A maidbot delivered a cup of coffee to Otis. Mark reviewed the message, and groaned in mild dismay. “You’ve only just got back.”
Otis shrugged good-naturedly. “That’s the job.”
“What’s happening, boys?” Liz asked.
“Another flight,” Mark said.
“And Dad’s getting impatient,” Otis said.
“That’s got to be the…” She trailed off, giving the two children a guilty glance.
“What is it?” Barry demanded.
“It is,” Mark told her.
“Oh, hellfire. You be careful,” she told Otis.
“You betcha.”
Otis drove Mark the short distance over to the wormhole that led up to the cluster of orbital assembly platforms. He had an antique Daimler coupe convertible, which was kept in immaculate condition. It was powered by a combustion engine. Mark wasn’t sure if it had a drive array, not that it mattered with Otis behind the wheel; the man’s reflexes were incredible.
“Have you talked to Nigel?” Mark asked after he tightened his seat belt as far as it would go.
“Yeah, minor conference on Cressat last night. Apparently, the Dynasty now officially believes the Starflyer is behind the war.”
That took Mark a moment to digest. “You’re kidding.”
“No. Classified, okay? Daniel Alster was one of its agents. Dad was seriously not pleased. The Starflyer used Alster to break through to Boongate; it’s on its way back to Far Away as we speak. So we’re also sending a frigate there, just in case it tries to escape in the Marie Celeste.”
“Holy shit. How many frigates does Nigel want active?”
“Leading question. Minimum of three to Dyson Alpha, and we’d like two to visit Far Away. Although there was talk of sending the Searcher there instead. A lot of important people joined up with the Guardians, and are now cut off from the Commonwealth.”
“You did tell him we haven’t got five assembled yet, didn’t you?” Mark said nervously.
“He knows our status. There’s also a minor supply problem with nova bombs. We don’t have many yet.”
“But, Otis, we haven’t finished incorporating our procedures into the frigate assembly systems. We were looking for another week before the Dyson Alpha mission. Even the Scylla won’t be ready for vacuum for another two days.”
“Don’t be so modest. You’ve got four completed and another six in assembly.”
“Yes, but they haven’t been level-two tested yet, let alone flight tested. We held the Charybdis together with sticky tape and luck. You can’t keep flying frigates in that state, they’ve got to be integrated properly; anything else is going to prove fatal, and I don’t just mean in the long term.”
“I know; more than anybody. I’m the one who has to fly the damn things, remember. Pull in whoever you need; Giselle will coordinate personnel requests for you so you’ll be free to concentrate on the engineering.”
“Huh!” Mark exclaimed, unimpressed, as they pulled into the gateway building’s parking lot. “I’d like to take the entire design team up there for a start. Maybe they’ll finally learn the difference between theory and practice.”
Otis grinned. “Designers and engineers, may the two never meet.”
***
At night, stuck in the Volvo’s forward passenger seat while Rosamund drove them southward across the Aldrin Plains, Adam could see no difference between this and any normal Commonwealth H-congruous world. The low gravity wasn’t noticeable, except when they hit the odd bump in the road, when the truck performed a shallow glide back down. Farmland was more or less the same everywhere, and this close to the capital city, the land was nothing else, with broad fields and big swathes of woodland stretching out into the dark beyond his inserts’ ability to resolve. It was the absence of a planetary cybersphere that gave him the biggest sense of separation from the worlds he knew. All they had for communications here were some arrays with a short-wave capability. Not, as he was the first to admit, that there was anyone else to call on this forsaken planet. The lack of information was hard to endure, though.
At least he had a degree of solitude to enjoy. He’d been worried that Paula would insist on joining him in whatever vehicle he rode in. Instead she was in the second truck with Oscar, while Kieran drove. In what was undoubtedly the last miracle of the day, Adam actually found himself concerned for her. Whatever flu-variant virus she’d picked up was obviously affecting her badly. It was unusual for anyone these days to be brought low by such a simple illness, which implied it might be extraterrestrial. There hadn’t been an alien plague case for thirty years, since the Hokoth measles epidemic. For the Commonwealth to suffer one now would be badly ironic.
He told himself he was concerned mainly because she might be a carrier and give the bug to him and the others. She’d done her best to shrug it off, but he’d seen the sheen of sweat on her brow, the long uncontrollable shivers running along her limbs. It had come on quickly; she’d shown no symptoms back in the Carbon Goose where they’d talked through tactics for the landing at Port Evergreen. That had been a surreal moment, sitting down with Paula Myo, drinking tea together as they formulated the best strategy, both pooling their knowledge and experience without reservations—at least on his part. All the while, that little speech she’d given him back at Narrabri station was running through his mind. She could probably see it in his brain he was thinking it so hard.
After that she’d more or less dropped below his worry radar as they pushed through to Far Away and met up with the Guardians. He quietly assumed that once they’d delivered their precious cargo to the waiting Guardians in the Dessault Mountains that he’d wander off into the sunset while his friends prevented her from following—then he’d live out a quiet retirement on some farm for the remainder of his years. Except the only way that would happen was if someone killed her; even then her re-life version would appear on the horizon sooner or later. The reality was that this crazy Sicilian-style battle to the death they’d got going between them could only truly end with his death. Besides, he knew damn well he couldn’t spend more than a couple of hours on a farm without getting bored out of his skull. He’d have to return to the Commonwealth and go on the run again. Strangely, the prospect wasn’t as depressing as it first seemed.
Somewhere amid the constant low-level growl of engine noise a nasty metallic grinding sound was breaking out. Adam looked around in alarm. It was so loud he thought it must be coming from their truck. Rosamund was already braking smoothly.
“I’ve got a problem,” Kieran called on the general band.
By the time Rosamund had reversed up close to the second truck, Kieran was filling the band with some filthy language but no real information. Adam climbed down out of the cab and walked back. The road they were using was the main route linking this region’s market towns to the city; originally it had an enzyme-bonded concrete surface, but that was steadily shrinking from an onslaught of earth and weeds, while cracks and potholes went unrepaired for decades. Nowadays it resembled a simple much-used dirt track with congested drainage ditches on both sides. Adam was already entertaining serious doubts about how long it would take them to reach the mountains, and this was a good infrastructure for Far Away. According to the so-called maps stored in his inserts, the roads vanished altogether another hundred sixty kilometers south where the Aldrin Plains became a sea of uninhabited grasslands.
“What’s happened?” he shouted.
Some kind of thick vapor was swirling across the Volvo’s headlight beams. Kieran strode through it, a furious expression on his angular gaunt face. He hit the release handle on one of the engine covers, and it folded back. Flame belched out into the night.
Kieran ducked back, shielding his face with his hands. “Dreaming heavens!” His voice was ripe with pain.
Oscar jumped down from the cab, and rushed forward with a slim fire extinguisher. He directed the powerful stream of ice-blue gel particles over the burning machinery, smothering the fire in seconds.