Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  To mirror them, Sid and Ralph were together; Abner shared a car with Eva, parked up on the north edge of Jarrow; while Ian was by himself, waiting outside the Simonside Metro station car park. They weren’t using the surveillance routines, or even accessing the traffic macromesh to keep tabs on the vans. The Gang Task Force files on the two byteheads that Jede had recruited showed they were experts at dealing with alarms and observation routines. Sid was taking no chances. Despite the drizzle, he was determined they’d track the raid via micro-copter alone. And this weather was mild, the sensors on the little machines could easily cope with a light Geordie squall.

  ‘Do you think they’ll kill the guards?’ Eva asked over their secure ringlink. ‘Those thugs Boz has with him are armed.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Sid said. ‘Sherman won’t want to draw excess attention to what goes down tonight. If I know him he’ll be lifting a whole load of stuff as well as his actual target items, that way nobody will know what they were actually here for. It’ll look like a high-end blackmarket theft.’

  ‘But if they do? If something goes wrong?’

  ‘Then we know exactly who to arrest.’

  ‘That won’t mean a lot to the victims’ families. We could have had a tactical team on stand-by.’

  Ralph turned his head to look at Sid. In the yellow streetlight filtering through the windscreen his skin looked deathly grey, amplifying his expression.

  ‘There’s a lot of maybes in that, Eva,’ Sid said.

  ‘These people are professional,’ Abner said. ‘They’ll shoot tasers and tranks, not bullets or e-bolts.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘So we’re relying on Sherman to be capable.’

  ‘He didn’t get where he is by making a noise,’ Ralph said. ‘Besides, this is an official HDA operation. It’s my responsibility, and therefore my decision not to involve anyone else. You’re covered.’

  Now it was Sid’s turn to give Ralph a blank stare. The agent responded with a shrug. ‘Shuts her up,’ he muttered.

  Sid let out a long breath, and returned to the visual in his grid.

  Trigval Molecular Solutions dominated the Bede Industrial Estate where it was situated, a seven-storey, ultra-modern carbon-black, all sharp-edged geometries intersecting at odd angles, crystallization architecture that had gone subtly wrong. It was surrounded by a moat of corporate parkland, with a formal layout of grass, pruned bushes, and staked trees, with precise leisure zones of benches and tables where employees could take a break in warmer months.

  The vans driven by Ruckby and Boz arrived at the entrance, where a red and white barrier was down. It slid up immediately, and they both drove in, following the road round to a loading bay door at the back of the building.

  ‘No alert registering in any police network,’ Ian said. ‘They’re in clean.’

  ‘Oh, they’re good,’ Ralph acknowledged.

  The two goons were already out of Boz’s van when a security guard emerged from a side door to check up on the unexpected activity. A tiny flash was visible to the micro-copter’s sensor mesh, along with an electromagnetic spike. The guard crumpled. One of the goons dragged him back inside. Ruckby led the byteheads in after them.

  ‘Taser,’ Ian said. ‘Happy now, pet?’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ Eva retorted.

  They waited and watched for seventeen minutes, while Boz sat patiently in his van and the drizzle gradually abated. Sid tried not to think of the silent mayhem playing out inside the black building. Eva’s worries were a meme gaining power in his mind.

  Eventually, Jede drew up at the entrance, and the barrier lifted again. He drove round to the other two vans, then he and Boz went inside. It was another eleven minutes before one of the loading bay doors rolled up, sending a fan of bright orange-tinged light spilling out across the wet tarmac. Boz jumped down from the platform and hurried over to Jede’s van, backing it up to the open bay. Shadows wove back and forth through the light as the team started loading up the van.

  ‘Aye man,’ Sid said grudgingly. ‘Got to admit, they know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Can we see what’s in those crates?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘Not without sending the copter in closer,’ Sid said. ‘Which I’m not going to do. I don’t want to blow this now. Abner, launch the other two micro-copters, please. We need to keep tight on Jede’s van when they go for the getaway.’

  ‘Going airborne now.’

  The van was loaded after another four minutes. Doors slammed shut, the loading bay lights went off. All three vans drove out.

