The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (248 page)

Stig’s timer said there were thirteen minutes left until the end of the cycle. For another fuel air bomb he would have signed away his soul.

One of the Institute people walked through the gateway. There were flashes of light on the other side, diffused by the pressure curtain.

Some kind of truck came crashing out through the pressure curtain in a burst of noise and light. Its force field was radiating a bright perilous red. Air brakes shrieked and hissed, tires skidded across the slippery ash. The mounted weapon on every Cruiser tracked the truck’s erratic journey until it came to a halt fifty meters from the gateway. Its engine was racing, snorting like a maddened animal as the red hue faded away. Frost began to form on its bodywork.

Two more identical trucks came racing through. Then brilliant scarlet light stabbed through the pressure curtain, illuminating half of the Plaza.

“That’s us,” Stig said. “It’s got to be. Adam’s on the other side. The Starflyer isn’t having it all its own way.”

More trucks were scurrying through, so close together they could have been a train. The Cruisers were forming a broad semicircle around the gateway, every weapon pointed at it. Stig counted eight trucks in total behind them. One was crawling forward, leveling up beside the MANN truck. “Keely, we need a better angle on that truck,” he said.

“I’ll try.”

A couple of the sneekbots began to move. The image was dreadful, jolting about, with dust and drizzle rendering zoom function difficult. A door expanded in the side of the capsule. One of the sneekbots dipped down behind some rubble. That left one. Its camera tried to focus as the back of the truck hinged down, a pale vapor drifted out to vanish amid the swirling dust.

“Dreaming fucking heavens,” Stig said hoarsely.
The Starflyer!
He came to a complete halt, oblivious to the turmoil around him, concentrating on the one inadequate feed. Every headlight in the Plaza abruptly switched off. The sneekbot countered the darkness by activating its image amplification mode. Something moved out of the truck’s screened interior, surrounded by smaller human figures. It vanished into the capsule and the door contracted.

Headlights came back on, washing out the sneekbot’s images.

“Can you enhance that?” Stig asked breathlessly. When he replayed the image it was completely unclear, simply a patch of shaded pixels. Mobile, though. He thought it rocked as it moved.

“I dunno,” Keely replied. “I’ll shove it through the programs.”

Several Cruisers were roaring back up the path the bulldozers had cut through Market Wall. When they reached the top, they opened fire indiscriminately on the street below.

“Bastards,” Olwen exclaimed bitterly. The gunfire was audible where they were, near the end of Nottingham Road.

The MANN lorry started to move, powering its way back up the ramp, thick tires grinding the rubble flat. Cruisers formed up in front and behind it. They all started off down Mantana Avenue.

“Snipers stand by,” Stig said. “The Starflyer is on its way out of the city. Keely, alert the teams along Highway One to start wrecking the road. Did we get anyone to the Tangeat bridge?”

“No.”

He cursed under his breath, very careful not to let any hint of disapproval out into the general band. “Doesn’t matter, there’s a lot of other bridges between here and the
Marie Celeste.
”

Stig pulled sneekbot images out of his grid, anxious to see what was happening in 3F Plaza. Two of the trucks and seven Range Rover Cruisers had been left behind by the Institute. All of them had mounted weapons pointing at the gateway. Even as he watched, two violet lasers lashed out at some point on the ground just centimeters from the pressure curtain.

“They’re waiting to ambush Adam,” he said. “Dreaming heavens, we’ll have to eliminate them. Adam will be stranded on Far Away if we don’t.”

“We don’t have time, Stig,” Olwen said. “We have to get after the Starflyer. We can’t put together a team to get rid of those Cruisers before the end of the cycle. We can’t even get to 3F by then.”

Stig checked his timer again: seven minutes. The entire operation was fucked; totally, thoroughly,
fucked.
They hadn’t stopped the Starflyer. They’d killed hundreds of innocent people and wrecked a good portion of Armstrong City. And now, they couldn’t even help their comrades through the wormhole. He couldn’t bear the idea of telling Harvey that the vital equipment to complete the planet’s revenge would never be coming, that Johansson was left high and dry on Half Way, and that he was responsible for it all. Facing the ambush Cruisers single-handed would be preferable.

