Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

Jenny had provisionally tagged a couple of the navy team, who were also loafing on the periphery of the park.

“This is becoming farcical,” she said. “They’re going to spot us even if she doesn’t. We can’t keep following her like this all day. Their scrutineers will catch our encrypted traffic if nothing else. We’re trained in avoiding observation teams, not being one.”

“You’re right,” he said as Jamas walked past a woman they suspected was navy. “Everybody disengage. We’re going to change tactics.”

“What are you doing?” Jenny asked.

“I’m going to watch the watchers. It’s the logical choice.”

Jenny bit back on any criticism. It was a risky decision, but carrying on like this simply was not an option. She watched Bernadette change direction quickly, and hurry for the escalator up to the elevated platform. It was a junction station, with four possible directions for the monorail trains to take. The woman they thought might be navy was on the station’s second escalator.

“Rosamund, Jamas, we’re taking this one.” Kieran sent them the visual file of a man who was strolling along a hundred meters ahead of them. “He’s been part of the navy box for fifteen minutes. They’ll rotate him now.”

Keeping the navy operative under observation was considerably easier. Kieran was right, he was being rotated, and he clearly had no idea he was being observed. After Bernadette slipped away along the monorail the man changed direction and caught a cab. The Guardians followed in three separate taxis, grinding their way through Tridelta’s daytime congestion.

The navy was using the Dongara Harbor police precinct as their headquarters. Hanging around the police building added a certain edge to the Guardian team’s operation, but the harbor had a lot of waterside bars and restaurants. They took it in turns to sit at the outside tables, scanning the precinct with retinal inserts.

Halfway through the afternoon Jenny called Adam. “Guess who just drove down into the precinct garage?”

“Tell me,” Adam said.

“Paula Myo.”

“Indeed? What with that and the Almada hotel fracas, I’m almost sorry I left.”

“But surely this is important? The navy is chasing a Starflyer agent. They must know it exists.”

“Paula is Senate Security, not navy, but yes, senior echelons of the Commonwealth political class must be at least aware of the possibility now. I’ll inform Bradley.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Stay close to the navy team without compromising yourselves, and observe as much as you can. There’s obviously no way you can break into the Starflyer agent network through Bernadette anymore, but I would like to know what she’s doing on Illuminatus. I suspect the planet is where a lot of the Starflyer’s agents are wetwired; heaven knows we use it often enough. If Myo exposes one of their cells it can only act to our advantage.”

“Okay, we’ll follow if we can. Kieran’s hired some cars for us.”

“Good luck in that traffic.”

The sun was starting to sink below the horizon when eight large cars came out of the precinct garage, traveling in fast convoy. They didn’t have sirens and strobes on, but the civic traffic management arrays were obviously shunting cars and trucks out of their way.

Jenny drained the last of her iced tea. “Let’s go,” she told the others.

***

It was a warm evening again, though the vanishing sun seemed to take the humidity with it. Mellanie traveled with Murdo on the monorail to a station just half a block away from Greenford Tower. The bars and clubs along Allwyn Street were just setting up for the night trade, as yet they had few customers. Even the traffic seemed lighter than usual.

Murdo led her across the Greenford’s plaza where the fountains were pumping their jets high into the darkening sky. Far above them, the airship docked to the top of the tower was preparing for its flight; the lights on the observation deck were shining brightly as servicebots and waiters laid the tables ready for the Michelin-starred meal to be served as it soared over the jungle.

The Saffron Clinic’s private door opened for Murdo as soon as he put his hand on the sensor. It was a small narrow lobby inside, with a single elevator.

Mellanie started to key some inserts as they rose up to the thirty-eighth floor, allowing her to review the electronic environment she was moving through. The elevator had several systems, none of them new or elaborate, dating back to the tower net’s last refurbishment fifteen years ago. Above her, she could sense the clinic’s sophisticated and powerful e-shield. She deactivated all but the most elementary OCtattoos and inserts; the SI’s systems were very hard to detect when they were inert, so it had promised her.

The elevator rose through the e-shield. It stopped and the doors slid open. Mellanie was abruptly the center of a deep scan. It was a bare hallway outside, with pipes running along the walls and bright polyphoto strips on the ceiling. A couple of bored human guards, both of them armed, sat at a desk beside the elevator doors.

“Who’s this?” one of them asked curtly, nodding at Mellanie. He didn’t bother getting up. The deep scan couldn’t have revealed anything about her.

“New trainee,” Murdo said. “I cleared her with personnel this afternoon.”

The guard grunted. “You’re Saskia?”

“Yes,” she said anxiously.

“Okay.” He propelled a handheld array across the top of the desk. “Put your palm on that, we need a biometric. You’re not cleared for the medical levels yet, understand? You don’t go off this floor.”

“Yes.”

“If you try to go up there we shoot you. You do not discuss anything you see in here with anybody from outside. If you do, we shoot you. You do not bring anything into the clinic other than yourself and the clothes you are wearing. You will be issued with a uniform. If you bring anything in, like a sensor, we shoot you.”

Mellanie nodded anxiously. The guards grinned at each other.

“Ignore this lame-ass bullshit,” Murdo said. “These two dickbrains couldn’t hit the side of a skyscraper from twenty paces.”

The guard showed him a vigorous hand gesture.

Murdo gave him the finger in return; he and Mellanie walked off down the corridor. He steered her into a locker room. Three nurses were getting changed to go on shift. They stopped talking at the sight of Murdo and one of them scowled.

“Most of the staff use this place to change,” Murdo said. “Except for the doctors and management; they just wear their own suits.” He walked along one of the locker rows. “This one’s yours. Use your thumb on the scanner to open it. Those morons on the desk should have updated the network by now.”

Mellanie pressed her thumb to the small scanner patch, and the locker opened. It was empty. “I thought I got a uniform?”

“I’ll requisition one from supply. Just wait a minute.” He walked away around the end of the row.

Mellanie took a good look around the locker room while Murdo got changed, bringing her inserts on-line one at a time. There was no active sensor, only a couple of cameras looking down from the ceiling. She fed a scrutineer program into the locker room’s array, cautiously examining the structure of the clinic’s internal net. There were an impressive number of security systems and programs, especially on the upper floors. They were all protected by encrypted gates that she didn’t have the skill to circumvent. However, the reception array with its open connection to the Illuminatus cybersphere was easy to access. Her e-butler rode in on a Trojan finance transfer, and began to search admission records for five days on either side of the date that Michelangelo said the lawyers had arrived.