Denise's Prime simply erased the Scarret's AS and installed itself in the neurotronic pearls that governed the bike's systems. With her d-written neural structure integrating her directly into the software, it was as if she'd become part of the bike. Power burned into the axle motors, and she turned the handlebars in smooth unison with the alignment power coupling. The U-turn was sharp enough to scrape a parking leg on the tarmac. Sparks fantailed before it finished retracting. Denise accelerated hard, losing Lee Brack's barrage of obscenities within seconds.
The jeeps were approaching the edge of Memu Bay's original gamma soak. Strands of darker, bluish vegetation were mingling with the terrestrial grass on either side of the Great Loop Highway. Up ahead the jungle of native vegetation was steaming gently after the early morning rains. In the passenger seat of the first jeep, Lawrence had a good view of the wide strip of tarmac cutting straight across the land until it disappeared into the trees.
Finally they were leaving the villages behind. They were dotted every few kilometers along the highway, clusters of small buildings that lined the road, almost identical each time—a couple of general stores, always a bar, and some kind of low-tech industry. Truck garages were fairly common, with rows of corroding hulks parked out on the grass. Road maintenance robot stations, also with broken-down chassis strewn around. A semiautomated steel mill churning out I-beams. A reclamation furnace with tall twin stacks blowing out thick, greasy smoke into the clear air, a huge stinking pile of rubbish sprawled over the land behind. The houses that accompanied them were a lot cruder than the fine whitewashed apartment blocks in Memu Bay. These were little more than one-story shacks with walls of cinder block and a roof of composite sheeting and solar collectors. Adults sat outside, watching the road and its traffic. Kids ran about on the dirt paths, chasing after one another, playing soccer.
"None of this was here last time," Lawrence said as they drove through a little conglomeration calling itself Enstone. A big sign was stuck up on the side of the highway, advertising the boatyard that had spread over a couple of acres beyond the row of houses.
"We're twenty klicks from the sea," Lewis protested.
"Cheaper to build out here," Amersy said. "This is Memu Bay's secondary economy. It always starts to grow up around prosperous settlements that have been established for a while. The bigger the population the bigger the percentage of semiskilled and transient workers."
"You mean poor people," Dennis said.
"I certainly do."
The traffic on this stretch of the Great Loop Highway was also a lot heavier than Lawrence remembered from last time. Most of it was trucks or vans that were dropping in and out of the little factories and businesses, shuffling supplies and material between them. At this rate, he thought, it wouldn't be long before the villages merged into a single urban strip.
They were passing through the last highway village when Lawrence's Prime notified him that another Prime had queried the patrol assignment. Another Prime? he asked it. There was no margin of error.
It must be KillBoy, he thought. It was the only explanation. In fact it made perfect sense. He'd always known the resistance people had sophisticated subversion software available. Strange irony, though, that it should be Prime; in twenty years this was the only copy he'd ever encountered.
"I want sensors switched to search pattern A-five," Lawrence told everyone. "Have your AS review the input for localized data traffic and electronic activity. Someone's just taken an interest in us. There may be a few hostiles around here."
"How the hell do you know that?" Amersy asked.
"I have some smart software that can spot illegal askpings. And someone queried our patrol. Someone outside Z-B."
"Christ, Sarge," Karl said. "They should make you general."
"That's some software," Amersy said dryly.
"Yeah. Come on, people, look lively." He checked his telemetry grid to make sure they were activating their sensors. When everyone had upgraded he turned around and checked on Hal, who was riding in the back of the jeep. The kid was leaning on the door so he could look out across the countryside. Wind was thrashing his short hair about. He had a permanent lopsided grin as he watched the scenery flash past. Edmond was sitting beside him, feet resting on a box full of the medical supplies that Hal's modules used.
"Everything okay?" Lawrence asked.
Edmond waved casually. "Under control, Sarge."
They crossed the border between terrestrial and Thallspring vegetation. The only other vehicle left on the Great Loop Highway was a tractor unit pulling a flatbed trailer that was trundling in from the hinterlands. When they passed it, Lawrence saw the trailer was loaded with trimmed tree trunks. He wondered how legal that was. There were several plants in town that synthesized wood.
"Let's go," he said to Dennis, who was driving the lead jeep. "I want to reach Arnoon by nightfall."
Dennis lowered his foot down on the accelerator, and the jeep began to pick up speed.
Since the call came in, Newby had been operating on a permanent adrenaline high, and it felt glorious. This kind of action was what he'd envisaged when he joined the cell. But ever since the invaders landed, all he'd been asked was to keep some bulky sealed boxes in the back of his father's shop, hidden underneath the crates of empty bottles that were waiting to be collected. He did get a thrill from the strangers who would come in and give him the password, either collecting or delivering boxes. It made him feel part of something important. At twenty-three years of age, it was the first sense of belonging he'd ever known.
Now finally the cell had been put on active status, with a critical duty. He joined his fellow cell members Carole and Russell around the back of his father's store and climbed into the battered old pickup. Any thoughts of a quiet getaway were ruined by the gut-rattler roar of the truck's ancient combustion engine as it fired up. He winced and grated through the gears, racing away as his father came running out.
The instructions received and decrypted by his bracelet pearl were simple and accurate. He stopped to pick up another celclass="underline" three people he'd never seen before. Two pudgy pasty-skinned men in their late twenties that he suspected were brothers. The third man was slim and dignified, at least sixty years old, wearing pressed jeans and a denim shirt with a lace tie; his Stetson was also clean and expensive. He looked like money to Newby. But they all had the right password, and each of them carried two intriguingly heavy cases. They squashed into the back of the pickup, and all six of them headed east along the Great Loop Highway toward the Mitchell foothills, with Newby pushing the old engine hard.
They chose the ambush site deep in the jungle, where the road had already begun its climb up to the plateau. It was an area of exceptionally lush vegetation, with creepers and vines that grew at near-visible rates. The battle between the undergrowth and the highway maintenance robots was as fierce as ever. Constant pruning by energy blades meant that the wall of foliage on either side of the road was now almost solid. Overhead, where the robotic implements couldn't reach, the branches had knitted together over the tarmac wound, creating a somber arboreal tunnel. Ragged strings of creeper hung down from the apex, acting as conduits for the rain-soaked canopy above. They dripped sour water across the Great Loop Highway like botanical stalactites.