Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

‘Thanks,’ Paula said. Her red virtual finger touched a communication icon, opening a secure link to the tactical team. ‘Be aware, we confirm target is hostile. He has access to weapons, and does not hesitate to open fire. Civilians are not safe. Squad sergeant?’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘Can you immobilize him?’

‘We’ve got a nerve jangler drone, but we’ll have to blow the door open to get it in there. We don’t know if it’s reinforced.’

‘Has he rigged the approach?’

‘No sensors detected in the corridor.’

‘All right, let’s go. Be careful.’ Paula called up feeds from the cameras on the suits of the entry team. Seeing jerky images of the corridor as they hurried along. The wooden door to Fiech’s apartment was painted a dull green. They gathered round it and quickly rolled an explosive tape along the edges. One camera showed the drone being held ready, a small triangle of grey plastic.

‘Go!’ the squad sergeant ordered.

The explosive tape detonated, shattering the wooden door. The remnants crashed inwards. Suit sensors went active, cutting through the smoke and dust, producing a sharp black and white image. The drone streaked in. Icons blinked green and amber, showing the nerve jangler field was active. Theoretically it would stun Fiech’s nervous system, giving the team time to get in and cover him before he could go for any weapons. Unless he was ready and protected.

The icons turned blue and the entry team charged in. Fiech was sprawled on a couch in the living room, still wearing the yellow shirt Paula had seen through so many camera images. His head was flung back, hanging over the edge of the cushions as his limbs shook from the aftermath of the jangle. Drool leaked out of his gaping mouth.

Paula was running down the corridor, turning the corner. The wreckage of the door was in front of her. Four more team members were charging through it into the apartment. She followed them in. Fiech was still spread out across the couch. One of the suited figures was pressing an ion pistol to his temple. The second was providing cover. The remainder spread out through the apartment, guns held ready, sensors on full power, scanning ahead.

‘Clear,’ the squad sergeant called.

Fiech was given a full deep scan. His body had a few inserts and a couple of OCtattoos, simple unisphere interfaces and a standard memorycell, none of them combat grade. They turned him over and secured his wrists. Two ion pistols remained trained on him. He was white and shaking now, on the verge of vomiting.

Paula removed her helmet, shaking out her hair. Fiech gave her a terrified stare.

‘It’s going to be rough on you,’ Paula said. ‘Even if you cooperate, memory reading is never pleasant. But if you give us the names and structure of your movement we can keep it to a minimum. We’ll just verify your information. Trust me, it’s worth it.’

Fiech started sobbing, tears tricking down his cheeks. ‘What the fuck is happening?’ he wailed. ‘What is going on?’

Paula gave him a contemptuous look. She’d expected more professionalism. ‘Take him down to the office. Prep him for a memory read. I’ll run it myself.’

A whimpering Fiech was dragged past her. Christabel came into the apartment, taking her helmet off to look round. ‘I’ll get forensics in, rip this place apart.’

‘Sure.’ A formality, Paula knew. The apartment was part of his cover, it’d be clean.

‘Hell of a first day back, boss. What are you going to do tomorrow?’

I was up early that morning, just like bloody always these days. Damn company is squeezing its staff to husks, always raising our performance targets. You can’t keep doing that year after year, people can only do so much.

Anyway… the first wave of commuters was buzzing about on the streets when I left the tower lobby. Poor bastards. Just like me. Squeezed on all sides. You can see it in their null expressions. All that effort and angst etched into their faces, and it was only five past seven.

I walked down O’Connal Street to the underground metro station. It’s steep ground just behind Sydney harbour, and the skyscrapers are so high you don’t see sunlight that time of the morning. Some of my fellow sufferers were gulping down Bean There coffee from plastic cups. I hate that. Food on the run gives me really bad indigestion.

The metro station has a direct line to the CST station on the south side of the city. It took eleven minutes. Three longer than usual. Every bugger is conspiring to make my life worse.

I missed the first train to Wessex. Typical. So I waited on the big platform, with its white wing roof. Me and two hundred others. Time was I used to be excited just being in CST’s Sydney station. Think of it. Out there past the end of the platform there’s eighteen wormhole generators, each one with tracks leading to a different phase one world. One line goes to Wessex, the junction to phase two space, with another twelve worlds beyond that. They’re going to open five more in the next three years. All that opportunity, the potential out there, and what does my life amount to? Bugger all. Corporate drone, that’s me. Worlds aren’t new starts and fresh hope, all that crap in the brochures. I’ve been to all of them. They’re just more developments that I’ve got to flog Colliac Fak’s bloody software to. We’re covering every H-congruous planet in the galaxy with concrete; building little nests with a window we can look at the neighbouring squalid skyscraper with. Yeah, we’re a really progressive species, us humans.

So I got the next train to Wessex. Standard class coach, and I just managed to grab a seat next to a window. Beat some woman to it, who looked real pissed at me when I slipped in ahead of her. Gotta learn, lady. Survival of the fittest on this route. Every route, every day.

The Wessex station made its Sydney cousin look small. Three big passenger terminals with gold and scarlet roofs curving high over twenty platforms apiece, you could probably fit my apartment skyscraper inside one of them. And a marshalling yard that sprawled over fifteen square miles, a giant zoo of cybernetic machines and warehouses.

I had to switch terminals for the train out to Ormal. That’s a five-minute trip on a pedwalk, then I had to find the right platform. The insert that provides my virtual vision has interface problems now, so the guidance icons I was picking up from the station management array were blurred. Nearly misread the damn thing. Finished up on platform 11B waiting with a big crowd for the train. These people weren’t so stressed and desperate as the ones back in Sydney. More prosperous types, with suits a lot more expensive than mine. They had neat little leather designer arrays edged in gold or platinum tucked into the top pockets. You could see their fingers flicking about minutely as they shunted icons around their high-rez virtual vision. I even saw a few of those new OCtattoos, the ones that light up, tracing colourful lines across their skin. One woman had green and blue spirals on her cheeks.

The carriage wasn’t so crowded, so I got a seat by a window again. I guess most of my fellow travellers were up in first class. Trip to Ormal was a simple eight minutes. We rolled out from the end of the platform and across the marshalling yard. I could see the row of wormhole generators up ahead like a metallic cliff, bloody huge great rectangular buildings side by side with a wormhole gateway at the end, like the mouth of an old-fashioned train tunnel. Only these ones had light shining out of them; alien suns spreading a multitude of subtle shades across the rusting jumble of the marshalling yard.

Our train headed straight for a pink-tinged hole, and I felt the tingle of the pressure curtain across my skin as we passed through. Then we were rolling along a couple of miles of track surrounded by open countryside with strange bulbous grey and white trees before we reached the CST planetary station.