The Mandel Files, Volume 1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘OK, Morgan, we’re on the ground,’ Greg said. ‘Put Colin on, please.’

  Colin had insisted on being included, even though he really was too ill for an operation which required sustained gland use. But Greg didn’t have it in him to say no, not to that brave, silently pleading face. More bloody guilt.

  ‘I’m here, Greg.’ Colin’s voice was reedy, anxious and eager.

  He imagined them all in Morgan’s ops room: Eleanor silently worried, Gabriel staring grimly at the communications console, Morgan keen-eyed and serious, Colin sitting in front of a flatscreen displaying the satellite image of Walton, technical support staff hovering around. The hard-line security team commander secretly hoping to be ordered into the fray.

  ‘Where’s our man?’ Greg asked.

  ‘He hasn’t moved. It must be his house.’

  ‘Right, thanks, Colin.’ Greg requested the virtual simulation again. Featureless green toytown houses blinked in, marking the perimeter of the factory yard sixty metres away. He tilted the display to vertical, and reduced it until it was a panoramic model of the whole district. The house where Colin had said Knebel was staying flashed a bright amber. It was seven hundred metres away, due south. A route graphic slid out from their warehouse, an orange serpent bending and twisting down the smaller streets and constricted alleys.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Greg said. The display reverted to its real-scale superimposition, the route a path of tangerine glass.

  ‘I’ll keep you updated,’ Colin said.

  Greg saw Teddy’s face turn towards him, blank band concealing his expression.

  ‘No, Colin, just give us another scan when we’re a hundred metres away to confirm he’s still there.’

  ‘I can manage, Greg.’

  ‘Yeah, but if he starts to go walkabout you’re going to have to track him for us. I don’t want you overstressed.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘OK, call you when we’re in place.’ He summoned up a secretion from his gland, then set off down the orange line, feet sinking into the placid current of photons up to the ankles.

  The fog was sparser out on the streets, broken by walls and a light breeze coming off the basin. Visibility had increased to fifteen metres. Greg switched the virtual simulation back to outlines, the photon amp image shaded in the actual walls and roads a smoky grey and blue.

  Spook town, and no messing.

  There were no streetlights. Public utilities in Walton didn’t receive much priority from the city council these days. Chinks of biolum light escaped from some houses, glimmers from shuttered windows. The amp showed them as near-solid blades probing out across the street.

  Pro-PSP graffiti was splattered on every wall. They walked down one alley with an elaborate mural of People’s Constables and socialist-stereotypical workers sprayed on the fence, bold uplifted faces and stout poses; rotting wood had left vacant jagged gashes, mocking the artist’s vision.

  Black bags like swollen pumpkins and kelpboard boxes full of rubbish formed a humpbacked tide-line along the pavements. The corrupt smell of putrefying vegetation was strong in the air, mingling with the brine from the basin. Greg saw rats crawling around the bags, gnawing at soggy titbits. Tiny black glass eyes turned to watch him and Teddy pass, quite unafraid.

  They had to sink back into the shadows and gaps between buildings several times as Greg perceived people walking towards them. Walton’s residents invariably stuck to the centre of the road, as if they were afraid of the buildings and what they contained. They never once heard or saw any kind of powered transport, though bicycles nearly caught them out a couple of times, rushing up silently from behind.

  A street-corner pub produced the biggest obstacle. Bright fans of light shone out of its windows and open door, illuminating a broad section of the road. Men were lounging against its walls, drinking in small groups. Jukebox music reverberated oddly across the street, country rap, hoarse vocals booming against a background of a solitary steel guitar.

  Greg halted on the fringe of the light field consulting his virtual simulation. He pointed at the entry of a narrow alley on the other side of the road from the pub, and they edged off the street.

  ‘Recognized some active Blackshirts back there,’ Teddy muttered.

  ‘Mark it off for the future,’ Greg said.

  ‘Sure.’

  One of the reasons Teddy agreed to accompany him was because the opportunity to scout round enemy territory was too great to pass up. Greg knew the detailed satellite images stored in the guido’s memory would be handed over to Royan who would integrate them with the Trinities’ existing intelligence bytes. Lieutenants would pore over the resulting package, fine-tuning tactics for the final assault. Teddy hadn’t said anything, but he knew the fight wasn’t far away now.

