Part 13 (1/2)

'But why?'

'You a... ware of... e galact... ituation?'

'The planetary attacks? I thought they were isolated incidents.'

Perhaps through some fluke in the software, perhaps because of some local fluctuation in signal strength, the face of the Adjudicator in Extremis suddenly ballooned out to its full, impressive girth. Her voice regained its usual baritone boom. 'We have lost fifteen colony worlds in three weeks, Adjudicator. Azure, Qartopholos, Sifranos ecologies devastated, entire populations wiped out and we have absolutely no idea who's responsible! The Interstellar Taskforce is on continual stand*by alert. I am on a,' her pause was not due to a transmission fault, 'fact*finding tour of the outlying regions, and took the opportunity to contact you directly. All currently una.s.signed Adjudicators are working full*time following up leads, but frankly, the Guild does not look even remotely good. Besides,' her pudgy eyes suddenly narrowed and she ran a hand across her tattooed scalp, 'there are moves afoot which I am not at liberty to discuss. You may be receiving help soon from an unexpected source.'

'But Extremis, if you would only see the logic '

'Adjudicator Bishop, I need hardly remind you that so far your case list borders upon the ludicrous: one accident, possibly murder; one suicide, possibly murder; one disaster, possibly ma.s.s murder. No evidence and a baseful of suspects. This is how careers end, Adjudicator: not with a bang, but with a whimper.'

'But '

Bryn's face bulged and seethed in unlikely places as the signal began to corrupt again. Her eyes flickered sideways to read the digital cost display '...m afraid your budget... an no longer... ustain the price of... is transmission,' the Extremis said. '...uggest you... eep a tight watch on furth... penditure.' The picture flickered back into sync one more time before fading. 'I also recommend you wear your robes the right way round, Adjudicator; it's so much better for public relations.'

The transmission faded and he frowned, casting his mind back over the conversation.

How did she know that people had died on the Bridge? he wondered. All I did was mention sabotage.

As if he didn't have enough to worry about.

He sighed in frustration and reached for his tea.

It was cold.

It was cold in the crew room on Moloch Base.

Jesus Delporto's dying scream had followed Ace all the way to the lower moon, down the violently oscillating length of the Bridge, past bizarre machinery which seethed with naked power, and through the gap she had torched in the base of the column; it followed her as eager hands pulled her from the writhing Bridge, stripped away her suit and placed her with the others in the medical unit; followed her into sleep, forced a path into her dreams, drove her screaming and unrested into wakefulness.

One more failure on her part; one more life lost; one more friend pulled away by the black tide. She tried to use s.p.a.cefleet hypno*techniques to block the remorse, but either they weren't that good or she hadn't learned them well enough.

Ace glared at her face in the mirror. She poked a finger into the luggage beneath her eyes, stretching the skin, trying to make it look young again. All her life she'd striven to be older, more mature, to experience more of what the universe had to offer. Now, here she was, with her life's dream in the palm of her hand, trying to turn back the clock. She shook her head as a short, unexpectedly bitter laugh bubbled up from her chest.

She stifled the sound as the crew room door opened and Kosi walked in. Her hand hesitated by Ace's shoulder. Ace was thankful the touch was not completed. She felt vulnerable enough already.

'Come back to the operations room, Ace. Get your mind off it, all right?'

'Yeah, right.' Ace followed Kosi from the room. 'Ta.'

The Ops Room on the lower moon was a twin to Belial's; a s.p.a.cious, split*level hemisphere with a profusion of glimmering instrumentation, manned by serious*looking technicians, surrounding the towering bulk of a MultiCray Neural Net. Floor to ceiling simularity windows displayed the incredible landscape beyond the base, giving Ace the impression that the Operations Room was actually outdoors. Only the absence of wind marred the illusion.

She exchanged a few words with the s.h.i.+ft supervisor, a dour Scot named Rachel McBride, and was told a message had been sent to Belial confirming their arrival and condition. Ace thanked the woman and then moved restlessly across to the windows, drawn by the view.

