Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘No, Sid,’ Clayton said, suddenly serious. ‘It wasn’t Jupiter. This was never a North on North battle. We don’t know what this thing is, or where it came from. But we’ll find out.’

  The monster was tugged off the floor. It spun up through the air towards a hatch Sid could see opening in the side of the fuselage.

  Ralph made an incoherent snarling sound, pain and outrage crushed into one pitiful cry. Clayton bent over him, spraying something over his finger stumps.

  ‘Take care, Sid,’ Clayton said. ‘It was a privilege being part of your team.’ He started to rise off the floor, vanishing into the glare. The fallen angel reclaimed by his own.

  Then the lights went out. The shape of the spaceship was briefly visible against the backdrop of delicate twinkling stars. It blurred, elongating upwards. Sid cheered it on wildly. Then the boom burst around him, the kind of thunderclap that only an object weighing hundreds of tonnes shredding the atmosphere could create. After that there was only the US-22s buzzing about in total confusion in its wake; and armoured interdiction troopers spilling through the door, ruby laser target beams chasing round as they sought something they understood amid the carnage and debris.

  *

  The HDA mobile field clinic was a fifty-tonne twenty-wheel lorry with five triage centres and two emergency surgery theatres. It was parked outside the Mountain High building, the triage modules extending out from its sides, and standing secure on telescoping legs, ready for all injuries the assault might result in.

  They’d carried Sid into it on a stretcher, which he thought was degrading. But by then shock was starting to kick in, and he’d lost the power of speech. His skin was hot or cold, he couldn’t decide. All he could see was the dark, glossy blades slashing. Ian’s head flipping back. Blood exploding into the beams of the helmet-lights. His friend, his partner, was dead. Killed by an alien monster, who had been stalking the streets of Newcastle all along.

  Keen, efficient young medical staff in green gowns and white masks had clustered round, eager to have a patient. His armour had been removed, clothes cut away from his torso. He didn’t get to go to the theatre, since his cracked rib and bruising wasn’t bad enough. Instead, the doctor treated him in the triage centre, sliding some shiny flexible tube into his chest through a tiny incision and wrapping the rib fractures with nuflesh.

  Physically he was fine. They bumped a lot of tox into him.

  ‘It’ll help,’ the doctor said reassuringly.

  It was a lie. Tox took the edge off, calming his body and giving his face the expression of a happy idiot. But it never took the internal pain away, never stopped the memory of Ian’s terrible death. He lived in a loop of time, where they burst into the hexagonal room, the five of them, hyped up on the thrill of their hunt coming to an end. They’d caught the scent of victory. It wasn’t just the satisfaction of closing the case, they had anger powering them along, anger that Aldred had been the bad guy all along, anger that he’d wormed his way into their confidence, anger that they’d been fooled, that they’d opened themselves to him.

  Except it wasn’t the five of them. It was only four. Abner wasn’t Abner, not the detective that Sid had known and quite respected. Clayton, whoever he was, had wormed his way into their lives as much as Aldred.

  Clayton had lied. It was North against North. It always had been. And just as he’d suspected right from the start, he’d never know why, never be told exactly what had happened.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ a nurse asked.

  Sid focused on the smiling young face above him. Without her mask she was beautiful. He wondered if all Jacinta’s patients fell in love with her, too.

  ‘My friend is dead,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry, but your other friends are okay.’

  ‘I want to see them.’

  ‘All right. But not for long.’

  ‘I know. My wife’s a nurse, you know.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Can you walk? I can get a wheelchair.’

  ‘I can walk.’

  Eva was in the next triage centre. Blood-soaked clothes from the top of the Mountain High building had been removed, and her hair washed. Getting her clean was important, the nurse told Sid, because blood was a strong psychological trigger. Now she sat on the gurney, wrapped in two blankets, staring at nothing. Her Nordic-pale skin was so white that even the freckles had blanched away.

  Sid sat beside her. ‘It’s over,’ he said.

