125215.fb2 Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 123

Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 123

“There is only one,” Alkad said.

“You can build more, can’t you?”

She hesitated uncomfortably. “If there was a requirement, it could be duplicated.”

“There you are then. You can’t leave what’s left of the Garissan nation and culture unprotected, can you?”

“You want to start a damn arms race as well?” Ikela yelled. “You’re as mad as she is.”

“Curb your language. Have you forgotten the possessed?”

“In Mary’s name what have they got to do with this?”

“If we were armed with Alchemists, that bastard Capone would think twice before sending his fleet here.”

“And who precisely is going to be in charge of these Alchemists?”

“The Dorados council, of course,” Dan Malindi said scornfully.

“Exactly, and we all know how much influence you have there.”

“Enough!” Alkad slammed her fist down. “I will not supply Alchemists to anyone. You have no conception of what it is capable of. It is not some bigger and better bomb you can use for political advantage. It was built for one purpose, to destroy the people who threatened our world. It will be used for one purpose, our revenge against them.” She looked at each of them in turn, furious and sickened that this was all that remained of the planet she was once so proud of. Where was their dignity, their resolution? Could none of them perform one single act of remembrance? “I will give you thirty minutes to debate this. After that you will tell me which of you support me, and which do not.”

“I certainly support you,” Kaliua Lamu said loudly, but he was talking to her back as she limped away.

The shouting had already begun again before the door closed behind her. All the bodyguards and aides in the anteroom stared; Alkad barely saw them. If she had just known or anticipated the shambles which the partizans had become, then she would have been mentally geared up.

“Alkad?” Voi was bending down, giving the smaller woman an anxious look.

“Don’t mind me, I’ll be all right.”

“Please, I have something to show you. Now.”

The girl took Alkad’s arm, hustling her across the room and out into the corridor. Alkad couldn’t be bothered to protest, although force of habit made her activate a threat analysis program. Her enhanced retinas began scanning the length of the corridor.

“Here,” Voi said triumphantly. She opened her palm to reveal a tiny squashed spider.

“Mother Mary! Have you completely flipped?”

“No, listen. You know you said you thought the intelligence agencies were following you.”

“I should never have told you that. Voi, you don’t know what you’re getting involved with.”

“Oh, yes I do. We started checking the spaceport log. There’s a delegation of Edenists here to discuss strengthening our defences. Three voidhawks brought thirty of them.”

“Yes?”

“Mapire only rated one voidhawk, and six Edenists to discuss our mutual defence with the council. It should be the other way around, the capital should have got the larger delegation, not Ayacucho.”

Alkad glanced at the little brown blob in the girl’s hand, a bad feeling sinking through her. “Go on.”

“So we thought about how Edenists would search the asteroid for you. Adamists would use spylenses and hack into the communications net to get at public monitor security cameras. Edenists would use bitek systems, either simulants or affinity-bonded animals. We started looking. And here they are. Spiders. They’re everywhere, Alkad. We checked. Ayacucho is totally infested.”

“That doesn’t necessarily prove—” she said slowly.

“Yes it does.” The hand with the crushed blob was shaken violently. “This is from the Lycosidae family. Ayacucho’s ecologists never introduced any Lycosidaes into the biosphere. Check the public records if you don’t believe me.”

“All sorts of things can get through bio-quarantine; irradiation screening isn’t perfect.”

“Then why are they all male? We haven’t found a single female, not one. It’s got to be so they can’t mate, they won’t reproduce. They’ll die off without causing any sort of ecological imbalance. Nobody will ever notice them.”

Strangely enough, Alkad was almost impressed. “Thank you, Voi. I’d better go back in there and tell them I need more security.”

“Them?” Voi was utterly derisory. “Did they leap to help you? No. Of course not. I said they wouldn’t.”

“They have what I need, Voi.”

“They have nothing we don’t. Nothing. Why don’t you trust us? Trust me? What does it take to make you believe in us?”

“I do believe in your sincerity.”

“Then come with me!” It was an agonized plea. “I can get you out of here. They don’t even have any way to get you out of the office without the spiders seeing.”

“That’s because they don’t know about them.”

“They don’t know, because they’re not concerned about security. Look at them, they’ve got enough bodyguards in there to form a small army. Everybody in the asteroid knows who they are.”

“Truthfully?”

“All right, not everybody. But certainly every reporter. The only reason they don’t say anything is because of Cabral. Anyone coming to the Dorados who really wanted to make contact with the partizan movement wouldn’t need more than two hours to find a name.”

“Mary be damned!” Alkad glanced back at the door to the anteroom, then at the tall girl. Voi was everything her father was not: dedicated, determined, hurting to help. “You have some kind of safe route out of here?”

“Yes!”

“Okay. You can take me out of this section. After that I’ll get in touch with your father again, see what they’re going to do for me.”

“And if they won’t help?”

“Then it looks like you’re on.”

“Yeah? So, I’m late. Sue me. Listen, this meeting caused me a shitload of grief. I don’t need no lecture from the ESA on contact procedures right now.”

. . .

“Yeah, she’s here all right, in the flesh. Mother Mary, she’s really got the Alchemist stashed away somewhere. She’s not kidding. I mean, shit, she really wants to take out Omuta’s star.”

. . .