There was a rush of giddiness when the induction ram cut off abruptly, dropping Julia into freefall; with her eyes closed she could believe she was diving headlong through space. There was nothing to be seen through the curving windscreen, a few stars and the diffuse rose-pink glow of the friction-heated nose. It faded to nothing as she watched.
"I can't establish a datalink with New London," Maria said. "Inmarsat says their microwave antennas have shut down. Solar-flare activity." She turned her head, glancing back over her shoulder. "That's pure bullshit, you know that."
"Yes," Julia said. "Use the company security link, you'll get through that way."
"You're the boss."
"Did you unplug New London?" Victor asked.
"Yes. I want the alien isolated until we've made contact."
"It might not like that."
"I thought you didn't believe in it?"
"If it exists, it might not like that."
Somehow Julia couldn't raise a smile. "I don't like the way it's messed me around."
Twenty-five thousand kilometres up, and the Earth was a gibbous white and blue apparition beyond the windscreen.
Julia watched the terminator crawl across Italy and Africa, igniting a multitude of city lights in its wake. Apart from the equatorial band, she noted. That remained ominously dark.
"We've got company," Maria said.
"What sort?" Victor asked sharply.
"Spaceplanes. One is three thousand kilometres behind us, the other another ten behind them. Both on a New London intercept trajectory. I wouldn't mention it, but neither had clearance, not with Inmarsat's linkage still down."
Open Channel to Falcon Command Circuitry. Access External Sensor Feed.
The starfield wrapped itself around her, Earth dominating one quadrant, the silver splash of New London directly opposite it. There was the beginnings of a faint necklace in geostationary orbit, bright sequins strung out in a fragmented loop, the vast commercial communication dishes interspaced with strategic defence platforms from all five major defence alliance networks.
The high-orbit platforms were an act of mass political paranoia which always rankled, despite the fact that Event Horizon earned a great deal of money from supplying the Greater European Alliance with platforms, and components to all the other networks.
Over half the global armaments budget was spent on low Earth orbit SD platforms to guard against the possibility of sneak attacks. Since the West African slamdown war, kinetic bombardment from space had been the number one public bogeyman. Anybody with a spaceplane could launch harpoons at any target on the planet. A ten-tonne projectile protected against re-entry ablation, travelling at orbital velocity, was a thousand times cheaper than nuclear or electroncompression weapons. And there was no worry about radioactive fallout if the intended victim was a neighbouring country.
It resulted in the five independent defence networks, assembled more or less along regional groupings rather than the political combinations which dominated the previous century. A triumph of practicality over ideology, Julia always thought, with nominally hostile neighbours co-operating. She had drawn a lot of comfort from that at the time; political commentators were hoping it would lay the foundations for a more stable world order. There were even discussions of combining some of the networks into a single global defence system under the control of the UN. But so far nothing had come from them.
The geostationary platforms were a good reminder that for all the progress made in defusing the worst international tensions, there was still a long way to go. There was so much commercial hardware in geostationary orbit, along with national military communications satellites, that the aerospace-force generals and marshals had worried about harpoons being hidden among the antenna platforms. Squadrons of sensor satellites from the Asian-African Pact and the Greater European Alliance had been positioned in geostationary orbit to watch for clandestine harpoon launches. They were swiftly followed by similar spysats from the Chinese and Eastern Federation Co-Defence League, and the Pacific Treaty Nations. The Southern and Central American Defence Partnership brought up the rear three months later. And after the sensors came the weapons platforms. Strictly for defensive interception duties, the network chiefs said.
Julia observed them glimmer in the raw sunlight with a feeling of sad resentment. How little the politicians change. Watching you watching me; the old Cold War slogan resurrected and given fresh respectability. It was bandied about quite a lot on the current affairs 'casts these days. Pure governmental machismo.
As well as the capability to attack other systems in geosynchronous orbit the high-orbit platforms could also launch an assault on New London. She had seen confidential intelligence assessments about New London and the other four asteroids currently being manoeuvred into Earth orbit. Military intelligence was always defined in terms of potential, and what was worrying the generals was the sheer mass of rock available: enough to flatten every city on the planet a thousand times over if it was ever flung down.
Potential.
Possible threat.
Theoretical capability.
I was right not to warn the government about Royan's alien.
Superimpose Radar Return.
Two stars turned red, and the 'ware assigned them five-digit codes, followed by velocity readings, size, and projected course vectors.
NEGATIVE TRANSPONDER RESPONSE, the Falcon's 'ware reported, printing it over the image.
"They don't want us to know who they are," Maria said.
Exit Falcon Command Circuitry.
Julia looked over at Victor. "Coincidence?" she asked archly.
"There's no need to get nasty. The question is, which two?"
"Clifford Jepson and Leol Reiger are tied in together, so one of them has to be carrying Reiger. Whether Clifford would come up with him, I don't know. He was pretty desperate for that generator data."
"I'm not having Reiger inside New London," Victor said flatly.
"No," she agreed. "Maria, can I have a communication channel to Sean Francis, please."
Maria unclipped a handset from her chair, and handed it back to Julia.
"Yes, ma'am?" Sean Francis said.
"There are two spaceplanes on a rendezvous trajectory with New London."
"Yes, we know. We've been tracking them."
"Open a datalink to them, and order them to stop outside your flight-control zone. If they come inside, use the defence systems to kill them. Under no circumstances are either of them to dock with New London."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good enough?" she asked Victor.
"Yes. I wish we could find out if Reiger really is on board one of them."
"Not without X-ray sight."
"Can you get an ident on the type of craft?" Victor asked Maria.
"I'll run a comparison program on the nearest, see what the 'ware's best guess is. But the furthest one is well outside sensor definition range."
The handset bleeped.
"Yes?" Julia asked.
"No reply, I'm afraid," Sean Francis said.
"Put the message on repeat, and keep sending it until they violate New London's flight-control zone."
"Yes, ma'am."
"No good," Maria said. "It's jamming the sensors. I can't burn through their ECM at this range."
"Well, that confirms they aren't legitimate," Victor said mordantly.
"Yes, there is that," Julia said. But it did clear up a lingering doubt about ordering Sean Francis to use New London's defences.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
There was more to Julia's cautious walk than the one-third gravity field. Victor knew her well enough to see how shaken she was by the two unidentified space-planes following them up to New London. By now every major player would know the alien was in the asteroid. Isolating New London bought Julia some time, but there was the question of what the opposition would do next.