The Night's Dawn Trilogy (300 page)

“It has to be the ironberg foundry yard,” he datavised to Monica after they had been driving over the farmland for twenty
uneventful minutes.

“We think so, too,” Monica replied. “Are the foundry’s landing pads equipped with beacon guidance? If she’s looking for a
spaceplane pickup, they’ll need a controlled approach in this weather.”

“Unless they have military-grade sensors. But yes, the foundry’s pads have beacons. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their reliability,
mind. I doubt they’ve been serviced since the day they were installed.”

“Okay, can you run a data sweep of the foundry? And if you can access it, a security sensor review would be helpful. I’d like
to know if there’s anyone there waiting for her.”

“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, that foundry is big. But I’ll put a couple of my analysts on it.
Just don’t expect too much.”

“Thanks.” She gave Samuel a forlorn look. “Something wrong?”

The Edenist had been accessing their exchange via his bitek processor block. “I am reminded of the time she left Tranquillity.
We were all following after her rather like this, and look what happened that time. Possibly we should be the ones taking
the initiative. If the foundry is her intended destination, she may well have a method of eluding us already in place.”

“Could be. But the only way of stopping her now is to shoot the car. That would bring the police storming in.”

Samuel accessed the ESA operations centre computer and reviewed the security police deployment status. “We are a long way
from their designated reinforcements; and we can have the flyers here in minutes. Hurting the feelings of the Tonala government
is an irrelevance compared to securing the Alchemist. Mzu has done us a favour by coming to such a remote place.”

“Yeah. Well, if you’re willing to bring your flyers in to evac us, I’m certainly prepared to commit our people. We’ve got
enough firepower to stomp on the police if—” She broke off as Adrian datavised again.

“The city air defence network has just located those missing Organization spaceplanes,” he told her. “They’re heading right
at you, Monica; three of them coming in over the sea at Mach five. Looks like you were right about the foundry being a pickup
zone.”

“My God, she is selling out to Capone. What a bitch.”

“Looks that way.”

“Can you direct the city network to shoot the space-planes?”

“Yes, if they get closer, but at the moment they’re out of range.”

“Will they be in range at the foundry?” Samuel asked.

“No. The network doesn’t have any missiles, it’s all beam weapons. Tonala relies on its SD platforms to kill any threat approaching
from outside its boundaries.”

“The flyers,” Monica asked Samuel. “Can they intercept?”

“Yes.”
Launch please
, he instructed the pilots.

Monica datavised her armour suit management processor to run a readiness diagnostic, then pulled her shell helmet on and sealed
it. The other agents began checking their own

weapons.

•  •  •

“Joshua, the flyers are all leaving,” Ashly datavised.

“I was wondering about that,” Joshua replied. “We’re only about ten kilometres from the ironberg foundry now. Mzu must have
arranged some kind of rendezvous there. Dick’s been running some checks for us; he says that sections of the foundry electronics
are glitched. There could be some possessed up ahead.”

“Do you need an evac?”

Joshua glanced around the car. Melvyn and Dahybi weren’t giving anything away, while Dick Keaton was merely curious. “We’re
not in any danger yet,” one of the serjeants said.

“No. But if it happens, it’s going to happen fast; and we’re not in the strongest position.”

“You can’t pull out now. We’re too close.”

“You’re telling me,” he muttered. “All right, we’ll keep on her for now. If we can get close enough to make our offer, well
and good. But if the agencies start getting aggressive, then we back off. Understood, Ione?”

“Understood.”

“I may be able to offer some assistance,” Dick Keaton said.

“Oh?”

“The cars in this convoy are all local models. I have some program commands which could cause trouble in their control processors.
It might help us get closer to your target.”

“If we start doing that to the agencies, they’ll use their own electronic warfare capability on us,” Melvyn said. “That’s
if they don’t just use a TIP carbine. Everybody knows what’s at stake.”

“They won’t know it’s us,” Dick Keaton said.

“You hope,” Melvyn said. “They’re good, Joshua. No offence to Dick, but the agencies have entire departments of computer science
professors writing black software for them.”