  ‘He’s dead, Sid. Dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. But we got the machine.’

  ‘Umbreit is dead too.’

  ‘Yeah, and Boz, and Ruckby.’

  Tears started to roll down her cheeks. ‘I’ve got to get out. No more police. I can’t do this any more.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ He sat beside her and put his arm round her shoulders. There was nothing more to say. Eva leant in against him, thankful for the contact, the understanding.

  They stayed together for a long time before Sid said: ‘I’m going to check on Ralph.’

  Sarah Linsell was already in the surgical theatre with Ralph, standing beside the bed, her armour jacket open down the front, holding her helmet. Sid looked at Ralph’s hand, which was enveloped by a ball of translucent grey-green gel. Various wires and cables snaked out to a stack of equipment.

  ‘Good to see you, Sid,’ Ralph said in an exuberant voice that was louder and happier than it should be.

  ‘Aye, man, how’s it going?’

  ‘Pretty good, but then they’ve bumped me full of tox.’

  ‘Sorry about your hand.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Ralph grinned. ‘They can fix it.’

  Sid raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We recovered all the fingers from the scene,’ Sarah Linsell said. ‘He’ll be transferred back up to the base hospital in a little while. A surgical regraft team is flying in from France. They’ll operate as soon as they arrive. With luck he shouldn’t need any bionetic substitutions.’

  ‘Good. So what did Umbreit build?’

  ‘Classified.’

  ‘What did he build?’ Sid asked in a quieter, more assertive voice.

  ‘Some kind of modified D-bomb,’ Ralph said jauntily. ‘As far as the tech crew can make out, it would’ve ripped up the quantum fields inside the gateway. That way it would be difficult to open another gateway to Sirius for about a century while the quantum fields stabilized.’

  ‘And that’s where they were going to set it off, in the gateway?’

  ‘Jede turned,’ Sarah Linsell said. ‘Smart of him, given everyone else apart from Sherman is dead. The plan was for Aldred to get them to the gateway. After all, who was going to question the head of Northumberland Interstellar security? He told them he’d drive on by himself, with the bomb in his boot.’

  ‘So even if he made it through alive somehow, he’d be trapped on the other side for a hundred years?’ Sid mused. ‘That’s if anyone ever bothered to open a gateway there again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

  ‘Nothing does,’ Ralph said.

  ‘So what about Aldred? Have the troopers found him?’

  ‘No,’ Sarah Linsell said angrily. ‘They haven’t. We’ve searched that building thoroughly, brought in more agents, covered it in so much smartdust it’s now one giant mesh. We can scan every section of it simultaneously. He’s not in there. We’re working on the assumption that he used the confusion over the spaceship arrival to slip through the perimeter. He must have had help, some team we didn’t know about. There’s an alert out for him, he won’t get far.’

  ‘Ha!’ Sid grunted. ‘He’s a North. He looks like every other North. I couldn’t even tell when Clayton replaced Abner, and I’ve worked with him for years.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I have to,’ Linsell said.

  ‘Aye, that’s what I told myself when I was given this case,’ Sid said. ‘Much good it did me. I didn’t even bel
ieve in the alien. But it’s real all right, hiding out in the Mountain High building ever since January. Aldred must have known, he was the one covering for it, arranging for the body to be disposed; the Norths must have some kind of deal with it.’

  She shrugged. ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘We’ll need to check if Mountain High imported anything from St Libra,’ Sid said. ‘Crap on it, we were on the right track back in January, following up on crates that came through the gateway from St Libra. Why didn’t we catch this?’

  ‘Who cares?’ Ralph said. ‘You’ve got yourself a huge first. You caught an alien murderer, Sid. Nobody’s ever done that before in all human history. You’re famous.’

  ‘Aye, but I didn’t catch it. Clayton did. And are you going to tell me about that spaceship? I didn’t know anything like that existed.’

