Christ,’ Victor muttered in an undertone. ‘Walshaw’s going to kill somebody when this is over.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Teddy asked. �
��OK. We’ll ask the Lord for his blessing.’

  The Trinities bowed their heads. Eleanor saw Victor look round in surprise. She lowered her own head.

  ‘Lord, we ask for your guidance and protection in our task ahead. We’re going to see if we can help our lost brother and sister, and we believe our cause is right and just. If in your wisdom you could grant us success we will remain thankful for such mercy for the remainder of our mortal life. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ the Trinities whispered in chorus.

  ‘Amen,’ Eleanor added.

  ‘OK. Tool up. Move out.’

  The Rockwell was a wound monolattice-filament tube one and a half metres long and twenty centimetres wide. It had a broad leather strap so Eleanor could carry it across her back. She lifted it up and realized just how dependent she was going to be on the Trinities for protection from the sentinels. She was confident she could carry it to the manor, but the weight was going to slow her down.

  After she’d settled the cannon into place, Suzi clipped a Braun laser pistol on to her belt. ‘Twenty-five shots, or a five-second continuous burn,’ Suzi said. ‘Don’t fret yourself none about getting it wet, it’s waterproof.’ Five power magazines were added. Eleanor felt like protesting about the extra weight, but held her tongue. Suzi’s normally infallible barbed humour had evaporated.

  The seven of them splashed into the middle of the stream. Teddy and Suzi paired at the front, Roddy took up station on Eleanor’s right-hand side. On her left was Victor, who was carrying a couple of high-density power units for the Rockwell along with the message laser. Nicole was on his left, and Des brought up the rear.

  The graphics display had reproduced a perfect profile of the stream’s winding course for her; a memory loaded straight from the security core Royan had burnt. It’d been built by the landscape team who had fashioned the manor’s grounds; they had made the actual bed from fine, hard-packed sand, then layered it with long strips of worn limestone pebbles. The width was a near constant four metres where she stepped in, with the water coming half-way up her shins. After a minute she managed to find the best rhythm for walking, not quite lifting her sole out of the water. At least they were going in the direction of the flow. Heat was draining out of her feet. Her toes were already numb.

  Teddy held his hand up. ‘OK, people. Hoods on.’

  Eleanor reached back and pulled it over her head. A circle of skin around her eye sockets tingled briefly, The photon amp fed its monochrome image into her retinas, suit graphics confirming the neck seal’s integrity. She breathed air through the filters, dry and metallic.

  She took it as an offhand compliment that nobody checked to see if she’d fixed her hood properly.

  The stream ran through a thick braided cassia hedge ten metres ahead, the dividing line between the sugar-cane fields and a broad tract of undulating meadowland. Eleanor saw a line of posts spaced seven or eight metres apart had risen up in front of the hedge, two metres high and featureless except for a small red light flashing away on top. The earth around them had been torn as they’d pushed their way up out of their recesses.

  Her photon amp picked out a band of forest about eight hundred metres past the hedge. She didn’t like to think about lugging the Rockwell all that way. And how far was the manor beyond the forest?

  THREE HUNDRED METRES, the graphics told her. Oh well.

  ‘Boundary,’ Teddy said. His voice was muffled by his hood filters. ‘Now is when it starts to hit the fan. OK, Suzi.’

  Both of them brought up their AK carbines. There was a bass stutter and the two posts on either side of the stream disintegrated. They switched their aim to the next pair.

  In the end they took out eight before Teddy was satisfied. His arm signalled the advance.

  Eleanor meshed the infrared into her image, alert for any sign of the sentinels. The function fuzzed the outlines a little, but she saw a couple of pink spots pelting away from the stream. Stoats, invisible before.

  The meadowland here offered little or no cover. The grass was knee-high, laced with weeds and keck. Nothing had grazed on it for months.

  Two hundred metres past the boundary markers and Teddy stopped them again. He plucked one of the smallest spherical grenades dangling from his waist and twisted the timer. ‘Down.’

  Eleanor squatted, her backside below the surface of the water. Growing cold. Teddy lobbed the grenade out across the meadowland. Crouching down. Five seconds later there was a barely audible thud.

  Another line of posts rose out of the ground ahead of them. Eleanor could hear grass and soil ripping. This time there were no red lights on top.

  Suzi and Teddy took aim with their AKs.

  PRESSURE-SENSITIVE PICKET, said the graphics, when she asked. There were another two picket lines between them and the forest. The memory core didn’t have any information about what they did if you walked between them. Presumably, if you were talented enough to be on this kind of mission you ought to know.

  They yomped on.

  The stream’s banks were growing perceptibly steeper. Eleanor thought the water was getting deeper too. Her view across the meadowland was shrinking. Thick patches of watercress choked both sides of the stream. Roddy and Nicole had to walk through it, kicking away a tangled wrap of tendrils from their legs every few paces.

