The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (228 page)

“Paula?” Nigel asked. “Can we neutralize it?”

“I’m not certain. Qatux, do you know how far its influence extends?”

The portal image showed the Raiel watching them patiently. “This is obviously exciting for all of you,” it said in its soft wind-chime voice. “I wish I could share the experience.”

“Qatux, please answer the question,” Paula said sternly.

“Isabella Halgarth came into contact with many people who suffered the same compulsion overlay. They are arranged in a three-person structure based on the old human spy cell system. The controller can put them in touch with each other for specific operations, but apart from that they operate in isolation.”

“So you understand the method which the Starflyer uses to control her and the others?”

“It is a sophisticated technique, indicating the controller has a great deal of experience in manipulating the thought routines of other creatures. A Prime-type entity would have an obvious advantage over singleton mentalities; its understanding of mental constitution operates at an instinctive level.”

“What did it do to Isabella?” Mellanie asked, her voice heavy with trepidation. She obviously feared what she was about to hear, but had to know anyway.

“Her thought routines, what you would term the personality, were infiltrated with alien behavioral modifiers. She performed as a normal human under everyday circumstances, but within that framework she acted solely in the interests of the Starflyer. Think of it as having your mind cored like an apple, and the hole being filled with the Starflyer’s desires.”

“How old was she when this happened?” Paula asked.

“Five or six. The memory is hazy. She was on Far Away with her parents. They took her into a room that resembled a hospital; she was scared. After that, her mind was no longer hers.”

“Urggh.” Mellanie wrinkled her nose up. “It did that to a six-year-old? That’s so shitty.”

“Ahh,” Qatux sighed. “Sentiment. I have experienced it often in human memories. It is one of your more exquisite feelings. Would you consider sharing yours with me, Mellanie?”

“Uh. Like: no!”

“So you don’t actually know what the Starflyer is thinking?” Paula said.

“No,” Qatux said. “However, there are residual traces of its presence within her mind which betray certain aspects of its character.”

“Such as?”

“Alterations made to the original directives. Isabella and other agents very abruptly received new instructions when the Commonwealth first announced it was building a starship. They were originally working on the assumption that a series of wormholes would be opened to Dyson Alpha. Its whole strategy had to be altered to incorporate the development of superluminal travel. Isabella was also unaware of your quantumbuster weapon, she was expecting the navy to use flare bombs against MorningLightMountain’s second invasion. That was the information which her kind were supplying to the Seattle team.”

“And we improved on it,” Wilson said tightly.

“Has Isabella got any memory of Alessandra Baron being a Starflyer agent?” Mellanie asked eagerly.

“Yes. Isabella was brought into the operation to hide the New York lawyers when Alessandra Baron learned you were investigating them.”

“Gotcha, you bitch!” Mellanie punched the air. “Yes!”

“Not relevant at this point,” Paula said dismissively. “Qatux, does Isabella know where the Starflyer is, or will be?”

“No. She only knows what she is supposed to do. She was on Illuminatus to join up with the lawyers after they had been given new identities. They would all receive their assignment then.”

“Johansson says it will now return to Far Away,” Justine said.

“It can’t,” Nigel told her. “Not unless it’s already on Boongate, in which case it might stand a chance. The wormhole from Wessex to Boongate will not be opened to transport again.”

“Then it is confined to the Commonwealth,” Paula said. “Qatux, if we take known Starflyer agents into custody can you read their memories for us? At some point, we should encounter one who knows where it is. It is important that we apprehend it as swiftly as possible. Will you come to the Commonwealth to assist me?”

“I would find such a venture most appealing. I would wish to be engaged through your own perception and interpretation facilities.”

Paula faced the Raiel’s image, her face devoid of any expression. “We have discussed this before. You may not leech my emotional state.”

“Is not your task an urgent one? Is this not how humans behave? Is not the price negotiated in advance?”

“Well, yes,” Paula said, flummoxed by the request. “But you will access the agent’s thoughts, you will experience their emotions. That is our standard payment.”

“Their emotional levels are much reduced, suppressed by the Starflyer’s behavioral modifiers. They mimic true feelings, they do not experience them for themselves, there is nothing there for me. You, though, Investigator, would feel a great deal as this case is wrapped up, the culmination of a hundred thirty years of work. I would know what that is like.”

