The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Tekmerc five: “Hey, come on, get real, Leol. No one’s gonna loose off at you.”

  The ‘ware in the redundant MHD chamber was a confusing mess to unravel-a couple of ordinary terminals with custombuilt augmentation modules, music deck, VR gamer gear-and all of it plugged together by a nonstandard web of fibre-optic cable. Julia recognized old hotrod-style programs protecting some of the ‘ware cores. It took time to melt through and initiate her own command procedures.

  The first coherent input she received was from the cameras. Charlotte Fielder dressed in a white cotton top and shorts being held in an armlock by Nia Korovilla. Julia watched as Nia Korovilla broke two of her fingers. Charlotte’s mouth opened in a scream of pain. Unheard; Julia couldn’t find the microphone circuits. Fabian Whitehurst was charging at the two women.

  Julia turned all of the lightware cruncher’s spare capacity to interpreting the den’s ‘ware. She ordered one camera to zoom in on Nia Korovilla’s face; her pupils were dilated; her grip on Fielder looked effortless. The woman was taking some kind of narcotic. Memory correlation assigned the highest probability to cleardust. Korovilla would be quite capable of killing Fabian Whitehurst and Charlotte Fielder with her bare hands.

  Charlotte Fielder shoved Fabian Whitehurst away. He stumbled back, swaying for balance.

  The den’s circuits were defined, operational codes pulled out of the ‘ware cores. Julia turned on the mikes, the flatscreens, the music deck speakers.

  “Oh God no,” Charlotte Fielder cried.

  Fabian was getting ready to charge again. There was blood running down his chin.

  Julia rammed the music deck volume up full. “Enough of this. Fabian, stay where you are.”

  The three figures froze in surprise.

  Julia activated a visual synthesizer program, plugging it into the flatscreens.

  “Julia Evans,” Charlotte Fielder gasped.

  “Hello, Charlotte. I think it’s about time you and I had a talk.”

  “Not a chance,” said Nia Korovilla.

  “Your position is not a strong one, Nia,” Julia said. “There is a tekmerc squad loose in the gondola, two of my agents survived the Messerschmitt attack, and an Event Horizon security crash team is en route. Whoever you work for, they’ll have to fight through all those groups to reach you.”

  What’s happening?” Charlotte Fielder implored. Her beautiful face was screwed up in pain. “What attack?”

  “The Colonel Maitland is currently under siege by tekmercs,” Julia told her. “You are the target, you possess some unique information which several people would like to obtain.”

  “Not me, no I don’t.”

  Julia could see the girl was near to cracking up.

  “Please, Mrs Evans,” Fabian Whitehurst ca’led. “Tell Nia to let Charlotte go. Please.” There were tears trickling down his cheeks, mingling with the blood on his chin, droplets spilling onto his jacket.

  Nia Korovilla’s free hand moved up to clamp around the back of Charlotte Fielder’s neck “That isn’t an option.”

  Internal camera, fuselage keel. The four tekmercs under Frank’s command had come up the stairwell from the gondola. They were clumping along in single file, helmets brushing the gasbags. The walkway hadn’t been designed for armour suits, arms kept knocking against the hand rails, bending them. The grid mesh was creaking under their weight.

  Julia sent out a string of instructions to the maintenance drones, directing them down the fuselage to the tail. They began to slide smoothly along their rails.

  Internal camera, fuselage engineering bay. Greg and Suzi were stepping off the ladder on to the walkway that would take them to the MHD chamber. One side of the walkway looked out over the engineering bay, a circular lattice of girders like a metal spiderweb. Massive cylindrical heat exchangers, and chrome-silver giga-conductor cells were cocooned Within it, concentric rings of metal eggs. Cables and thick pipes wound around the girders; the air carrying a steady thrumming from the machinery. On the other side of the walkway was the featureless shallow curve of the main spherical gasbag, ringed by one of the doughnut-shaped bags.

  Greg consulted his cybofax. “This is it,” he said. “Straight ahead now.”

  “Right.” Suzi’s acknowledgement was strained.

  Julia called them through the cybofax. “Bad news, the maid, Nia Korovilla, is some kind of hardliner.”

