The Temporal Void (80 page)

At three hundred and thirty-five years old, it always galled Digby that his great-grandmother still thought he wasn’t experienced enough to do his job. He suspected it would always be the case. Nonetheless, as soon as he received the shadow assignment he vowed it would be the epitome of professionalism.

His starship, the
Columbia505
, helped; a brand-new ultradrive designed and built by ANA in its secure replicator station on Io. Its systems were the most sophisticated in the Commonwealth. Tracking Chatfield’s stealthed hyperdrive ship as it left Ganthia was no problem at all.

Digby followed Chatfield out to an uninhabited star system just inside the loose boundary that defined the Greater Intersolar Commonwealth. A small star whose mildly variable spectrum drifted between orange and yellow in two-hundred-year cycles. It had been examined by CST’s exploratory division nine hundred years ago, a short visit which soon established there were no H-congruent planets. According to the
Columbia505
’s smart-core there were no subsequent follow-up ventures.

Chatfield’s ship rendezvoused with the Trojan point of the biggest gas giant. The only object of any note there was a small ice moon which had been trapped by the gravitational nullzone over a billion years ago. With a diameter of just over two thousand kilometres, its grizzled surface glinted softly in the weak copper sunlight.

The first thing Digby found as he followed Chatfield in was the elaborate sensor network scanning space and hyperspace out to a hundred million kilometres from the ice moon. His stealth systems allowed him to get within twenty thousand kilometres before he halted his approach. The on-board sensors had just managed to pick up eleven vehicles of some kind orbiting the moon. They were heavily stealthed, and his ship’s registry didn’t have anything like them on file. Digby couldn’t get any kind of image using passive sensors from such a distance, so the
Columbia505
released a flock of miniature drones on a flyby trajectory. The only flaw with that was the flight time. To avoid suspicion about their trajectory and velocity the pebble-sized drones would take nine hours to reach the ice moon and skim past its unknown sentries.

Chatfield’s visit lasted three hours.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Digby asked Paula as Chatfield’s ship rose away from the frigid surface at five gees. ‘Stay here or follow him?’

‘Follow him,’ Paula said. ‘I’ll investigate the base.’

‘My sensor drones will engage in another five and a half hours. They should be able to tell you more about the satellites. If they’re as bad as I think they are you’ll need a Navy squadron to break in.’

‘We’ll see.’

The
Columbia505
’s sensors watched Chatfield’s ship power into hyperspace. Five seconds later Digby followed him out of the unnamed system. Interestingly, they were now heading for Ellezelin.

The
Alexis Denken
flew into the star system seven hours after the
Columbia505
had departed. Its smartcore steered it towards the ice moon in full stealth mode. While it was still ten thousand kilometres out, Paula triggered the sensor drones that were now tumbling away from their brief encounter. All the data they’d amassed downloaded into the smartcore, which immediately set about analysing the information.

The orbiting sentries were impressive. Very little of their nature had leaked through the stealth effect, but the drones had managed to piece together a few fragments. What they’d glimpsed was some kind of ship over a hundred metres long, with a strange wrinkled teardrop-shape hull that sprouted odd lumps. Power signature leakage confirmed they were heavily armed. Technologically they weren’t as advanced as the
Alexis Denken
(very few ships were, she acknowledged wryly), but their sheer size and power meant they’d be able to overwhelm her starship’s force fields if they ever caught it.

The smartcore took eight minutes to analyse a flaw in their detector scans and configure the
Alexis Denken
’s emissions so that it could pass among them unnoticed. Paula watched the surface of the ice moon grow larger as the
Alexis Denken
slipped placidly through the big defence sentries. Little attempt had been made to hide the station that sprawled across the fissured ice plain. Electronic and thermal emissions were strong. She saw a broad cross shape of dark metal, with each wing measuring nearly a kilometre long.

‘This might just be the proof you need,’ Paula told ANA: Governance. ‘We’ve never been able to find one of their bases before, let alone intact and still functioning.’

‘Now we know it exists do you want Navy support?’