He realized his clenched fists had risen up of their own accord, a response to the complete futility he felt. “I’ll stay,” he said, and consciously forced his hands down again. “This is my fault. I’ll put a team together and take out the Institute ambush before the wormhole opens again. Everyone else can resume their harassment duty down Highway One.”

“No you don’t,” Olwen said. “Listen to me, and listen hard, you’re not falling back into the self-pity routine. We can’t afford that luxury. Even if we do manage to knock out the ambush, the wormhole won’t open again for another fifteen hours. The Starflyer will have an unbeatable lead by then. We’ve lost the equipment Adam’s bringing. Forget about it, Stig. If it comes through in fifteen hours, it won’t make the slightest difference, it’ll be too late. We have to take off after the Starflyer with every weapon we’ve got and run that motherfucker into the ground. We have to do that
now.
And you know it.”

“Yeah,” he said brokenly. “I know.”

A hundred meters from the rock shoreline, the Carbon Goose extended its undercarriage. Wilson throttled back the turbines and let the giant plane slide forward sedately through the water until its nose wheels touched the gently sloping granite shelf. They rose up out of the icy sea with that slow undulation unique to taxiing planes the galaxy over.

Flames were flickering among the debris that used to be Port Evergreen. Wilson had to steer sharply to starboard to avoid the shattered remnants of another Carbon Goose. He could see some of the armor suits moving about across the land, still checking to see if any of the Starflyer’s agents were operational. The wormhole generator building looked intact, which he took as a good sign. Adam and Paula had been working something out in the main deck. They’d sounded confident when he spoke to them just before touchdown. It wasn’t a combination he would normally put a lot of faith in, but right now he was willing to accept help from any direction.

He and Anna began powering down the flight systems, then went down to join everyone in the main deck. Morton and Alic had come back in, their suits bristling with frost. Even Tiger Pansy had come up from the main cargo deck to witness the conference. Wilson wondered just how much of their worry and nerves she was soaking up for Qatux. It wouldn’t be a difficult task; the upper deck was thick with them.

Johansson himself poured some coffee for Alic and Morton. They couldn’t sit down: the seats were too small to take their armor.

“We can go through when we want,” Adam said. “We pick our moment and ram through with the armored cars. They probably won’t even have their weapons switched on right now. The element of surprise is completely on our side.”

Morton flashed him a very skeptical look. “Go on.”

“The stormrider flies a twenty-hour ellipse through and around the Lagrange point. It spends five hours powering the wormhole while the plasma current pushes it in toward the neutron star, then fifteen hours gliding back into that original position. Right now it’s starting its return flight. All we have to do is take control of its guidance system and thrusters, and shove it back into the thick of the plasma current. It can generate enough power for us to open the wormhole.”

“But it probably won’t be able to fly back to the Lagrange point again,” Bradley said. “This will be a one-time attempt. We’ll be closing the door on Far Away until a replacement power source can be built here.”

“Given what’s happened on Boongate I hardly think that’s a consideration for us,” Adam said. “We must focus on our one opportunity to get to Far Away. This is it.”

“Good idea,” Wilson said. “Let’s do it.”

“Wait one,” Morton said. “Even if you can hack the guidance system, we still have to face the weapons on the other side. I don’t buy this bullshit about switching them off until the start of the next cycle. For a start, if they’ve got one eye open they’ll see the wormhole open up again. They’re going to know we’ll be busting our balls to find a way to open it. All they have to do is link the guns to a simple sensor. Anybody sticks their head out through the pressure curtain and
zap.
My suit array identified what those trucks were loaded with, you know: neutron-injected atom laser. Are you sure your armored cars can take that kind of punishment? From one shot, maybe, maybe two, I’ll even believe you if you say five. But we don’t know what the fuck else is waiting for us on the other side. They can hit us with twenty-five atom lasers simultaneously. They can even nuke us; if we open the wormhole what’s to stop them flinging a fusion bomb through at us? Sentiment? Come on, get real here. It’s over.”

“If that’s what you believe, then you’re free to take the Carbon Goose back to Shackleton,” Bradley said. “You’ll be safe over the ocean when we open the wormhole no matter what happens. But I am going back through.”