  “Jesus wept,” Suzi said hotly. “Last time I ever take on an Event Horizon deal.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julia said. “I didn’t realize what was involved when we started out. The situation is becoming very fluid.”

  “Fluid,” Suzi snorted.

  “What about the maid?” Greg asked.

  “She’s cleardusted, and using Charlotte Fielder as a shield.”

  “So what do you want us to do?”

  “The only viable option is to eliminate her. We cannot risk Fielder; and Korovilla has her hand round Fielder’s neck, ready to snap it.” Julia squirted the den’s camera image into Greg’s cybofax.

  Suzi craned her neck to look at it. “Not good,” she said. “We’ll have to go straight in and sharpshoot. Korovilla won’t be prepared. Even if someone does come in she won’t expect them to fire right off. Everyone takes time to assess a new situation.”

  “All right,” Greg said reluctantly.

  “I do it,” Suzi said flatly.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s what you brought me for. I can shoot straight, I’m familiar with the Browning. And you might hesitate, with her being a woman.”

  Greg pulled a sour face. “All right.”

  “OK. Julia, is she carrying?”

  “No, not that I can see.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I’m negotiating,” Julia said. “But I can’t hold her much longer. And the tekmercs are two minutes behind you. I’ve arranged a delay, but I can’t guarantee how long that’ll keep them.”

  “We’re gone,” Suzi said. She began to run lightly down the walkway towards the MHD chamber, fifty metres ahead. The camera showed a hard grey fan of light spilling out of its door.

  Internal camera, MHD camera. Charlotte Fielder clamped her jaw shut as Nia Korovilla’s hand tightened. The skin of her long neck was showing white around the maid’s fingers.

  “Be logical,” Julia urged. “My company’s infiltration of the Colonel Maitland’s ‘ware systems is total. Whatever questions Charlotte answers for you, whatever she says, wherever she is in the airship, we will hear them. There will be no advantage to your backers now. I offer you this: if you release her my security crash team will leave you alone, you may even have free passage to the destination of your choice.”

  Nia Korovilla gave a guttural laugh. “And I will tell you this. The whore is too valuable for anyone to risk harming her. Except for me, I’ll have nothing to lose in a last resort. If anyone, you or the tekmercs, tries to interfere I will break her elegantly crafted little neck.”

  Julia made her voice austere. “You will not be allowed to leave with her.”

  “You may not have her;’ Nia Korovilla growled.

  “Stop it!” Fabian Whitehurst wailed. “Stop it, stop it. Let her go. Just let her go.” The creases down his cheeks were like an old man’s.

  “Don’t get in anyone’s way, Fabian,” Charlotte Fielder said, her voice was very faint. “These people won’t even notice you.”

  “I revise my offer,” Julia said.

  “I’m listening,” Nia Korovilla said.

  “Contact your backers, we will explain the current situation, and I’ll offer them an atomic structuring manufacturing partnership with Event Horizon.”

  For the first time Nia Korovilla seemed uncertain.

  Suzi stepped into the den. Her Browning pistol was held level with her face, one eye closed.

  “If you-” Nia Korovilla began. Directly above her left ear a circle of hair one centimetre wide puffed into bright, almost invisible flame, singing the sur
rounding strands. She fell backwards, knees buckling.

  Charlotte Fielder staggered forwards as the grip around her neck and arm was relinquished. She twisted to look at the maid’s body, lying with limbs akimbo on the decking. The eyes had rolled back, leaving only the whites showing.

  Charlotte Fielder groaned, looking as if she was about to be sick. Then she found Fabian Whitehurst who was staring numbly at the body. They moved into each other’s arms, and locked like magnets.

  Internal camera, aft fuselage access way. The four tekmercs of Frank’s squad had begun to climb the transverse frame ladder up to the midsection of the engineering bay. Eighteen maintenance drones were lined up along the side of the ladder. Another two glided down their rails and stopped.

  Julia organized twenty separate drone-handling subroutines inside the lightware crunchers, loaded them with instructions, and plugged each of them into a maintenance drone.

  The last tekmerc started up the ladder. The first was still twenty rungs from the midsection walkway.

  Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

  Tekmerc three: What is it with these drones?”

  Tekmerc seven: “Lacey, hey, Lacey, they’re in love with you.” Kissing sound.

