Charlotte watched Victor and Lloyd exchange a nonplussed glance, then gasped. On the big flatscreen behind them, black armour-suited figures were emerging from the spaceplane and bouncing in long steps across the crater wall towards the docking complex.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The Celestials' village gave Suzi the fucking creeps. A jungle village buried inside an asteroid, mega-primitive sophistication. It was a real sense tripper. Twenty billion tonnes of rock above, and a vacuum infinity below. Bad.

She worked hard to block out the conflict.

Melvyn was doing his job properly. Sending scouts into the surrounding catacombs, building a detailed picture of the zone. Major fault zone—why the fuck did Julia have to call it that? And just how many minor zones were there, exactly?

She sidestepped her way along one of the cracks leading off from the village cave. At least that tit of an armourer back at Listoel had been right about her knee, the suit carried it well. The crack opened into a dry cave with a long fissure along its sharply sloping bottom. The rock glittered in the infrared beam her helmet lights gave off. Tiny flecks of metal frozen in silica. She couldn't see the base of the fissure, and it was too thin for anyone to climb. Not even the Celestials had used the cave.

She used her rangefinder laser to map the cave accurately, and spliced the result in with her inertial guidance unit data. When she scuffled her way back into the village cave the package was added to the composite Melvyn was assembling. He updated her own 'ware in return.

The catacomb map was superimposed over her photon-amp image. Cumulus clouds of solid light—reds, blues, and greens—caves, passages wide enough for a suit to traverse, dangerous cracks, the lake. Maybe fault zone was right after all. The surrounding area was rotten with cavities, as if the rock was mouldy.

Then there was Dennis Naverro to cultivate, one of the crash team's remaining two sac psychics. Melvyn had wanted to widen some of the cracks leading off from the cave to give the team greater tactical positioning. She'd teamed up with Dennis, the two of them blasting away awkward chunks of rock with their Konica rip guns, kicking the debris out of the way. Turning the crack into a corridor an armour suit could run down. She would need Dennis later; he didn't know it yet but he was going to pinpoint Leol Reiger for her.

The flatscreens in the middle of the village allowed her to monitor the spaceplane's progress. A squad of tekmercs had disembarked, penetrating the airlock sector.

Victor and Lloyd McDonald squirted over the images from security cameras in the southern endcap docking complex. She watched the image with her right eye, leaving the left free to pick the rock pinnacles that needed clearing from the crack. The images interlaced, both ghostly, transparent, her attention wandering between the two. Concentration would give one a solidity, banishing the second.

She saw Talbot Lombard standing in a corridor, hands raised above his head as the tekmercs boiled out of a space-plane reception room. Lockheed rip guns were levelled at him.

"Hey, what is this?" A handsome tanned face registered genuine bafflement.

He was flung against the wall, two tekmercs gripped his arms and pinned him there, feet twitching twenty centimetres above the ground. An armour-suited figure walked ponderously down the corridor, and stopped in front of him.

Leol Reiger. Had to be. Going for pose, as always. Crap artist.

"Listen, man," Talbot Lombard yelled frantically. "Where's Jepson? Which one of you is Jepson? I've got a deal, man!"

"Congratulations, you just asked the right question," Leol Reiger said. "You get to live a few minutes more."

"Did Jepson send you?"

"That's right. Who are you?"

"Tol, they call me Tol."

"Well, they call me Tol, where can I find the nuclear force generator data?"

"Down in the cave. He'll bring it, he said he would. I was supposed to take Jepson there tonight, after he'd put together a deal to manufacture atomic structuring technology."

"You're the interface?"

"Yes."

"Between Jepson and who?"

"I don't know, man. He runs a drone, real smart hard-wired. I couldn't backtrack its interface."

"So you've never actually met this person?"

"No, never."

Leol Reiger stepped back, making room for another tekmerc. This one stood so close to Talbot Lombard the suit helmet virtually touched his nose. Talbot Lombard closed his eyes and began to whine, fingers scrabbling against the rock wall.

Suzi felt her belly rumble. The guy in the suit must be a psychic. Not that she was squeamish when it came to using them. Had to be done most deals these days. But there was no way to fight something like that, nothing to get hold of, nothing to kick. Fucking spooky, rutting around in someone's mind.

The two tekmercs holding Talbot Lombard let go, he dropped to the floor, legs collapsing. His breath was coming in huge judders.

"The truth. Well done," said Leol Reiger. "Where are these caves of yours?" His boot nudged Talbot Lombard. "Where?"

"Northern endcap, they're under the northern endcap. I swear."

"Show us." A gauntlet grasped Talbot Lombard's upper arm and pulled him to his feet. He flopped about like a rag doll.

"Now," said Reiger.

The tekmerc squad marched off up the corridor, with Talbot Lombard scrambling to keep up. Twenty-five of the shits. Suzi wondered if she knew any of them. Most likely.

"There are four coaches waiting for them in the docking complex's station," Victor said. His voice was wonderfully smooth, audio silk. Him and Leol, mirror men, the same on opposite sides.

"Are the Celestial Apostles clear?" Melvyn asked.

"Yes, we collected them from the Whitechapel station; they're being parcelled out around the hotels. The tekmercs are all yours. I don't want them loose in Hyde Cavern, Melvyn. Snuff them."

"Yes, sir."

"Suzi?" Victor asked.

"Here."

"This is Melvyn's show, OK? I know you want Reiger. So do I. But it's a collective kill. Dead is dead."

"What is this? You been rapping with Greg?"

"I know you, Suzi."

She smiled unseen in her helmet. "Bollocks. I'm not gonna screw Melvyn's deal. Hell, I'm gonna make him an offer when this is over, plug him into my catalogue. Too flicking good to waste his time with Event Horizon."

"Take care, Suzi."

"Yeah. I was kinda planning on it."

Give him this: Melvyn knew his tactics. She advised when he asked for her opinion, knowing how Leol ran his hardline deals, probing with expendables—the whole world was expendable to Leol. But figuring out the combat routine was down to Melvyn.

Leol Reiger was heading for Moorgate station, using three of the coaches. It meant they'd be coming in through the lake cave. Two of the crash team were rigging sensors and setting charges to seal the lake off once the tekmercs were inside. There'd be no way out except through the village, and that was where Melvyn was concentrating his fire-power, the killing ground.

The security captain stood on top of the staircase, directing the crash team into position. There were ledges up near the roof, in the cracks, behind the piles of rock rubble produced when the Celestials levelled the floor. Even a couple of them lying in a small cave above the ring of solaris spots. Climbed up there like a pair of spiders.

Suzi and Dennis Naverro were in one of the cracks which led back to three deep caves.

"Suzi, Dennis, back a metre," Melvyn said.

She took two steps back.

"OK, that's where your infrared signature cuts off."

"Got it." She loaded the coordinate into the suit guidance 'ware, then pushed her thumb into the flinty rock and scratched a line. "Hey, Dennis, you got any intuition loaded in your skull?"