"Come an' get it," Suzi said.
Greg's intuition seemed to have dried up. He watched the spaceplane manoeuvring round the spindle, free of any presentiment.
Rick joined the two of them on the pedestal, giving the spaceplane a sober glance.
"You joining us?" Greg asked.
"Yes. It's what I came for. And I haven't been much use so far."
"Nobody expects you to hardline, Rick. Your job starts after we make contact."
The crack was slanted over at a good twenty degrees, one of several around the village cave. Sinclair had to clamber a metre off the arabic moss floor before he could squeeze into it.
"Down here?" Greg asked.
And Sinclair actually seemed embarrassed about it. "That's right, Captain Greg. The, er, younger folk use it quite a lot, if you take me meaning. The walls on the huts there, they aren't very thick."
"Got you," Greg said.
"It opens up a bit further down," Sinclair said encouragingly. "Your tin men'll be all right after that."
"Right." Three of the crash team were coming with them, Teresa Farrow, Jim Sharman, and Carlos Monetti. He took another look at the narrow crack. If they did meet anything hazardous in there, then targeting it would be a brute. "Hold it, Sinclair; Carlos, you go first. I want fire-power available if push comes to shove."
"Yes, sir," Carlos said gladly. He clamped his gauntlets on the side of the crack and walked himself up. Little splinters of rock spilled down.
Someone had found the controls for the solaris spots. They flared white, throwing everything into sharply defined contours.
Melvyn was busy organizing his crash team, sending them ranging into the village, and exploring the other cracks and fissures leading out of the cave.
"Hey, Greg," Suzi said. "Give Royan's arse a kick from me, OK?"
"No messing."
Sinclair wriggled into the crack after Carlos. Greg levered himself up. The aliens' presence was a cold burning star ahead of him, exerting a gravity which acted on his thoughts alone, pulling him on. He sucked in his belly, and slipped into the crack.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The empty corridors were faintly unnerving. Before the alarms had gone off the security centre had been a bustling, lively place. Now the moving walkway rattled hollowly in the deserted main corridor as the hardliner escorted Charlotte to the security centre's command post.
They stepped off the end of the walkway in front of a bank of seven lifts, the two at the far end were big service shafts. Security personnel were struggling with large flat-bed drones loaded with bulky machinery, trying to fit them through a service lift's doors. They were the first people Charlotte had seen since leaving Lloyd McDonald's office.
"What's all that for?" she asked the hardliner as they waited for their lift.
"Cutting gear by the look of it," he replied.
He'd been polite the whole time. Naturally. His eyes switching between her legs and her face. But he didn't know what was going on any more than she did. Nothing good, she knew, not with those alarms going off.
The lift arrived, and they descended.
There were three guards outside the command centre's door, all of them armed. He had to show his card to a cybofax one of them carried before they were allowed through the door.
Inside was a big circular room with rings of consoles, large flatscreens round the wall, a giant cube at the centre of the vaulting rock ceiling. She picked up on the current of worry infecting all the people sitting behind the consoles, their serious faces, strained voices.
"Over here." Her hardliner gestured at a glass-walled office. She could see Victor, Sean, and Lloyd inside.
Just as she got to the door she saw Fabian's face on a phone flatscreen, her legs almost faltered. Then Victor's expression registered. She wanted to turn and run.
"Fabian here has just told us that the pair of you managed to convince Pavel Kirilov to come up to New London," Victor said.
"Yes," she whispered.
"I don't bloody well believe this. You let him know you survived the Colonel Maitland, and then invited him up here? He will do anything to obtain the generator data, including ripping it out of you. And I do mean rip."
"Kirilov started all this!" Fabian shouted from the phone's speaker. "My father is dead because of him."
"And Julia Evans told you quite plainly that he would be dealt with," Victor said.
"Oh, sure. Sometime," Fabian said petulantly.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We did it so we could be certain," Charlotte said.
"What do you mean, certain?"
"You didn't seem interested. I thought… well, I wanted to be absolutely sure Pavel Kirilov was dealt with. Dmitri Baronski was killed too," she added lamely.
"Didn't you listen to a word said at Listoel?" Victor demanded. "We have got other, more urgent, problems right now. Third-rate crime lords have to wait their turn. But we would have got round to Kirilov, nobody screws Event Horizon about like he's done and gets away with it. You were given Julia Evans's word on it. What more do you want, a thumbprinted contract?"
Charlotte rubbed her bare arms, suddenly chilly in the air-conditioned office. The disgust and contempt in Victor's voice was almost unbearable.
"Just one shot from a Strategic Defence platform," she pleaded. "That's all it needs. Pavel Kirilov is going to call me before his spaceplane docks, we'll know when he's in range."
"No, he's not going to call you," Lloyd said. "And we're not shooting anyone right now. We can't, thanks to you."
She gave him a fearful glance.
"Screen six," he said, and pointed through the glass.
The delta-wing spaceplane was inside the lip of the southern hub crater, hanging below the docking spindle. Small blue flames stabbed out of the reaction-control nozzles, lining it up for a landing on the crater wall. Two sets of doors had hinged open on either side of the dorsal ridge. Black thermal-dump panels had concertinaed out, and folded back parallel with the wings, making way for silvered dishes and framework racks to rise out of their recesses. Charlotte peered forwards. There were squat cylinders nestling in the racks, their front ends were like insect eyes, a multisegment hemisphere of black chrome lenses, a large bell-shaped nozzle protruded from the rear. Now she knew what to look for, she could see the gold-foil covered boxes of lasers on telescopic arms rising above the dishes.
"That's Kirilov?" she asked, her voice had become a croak.
"Oh no," Victor said. "Kirilov is still on his approach phase. That's Leol Reiger. You remember him? The two of you almost met on the Colonel Maitland."
She bit her lower lip, fighting the tears building behind her eyes. Nothing. Nothing she ever did turned out right.
The office's terminal bleeped. Lloyd picked up a handset and listened for a few seconds. "It's Leol Reiger," he said. "He says he wants to talk to Julia."
"Talk to him, Sean," Victor said. "Stall him if you can."
Lloyd opened up the communication circuit. The flatscreen remained blank. Charlotte edged well out of the camera's pick up field.
"This is Governor Francis," Sean said.
"Where's Julia Evans?" Leol Reiger asked.
"Unavailable. I'm all you're going to get."
"OK, Mr. Governor, you and I need to come to an arrangement."
"You have no docking clearance, Mr. Reiger, and I'm not authorized to make deals."
"Never learn, you people, do you? Your SD platforms are flicked, otherwise you would have snuffed us ten minutes ago. We're coming in. Now how much damage we cause to that very delicate biosphere of yours in the process is down to you."