Night Without Stars (Chronicle of the Fallers Book 2)

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Chaing used a Cubar from the local PSR office to take him to the marina through the miserable drizzle coming in off the sea, its wipers swishing across the windscreen with a monotonous squeaking. His driver parked by the gates, so he buttoned his coat against the damp air as he hobbled along to the Ankatra Cafe. At this time of night it was closed and shuttered, but Corilla was waiting under one of the trasla trees outside, wrapped up in a big ankle-length raincoat. He suspected she wasn’t alone, but couldn’t see anyone else.

  ‘Now what?’ she asked petulantly as he huddled under the short tree with her. ‘It’s bloody freezing out here.’

  ‘You know exactly what,’ he said. ‘The apocalypse is coming. Stonal needs to talk to the Warrior Angel.’

  ‘I keep asking.’

  ‘How urgently?’

  The look she gave him was almost pitying. ‘Why am I here, Chaing?’

  ‘The government is getting desperate.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So am I. So I’m going to trust you. Hopefully that’ll liberate some reciprocity; we’re going to need to be a real team now.’

  She raised an eyebrow, sceptical in the extreme.

  Chaing touched his thumb to his knuckle, just like the Warrior Angel told him. A rectangular grid of thin lines fluoresced a pale emerald just below his skin.

  ‘Chaing!’ Her voice was loaded with incredulity. ‘Are you . . . No. You can’t be.’

  ‘Let’s just say the Warrior Angel and I have an agreement.’

  She grabbed his hand and studied the lines as they faded. ‘What is this thing? It emitted a general link call for her.’

  ‘She gave it to me. It’s some kind of Commonwealth technology. So now tell me truthfully, is she answering?’ He tried not to sound too desperate, but he knew that without the Warrior Angel everything was lost.

  ‘No.’ Corilla shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Nobody has heard anything from her since the Gothora sailed. We know the Fallers used atom bombs on Lukarticar.’

  ‘Crud.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe you’re on our side.’

  ‘Ha. You know, that’s the second time tonight someone has said that. There are only two sides, Faller and human. There is no choice.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘All we can do is wait and hope that the Warrior Angel and Paula are still alive, and they can do something. Until then, we fight the bastards with everything we’ve got.’

  *

  Jenifa woke up with a feeling of disorientation that might have been the end of a dream. A dream where she’d been fighting with Chaing. With her strength she’d easily beaten him, then she’d reached into his head and pulled out the Eliter cells, holding them up in triumph while he regarded her with the dazed admiration she was so used to from him.

  When she looked round he was standing in the bathroom doorway, wearing his uniform trousers, face covered in shaving foam. ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘So I’m still here,’ she said aggressively.

  ‘I see that. But I need you to understand something.’

  ‘Crudding what?’

  ‘I don’t care that you don’t trust me. What’s important is that I don’t trust you.’

  ‘I get that.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope so, Jenifa, I really do. Because we’re about to face up to the Faller Apocalypse and I need a proper partner, not one who’ll shoot me in the back.’

  ‘We’re on the same side,’ she said solemnly. ‘We’re both human.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  Jenifa pushed the bedclothes down and sat on the edge of the bed. He gave her naked body a deliberately dispassionate glance, which infuriated her further – he might just as well have slapped her.

  ‘How did it go last night?’ she asked, carefully keeping her voice level.

  ‘The Warrior Angel hasn’t been in contact with the Eliters since the Gothora set sail.’

  And just a day ago she would have said: you trust Corilla, do you? Now she had to sit placidly and say: ‘Crud. So what’s next?’ It was demeaning. But there will be payback. Oh yes.

  ‘Our duty. We find the nests in Port Chana and take them out.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Get dressed,’ Chaing told her. ‘We’re leaving in thirty minutes.’

  *

  The PSR Cubar picked them up at the end of Empale Street. Chaing still didn’t want anyone to know the location of the Section Seven safe house – it was routine.

  ‘The harbour,’ he told the driver as they sat in the back.

