Fallen Fragon

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Finally, he picked up a black, sleeveless jacket and fastened it over his chest It was primarily a harness for several weapons, their power packs and ammunition, although it also had several small gas jet nozzles around his shoulders and waist, giving him a degree of freefall maneuverability.

  Denise had also finished suiting up. She was holding a handgrip near the airlock.

  "Ready," Raymond told Josep. He and Denise airswam into the airlock. The inner door swung shut. Denise activated the cycle.

  "Stand by," Josep told them over the secure band. "We're fifty meters away."

  The outer hatch opened. Raymond could see the starship's engine section sliding past, its cryogenic insulation fiercely luminous in the bright sunlight. He gripped the hatch rim and pulled himself out.

  The Xianti was heading for the starship's drum-shaped cargo section. A hundred empty silos opened into blackness. The sunlight was at the wrong angle to shine directly into them, though he could just make out a few that were filled with cargo pods. Up ahead, past the silos, the huge doors of the maintenance bay were hinging apart to reveal a rectangular metal crater. Mechanical cradles were extending their mandibles, preparing to grip the spaceplane.

  "Go," Josep ordered.

  Raymond tensed his leg muscles and pushed off. The jacket nozzles fired immediately, adding to his velocity. He flew fast and true into the end of an open silo. The nozzles fired again, killing his velocity. He closed his hand on the metal grid structure and hauled himself along to the top of the silo. Denise was in a silo twenty meters away. She raised an arm and pointed. He gave her a thumbs-up and began to move again.

  Hand over hand they crawled along the cargo section until they reached the rim. Fifteen meters in front of them, the first life support wheel was turning silently, a wall of crinkled foam sliding along quickly enough to be mistaken for flowing water. Then they followed it around and the curves became apparent, shattering that illusion.

  They both started to crawl up the side of the cargo section toward the axis. After twenty meters, they were level with the top of the wheel. Raymond's suit had to increase its visual sensitivity, the gap between the cargo section and the wheel was so gloomy. Hardly any light was reflected off the wheel's coating of foam.

  Once he had a reasonable field of vision, Raymond fed his location into the suit's function control pearl and then entered the wheel's relative velocity. He let go of the cargo section's metal framework and drifted over to the edge of the life support wheel. When he was barely a meter above it, the jacket nozzles fired again, accelerating him in the same direction as the wheel's rotation. From his point of view, it seemed as if the wheel was slowing as he moved in toward it. There were innumerable protrusions amid the foam: conduits, pipes, even ladders. He grabbed at one, a thick metal loop, and the bogus gravity took hold, pulling him abruptly down onto the top of the wheel. A sixth of his weight had returned, holding him securely.

  He saw Denise had landed a quarter of the way around the wheel behind him. She gave him a thumbs-up. Raymond stood, taking care not to make any fast movements. He had a very clear impression that beyond the edge of the wheel was now down. If he slipped, centrifugal force would fling him clear of the starship and into its sensor field. He took a few careful steps in toward the middle of the wheel and examined the structure below his feet with deep senses. Particle resonance located a clear patch, and he took a loop of energy focus ribbon from his jacket. When it was laid out on top of the foam, the ribbon formed a circle about two meters in diameter.

  A hundred meters around the wheel, Denise was doing the same thing. Raymond stood away from the ribbon and activated it with a pulsed code. The foam underneath the ribbon flash-vaporized along with the carbon titanium alloy below. A two-meter circle of the wheel fuselage slammed upward, punched by a seething column of air. Bright white light shone up out of the hole. Paper, clothing, electronic modules and wildly oscillating sprays of liquid filled the column of air, hurtling into the darkness of the axis far above.

  Raymond waited until the blast died down, then hurried forward and dropped down into the wheel. He was in some kind of lounge, with the detritus from the decompression swirling senselessly around him. Bright red strobes were flashing. The emergency airlock panel had sealed the hatchway. His suit pearl found the wheel's internal network frequency, and Prime poured into the nodes.

  He walked over to the emergency airlock panel and used the Prime to override its safety locks. It slid open and he stepped into the chamber beyond. The panel slid shut behind him, and the hatch opened in front. Starship crew were running round in chaos. Prime shut down all other internal communications, then extinguished the lights. It didn't make any difference to Raymond: he could see equally well in infrared and laser radar. He brought up an EC pistol and started killing.

  After the i-simulation Josep and Raymond opened their eyes, grimacing against the bright afternoon sun pouring through the botany lab's windows. Josep got up first and stretched elaborately.

  "Not bad," he said. "I think we should start running more adversarial versions, though."

  "Yeah. I guess so. It is a little easy at the moment"

  "We can begin with you being spotted when you leave the spaceplane."

  "Oh great."

  Josep grinned and checked his watch. "We've got a couple of hours until Michelle gets back."

  "How's that going?"

  "Fine. Being an activist has sharpened her outlook. She likes courier duty: it makes her feel she's achieving something. How about Yamila?"