  Tekmerc three, identified, Lacey: “Go suck it cold.”

  Frank: “Come on, let’s show some discipline here.”

  Tekmerc seven: “Hey, this one’s moving.”

  Julia’s primary routine initiated the attack, handing over individual drone direction to the assembled subroutines. Welding lasers fired at the muscle armour suits’ photon amps. Strut-repair waldos reached out and began drilling through the armour with monolattice carbon bits, aiming for wrist, elbow, ankle, and knee joints. Riveting guns punched metal pins into the jetpacks.

  Internal camera, aft fuselage access way. A scene of terrorized chaos; machine versus machine. Metallic humanoids fighting vulpine robotic insects. The tekmercs thrashed and kicked as the drills penetrated; all the while desperately clinging to the ladder. Every time an armour boot hit a drone it would crumple the casing, smashing the hardware and hydraulic systems. Violent movement dislodged the waldos, but they would reach out again instantly, monolattice stingers blurring with speed.

  Blood began to seep out of the drill holes, running down the outside of the dark armour. It mingled with hydraulic fluid, slicking the ladder.

  The tekmerc below the leader lost his grip, dropping down a metre. He was halted momentarily by three waldos that had punctured the armour, but the force of the jolt ripped their drills free. He fell, rebounding off the fuselage framework, arms and legs flailing madly. Then he hit a clear section of the solar cell envelope head on, tearing straight through.

  External camera, aft fuselage keel. The tekmerc was a black pinwheeling doll against the calm blue ocean. Shrinking rapidly. He must have tried to activate his jetpack. Whatever damage the maintenance drones had inflicted, it was drastic. The jetpack erupted into a shower of minute slivers, dismembering the rest of the muscle armour suit.

  Tekrnerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

  Tekmerc seven: Continuous unintelligible shout.

  Frank: “Leol-the drones, the fucking drones. They’ve gone mad.”

  Leol Reiger: “What’s happening?”

  Frank: Screams. Shouting, “Help us for Christ’s sake. It’s the drones. They’re killing us. Blind. They’ve blinded me. Can’t hold. Oh God, my hands-” Screams.

  Tekmerc five: “Holy shit, listen to them, it’s likely they’re being eaten alive.”

  Leol Reiger: “Shut up. Everybody, drones are hazards, shoot on sight. That goes for any other piece of mobile hardware. Ian, Keith, Denny, get up to that MHD chamber. Someone doesn’t want us there. Help Frank if you can.”

  Tekmerc eight: “Jesus, Leol.”

  Leol Reiger: “Just flicking do it. Right? Snuff anything and everybody in your way, but do it. Now move.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Charlotte Fielder really was astonishingly pretty. She was the first thing Greg saw when he came into the MHD chamber after Suzi, all dark-gold skin and tight white cotton. Nothing else registered at the same level, it was as though the background had suddenly become monochrome.

  She and Fabian Whitehurst were clinging to each other. Greg reckoned a muscle armour suit would be hard pushed to prise them apart. They both stared at Suzi in trepidation.

  “Don’t piss yourselves,” Suzi told them, lowering her Browning. “I’m one of the good guys. Right, Julia?”

  “Yes,” Julia said, her voice booming out of speaker stacks. “Greg and Suzi won’t hurt you, Charlotte, nor you, Fabian, they work for me.”

  Greg looked down at Nia Korovilla’s body. She looked so tranquil in her prim maid’s uniform. Hard to imagine her as any kind of hazard. Maybe Suzi had been right, after all. It irked him to think that she knew him better than he knew himself. But she certainly hadn’t hesitated to shoot.

  Nia Korovilla’s presence kicked off a whole cascade of trepidation in his mind. Julia had squirted her data profile into his cybofax; according to that she had served on the Colonel Maitland for eight years. It meant she was a sleeper, a watcher keeping tabs on Jason Whitehurst. Which made no sense to Greg; if she’d been feeding someone with snatched bytes of Jason Whitehurst’s trading deals for eight solid years, then the old boy would have known. So if she hadn’t been doing that, what was she on board for?

  “Leol Reiger has dispatched three more tekmercs up here,” Julia said. Her face was replicated in six flatscreens, dominating one wall of the den. “I won’t be able to delay them, not now they have been warned about the drones being under my command.”

