Victor saw a lift opening, and ran for the doors.

There was a press of people at the head of the corridor T-junction. Two drone stretchers slid past Victor as he arrived, black bodybags zipped up. A couple of meditechs in white jumpsuits followed them down the corridor.

Lloyd McDonald watched them go with an expression of controlled fury. "Tekmercs, hardline flicking tekmercs active in New London," he said. "Hell, Victor, I'm sorry, this is one almighty great cock-up."

"Damage assessment?" Victor asked. It was the only way to do it, job first, shout and mourn later.

"They're inside," Lloyd shook his head disbelievingly. "They got into the Strategic Defence Ops Room. They loaded a top-grade virus into the screening 'ware, and shot their way in. Now they're holed up in there but tight. My people think they winged two of them, with one possible fatality. But there are still three confirmed actives left."

The corridor was four metres wide, three high; walls, floor, ceiling were solid rock, a single biolum strip ran along the ceiling. A lead-coloured slab of titanium/carbon alloy had risen out of the floor ten metres past the T-junction, solid and irresistible. Lloyd's people were already working on it.

The lock panel on the wall had been unscrewed, hanging on springs of coloured wire. A slim grey plastic case containing a terminal and several customized augmentation 'ware modules lay on the floor below it, fibre-optic cables plugging it into exposed circuit blocks. Suction-cup sensors were clinging to the edge of the door. Three security division technicians were standing round the case, talking in low, worried tones, ignoring the data displays filling the unit's small flatscreens.

Victor walked right up to the giant slab; estimating the gravity in the corridor at two-thirds standard.

"They glitched the entire lock system," one of the technicians said. "We think they've physically burnt out the 'ware. If we want in, the door will have to be broken down."

"Can you use a rip gun on it?" Victor asked.

"No, sir, this is over a metre thick. We're going to have to set up a cutting beam, and that's going to take time."

"How long?"

"Quite a while."

"Be more specific," Victor said forcefully.

"Ninety minutes, maybe two hours, before we can start. You see, we'll have to bring in environmental equipment to cope with the heat and the atmospheric contamination which the beam will generate. That will all have to be plumbed in to the colony life-support systems."

"It gets worse," Lloyd said. "This is only the first of three doors. All identical."

"How about blasting through?" Victor asked.

"We'd have to use shaped charges to blow the rock round the doors," said the technician. "And they're all countersunk; that means three or four blasts per door. It would take virtually the same amount of time as cutting, plus the blowback would ruin this entire floor of the security centre, and the environmental damage couldn't be contained as easily."

"Bloody hell." Victor rapped his knuckles on the alloy. "What exactly can they do in there? Can the platforms be retargeted to shoot out the solar panels and industrial modules?"

"Not at all," Lloyd said. "They can't activate a single platform, not without the authority codes. And Sean Francis is the only person who's got them."

Victor gave Lloyd a sharp look. "He's not in there, is he?"

"No. First thing I checked, he was having a meal in the residence. Should be here any minute."

Victor turned back to the obdurate door, trying to visualize what was going on behind it. "Have you got a psychic that can see inside?"

"I'm afraid not. There's two hundred metres of solid rock between here and the Ops Room, and the corridor zigzags. It was deliberately designed that way to stop any psychics from seeing inside. Not even a super-grade like Mandel could perceive it."

"So what the bloody hell are they in there for?" Even as he said it he knew the answer. "Shit. With the platforms inactive, there's nothing to stop the spaceplanes from docking now."

Lloyd punched a fist into his palm. "Of course. But who are they? They've obviously been up here for a while."

"Dolgoprudnensky," Victor said automatically. It fitted, they'd known about Charlotte coming down from New London right from the start. Greg had suggested that Kirilov would probably send agents up here to search for the alien. They must have attacked the Ops Room in order to allow their spaceplane to dock. But why? He couldn't think what could be on board that was so important it forced them into breaking cover and abandoning their search to make sure it got into the colony.

"We'd better check on those spaceplanes," Lloyd said.

They arrived at the command post at the same time as Sean Francis. Victor showed his card to the door and went in, with Lloyd bringing Sean up to date behind him.

The security command post was at the bottom of the security centre, where the gravity was virtually normal; a circular cavern cut into the rock, twenty-five metres in diameter, with a domed ceiling. It had three concentric console rings of terminals and communication stations, plugged into every part of the colony. The shirtsleeved desk jockeys operating them behaved with unruffled competence, filling the chamber with a sustained grumble of restless chatter. He was pleased to see there was no panic, just a smooth coordinated response to the alert status. Specialist technical and hardline teams being readied, transport priorities re-allocated, police and security personnel preparing to perform joint civilian control duties, keeping tourists and residents out of the way in case of an escalation, emergency services being brought to full stand-by status. He could remember the long hours spent finalizing contingency plans for the asteroid, that would be just after he was appointed Event Horizon's security chief, everything from biohazard procedure enforcement to full-scale evacuation.

Theatre-sized flatscreens were spaced round the walls, showing grainy green and blue images from photon amps dotted around Hyde Cavern.

Victor gave them a fast sweep, receiving a collage of rolling parkland, secluded gravel paths, small scurrying creatures, black glassy lakes, couples arm in arm, glaringly bright walls of illuminated buildings. It was New London at its usual pace, designer nightlife, providing an artificial fulfilment. There was no sign of any more tekmerc activity.

A large cube hung down from the centre of the ceiling like a boxy obsidian stalactite. New London floated at its centre, rotating slowly, shadowless, every crag in the rock beautifully detailed, with the flame-shaped silver stipple of the archipelago twisting upwards. A shoal of spacecraft glided round the outside, cool blue spheres, projecting green vector lines that wrapped the whole colony in an undulating net. The four englobing sentry layers of Strategic Defence platforms were flashing an urgent amber, as was the outer shell of passive sensor ELINT satellites.

"Where are the spaceplanes?" Victor asked Lloyd.

"Bernie Parkin will know," Lloyd said. "He's the duty commander tonight."

He walked down to the outer ring of consoles, and patted one of the desk jockeys on his shoulder. The man glanced over his shoulder, giving Victor a glimpse of a fifty-year-old face with rough leathery skin and thick lips, crinkled frown lines spread out from the corners of his grey eyes.

"What's the spaceplane situation?" Lloyd asked. "Any movement?"

"Sure thing," Bernie Parkin said. He reached over to one of the three keyboards on his console and tapped in an instruction sequence one banded. The image in the big ceiling cube began to shrink. A red dot swam into view with a green vector line extending right up to the southern end of New London.