It was going to be a long time before Moyce’s would be open for business again.
Nelson Akroid was waiting for him at the foot of the command hypersonic’s airstairs. His shell helmet was off, revealing a haggard face; a man who has seen the ungodly at play. “Seventeen wounded, three fatalities, sir,” he said in a voice close to breaking. His right hand was covered by a medical nanonic package. Scorch marks were visible on his armour suit.
“And the hostiles?”
“Twenty-three killed, six captured.” He twisted his head around to stare at the blazing building. “My teams, they did all right. We train to cope with nutters. But they beat those
“They did good,” Ralph said quickly. “But, Nelson, this was only round one.”
“Yes, sir.” He straightened up. “The final sweep through the building was negative. I had to pull them out when the fire took hold. I’ve still got three teams covering it in case there are any hostiles still in there. They’ll do another sweep when the fire’s out.”
“Good man. Let’s go see the prisoners.”
The AT Squad was taking no chances; they were holding the six captives out on the park, keeping them a hundred metres apart. Each one stood in the centre of five squad members, five rifles trained on them.
Ralph walked over to the one Dean Folan and Cathal Fitzgerald were guarding. He datavised his communications block to open a channel to Roche Skark. “You might like to see this, sir.”
“I accessed the sensors around Moyce’s when the AT Squad went in,” the ESA director datavised. “They put up a lot of resistance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If that happens each time we locate a nest of them, you’ll wind up razing half the city.”
“The prospects for decontaminating them aren’t too good, either. They fight like mechanoids. Subduing them is tricky. These six are the exception.”
“I’ll bring the rest of the committee in on the questioning. Can we have a visual please.”
Ralph’s neural nanonics informed him that other people were coming on-line to observe the interview: the Privy Council security committee over in Atherstone, and the civil authorities in Pasto’s police headquarters. He instructed his communications block to widen the channel’s bandwidth to a full sensevise, allowing them to access what he could see and hear.
Cathal Fitzgerald acknowledged him with the briefest nod as he approached. The man he was guarding was sitting on the grass, pointedly ignoring the semi-automatics directed at him. There was a slim white tube in his mouth. Its end was alight, glowing dully. As Ralph watched, the man sucked his cheeks in, and the coal glow brightened. He removed the tube from his mouth and exhaled a thin jet of smoke.
Ralph exchanged a puzzled frown with Cathal, who merely shrugged.
“Don’t ask me, boss,” Cathal said.
Ralph ran a search program through his neural nanonics memory cells. The general encyclopedia section produced a file headed: Nicotine Inhalation.
“Hey, you,” he said.
The man looked up and took another drag. “
“That’s a bad habit, which is why no one has done it for five centuries. Govcentral even refused an export licence for nicotine DNA.”
A sly, sulky smile. “After my time, seсor.”
“What’s your name?”
“Santiago Vargas.”
“Lying little bastard,” Cathal Fitzgerald said. “We ran an ident check. He’s Hank Doyle, distribution supervisor for Moyce’s.”
“Interesting,” Ralph said. “Skibbow claimed to be someone else when he was caught: Kingsford Garrigan. Is that what the virus is programmed to do?”
“Don’t know, seсor. Don’t know any virus.”
“Where does it come from? Where do you come from?”
“Me, seсor? I come from Barcelona. A beautiful city. I show you around sometime. I lived there many years. Some happy years, and some with my wife. I died there.”
The cigarette glow lit up watery eyes which watched Ralph shrewdly.
“You died there?”
“
“This is bullshit. We need information, and fast. What’s the maximum range of that white fire weapon?”
“Don’t know, seсor.”
“Then I suggest you run a quick memory check,” Ralph said coldly. “Because you’re no use to me otherwise. It’ll be straight into zero-tau with you.”
Santiago Vargas stubbed his cigarette out on the grass. “You want me to see how far I can throw it for you?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” He climbed to his feet with indolent slowness.
Ralph gestured out over the deserted reaches of the park. Santiago Vargas closed his eyes and extended his arm. His hand blazed with light, and a bolt of white fire sizzled away. It streaked over the grass flinging out a multitude of tiny sparks as it went. At a hundred metres it started to expand and dim, slowing down. At a hundred and twenty metres it was a tenuous luminescent haze. It never reached a hundred and thirty metres, evaporating in midair.
Santiago Vargas wore a happy smile. “All right! Pretty good, eh, seсor? I practice, I maybe get better.”
“Believe me, you won’t have the opportunity,” Ralph told him.
“Okay.” He seemed unconcerned.
“How do you generate it?”
“Don’t know, seсor. I just think about it, and it happens.”
“Then let’s try another tack. Why do you fire it?”
“I don’t. That was the first time.”
“Your friends didn’t have any of your inhibitions.”
“No.”
“So why didn’t you join them? Why didn’t you fight us?”
“I have no quarrel with you, seсor. It is the ones with
“They’ve infected others?”
“How many?”
Santiago Vargas offered up his hands, palms upwards. “I don’t think anyone in the shop escaped possession. Sorry, seсor.”
“Shit.” Ralph glanced back at the burning building, just in time to see another section of roof collapse. “Landon?” he datavised. “We’ll need a full list of staff on the nighttime shift. How many there were. Where they live.”
“Coming up,” the commissioner replied.
“How many of the infected left before we arrived?” he asked Santiago Vargas.
“Not sure, seсor. There were many trucks.”
“They left on the delivery lorries?”
“
Ralph stared in dismay at the sullen man.
“We’ve been concentrating on stopping passenger vehicles,” Diana Tiernan datavised. “Cargo traffic was only a secondary concern.”
“Oh, Christ, if they got on to the motorways they could be halfway across the continent by now,” Ralph