  "I could never get her involved, not even at basement level," Raymond said. "She's too timid. Even suggesting it would frighten her off and I'd be left looking for new cover."

  "Not at this stage, we can't afford it."

  "I know. As it is, she thinks I might be seeing someone else. All those nocturnal absences."

  "Speaking of which..."

  "Yes." Raymond filled two cups with water and dropped a tea cube in each before sliding them into the microwave alcove. "We need the communication keys." It had come as a surprise to them when they analyzed the data from the Xianti. They'd known that the spaceplane communication traffic was encrypted, although they'd never bothered to examine it before. Had they done so they would have found that not even Prime could decrypt it. Theoretically, given enough processing power and time, any code could be broken, but Z-B used a particularly strong four-dimensional encryption technique for its spaceplanes and changed it every time. Even with the resources Raymond and Josep had available, they could never crack it inside the timeframe they needed for a successful operation.

  "Shame the keys are physical. Z-B seems to take its space-flight security very seriously."

  "Prime keeps trawling up obscure references to Santa Chico," Raymond said. "I don't know what happened there exactly. But it's possible they may have lost a starship to some kind of weapon."

  "No wonder they're protective. Onetime dimensional encryption indeed." Josep shook his head in admiration. "I'll collect them from the spaceport in a few days."

  "Has the fuss over Dudley Tivon blown over?"

  "Just about. The police have downgraded the case to a level-five resource funding. Prime picked up some activity in Z-B's security AS; it was flagged for senior staff attention. I presume they were interested because Tivon worked at the spaceport. But there was never any follow-up."

  "We're in the clear, then?"

  "Looks that way."

  "Good. From what Denise has been saying, things are just about ready at her end."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The first time Lawrence Newton visited Thallspring he already considered himself a campaign veteran. By then his attitude was relaxed enough to allow him to enjoy the planets that Zantiu-Braun sent him to. In this case, it helped that the population put up no serious resistance. He didn't even mind being assigned to Memu Bay rather than the capital. The coastal town was small enough to be easily controlled and large enough to boast extensive leisure
facilities. Z-B's platoons had made full use of the clubs and bars along the marina since the first week after they landed. Even the locals had reluctantly started to welcome their spending power in the absence of the regular tourists.

  The campaign had all gone reasonably well up until the fifth week when some lunatic rebel had firebombed two of the local food production refineries. Now the Z-B governor had been forced to impose rationing on everyone and activate three collateral necklaces in retaliation. The mood in town had soured, although the biochemical factories that were being asset-realized hadn't been affected.

  So Lawrence hadn't grumbled too much that evening when Sergeant Ntoko announced 435NK9 had been assigned a hinterland patrol. They assembled early the next morning outside the hotel that was serving as their barracks. A convoy of eight jeeps to carry the three platoons, accompanied by five ten-ton trucks that would bring back any assets they found. They rolled out through the center of town and onto the eastbound start of the Great Loop Highway.

  Although most settlers on colony worlds lived in towns and cities that were built on gamma soak patches, some had chosen to establish themselves out among the native vegetation and animals. These smaller townships and homesteads were almost always founded to harvest a valuable native crop or mine some mineral. Out in the mountainous hinterland behind Memu Bay there were several dozen such settlements, all of them linked by the Great Loop Highway that ran in a rough oval around the Mitchell Mountains, a series of high volcanic peaks dormant for thousands of years.

  Thirty-five kilometers from Memu Bay the Great Loop Highway was still a wide, level tarmac road that had just cleared the modest barrier of mountains that encircled the coastal town. The Mitchells were rising out of the thick jungle ahead. Lawrence sat in the front passenger seat of the jeep while Kibbo drove on into the foothills country. He could see the range stretching away into the vanishing distance. Vulcanism had pushed an enormous plateau ridge up out of this side of the continent, running parallel to the coast for over two hundred kilometers. The table of the plateau was reasonably level, a kilometer and a half above sea level. Because of its size, it had a microclimate all its own. Amid the continent's pervasive tropical heat its domination of wind patterns pulled in a cooler, moist air that irrigated the whole area. Some of the most vibrant vegetation on the planet ran rampant around the plateau's lower slopes. Two major rivers flowed down from its heart, along with hundreds of smaller watercourses. But it was the peaks themselves that dominated the skyline, varying from small rounded mounds to giant jagged rock cones over seven kilometers high. Snow gleamed on over half of them, astonishingly bright in the clear air.

  "Anyone ever climbed those mothers?" Kibbo asked.

  "I think so," Lawrence said. "I saw some tour offices in town that ran trekking holidays up on the plateau."

  "I hope the poor schmucks wear some kind of power suit. It looks tough up there."

  "Mount Horombo is the tallest, eight kilometers. You wouldn't need a power suit for that, just really good thermal underwear. And an oxygen gill as well, I'd imagine."

  "You fancy trying it?"

