“Where did that come from?” Stig asked.
“We don’t know,” Keely said. “They must have parked it in a commercial estate somewhere close.”
“More to the point, what is it?” Olwen said. “A life-support cabin for the Starflyer?”
“Could well be,” Stig said. He was tracking the MANN truck with the sneekbot’s sensors. The curving metal walls of the capsule were reinforced by some kind of bonding field, making it virtually impregnable to any portable weapon the Guardians had. It didn’t have any windows. Wisps of steam were rising from the fins of the air-conditioning units as the rain pattered all over them.
“Movement in 3F,” Keely warned.
Stig hurriedly pulled more images from the grid. Eight people in bulky helmeted environment suits were walking out from the CST management building beside the gateway. They went straight through the pressure curtain.
“This is it,” he announced. “It’s got to be; there’s only an hour and a half left in this cycle.” Amazingly he felt almost nothing, no excitement, no dread. Humanity’s most devious enemy was about to arrive on his world, and here he was regarding the moment with cool anticipation. His virtual hand touched the general communications icon. “Status one, everybody. We think it’s coming. Get to your shelter positions, and be ready to move up to engagement point after we hit 3F Plaza.” He stubbed his cigarette out, and settled back in the chair, closing his eyes so he was completely surrounded by his virtual vision. Blue and chrome virtual hands danced across the blimpbot flight command icons as he organized them into their attack formations. He’d been right about the rain, it degraded their performance characteristics, making them even more sluggish than normal. Dangerous in the squally rainstorm. If a gust knocked one off course, it took a longer time than normal to respond and correct itself.
“People are heading back home,” Olwen said. “Rain makes for a bad protest environment.”
Stig pressed himself up against the glass, looking out toward First Foot Fall Plaza, which rose above the surrounding buildings. “That might help us. They’ll be safer indoors.”
“Will they?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s comfortable to believe.” His hand tapped the cold thick slab of glass. “We’d better get out of here.”
Just before they reached the stairs, a lightning flash went off close to shore. Stig saw the blimpbots heading in across the city boundaries. Seen head-on they were big black circles poised above the buildings, seemingly immobile. They were running dark, with their navigation strobes off. It had transformed them; no longer lumbering obsolete throwbacks that drew a smile as their quaint outline slid overhead, they’d obtained a sinister otherworldly appearance as they closed on the overcast human city to deliver their lethal cargo.
“What if it’s Adam coming through?” Olwen asked.
“I have to act on the information we’ve got, however limited. And that truck wasn’t carrying a weapon. It’s the Starflyer.”
“If it is, it’ll blow the wormhole generator as soon as it’s through. We’ll be cut off.”
“I know,” he said, wishing he could answer differently.
“Will Adam be following?”
“I don’t know. Dreaming heavens! He was supposed to be here before now. That blockade-busting operation he put together should have worked.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Carry on with the attack; there’s nothing else we can do. If it’s Adam on Half Way he’ll guess what we’re going to do.”
“Adam doesn’t know what we have here, what our contingencies are.”
“Johansson does. He was going to join the blockade-busting run.”
“Stig, we have to keep the gateway open. They’ll both be trapped on Half Way, along with the equipment we need.”
“We might just have enough equipment for the planet’s revenge. Not that we’ll need it if we can kill the Starflyer today.”
“Long shot,” she exclaimed bitterly. “Very long shot.”
They went out into the street. Stig activated his force field skeleton suit at level one, establishing a minimum field, and zipped up his leather StPetersburg jacket against the rain. Dark rain clouds were blotting out the sun, bringing a premature twilight to Armstrong City.
He hurried along the deserted street, then took a route along several unlit alleys until they came out on Mantana Avenue just above the government district. Here at least the street lighting worked, casting long yellow-hued reflections off the soaking pavement. Lighting in the shabby old buildings behind the maple fur poplars was intermittent, office windows shining with a pearly white sheen as their polyphoto strips remained on, illuminating empty desks and conference rooms. Shops along the ground floor were all shut, their carbon mesh shutters pulled down and bolted, dark and lifeless inside. There was no traffic on the road itself. Civicbots rumbled along the gutters, amber strobes flashing as their rotary brushes cleared the litter and leaves away, keeping the drains free.
Stig picked up the pace as the rain intensified, almost jogging. Branches on the maple fur poplars were drooping low over their heads as the woolly leaves soaked up the water. Thick droplets splattered down. Lightning flickered somewhere close to the docks.
“Here we go,” he said as they reached the turning for Arischal Lane. It led to Bazely Square, which on ordinary days was a busy intersection, with a big grassed-over roundabout in the middle. It had wide pedestrian subways running underneath, which were their designated shelter point during the bomb run.
He turned to go, then halted. Lightning flashed again. One of the blimpbots was sliding over the government district at the far end of Mantana Avenue, its black bulk materializing silently out of the gray rain as it headed toward them. Olwen followed his gaze. “Dreaming heavens, that’s low,” she gasped. The keel was barely ten meters above the roofs of the various government office buildings. Given the size of the blimpbot, such a separation distance was insignificant. Water poured from its flanks to drench the red pan tiles and solar paneling.
Stig watched it tack around slightly, and begin to fly along the broad thoroughfare. On its final approach, the main ducted fans fore and aft spun up to full thrust. It moved fast, a lot faster than he’d anticipated. The tips of the lofty old maple fur poplars scraped along the blimpbot’s fuselage. Cargo doors swung open all the way along its belly.
“Move,” Stig yelled. His overlay graphics told him it wasn’t carrying a bomb, but it was going to draw the Institute’s attention in a big way. He’d been a fool to stop and gawp like a tourist. Adam would be cursing him.
They sprinted down Arischal Lane as the blimpbot slid gracefully along the avenue behind them. It was audible now, the ducted fans whirring urgently, their pitch shifting as they swiveled constantly to maintain the craft’s course against the wind and rain lashing against it. The engine sound was twinned with a coarse ripping noise as the soaking trees along the avenue grated their way along the fuselage.
It eclipsed the entrance to Arischal Lane, a disturbing dark presence dominating the sky. In Stig’s virtual vision, it was one of nine that made up the first attack wave. They were closing on 3F Plaza in a loose circle, set to arrive within a four-minute window. Three of them already had cherry-red damage warning symbols blinking bright; they’d all struck something on their flight over the city: chimney stacks, rotundas, trees, masts slicing through the fuselage fabric to buckle and snap the geodesic stress structure. The holes made little noticeable difference to their aerodynamics or speed as they droned onward relentlessly.
The communications array at the aerodrome reported a burst of calls from the government district and the Governor’s House. It replied with a standard reply of we are forwarding your message for action. More advanced software began to probe the aerodrome’s network, searching out current flight files. The routines that the Guardians had installed were deflecting them, and attempting to Trojan their own disruptor virals into the Institute systems.