Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Not that the electronic warfare was all she was going to bombard them with. As they levelled out at one hundred metres altitude, following knap-of-the-earth trajectories, each F-7009 fired three missiles. They were pre-programmed and smart guided. Velocity alone, at Mach 2.1, guaranteed they would penetrate the building’s walls. One of them, a smartbuster, simply took out the roll-up door, blowing it into lethal shrapnel blades. Two more smartbusters ripped gaping holes in the walls at ground-floor level. The remaining three missiles slammed into the building and dispersed their sub-munitions capsules in a pattern which had been calculated to cover every cubic centimetre. There could be no hiding place for anyone inside.

  The capsules let loose stun blasts, skin-searing radiative waves, incandescent strobes at frequencies calculated to induce neurological overload. Thick green-white gas fountained out, stinging exposed flesh and sending anyone who breathed it down into uncontrollable paroxysms of coughing. Another round of burn-pulses hammered electronics which had survived the first pulse.

  Every window in the building blew out under the pressure of the stunblasts, jetting shards of glass horizontally across the surrounding area. Nearby streetlights flared into droplets of sunlight from the energy input of the burnpulse beams, then detonated into cascades of smouldering glass casings that bounced and skittered along the pavements. Hologram adverts blazed in one last burst of nova glory before dying.

  Five seconds after the synchronized missile impact, the three US-22s dropped down out of the starlit sky, each one poised in front of a hole torn open by the smartbusters. Interdiction troopers slithered down their ropes in fast arachnid motions then charged into the gloomy caves filled with a churning green fog that was plagued by freakish phosphorescent discharges.

  Amplified voices boomed out into the hellish interior.

  ‘Freeze!’

  ‘Do not use links. Do not speak.’

  ‘You! Put that down.’

  ‘Freeze! Last warning.’

  The harsh crack of gunshots filled the air. Lone pistol shots at first, swiftly followed by bursts from automatic rifles. Blue-white light flashed inside the building.

  Ten seconds after the first wave of troopers went in, the big 4x4 vehicles started to arrive, braking sharply as the tactical coordinator positioned them around the building. Doors were flung open. Agents sprinted out, holding their stumpy carbines in double-handed grips, rolling round the jagged edges of the holes. The eight-strong tech crew raced for the Ford Telay, lugging heavy cases, ready to deal with whatever machine Umbreit had constructed.

  Agent Sara Linsell watched her operatives deploy from the front seat of her vehicle, viewing the internal deployment via her grid, and directing with the tactical coordinator. Right away the troopers hit a problem. The internal structure was completely different to the blueprints. The warehouse owners had constructed a honeycomb of rooms in the original cavernous storage halls, subletting to dozens of companies with glossy products to push on desperate refugees.

  ‘Shag it backwards,’ she murmured in dismay as the US-22 radars tried to penetrate the walls of composite spun up by automata in random shapes demanded by commerce’s of-the-moment requirements. Troopers in pairs wove their way through the maze of low corridors, scaling flimsy ladders. It looked like at least eight floors had been constructed in the highest levels. And the walls had acted as barriers to the sub-munitions capsules. The building wasn’t nearly as secure as it should have been by now.

  ‘Device secure,’ the tech team leader announced triumphantly. ‘We’re isolating now. Confirm presence of active-state matter. Removal in three minutes.’

  A big ten-wheel HDA nuke-hazard truck rumbled across the yard, nosing up to the wrecked roll-up door, shoving its way through the gap with brute force. Metal screeched as fractured ribbons were rammed aside.

  Sid Hurst’s Allclime rushed onto the forecourt tarmac. The four police officers hurried out. As they did, another burst of gunfire thudded out from somewhere inside the building. Sarah Linsell’s grid showed her the location, deep inside, on the new first floor. The troopers identified Ruckby as their opponent. His status shifted to dead.

  Two agents pulled a body out of the building amid the swirl of green smog. Ralph Stevens walked over and inspected the dead man’s face.

  ‘Oh Goddamnit, that’s Umbreit.’

  ‘They shot him,’ Linsell said.

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘All right people,’ she said. ‘Our two priority targets are still loose, Marcus Sherman and Aldred North. We’re building structural information now. Let’s clear this bloody great maze one room at a time.’