  Lawrence laughed. "Not a chance."

  "I wouldn't mind a go," Kibbo said. "It must be a fantastic sight from up there."

  "I bet it's covered in cloud most of the time."

  "Jeez, Lawrence, you're such a pessimist."

  Lawrence had a private smile at that. It had been long enough since that miserable, emotionally confusing time that had been born out of his assessment in Amsterdam. The memories no longer hurt when he brought them out to examine them. In fact, now he could look back in wonder at how he'd ever fallen for a girl as weird as Joona in the first place. Fate below, the signs he'd ignored!

  There were even times when he thought about reapplying for starship officer college. Z-B might be run by a bunch of pricks, but it was still his only chance of realizing his old dream. Despite everything that had happened to him over the last few years, he'd never quite let go of the hope. And he'd notched up a damn good record with strategic security. Sergeant Ntoko said he was going to recommend him for a corporal's stripe once this Thallspring campaign was concluded. And he was damned certain his stake was large enough to satisfy the college's deputy principal now.

  Life was good for him at the moment. Pessimism played no part in it.

  The convoy started to wind its way up the plateau's slope. As the climb progressed, so the trees on either side of the road became progressively taller. Their branches were swamped with vines, enormous webs of them strung between boughs and trunks in a thick, shaggy lattice, sprouting cascades of gold-and-black flowers. Ripe gray fruit was dropping all around the vehicles, making the tarmac slippery with their pulp. Humidity closed in around the convoy, with layers of warm mist coiling between the tree trunks. Their Skin was almost white as it repelled the heat.

  "Great Loop, my ass," Sergeant Ntoko grumbled from the lead jeep. The road was now down to a single band of tarmac, whose edges were being remorselessly chewed away by tufts of aquamarine grassmoss. He was often slowing for fallen branches, using the jeep's front grid bars to push them aside. Even the surface was cracking open, revealing dusty red earth underneath. Insects similar to terrestrial termites were busy building their soil castles up around the base of trees. The tiny creatures secreted a chemical cement, bonding the minute grains of dirt together so the odd-shaped tumuli glimmered with a metallic purple-and-blue sheen under the intense sunlight.

  The air was noticeably cooler when they finally drove out onto the top of the plateau. Ahead of them, the trees were thinning out, although the individual specimens seemed to be even larger than those on the slopes, reaching thirty to forty meters high. In between them, the ground was carpeted in monster plumes of spiked crown reeds, their withered leathery seed pods swaying three or four meters into the air. The Great Loop Highway degenerated to a heavily compacted dirt track with deep wheel ruts that had been burned through the reeds. Sooty black clumps lined the sides where the highway maintenance robots had incinerated any living frond that crept back across the designated route. To prevent any possible misdirection, slender metal pillars were spaced every kilometer, wearing a high collar of solar cells to power their beacon lights and transponder.

  Lawrence went back to mountain-gazing again. There were more Mitchells visible now, thrusting bluntly out of the lush subtropical plain, the awesome monuments of tectonic petulance. Long strips of dark cloud scudded round them, raining hard on the lower slopes.

  The convoy reached Rhapsody Province first—an area marked out by dozens of slate-gray slag heaps thrown up across the plain where mining equipment bit deep into the plateau's stratums, hunting out bauxite deposits. The spoil was fresh and dark, slick with dank chemicals that prevented anything from growing on its treacherous, shifting sides.

  Aluminum was not one of the metals that Auley supplied to the planet. And capturing another asteroid that had it in quantity wasn't cost-effective given the amount used by Thallspring's industrial concerns. Most cities had secured their own source, and Rhapsody Province even produced enough of a surplus for Memu Bay to export to other settlements.

  Located almost dead center of Rhapsody was Dixon, a mining town, or at least an engineering center where the mining machinery was maintained and repaired. A full quarter of the town was given over to huge sheds of corrugated composite where cybernetic tools and humans worked alongside each other to service the mining and processing equipment. There was even a small fusion plant sited a kilometer away, a squat white concrete hexagon with a slightly convex roof. It was surrounded by pylons that carried bright red power cables out to the active mining sites.

  The houses, shops and offices, that made up the rest of Dixon all had a prefab appearance. Their layout and size were highly individual, but every wall was made from the same insulated composite paneling, and each roof was a matte-black solar collector. Even the air-conditioning cabinets that stood outside were the same make, all with their fans whirring
away behind rusting chrome dissipater fins. The plain's dusty volcanic soil hazed the air above the grid of streets, frosting every surface with a dark ocher patina.

  As soon as the convoy arrived at the end of the main street they had to stop and reverse. One of the massive excavator processors was being delivered back to its site after a spell in the maintenance sheds. The unit was twice as long as a locomotive, and three times as wide. It was sitting on an even bigger low loader whose caterpillar tracks must have been as wide as Lawrence was tall. He whistled with respect inside his Skin helmet as the massive rig crawled past, shaking the nearby buildings.