  Greg glanced hurriedly round the MHD chamber. It reminded him of home, the kind of grotesque merger of gear and pets that the kids slapped together as various interests went through nova bursts of intense devotion, only to be abandoned a week or month later. It was an archaeological record of a boy’s development. So much for his intuition telling him there was something out of phase about Fabian Whitehurst.

  He tried to look at the MHD chamber from a tactical point of view. There was only the one door, and the walls behind the panels were solid alolithum. The tekmercs’ rip guns could break through that easily enough. Suzi was prowling along the line of gear consoles below the flatscreens.

  “Tell you, we can’t stay in here,” Greg said. “You got us a hidey-hole ready, Julia?”

  “Not exactly, but I think I can keep you and the tekmercs apart until my crash team arrives. There’s a lot of volume in this airship.”

  Greg glanced at Suzi, who gave him a shrug.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “This is all so fluid.”

  “Come on, Charlotte,” Greg said. “We’ll get you out of here.”

  Charlotte and Fabian actually managed to hold each other even tighter.

  “No,” Charlotte said. She was sweating profusely.

  Greg noticed the discoloration on her hand. The skin around two fingers was swelling, puffy with blood.

  “Charlotte, please, the tekmercs that are coming for you make Nia here look tame.”

  She stroked Fabian’s hair with her good hand. The boy’s eye had swollen shut, blood was drying on his lips and chin. “What’s happening?” she asked. “Please, I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Julia,” Greg called.

  Julia’s face vanished from the largest flatscreen, replaced by a view of the Colonel Maitland’s landing pad with the gutted wreck of the Pegasus still smoking. Charlotte gasped.

  “That’s the plane we came in,” Greg said. “There were four people on board when it was hit by the tekmercs. That’s your alternative. Now will you please come with us.”

  “I’m not leaving Fabian. Not if tekmercs are on their way here.”

  Fabian looked up at her with complete adoration. Greg realized they weren’t going to be separated. And he had promised Jason Whitehurst exactly that. Bloody wonderful.

  “We’re not ask
ing you to leave him, Charlotte,” Julia said gently. “One moment.”

  There was a burst of static.

  Jason Whitehurst’s voice came out of the music deck speakers. “Fabian?”

  “Yes, Father?”

  Greg’s cybofax bleeped. He looked down at it.

  “You stay with Charlotte and Mr Mandel,” Jason Whitehurst said. “It’ll be a lot safer for you. These damn tekmercs are all over the old Colonel. Bloody trigger happy brutes, they are. I’ll catch up with you later, I must see the crew is all right first, noblesse oblige, and all that. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Greg showed the cybofax to Suzi. Her face remained impassive as she read the screen’s message.

  “Splendid chap; bit of an adventure for you. Charlotte, my dear girl, what can one say? I’m most dreadfully sorry about all this trouble. Julia will explain later. You take care of Fabian in the mean time for me, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jolly good.”

  Greg pulled a first aid box off the wall, and found a local anaesthetic infuser. Charlotte didn’t resist when he took her hand. He pressed the infuser tube to her wrist.

  She gave a tremulous little sigh as the anaesthetic took effect.

  “Careful you don’t knock the hand against anything,” he warned her.

  She nodded meekly.

  Suzi was wiping Fabian’s chin with a disinfectant tissue.

  “OK,” Greg said. “Let’s move. Julia, which way?”

  “Turn right outside, down to the hull, then head up towards the prow. I’ve loaded your route.”

  He glanced at the cybofax, memorizing the Colonel Maitland’s blueprint with its superimposed red line.

  It was cool outside the MHD chamber. The engineering bay heat exchangers constantly circulated the air in the gap between the hull and the gasbags, preventing the helium from becoming superheated and losing lift capacity. Greg thought it smelt vaguely of chlorine. It left an unpleasant tang at the back of his throat.

  He led them along the walkway, the opposite direction to the way he and Suzi had come. Charlotte and Fabian followed him, holding hands; Suzi brought up the rear. The worst of his neurohormone hangover was lifting, but he wouldn’t be able to use the gland again today, not after two psi effusions like that.