  ‘Neither did we,’ Sarah Linsell said crisply. ‘I believe General Shaikh is going to be asking Jupiter some very pointed questions.’

  ‘And we still don’t know what this whole thing was all about,’ Sid said.

  ‘We know the goal now,’ Ralph said. ‘Shutting down the St Libra gateway.’

  ‘Aye, but why? The only possible beneficiary from that would be Zebediah North.’

  ‘Maybe he had more support among his brothers than they were letting on,’ Sarah Linsell said.

  ‘Aye, maybe,’ Sid said. The tox must have been wearing off, because he was now too tired to care. ‘I’m going to go home now. Can you sort out a car for me and Eva?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Sid told Ralph. ‘After your surgery, like. I’ll come and make sure it went okay.’

  ‘Thanks, Sid. And I am sorry about Ian.’

  ‘Sure.’ Sid managed a grimace of a smile and ducked out of the theatre.

  Chloe Healy was standing in the narrow corridor outside. Even though it was gone eleven o’clock she was as immaculately dressed as always. She was carrying a long protective plastic bag, the type Sid’s laundry service delivered his suits in.

  ‘Aye, bollocks to this,’ he groaned. ‘Go away, pet.’ Part of him wanted to know how she’d got past the secure cordon, but then that was a part of what she was.

  ‘O’Rouke sent me,’ she said.

  ‘Tell him to piss off.’

  ‘He said you’d say that.’

  ‘Did he tell you how to answer?’

  ‘No. I have my own reply.’

  ‘I’m not even going to hear it. Ian’s dead, you know.’

  ‘I do know. Every news site on the planet is alive with the story; licensed and unlicensed. Sid, they’ve got visuals of a spaceship hovering above Last Mile. They’re talking about a plot to set off a fusion bomb.’

  ‘It was a D-bomb. Look, pet, really, just leave me alone.’

  ‘My reply is this: when have I ever been disloyal to whoever I’m representing?’

  Sid’s shoulders slumped. He really didn’t need this, not on top of everything else. ‘I thought you’d got an agency job?’

  ‘I have. NorthernMetroServices. That’s why I’m assigned to you.’

  ‘No thanks, pet. Go home, that’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘This isn’t going to go away. It’s too big, the biggest story of the decade. The Norths tried to nuke Newcastle!’

  ‘No they didn’t.’

  ‘Then you need to tell people that. You’re the one they’ll listen to and believe. Sid, there are five hundred reporters pressing up against the cordon HDA have thrown round this place. This is just going to grow and grow. It’s your chance, Sid, your opportunity.’

  ‘To do what?’ he snapped.

  ‘To make a name for yourself. To become the next Chief Constable.’

  ‘Pet, you have got to be kidding.’

  ‘No I’m not, and neither are a lot of other people. That’s why I’m here. We have faith in you. This is exactly what you need to position yourself in the public perception. Haven’t you earned this? Haven’t you served your time, been treated like shit long enough?’

  ‘Yeah, mainly by O’Rouke. And you.’

  ‘Time to cash in.’

  ‘Really?’ It was nonsense, and he knew it was. Yet some persistent little thought worried away at his conviction. He’d burned his bridges with Northumberland Interstellar, and Ian had died following their case to its conclusion. No one else was stopping off to say: good job, thank you. Some little part kept reflecting on that, like the one that kept him on the case, kept chasing down the facts from places he had no right to be. ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘First, even O’Rouke didn’t know you were still part of this. Was it off-log?’

  ‘Yeah. We had a whisper about gang involvement, I decided to follow up.’

  ‘Excellent, that means Milligan cannot take any credit, because he didn’t even know what was happening. It was your initiative, your success. You saved the city from a D-bomb detonating.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘You’re here tonight. You were injured on the front line. You’re a hero, Sid. Milligan is a lard-arse office squatter. You’re a regular policeman who gets out on the streets to protect the citizenry, and puts his own life on the line to do it. We need you. Who would make a better Chief Constable, who would have more support, who would make the people feel safer?’