  ‘Okay,’ Sid said. ‘Abner, Ralph; we’re following Jede’s van. Focus on that, we have positive IDs on the others, we can pick them up any time.’

  ‘Aye, boss,’ Abner said.

  Sid glanced over at Ralph for confirmation, but the agent already had his eyes closed as he whispered instructions to his e-i which controlled the micro-copter’s flight. He figured any more instructions would just be patronizing, and let the agent get on with it.

  The three vans separated as soon as they cleared Trigval’s gate. Boz and Ruckby headed back towards the city in their respective vans, while Jede took the Tyne tunnel.

  Sid switched the police car to auto, and told it to start following Jede. Abner sent one of the micro-copters racing on ahead to the north of the Tyne, making sure it would be at the far end of the tunnel when Jede came out.

  ‘Unless they pull a switch on us,’ Ian said. ‘The tunnel is the best place for that. And we know they’re good at that kind of subterfuge, look how they fooled us with the taxi.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Ralph said.

  ‘We’re on the tunnel approach now,’ Sid said. ‘If there’s another van, we’ll see it.’

  They dipped down the approach road and went into the tunnel. Sid watched his grid, allowing himself a quick smile as Jede’s van cleared the far end. ‘Seems okay.’ His e-i relayed a warning from the auto that the macromesh of the road junction at the end of the tunnel had glitched, and advised him to switch to manual. ‘Oh yeah, like that was coincidence. What’s he doing, Abner?’

  ‘Circling the roundabout, twice now. Ah, no, wait, here we go, he’s off down the A19.’

  Sid switched the car to auto. ‘And what’s the betting the van’s got a different licence code now?’

  ‘No takers,’ Ralph said. Behind them, Eva and Abner were entering the tunnel, with Ian a minute further back. Traffic was minimal, mainly taxis, which brought a wry grin to Sid’s face.

  Abner and Ralph kept the micro-copters in a triangular formation two hundred metres above the van. Their three cars took up position trailing half a mile behind, and drove steadily. Jede kept going all the way to the end of the A19 where he turned onto the A1.

  ‘Interesting,’ Ian said as they watched the van turn onto the northbound carriageway and accelerate down the practically empty road. ‘Where’s the bugger off to, then?’

  They followed the van onto the A1, and Sid kept their speed constant for a while, allowing the separation distance to build to a couple of miles. When that was established he matched Jede’s speed.

  After four miles, the carriageway’s overhead lights ended, leaving them racing on into the darkness. A lot of the land beside the road used to be fields, but the farmers had long ago taken GE grant money under the natural reversion scheme. Now the forests were spreading out again, covering the undulating land with sturdy deciduous trees that provided a huge wildlife reserve.

  ‘Going to have to think about bringing the micro-copters down to recharge soon,’ Ralph said. ‘We can do it in relay.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sid agreed. ‘Who knew he’d be coming all the way out here?’

  They passed a sign for the Alnwick slip road.

  ‘Augustine lives round here, doesn’t he?’ Sid said.

  Ralph shot him a look. ‘It can’t be. He could just buy Trigval, there’d be no need for tonight’s activity.’

  ‘Aye, just saying, man.’

  ‘Screw this,’ Ralph grunt
ed.

  ‘So what else can active-state matter be used for?’ Sid asked. ‘Apart from in gateways.’

  ‘Sorry, classified.’

  ‘The company was defence listed, we checked. So it has to be involved in some kind of weapons for the HDA.’

  ‘I can’t fault your logic.’

  ‘War gateways, is that it? They’re supposed to be a lot more stable than the exploratory ones, you know, before you send through an anchor mechanism.’

  ‘Sid, really, I can’t tell you. It’s need-to-know only.’

  ‘All right,’ Sid grumbled.

  They spent the next ten minutes in silence. Then the van reached North Charlton. The micro-copters showed its brake lights coming on, followed by the indicator.

  Sid studied the map projected on the windscreen. There were three tiny roads spiking out from the hamlet. None of them was included in the macromesh. ‘Crap on it.’

  Ralph growled in agreement. ‘Those roads are too small, and nobody but locals use them at this time of night. If this is where the handover is, they’ll have them monitored.’