  The alleyway they had skipped down brought them out into a cul-de-sac. One side was a brick wall backing on to some gardens, the other was a row of garages, their metal swing-up doors were either broken open or missing entirely. Walton’s perpetual tide of rubbish had swollen to form a rancid mattress underfoot, bags rose like lumpy organic buttresses against the bricks. Rats scampered about everywhere.

  Greg’s espersense found the cluster of minds, just as he heard the low bubbling laughter up ahead. Something about the minds wasn’t quite right, their thought currents wavered giddily, emotions burning fiercely. One of them was emitting a mental keening, gibbering with psychotic distress.

  ‘Shit. Teddy, it’s a bunch of synthoheads. And they’re juiced up high.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Ten metres. One of the garages.’ He drew his Armscor stunshot, a simple ash-grey pistol with a solid thirty-centimetre-long barrel. ‘I’ll take them, cover for any runaways.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  The stunshot was only accurate up to twenty metres. If one of the synthoheads got away, Teddy would have to use the Uzi on them, providing the target laser worked in the fog. Tension clamped down hard; this was supposed to be a stealth infiltration. People being killed just for getting in his way wasn’t part of the deal.

  It was the third garage from the end of the cul-de-sac, a dim yellow glow spilling out on to the sludge of rubbish. Greg flattened himself against the wall, checked the stunshot, then spun round the corner.

  There were five of them. Kids, still in their teens, two girls, three boys. Filthy, greasy jeans, frayed black leather jackets, denim waistcoats with studs, long straggly hair. The garage walls were slick with condensation, junk furniture – broken settees and armchairs – lined up around the walls, and an oil lamp hung from the ceiling.

  Greg’s photon amp threw the whole scene into starkly etched focus. Two of the kids were screwing on the floor, grunting like pigs. Another two stood on either side, watching, giggling. The fifth was huddled in a corner, arms over his head, weeping quietly.

  Greg shot the one closest to him. A girl, about seventeen, her neck freckled with dark infuser marks. The stunshot spat out a bullet-sized pulse of blue-white lightning. It hit her on the side of her ribcage. Her squeal was choked off as she reeled round. There was an impossibly serene smile on her face as she crumpled on to the legs of the rutting couple.

  Pulling the trigger was incredibly hard. They weren’t innocent, not even close. Just profoundly ignorant, pitiable. He had to keep on reminding himself the stunshot wasn’t lethal, though God alone knew what it would do to a metabolism fucked up so badly by syntho.

  He turned slightly. Aim and fire, nothing else matters.

  The second kid gurgled as the pulse hit him in the stomach, curling up and falling forwards. Aim and fire. The girl on the floor was struggling to get up as her partner collapsed on top of her. Aim and fire.

  The boy in the corner was looking straight at Greg, face ecstatic, tears streaming down. ‘Thank you, oh thank you.’

  Aim and fire.

  The kid slumped down again, head bowed.

  ‘Lord, what a waste,’ Teddy said. ‘Someplace else they
could’ve been real people.’

  Greg stepped over the prone bodies and extinguished the oil lamp, letting the night claim its own. ‘You can get syntho anywhere.’

  ‘Not in Mucklands, you fucking couldn’t. I look after my kids. Anyone tries peddling that shit near me an’ they end up swinging by the balls. Blackshirts don’t even look after their own.’

  ‘You’re preaching to the converted. Come on.’

  According to the bright yellow co-ordinates the guido was flashing up, he was standing fifty metres from the target house. Its green template glowed lambently, the walls and roof remaining outside the photon amp’s resolution.

  ‘Colin, how are we doing?’

  ‘He’s still there, Greg.’

  ‘OK, we’re closing in now.’

  He trotted down the road, watching the house gaining substance. It was a large detached three-storey affair, with bow windows on either side of the front door, built from a pale yellow brick with blue-grey slates. Nothing fancy, virtually a cube. Diamond shapes made from blue bricks set between the first-floor windows were the only visible ornamentation. A tall chimney stack was leaning at a worrying angle, a number of bricks from its top were missing. The chimney pots themselves ended in elaborate crowns, all of them playing host to tussocks of spindly weeds.

