He could see dirty-yellow specks floating at the centre of the discolouration, neatly arranged in a square formation, each one a couple of kilometres from its neighbour. That made the specks huge. Lights were twinkling on all of them as the sun sank towards the horizon.
Philip Evans had started the mid-Atlantic anchorage twenty-five years ago, a refuge for his cyber-factory ships. The old man had put together a rag-tag fleet of converted oil-tankers and ore carriers, even an ex-US Marine Corps Harrier carrier, all floating with legal impunity in international waters during the entire PSP decade. The household gear they manufactured was smuggled into England, helping to kick-start the country’s black market, worsening the economy, weakening the PSP.
Kombinates had been swift to recognize the potential of the tax-free anchorage, and more cyber-factories began to arrive. Investment poured in; banks and finance houses were running scared of the political and physical turbulence on mainland Europe. For a few brief glory-years Listoel was a centre of innovation rivalling Silicon Valley and the Shanghai special economic zone.
The cyber-factory ships had been equipped with thermal generators, sucking up cool water from the bottom of the ocean trench and running it through a heat exchanger, self-powering, virtually eternal. There had been pirate miners too, Greg recalled, scooping up the ore nodules that lay on the ocean bed to supply the cyber-factories. Marine harvesters, exploiting the bloom of aquatic life which the nutrient-rich ocean-trench water fuelled. But the most memorable aspect had been the spaceport; a floating concrete runway for the hydrogen-fuelled Sanger spaceplanes which ferried ‘ware chips down from orbital industry parks so they could be incorporated into the cyber-factories’ gear.
At its peak, Listoel had had the industrial output of a small European nation, exporting its gear right across the globe.
That all changed after the fall of the PSP. Philip Evans brought his cyber-factories ashore, beginning England’s industrial regeneration. A new generation of giga-conductor powered spaceplanes turned the Sangers into museum pieces overnight. The global economy started to struggle out of the recession which had followed the Warming, and kombinates found they could virtually dictate their own taxes as governments vied for their investment, making exo-national manufacturing redundant.
Listoel would have been abandoned if Julia hadn’t recognized the enormous demand for electricity which the resurgent land-based industries would exert on national grids. Solar-panel roofing could supply the domestic market, but it was woefully inadequate for the new cyber-precincts and arcologies. She also faced the problem of powering revitalized transport networks; Event Horizon was counting on its new giga-conductor being incorporated in planes and cars and trains and ships and lorries. They all needed electricity to run. But no politician, bought or otherwise, was going to permit her to burn oil and coal to generate it. Fusion remained hugely expensive. A return to nuclear fission was out; too many stations had been sited on the coast, overrun by the rising sea. Salvage and decontamination operations had cost governments a fortune at a time when it was a struggle just to feed people. A large proportion of Dragonflight’s revenue still came from the R &D fund, lifting vitrified blocks of salvaged radioactive waste into orbit where they were attached to solid-rocket boosters and fired into the Sun.
The Titan switched to VTOL mode, coming down for a landing on one of Listoel’s platforms. It was a triangle, two hundred and fifty metres to a side, made up out of concrete flotation sections bolted together. There were three ocean thermal generator buildings made out of pearl-white composite running along each side; the centre was clotted with an irregular collection of hangars, offices, maintenance sheds, and crew quarters, the blue rectangle of a swimming-pool. Nine large discharge pipes were venting brown water into the Atlantic from each generator building; there were other pipes, Greg knew, unseen, dangling kilometres below the platform, pumping up the icy water of the trench to cool the generator’s working fluid.
A non-polluting and totally renewable energy source, for as long as the sun kept shining. Listoel supplied gigawatts of cheap electricity to England and mainland Europe via high-temperature superconductor cables laid across the ocean floor.
But despite its legitimate power industry, Listoel was still outside the jurisdiction of national governments. Greg knew one of the platforms housed the production line for Julia’s electron-compression warheads. Another, or the same one, was Victor’s principal hardline base. The whole anchorage was heavily defended; he’d seen the Typhoons flying escort on the two crash-team Titans, there were definitely null psychics shielding it. Rumour said there were submarines and strategic defence lasers, secret weapon labs, prisons, bullion vaults. He’d laughed when he’d heard that on a tabloid newscast. Maybe he shouldn’t have. The crash team was so effectively organized-Titans, Typhoons, super-grade armour and weapons, all of them on permanent stand-by, if Julia and Victor went to that much trouble…
The Titan settled easily on its undercarriage, and a section of wall on the generator building ahead split open. They began to taxi forwards.
Melvyn Ambler, the crash team’s captain, tapped Greg on the shoulder. He had removed his muscle-armour suit during the flight, dressing in olive-green one-piece fatigues with Event Horizon’s logo on his breast pocket. “The platform’s clinic has been alerted, we’re all ready for you, sir.”
“Fine, thank you. How are Fielder and Whitehurst?”
“The medics gave the girl a second anaesthetic for her fingers and some treatment for the swelling. She’s exhausted, but physically she’s in good shape, nothing the clinic can’t fix up. The boy is still in shock from the death of his father.”
Greg nodded, he’d let Fabian think Jason Whitehurst had died as the airship crashed, it was a lot kinder than knowing the truth. “And what about Suzi?”
Melvyn Ambler couldn’t quite keep his face straight. “All right, though the doctor says her knee’s going to need some work. She’s been telling us about how tough it all was in the old days.”
Greg let out a small groan. “Back when hardliners were real hardliners?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The name’s Greg, thanks.” Sir reminded him of the Army.
“Right.”
Greg stood up slowly, pleased to find his neurohormone hangover had run its course. He thanked the pilot and followed Melvyn Ambler back through the Titan’s fuselage. Charlotte Fielder was being helped down the ramp, she was wrapped up in a bright orange padded suit, as if she was wearing a polar sleeping bag. Fabian Whitehurst was walking ahead of her, his eyes dead to the world.
Greg watched Suzi being lifted into a wheelchair by a couple of the crash team. Her teeth were gritted.
“Just a flesh wound?” Greg asked innocently.
“Bollocks!” she shouted back, then shrugged. “I landed wrong back there in the airship.”
“Never mind, Julia will pay for a new knee, no doubt.”
Suzi grinned. “You finished with me for today? I’ve’ got me a date with good old Leol Reiger.”
“I think you’d better put that off for a day or two.”
“Come on, Greg, we’ve got the Fielder girl.”
“Yeah, and it’s where she’s going to lead Julia to that worries me, no messing.”
“Right. Suppose I’d better stick around, then. But, Greg, it’s not going to be for ever.”
The generator building served as a hangar for several Typhoon fighters as well as three Titans. Greg saw a Pegasus parked at the far end as he came down the loading ramp. Julia and Victor were waiting for him, along with a large blond-haired man wearing a crumpled suit jacket.