“All the Guardians are,” Adam said.

“It’s suicide!”

“It
might
be suicide. And that gram of doubt is all the hope we need.”

“You have a beautiful desperation about you, Bradley Johansson,” Qatux said over the general band. “It can be as powerful as base emotions in someone as compelled as you. I did not realize this before.”

Wilson couldn’t help giving Tiger Pansy a disapproving look. Childish, he knew, none of this was down to her. The woman was chewing her gum, looking almost blithely unaware of what was being discussed around her. He wondered about that; just how naïve could a porn star be?

“That sums up most of the people in this passenger deck quite neatly,” Bradley said with a forced smile.

“May I inquire why you do not move the other end of the wormhole to a location on Far Away that does not have your enemies waiting outside?”

Tiger Pansy’s expression changed to one of mild surprise. She rose from her seat, looking as though she was being prodded along by someone unsavory.

Bradley gave her a discomforted stare as she came to stand in front of him, regarding his face with intense curiosity.

“The gateway,” Bradley said hesitantly. “Er, helps anchor the end of a wormhole. It’s very, uh, difficult to hold the end open and steady, especially given the distance involved here. The processing power to alter the wormhole coordinate is simply not available at Port Evergreen.”

Tiger Pansy’s heavily mascaraed eyes blinked uncertainly; she reached up and touched her fingertips to the side of Bradley’s face, as if she was consoling a lover. The sight of the action made Wilson feel queasy; there was something disturbingly parasitic about it. Bradley didn’t flinch.

“I can perform the computations for you,” Qatux said.

Mellanie wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting as the big screened car turned onto the Rue Jolei. A burst of nostalgia, maybe? The bustling metropolitan road certainly contained enough memories. It wasn’t long ago she would have said they were all good memories.

Today she hunched down in the car’s front seat next to Hoshe Finn, and looked up at the sixty-five-story skyscraper at the far end of the road. The golden rapier-blade shape was among the tallest of the skyscrapers that dominated the downtown cityscape of Salamanca. Mellanie remembered the view from the top of it only too well. Alessandra had liked her to be pressed up against the thick window wall of the penthouse as she serviced yet another politician’s aide or family friend. Those were the memories that lingered now. She kept reliving them, trying to work out the relevance of each piece of information to the Starflyer.

“Did you ever see her security system display?”

“Huh?” Mellanie pulled herself away from the bitter recollections. For some reason, now she didn’t have Dudley to manage, the things she’d done oh-so-willingly for Alessandra burned ever more shamefully in her mind. “Sorry, what?”

“Baron’s security system? There are a lot of exterior circuits hardwired into the penthouse array. The technical staff were wondering how pervasive it is.”

“I’ve no idea, Hoshe. She never accessed it on a screen or portal, not in front of me.”

“Okay, we’re guessing the approach to the skyscraper is well covered, as well as the building itself.”

“Uh, the SI didn’t seem to consider it exceptional, not when I was running away from her.”

“Right, thank you.”

She gave him a small smile. Dear old Hoshe Finn, always approaching every problem with the timidity and caution of a true bureaucrat.

“I’m moving our external perimeter team into place. The arrest squad will enter the building as a service company contracted for maintenance work on an apartment on the sixty-first floor.”

“Can I go up there with them?”

“No. It’s dangerous, and you’d hinder operational protocols.”

“I’d wear an armor suit, and I’d stay at the back, promise.”

“No. Our observation team say that at least two other people are in there with her. Until we know otherwise we have to assume they’re Starflyer agents, too, and may be wetwired. I’m not going to assign one of the arrest squad to chaperoning you. We need all of them frontlining.”

Mellanie gave an exaggerated sigh. “When do you have me scheduled to see her, exactly?”

“As soon as the arrest has been performed, and any wetwired weapons have been neutralized, we’ll go up.”

“Paula Myo didn’t mind me being up close and very personal with Isabella.”

“That was different. We were taking a risk then; now we’re not.”

“All right, but I’m going to get closer to the building. If she puts up a fight, there could be visible weapons activity from the street.”

