‘What do you want with me?’ he asked as he sat down in the chair, with Gaffney still jamming the stylus into his neck. ‘You’re going to dislocate my arm!’
‘That’s what happens to arms. Now open the desk drawer on your right.’
‘My drawer?’
Gaffney intensified the pressure on both the stylus and the arm. ‘I’m not really in the mood to say things twice, son.’
With his left arm, Mercier opened the drawer. ‘There’s nothing in here except papers,’ he said, tugging it open enough to demonstrate that this was the case.
‘You do like your paperwork,’ Gaffney commented. ‘Now reach all the way to the back of the drawer.’
‘There’s nothing at the back.’
‘Do it.’
Mercier started as his fingers brushed against something unfamiliar, lodged at the back of the drawer where it would not interfere with his beloved paperwork.
‘Pull it out,’ Gaffney said.
Mercier tugged and the item snapped loose. It felt heavy in his hand, like a bar of cold iron. Something about its shape was familiar, though he had never handled anything remotely like it. ‘This isn’t possible,’ he said. ‘There shouldn’t be—’
‘How many times have you had this office swept by Internal Security?’ Gaffney asked.
Mercier’s hand emerged from the drawer. He was clutching the black shaft of a whiphound. ‘How did—’
‘I put it there. I put them in a lot of places, wherever I felt I might need one. The possibility of my being exposed and arrested was not something I could ignore. Matter of fact, there’s one in that holding cell you were probably intending to take me to. Impossible, you say. Security would never have allowed it! Getting the picture now?’ Gaffney croaked out a guttural laugh. ‘Put the whiphound down on the table.’
Mercier dropped the whiphound. It clunked heavily on the table, denting the polished wood surface beneath his writing lamp. In a single fluid movement, Gaffney released Mercier’s arm, alleviated the pressure from the stylus and snatched up the whiphound.
He spooled out the filament.
‘You know what one of these can do in the wrong hands,’ he said. ‘So let’s not dick around, shall we?’
Pell brought the cutter to a halt on a ledge just under the rim of the canyon they had been following for the last twenty kilometres. He powered down the in-atmosphere engines, allowing the weight of the vehicle to settle onto its tripedal landing gear.
‘This is as close as I can get you.’
Dreyfus felt an unsettling crunching movement as the gear forced its way though the ice crusting the shelf.
‘Are you sure?’
Pell flipped up his goggles and nodded. ‘I’d caution against flying any closer, unless you have a burning desire to find out what kind of perimeter defences Firebrand have managed to get their hands on.’
‘Fair enough.’ Dreyfus knew better than to debate the point with Pell, who he knew would have done the best possible job. ‘How long a stroll are we looking at?’
Pell indicated a contour map conjured onto his flight-deck console. ‘You’re here,’ he said, stabbing his finger at the head of the canyon. ‘Ops Nine is
‘If that’s the good news,’ Sparver said, ‘what’s the bad?’
‘You’ll have limited cover, which is the reason we can’t fly any closer. You’ll have to stay low and avoid exposed ground. If something paints you, hunker down and don’t move for at least thirty minutes. The perimeter system may just assume it picked up a scavenger drone, wandering the surface looking for Amerikano trinkets.’
‘What about our way in?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘Imagery points to several possible entry points. I don’t recommend going in through the front door.’ Pell moved his finger slightly. ‘If you approach the way I’m suggesting, you should hit some kind of secondary access ramp about here. It’s all locked into your suits, so don’t worry about that.’
‘We won’t,’ Dreyfus said.
‘That’s about all I have to say. You can get off the ledge easily enough: there’s a dried-up river bed that climbs up onto the plateau. Keep low once you’re up there, and exploit whatever natural features you can find for cover. You’ve got a good shot at getting to Ops Nine by sundown. I suggest you aim to achieve that objective.’
‘If we don’t?’ Sparver asked.
‘It cools down pretty fast here. In infrared, those suits of yours are going to light up the landscape like a pair of beacons.’
‘Then we should move out right now,’ Dreyfus said, readying his suit for exposure to Yellowstone’s atmosphere. He picked up the heavy bulk of the Breitenbach rifle and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Thank you for the ride, Captain. I appreciate the risk you took in bringing us this close.’
‘I’m not the one taking the risk here.’ Pell touched a control on this console then studied a read-out for a moment. ‘We’re stable. You’re free to cycle through.’
Dreyfus nodded at Sparver and the two of them moved towards the cutter’s suitwall.
‘One thing I forgot to mention,’ Pell said. ‘When you were suiting up, word came through from Panoply.’
‘They weren’t supposed to contact us.’
‘They didn’t, not specifically. It was a general broadcast, to all assets. It sounded like a code. It meant nothing to me, but I thought you might know better.’
‘Tell me,’ Dreyfus said, swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat.
‘The message was, “Zulu has occurred. Repeat, Zulu has occurred.”’ Pell shrugged. ‘That was all.’
Dreyfus moved to snap down his faceplate. ‘You’re right. It does mean something.’
‘Good or bad?’
‘Too soon to tell,’ he answered.
CHAPTER 30
Gaffney held the stiffened filament of the whiphound against Mercier’s throat in much the same way that Dreyfus had held the whiphound against his own. They were standing outside the operating theatre where the Zulu team were still at work.
‘I can’t let you in there, Sheridan.’
Gaffney let the sharp edge of the filament draw a dab of blood. ‘It’s not a question of “can’t”, I’m afraid. You’re going to do it, or they’re going to have another head to reattach when they’re done with Jane.’
‘I can’t allow you to hurt the Supreme Prefect.’
Gaffney’s thumb caressed the handle of the whiphound. ‘Open the door. I won’t ask again.’
Mercier palmed the door, ignoring the signs warning him against entry. The door slid open, revealing the gowned backs of Demikhov’s crash team standing at their pedestals with the medical servitors beyond them. For a moment all was deceptively normal. Mercier heard the urgent but calm voices of the surgeons discussing the progress so far; he saw gloved fingers reach out towards data panes, switching between display options. Then one of the gowned figures became aware that the door had opened. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she took in the spectacle of Gaffney holding Mercier hostage.
‘Is there a problem?’ Demikhov asked.
‘What does it look like, shit-for-brains?’
‘We’re in the middle of a delicate procedure here,’ Demikhov said, still keeping admirably cool. ‘If you’ve got