  *

  The airborne assault on the Mountain High building, with the resulting devastation it inflicted on Last Mile’s network, was the perfect opportunity for Clayton to re-establish direct contact with Ivan and the team. Not even the HDA AI could make immediate sense of the links flickering between the glitching public cells.

  ‘We followed you out of the base,’ Ivan said as the Allclime surged forward. Ahead of them the F-7009s flashed across Last Mile’s skyline. A couple of seconds later, the 4x4 rocked on its suspension as their sonic boom washed across the streets, terrorizing cats and cracking windows. Between the planes and the missiles, just about every alarm in the district was wailing for help. ‘That’s quite an operation Stevens and Linsell are mounting.’

  ‘Justifiable,’ Clayton told them. ‘Aldred is here. We need to retrieve him from the HDA. Get the lightwave ship to hold station one kilometre above the city. When we need it, we’ll need it fast.’

  ‘Copy that, sir.’

  ‘Go to full active status yourselves. Get as close to me as you can, but for crap’s sake watch out for the troopers. I’ll call.’

  The Allclime braked in front of the Mountain High building. Vehicles were scattered round. A US-22 hovered menacingly overhead, slim weapon pods pointing at the dark walls with their shattered windows.

  Sid led them towards the decimated roll-up door where the nuke-hazard truck had shunted through with brute force. Clayton would have dearly loved to get his hands on whatever Umbreit had been coerced into building, but that simply wasn’t going to happen. Concentrate on Aldred, he told himself. He’s the key to it all.

  The green gas was seeping round his ankles as Sid led them closer to the door.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Support duty, man,’ Sid replied. ‘Just like it says on the label.’

  Past the door, the tech crew had got the crate out of the Relay van, onto a trolley they were wheeling towards the open door at the side of the truck. Ralph Stevens was watching them.

  ‘Guess we won,’ Sid said to him.

  The agent turned to face them, his face covered by his gasmask. The narrow vision slits revealed nothing.

  ‘We still need Aldred,’ Ralph said. ‘He’s in this bloody maze somewhere.’

  Clayton studied the trashed wall beyond the Telay. The shredded spun composite revealed narrow corridors leading deeper into the pitch-black interior. Unknown rooms were exposed through savage cracks. If that same tight-packed structure was repeated throughout they were going to be in trouble. It would take hours to search through it all. Presumably as Aldred intended.

  ‘Hey,’ Ian said. ‘Just a thought, but . . . did anyone see what kind of shoes Aldred was wearing?’

  The gasmask hid Clayton’s smile of admiration. Even now, he still hadn’t learned not to underestimate the police.

  ‘Worth a try,’ Sid admitted.

  ‘Good call, Ian,’ Ralph said.

  ‘I think we should take point,’ Clayton said quickly. ‘Come on, we deserve this. We’re the ones who brought this to you.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘Let’s see if we get a response first,’ Ralph said.

  It took a minute to set up, Ian and Eva linking to all the vehicles ringing the building, reassigning their meshes to scan for a specific emission.

  ‘Ready, boss,’
Ian reported eventually.

  Sid transmitted the code which would trigger a download from the smartmicrobe bug they’d attached to Aldred’s heel in the Jamaica Blue café barely three weeks ago.

  ‘Yes!’ Eva and Ian cried together. The pulse had lasted barely half a second, but the meshes had triangulated. A coordinate appeared in their grids, hovering near the top of the crude blueprint of Mountain High building. As one they tilted their heads back to stare at the green-hazed ceiling five metres over their heads.

  ‘Eight floors straight up,’ Ian said.

  ‘There are troopers on the sixth floor,’ Eva said. ‘We can always call for back-up once we get there.’

  Ralph drew a mean-looking automatic pistol, and checked the chamber. ‘Come on.’

  There was no power left in the building. Even the occasional battery-powered emergency light they passed was dead. And there were none of those after the third floor. Three lift shafts cut clean through the floors, intended to carry goods and raw up and down, but following the burnpulses they were all immobilized. So they had to use the stairs and ladders which stitched the floors together to ascend into darkness.

