"Trust you to stick up for him then," Suzi said.
"Sinclair is a precog?" Julia asked.
"He has some ability along those lines, certainly. Although the talent seems somewhat erratic. He's very aware that there's a big concentration of events and interests focusing on New London right now. It's what he's been predicting all along. Quite a formidable prescient vision, really. Given that he's been up here for seven years."
"All right," said Julia. "If you think Sinclair is reliable enough, then we'll try it."
Victor groaned inwardly. He'd known this was coming. One whiff of Royan and she'd charge off without thinking. She was so methodical and prudent about everything else in life; the man was a dangerous blind spot. "Julia." The quiet, purposeful way it came out made everyone look at him.
Julia's eyes narrowed challengingly. "Yes?"
"If you go into the caves then you wear proper protective gear, and the crash team goes with you. You don't go in otherwise."
Suzi chuckled in the dead silence that followed.
"Will Sinclair buy that?" Julia asked Greg.
"It's not up to him," Victor said.
"Victor's right, I'm afraid," Greg said apologetically. "That flower was a warning, after all. And I know the alien's here even if nobody else quite believes."
Julia raised her hands in good-humoured capitulation. "OK. The crash team it is."
Charlotte stayed with him. It made sense, her part was over, and Greg didn't want her with him in the caves where she'd be a liability. She said she didn't fancy spending the night sitting in the Governor's Residence with a hardliner. He certainly wasn't going to let her go out into the cavern again. So the security centre it was.
Besides, Victor thought, she was so bloody easy to look at.
They were in Lloyd McDonald's office, an impersonal standardized cube with two glass walls and two of rock. One of the glass walls gave him a view across the Cavern, the other showed a secretary's office on the other side. The hardline bodyguard Lloyd had assigned to him was lounging in one of the reception area chairs outside.
Charlotte had curled up on a low black leather settee, chin on her hands, looking dolefully out into Hyde Cavern. She still seemed nervous, always glancing at her watch. It had stopped raining now, allowing the mist to clear away. The lighting tube had dimmed to a sylvan glimmer, a lone moonbeam threaded between the endcap hubs. Buildings across the parkland were picked out by floodlights, a weird mix of architectural styles, the best classical representation of each era, scattered about without thought.
New London always put him in a contemplative mood.
The eye-twisting geometry and the determination with which the residents pursued life insisting on introspection.
He was sitting in front of Lloyd's desk terminal, watching the intricate jockeying of the Strategic Defence platform as it inched towards the Alenia COV-325. New London's electronic warfare satellites were blocking the spaceplane's sensors, preventing it from observing the manoeuvre. It would be within laser range in another ninety minutes.
The spaceplane pilot must know. It was the obvious tactic. They would have to pull back.
COV-325 performance perimeters streamed through Victor's processor node. He reckoned the spaceplane had another thirty-two hours' life-support capacity left before they would have to de-orbit and head back to Earth.
The Typhoons from Listoel would catch it. A spaceplane lumbering down through the atmosphere would be no match for front-line fighters.
Charlotte shifted round on the settee. It was distracting. Her legs belonged to someone at least three metres tall.
He started to enter the code for Listoel into the terminal, then the alarm went off.
"What's that?" Charlotte demanded.
"Status one security alert," he said.
Access Security Centre Command Circuit. Query Alarm. New London Strategic Defence Operations Room Violation. Five Possible Penetration Agents. Sector Isolation Procedures Activated.
"Bloody hell," Victor blurted. He made for the door, Charlotte scrambled to her feet behind him.
"Stay here," he ordered. "And you," he told the bodyguard, "stay with her."
Charlotte looked like she wanted to protest, but the strength in his voice stopped her. Her shoulders slumped.
Display Security Centre Floor Map. As the outline squirted into his mind he drew the Tokarev pistol from his shoulder holster and flipped the safety off. A rush of adrenalin buzzed in his veins when he came out into the broad central corridor. Security personnel were ignoring the moving walkways, half-running past him, grim faced. They all seemed to know what to do, where they should be going. The alarm was still blaring away.
Victor saw a lift opening, and ran for the doors.
There was a press of people at the head of the corridor T-junction. Two drone stretchers slid past Victor as he arrived, black bodybags zipped up. A couple of meditechs in white jumpsuits followed them down the corridor.
Lloyd McDonald watched them go with an expression of controlled fury. "Tekmercs, hardline flicking tekmercs active in New London," he said. "Hell, Victor, I'm sorry, this is one almighty great cock-up."
"Damage assessment?" Victor asked. It was the only way to do it, job first, shout and mourn later.
"They're inside," Lloyd shook his head disbelievingly. "They got into the Strategic Defence Ops Room. They loaded a top-grade virus into the screening 'ware, and shot their way in. Now they're holed up in there but tight. My people think they winged two of them, with one possible fatality. But there are still three confirmed actives left."
The corridor was four metres wide, three high; walls, floor, ceiling were solid rock, a single biolum strip ran along the ceiling. A lead-coloured slab of titanium/carbon alloy had risen out of the floor ten metres past the T-junction, solid and irresistible. Lloyd's people were already working on it.
The lock panel on the wall had been unscrewed, hanging on springs of coloured wire. A slim grey plastic case containing a terminal and several customized augmentation 'ware modules lay on the floor below it, fibre-optic cables plugging it into exposed circuit blocks. Suction-cup sensors were clinging to the edge of the door. Three security division technicians were standing round the case, talking in low, worried tones, ignoring the data displays filling the unit's small flatscreens.
Victor walked right up to the giant slab; estimating the gravity in the corridor at two-thirds standard.
"They glitched the entire lock system," one of the technicians said. "We think they've physically burnt out the 'ware. If we want in, the door will have to be broken down."
"Can you use a rip gun on it?" Victor asked.
"No, sir, this is over a metre thick. We're going to have to set up a cutting beam, and that's going to take time."
"How long?"
"Quite a while."
"Be more specific," Victor said forcefully.
"Ninety minutes, maybe two hours, before we can start. You see, we'll have to bring in environmental equipment to cope with the heat and the atmospheric contamination which the beam will generate. That will all have to be plumbed in to the colony life-support systems."
"It gets worse," Lloyd said. "This is only the first of three doors. All identical."
"How about blasting through?" Victor asked.
"We'd have to use shaped charges to blow the rock round the doors," said the technician. "And they're all countersunk; that means three or four blasts per door. It would take virtually the same amount of time as cutting, plus the blowback would ruin this entire floor of the security centre, and the environmental damage couldn't be contained as easily."