Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

The final row of hangars, which the remaining blimpbots operated out of, were kept in a better state of repair, with so many new panels fixed to the framework they produced a check pattern so pronounced it looked like the original design. Maintenancebots stood along the base of the walls, their wide, flexible crawler trolleys looking alarmingly spindly for the weight they had to carry.

Powerful halogen bulbs on the top of the hangars produced elongated smears of light down the thoroughfare, which were easy enough for Stig to avoid. His sensors couldn’t detect any kind of electronic activity, anyway. The management building was at the end of the row, another construct of molded carbon panels that had been modified and added to over the years to become a strange amalgamation of cubes, cylinders, and domes.

Stig avoided the main entrance, and walked around to one of the smaller doors at the side. It wasn’t even locked. Every light was on inside. He moved through the corridors, going up and down stairs, checking rooms. The whole place was completely deserted, not even the guards had turned up for their shift.

Stig finished up in the security office, and opened a link to Olwen. “Everything clear in here. I’ve loaded our software into the arrays. I’m opening the gate for you now.” A bank of screens showed various camera images of the aerodrome, with the biggest concentration around the main entrance, the management building, and the inside of the operational hangars. He watched the barrier at the main entrance lift up. A couple of minutes later, the Guardians drove their three trucks through.

He met them outside the service door on the first hangar; it occupied a small corner segment of the flight doors, but it was still big enough to take two trucks side by side. Olwen climbed down out of the cab once they were inside.

“I’ve never been this close to one before,” she said in admiration.

There were two blimpbots tethered end to end inside the hangar. The dark ellipsoid shapes were a hundred fifty meters long, and fifty meters high. With their ducted fans folded back along the fuselage their resemblance to airborne whales was even more acute.

“Me neither,” he admitted. Up close, the blimpbots weren’t quite so impressive. Their fuselage envelopes had as many patches as the hangar that sheltered them, although they were a lot neater. The series of payload bay doors that lined the belly were open, showing various mechanical latches and grabs in the cavities. “I didn’t expect them to be this crude.”

“But they’ll do the job,” she said. “How many are there?”

“Twenty-two in the hangars. Three have had their flightworthiness certificate withdrawn, pending maintenance, but they’ll do for what we want.”

The other Guardians were climbing down out of the trucks.

“Let’s get at it,” Olwen told them. “We can install most of our systems by morning.”

“The next wormhole cycle starts midafternoon,” Stig said. “That’ll give us enough time to get them all airborne and positioned. They can circle the city until we call them in.”

“What about the revitalization team and the engineers?”

“I don’t think they’re coming back. This place is abandoned. And if they do show up, we’ll just hang on to them so they don’t raise the alarm.”

“All right then.”

One of the trucks had been backed up as close as it could get to the underside of the first blimpbot. The Guardians let the rear gate down, and pulled out a set of wheel ramps. Stig and Olwen went over to help them. A trollybot inched its way down the wheel ramps, carrying a fat cylinder nearly four meters long. The metal ramps creaked under it, betraying the weight of the cylinder.

“Are these going to work?” Olwen asked.

“I hope so.” Stig peered up into the truck. “We’ve only got six. I’d be pleased if just one of them reaches 3F Plaza.” He could see another of the cylinders resting on its cradle inside. Crates full of decoy drone and chaff dispensers were strapped to the floor around it. “We need to fit dispensers to all the blimpbots, including the ones we’ve armed. That way the Institute won’t be able to spot the difference until it’s too late.”

“No kidding?” Olwen said.

“Sorry. I get kind of nervous around bombs like this.”

They followed the trollybot as it rolled down to the central payload bay. The Guardians started to attach the blimpbot’s internal hoist cables to the cylinder.

“We’re picking up a lot more rumors from the Institute troops,” Olwen said. “They’re all talking about some kind of attack on the Commonwealth.”

“The Primes again,” Stig said.

“Yeah, but, Stig, it was a big attack; they’re consistent about that. It’s making them very jittery. There’s even been talk about some of them breaking through to Half Way.”

“Stupid of them. They don’t know if there are any Carbon Goose planes left at Port Evergreen.”

“It was only a whisper.”

Probably true, though, Stig thought. Guardians and their supporters had taken jobs at the pubs and clubs that the Institute troops had established as their own in Armstrong City. They provided a slow but steady trickle of information on the troops and their assignments. Morale, already low, was heading downhill fast. The soldiers had all signed up for medium-term contracts to help the Institute combat raids from guerrilla bands out on the Great Iril Steppes; none of them expected to be doing urban paramilitary duties. Being the most hated group on the planet, subject to constant abuse and harassment, was taking its toll. Their officers had to let them out at night; safe together, they drank and bitched like any soldier since Troy.

“Anybody let on if they’re expecting an arrival?”

“I’d have told you. They don’t know, too low down the food chain.”

“It can’t be long now.”

She watched the heavy cylinder rise up into the cargo bay, flinching each time the ancient winch chains let out a creak of protest at the weight. “You’ve done everything you can do. It can only come through at preset times, and we know what those are to the second. We’ve got 3F Plaza covered by every kind of sensor the human race has ever invented. If those troops even so much as glance at the gateway we’ll know about it. So stop worrying, we’ve got it covered.”

Stig looked up at the blimpbots, and laughed at the audacity of the plan they’d come up with. “Right, who’s going to notice a goddamn airship on a bombing run? Dreaming heavens!”

“Nobody,” she said, smiling back with the same wild enthusiasm. “That’s the beauty. Fly them in low enough, and they’ll be over the walls of 3F Plaza before the Institute can aim a single weapon at them.”

“I hope you’re right.” He gave a start as the winch mechanism stopped with a nasty metallic grinding sound. The bomb was completely inside the bay. “Let’s work out how to get this brute secure. I really do want to have them all in the air by morning.”

***

Oscar didn’t expect a downtime of more than six hours. Enough to recharge the Dublin’s niling d-sinks, and reload the forward section with Douvoir missiles and quantumbusters. Fleet Command had indicated they’d be sent right back to Hanko. After the wormholes had vanished, they’d destroyed over eighty Prime ships before their armaments were depleted.

As soon as the starship eased its bulk into a docking station at Base One, the secure encrypted message popped into Oscar’s hold file. Admiral Columbia wanted to see him right away. Along with the rest of the crew, Oscar was still in shock by the way the War Cabinet had dumped shit from a great height on Wilson. Resentment was a strong twin of that feeling; he was tempted to tell his new commander where to shove his meeting, an impulse made worse by worry that Columbia was implementing a political clearout of his new office. Oscar had been one of the first people Wilson had recruited, making him a prominent loyal member of the old regime.