“Fine,” Monica said. “We’ll intercept her at the hotel.”
“Very well.” Adrian gave her an edgy glance. “The local police won’t appreciate that.”
“Sad, but irrelevant. Can you load a priority flight clearance authorization into the city’s air defence network?”
“Sure, we supplied it, we have the ultimate authority codes.”
“Fine, stand by to do it for the Edenist flyers. We’ll use them to evac as soon as we’ve acquired her.”
“The Kingdom will probably get expelled from this entire system if you pull a stunt like that,” Adrian said. “If there’s one thing Nyvan’s nations hate more than each other, it’s outsystem foreigners.”
“Mzu wanted somewhere that was dishonest and greedy enough to supply her with weapons on a no-questions-asked basis. If this planet had built themselves a decent civilization in the first place, she wouldn’t even be here. They’ve only themselves to blame. I mean, they’ve had five centuries for God’s sake.”
Samuel groaned chidingly.
Adrian paused, not meeting Monica’s stare. “Um, my second surveillance team leader is reporting in. I’ve had them following that Calvert character, as you asked.”
“Yes?” There was a sense of grudging inevitability in this moment, Monica thought.
“The captain contacted a data security expert as soon as he landed, a Richard Keaton. It would seem Keaton has done a good job for him. In fact, he probably origined one of the probes into the hotel computer. They’re currently in a car which is heading in the general direction of the Mercedes Hotel. He’ll get there before you can.”
“Shit! That bloody Calvert.”
“Do you want him eliminated?”
“No,” Samuel said. He stopped Monica’s outburst with a firm stare. “Any action at the hotel now will draw the police to it before we can get there. Our interception will be difficult enough as it is.”
“All right,” she grumbled.
“My team could intercept Mzu for you,” Adrian said.
Monica was tempted—anything to get this resolved. “How many have you got on her?”
“Three cars, seven personnel.”
“Mzu has at least four people with her,” Samuel said.
“Agreed,” Monica said regretfully. “That’s too many, and God knows what they’re carrying, especially these unknown locals. We have to guarantee first attempt success. Tell your team to continue their observation, Adrian, we’ll join them as soon as we can.”
“Do you think she’ll resist?” Adrian asked.
“I would hope not,” Samuel said. “After all, she is not stupid; she must know Nyvan’s situation is decaying by the minute. That may well make this easier for us. We should start with an open approach to fly her outsystem. Once she realizes she has to leave with us, either willingly or by force, it would be logical for her to capitulate.”
“Easier?” Monica gave him a pitying look. “This mission?”
* * *
“Mother Mary, why?” Voi demanded as soon as the five of them crowded back into the penthouse lift. “You can’t sell out now. Think of what you’ve been through—Mary, what we’ve done for you. You can’t hand it over to Capone!”
Her impassioned outburst stopped dead as Alkad turned to stare at her. “Do not argue with one of my decisions ever again.”
Even Gelai and Ngong were daunted by the tone, but then they could sense the thoughts powering her.
“As Baranovich made quite clear, the Omuta option is now closed to me,” Alkad said. “Worthless piece of trash though he is, he happens to be right. You cannot begin to imagine how much I resent that, because it means the one thing I never allowed myself to think in thirty years has become real. Our vengeance has become irrelevant.”
“Nonsense,” Voi said. “You can still hit the Omutans before the possessed do.”
“Please don’t display your ignorance in public, it’s offensive.”
“Ignorance, you bitch. Mary, you’re giving the Alchemist to Capone. Giving it! You think I’m going to keep quiet about that?”
Alkad squared her shoulders; with an immense effort she spoke in a level voice to the ireful girl. “You are a simple immature child, with an equally childish fixation. You have never once thought through the consequences should your wish be granted, the suffering it will cause. For thirty years I have thought of nothing else. I created the Alchemist, Mary have mercy on me. I understand the full reality of what it can do. The responsibility for that machine is mine alone. I have never, nor will ever, shirk that. To do so would be to divorce myself from what remains of my humanity. And the consequences of the possessed obtaining it are very bad indeed. Therefore I will accept Baranovich’s offer to leave this doomed planet. I will lead Capone’s forces to the Alchemist. And I will then activate it. It will never be available for anyone to study and duplicate.”
“But—” Voi looked around the others for support. “If you activate it, surely . . .”
“I will die. Oh, yes. And with me will die the one man I ever loved. We’ve been separated for thirty years, and I still love him. That purely human entanglement doesn’t matter. I will even sacrifice him for this. Now do you understand my commitment and responsibility? Maybe I will come back as a possessor, or maybe I will stay in the beyond. Whatever my fate, it will be no different to any other human being. I am afraid of that, but I don’t reject it. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can cheat our ultimate destination.
“Gelai and Ngong have shown me that we do retain our basic personality. That’s good, because if I do come back in someone else’s body, my resolve will remain intact. I will not build another Alchemist. Its reason for being is gone, it must go too.”
Voi bent her knees slightly so her eyes were closer to Alkad’s face, as if that would give her a deeper insight into the physicist’s mind. “You really will, won’t you? You’ll kill yourself.”