“I …” Paula looked around the study for help.

“I should let you stew in that one,” Mellanie said. “But I’ll be big. My price is an interview when all this is over.”

“You’ll let it feel through you?” Paula asked.

“No, but I know a girl who will, and she’s already wetwired for it.” Mellanie turned to the portal, already looking victorious. “Qatux, how about I get you someone who’s a lot more emotional than the Investigator is? Let’s face it, she’s a bit of a cold fish.”

“That would be acceptable.”

“Great. Nelson, I’ll need some bodyguards to help me collect her.”

“Bodyguards? You’re not going to kidnap someone, are you?”

“Not for her, for me. I’m not very popular with her friends.”

“You can have bodyguards,” Nigel said. He grinned admiringly. “Anything else?”

“An express ticket to Darklake City.”

“Of course.”

“Who are you going to arrest?” Mellanie asked Paula.

“Every agent Isabella came in contact with.”

“Good, that’ll include Baron, then. I’ll cover that arrest for Michelangelo.”

“It wasn’t her that used and abused you,” Paula said. “She is no longer human.”

“She never was,” Mellanie said gruffly.

“Assuming all this leads us to the Starflyer, what are we going to do with it when we find it?” Justine asked.

“Execute it,” Wilson said.

“Quietly,” Nigel said quickly.

“If Johansson is right about it trying to return to Far Away, and he’s been right about everything else, then it will have to reach Boongate via Wessex,” Justine said. “The Guardians are watching for that. Now might be a good time to help them. We’ve got Morton and his squad; they’d be able to take out anything guarding the Starflyer’s train.”

Nigel gave Nelson a questioning glance.

“They could spearhead,” Nelson said. “But it would have to be our operation; I’m not having rogue groups running around near the wormhole generators, no matter how good the cause. We’ve seconded half of our technical personnel to Narrabri to help modify the wormhole generators for the future settlement project. We can’t risk any kind of firefight there.”

“All right,” Nigel said. “We’ll set up at Narrabri. There’s enough space in our planetary station to hide this, and we can get Qatux there without drawing attention. Let’s get started.”

The stealth coat wrapped Stig in a gray-black haze as if he’d been devoured by his own private event horizon. Above him, the midnight sky was dominated by the twinkling stars of Neptune’s Trident, the constellation that marked his birth. Directly ahead, the chain-link fence stretched out for kilometers, a straight line slicing through the low grass like some kind of border between nations rather than a mere aerodrome perimeter. Even with the starlight it was dark out in the surrounding fields where he’d been waiting. His retinal inserts were switched to enhancement, giving the damp land a blue-gray hue. Sleeping sheep were huddled together for warmth. There were flocks on both sides of the fence. The aerodrome was spread over such a big area it was cheaper to give the local farmers grazing rights than buy and maintain a fleet of mowerbots.

He reached the fence in the middle of a hundred-meter section where there were no lights. The poles and the fittings were there; they just didn’t work. His bolt cutters cut through the slim strands of rusted metal as if they were paper. By now he was feeling ridiculous with the whole superagent covert mission setup. There was no real security at the aerodrome, just a couple of overweight guards who spent their nights sitting around the management building raiding the canteen kitchen and watching local dramas on their portals. He could have walked in through the main gate and they’d never know.

Usually.

And that was the one thing that Adam had lectured him about ceaselessly. There was no
usual.
So here he was jogging over a kilometer of open field between the gate and the back of the vast hangars for the sake of procedure.

“How’s it going?” Olwen asked.

“Good. Be there in five minutes or so.” Sweat was running down his skin now; the stealth coat on top of his usual jacket, force field skeleton, and weapons meant he was carrying quite a weight.