  ‘We’ve just passed the B6374 turning. Nothing for it, we’ll have to keep going. Eva, Ian, turn off onto the B6374 and we’ll see where he goes.’

  ‘Got it, boss,’ Eva said.

  Sid watched anxiously as the van drove over the carriageway bridge, and started heading east on the narrow track. ‘Oh bugger it, that road leads back to the B6374. Eva, Ian, just stop.’

  Sid drove under the bridge which Jede had gone over a minute before. He resisted the impulse to crane his neck in an attempt to spot the van. Besides, he could see from the grid that Jede was south of them now.

  The van carried on down the lane at barely twenty mph. Then they all saw its brake lights flare red again, and it turned off.

  ‘Now where are you going?’ Sid asked. His e-i immediately pulled the satellite image up onto the windscreen, superimposing it over the map. The image had been taken in mid-summer, when the meadows and spinneys were graded shades of lush green. They saw the track the van was on, which led to a cluster of old buildings enveloped by the burgeoning forest.

  ‘Farmhouse,’ Ralph said. ‘And there’s a lot of infrared emission down there. Interesting, because my e-i’s harvest is telling me the barns are under redevelopment as holiday cottages for the English Countryside Retreats Company.’

  ‘Keep the micro-copters back,’ Sid said urgently. ‘If this is the centre of Aldred’s operation, they’ll have some serious sensors keeping watch.’

  ‘The copters are well stealthed, boss,’ Ian protested.

  ‘I don’t care. These people are smart. We pull them back.’ Sid was desperate to turn the car around and head back to where the others were parked on the B6374, but that just couldn’t happen. He’d have to leave at least an hour before coming back through North Charlton to avoid suspicion. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘I call it in and get us back-up,’ Ralph said. ‘A lot of back-up. This has just turned serious. They’re not handing the systems on for blackmarket resale; that’s a functioning operation down there involving active-matter technology.’

  ‘Aye, crap on it. I was kind of enjoying this, man, you know.’

  ‘Sid, you’ve done a terrific job. Really. It won’t go unnoticed.’

  ‘Thanks. One favour?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let us in on the rest of the case. We’ll take the back seat, no question, but I think we deserve to be there. We might even be able to keep contributing.’

  ‘Last fling, huh? You’re supposed to be an office baron now.’

  ‘Still my case, though, man. And you owe me.’

  ‘We’re going to need high-level liaison with local police. I’ll mention your name to some people.’

  *

  The Wukang convoy had finally cleared the jungle on Friday, two days longer than Vance had been quietly praying for. As if to compensate, the weather had gradually been improving. The aurora borealis was still the dominant power in St Libra’s atmosphere, but the clouds were higher, and occasionally breaking up, allowing them to see clear up to a copper sky where Sirius burned its unnatural bright roseate pink. They even caught occasional glimpses of the rings. Temperature had risen a couple of degrees. The winds still blew, though their strength had diminished.

  Such good fortune should have allowed them to make better progress. But open ground brought its own problems, and they still didn’t cover much distance each day.

  Vance was driving MTJ-1, taking point. It was almost a displacement activity for him. Driving over the unending snow field required his absolute concentration. He simply couldn’t think about anything else, which was a relief.

  The landscape of blank snow shimmered in gaudy reds and greens as the snow reflected the aurora’s gigantic phosphorescent rivers overhead. The shifting light played havoc with his perception, making the ridges and dunes and gulches formed by the snow hard to judge. Sometimes a hump he’d thought of as rising only a metre would turn out to be as high as the MTJ, and he’d ram into it believing the plough blade would slice clean through only to come to a juddering slam-halt, embedding the vehicle so firmly the axle hub motors couldn’t extricate them. Then they’d have to take twenty minutes to half an hour to rig up the tow cable, and the other MTJ would haul them free. After that they’d have to find a lower point in the ridge and punch through. If they couldn’t find a low saddle, they’d just have to keep ramming the dune until they broke through, which could take hours.

