Nigel smiled back uncompromisingly. “Disconnect this assembly bay from the platform. Attach it to one of the completed lifeboat starships, and continue working on the Charybdis while you’re flown to Wessex.”
“Huh?” Even without gravity, Mark’s jaw dropped open in astonishment.
“Is there any technical reason why that cannot be done? Any at all?”
“Er, well, I hadn’t really thought about it. Suppose not. No.”
“Good. I want it attached and ready to leave in one hour. Take whoever you need with you, but get the Charybdis flight-ready.”
“You want me to go with it?”
“You’re the expert.”
“Umm. Right. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Er, can I ask why you want a frigate at Wessex?”
“Because I’m sure that star is going to be right up at the top of the Primes’ list of targets when they invade.”
“Uh huh. I see.”
“Don’t be modest, Mark; you did a terrific job helping people back in Randtown. I’m proud you’re one of my descendents. I know you won’t let us down.” Nigel signaled to Giselle and Otis, then pushed off from the manipulator track and headed back for the interlink tube. “We’ll move the weapons section onto the lifeboat as well. I’d like to meet the project scientists now. Which lifeboat will be easiest?”
“The Searcher has done two test flights already,” Otis said. “Shakedown’s almost complete. It should be the most reliable.”
“The Searcher it is, then.”
Mark clung to the slim strut as he watched Nigel Sheldon slide away down the interlink tube. Sweat was oozing out of every pore on his body and clinging to the skin to produce a horribly cold, sticky film of moisture. “Top of the invasion list,” Mark whispered forlornly. He glanced back at the incomplete frigate. “Oh, hell, not again.”
***
It was four in the morning Illuminatus time when Paula finally left for the CST station. Everyone in the Greenford Tower had been evaluated by the medical forensic team. Several criminals undergoing wetwiring had been hauled off by the local police. The city hospitals were dealing with casualties from both Greenford and Treetops. A civil engineering team was inspecting the remnants of the Saffron Clinic for structural damage. Forensics was removing all the surviving arrays ready to perform a complete data extraction.
Paula removed her armor suit in the control center, handing it over to the support team who were packing everything away. She put on a force field skeleton suit, then dressed in a long, plain gray skirt and thick white cotton crew-neck top. Her brown leather belt with its embedded silver chain looked decorative; it had even come from her own wardrobe, but Senate Security technical services had reworked it.
“You okay?” Hoshe asked.
“This didn’t quite happen how I was expecting,” she admitted. Her e-butler was running integration checks on the belt and force field skeleton. “Hopefully it’s not over yet. Are we ready for the journey back?”
“Teams are in position, equipment all set up”—he glanced down at the four black cases containing their cage equipment—“and activated.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
They went out into the subbasement garage where the holding areas had been set up. A single pen of wire mesh was left, with twenty guardbots surrounding it, weapons out of their recesses. Two local police officers stood on either side of the gate. There was only one person left inside.
Mellanie waited in the middle of the pen, still in her nurse’s uniform, arms folded huffily across her chest, an incensed expression welded into place.
Paula told the police to open the gate. Mellanie remained resolutely in place.
“I thought we could talk on the way back,” Paula said. Somehow she didn’t have any scruples about setting the girl up. Mellanie, she guessed, had involved herself in a great deal of illicit activity to get into the Saffron Clinic.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here?”
“To the second, actually. Why?”
Mellanie glared at her.
“If you prefer, you can stay here,” Hoshe said generously. “The police will process you in due course. They are quite busy after tonight.”
Mellanie let out a dangerous growl. “I can’t access the unisphere.”
“We have blocker systems active down here,” Hoshe said. “They’re quite effective, aren’t they?”
Mellanie switched her stare to Paula. “Where?”
“Where what?” Paula asked.
“You said we’d talk on the way back. Back where?”
“Earth. We have tickets for the next express. First class.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Mellanie stomped out through the open gate. “Where’s the car?”
Hoshe gestured politely to the ramp. “Outside.”
Mellanie flounced in disgust at their incompetence. She headed for the ramp with long impatient strides. Paula and Hoshe exchanged a bemused glance behind her back, and set off after her. Hoshe’s four black cases trundled along behind him.
The ramp came out directly on the street beyond the Greenford Tower’s plaza. Mellanie paused in confusion at the scene outside. Paula and Hoshe stood on either side of her. The remaining reporters flocked toward the nearest section of the barricades, and started shouting questions.
Paula’s virtual vision showed her several heavily encrypted messages arriving in Mellanie’s address port as they emerged from the blocking field. The girl sent two.
Tridelta police still had Allwyn Street sealed off for six blocks around the skyscraper. All the ambulances had departed, leaving the fire department crews and bots to clear up the aftermath of the explosion. The eight cars closest to Renne’s taxi were burnt-out wrecks, shunted across the road to smash into the buildings; a further twenty vehicles were buckled and broken. A big crane was lifting them onto waiting trailers. Civic cleaning bots were washing the blood off the pavement. There had been a lot of people in the open-air bars nearby. GPbots were moving along the façades, sweeping up the piles of broken glass.
“Oh, God,” Mellanie mumbled. She stared at the devastation, then twisted around to look back at the Greenford Tower.
“I told you it was an unsafe environment,” Paula said.
A big police van pulled up beside them. The door slid open, and they climbed in. The cases rolled into the luggage compartment.
“I remember Randtown,” Mellanie said in a quiet voice as the van drove off. “I hoped I’d forgotten, but that just made it all come back. It was awful.”
Paula decided the girl was genuinely upset. “Death on this scale is never easy.”
Hoshe was looking out of the window, his face expressionless.
“Did your people get hurt?” Mellanie asked.
“Some of them, yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They knew the risks, just like you did. They’ll all be re-lifed.”
“If there’s anything left to be re-lifed into.”
“We’ll make sure there is.”
***
The police van got them to the CST station in plenty of time before the express was due to depart. A cool breeze blew through the cavernous structure, coming straight off the Logrosan, which ran along the side of the smallest marshaling yard Paula had seen in the Commonwealth. Illuminatus didn’t export any bulk products, it only manufactured small high-technology items. The marshaling yard was set up primarily for receiving food imports; without any arable land on the planet, every meal had to be brought in on the goods trains. She wondered what would happen if the Primes struck here. Or worse, on Piura, the Big15 world to which it was connected. If Illuminatus was cut off from the Commonwealth, it would go bad very quickly for the population of the trapped city.
When she looked along the platform, the other waiting passengers scrupulously avoided eye contact. The station wasn’t exactly busy, but there were more people than usual for this time in the morning. Several families stood huddled together, complete with drowsy children. After the news of the starships, they’d obviously been thinking hard about the consequences of a Prime attack.