Peter Hamilton - Great North Road

Juan-Fernando:CT-606D

Ravi Hendrik:CT-606D Berlin, ex–Thunderthorn SF-100 pilot

AAV flight team

Ken Schmitt:chief

Davinia Beirne:technician

Chris Fiadeiro:technician

Mackay:technician

Dr Tamika Coniff

Mark Chitty:paramedic

Juanitar Sakur:paramedic

Tork Ericson

Erius

Olrg Dorchev

Dean Creshaun

Lance

Leif Davdia

Darwin Sworowski

Karizma Wadhai

Ophelia Troy

Luther Katzen:supervisor

Madeleine Hoque

Fuller Owusu

Lulu MacNamara

Winn Melia

Sidney Hurst:detective

Royce O’Rouke:chief constable

Ian Lanagin:detective, surveillance specialist

Eva Saeland:visual interpretation constable

Ralph Stevens:special investigator, AIA

Abner North:detective, forensic specialist

Ari North:constable, data management specialist

Aldred North:Northumberland Interstellar security director, legal liaison

Hayfa Fullerton:detective, gang task force

Kaneesha Saeed:detective, retired, chief of gang crime office

Tilly Lewis:Northern Forensics, Grade-A team manager

Chloe Healy:O’Rouke’s media officer

Saul Howard:surfer and store owner, St. Libra

As midnight approached, the wild neon colors of the borealis storm came shimmering through the soft snow falling gently across Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. It was as if nature were partying along with the rest of the city, providing a jade-and-carmine light show far more elegant than any of the fireworks that had been bursting sporadically above the rooftops since Friday.

Detective Third Grade Sidney Hurst watched batches of late-night revelers staggering along the frozen pavement, calling out greetings or challenges depending on how toxed up they were. Ice, snow, and slush played havoc with the smartdust embedded in the tarmac, blacking out whole sections of the metamesh that governed the city’s roads and therefore making driving with the vehicle’s smartauto a dangerous gamble. Sid was steering the unmarked police car manually, but with the auto managing wheel torque on the slippery road. Their snow tires provided reasonable traction, adding to stability and allowing him to make a decent thirty-five kilometers per hour along Collingwood Street past the cathedral. Radar kept throwing proximity symbols across the windshield, designating a warning for the long filthy dunes of snow that the civic snowplows had thrown off the center of the road.

It had been snowing for two days now, and with the midday temperature spike sticking stubbornly below ten degrees there had been no thaw, allowing the elegant stone Georgian buildings of the city center to become cloaked in Dickensian yuletide splendor. Another proximity warning flashed scarlet, outlining a man running across the road directly in front of the car, laughing and jeering as Sid veered sharply around him. One last obscene gesture, and he was claimed by the swirling snow.

“He’ll never last till dawn,” Ian Lanagin claimed from the front passenger seat.

Sid glanced over at his partner. “Just another two-oh-one file,” he agreed. “Welcome back, me.”

“Aye, man, some Sunday-night reunion this is.”

It was crazy so many people being out in this weather; though for once Newcastle’s traditional nightclub dress code of T-shirt for the boys and short skirt with glitter heels for the girls had vanished under thick ankle-length coats. It was that cold. He’d even glimpsed a few sensible hats, which was almost a first in the fifteen years he’d been with the Newcastle police. Even now—married with two kids, a career that wasn’t quite as dynamic as he’d originally envisioned—he was slightly surprised he was still in Newcastle. He’d followed a girl up here from London, where—like every twenty-something law graduate—he’d been arrowing down the smart and fast career path, alternating jobs between police and private security as if he were an electron bouncing between junction gates. To consummate the grand romantic gesture he applied for a transfer to the local city police, where the career track was equally valid for a couple of years, and the nights could still be spent in bed with Jacinta. Now, fifteen years’ worth of Siberian winters and Saharan summers later, he was still here, married to Jacinta (which at least showed good judgment), with two kids and a career that had taken the kind of direction he’d always sneered at during those long-distant university years when he had passion and conviction and contempt for the way of a world screwed up by the current generation in power and the omnipresent lurking evil of the Zanth. Now experience and its associate wisdom had flicked him onto the more rational track of time-serving and networking to make the final career switch that would see him through the last twenty years before retirement. Fifteen years’ hard labor had taught him real life had a habit of doing that.

“They’ll all sober up by tomorrow,” Sid said, switching his gaze back to the road.

“In this town?” Ian challenged.

“We’ve all got jobs now.”

Sid had been as surprised as anyone on Friday morning when Northumberland Interstellar had finally announced they were awarding contracts for five new fusion stations to be built at the Ellington energy complex north of the city. They should have been built years ago, but such was the way with all big projects that decade-long delays were built into corporate decisions as standard. And that was before regulators and politicians started to intervene to prove their worth. It meant the aging tokamaks at Ellington that currently powered the Newcastle gateway to St. Libra would have to be coaxed along way past their original design lifetime. Nobody cared about that, though, and euphoric Geordies had spent the weekend rejoicing about the announcement. It meant a new surge in the monumental tide of money that already coursed along the city streets, money that was channeled at every corner into St. Libra, to be rewarded by the return flow of indispensable bioil back to the old motherworld. Bioil that kept cars and lorries moving across Grande Europe’s still-powerful trade arteries; valuable derivations allowing planes to fly and ships to voyage. This contract was nothing more than a ripple on that tide, to be sure, but even so it promised additional revenue for the ancient coal town’s manufacturing and service industries, which would devour the digital cash with clever greed to fuel runaway expansion curves on the corporate market graphs. That meant there would be job opportunities at every level. Happy times were officially on their way.

None knew that better than Newcastle’s extensive secondary economy of private lounges, pubs, clubs, pimps, and pushers, who were already salivating at the prospect. Like the rest of the city, they could look forward to a fresh decade of providing a good time to the army of middle-class salary-plus-bonus contractors who would descend upon them. To launch the new era, first drinks had been on the house all this weekend, with second drinks half price.