S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

Our job is to see that it does not happen. No wonder my precog is blinded, with Trimback facing us!

Jack engaged the engine and let the big eighteen-wheeler purr forward; it was a nearly new Daimler hybrid, and the all-glass control panel looked like an F-42's. It also prompted the driver in a female German voice that somehow conveyed a grating, hectoring, anal-retentive personality along with a strong Mecklenburger accent.

"Very slow," it said. "Continue strictly on this line-"

A glowing track came up on the screen forward of the wheel, with an outline of the truck approaching a matching form beneath the crane.

"Halt! Reverse ten centimeters!"

"Shut up; it's a fucking truck and I'm only two inches off!"

"Halt! Reverse ten-"

" Shut up, you fucking Nazi bitch!" Jack screamed, hammering a fist on the wheel and punching the controls more or less at random until he found the mute function; then he tapped the ready icon on the screen.

"Ve haffwayz of making you stop talkink!" he shouted, then added: "Sorry," in more normal tones.

Oh, my, but Jack is not wired too tightly at all now and then, Guha thought-not for the first time. At least I only scream when I am dreaming.

The screen switched to one of the pickups on the cab of the truck, showing the huge four-legged crane as it trundled over on its man-high wheels. The heavy weight spooled down smoothly and landed on the truck bed with a muffled clunk. Clamps were inserted and turned. Guha hopped down briefly, did a visual examination to confirm the video and sensors, and then climbed back in.

"You may now proceed to exit gate seventy-six-B," the truck said. "Please follow the indicated route. Do not deviate from the route or Europoort Security will be alerted. A condition of heightened security awareness is in force. Thank you."

" Fuck you, bitch!" Jack snarled, as he pulled away.

"It's just a truck, Jack," Guha soothed.

"Then it won't mind me calling it names, will it?" he grumbled.

Guha slipped a hand inside the toolbox and let it rest on the compact little Steyr machine pistol there; it wouldn't be much use if an adept were around, but it would kill stray renfields very effectively. The gray sky began to drizzle, and Jack was driving as much by the telescreens as through the windshield. They slowed again for the exit scan. There were more personnel there than usual.

"Uh-oh," Jack said softly.

The extra personnel were in camo fatigues and body armor; as they came closer she saw that they had C7 assault rifles and wore badges shaped like a burning grenade.

" Koninklijke Marechaussee," she muttered. "So much for machine pistols. And they are not renfields. Not really, they do not know for whom they are working."

"Big fucking difference," Jack muttered.

Koninklijke Marechaussee meant Royal Gendarmerie; specialists in border protection and counterterrorism work, with a well-deserved reputation for professionalism. This wasn't a problem you could solve by slipping a couple of hundred euros from hand to hand.

And they had a van that looked like it was full of some sort of detection equipment to add to the usual scanners; she could sense its buzzing activity. The forty-foot container behind them was lined with lead fabric, among other things, but it did have a nuclear weapon in it, and it was a bomb made by amateur fanatics for a one-off use at that.

"You take care of the gendarmes," Jack said quietly. "I'll fox the machinery."

Guha nodded stiffly. "I would guess someone found the little workshop of the jihadi elves in Veracruz," she said. "And the DNA would tell them who made it."

The workshop would have, besides half a dozen very decayed bodies with interesting personal dossiers, an underground facility with unmistakable traces showing that someone had been handling plutonium there. Even if the original theft from Seversk hadn't been detected, which it probably had, the Veracruz thing would have security forces all over the world on the alert; even the Shadowspawn might be concerned, since they were more vulnerable to ionizing radiation than true humans anyway, especially when night-walking or postcorporeal.

Guha smiled grimly. A very long time ago, human rebels had slain Shadowspawn with everything from silver arrowheads to poison, but they had always buried the bodies with carved disks of natural pitchblende-uraninite-in the grave as well.

To make sure they stayed dead.

She licked dry lips as the computers in the gendarmes' equipment identified the serial number on the container and shook hands with the truck's own IT system and the Europoort mainframe. One of the military police held up a hand, carefully not standing in the way where a desperate terrorist might have run him down; the road had a pop-up toothed barrier that would rip their wheels to ribbons if they tried that anyway.

Another walked towards her side of the cab, and two more went towards the cargo containers with sensor paddles in their hands.

My, my, would they not get a surprise if they looked in there! she thought, fighting down a hysterical giggle.

"Can I help you, sir?" she said in excellent Dutch as she keyed down the window.

Jack slumped down in his seat; he couldn't go into full trance here, but that was close. And he had the easier task, dealing with the coarse and simple processes inside computer circuits. Though they were both going to be very shaky after this. Using the Power when you didn't have the biochemical equipment to feed on others-or even to use the ghastly stored blood that was a very bad alternative-meant that you were taking it out of yourself.

Guha felt a familiar, complex set of emotions shudder through her hindbrain. A dark longing that could never be satisfied, even if you gave in to it. She had enough of the inheritance to want to feed, but blood would simply be contaminated seawater to her stomach. Best not to think about it. That way lay madness; that way lay Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Bathory and Jeffrey Dahmer.

I do not know if the ones like Sheila Poison are luckier or even farther down the ramp to Hell, she thought. She could feed. She does use Red Cross blood, foul though that tastes, to give her strength. She could give in to the temptation, while I know it would be useless. She probably even feels that she is better because she has a real choice and refuses the power, the ecstasy…I am not a bad person. I am just a good person who wants to do bad things. I know giving in would do nothing except make me hate myself even more.

But the needs coiled down in the base of her skull knew nothing of reason or consequences. They just wanted. And they never went away, though it was worse when she used the Power.

" Goede middag, mevrouw," the yellow-haired gendarme said with a flat, nasal accent in his standard Dutch, which meant he'd probably grown up speaking Frisian. "Papers, please."

"Thank you," he added as she handed over the manifest and the trucks papers and her and Jack's-false-IDs.

She noticed a wachtmeesters single chevron on his sleeve, which made him a sergeant, more or less. He had a headset monocle deployed over one eye, part of a full mil spec infantry IT outfit; it would be reading her face and running the digitized pattern through the EU database, and matching it to the papers she'd just given him. That didn't worry her; planting data in computers just wasn't very difficult for the Brotherhood's specialists, who combined high-level conventional IT skills with low-level Wreaking. That worked better than the usual Shadowspawn habit of simply making the system forget them. A false positive was much more convincing than mere absence.

She wasn't very worried that they were slightly in violation of EU regulation (EC) No. 561/2006 on driver rest periods either, which just added a touch of authenticity. Nobody could actually abide by all of Brussels' pettifogging micromanagement even if they wanted to; sliding around it was a way of life.