“I think kamikaze is a more appropriate term. But don’t worry, I’m not going to dragoon you two along. I don’t even consider this to be your fight, I never did. You’re not Garissans, not really; you have no reason to dip your hands into blood this deep. Now be quiet and pray to Mother Mary that we can save something from this pile of shit, and get the pair of you as well as Lodi out of here. But be assured, I still consider you expendable to my goal.” She turned to Gelai. “If either of you have any objection to this, then speak now, please.”
“No, Doctor,” Gelai said. There was the faintest smile on her lips. “I don’t object. In fact, I’m rather glad it won’t be used against a planet by you or Capone. But believe me, you don’t want to kill yourself; once you’ve known the beyond, the pressure Capone can exert by promising you a body is going to be extraordinary.”
“I know,” Alkad said. “But choice has never played a large part in my life.”
* * *
Tonala’s state of emergency had drastically reduced the volume of road traffic in the capital. Normally, the churning wheels of the afternoon gridlock would turn the snow to mush and spray it over the pedestrians. Now, however, the big flakes were beginning to accumulate on the roads. Harrisburg’s civic mechanoids were losing their battle to clear it away.
The transport department considered the effects such an icy blanket would have on brake response time, and ordered a general speed reduction to avoid accidents. The proscription was datavised into the control processor of individual vehicles.
“You want me to neutralize the order for this car?” Dick Keaton asked. Joshua gave the data security expert an edgy glance as he tried to decide. The answer was yes, but he said, “No,” anyway, because speeding when you’re a suspect foreigner in a nation on the brink of war and being followed by two local police cars is an essentially dumb thing to do.
Thanks to the general lack of cars, their tail was a prominent one, keeping a precise fifty metres behind. Its presence didn’t have much effect on Joshua and his companions. The two serjeants were as vigil
ant as mechanoids, while Melvyn stared out at the city covered in its crisp grey mantle, the opposite of Dahybi who sat hunched up in his seat, hands clasped and paying no attention to their surroundings, almost as if he were at prayer. Dick Keaton was enjoying the ride, a pre-teen excitement which Joshua found annoying. He was trying to balance mission priorities at the same time as he reviewed what he was going to say to Mzu. A sincere but insistent invitation to return to Tranquillity, point out the shit she was in, how he had a starship waiting. It wasn’t that he was bad with words, but these were just so damn important. Exactly how do you tell the semi-psychotic owner of a doomsday device to come along quietly and not make any fuss?
His communications block accepted Ashly’s secure datavise and relayed it straight into his neural nanonics.
“New development,” Ashly reported. “The Edenist flyers just activated their ion fields.”
“Are they leaving?”
“No sign of that yet. They’re still on the ground, but they’re in a rapid response condition. Their agents must be close to Mzu.”
“Bugger. Any news from orbit?”
“Not a thing. Lady Macbeth isn’t due above the horizon for another eight minutes, but the spaceplane sensors haven’t detected any low-orbit weapons activity yet.”
“Okay. Stand by, we’re approaching the hotel now. I might need you in a hurry.”
“Do my best. But if these flyers don’t want me to lift off, it could get tricky.”
“Lady Mac is your last resort. She can take them out. Use her if you have to.”
“Understood.”
Dahybi was leaning forward in his seat to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes Hotel as the car swept along the last two hundred metres of road.
“That park would make a handy landing spot for Ashly,” Melvyn commented.
“Acknowledged,” Joshua said. He squinted through the windscreen as the car turned onto the loop of road which led to the hotel’s broad portico. There was a car already parked in front of the doors.
Joshua datavised a halt order into their car’s control processor, then directed it to one of the parking slots outside the portico. Tyres crunched on the virgin snow as they pulled in.
The two police cars stopped on the road outside.
“What is it?” Dick Keaton asked, he was almost whispering.
Joshua pointed a forefinger at the car under the portico. Several people were climbing in.
“That’s Mzu,” one of the serjeants said.
After so long on the trail, so much endured, Joshua felt something akin to awe now he could finally see her. Mzu hadn’t changed much from the visual file stored in his neural nanonics during their one brief encounter. Features and hair the same, and she was wrapped up well in a thick navy-blue coat, but the flaky professor act had been dumped. This woman carried a deadly confidence.
If he’d ever doubted the Alchemist and Mzu’s connection to it, that ended now.
“What do you want to do?” Dahybi asked. “We can stop her car. Make our pitch now.”
Joshua held up a hand for silence. He’d just noticed the last two people getting into the car with Mzu. It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain. “Oh, Jesus.”
Melvyn’s electronic warfare blocks datavised a warning. He accessed the display. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want to alarm you guys,” Dick Keaton said. “But the people in the next car are giving us a real unfriendly look.”
“Huh?” Joshua glanced over.
“And they’re aiming a multiband sensor at us, too,” Melvyn said.
Joshua returned the hostile stare from the two ESA agents in the car parked beside them. “Oh, fucking wonderful.”
“She’s leaving,” one of the serjeants called.