  Decades ago, when he was still living on Earth, Clayton had found a wasp nest in the garden. It had spooked him with its malignant beauty; how something so elegant and complicated could be created by a creature so unpleasant was beyond him. Now here he was, clambering round inside the human equivalent. The cell-like rooms seemed to have been woven by an aberrant design program influenced by organic structures. Stairs or ladders didn’t have central wells, they were separated by long twisting corridors, or as they found on the fifth floor, by a cloister with ancient cloth printers huddled in arching alcoves. Water or a similar fluid ran down the ladder tube between six and seven. Then they finally emerged onto the eighth level. Heat from the solar roof barely half a metre above their heads turned the motionless air sweltering. As soon as he climbed off the top of the ladder, Clayton felt the sweat oozing out of his pores to soak his T-shirt and trousers. The nightsight function in the gasmask vision slits gave the serpentine corridors an eerie aquamarine tint, as if he was underwater. Infrared bled in, sharpening the silhouettes with pink shades.

  The radar picture from the US-22s hovering outside had captured the layout of the eighth level. It was separated out into simple hexagonal chambers, with the corridor maze separating them.

  Ian led the way, heading to the location where they’d detected the bug’s download pulse. He went slowly, his pistol raised, ready to aim and fire. Taking care to check the floor before each step.

  Good procedure, Clayton acknowledged. They were making no sound as they closed on the doorway.

  ‘Stand by,’ he sent to Ivan. ‘If he’s here I’ll need the ship for an extraction.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Clayton started to activate the metamolecule armaments he’d brought from Jupiter.

  *

  Sid had thought sitting in the Mercedes Allclime waiting for the assault to begin had been tough. It was nothing to the tension of creeping round in the oppressive dark intestines of the beat-up Mountain High building, chasing after a phantom.

  But now they were barely ten metres from the doorway where their prey might be hiding. He squeezed his pistol tighter, and wished the gasmask filter would let a decent gust of air down into his lungs. Ian was a couple of metres ahead of him, a jade and purple profile thanks to the overlay image. Edging oh so cautiously towards the doorway. It was open a crack, and there’d still been no giveaway sound or movement from inside. Eva, at the rear of their line, kept checking round to make sure Aldred wasn’t creeping up behind them. It was that kind of environment.

  ‘Sir,’ Linsell said in the secure ringlink. ‘We’ve detected an unauthorized transmission from your location.’

  ‘That’ll be Aldred,’ Ralph said.

  ‘No, sir, it’s right beside you. High-level encryption.’

  Sid twitched, automatically checking the ceiling as his heart-rate flushed litres of adrenalin into his bloodstream. When he glanced forward again, Ralph was silently indicating the wall. Sid nodded, Aldred was on the other side, maybe a metre away.

  ‘Recommend you wait, sir,’ Linsell said. ‘I can’t determine what’s happening up there. The troopers are on their way.’

  Ian had reached the door. He held up a hand. The rest of them gathered behind him, weapons brought up ready. Sid tensed, bracing his feet against the floor.

  ‘Go!’ Ralph yelled.

  Ian charged into the door, shoulder hitting the composite hard, knocking it aside. Bright helmet-lights came on, broad beams illuminating the room in wild angles. Shadows leapt up, surging round as he rushed in. ‘Freeze motherfucker,’ Ian yelled.

  Those were his last ever words.

  The monster was there waiting for them, standing right in front of the door. It was exactly as the secure HDA file had shown Sid back in January: the size of a man, with a dark wrinkled hide like petrified leather. Its arm swung with a club’s brutality, five lethal blade fingers slashing across Ian’s throat, below the helmet above the armour vest, hewing flesh, muscle, tendons, veins, arteries, windpipe – only the spine avoided complete severance.

  Ian’s arms flew wide in a macabre theatrical gesture as his collapsing body lurched backwards. His corpse crashed into Eva, who was directly behind him, knocking her aside. Five blades swiped through the air where she’d been an instant before.

  Sid had begun his charge so hard he couldn’t stop. Not the utter surprise at the impossibility before him, not the primal self-preservation instinct, nothing managed to divert his legs in those critical first seconds when he emerged into the room. He just kept powering forward, momentum propelling him inexorably towards the monster. Eva was screaming in terror as she hit the floor on one side of him. Arterial blood spewed out of Ian’s throat, splattering the ceiling then arcing round to cover walls and floor as the corpse tumbled down, still entangled with the wailing Eva.

