Renne had fumed at being given the perimeter duty. After all that the Paris office had been through lately she wanted to get into an armor suit and kick some serious ass. But the duty wasn’t just putting up barricades and liaising with the local police. Everyone brought down from the clinic had to be examined and confirmed. A lot of them would be criminals of some kind, it was that sort of clinic, which meant there was a good probability they would be weapons wetwired. Paula kept emphasizing how the perimeter was to be maintained. It was good to be working with the boss again. Renne just wished she were on the sharp edge of the operation. She couldn’t decide if she’d been given the perimeter duty because of Paula’s earlier suspicions. That she’d ever been on the suspect list in the first place had shocked her. But that was the boss for you, logical to the last. Renne was still reeling from hearing about Tarlo’s treachery. They’d known each other for nearly fifteen years.
The holding chambers they’d set up in the subbasement were starting to fill up with the Saffron Clinic people. All the fighting was over. There was no more debris falling onto the plaza, though water was still dribbling down the face of the Greenford Tower from the gaping windows.
Renne walked around the edge of the police barricades, looking up into the dark sky. The clinic’s floors were easy to see; without their glass the shattered windows gleamed a harsh amber against the rest of the tower’s black bulk—the only illumination above ten meters in the whole city.
Police officers and patrolbots stood guard along the barricades, keeping the curious citizens well back. She was pleased to see how vigilant they were being despite the news about the starships.
“Nobody down here, Boss,” she told Paula. “Do you want the police teams to start sweeping the lower floors?”
“Not yet. Hoshe is locking down every floor. We’re going to have to seal up the entire tower and scan everyone as they emerge.”
“Long night.”
“Looks that way.”
“Have you heard the starships are back? The attack was a failure.”
“That’s not good.”
“So was the Starflyer part of that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Admiral Kime.”
“You know the Admiral?”
“Yes.”
Renne knew she shouldn’t be surprised. But if the boss knew Kime, how come Columbia had fired her? Or had he? Was it a setup to make the traitor relax his guard? With the boss, anything was possible. She never let go of a suspect.
Renne turned to go back into the Greenford Tower where Hoshe had set up the operation’s command post. Somebody moving away from the crowd outside the barricades caught her eye. She frowned. A girl with a mane of blond hair stepped off the pavement and crossed over Allwyn Street. It wasn’t the hair that made Renne peer after her, it was the walk. The girl almost strutted, holding her head high, hardly bothering to check that traffic had stopped for her. That kind of arrogance belonged to a Dynasty brat, or a Grand Family trustafarian. The kind of integral arrogance Isabella Halgarth possessed in abundance.
Renne swung her legs over the barricade and pushed through the line of spectators. The girl was walking away down the other side of the street. She was the right height. Her clothes were expensively casual, a red sweater and short amethyst wrap skirt with slim metal clips, long black boots.
“I might need some backup here.”
“What have you got?” Hoshe asked.
“I’m not sure. I think I’ve just seen Isabella Halgarth.”
“Where?”
“Allwyn Street, near the Lanvia Avenue turn.”
“Hold please, I’m accessing the civic sensors.”
Renne kept an eye on traffic, and hurried out into the road. Horns tooted furiously at her as cars braked. A cyclist screamed obscenities as he wobbled past. “She’s getting into a taxi.” The girl vanished in a blue and green vehicle, and the door shut.
“Number?” Hoshe demanded.
“I can’t see, damnit. The logo is an orange trumpet, it’s on the doors.” She flagged down a taxi. “She’s heading west.” The maroon Ables Puma drew up beside her. “Just drive west,” she told the drive array.
“All right, I’m filtering traffic control arrays for a match,” Hoshe said. “Murray cabs have that trumpet logo.”
“Renne, you need backup,” Paula said. “Don’t go near her. She’s extremely dangerous.”
“I won’t.” She switched on her force field skeleton suit. “Just observing.”
“Okay, I’ve got a police team in their car,” Hoshe said. “Leaving the Green-field garage now.”
Renne was pressed up against the taxi’s front windshield, retinal inserts searching through the traffic ahead for the blue and green Ables. Her OCtattoos reported a sophisticated scan washing across her, immediately pinpointing the source. She turned quickly to see Isabella Halgarth standing on the pavement, looking straight at her. The girl’s right arm was raised, pointing at the taxi.
“Oh, shit.” Renne closed her eyes.
The maser struck the taxi’s power cells, which exploded with enough fury to lift the disintegrating car three meters off the ground. Renne’s force field was overwhelmed in the first second. But it did provide enough protection that when the paramedics started to pick up the sections of her body that had been flung over a wide radius they found her memorycell was intact. After re-life procedure, Renne would be able to remember her death.
CHAPTER TEN
The assembly platform brought back memories of the Second Chance being constructed above Anshun. To Nigel that whole period seemed like centuries ago now, a time when life was a great deal quieter and more leisurely. Giselle Swinsol and Nigel’s own son, Otis, were leading him through the platform’s gridwork maze inside a huge cylinder of malmetal, where the Speedwell was under construction. The Dynasty’s colony ship was much bigger than the Second Chance, a lengthy cluster of spherical hull sections arranged along a central spine. So far, Nigel had authorized eleven of the vast ships, with initial component acquisition consent for another four. In theory, just one ship could carry enough equipment and genetic material to establish a successful high-technology human society from scratch. But Nigel had wanted to begin with more than the basics, and his Dynasty was the largest in the Commonwealth. A fleet would make absolutely sure any new human civilization they founded would succeed. Now, though, he wasn’t sure if that second batch would ever be built. Like everyone else, he’d expected the navy warships to have some success against Hell’s Gateway. The moment when the navy detector network saw the Prime wormholes come back to the Lost23 had come as a savage surprise to him. He really hadn’t been prepared for a defeat of that magnitude.
“We’ve commissioned four now,” Otis was saying. “The Aeolus and the Saumarez should be ready for their preliminary trials in the next ten days.”
“Don’t quote me, but we might not have ten days,” Nigel said. “Giselle, I want you to review our emergency protocols for evacuating as much of the Dynasty as possible onto the lifeboats during an invasion. Coordinate with Campbell. We’ll need to establish hardened wormhole connections to our parties. The exploratory division wormholes will be our principal method, but we’ll need backup procedures ready.”
“Got it.” Her elegant face was slightly puffed in freefall, but she still managed a worried expression. “How likely is that?”
Nigel halted his steady drift by grabbing a carbon strut at the base of a high-mass manipulator. He was looking out at the Speedwell’s drive section, a mushroom hemisphere at the front of the starship with fluted edges that curved backward like a protective umbrella over the forward sphere sections. The outer skin was a smooth blue-green boronsteel, with a sheen that gave it the overall appearance of a beetle’s carapace.