  A metre-high wall enclosed a broad strip of garden at the front. Greg stopped just outside; it took him a moment to realize there were no solar panels. The house’s residents must be right at the bottom of the human pile, and in Walton the bottom was as far down as you could get. All the windows had their curtains drawn; the photon amp revealed vague splinters of light round the edges. There was no gate, its absence marked by rusty metal hinge pins protruding from the wall.

  He walked down the algae-slimed path. Dog roses had run wild in the garden, reducing it to a thorny wilderness sprinkled with small pale flowers. A panel with eight bell buttons was set into the wall at the side of the door. Very primitive, there was no camera lens as far as he could see. He took the sensor wand from its slot on his ECM ’ware module, and ran it round the door frame. Apart from the lock system, it was clean.

  ‘We’re at the front door now,’ Greg said. He was surprised by the ’ware lock, a tiny glass lens flush with the wood. He already had the vibration knife in his hand ready to cope with a mechanical lock.

  ‘I can feel you,’ Colin said. ‘Yes, you’re very close now. He’s above you, Greg. Definitely higher up.’

  ‘OK.’ He showed his card to the lock, using his little finger to activate it rather than the usual thumbprint. A Royan special was loaded in the card, a crash-wipe virus designed to flush lock circuitry clean. There was a subdued snick from the lock. He pushed the door open a crack, and slipped the sensor wand in.

  ‘It’s clear,’ he told Teddy.

  The hall went straight through to the back of the house. He saw a set of stairs halfway along. A candle was burning in a dish on a small table just inside the door. Its flame flickered madly until Teddy closed the door shut behind him. The lock refused to engage.

  Greg let his espersense expand. There were four people on the ground floor, none of them showing any awareness that the front door had been opened.

  They went up the stairs fast. The first-floor landing had five doors. One was open; he could just make out an ancient iron bath inside. His espersense picked out seven minds, two of them children. Murmurs of music from channel shows were coming through some of the doors.

  ‘Which way, Colin?’

  ‘Walk forward, Greg.’

  He took three paces down the worn ochre carpet. Teddy stayed at the top of the stairs, watching the other doors.

  ‘Stop,’ Colin said. ‘He’s on your left.’ The strain in his voice was quite clear, even through the satellite link.

  ‘Thanks, Colin. Now you shut your gland down, right now, you hear?’

  ‘Greg, my dear chap, there’s no need to shout.’

  Greg let his espersense flow through the door. There were two people inside, one male, one female, sitting together. Judging by the relaxed timbre of their minds he guessed they were watching a channel.

  The door lock was mechanical, an old Yale. With Teddy standing behind him he shoved the blade clean through the wood just above the keyhole and sliced out a semicircle.

  Knebel’s room was just as seedy as he had been expecting: damp wallpaper, cheap furniture, laminated chipboard table and sideboard, plain wooden chairs, a settee covered in woolly brown and grey fabric, its cushioning sagging and worn; thin blue carpet. The light was coming from some kind of salvaged lorry headlamp on the table, shining at the ceiling, powered from a cluster of spherical polymer batteries on the floor. An English Electric flatscreen, with shoddy colour contrast, was showing a channel current affairs ’cast.

  Greg didn’t know the woman, a blowzy thirty-year-old, flat washed-out face, straw hair, wearing a man’s green shirt and a short red skirt.

  Knebel had grown a pointed beard, but Greg would have recognized him anywhere. The apparatchik was wearing jeans and a thick mauve sweater, buckled sandals on bare feet. He had aged perceptibly; he was only forty, almost Greg’s contemporary, but the flesh had wasted from his face producing sunken cheeks, deep eyes, thin lips. Mouse-brown hair with a centre parting hung lankly down to his ears.

  The two of them were sitting on the settee, facing the flat-screen, heads turning at the clatter of the lock hitting the floor. Greg aimed the stunshot at the woman and fired. It sounded dreadfully loud in the confined space. The pulse caught her on the shoulder. She spasmed, nearly slewing off the settee. Her eyes rolled up as she emitted a strangled cry.