  Eleanor was glad of the brief rest when they came to the next picket line.

  Victor pressed his head up to hers. ‘You OK?’

  The AKs demolished another set of pillars.

  ‘Fine.’

  There was a quick squeeze on her upper arm.

  Suzi and Teddy reloaded their carbines, jamming in fresh magazines with hard snaps.

  The stream fell on harder rock. It was narrower now, deeper. The water came up to Eleanor’s knees. Teddy slowed the pace, edging cautiously round the sharper turns.

  ‘How about a couple of us walk along the side?’ Suzi said. The banks had risen until they were level with Eleanor’s head. She couldn’t see much of the meadowland now. What was visible seemed to be small deep hollows, and ground-hugging bushes. There could’ve been anything hidden out there. Her breathing was coming faster.

  ‘No,’ Teddy said.

  Suzi didn’t argue. Discipline. Eleanor thought it would’ve made a lot of sense to have someone who could look out over the meadowland.

  They rounded a bend and saw the last line of picket pillars had already emerged from the earth. Five AK carbines came up in reflex. There was a moment’s pause.

  The sentinel came at them through the air like a guided missile. Eleanor saw it as a pink streak arcing overhead, forelegs at full stretch, an angel of death reaching for Des. All five AKs opened up, filling the air with a guttural roar. Des was falling backwards, still firing. The sentinel’s heavy streamlined body juddered in mid-flight, its edges distorting as the slugs chewed it apart. Momentum kept it going. Des hit the water. Eleanor’s image was suddenly degraded by a spray of blood painting her hood’s photon-amp receptors. The sentinel landed almost on top of Des, already dead.

  ‘Keep watching!’ Teddy bellowed as they all began to move towards the carcass.

  Des still hadn’t surfaced. Eleanor felt vomit about to rise from her belly. Forced herself to hold it down. She’d drown if she puked with the hood on.

  ‘Eleanor, Victor, see to him.’ Teddy’s words became lost in a strident whistle; already piercing it was rapidly broaching her pain threshold. Eleanor jammed her hands over her ears and floundered towards the dark soggy hump which was the sentinel.

  The four pillars nearest the stream had begun to glow violet. Eleanor’s photon amp hurriedly faded them down. She felt her bones beginning to shake from the noise.

  Victor was at her side, shoving at the bulky sentinel. She helped him, pushing its hindquarters. It began to move with desperate slowness. The sound from the pillars had turned to fire, drilling into her ears. Concentration was becoming impossible. The dead cat rolled over, and Des thrashed to the surface. Victor pulled
at his hood, breaking the neck seal. Des was choking, squirting water, and gasping for air.

  The hideous sound level had begun to reduce. Eleanor risked a glance round. Teddy and Suzi were blasting away at the brilliant pillars. Nicole and Roddy were poised in a half crouch, AKs held ready, scanning the top of the banks.

  Des’s desperate coughing subsided. The last violet pillar crumpled. Eleanor found she was trembling violently.

  Silence closed about them.

  Victor shook Eleanor’s arm.

  ‘What?’ She couldn’t even hear her own voice.

  He was jabbing a finger at Des’s arm. She saw the jumpsuit fabric was torn above the elbow, slashed by the sentinel’s claws. Blood was streaming out of the wound.

  The sight snapped Eleanor out of her daze. She made Victor clamp his hand around the wound, reducing the flow of blood. Nicole was carrying the field first-aid kit. She let Eleanor take it from her without ever breaking her vigilance.

  Teddy fished the Rockwell and its power units from the water while Eleanor pulled an elasticated sheath up around Des’s wound. It ballooned out as she touched the inflation stud, analgesic foam setting in seconds. She helped Des to his feet. Even with the photon amp’s peculiar vague shading she could tell his face was chalk white.

  Teddy handed an AK to Victor and hung one of the power units on Des. He gave the second power unit to Eleanor after she’d lifted the Rockwell again, taking the message laser himself.

  ‘Come on. Outta here.’

  Eleanor knew Teddy must’ve shouted it, but barely heard the sound over the occlusive ringing in her ears. The weight of the weaponry was tormenting her spine. Her mind chucked out stupid irrelevances like cold feet and keeping watch across the meadowland to concentrate on the important: thrusting one foot at a time through the churning water. Her flesh was going through the routine, disjointed from her mind. Solitude’s anguish unravelling around her. Alone with people she didn’t know, walking to a place she didn’t want to go to.

  They were fifty metres from the forest when Nicole opened fire, her AK a subliminal rumble. The sentinel was hunkered down behind a bush, a clenched shadow, coiled up waiting to leap. It managed a short jump before the slugs bit into its skull. Crashing down into the watercress.