Nigel gave Nelson a questioning glance.
“They could spearhead,” Nelson said. “But it would have to be our operation; I’m not having rogue groups running around near the wormhole generators, no matter how good the cause. We’ve seconded half of our technical personnel to Narrabri to help modify the wormhole generators for the future settlement project. We can’t risk any kind of firefight there.”
“All right,” Nigel said. “We’ll set up at Narrabri. There’s enough space in our planetary station to hide this, and we can get Qatux there without drawing attention. Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The stealth coat wrapped Stig in a gray-black haze as if he’d been devoured by his own private event horizon. Above him, the midnight sky was dominated by the twinkling stars of Neptune’s Trident, the constellation that marked his birth. Directly ahead, the chain-link fence stretched out for kilometers, a straight line slicing through the low grass like some kind of border between nations rather than a mere aerodrome perimeter. Even with the starlight it was dark out in the surrounding fields where he’d been waiting. His retinal inserts were switched to enhancement, giving the damp land a blue-gray hue. Sleeping sheep were huddled together for warmth. There were flocks on both sides of the fence. The aerodrome was spread over such a big area it was cheaper to give the local farmers grazing rights than buy and maintain a fleet of mowerbots.
He reached the fence in the middle of a hundred-meter section where there were no lights. The poles and the fittings were there; they just didn’t work. His bolt cutters cut through the slim strands of rusted metal as if they were paper. By now he was feeling ridiculous with the whole superagent covert mission setup. There was no real security at the aerodrome, just a couple of overweight guards who spent their nights sitting around the management building raiding the canteen kitchen and watching local dramas on their portals. He could have walked in through the main gate and they’d never know.
Usually.
And that was the one thing that Adam had lectured him about ceaselessly. There was no usual. So here he was jogging over a kilometer of open field between the gate and the back of the vast hangars for the sake of procedure.
“How’s it going?” Olwen asked.
“Good. Be there in five minutes or so.” Sweat was running down his skin now; the stealth coat on top of his usual jacket, force field skeleton, and weapons meant he was carrying quite a weight.
He reached the first row of hangars, and jogged down the strip of hard ground between them, where mosses and weeds were smothering the crumbling gray concrete. On either side of him the ends of the vast buildings presented perfect black semicircles against the star-filled sky. Almost sixty meters high at the apex, their sliding doors had been shut against the elements decades ago, never to be opened again. They rattled constantly now as the gentle breeze from the North Sea swept over the aerodrome. Built by the revitalization project, they were made out of the ubiquitous carbon panels pinned to a geodesic grid of carbon girders. Age and neglect had seen the pins and epoxy decay and fray, allowing blustery weather to worry away at the edges and joints. Each hangar had lost hundreds of panels to the wind, while others now hung by a single tenuous pin, swaying from side to side in the slightest gust. They clattered away against the framework as Stig moved deeper into the deserted ghost city. He turned off the wide thoroughfare to cut through toward the next row. The irregular gaps in the curving walls of the hangars on each side gave glimpses of the interiors. All of them were empty, stripped of machinery and support equipment. Dead cabling and pipes dangled down from unseen conduits overhead. Water leaked in through the missing panels to pool in long dank puddles on the concrete floor.
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.”