He reached the first row of hangars, and jogged down the strip of hard ground between them, where mosses and weeds were smothering the crumbling gray concrete. On either side of him the ends of the vast buildings presented perfect black semicircles against the star-filled sky. Almost sixty meters high at the apex, their sliding doors had been shut against the elements decades ago, never to be opened again. They rattled constantly now as the gentle breeze from the North Sea swept over the aerodrome. Built by the revitalization project, they were made out of the ubiquitous carbon panels pinned to a geodesic grid of carbon girders. Age and neglect had seen the pins and epoxy decay and fray, allowing blustery weather to worry away at the edges and joints. Each hangar had lost hundreds of panels to the wind, while others now hung by a single tenuous pin, swaying from side to side in the slightest gust. They clattered away against the framework as Stig moved deeper into the deserted ghost city. He turned off the wide thoroughfare to cut through toward the next row. The irregular gaps in the curving walls of the hangars on each side gave glimpses of the interiors. All of them were empty, stripped of machinery and support equipment. Dead cabling and pipes dangled down from unseen conduits overhead. Water leaked in through the missing panels to pool in long dank puddles on the concrete floor.

The final row of hangars, which the remaining blimpbots operated out of, were kept in a better state of repair, with so many new panels fixed to the framework they produced a check pattern so pronounced it looked like the original design. Maintenancebots stood along the base of the walls, their wide, flexible crawler trolleys looking alarmingly spindly for the weight they had to carry.

Powerful halogen bulbs on the top of the hangars produced elongated smears of light down the thoroughfare, which were easy enough for Stig to avoid. His sensors couldn’t detect any kind of electronic activity, anyway. The management building was at the end of the row, another construct of molded carbon panels that had been modified and added to over the years to become a strange amalgamation of cubes, cylinders, and domes.

Stig avoided the main entrance, and walked around to one of the smaller doors at the side. It wasn’t even locked. Every light was on inside. He moved through the corridors, going up and down stairs, checking rooms. The whole place was completely deserted, not even the guards had turned up for their shift.

Stig finished up in the security office, and opened a link to Olwen. “Everything clear in here. I’ve loaded our software into the arrays. I’m opening the gate for you now.” A bank of screens showed various camera images of the aerodrome, with the biggest concentration around the main entrance, the management building, and the inside of the operational hangars. He watched the barrier at the main entrance lift up. A couple of minutes later, the Guardians drove their three trucks through.

He met them outside the service door on the first hangar; it occupied a small corner segment of the flight doors, but it was still big enough to take two trucks side by side. Olwen climbed down out of the cab once they were inside.

“I’ve never been this close to one before,” she said in admiration.

There were two blimpbots tethered end to end inside the hangar. The dark ellipsoid shapes were a hundred fifty meters long, and fifty meters high. With their ducted fans folded back along the fuselage their resemblance to airborne whales was even more acute.

“Me neither,” he admitted. Up close, the blimpbots weren’t quite so impressive. Their fuselage envelopes had as many patches as the hangar that sheltered them, although they were a lot neater. The series of payload bay doors that lined the belly were open, showing various mechanical latches and grabs in the cavities. “I didn’t expect them to be this crude.”

“But they’ll do the job,” she said. “How many are there?”

“Twenty-two in the hangars. Three have had their flightworthiness certificate withdrawn, pending maintenance, but they’ll do for what we want.”

The other Guardians were climbing down out of the trucks.

“Let’s get at it,” Olwen told them. “We can install most of our systems by morning.”

“The next wormhole cycle starts midafternoon,” Stig said. “That’ll give us enough time to get them all airborne and positioned. They can circle the city until we call them in.”

“What about the revitalization team and the engineers?”

“I don’t think they’re coming back. This place is abandoned. And if they do show up, we’ll just hang on to them so they don’t raise the alarm.”

“All right then.”

One of the trucks had been backed up as close as it could get to the underside of the first blimpbot. The Guardians let the rear gate down, and pulled out a set of wheel ramps. Stig and Olwen went over to help them. A trollybot inched its way down the wheel ramps, carrying a fat cylinder nearly four meters long. The metal ramps creaked under it, betraying the weight of the cylinder.

“Are these going to work?” Olwen asked.

“I hope so.” Stig peered up into the truck. “We’ve only got six. I’d be pleased if just one of them reaches 3F Plaza.” He could see another of the cylinders resting on its cradle inside. Crates full of decoy drone and chaff dispensers were strapped to the floor around it. “We need to fit dispensers to all the blimpbots, including the ones we’ve armed. That way the Institute won’t be able to spot the difference until it’s too late.”

“No kidding?” Olwen said.

“Sorry. I get kind of nervous around bombs like this.”