‘No. This is just a reconnaissance trip. If the Navy tries to force its way in here, they’ll self-destruct. I want to know what’s here that’s worth this level of secrecy and defence.’

The
Alexis Denken
descended carefully until it was hovering above the craggy icescape a couple of kilometres away from the base itself. Quantum mass signature detectors built up a comprehensive pattern of the base’s layout for Paula. It extended over half a kilometre below the top of the ice. The central section was largely empty, which she judged to be the starship docking bays. Around that, the wings had a much higher density average, reflecting the concentration of equipment inside. Whatever the Accelerators were doing in there, it required eight high-output mass energy generators to supply the power they needed.

Paula directed the smartcore to extend the ship’s t-field, which inflated out to a five-kilometre radius. A t-field wasn’t exactly standard starship gear, not even for ultradrives; but then the
Alexis Denken
was pretty extraordinary even by ANA’s standards. She waited anxiously for a couple of seconds, but the t-field didn’t register with the base defence sensors.

For over half an hour the
Alexis Denken
teleported flecks of ice from directly underneath the bottom of the base. One sliver at a time was taken, to rematerialize in crevices and fissures across the surrounding surface, adding to the coat of slush-gravel that covered the small moon. Eventually, Paula had excavated a cavern slightly larger than the
Alexis Denken
. The starship tele-ported itself inside.

The next phase was even more delicate. Paula suited up and went outside, carrying several cases of equipment. She slowly cleared the remaining shell of ice from the bottom of the base, exposing the metal skin. Once that was clean, she applied a segment of molecular nano-filaments which began to worm their way up through the molecular bonds of the metal. The first tips which penetrated scanned round, showing her where to apply the next batch. It took five attempts in total before a set of filaments melded into one of the base’s data cables, and gave the ship’s smartcore unrestricted access into the network.

Paula’s u-shadow assumed direct control over the basement above her, disabling the alarms and subverting the sensors. After the whole Sholapur incident she wasn’t taking any chances with her personal safety. She teleported eight combatbots into the room, then materialized at the centre of them.

The chamber she emerged into was empty, and looked like it had never been used. A blank metal room with structural ribbing reinforcing the base’s external skin, its floor a simple grid suspended above the curving metal. Thick conduit tubes threaded across it. The only door was a malmetal circle in the ceiling. Paula told her u-shadow to open it. Her armour suit’s ingrav units lifted her through after the combatbots. The corridor she came out on to was illuminated by thin green lighting strips on their lowest setting. It ran for almost two hundred metres in both directions before ending in pressure bulkheads. Gravity at this level was a standard one gee field.

She called up schematics which the
Alexis Denken
’s smartcore had extracted from the network. The base’s staff quarters and ship facilities were clustered round the centre of the cross, with the lower levels providing utility and engineering support to the big chambers on the upper levels of all four wings. Strangely, the base’s network didn’t extend into those large chambers, which were linked with an independent web. There was no way of knowing what was going on inside. However, there was one compartment which the network did cover. Twelve suspension cases were inside. Three of the rooms adjoining it were given over to extensive biomedical facilities. Ten of the cases were currently occupied. The network didn’t list any personal details, but her instinct gave her a really bad feeling about who they contained.

Her u-shadow swept through the network nodes in the suspension case compartment, creating neutral ghost readings in the sensor systems so she could walk about without triggering any alerts. According to the network, there were five staff at the base, none of them near the compartment. Paula and her escort teleported in.

It was dark in the suspension case compartment. A small polyphoto ball in each corner glowed an unobtrusive lime green, giving the big sarcophagi a sombre shading. The compartment was like some bizarre miniature homage to the Serious Crimes Directorate secure vault. She walked over to the first sarcophagi, and ordered her u-shadow to opaque the lid.

The Cat lay inside, her trim body contained within a silver gossamer web.

Paula stared at her hibernating adversary for a long while. ‘Ho Jesus,’ she muttered and walked over to the next sarcophagi. Her u-shadow opaqued the lid. Another Cat lay inside. She moved on to the third.

