"Bloody hell." Victor rapped his knuckles on the alloy. "What exactly can they do in there? Can the platforms be retargeted to shoot out the solar panels and industrial modules?"
"Not at all," Lloyd said. "They can't activate a single platform, not without the authority codes. And Sean Francis is the only person who's got them."
Victor gave Lloyd a sharp look. "He's not in there, is he?"
"No. First thing I checked, he was having a meal in the residence. Should be here any minute."
Victor turned back to the obdurate door, trying to visualize what was going on behind it. "Have you got a psychic that can see inside?"
"I'm afraid not. There's two hundred metres of solid rock between here and the Ops Room, and the corridor zigzags. It was deliberately designed that way to stop any psychics from seeing inside. Not even a super-grade like Mandel could perceive it."
"So what the bloody hell are they in there for?" Even as he said it he knew the answer. "Shit. With the platforms inactive, there's nothing to stop the spaceplanes from docking now."
Lloyd punched a fist into his palm. "Of course. But who are they? They've obviously been up here for a while."
"Dolgoprudnensky," Victor said automatically. It fitted, they'd known about Charlotte coming down from New London right from the start. Greg had suggested that Kirilov would probably send agents up here to search for the alien. They must have attacked the Ops Room in order to allow their spaceplane to dock. But why? He couldn't think what could be on board that was so important it forced them into breaking cover and abandoning their search to make sure it got into the colony.
"We'd better check on those spaceplanes," Lloyd said.
They arrived at the command post at the same time as Sean Francis. Victor showed his card to the door and went in, with Lloyd bringing Sean up to date behind him.
The security command post was at the bottom of the security centre, where the gravity was virtually normal; a circular cavern cut into the rock, twenty-five metres in diameter, with a domed ceiling. It had three concentric console rings of terminals and communication stations, plugged into every part of the colony. The shirtsleeved desk jockeys operating them behaved with unruffled competence, filling the chamber with a sustained grumble of restless chatter. He was pleased to see there was no panic, just a smooth coordinated response to the alert status. Specialist technical and hardline teams being readied, transport priorities re-allocated, police and security personnel preparing to perform joint civilian control duties, keeping tourists and residents out of the way in case of an escalation, emergency services being brought to full stand-by status. He could remember the long hours spent finalizing contingency plans for the asteroid, that would be just after he was appointed Event Horizon's security chief, everything from biohazard procedure enforcement to full-scale evacuation.
Theatre-sized flatscreens were spaced round the walls, showing grainy green and blue images from photon amps dotted around Hyde Cavern.
Victor gave them a fast sweep, receiving a collage of rolling parkland, secluded gravel paths, small scurrying creatures, black glassy lakes, couples arm in arm, glaringly bright walls of illuminated buildings. It was New London at its usual pace, designer nightlife, providing an artificial fulfilment. There was no sign of any more tekmerc activity.
A large cube hung down from the centre of the ceiling like a boxy obsidian stalactite. New London floated at its centre, rotating slowly, shadowless, every crag in the rock beautifully detailed, with the flame-shaped silver stipple of the archipelago twisting upwards. A shoal of spacecraft glided round the outside, cool blue spheres, projecting green vector lines that wrapped the whole colony in an undulating net. The four englobing sentry layers of Strategic Defence platforms were flashing an urgent amber, as was the outer shell of passive sensor ELINT satellites.
"Where are the spaceplanes?" Victor asked Lloyd.
"Bernie Parkin will know," Lloyd said. "He's the duty commander tonight."
He walked down to the outer ring of consoles, and patted one of the desk jockeys on his shoulder. The man glanced over his shoulder, giving Victor a glimpse of a fifty-year-old face with rough leathery skin and thick lips, crinkled frown lines spread out from the corners of his grey eyes.
"What's the spaceplane situation?" Lloyd asked. "Any movement?"
"Sure thing," Bernie Parkin said. He reached over to one of the three keyboards on his console and tapped in an instruction sequence one banded. The image in the big ceiling cube began to shrink. A red dot swam into view with a green vector line extending right up to the southern end of New London.
"That COV-325 pilot knows his stuff," Bernie Parkin said. "As soon as our targeting radar shut down they loosed off two missiles, probing the defence perimeter. Of course, the platforms didn't respond, so the spaceplane performed a four-G burn. It's heading straight for us."
"So it's definitely armed?"
"Yes, sir."
"When will it get here?" Victor asked.
"Assuming a four-G deceleration burn, it'll rendezvous in another eight minutes. Give it time to manoeuvre, and it'll be putting down in the southern hub crater in quarter of an hour."
"Is there anything in the crater we can use to intercept it?" Victor asked.
"Not a damn thing," Lloyd said.
"OK. Assume it puts down in the crater," Victor said. "The tekmercs will enter the colony, probably in search of the alien. That means they'll be armed, suited-up as well."
"Well, Christ, Victor, we're not equipped to handle muscle-armour suits," Lloyd said. "I've got a total of five rip guns in the armoury. But the tekmercs would just shoot back at any snipers until they've been blown to pieces. You'll have to call the crash team back to the docking complex, let them ambush the tekmercs."
"I wonder," Victor mused. "Clifford Jepson had to know where to get in contact with the alien. And it must be done tonight if he's to sign up his industrial partner tomorrow."
"You mean let them in unopposed?" Lloyd's voice rose an octave.
"The crash team has got to fight the tekmercs somewhere, why not in the caves where there'll be minimal damage to the rest of the colony? And they'll have the advantage of surprise."
"If it is carrying tekmercs, and if they go into the caves. That's a big assumption."
"We'll wait and hope, because one of those spaceplanes is carrying Reiger. I know it. And allowing his squad into the caves is the only chance we'll have to fight them on our terms. If not, it'll be a running battle in Hyde Cavern. And that will be bad, Lloyd."
"Yeah," Lloyd massaged the back of his neck with one hand, his face registering harrowing indecision. "Maybe, Victor. Christ, I don't have an alternative. But how do we find out which one is carrying Reiger?"
"I don't know. I wonder if Greg could identify him for us?" Typical. He'd mistrusted Greg's intuition all along. But now he actually needed miracles performing… "Where's the second spaceplane?" he asked Bernie Parkin.
"Just reaching the defence perimeter now, five thousand kilometres out. Still on a standard approach vector. ETA, twenty-five minutes. They're not in the same hurry as the COV-325. That timing is interesting."
"Oh?"
"The COV-325 was stuck out there for seventy-five minutes before the Dolgoprudnensky agents made their move on the Ops Room. And we initiated colony quarantine procedures four hours prior to that. The Dolgoprudnensky agents could have launched their assault at any time since the quarantine started. But they waited until the second spaceplane was nearing the defence perimeter. What I'm saying is: it looks like the platforms were shut down specifically to let that second spaceplane through."