They followed the trollybot as it rolled down to the central payload bay. The Guardians started to attach the blimpbot’s internal hoist cables to the cylinder.

“We’re picking up a lot more rumors from the Institute troops,” Olwen said. “They’re all talking about some kind of attack on the Commonwealth.”

“The Primes again,” Stig said.

“Yeah, but, Stig, it was a big attack; they’re consistent about that. It’s making them very jittery. There’s even been talk about some of them breaking through to Half Way.”

“Stupid of them. They don’t know if there are any Carbon Goose planes left at Port Evergreen.”

“It was only a whisper.”

Probably true, though,
Stig thought. Guardians and their supporters had taken jobs at the pubs and clubs that the Institute troops had established as their own in Armstrong City. They provided a slow but steady trickle of information on the troops and their assignments. Morale, already low, was heading downhill fast. The soldiers had all signed up for medium-term contracts to help the Institute combat raids from guerrilla bands out on the Great Iril Steppes; none of them expected to be doing urban paramilitary duties. Being the most hated group on the planet, subject to constant abuse and harassment, was taking its toll. Their officers had to let them out at night; safe together, they drank and bitched like any soldier since Troy.

“Anybody let on if they’re expecting an arrival?”

“I’d have told you. They don’t know, too low down the food chain.”

“It can’t be long now.”

She watched the heavy cylinder rise up into the cargo bay, flinching each time the ancient winch chains let out a
creak
of protest at the weight. “You’ve done everything you can do. It can only come through at preset times, and we know what those are to the second. We’ve got 3F Plaza covered by every kind of sensor the human race has ever invented. If those troops even so much as glance at the gateway we’ll know about it. So stop worrying, we’ve got it covered.”

Stig looked up at the blimpbots, and laughed at the audacity of the plan they’d come up with. “Right, who’s going to notice a goddamn airship on a bombing run? Dreaming heavens!”

“Nobody,” she said, smiling back with the same wild enthusiasm. “That’s the beauty. Fly them in low enough, and they’ll be over the walls of 3F Plaza before the Institute can aim a single weapon at them.”

“I hope you’re right.” He gave a start as the winch mechanism stopped with a nasty metallic grinding sound. The bomb was completely inside the bay. “Let’s work out how to get this brute secure. I really do want to have them all in the air by morning.”

Oscar didn’t expect a downtime of more than six hours. Enough to recharge the
Dublin
’s niling d-sinks, and reload the forward section with Douvoir missiles and quantumbusters. Fleet Command had indicated they’d be sent right back to Hanko. After the wormholes had vanished, they’d destroyed over eighty Prime ships before their armaments were depleted.

As soon as the starship eased its bulk into a docking station at Base One, the secure encrypted message popped into Oscar’s hold file. Admiral Columbia wanted to see him right away. Along with the rest of the crew, Oscar was still in shock by the way the War Cabinet had dumped shit from a great height on Wilson. Resentment was a strong twin of that feeling; he was tempted to tell his new commander where to shove his meeting, an impulse made worse by worry that Columbia was implementing a political clearout of his new office. Oscar had been one of the first people Wilson had recruited, making him a prominent loyal member of the old regime.

However, you can’t go around judging people on the basis of your own emotional prejudices. So Oscar did the mature thing, and sent a message back saying he was on his way. Sir.

“If the shit fires you, we walk, too,” Teague said.

“Don’t,” Oscar said as he left for the small shuttle craft. “The navy needs you.”
Where have I heard that phrase before?

Nothing physical had changed at Pentagon II. Senior staff seemed twitchy as Oscar went through the offices and corridors, but then they were in the middle of organizing a battle to defend human worlds against forty-eight alien armadas. They were allowed to be twitchy.

Rafael Columbia had taken over Wilson’s sterile white office. He was alone when Oscar was shown in.

No witnesses,
Oscar thought immediately.
Oh, for God’s sake, get a grip.

Columbia didn’t get up; he simply waved Oscar into a chair with easy familiarity. “I have a problem, Oscar.”

“I’ll resign if it makes it easier. We can’t afford any more internal disruption.”

Columbia frowned in genuine surprise, then smiled briefly. “No, not that. You’re an excellent starship captain. Just look at the
Dublin
’s performance.”