Joshua enjoyed the idea of screwing up the other cars, but the way they were driving further and further into isolation was
a big mitigating factor. Normal agency rules of minimum visibility wouldn’t apply out here. If he upset the status quo, Melvyn
was probably right about the reaction he’d get. What he really wanted was
Lady Mac
above the horizon to give them some fire support, although even her sensors would struggle to resolve anything through this
snowstorm, and she wasn’t due up for another forty minutes. “Dick, see what you can do to strengthen our car processors against
agency software. I’ll use your idea if it looks like she’s getting away from us.”

“Sure thing.”

“Ashly, can you launch without causing undue attention?”

“I think so. There has to be someone observing me, but I’m not picking up any active sensor activity.”

“Okay, launch and fly a low-visibility holding pattern ten

kilometres from the yard. We’ll shout for you.”

•  •  •

The four Edenist flyers picked up velocity as they curved around the outskirts of Harrisburg, hitting Mach two thirty kilometres
from the coast. Their smoothly rounded noses lined up on the ironberg foundry. Snowflakes flowing through their coherent magnetic
fields sparkled a vivid blue around the forward fuselages, then vaporised to fluorescent purple streamers. To anyone under
their path, it appeared as though four sunburst comets were rumbling through the atmosphere.

It was the one failing of Kulu’s ion field technology that it could never be successfully hidden from sensors. The three Organization
spaceplanes streaking in from the sea spotted them as soon as they lifted from the spaceport. Electronic warfare arrays were
activated, seeking to blind the flyers with a full-spectrum barrage. Air-to-air missiles dropped out of their wing recesses
and shot ahead at Mach ten.

The Edenist flyers saw them coming through the electronic hash. They peeled away from each other, arcing through the sky in
complex evasion manoeuvres. Chaff and signature decoys spewed out of the flyers. Masers locked on and fired continuous pulses
at the incoming drones.

Explosions thundered unseen above the farmland. Some of the missiles succumbed to the masers, while others followed their
programs to detonate in preloaded patterns. Clouds of kinetic shrapnel threw up lethal blockades along the trajectories they
predicted the flyers would use. But there were too few missiles left to create an effective kill zone.

The flyers stormed through.

It should have ended then, a duel between energy beam weapons and fuselage shielding, the two opponents so far away that in
all probability they would never even see each other. But the snow forbade that; absorbing maser and thermal induction energy,
cutting the effective strike range of both sides to less than five hundred metres. Flyers and spaceplanes had to get close
to each other, spiralling around and around, looping, twisting, diving, climbing. Aggressors desperate to keep their beams
on one point of their target’s fuselage; targets frantic to keep moving, spinning to disperse the energy input. A genuine
dogfight developed. Pilots blinded by the snow and clouds, dependent on sensors harassed by unremitting electronic warfare
impulses. Given that both the flyers and the spaceplanes were multi-role craft, the manoeuvres lacked any real acrobatic innovation.
Predication programs were the true knights of the sky, allowing pilots to keep a steady lock on their opponents. The flyers’
superior agility began to pay dividends. The spaceplanes were limited by the ancient laws of aerodynamic lift and stability,
restricting their tactics to classical aerial manoeuvres. While the flyers could move in any direction they wanted to providing
their fusion generators had enough power.

The Organization was always going to lose.

One by one, the crippled spaceplanes tumbled out of the sky. Two of them smashed into the frozen soil outside the foundry
yard, the third into the sea.Overhead, the flyers closed formation and began to circle the vast foundry yard in anticipation
of claiming their prize.

Urschel
and
Pinzola
slid up over the horizon. Warned by
the screams of souls torn back into the beyond, they knew
what to look for. X-ray lasers stabbed down four times, their
power unchecked by gravid clouds or swirling ice crystals.

•  •  •

The docking cradle rose out of the spaceport bay, exposing the fuselage of the
Mount’s Delta
to a blaze of sunlight. At this juncture of a normal departure, a starship would spread its thermo-dump panels before it
disengaged. Quinn told Dwyer to switch their heat exchange circuits to an internal store. Umbilical feeds withdrew from their
couplings in the lower hull, then the hold-down latches retracted.