  As a result they were tracking a zig-zag course across the snow, taking way too long to reach the river. Vance was starting to worry about the accuracy of their maps, and the inertial navigation systems. By his and Ken’s reckoning, they should have reached the Lan tributary yesterday. One more problem which the sheer grind of driving banished.

  They were travelling through low hill country, winding along the wide valleys, dodging the spinneys and treacherous rough expanses of snow which they’d long since discovered covered vast swathes of ferns. The strange, jagged snow covering was always loose, and the frozen fern fronds snapped like glass if anything drove over them, turning the whole area into a giant ice granule swamp that would pull the vehicles down and surround them with a powdery shale while their wheels churned away uselessly.

  Vance could see a dune up ahead, sparkling green as the vigorous aurora borealis slithered through the clouds above. He studied it intently as the MTJ rolled onwards relentlessly, the snowplough blade cutting cleanly through the rumpled surface, while their big tyres threw off churning fantails as they flattened the snow for the convoy to follow. It didn’t rise too far out of the surface, maybe a metre or so at the top. The pitiful radar image on the windscreen confirmed what he was seeing, though he almost discounted it. Snow with all its varying densities, as they’d discovered, did strange things to the return. He gunned the throttle, and turned the wheel slightly so the MTJ was lined up full square. Only when the tip of the snowplough was about to hit did Vance realize he’d made a mistake again. Now he could see over the brow of the dune, the deep depression behind it was visible to him.

  ‘Wrong,’ he snarled as the snowplough hit the dune. He concentrated hard, aware of how the vehicle began to dip then slow as the resistance built up. He knew there wasn’t enough power to get them through; impact with a hundred other dunes made such knowledge instinctive now. Snow thrown up from the blade and bonnet drew a lazy arc in the air, smothering the windscreen and thudding down loudly on the roof. He carefully throttled back, timing it so the motors were still by the time they came to a halt. The wipers strained to clear the fat smear of snow from the windscreen.

  ‘Good call,’ Camm Montoto said as they finished moving.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Vance said. He put the axle motors into reverse, and applied power. If he’d got it wrong, if he’d kept the acceleration going too long as the MTJ buried itself in the dune, they’d be stuck fast. The MTJ shifted backwards a fraction. Vance maintained
power, making sure the big tyres didn’t spin, allowing them to gain some traction on the flattened snow. Slowly and surely the MTJ began to back out of the dune, crawling up the incline.

  ‘You okay?’ Davinia asked over the ringlink.

  ‘We’re moving,’ Vance confirmed. ‘There’s a slope on the other side, not sure how deep.’

  ‘Are we going round?’

  Vance looked at Omar, who was sitting in the passenger seat. The Legionnaire grinned, which scrunched up the protective membranes covering his cheek. ‘We can manage that.’

  ‘Going through,’ Vance announced to the ringlink. The MTJ extracted itself from the dune, and Vance continued to back up. Twenty metres from the dune he stopped, and adjusted the snowplough blade height. He twisted the throttle sharply, sending the MTJ racing towards the dune again. He had to keep a strong hold on the steering wheel, making sure the big vehicle threaded straight into the gap he’d already created.

  They hit the snow again, punching further in. Vance intuitively knew they weren’t going to make it, and eased up on the throttle as he felt the MTJ’s momentum dissipate once more. Backing out slowly again. Lining up. Charging forward. Keeping the blade tip aligned on the centre of the gap.

  Third time was enough. They broke through, with snow forming an airborne curtain overhead. They bounced and jostled down the slope on the other side as the wipers worked fast, clearing away the smears and chunks of snow. There were trees ahead, a big sprawl of bullwhips and cozpal and trinnades, meshed by vines which in turn produced a vast undulating roof of snow and ice. The snow around them was the now-familiar rumple of submerged ferns.

  Vance throttled back and turned left, giving the bad snow a wide berth before slowly coming to a halt. There weren’t many functioning sensors or much working smartdust on the MTJ, but he could just access enough in his grid to give him a view back to the gap he’d rammed through the dune. The second MTJ was manoeuvring through. Davinia used the snowplough blade to carve a deep slice out of the side of the gap, producing a wider track for the trucks and biolabs.