  Greg shifted the stunshot fractionally.

  Knebel stared at him, his mouth parted, jaw quivering softly. His startled thoughts reflected utter despair. He closed his eyes, screwing up his face wretchedly.

  ‘One sound, and you won’t be dead, you will simply wish you were,’ Greg said. ‘Now turn the flatscreen off.’

  Teddy closed the door behind him.

  Knebel opened his eyes, showing the frantic disbelief of a condemned man given a reprieve. A shaking hand pawed at the remote.

  Greg ignored him, his espersense hovering around the other minds on the first floor. Two of them had heard the commotion. Curiosity rose, they waited for something else to happen. When nothing did their attention wavered, and they were drawn back into the mundane routine of the evening.

  He waited another minute to make sure, then pulled the photon amp band from his eyes.

  Knebel managed to crumple without actually moving. ‘Oh my God. Greg Mandel, the Thunderchild himself.’

  It had been quite some time since Greg had heard anyone use his army callsign. Not since he left the Trinities, in fact. But of course, the PSP had access to all the army’s personnel files. ‘I’m flattered. I wasn’t aware Oakham’s Lord Protector had taken an interest in me.’

  ‘You were believed to be an active member of the Trinities, and you live in the Berrybut estate. No close family, no special woman as far as we knew. Very high ESP rating. Plenty of combat experience. I took notice all right.’

  ‘Lived. Lived in Berrybut. I’ve moved now.’

  ‘Of course,’ Knebel said with bitter irony, ‘do excuse me, I haven’t accessed your file lately. My mistake.’

  ‘If you knew all that, how come you never came hunting for me, you and your Constables?’

  Knebel stroked the hair of the unconscious woman, gazing tenderly at her shivering face. ‘And if we’d missed? Which was more than likely with that freaky Thompson woman guarding your future. I had enough trouble keeping the ranks in order as it was. You were busy here in Peterborough. The last thing I needed was a fully trained, fully armed Mindstar monster gunning for us when we left the station to go home at night.’

  ‘Figures. You people never did try anything physical unless the odds were ten to one in your favour.’

  ‘Could you spare me this ritual of insults, and just get it ov
er with, please?’

  Greg gave him a frigid grin. ‘Tell you, Knebel, this is the luckiest day of your entire shitty little life. I’m not here to snuff you.’

  Knebel’s hand stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘True. I only want some bytes you’ve got.’

  ‘An’ you gonna give ’em to us, boy,’ Teddy growled.

  Swellings of terror and hope disrupted the surface thoughts of Knebel’s mind. ‘Are you serious? Just information?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He licked his upper lip, glancing nervously at Teddy. ‘What about afterwards?’

  ‘You join her in dreamland, we leave. And that’s a fucking sight more than you deserve.’

  ‘God, you must be loving this, seeing what I’ve been brought down to.’ The eyes darkened with pain. ‘Yes, I’ll plead with you for my life, I’ll tell you anything you want, answer any question, I don’t care. Dignity isn’t something I have any more, your kind broke that. But you gave me something in return; I’ve found there’s a great deal of peace to be had once every pretension has been stripped out. Did you know that Mandel, can you see it? I don’t worry about the ways things are any more, I don’t worry about the future. That’s all down to you now. Your worries, your power politics. And you’ve wasted your time coming here, because I don’t know anything about the Blackshirts’ weapons stocks, they never tell me anything. I’m not a part of that.’

  ‘Not what we’re here for.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Teddy muttered.

  ‘What then?’ Knebel asked.

  ‘Launde Abbey.’

  ‘What?’ Knebel blurted loudly. He shrank back when Greg motioned with the stunshot. ‘Sorry. Really, I’m sorry. But … is that it? You came to ask me about Launde Abbey?’

  ‘Yeah. Now I’ve come a long way, and gone to a lot of trouble to rap with you. So believe me, you don’t want to piss me off. You know I’m empathic, so just answer the questions truthfully.’

  ‘All right. I saw you on the newscast the other night. You were appointed to the Kitchener murder, something to do with Julia Evans.’ His eyes lingered on the ’ware modules hanging from Greg’s belt.