Just as Paula looked down to confirm the seventh version of the Cat, her biononic field scan function detected a change in energy patterns at the first sarcophagi. She spun round to face it. Three combatbots deployed their proton lasers to cover the big case.

The Cat sat up on her elbows. An integral force field came on, cloaking her in a ghostly violet scintillation. A field scan swept out from her biononics, attempting to probe Paula’s armour suit. ‘Who are you?’

‘Paula Myo.’ Paula’s u-shadow was running a review of the sarcophagi’s management routines, trying to determine what had switched off the suspension.

‘Ah,’ the Cat said, and grinned hungrily. ‘
C’est la vie.
’

Paula’s u-shadow reported a small non-register sub-program that had been grafted on to the case’s opacity routine which would terminate the whole suspension as soon as anyone looked in on the occupant.
I should have guessed there’d be a trip. Typical Cat, paranoid and clever.
‘I’m afraid you’re not negotiating from a strong position.’

The second Cat sat up. ‘Aren’t we?’

‘No.’

‘Paula Myo herself,’ said the third Cat. ‘We must have been doing something bad to warrant your personal attention.’

‘Of course we have,’ said the fourth.

‘It is what you do,’ Paula admitted to them. ‘But now you have to go back into suspension so the court can ascertain what to do with you.’

‘Been there,’ said the sixth.

‘Done that,’ said the second as she slipped nimbly over the rim of the case.

‘Bored with it,’ the fifth emphasized.

‘You’re interfering with my investigation,’ Paula warned them. Two combatbots glided into place on either side of her.

The first Cat to waken grinned her effusive grin. ‘Is this supposed to be a covert mission, Paula? Are you creeping round here to try to see what’s going on?’

‘My dears, I do believe she is,’ said the third.

‘Shit,’ Paula grunted, and rolled her eyes inside her armour helmet. This was the Cat after all.
All that time and effort sneaking in here . . .

As if they’d read her mind, all seven Cats configured their biononic energy currents to full weapons function. The combat-bots opened fire. Paula teleported out. The
Alexis Denken
’s smartcore activated its weapons systems, and hardened the fuselage force fields. Paula sat down fast in the couch. Active sensors swept out.

The fight in the suspension compartment was almost over. The Cats had lost, against the level of firepower carried by the combatbots the outcome was inevitable. But that wasn’t the point, as they’d well known. The damage to the compartment and the base’s surrounding structure was substantial. Emergency systems were just starting to deploy. The staff and the orbiting sentry vehicles knew their security had been breached. Paula had a good idea what they would do next. Ilanthe was just as ruthless as the Cat, and she knew the Accelerators couldn’t afford to leave any evidence behind.

Sure enough, barely five seconds after the fight between the Cats and the combatbots four of the sentry vehicles were swooping down towards the ice moon at high acceleration. Their multiple sensors probed the base on high intensity, exposing the combatbots. Paula’s u-shadow tried to crash the base network, but two of the staff established personal secure links to the incoming sentries.

All of the base’s protective force fields switched off. The
Alexis Denken
teleported above the cross of cool metal, assuming a defensive posture. Gamma lasers and disruptor pulses hammered down from the approaching sentries. Explosions ripped through the base’s skin, sending huge plumes of superheated gas jetting out into space. Paula winced at the damage they’d caused, and fired three m-sinks up at the sentries. They began evasive manoeuvres, twisting and varying acceleration with an elegance she’d never witnessed before, the way they slipped fluidly through space was almost organic. Their fuselage seemed to adapt with them, distorting to absorb the constantly shifting acceleration vectors. One actually managed to elude an m-sink, driving down at forty gees. Kamikaze impact, Paula realized. The
Alexis Denken
rose to intercept it, firing another two m-sinks.

High above, an m-sink punched clean through one of the sentries, its colossal tidal forces imploding the internal structure in microseconds. The wreckage spun uncontrollably. More m-sinks tracked their prey skilfully. Energy weapons lashed across the base, partially deflected by the
Alexis Denken
. It was actually looking as though Paula might manage to preserve some of the base.