  Jenifa was silent beside him, her back straight, looking out of the side window. She’d stopped speaking to him.

  After visiting Corilla he’d started considering how long she’d suspected him. If it had been back in Opole, she probably wasn’t acting alone, which would explain the link detector. It also meant all the sex was a lie, that she’d used it to get closer to him, oozing her way into his confidence. That hurt.

  And he knew she didn’t trust him. Even if she had back in Opole, the seed of doubt Castillito had planted was rooted deep by now.

  Last night he’d barely contained his fury when he learned what Castillito had done.

  ‘I want you to call Corilla in as soon as we reach the warehouse,’ he told Jenifa. ‘She can work with us full time, now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you brought the link detector?’

  She hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Feel free to keep watching it.’

  The Cubar made good time driving through the streets. Overnight, the sheriffs and several battalions from the Port Chana Regiment had set up checkpoints across the city. The martial law proclamation had been announced on the radio at dawn, along with instructions for all reservists to report to regimental headquarters.

  Chaing was surprised how many residents had obeyed the instructions to turn out for duty, given the city’s notorious reputation for nonconformity. Use of private vehicles had been prohibited as part of martial law, but a great many people were cycling to the major tram stations. The iron parking racks outside were jammed with bicycles, padlocked to the rails or each other in a giant mechanical clutter. All public transport had been commandeered by the city council’s emergency committee, to be used ferrying the reservists to various regiment bases just outside the city.

  Sheriff cordons had been established round the tram stations, with long good-natured queues snaking along the pavements. No one was allowed through to the platforms until they’d been given a blood test.

  The cordon round the harbour had been in place since the night of the storm. Today, the sheriffs on the checkpoint insisted on a blood test before they let Chaing and Jenifa through. So he stuck his hand out and endured the needle pricking his skin. The red blood welling up satisfied the young sheriff, and she moved the barrier aside.

  Captain Fajie and her expanded team of investigators had taken over the whole warehouse, using the huge enclosed space to set up dozens of trestle tables. Each one was piled with evidence bags the forensic teams had collected, from the warehouse itself and all the houses the nest had used. Clothes from dead Fallers, along with two of the huge pump-action bazookas, had their own section. The burnt-out lorries from the fight on the docks had been towed in to form a line along the back wall, each with a semicircle of associated forensic bags.

  Investigators were standing at tables, carefully cataloguing each item, which would be filed and Rolodexed by the smaller team of clerks. Usually, senior investigators sat at a long line of desks across the front of the warehouse, trying to map out connections. Today when Chaing walked in, barely a fifth of the desks were occupied.

  He walked over to Fajie’s desk at the end of the row. A small first-aid tin was open in front of her and she was flinching as she tried to wrap a plaster round her thumb. Spots of blood were glistening on her papers.

  ‘Crudding sheriffs
,’ she muttered as Chaing stood in front of her. ‘I swear that one on the checkpoint is still a teenager. Hasn’t got a clue how to do a blood test. Tiny needle puncture is what’s supposed to happen. Look at this!’ She held her thumb up; blood was leaking through the plaster’s fabric. ‘The idiot jabbed the whole needle in. Hurt like Uracus’s kiss.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it.’ Chaing tried not to show any amusement. Fajie had been in the thick of the firefight on the dock beside the Sziu, facing down the monster Fallers. Now she was whinging about a needle jab. ‘They’re just carrying out orders.’

  ‘Ha! See if you’re still laughing after a day of this. As from five o’clock this morning, they’re blood testing anyone going into a government building, a transport hub, or a utilities facility. They’re also doing random street tests. Forget the Faller Apocalypse; we’re all going to die in a blood poisoning epidemic by the end of the week.’

  ‘I’m sure. Where is everyone?’

  Fajie glanced round the warehouse. ‘This is all we’ve got, and all we’re likely to get for the foreseeable future. Martial law has complete priority over every investigation. Director Husnan called most of our case officers back to the office.’

