Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

***

“Paula, we’ve got an interesting situation developing.”

“What is it, Hoshe?”

“I’m with Nadine and Jacob on Illuminatus, running the electronic surveillance on Tarlo while he goes after Beard. Now Gus and Isaiah have joined us; they’re monitoring Renne.”

“So both targets are on Illuminatus?”

“Yes. Renne arrived twenty minutes ago, following Bernadette Halgarth. As soon as Renne got here she called Tarlo, then five minutes later Tarlo called Bernadette. It was an encrypted message and routed through a onetime address, but for once we got lucky; we infiltrated scrutineer software into Bernadette’s hotel node as soon as Warren told me she was here. We haven’t managed to decrypt yet, but the message Tarlo sent is the one she received. It looks like Tarlo was warning her she’s under observation. There’s no other reason.”

“Tarlo. Damnit.”

“I’m sorry, Paula.”

“Not your fault. I knew it had to be one of them.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Keep a close eye on him and Bernadette. I’ll join you in a couple of hours.”

“Are you going to tell Renne?”

“Possibly. Our priority has to be getting Tarlo into custody. But I don’t want to scare off Bernadette until she’s contacted whoever she’s there to meet. This is our first real chance to penetrate the Starflyer agent network. Timing is going to be critical.”

“Tarlo’s going to be wetwired. Bernadette as well, probably.”

“Definitely. Don’t worry, my team will be armed.”

***

The room didn’t look like anything special, a simple cube of gray walls and a worn carpet. Two polyphoto strips in the ceiling made it brighter than it strictly needed to be. A single air-conditioning grille high above the malmetal door hissed away unobtrusively. There weren’t any sensors visible, but they had to be there somewhere.

Robin Beard sat on a cheap plastic chair with his feet up on the table that was bolted to the middle of the floor. He didn’t look particularly concerned that he’d been arrested. But then, Lucius thought, he’d been in custody so many times he was familiar with the routine. Say nothing and wait for the lawyer.

Lucius followed Tarlo into the interview room. The blond surfer gave Beard a friendly smile.

“You’re not a lawyer,” Beard said.

“Smart,” Tarlo said. “I like that. That’s going to be helpful for both of us.”

“You guys are really going to suffer for this,” Beard said. “I was walking through a garage and you restrained me for no valid reason with undue force. You didn’t even read me any rights.”

“That’s because you don’t have any,” Tarlo said.

Beard smiled.

“Sit down,” Tarlo said.

The smile flickered on Beard’s face. “I am—”

Tarlo’s fist swung fast, smashing into the small man’s nose. There was a crunch of bone breaking as the chair tipped back spilling him onto the floor, limbs all in a tangle. His head caught a nasty crack as he went down. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Beard wailed. One hand was cupping his nose, with a copious amount of blood leaking through his fingers; the other hand was probing the back of his skull. His eyes had watered.

Lucius had taken a half pace forward, then halted, unsure what to do. He glanced to the ceiling corner where one of the visual sensors was hidden. Nobody was calling him.

Tarlo grinned as he squatted down beside the mechanic. “Always hurts like a son of a bitch, doesn’t it? Busted my own nose a couple of times on a board, so I know.”

Beard glanced desperately at Lucius. “You saw that. You’re my witness.”

Lucius managed to let his gaze drift away. Tarlo had told him to say nothing, but this wasn’t what he was expecting.

“We couldn’t get hold of a good cop to work this routine properly,” Tarlo said. “They’re all out on the streets helping decent citizens in these troubled times. So we’re just going to have to do the bad cop, worse cop setup instead. Know what? The boys in the office, they’re running a pool on how long you can stand up to the beating before you crack. I’ve got fifty pounds on ten minutes, but I’m gonna be on the level with you here, buddy, I’m not even going to wait that long.” He drew a slim medical infuser patch from a pocket.

“There’s quite a few street names for this; you ever heard of hardbang? No? How about painamp?”

Beard shook his head, giving Tarlo a frightened look.

“The thing is, this is like the opposite of an anesthetic,” Tarlo said. “It makes the pain progressively worse. Really, badly, worse. I mean I’ve see people screaming in agony from a torn nail when they’re tripping on this. So you can imagine what that nose is going to do to you, especially when Lucius here starts thumping it.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Beard shouted. His wide eyes were staring wildly at the infuser patch.

“We’re not police,” Tarlo said. “We’re navy. So there is no comeback for us no matter how bad this gets for you, how many of your rights we stamp on. No lawyer is going to come charging in to save you. Do you understand that?”

Beard swallowed hard and nodded.

“You will do as I tell you. Now do you want me to pump a dangerous dose of this into you? Is that the way I make you cooperate?”

Beard shook his head. The blood was running right down his grubby shirt to drip onto the floor. “No, sir.”

“Hey.” Tarlo grinned around at Lucius. “Haven’t been called sir in a long time. How about that? This man has respect. I like that.” He turned back to Beard. “So do I infuse?”

“No. No, sir, I’ll cooperate.”

“Good man.” Tarlo put his hand out. Beard gave it a mistrustful look, but eventually allowed Tarlo to help him to his feet. “You introduced a friend of yours, Dan Cufflin, to an agent who supplies people for illegal activities,” Tarlo said. “Correct?”

Beard frowned, trying to concentrate. “Yeah, I remember Dan.”

“What was the agent’s name?”

“I don’t know. He’s just the Agent.”

“Where is he?”

“Here, on Illuminatus, I think, this is where we normally meet.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever met him twice, and that was in different places: bars. We normally use the unisphere.”

“Today you meet him again, in person, on Illuminatus. Fix it up. Now.”

***

Jenny McNowak had checked herself and Kanton into the Grialgol Intersolar hotel on Lower Monkira Wharfside Avenue, on the opposite side of the street from the Octavious, and two blocks down. After that there wasn’t much she could do apart from load scrutineer programs into arrays in and around the Octavious. The registration array was easy to hack, giving them Bernadette’s room number, 2317, as well as a list of other guests, which they ran through their database.

After that, they’d managed to get up on the Grialgol’s roof, and position a sensor that could zoom in on Bernadette’s twenty-third-floor window. It was dark by then; there was nothing else they could do except wait.

Kieran McSobel arrived a couple of hours later, bringing Jamas McPeierls and Rosamund McKratz with him. There was enough room for all of them; Jenny had booked a suite in the Grialgol. After weeks in Rialto’s rock-bottom economy accommodation, and long stints cramped up in cheap hired cars, the suite with its luxury fittings, especially in the bathroom, was a pleasant interlude. It gave her a lot of satisfaction being in a more expensive room than Bernadette, whom Jenny had come to envy and despise for the ostentation she lived in on EdenBurg. She was looking forward to testing the Grialgol’s room service menu.

“Nothing much to report,” Jenny said as the newcomers began to set up a series of specialist arrays they’d brought with them in the suite’s main octagonal lounge. She and Kanton had arrived with almost nothing other than their standard field operation packs. Bernadette had caught everyone by surprise when she left EdenBurg.