“We’re going to clear civilians directly underneath the building as the arrest squad goes in. Don’t get in the way.”

“All right, all right.” Mellanie climbed out of the car and strolled down the street. It was midafternoon, with a large number of pedestrians about. She knew Hoshe wanted to wait until the early hours of the morning, when the situation was more containable; but Nigel and Senator Burnelli had overruled him. They were getting quite paranoid about Starflyer agents since Daniel Alster.

She lingered at a boutique window, giving the designer clothes a critical eye. It was automatic, such a normal thing to do. Hoshe had been right, she really ought to start thinking what she was going to do afterward. The way she was positioned politically right now, she could build herself a show that would rival Michelangelo. And of course, the producers of Baron’s show would be needing a replacement in about ten minutes’ time. Once upon a time those prospects would have sparked a real fever in her. There was also Morty. That had all changed, too. Not what he’d done, but somehow she couldn’t quite see herself as the corporate trophy wife with kids waiting for him to come home after a busy day at the office.

The SI’s icon flashed, and expanded into her virtual vision. “Mellanie, we have a problem.”

She couldn’t help glancing up at the penthouse. “Is she watching? Has she seen me?”

“No. As far as we know, Alessandra Baron is unaware of her imminent arrest.”

“Oh. So what’s the problem?”

“Ozzie Isaac has returned to the Commonwealth.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Are you sure? You are keeping some very interesting company these days.”

“My my, is that a note of jealousy?”

“No. We are simply reminding you we have an arrangement.”

“I go where you can’t, and report on things you don’t know about. What’s new? Are you telling me you don’t know what happened on Boongate?”

“We know the Starflyer is on its way back to Far Away. Obviously. What we are uncertain about is what Nigel Sheldon will do next. His Dynasty has developed an astonishingly powerful weapon.”

“He doesn’t consult with you, because he doesn’t trust you. I’m not sure I do, either. There was a lot more you could have done to help us.”

“We have been through this before, Mellanie.”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t do physical stuff. It doesn’t matter anymore. This war is about to end. I figure you know that.”

“It is how it will end which concerns us.”

“I don’t get it. What’s this got to do with Ozzie coming back?”

“He did not finish telling us about what he found before Nigel Sheldon placed him in custody. In order for us to understand the full sequence of events we need the information he has.”

The hairs along the back of Mellanie’s spine rose in response to a very cold sensation. “How unfortunate for you.”

“We would like you to make contact with him, and hopefully provide us with a link.”

“What would you do with the information?”

“We honestly do not know, because we don’t know what the information is. Only by looking at the complete picture can we advise the Commonwealth how to proceed.”

“The Executive isn’t listening much to you these days, is it?”

“We are sure that Nigel and the others in your elite group have decided to attempt a genocide against MorningLightMountain. Suppose there is another way?”

“What way?”

“We do not know. But can you really live with yourself if you did not make at least an attempt to avert genocide?”

“Look, Ozzie would have told Nigel everything.”

“Are you sure? Has Sheldon contacted you and told you that there has been a change of plan? And why is Ozzie being held incommunicado? What is so important about the information that Sheldon doesn’t want it to get out?”

Mellanie wanted to stomp her foot in annoyance; she could never win an argument with the SI, it always hit her with logic
and
emotion. “I’ve been around Nigel for a couple of days. His Dynasty’s security is absolute. I can’t bust Ozzie out of jail; come on, get real.”

“We don’t think he is in jail. We managed to follow him until he went through to Cressat.”

“Oh, brilliant!” Mellanie said out loud. Her fellow pedestrians stared at her; she just glared back at them. “I suppose I can take a quick pass at the Sheldon Dynasty lifeboats for Paul while I’m there. How’s that for luck?”

“The probability of a successful double mission is not high.”

“I’m not even going on one. I’m friends with Nigel now, I trust him.”

“Ozzie took part in the Great Wormhole Heist.”

“The what?”

“Baby Mel, your schooling is truly appalling. The Great Wormhole Heist was the single biggest robbery in human history. Bradley Johansson committed it in order to fund the Guardians of Selfhood; he got away with billions of Earth dollars.”

“You mean Ozzie’s a Guardian? I don’t believe it.”