  ‘But the PSR is supposed to be following every lead to suspected nests.’ His arm swept round. ‘There is no lead bigger than this. This nest had nukes, for Giu’s sake.’

  ‘Not my decision. For what it’s worth, I agree with you a hundred per cent. But this is a huge investigation. Even with full resources, it was going to take months.’

  And there it was, the unspoken worry: we don’t have months left.

  ‘Crudding Uracus!’ Chaing gathered himself to shout, but the impulse died as swiftly as it came. This wasn’t Fajie’s fault. It was Director Husnan playing petty politics.

  He stalked back to his own desk, ignoring the throbbing from his leg. All the files he’d been studying yesterday now seemed a complete waste of time.

  ‘She’s here,’ Jenifa announced from her desk as she replaced the telephone handset.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Corilla.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘I never called her. She’s coming though the harbour checkpoint now. It’s like she knew when we arrived.’

  He gave her a thin smile. Even now she kept on pushing.

  Corilla came in, dressed in a blue blouse and black jeans – a simple combination, but one that made her seem quite different to the angry young radical with a persecution complex waiting at the outdoor cafe at McKie College. Every time he saw her she seemed to have grown in confidence. She came straight over to his desk, giving Jenifa only a cursory glance. Chaing tried not to smile at that.

  ‘Morning,’ she said breezily.

  ‘Morning.’ He thought of asking Jenifa to fetch them some tea, but that was too childish. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Not of the Warrior Angel, no. I came in because I have information for you which some of my friends consider very important.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Roxwolf is back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In Opole. My old contacts there are seeing underworld faces reappearing again, and they’re back with a swagger. That can only mean they have his backing.’

  ‘So? I have more immediate concerns.’

  Corilla tilted her head to one side. ‘You don’t know, do you? You never actually saw him when you raided Cameron’s.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘He’s a Faller. A weird one; some kind of mutation. Paula confirmed that for us, by the way. He’s not part of any nest, but he does have connections with them.’

  ‘You got any proof of that?’ Jenifa asked.

  Corilla kept looking at Chaing. ‘You found human–Faller bodies at Cameron’s, didn’t you? What does that tell you about his gang? And anyway, why would I lie?’

  ‘I don’t know what motivates Eliters,’ Jenifa said, ‘but I can find out easily enough.’

  Chaing held up a finger for Jenifa to stop. ‘You’re sure Roxwolf is a Faller?’

  Corilla nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do your friends know what he’s up to?’

  ‘There’s been a big increase in arms trafficking over the last ten days,’ Corilla said. ‘So much it’s even making some of the gangs nervous. Especially right now.’

  ‘You think he’s supplying weapons to the nests?’

  ‘I can’t see what else it is. We all know what we’re about to face.’

  ‘Are your people prepared to lead us to him?’

  ‘My people? You mean your fellow humans?’

  ‘Yes. Will you lead me to him? It could be the breakthrough route into the nests we need.’

  Corilla gave him a soft smile. ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m your contact, remember? Can you get us back to Opole? The whole train network shut down last night.’

  ‘I can get us back to Opole.’

  *

  The first signs that Opole’s martial law wasn’t as effective as it should be came when the PSR Cubar drove over the Yokon Bridge and turned onto Dunton Road. There was a junction of tram rails in the middle of the road, where the metal rails crossed. The overhead power cables were lying on the ground, their posts bent over like trees after a storm. A car had been abandoned in the middle of the junction and set on fire.

  Chaing assumed the dents in its grille had come from repeatedly ramming the power cable posts until they toppled.

  ‘Why isn’t anyone fixing that?’ he asked. ‘At the least they should tow it away.’

  The driver, assigned to them from the Opole PSR office, shrugged as he edged their Cubar round the burnt-out wreck. Cars and vans waiting their turn on the other side tooted their horns angrily. ‘Everyone is registering at the regiment bases. Nobody is left on the maintenance crews.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Chaing said.

  Another shrug. ‘When everyone’s registered and they sort out the command structure, things will get done in a hurry.’

