Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

The Titan settled easily on its undercarriage, and a section of wall on the generator building ahead split open. They began to taxi forwards.

Melvyn Ambler, the crash team’s captain, tapped Greg on the shoulder. He had removed his muscle-armour suit during the flight, dressing in olive-green one-piece fatigues with Event Horizon’s logo on his breast pocket. “The platform’s clinic has been alerted, we’re all ready for you, sir.”

“Fine, thank you. How are Fielder and Whitehurst?”

“The medics gave the girl a second anaesthetic for her fingers and some treatment for the swelling. She’s exhausted, but physically she’s in good shape, nothing the clinic can’t fix up. The boy is still in shock from the death of his father.”

Greg nodded, he’d let Fabian think Jason Whitehurst had died as the airship crashed, it was a lot kinder than knowing the truth. “And what about Suzi?”

Melvyn Ambler couldn’t quite keep his face straight. “All right, though the doctor says her knee’s going to need some work. She’s been telling us about how tough it all was in the old days.”

Greg let out a small groan. “Back when hardliners were real hardliners?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The name’s Greg, thanks.” Sir reminded him of the Army.

“Right.”

Greg stood up slowly, pleased to find his neurohormone hangover had run its course. He thanked the pilot and followed Melvyn Ambler back through the Titan’s fuselage. Charlotte Fielder was being helped down the ramp, she was wrapped up in a bright orange padded suit, as if she was wearing a polar sleeping bag. Fabian Whitehurst was walking ahead of her, his eyes dead to the world.

Greg watched Suzi being lifted into a wheelchair by a couple of the crash team. Her teeth were gritted.

“Just a flesh wound?” Greg asked innocently.

“Bollocks!” she shouted back, then shrugged. “I landed wrong back there in the airship.”

“Never mind, Julia will pay for a new knee, no doubt.”

Suzi grinned. “You finished with me for today? I’ve’ got me a date with good old Leol Reiger.”

“I think you’d better put that off for a day or two.”

“Come on, Greg, we’ve got the Fielder girl.”

“Yeah, and it’s where she’s going to lead Julia to that worries me, no messing.”

“Right. Suppose I’d better stick around, then. But, Greg, it’s not going to be for ever.”

The generator building served as a hangar for several Typhoon fighters as well as three Titans. Greg saw a Pegasus parked at the far end as he came down the loading ramp. Julia and Victor were waiting for him, along with a large blond-haired man wearing a crumpled suit jacket.

Julia put her arms round him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I didn’t know it was going to finish up like this, Greg.”

“That’s OK.” He stroked the long hair down her back. “Tell you, I’m just sorry about Rachel and the other three.”

Julia nodded silently, giving him a lonely smile. “Rachel’s been with me for twenty years. I know her father and her brother. They were all so proud she was doing well for herself. Personal assistant to the mighty Julia Evans. Now I’ve got to tell them she’s dead. She was out of hardlining, Greg. Clean away, then I made her go back.”

“This wasn’t hardlining. Not really. It was just crazy. There was no need for it, the Pegasus wasn’t armed.”

“We really have made a mess of today, haven’t we?”

“I got you Charlotte Fielder. Nothing that important ever comes cheap.”

“Yes. Well, that girl had better bloody well start telling me what I want to know.”

“Tomorrow,” Greg said. Even without his espersense he could tell Julia was feeling the strain, and that was with all the protection the NN cores threw around her. Chasing after Fielder wasn’t all this deal involved by the look of it. “She’s had a rough time of it this afternoon. So’s young Fabian, come to that.”

Julia stepped away from him. “Yeah, I know, I was there.”

“So you were.” Greg looked at Victor. “Did Leol Reiger survive?”

“We don’t know. We’ve been monitoring the air-sea rescue traffic. The Nigerian coast guard have picked up quite a few of the Colonel Maitland’s crew from their escape pods. I haven’t got a list yet, my Lagos office will squirt one over in a couple of hours.”

“What about Baronski?”

“Snuffed, along with the girl who was with him. There were three people killed when Reiger’s tekmercs opened fire on you in the Prezda well, another thirty-eight injured, seven seriously. I’ve never known anyone like this Reiger; he’s a mad dog, absolute mad dog. I’ve been in touch with the Tricheni security chief, that’s the kombinate which owns the Prezda, we’re launching a joint search-and-destroy deal.”

The big man standing behind Victor was looking more and more uncomfortable.

“Good,” Greg said, surprised by his own anger. “Did you find out who’s behind Reiger?”

“Yes,” Victor said. “We’ve got quite a bit to tell you about that.”

The conference room had a broad silvered window looking out over the rest of the oceanic energy field. It showed the other generator platforms as oblong ochre silhouettes on the darkening horizon, navigation lights winking steadily.

He sat with Julia, Victor and Rick Parnell at one end of a long black composite table, listening to Victor give a review of Royan’s Kiley probe, and the waiting personality packages.

The office’s three teleconference flatscreens were on, plugging the three NN cores into the discussion, two showing images of Julia, while Philip Evans filled the third. Julia’s grandfather had synthesized an image of himself at fifty, a thin face with a healthy tan and silver hair.

Greg could see that Rick Parnell was having trouble coping with the NN cores, glancing up at the screens then back down at the table. The blunt hardline talk about Leol Reiger wasn’t helping to settle him either. He wasn’t quite out of his depth, but he was certainly having his world-view shaken today.

“If Clifford Jepson already has the data on the nuclear force generator, why would he want to find Royan?” Greg asked after Julia finished telling him about the two partnership offers she’d received. “Especially, why go to this much trouble to find Royan? I’d say hiring Leol Reiger was almost an act of desperation.”

“To make sure Royan doesn’t plug me into the alien, and do a deal direct. Clifford would be left with nothing then, Globecast can’t develop the nuclear force generator by itself.”

“But Globecast doesn’t have a monopoly on the generator data,” Greg said. “Mutizen’s offering you the same deal.”

Julia looked up at the screens, arching an eyebrow.

“Buggered if I know, girl,” Philip Evans grunted.

“It is odd,” Julia’s NN core one image agreed.

Greg turned to Rick. “Are we sure Royan’s alien is the source of the atomic structuring technology?”

“No idea,” said the SETI director. “It’s conceivable that the microbes could live on the outside of a starship, that they were brought here rather than drifted across interstellar space. But that would mean the alien has been here a long time; a couple of centuries before the Matoyaii probe was launched, at least. Remember, we’ve now inspected just two rocks out of all the millions which make up Jupiter’s ring, and both of them had microbe colonies. No matter how vigorous they are, it would take a long time to spread that far.”

“Is that significant?” Victor asked.

“I think it must be,” Rick said. “If the aliens have been here, been watching us for so long, why make contact now?”

“Because we discovered them,” Julia said.