"You'll lose in the end. You know that, don't you? There are fewer starships this time. Where did they go? Why didn't you build replacements? One day you'll come here and we'll be strong enough to resist. We grow while you wither away like every other decaying society in history. This is our time that's dawning. An end to starflight will bring an end to tyranny."
"Did your speechwriters dream that slogan up, or did you actually manage to think of it for yourself?"
"My grandchildren will dance all over your grave, you little shit." Edgar Strauss turned on his heel and marched out. He whistled the first few bars of Thallspring's anthem as he went.
Simon watched the door swing shut behind him. "My grave doesn't exist," he whispered to the president's back.
"That was fun," Braddock said stoically. "Would you like him to have an accident?"
Simon permitted himself a dry laugh. "Don't tempt me."
"So why am I here?"
"We're going to have to start this vaccination program that the medical AS recommends. I want you to supervise inoculating strategically important personneclass="underline" everyone who is critical to continued asset production. Start with the factory staff, but don't overlook people who work at the power stations and other ancillaries. I want to keep any disruption to our schedule to an absolute minimum."
"You've got it."
* * *
The pump station was unimpressive—a flat-roof box of concrete measuring twenty meters on each side, rucked away behind a chain-link fence, itself surrounded by a hedge of tall evergreen thorn bushes. It was in the corner of a small industrial estate on Durrell's outskirts, invisible from the trunk road outside, ignored by the estate.
At night, it was illuminated by tall halogen lights around the perimeter. One of them was off, while another flickered erratically. Maybe it was the angle of their beams, but they seemed to show up more cracks in the concrete walls than were visible during the day.
From his sheltered position in the hedge, Raymond studied the gate in the fence. A simple chain and padlock was all that held it. Although they'd studied long-range images, they'd never been quite sure if that was all. Now he could confirm it. One padlock.
Security wasn't a large part of the water utility's agenda. Enough to discourage local youths from breaking in and causing petty damage. To that end, there were a couple of alarms and sensors rigged outside—at least, they were the only ones listed in the station's inventory.
Prime was probing every aspect of the little station's internal data network, examining each pearl and circuit for hidden traps and alarms. And not just the station: the local datapool architecture was being scrutinized for inert links leading to the station, secondary trip alarms that would link into the datapool only when an intruder activated them. If they were there, the Prime couldn't find them.
Caution could only be taken so far before it became paranoia.
Raymond told the Prime to go to stage two. Images from the visual and infrared sensors around the station's door froze as the software infiltrated their processors, although their digital timers kept flipping through the seconds, making the feed appear live. Another routine inserted itself into the lock. Raymond heard it click from where he was hiding.
He slipped out of the shadows and scrambled up the fence. A quick gymnastic twist at the top, and he landed on the un-mown grass inside. It took another three seconds to reach the door and open it. Total elapsed exposure time, seven seconds. Not bad.
His d-written eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness inside, a tiny scattering of light gleaned from LEDs glowing on the equipment boards. There was only the one room. He could see the pumps, five bulky steel cylinders sitting on broad cradles. Thick pipes rose out of the concrete beside each one. Their heavy throbbing filled the air with a steady vibration.
He took the pack from his back and removed the explosives. Working quickly, he moved along the pumps, securing the small shaped charges directly above the bearings.
His retreat was as quiet and efficient as his entry. The lock clicked shut behind him. As soon as he was back over the fence, the door sensors resumed their genuine feed. The Prime withdrew from the Durrell datapool, erasing all log traces of its existence as it went.
The red-and-blue strobes were visible long before the pump station itself. Simon could see them through the car's windshield as they turned off the main road and into the industrial estate, throwing out planes of light that flickered off the walls of buildings. Over a dozen police vehicles were drawn up around the pump station. Electric-blue plastic Police Crime Boundary barriers had been erected, forming a wide cordon outside the shaggy evergreen hedge. Uniformed officers were standing around it, while forensic personnel and robots carried out a slow centimeter-by-centimeter search of the ground. Skin suits moved around inside the barriers like guards overseeing a chain gang, never physically mixing with the forensic team. A crowd of reporters was jostling the blue plastic, shoving sensors forward. There must have been twenty direct feeds diving into the datapool, delivering the operation direct to the public in every visual and audio spectrum acceptable to human senses. Even laser radars were being used to map out the scene in 3D. Questions were shouted at police and Skins, regardless of rank. A constant harassment, deliberately pitched to provoke a response of any kind.
Simon's DNI was providing him with technical results from the forensic team as soon as their sensors acquired it. The grid of indigo tables and graphs was depressingly devoid of valid data.
"Can you believe this?" Braddock Raines said. He and Adul Quan were sharing the car with Simon. They were both staring out at the rest of the spectators. Staff from the factories and offices on the estate had gathered outside their respective doorways to observe the police operation firsthand. They shivered in the early morning chill, stamping their feet and swapping gossip and rumor, most of it invented by themselves.
Braddock took over manual control of the car and slowed it, steering around the clumps of people standing in the road. Most of them seemed oblivious to traffic.
"You want to go in, Chief?" Adul asked. "It won't be very private."
Simon hesitated for a moment. True, i-holograms could provide him with the scene of the crime to peruse at his leisure. And he had an inbuilt reluctance to be identified as any sort of important figure—especially here. Yet there was something about this whole act of sabotage that unsettled him. He just couldn't work out why. Whatever he was looking for, it wouldn't be in a hologram, no matter how high the resolution.