“Fly us fifty kilometres along Jesup’s spin axis,” Quinn said. “Then hold us there.”

Dwyer flicked a throat mike down from his headset and muttered instructions to the flight computer. Ion thrusters lifted the
clipper-class ship clear of the bay, then the secondary drive came on.
Mount’s Delta
accelerated away at a fifteenth of a gee, following a clean arc above the surface of the counter-rotating spaceport.

Quinn used the holoscreens surrounding his acceleration couch to display images from the external sensor suite. Nothing else
moved around the gigantic asteroid. The surrounding industrial stations had been shut down for days and were now drifting
out of alignment. An inert fleet of personnel commuters, MSVs, inter-orbit cargo craft, and tankers were all docked to Jesup’s
counter-rotating spaceport, filling nearly every bay.

As soon as the starship rose away from the apex of the spaceport, Quinn switched the optical sensors to track the other asteroids.
Dwyer watched the screens in silence as the three deserted asteroids appeared. This time there was movement visible, tiny
stars were closing on the dark rocks at high velocity.

“Looks like we’re just in time,” Quinn said. “The nations are getting upset about losing their ships.” He spoke briefly into
his mike, instructing the flight computer.

Four secure military-grade laser communicators deployed from the starship’s fuselage. One pointed back at Jesup, while the
other three acquired a lock on the abandoned asteroids. Each one fired an ultraviolet beam at their target, its encrypted
code requesting a response. In answer, four similar ultraviolet beams transfixed the
Mount’s Delta
. Impossible to intercept or interfere, they linked Quinn into the equipment his teams had been setting up.

Diagrams flashed up on the bridge screens as modulated information flooded back along the beams. Quinn entered a series of
codes and watched in satisfaction as the equipment acknowledged his command authority.

“Ninety-seven nukes on-line,” he said. “By the look of it, they’re rigging another five as we speak. Dumb arseholes.”

“Is that enough?” Dwyer asked anxiously. Loyalty would probably not be any defence if things weren’t going precisely to plan.
He just wished he knew what that plan was.

Quinn’s grin was playful. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

•  •  •

“No survivors,” Samuel said. “None.” His dignified face betrayed a profound sorrow, one hardened by the grey light of the
snow-veiled landscape.

For Monica the loss was heightened by the terrible remoteness of the event. A few swift diffuse flashes of light lost among
the occluded sky above the convoy, as if sheet lightning were flaring amid the snowstorm. They had seen and heard nothing
of the decimated flyers crashing on the eastern edge of the foundry yard.

We have the pilots safe,
the
Hoya
told Samuel and the other Edenists. Fortunately the flyers’ shielding held out long enough for the transfer to complete.

Thank you, that’s excellent news,
Samuel said. “But not their souls,” he whispered under his breath.

Monica heard him, and met his gaze. Their minds were a unison of grief, less than affinity but certainly sharing awareness.

“Practicalities,” he said forlornly.

“Yes.”

The car gave a fast unexpected lurch as the brakes suddenly engaged, then cut out. Everyone inside was flung forwards against
their seat straps.

“Electronic warfare,” shouted the ESA electronics expert who was riding with them. “They’re glitching our processor.”

“Is it the possessed?” Monica asked.

“No. Definitely coming through the net.”

The car braked again. This time the wheels locked for several seconds, starting to skid across the slushy road before an emergency
program released them.

“Go to manual,” Monica instructed. She could see other cars in the convoy twisting and slithering across the dual roadway.
One of the police vehicles hit the safety barrier and shot down the embankment into a frozen ditch, spraying snow as it went.
Another of the big embassy cars thumped into the rear of Monica’s car, crunching some of the bodywork. The impact spun them
around. Monica’s armour suit stiffened as she was shaken from side to side.

“It’s not affecting Mzu,” Samuel said. “She’s pulling away from us.”

“Disable the police cars,” Monica told the electronics expert. “And that bloody Calvert, too.” She felt a sincerely unprofessional
glee as she ordered that, but it was perfectly legitimate. By separating herself and Mzu from the police and Calvert she was
reducing the opportunity for interference in the mission goal.