Peter Hamilton: Fallen Fragon

Clearly there wasn't a single viral-written chromosome in her DNA, Simon decided with considerable distaste. Given her background, the absence of such v-writing inevitably meant she had low intelligence, bad physiology and zero aspirations. She was one of life's perpetual underdogs.

A female police officer sat on a barstool beside the waitress, a sympathetic expression on her face. If she'd taken in any of her specialist training, Simon thought, the first thing she would have done was move the woman outside, away from the scene.

His AS was unable to find the waitress's name. Apparently, the bar didn't have any kind of accountancy and management programs. The AS couldn't even find a registered link to the datapool; all it had was a phone line.

Simon sat down on the empty barstool next to the waitress. "Hello there. How are you feeling now, er...?"

Weepy eyes focused on him. "Sharlene," she whispered.

"Sharlene. A nasty thing to happen to anyone." He smiled at the police officer. "I'd like to talk to Sharlene alone for a moment, please."

She gave him a resentful look, but got up and walked off. No doubt going to complain to Finemore.

Adul stood behind Sharlene, surveying the bar. People tended to take a wide detour around him.

"I need to know what happened," Simon said. "And I do need to know rather quickly. I'm sorry."

"Jesus," Sharlene shivered. "I just want to forget about it, y'know." She tried to lift the whiskey to her lips. Blinked in surprise when she found Simon's hand on top of hers, preventing the tumbler from moving off the countertop.

"He frightened you, didn't he?"

"Too damn right."

"That's understandable. As you saw, he could cause you a great deal of physical discomfort. I, on the other hand, can destroy your entire life with a single call. But I won't stop there. I will obliterate your family as well. No jobs for any of them. Ever. Just welfare and junk for generations. And if you annoy me any more, I'll see you disqualified from welfare, too. Do you want you and your mother to be whores for Z-B squaddies, Sharlene? Because that's all I'll leave you with. The pair of you will be fucked into an early diseased death down on the Cairns Strip."

Sharlene's jaw dropped.

"Now, you tell me what I want to know. Focus that pathetic mush of flesh you call a brain, and I might even see you get a reward. Which way do you want to go, Sharlene? Annoyance or cooperation?"

"I want to help," she stammered fearfully.

Simon smiled wide. "Splendid. Now, was he wearing a Skin suit?"

"No. Not really. It was his arm. I saw it when he bought his beer. It was all fat, and a funny color."

"As if he had a suntan?"

"Yeah. That's it. Dark, but not as dark as an Aboriginal."

"Just his arm?"

"Yeah. But he had the valves on his neck, too. You know, like Frankenstein bolts, but made from flesh. I could see them just above his collar."

"You're sure about that?"

"Yes. I'm not making this up. He was a Zantiu-Braun squaddie."

"So what happened: he walked in and shot everyone?"

"No. He was talking to some bloke. Then Jack and a couple of the others went over. I guess they were looking for trouble. Jack's like that; a good bloke really, though. That's when it happened."

"The man fired darts that knocked everyone out?"

"Yes. I saw him hold his hand up high, and someone shouted that he was in Skin. I got down behind the counter. Then I heard everyone screaming and falling. When I got up, they were all just lying there. I thought... thought they were all dead."

"And you called the police."

"Yes."

"Had you ever seen this man before?"

"I don't think so. But he might have been in. We get a lot of people in here, you know."

Simon glanced round the bar, and just avoided wrinkling his nose in disgust. "I'm sure you do. What about the person he was talking to—have you seen him before?"

"No. But—"

"Yes?"

"He was Zantiu-Braun as well."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I've worked in bars all around Cairns. You get to recognize the squaddies, not just from their valves."

"Very well. So the shooter came in and bought a beer, then went straight over to the other squaddie, is that right?"

"Yes. That's about it."

"Try to remember, did either of them seem surprised that the other was there?"

"No. The one who was here first was drinking by himself, like he was waiting for the other."

"Thank you. You've been most helpful."

Captain Finemore gave Simon a surprised look when he emerged from the bar. "What happened?"

"Nothing," he said. "It wasn't a Skin suit He was using some kind of scatter pistol. I expect the dart toxin was produced in an underground lab. Shame the chemist wasn't a bit more attentive to the actual molecular structure when he attempted to retrosynth it."

"A shame?" The line of Captain Finemore's lips was set hard. "We've got one dead, and Christ alone knows if the rest of them will recover."

"Then you'll be glad we're getting out of your hair." Simon gestured along the clutter and confusion of Kuranda's main street. "It's all yours. But if you do need any help rounding the shooter up, then don't hesitate to ask. Our boys can always do with a bit of live training."

"I'll keep it in mind," Finemore said.

As before, police and civilians parted for him with sullen, silent resentment. He ran quickly through the TVL77D's start-up procedure and lifted from the baked mud. His personal AS reported there was no unauthorized removal of a Skin suit from the Cairns base armory.

"Check this out for me," he told Adul. "I want to know who it was walking round in Skin."

"Some squaddie got jumped in a bar. Do you really think it's that important?"

"The incident isn't. The fact that there's no reference to Skin missing is. And I'm curious why two of our people should choose to meet in such a godforsaken place."

"Yes, sir."

Zantiu-Braun's Third Fleet base centered on the old Cairns International Airport just to the north of the town. There were no commercial flights there anymore; the main transport link was the TranzAus magrail train, bringing cargo and people northward with smooth efficiency at five hundred kilometers an hour. Now the parking aprons held squadrons of Third Fleet helicopters along with scramjet-powered spaceplanes and a few dark, missilelike executive supersonic jets; eight old lumbering turboprop craft maintained by Z-B provided a civil coastwatch and rescue service all the way out to New Guinea. As a result, the airspace over Cairns was the busiest section in Australia apart from Sydney, where the remaining airlines had their hub. Synthetic hihydrogen fuels had replaced natural petroleum products, ecologically sounder but relatively expensive to produce, the cost pushing air travel right back where it started in the twentieth century, the preserve of governments, corporations and the rich.

With mass tourism dying and agriculture effectively eliminated by vat-grown food and worsening ultraviolet infall, Queensland was fast becoming an economic wasteland in 2265 when Zantiu-Braun was offered zero-tax start-up incentives to site a new wave of Earth-to-orbit operations there.

In those days, the operation was purely commercial. Freight spaceplanes boosted factory station modules to loworbit stations and returned with valuable microgee products, while the passenger variants ferried colonists up to starships. After 2307 that all began to change. Asset realization became the new priority, and the nature of the cargoes that the space-planes hauled up to low orbit switched accordingly. The number of colonists flying from Cairns fell to zero inside of a decade, replaced by strategic security personnel. Third Fleet support systems took over from industrial shipments.