“Doesn’t that bother you?” Voi asked.
Alkad sank down deeper into her seat, getting herself comfortable. “Not really. This is like old times for me.”
“What if they stop us?”
“Gelai, what are the police thinking?”
“They’re curious, Doctor. Make that very curious.”
“That’s okay then; as long as they aren’t going to stop us we’re all right. I know the agencies, they will want to know where we’re going first before they make their move.”
“But Baranovich—”
“They’re his problem, not ours. If he doesn’t want me followed then it’s up to him to do something about it.”
Alkad’s car navigated itself along Harrisburg’s abandoned streets at a doggedly legal speed. Despite that, they made good progress, leaving the closely packed buildings of the city centre behind to venture out into the more industrial suburbs. Thirty minutes into the journey, the last of the urban clutter was discarded behind them. The slightly elevated roadway cut straight across a flat alluvial plain that was open all the way to the sea eighty kilometres away. It was a vast expanse of huge fallow fields from which tractor mechanoids and tailored bugs had eradicated any unauthorized vegetation. Trees were stunted and bent by the wind that blew in from the shore, standing hunched along the line of the drainage canals which had been dug to tame the rich black soil.
Nothing moved off the road, no animals or vehicles. They were driving across a snow desert. Large, stiff flakes were hurled horizontally against the car by the wind, taxing the guarantee of the lofriction windshield to stay clear. Even so, that didn’t prevent them from seeing the fifteen cars which were now following them, a convoy that made no attempt to hide itself.
Adrian Redway had settled himself into one of the chairs in the ESA’s operation centre and datavised his desktop processor for a filter program to access the station’s incoming information streams. Even with the filter he was almost overwhelmed by the quantity of data available. Neural nanonics assigned priority gradings. Sub-routines took over from his mind’s natural cross-indexing ability, leaving his consciousness free to absorb relevant details.
He focused on Mzu, principally through the observation team, then defined a peripheral activity key to alert him of any incoming factors which would affect her situation. The rate at which external events were developing on Nyvan made it unlikely he would be able to secure Monica much advance warning, but as a veteran of twenty-eight years ESA service he knew even seconds could change the entire outcome of a field operation.
“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 spaceplanes?”
“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?”