Whereas Belial Base had been built on the outer surface of a solid moon, Moloch Base was inside a hollow one; a miracle of planetary engineering which, after five years, still had Bannen and his team groping in the dark for answers to questions they didn't even know how to formulate. The ground of this bizarre world rose gradually in all directions, curving overhead until it was lost above the clouds. Vegetation ran riot. Duty teams maintained a neat lawn surrounding the base but, beyond the perimeter, a lush pink jungle rose in fantastic profusion towards the flat glare of a pale, artificial 'sun' whose energy was provided by the same mysterious means as powered the Bridge and the Lift. Translucent shapes undulated through the jungle, glimmering in the sunlight: the only life the Lucifer System had so far offered up for study. Ace felt her pulse racing at the sight. She grinned: all the s.h.i.+t in the world could not blow away the simple wonder of this pastoral scene.

'Horrible, isn't it?' Kosi had moved up beside her after checking in with the duty manager. 'All that s.p.a.ce.'

Ace turned in surprise. 'You're not agoraphobic are you?'

'So what if I am?' Kosi replied a little defensively. 'All that open ground. No factories. No living towers. And those horrible white things floating up there, just waiting to fall down and smother us. Ugh!' Kosi s.h.i.+vered, seemingly unable to understand why Ace giggled softly.

'I can't understand you people,' Ace confided. 'All this s.p.a.ce*cadet, sense*of*wonder stuff, and you're happier with four blank walls around you.'

'You forget,' said a voice behind her. 'We have been here for five years. Our sense of wonder has pa.s.sed. Our sense of boredom has set in with a vengeance.'

Lars Ulrich smiled as Ace turned, and continued, 'Christine will be fine. Minus an arm, but fine. There is no infection. s.p.a.ce, it may be cold, but it is clean, at least.'

It's not s.p.a.ce you've got to worry about, Ace thought, it's the people in it. She said nothing, but instead left the two young people by the window and moved back to the duty manager's desk.

'I just wanted to say thanks for pulling us out of there.'

'No problem.' Rachel McBride smiled. 'Alex Bannen would've had a screaming fit if we'd left you to mess up his precious Bridge; G.o.d alone knows what Tiw would've done.'

'Given you a lecture on the sound of one hand clapping, I expect.'

'Aye clapping against the side of my head, I've no doubt!' Both women laughed. McBride had a pretty laugh, Ace noticed. A laugh it felt good to join in with. 'Have they told you what goes on down here, then?'

Ace shook her head. 'Nope.'

McBride shrugged. 'There's the bra.s.s for you.' She called to a white*haired technician, 'Chas, do us a favour will you? Keep an eye on this lot and shout if anything weird pops up.' She turned back to Ace. 'Come on then. I'll give you the tour.'

'Oh,' she said, as she led the way from the room, 'I've been meaning to ask you. What happened to Sam Russell? He was supposed to be down here on the second part of a double s.h.i.+ft. When he didn't turn up, I a.s.sumed he'd overslept, but when he didn't radio through to apologize...'

Kosi and Lars turned from the window to watch Ace and McBride leave the Operations Room.

'What do you reckon, then?'

'Ace? She's fine, I reckon.'

'That's not what I meant.'

'You ask odd question. Ace, she saves Christine's life. Would have saved Yukio and Jesus too if not for bad luck.'

'Yeah, I know. But she makes me uneasy. She always looks... I dunno, ready for a fight.'

Lars tapped his fingers reflexively against his wax tablet, a sure sign he was thinking carefully about what Kosi had said. 'I think you make big refinery out of small process. Ace, she's fine. Fine person.'

'Then how come when we pulled her from her suit I found a folder full of Alex Bannen's notes stashed away inside the sleeve?'

The Atmospheric Vehicle Research Laboratory was a large, irregular enclosure filled with machinery of human design. In the centre of the room a large, asymmetric pod was suspended over an engineering pit. The pod was four metres in height, with a single hatch and an exoskeleton which supported various instrument modules and waldo limbs.

Ace touched the gleaming metal sides of the starpod. White alloy, highly polished, threw back the glare of multiple floodlights into her narrowed eyes.

'So this was what Paula was working on. An excursion module.'