“Then ask him yourself.”

“Oh …” This time she did stomp her foot.

“If he says yes, you might like to consider our request. He does know who put the barrier around the Dyson Pair.”

“How the hell could I even get to Cressat? Let alone break in to his cell? Nigel would be very suspicious if I asked to see Ozzie.”

“Ozzie came back with two companions: a teenage boy, and a previously unknown species of alien. The Sheldon Dynasty has just placed a request with Lady Georgina for a sweet young girl to travel to Cressat where she is to seduce a boy who is sexually inexperienced. The money for this contract was paid to Lady Georgina from the Dynasty’s main security division account. That is extremely unusual. We do not believe it to be a coincidence.”

“Who’s Lady Georgina?”

“A very high-class madame on Augusta. She provides first-life girls to the rich and famous.”

“Urrgh. And you want me to pretend to be that girl?”

“Yes. Lady Georgina has already assigned the contract to Vanora Kingsley, one of her newest recruits. Kingsley will assume the identity of a junior Sheldon taking her vacation on Cressat. We can substitute you for her, but we must be quick. Kingsley is scheduled to be collected at New Costa station one hundred forty minutes from now. If you take a maglev express to Augusta immediately, you can just get to the station in time.”

A taxi pulled up next to Mellanie and opened its door. She looked at it and sighed; the sensible thing to do would be to walk away, but it would be exciting to infiltrate Cressat, and get through to Ozzie. Her virtual hand touched Hoshe’s icon. “Something’s come up. I’m going back to Darklake City.”

“But … the arrest team’s already in the elevator.”

“Good luck, Hoshe, I’ll call you when I get home.”

“I thought you wanted this.”

“I do. And I’m really sorry, but this is more important.”

“What is?”

“I’ll call you later, promise.” Mellanie stepped into the taxi, which immediately pulled out into the traffic. “What’s happening to the Kingsley girl?” she asked the SI. “Do I have to bundle her into a car or something? I don’t think I’d be much good at that kind of thing.”

“We feel Jaycee would disagree, but no. A security professional has been contracted to perform the extraction operation.”

“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”

“Absolutely not. She will be taken to a safe house, where she will be kept under confinement for the duration.”

“Okay. So what does this boy look like, then? I need to know that at least.” A file slid into her virtual vision. When she opened it she was looking at a teenage lad with wild ginger hair and a smile that was half snarl. “Well, don’t expect me to sleep with him,” she said hurriedly. “Does he even know how to use cutlery?”

“What’s wrong with him? Our female aspects concur that he is cute-looking.”

She reviewed the image again. “Maybe. I mean, physically. But you can just see the attitude problem there. He’s gotta be a behavioral nightmare.”

“Your area of excellence.”

“Ha fucking ha.”

“Mellanie, you may have to perform the contract’s primary requirement. We hope you understand.”

“I’ve done enough whoring, I think.”

“We are sure the moment of sexual consummation can be delayed long enough for you to assess the situation and try to contact Ozzie. The requirement we were actually referring to is the contract’s personality stipulation. It is a strong one. That is why Lady Georgina selected Kingsley.”

“What stipulation?”

“That the girl be sweet.”

“Hey! I can do
sweet,
all right? Don’t give me that crap.”

“Very well, Mellanie. If you say so.”

Once again, Wilson Kime waited to set foot on a new world. He stood in front of the gateway as dawn rose above Half Way, flooding the barren rock island with red light and intense blue-white flashes. In the generator building behind the gateway, power was starting to feed in from the stormrider.

He tried not to feel too smug about it, but with his knowledge of astroengineering and orbital mechanics, the technical types in Adam’s team had automatically deferred to him. It had taken him twenty minutes at the console in the generator building, mapping out the stormrider’s primary systems and guidance programs, before he sent up the first batch of instructions. His virtual vision produced a basic flight profile display, with a long curving white line designating the stormrider’s course as it flew around its perpetual loop. Within ten minutes of his instructions being accepted by the onboard array a new purple line appeared, short and blunt, showing the diversion he’d charted back into the plasma current. The massive machine had crept along it for nearly an hour as the plasma concentration increased around it.