"How so?"
"I want Charlotte Fielder."
Charlotte let out a soft moan, the sound of her heart pounding was very loud, all the glass walls of the office were suddenly rushing towards her. Hands clamped round her upper arms, guiding her into a chair as her legs buckled.
"Have her brought to the docking bay," Leol Reiger said.
"Never heard of her," Sean said.
"Wrong. She's been on a bit of a spending spree in your shops today. She's up here. Find her and bring her to me."
"Otherwise?"
"We come hunting for her. And you know me, that will become very messy. Guaranteed."
"What do you want her for?"
"She knows where to find something I'm looking for."
"Don't," Charlotte gulped. "I don't."
Lloyd knelt down beside her, "Shush," he said softly. "It's all right." His arm went round her shoulder.
She hated herself for being so weak, especially in front of Fabian.
"She tells me where it is, and I pick it up," said Leol Reiger, "then I leave. Nobody comes to any grief that way. Simple."
Sean looked helplessly at Victor. The security chief threw his hands in the air.
"We don't hand people over to tekmercs," Sean said. "I suggest you refer back to Clifford Jepson if you want to know where the source of atomic structuring is located, yes?"
There was a brief pause.
"Gotta hand it to you people," said Leol Reiger. "You're well plugged in. So you know what'll happen if I don't get that little fuck-dolly. Think about it. You've got five minutes."
Victor's fist came down on the desk top. "Bloody hell. Why hasn't Clifford Jepson briefed Reiger on how to contact the alien?"
"Do you want me to recall the crash team back to the airlock complex?" Lloyd asked anxiously.
"Looks like we'll have to," Victor said. "Do we know if Reiger's spaceplane has a datalink with any of the geosync communication platforms?"
"I'll get Bernie to run a check on their data traffic," Lloyd said.
"Do that. If not, we'll offer to plug him in to Jepson direct."
"He'll want to know why you're making that kind of offer, yes?" Sean said.
"Yeah," Victor growled. "Maybe we can spin him something about not being able to find Charlotte. Hell, we've got to give him something."
Lloyd picked up a handset, then frowned. "Now what?"
Charlotte turned to look into the command post. There was a commotion round one of the consoles, its operator shouting into his headset mike. Two supervisors stood behind him, leaning over his shoulders.
Lloyd raised the handset to his face. "Bernie, what's going on?"
Charlotte instinctively checked on the spaceplane. The undercarriage had unfolded. As she watched, it touched down on the crater wall. The wheels blurred with speed.
"There's someone in the docking complex," Lloyd blurted.
"Not one of my people," Sean said. "They were all taken out."
"I wonder," Victor said thoughtfully. "Lloyd, put the intruder on this screen."
Lloyd muttered into the handset. The desk terminal's flat-screen lit up. It was another of the southern endcap's interminable stone-walled corridors. Someone was walking along it, dressed in a blue maintenance division jumpsuit.
"Run an ident check on him," Victor said.
Lloyd typed hurriedly on the terminal keyboard.
The spaceplane had finished its acceleration run. Its nose began to turn in towards the southern endcap.
"Got him," Lloyd said.
Victor bent over to scan the data flowing down the flatscreen.
"His name is Talbot Lombard," Lloyd read. "Aged forty-one, got his communications technology degree from Hamburg University. Came up to New London eight years ago, employed by Globecast, worked setting up their franchise in the southern endcap. Fired seven years ago for pirating programmes. His return ticket was never used, no record of further employment in New London."
"A Celestial Apostle," Victor said. "One who'd know all about Clifford Jepson's arms trading. And how to get in contact."
"You think he's the interface?"
"Has to be," Victor said. "And he'll take Leol Reiger straight down into the caves."
"If Reiger doesn't shoot him first, yes?" Sean said.
"So cynical," Victor muttered with a grin. He straightened up, pointing two fingers at the big flatscreen outside, and shooting. "Got you, Reiger."
"What about the Dolgoprudnensky spaceplane?" Sean asked. "They're due to reach us in another ten minutes."
"I'll call Pavel Kirilov," Charlotte said. "If you want. Explain that I haven't really got the generator data." She thought of facing that cold clinical expression again, and shivered; but she desperately wanted to do something right, try and repair a little bit of the damage.
"I think it's a bit late for that," Victor said.
"That's not the answer, anyway," Fabian said. She heard the old sneer in his voice.
"No?" Victor asked.
"Course not. It's simple, stupid. This is your story: The second spaceplane is assaulting New London, it's already knocked out your defences; and the Governor officially requires assistance in dealing with it. So call Greg's Russian general friend, the one that's authorized to use the CoDefence League's Strategic Defence platforms, and explain exactly who's inside that spaceplane."
Charlotte watched Victor and Lloyd exchange a nonplussed glance, then gasped. On the big flatscreen behind them, black armour-suited figures were emerging from the spaceplane and bouncing in long steps across the crater wall towards the docking complex.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Celestials' village gave Suzi the fucking creeps. A jungle village buried inside an asteroid, mega-primitive sophistication. It was a real sense tripper. Twenty billion tonnes of rock above, and a vacuum infinity below. Bad.
She worked hard to block out the conflict.
Melvyn was doing his job properly. Sending scouts into the surrounding catacombs, building a detailed picture of the zone. Major fault zone—why the fuck did Julia have to call it that? And just how many minor zones were there, exactly?
She sidestepped her way along one of the cracks leading off from the village cave. At least that tit of an armourer back at Listoel had been right about her knee, the suit carried it well. The crack opened into a dry cave with a long fissure along its sharply sloping bottom. The rock glittered in the infrared beam her helmet lights gave off. Tiny flecks of metal frozen in silica. She couldn't see the base of the fissure, and it was too thin for anyone to climb. Not even the Celestials had used the cave.
She used her rangefinder laser to map the cave accurately, and spliced the result in with her inertial guidance unit data. When she scuffled her way back into the village cave the package was added to the composite Melvyn was assembling. He updated her own 'ware in return.
The catacomb map was superimposed over her photon-amp image. Cumulus clouds of solid light—reds, blues, and greens—caves, passages wide enough for a suit to traverse, dangerous cracks, the lake. Maybe fault zone was right after all. The surrounding area was rotten with cavities, as if the rock was mouldy.
Then there was Dennis Naverro to cultivate, one of the crash team's remaining two sac psychics. Melvyn had wanted to widen some of the cracks leading off from the cave to give the team greater tactical positioning. She'd teamed up with Dennis, the two of them blasting away awkward chunks of rock with their Konica rip guns, kicking the debris out of the way. Turning the crack into a corridor an armour suit could run down. She would need Dennis later; he didn't know it yet but he was going to pinpoint Leol Reiger for her.