  Finally, Sid managed to turn fractionally, avoiding an outright collision. His pistol swung about as he was level with the monster, and he fired off two rounds. Missing completely. The monster spun with perfect timing, and its elbow struck Sid on the side. The impact was terrible, he felt a rib break underneath the armour, and he lost his balance, twirling round chaotically to land on his arm. Breath was knocked out of him painfully as the carbon-beam floor slammed up into his chest.

  Ralph stopped his own headlong rush and levelled his pistol, putting its muzzle centimetres from the monster’s chest. He fired three shots. They ricocheted. Sid actually heard them slam through the spun composite walls. Ralph’s body stiffened. Like Sid he didn’t believe what he’d just seen. He jerked his pistol up, going for a head shot.

  The monster’s arm moved again in a smear of speed. Ralph lost the pistol and most of his hand in the sideways swipe. He stumbled back, crying in shock and agony as his finger stumps squirted blood.

  It gave Sid just enough time to raise his own pistol again, arm wobbling as he tried to take aim amid the pain and his own fluctuating vision. Knowing it was all useless. Knowing this was his last moment of life. Yelling savage defiance at the monster as it took a swift step towards him.

  Abner jumped into the gap between them. The monster lunged forward, blades extended horizontally, aiming for the North’s heart as its arm pistoned out with inhuman power.

  Sid never did quite make out what happened – the gasmask’s nightsight and infrared image were badly overloaded by everyone’s garish helmet-lights. It simply showed Abner’s outline shiver as if he was looking at him through a wash of overheated air. Then Abner was in a dark, slick, one-piece armour suit of some kind. There was no sign of all the clothes he’d been wearing a moment before.

  The strangest clunk filled the confined space. And the monster’s blades were rebounding, sending it juddering backwards.

  ‘Surrrprise,’ Abner warbled in a cheerful taunt.

  The monster twirled with incre
dible speed, a perfect pirouette, arm extended. Blade fingers chopping furiously against Abner’s arm.

  This time the clunk was as loud as a church bell, reverberating across the room. The monster staggered back from the deflected blow.

  ‘My turn,’ Abner announced calmly. He tugged a very squat, cylindrical pistol from his waist. Pointed and fired.

  The air boiled with thin lashing sounds. And the monster was fighting a tangle of netting that responded to its every frantic scrabble and twist by expanding and seething as if it were alive. Within seconds it was toppling to the ground, completely swaddled in rippling cords.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Sid managed to babble, choking back on a hysterical wail.

  ‘I need extraction,’ Abner was shouting. ‘Now!’

  Eva was lying where she’d fallen, weeping uncontrollably as she swatted feebly at the heavy corpse on top of her. Ralph thrashed about, clutching his ruined hand, unable to stop the blood pumping out.

  ‘Abner?’ Sid pleaded. ‘What—’

  ‘Sorry, boss. The name’s Clayton, actually. Abner took a little holiday a while back. He’s fine, don’t worry.’

  Sid gawped incredulously at the C North. Even now, even amid all the butchery and with bone-chilling fear flaring in his mind he felt a little tweak of interest at the revelation. ‘It was Jupiter behind this.’

  The ceiling creaked as weird ripples flexed the solar panels and support girders. An unseen force ruptured it. Dazzling white light shone down through the widening breach, revealing fragments of panelling tumbling upwards in defiance of gravity. Sid slowly shoved his gasmask up and held a hand over his brow, shielding himself from the glare. Raw night air rushed across the decimated room. Now even the monster had stopped fighting the net to stare up at its fate.

  Behind the lights, a massive vehicle was lowering itself sedately onto the overstressed roof of the Mountain High building. Sid couldn’t help himself. He started laughing. A spaceship. He was looking at an actual spaceship floating down out of the star-smeared night sky. A thirty-metre cone of smooth dark-grey metal, with five wide rings curling out halfway along the fuselage like deformed wings. There was no sound, no rocket roar, no hushed hissing of stealthed fan ducts. Sid just knew it didn’t work on any principles he would ever understand. But it was a thing of wonder nonetheless, so much so he nearly asked, take me with you.