Peter Hamilton - Great North Road

She trudged around the convoy slowly, turning a complete circle every couple of paces so she could see it when it came for her. Ball lightning swooped above her sporadically, revealing the stark ground of broken folds, meandering fissures, and entombed rock. She had to walk; anyone stationary out here would freeze soon enough. The glow of the headlights revealed the vehicles easily enough. An icon in her smartcell grid showed her the net fading in and out as if it were nothing more sophisticated than a shortwave radio signal.

Angela had completed a half circuit of the vehicles when she saw something moving through the churning snow. A bulky humanoid figure leaning into the wind and abrasive snow. It was heading straight for her. Angela hurriedly pulled off her outer gauntlets.

When it was five meters away, another lightning ball darted above the canyon wall. The figure was coated in a slick black skin, obscuring its features. Snow slithered down it, unable to gain any kind of hold. Several slippery bulges flared out from around the waist, two of them with pistol grips protruding.

“Rebka?”

A secure link quested out from the blank figure. “Mother, what the hell are you doing out here?”

Angela started stuffing her hands back into the gauntlets. Just a few seconds’ exposure had sent the acute cold slithering through the fabric of her inner layers to nip at her fingers. “Protecting you. It’ll come for me. I can deal with it.”

Rebka came right up to her until their faces were centimeters apart, Angela covered by a balaclava wrapped in a scarf, Rebka clad in smooth metamolecule armor.

“I really don’t think you can,” Rebka said. “Come on, come back in.”

“To sit in a biolab until it rips a door off and stabs us while we sleep? Not my style.”

“The biolabs are tough. We can sit out the blizzard in them.”

“It will go for the comm rockets. We need them just as much as the bioil.”

“Mother! Please, I can deal with it.”

“I am not letting you face that thing. I can’t. Not after everything we’ve done to make sure you live.”

“Why won’t you trust me? These systems are quite capab—Aye hell.”

“What?” Angela turned to scour the blizzard, fearful what her daughter’s sensors had detected.

“You must have two micro tracers on you. The second one just got triggered.”

“That son-of-a-bitch Elston never did really trust me.”

Rebka slapped her shoulder. “Can’t think why. He’ll be out here soon. That’s all we need, a Gospel Warrior screwing things up.”

As soon as Vance gave the order for everyone to take shelter in the biolabs, he found that Angela was missing. Her identity icon showed she was in biolab-2 where he’d left her, but Paresh had tried to link to her, to check she’d made it back to the Tropic okay.

Vance didn’t know what she was doing, but with his command under deadly assault from the monster, he was long past giving her the benefit of the doubt. He ordered his e-i to trigger the smartmicrobe bug that Antrinell had tagged Angela with.

Even the convoy’s decaying, glitching net could still perform a triangulation function. Her location popped up immediately in Vance’s iris smartcell grid. Angela was standing twenty-five meters outside the ring of vehicles. At least, he assumed she was standing—there was no medical data to confirm it, just the smartmicrobe’s weak ping.

Antrinell and Jay watched him closely as he slipped the pistol into its rubbery heated sheath. His e-i quested a link to the magazine and gave the bullets their arming code. “I’m going out there,” he said.

“Keep a link open,” Antrinell said. “We need to know what’s happening.”

“And be careful,” Jay said. “She’s either the murderer or she’s helping that thing. There’s no other reason for her to be out there.”

“I know,” Vance said. The knowledge came with a heavy heart. Despite their differences, he had come to rely on Angela. And if she was part of whatever conspiracy they were caught up in, why had she brought Ravi back? Was Ravi part of this, too? He hated the fear his paranoia was generating. “Sweet Jesus, protect me, please,” he whispered.

Ball lightning struck the floor of the canyon several hundred meters away, detonating into a morass of belligerent lightning strands. The vehicles were briefly highlighted in the stark flickering light. He saw Garrick climbing up into biolab-2’s door chamber, and his e-i quested a link. “Did everyone get across okay?” he asked.

“Lulu and Darwin are inside,” Garrick said. “Madeleine went back for something. I couldn’t stop her.”

Vance studied his grid, but Madeleine Hoque’s identity icon was missing. “It’s back,” he growled. “Get inside, now,” he told Garrick.

The lightning rampage died away, leaving Vance alone in the gloom of the savage blizzard. He bent into the wind, and hurried forward as fast as he could go. Angela’s tracer hadn’t moved. His e-i activated his iris smartcells’ infrared function, shifting his vision to a seething blur-cloud of sapphire and cyan. A slim glimmer of pink fluctuated in and out of existence up in front as the harsh flurries of snow marched across it.

Elston gripped the pistol tightly and slogged forward over the hellish wasteland of the broken ice river. Nothing was going to stop him now, not weather, not monsters. Angela Tramelo was finally going to tell him the truth no matter what. The Good Lord would understand and forgive extreme measures on this day.

As he drew closer the red glimmer strengthened, widening, resolving out of smeared chaos. Another lightning ball plummeted into the ground behind him. White light flooded out, revealing the canyon. It was two figures up ahead!

Angela was easy enough to identify: She was in a parka with one of those thick scarves she knitted wrapped around her head. The monster was standing beside her. Its skin was sleeker than the images had shown him, and it wasn’t as large as he’d expected. “I have looked upon you,” Vance snarled into the storm. “And I have seen the devil.” He raised his pistol and walked forward. He fired. Once. Twice.

The monster bent and ducked. Just as it had been with Ravi, the bullets had no effect. I have to get closer. Have to get a clean eye shot . Then Vance realized it didn’t have blades for hands. In fact it looked remarkably human, despite being featureless. There must be different types .

“Stop stop!” Angela yelled. She was racing forward, waving her arms frantically. “Elston, for fuck’s sake. Stop shooting!”

“You are allied,” he cried in consternation. His pistol swung around, lining up on the traitor woman who had persecuted his dreams for too long. Satan’s whore. The archdeceiver.

“She’s my daughter,” Angela bellowed.

Vance wouldn’t have believed anything could have stopped him from pulling the trigger. Yet his finger now refused to move. “What?” To know… to finally know!

“Madeleine, she’s my daughter. That’s why I was in the mansion.”

“This is—I don’t—” Vance was stricken with doubt. His e-i reported a quest ping emanating from the dark figure. It carried Madeleine Hoque’s identity code. “You can’t be—” he blurted.

“I am,” Madeleine said. “I’m an undercover operative. My real name’s Rebka DeVoyal, and Angela is my mother.”

“You’re the monster?”

“Crap no. This is metamolecule armor. Constantine North sent me. Jupiter wants to know what’s going on.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Vance moaned. But… a daughter. “How?” he pleaded.

“I needed money to save her,” Angela said. “I was scamming the Norths.”

“You really didn’t kill them.” The revelation was almost spiritual. Despite where he was he felt like laughing for the sheer joy of finally understanding.