  ‘Has there been any more disruption to the tram network?’ Jenifa asked. She was in the back seat next to Corilla and clearly unhappy with that arrangement.

  ‘There’s been about eight or nine junctions smashed up like this one,’ the driver said. ‘They’ve got regiment squads guarding the important ones now, but trams are out over half the city.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Jenifa said. ‘The routes out to the regiment bases?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Twenty minutes, and three blood-test checkpoints later, they turned onto Broadstreet. Chaing had witnessed so much chaos lately he was mildly surprised to see the familiar old buildings were all still standing.

  The Cubar pulled up outside the seven-storey PSR office. Corilla stared up at it mistrustfully.

  ‘We won’t be in there long,’ Chaing assured her as he climbed out of the front.

  Jenifa strode across the pavement, pointedly ignoring them. Behind her back, Corilla gave him a small rueful smile.

  A wall of sandbags had been put up across the entrance. Five armed officers were on guard duty. They saluted Chaing, even said: ‘Welcome back, captain.’ But he still had to hold out his thumb for a needle prick.

  ‘She’s in my custody,’ he explained when they asked for Corilla’s papers and saw ELITER printed across the front. They didn’t like that, but agreed she could go inside.

  ‘Ground floor only,’ he told Corilla as they went in. ‘There’s a waiting room down here. I can’t allow you upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll try and contain my disappointment,’ she muttered.

  Even getting the waiting room opened involved forms to be filled out at reception.

  ‘She shouldn’t even be inside at all,’ Jenifa said.

  ‘Then how do we set up this operation, corporal?’ he barked back.

  ‘We have special cells for Eliters.’

  He didn’t even bother responding to that. They took the stairs up to the seventh floor. It wasn’t as difficult as usual for his leg; all the practic
e he’d had with the Port Chana lighthouse had clearly paid off. Not that Jenifa waited. She was already in Yaki’s office when he finally arrived.

  ‘You brought an Eliter into my headquarters?’ the director asked coldly as soon as he shut the door. ‘Why didn’t you put her in a cell where she belongs?’

  Chaing refused to even glance in Jenifa’s direction. Instead he focused on Yaki. ‘This is an emergency, and she’s an asset, not a prisoner. She won’t be going anywhere in the building other than the waiting room.’

  ‘All right.’ Yaki was staring intently at Jenifa. ‘So why are you both back here?’

  Now Chaing turned his head. ‘Corporal, would you explain, please?’

  Yaki listened without comment as Jenifa told her of Corilla’s claim about Roxwolf returning.

  ‘He’s a Faller?’ she asked at the end. ‘Why did the gangs work with him? They’re not that stupid.’

  ‘Nobody ever saw him,’ Chaing said. ‘He can’t show himself because he’s some kind of mutant Faller. The nests despise him as much as we do.’

  ‘An unseen, all-powerful boss is quite a reputation to have,’ Jenifa admitted. ‘It’s also very convenient.’

  ‘And this Corilla girl says he’s buying arms for the nests?’

  ‘That’s what the local Eliters have told her, yes,’ Chaing said.

  ‘We have to investigate this,’ Yaki said tightly. ‘If she’s right, it’s a direct route to all the nests in the city.’ The scar on her face showed as a thin white line as she sat behind her desk, fingers steepled, their tips resting on her chin. ‘Okay. Chaing, you did the right thing bringing her here, but I’ve got martial law to enforce. My officers are spread very thinly. There have already been some very proficient acts of sabotage which we’re prioritizing. So, I’m going to let you and Jenifa track down any leads Corilla offers you.’

  ‘I’m going to need a team—’ Chaing started.

  ‘No. You get me some positive leads, and I’ll assign you whoever you ask for to follow up. But until then, you’re on your own. And I don’t want any heroics, understand? If you find Roxwolf, you come here and get some serious backup. I can’t afford another Cameron’s.’

  ‘Yes, director,’ Chaing mumbled. ‘Can I at least have access to records?’