  ‘I don’t have the political contacts to pull this off.’

  ‘You have a foundation, and tonight can build high on that, very high indeed. I can help you with that. Hate me and despise me all you want, but it’s what I do. And I’m damn good at it. I understand the media. I know who to talk to, what angle to spin. You have to control the news, Sid, or it will sweep you along out of control; rule the transnet, dictate the information cycle, don’t let the sites use you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We can start with a press conference. I’ve seen you do them before, you’re good. And we have the ultimate knowledge monopoly here tonight. The Mayor doesn’t know anything, neither does Market Street. HDA isn’t saying a damn thing. You can be the city’s representative right here and now, you can make sense of all this for people, make them feel safe again. People are worried out there, Sid, they know about the spaceship and they don’t know what to think. There are a hundred rumours, and they’re breeding worse ones every second. That’s all anyone’s listening to because there are no facts. Help correct that.’

  He nodded his head slowly as the options began to crystallize in his mind. There were opportunities to be had here. It would be a very foolish man who thought otherwise, a man who didn’t understand how the world worked. ‘I’ll need some guidance on how to say all that.’

  Chloe Healy smiled shrewdly. She held up the long protective bag that clearly held all the kingdoms of the world. ‘First we make you look good. I’m not having you stand up in front of everyone in a clinic gown that shows off your underpants at the back.’

  Sid took the bag from her. No need to ask what it contained, she would have chosen the perfect attire for the occasion. ‘Aye, I’d best get changed, then, pet.’

  Friday 3rd May 2143

  General Khurram Shaikh, the Supreme Commander Human Defence Alliance, walked into the Trans-stellar Situation Centre underneath Alice Springs, accompanied by Majors Vermekia and Fendes. Officers at the Sol section saluted quickly as he came over to them and sat at the chair at the head of the consoles. None of them could recall him looking so angry before.

  ‘Are we ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Captain Toi replied. ‘Cape Town is standing by.’

  ‘Very well, proceed with the war gateway opening, Captain.’

  Captain Toi turned back to her zone console and let the slim screen curve round her face. ‘Power it up,’ she told the Cape Town base commander.

  General Shaikh watched the big wall pane that was displaying all the information being gathered by the five HDA satellites closest to Jupiter. It wasn’t nearly as much as he would have liked. Providing a full ran
ge of high-resolution optical sensors wasn’t a priority to the design geeks and budget lords of the deep-space satellite warning network that orbited Sol; the technological sentinels were intended to watch for any perturbation of quantum fields, that inevitable precursor for Zanth activity. The images which the Sol station team had pulled out of the quintet showed the North constellation as little more extensive than a blurred patch, like a dull silver nebula; it was difficult to make out the individual elements apart from the main habitat amalgamation. Even so he was surprised by the size of the constellation.

  ‘How many . . . components in the constellation now?’ he asked.

  ‘Over a hundred, sir,’ Toi replied. ‘Plus some large chunks of astroidal rock; we’ve identified both metallic and carbonaceous chondritic types, as well as a sizeable iceberg; presumably they provide a full range of metals and minerals to process into raw. They’ve been busy.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The General watched the data gliding down the side of the pane, showing him the Cape Town war gateway powering up. The trans-spacial connection was reaching out to compress the forty-light-minute distance from Earth to Jupiter down to an effective zero. It was almost insulting to ask the fabulous machine to perform a connection over such a short length – it was designed to extend out to the very stars themselves, to help humans fight off the most terrifying foe in the universe. Now he wanted to use it to have an angry conversation with a stubborn recluse.

  Several sections of the data turned red. Captain Toi’s back stiffened. She began a fast conversation with the Cape Town technicians controlling the gateway. The data flipped back to amber, then went red again.

  ‘Captain?’ the General asked in a low voice.

  She turned around to face him, a line of perspiration on her brow. ‘Sir, we can’t open the gateway close to Jupiter. Something is blocking the connection at the other end.’