“Jesus,” Joshua grumbled. “Melvyn, are you blocking that sensor?”
“Absolutely.” He gave the agents a broad toothy smile.
“Okay, we follow her. Let’s just hope she’s going somewhere I can have a civilized chat.”
* * *
The five embassy cars carrying Monica, Samuel, and a mixed crew of ESA and Edenist operatives disregarded the city’s new speed limit altogether as they raced for the hotel. All the security police did was follow and observe; they were anxious to see where this was all leading.
They were still a kilometre from the Mercedes Hotel when Adrian Redway datavised Monica to advise her that Mzu was on the move again. “There’s definitely only four people with her this time. The observation team launched a skyspy outside the hotel. It looks like there’s been some sort of fight in the penthouse. Do you want access?”
“Please.”
The image from the small synthetic bird hovering above the park filled her brain. Its artificial tissue wings were flapping constantly to hold it steady in the middle of the snowstorm, producing an awkward juddering. A visual-wavelength optical sensor was scanning across the penthouse’s broad windows. One of them had a large jagged hole in the middle.
“I can see a lot of glass on the carpet,” Monica datavised. “Something came in through that window, not out.”
“But what?” Adrian asked. “That’s the twenty-fifth floor.”
Monica continued her review. The living-room doors had been smashed open. Long black scorch marks were chiselled deep into the one lying on the floor.
Then she switched focus to a settee. There was a foot dangling over the armrest.
“No wonder Mzu was in a hurry to leave again,” she said out loud. “The possessed have tracked her down.”
“Her car isn’t heading for the spaceport,” Samuel said. “Could the two locals with her be possessed?”
“Possible,” Monica agreed hesitantly. “But the observation team said she seemed to be leading the others. They didn’t think she was being coerced.”
“Calvert has started following her,” Adrian datavised.
“Okay. Let’s see where they’re all so eager to get to.” She datavised the car’s control processor to catch up with the observation team’s vehicles.
* * *
“Someone else has now joined us,” Ngong said. His voice was split between amusement and surprise. “That makes over a dozen cars now.”
“And poor old Baranovich said to come alone,” Alkad said. “Is he in one of them?”
“I don’t know. One car certainly has some possessed in it.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Voi asked.
Alkad sank down deeper into her seat, getting herself comfortable. “Not really. This is like old times for me.”
“What if they stop us?”
“Gelai, what are the police thinking?”
“They’re curious, Doctor. Make that very curious.”
“That’s okay then; as long as they aren’t going to stop us we’re all right. I know the agencies, they will want to know where we’re going first before they make their move.”
“But Baranovich—”
“They’re his problem, not ours. If he doesn’t want me followed then it’s up to him to do something about it.”
* * *
Alkad’s car navigated itself along Harrisburg’s abandoned streets at a doggedly legal speed. Despite that, they made good progress, leaving the closely packed buildings of the city centre behind to venture out into the more industrial suburbs. Thirty minutes into the journey, the last of the urban clutter was discarded behind them. The slightly elevated roadway cut straight across a flat alluvial plain that was open all the way to the sea eighty kilometres away. It was a vast expanse of huge fallow fields from which tractor mechanoids and tailored bugs had eradicated any unauthorized vegetation. Trees were stunted and bent by the wind that blew in from the shore, standing hunched along the line of the drainage canals which had been dug to tame the rich black soil.
Nothing moved off the road, no animals or vehicles. They were driving across a snow desert. Large, stiff flakes were hurled horizontally against the car by th
e wind, taxing the guarantee of the lofriction windshield to stay clear. Even so, that didn’t prevent them from seeing the fifteen cars which were now following them, a convoy that made no attempt to hide itself.
* * *
Adrian Redway had settled himself into one of the chairs in the ESA’s operation centre and datavised his desktop processor for a filter program to access the station’s incoming information streams. Even with the filter he was almost overwhelmed by the quantity of data available. Neural nanonics assigned priority gradings. Sub-routines took over from his mind’s natural cross-indexing ability, leaving his consciousness free to absorb relevant details.
He focused on Mzu, principally through the observation team, then defined a peripheral activity key to alert him of any incoming factors which would affect her situation. The rate at which external events were developing on Nyvan made it unlikely he would be able to secure Monica much advance warning, but as a veteran of twenty-eight years ESA service he knew even seconds could change the entire outcome of a field operation.
“It has to be the ironberg foundry yard,” he datavised to Monica after they had been driving over the farmland for twenty uneventful minutes.
“We think so, too,” Monica replied. “Are the foundry’s landing pads equipped with beacon guidance? If she’s looking for a spaceplane pickup, they’ll need a controlled approach in this weather.”
“Unless they have military-grade sensors. But yes, the foundry’s pads have beacons. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their reliability, mind. I doubt they’ve been serviced since the day they were installed.”
“Okay, can you run a data sweep of the foundry? And if you can access it, a security sensor review would be helpful. I’d like to know if there’s anyone there waiting for her.”
“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, that foundry is big. But I’ll put a couple of my analysts on it. Just don’t expect too much.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 230