omnirover was weaving from side to side with complete disregard for the lane markings. The ceaseless and random movement made it difficult for the pilot to stay matched directly overhead.
Ralph realized what had been bothering his subconscious, and requested a visual sensor to zoom in. “That’s more than just a holographic illusion,” he said after studying the image. “Look at the bus’s shadow under those lights, it matches the outline.”
“How do they do that?” Diana asked. Her voice was full of curiosity, with a hint of excitement bleeding in.
“Try asking Santiago Vargas,” Vicky Keogh told her sharply.
“I can’t even think of a theory that would allow us to manipulate solid surfaces like that,” Diana said defensively.
Ralph grunted churlishly. He’d had a similar conversation back on Lalonde when they were trying to figure out how the LDC’s observation satellite was being jammed. No known principle. The whole concept of an energy virus was a radical one.
“Possession,” Santiago Vargas called it.
Ralph shivered. His Christian belief had never been that strongly rooted, but like a good Kingdom subject, it was always there. “Our immediate concern is what do we do about the bus. You might manage to land AT Squad teams on the thing if they were equipped with airpack flight suits, but they can hardly jump down from the hypersonic.”
“Use the SD platforms to chop up the motorway ahead of it,” Admiral Farquar suggested. “Force it to stop that way.”
“Do we know how many people were on board?” Landon McCullock asked.
“Full complement when it left Pasto spaceport, I’m afraid,” Diana reported.
“Damn. Sixty people. We have to make at least an effort to halt it.”
“We’d have to reinforce the AT Squads first,” Ralph said. “Three hypersonics isn’t enough. And you’d have to stop the bus precisely in the centre of a cordon. With sixty possible hostiles riding on it, we’d have to be very certain no one broke through. That’s wild-looking countryside out there.”
“We can have reinforcements there in another seven minutes,” Bernard Gibson said.
“Shit—” It was a datavise from the pilot. A big javelin of white fire streaked up from the bus, punching the hypersonic’s belly. The plane quaked, then peeled away rapidly, almost rolling through ninety degrees. Bright sparkling droplets of molten ceramic sprayed out from the gaping hole in its fuselage to splash and burn on the motorway’s surface. Its aerodynamics wounded, it started juddering continuously, losing height. The pilot tried desperately to right it, but he was already too low. He came to the same conclusion as the flight computer and activated the crash protection system.
Foam under enormous pressure fired into the cabin, swamping the AT Squad members. Valency generators turned it solid within a second.
The plane hit the ground, ploughing a huge gash through the vegetation and soft black loam. Nose, wings, and tailplane crumpled and tore, barbed fragments spinning off into the night. The bulky cylinder which was the cabin carried on for another seventy metres, flinging off structural spars and smashed ancillary modules. It came to a jarring halt, thudding into a steep earthen bluff.
The valency generators cut off, and foam sluiced out of the wreckage, mingling with the mud. Figures stirred weakly inside.
Bernard Gibson let out a painful breath. “I think they’re all okay.”
One of the other two hypersonics was circling back towards the crash. The second took up position a respectful kilometre behind the bus.
“Oh, Christ,” Vicky Keogh groaned. “The bus is slowing. They’re going to get off.”
“Now what?” the Prime Minister demanded. He sounded frightened and angry.
“One AT Squad can’t possibly contain them,” Ralph said. It was like speaking treason. I betrayed those people. My failure.
“There are sixty people on that bus,” an aghast Warren Aspinal exclaimed. “We might be able to cure them.”
“Yes, sir, I know that.” Ralph hardened his expression, disguising how worthless he felt, and looked at Landon McCullock. The police chief obviously wanted to argue; he glanced at his deputy, who shrugged helplessly.
“Admiral Farquar?” Landon McCullock datavised.
“Yes.”
“Eliminate the bus.”
Ralph watched through the hypersonic’s sensor suite as the laser blast from low orbit struck the fantasm vehicle. Just for an instant he saw the silhouette of the real Longhound inside the illusory cloak, as if the purpose of the weapon was really to expose truths. Then the energy barrage incinerated the bus along with a thirty- metre-diameter circle of road.
When he looked around the faces of everyone sitting at Hub One, he saw his own dismay and horror bounced right back at him.
It was Diana Tiernan who held his gaze, her kindly old face crumpled up with tragic sympathy. “I’m sorry, Ralph,” she said. “We weren’t quick enough. The AIs have just told me the bus stopped at the first four towns on its scheduled route.”
Chapter 03
Al Capone dressed as Al Capone had always dressed: with
It hadn’t taken him long to decide that the people in this future world didn’t have much in the way of fashion sense. The suits he could see all followed the same loose silk design, although their colourful slimline patterns made them appear more like flappy Japanese pyjamas. Those not in suits wore variants on vests and sports shirts. Tight-fitting, too, at least for people under thirty-five. Al had stared at the dolls to start with, convinced they were all hookers. What kind of decent gal would dress like that, with so much showing? Skirts which almost didn’t cover their ass, shorts that weren’t much better. But no. They were just ordinary, smiling, happy, everyday girls. The people living in this city weren’t so strung up on morality and decency. What would have given a Catholic priest apoplexy back home didn’t raise an eyebrow here.
“I think I’m gonna like this life,” Al declared.
Strange life that it was. He seemed to have been reincarnated as a magician: a real magician, not like the fancy tricksters he’d booked for his clubs back in Chicago. Here, whatever he wanted appeared out of nowhere.
That had taken a long while to get used to. Think and . . .
Al could hear Lovegrove whimpering away inside him, like having a leprechaun nesting at the centre of his brain. He was bawling like a complete bozo, and making about as much sense. But there was some gold among the dross, twenty-four-karat nuggets. Like—when he first got his marbles together Al had thought this world was maybe Mars or Venus. Not so. New California didn’t even orbit the same sun as Earth. And it wasn’t the twentieth century no more.
Je-zus, but a guy needed a drink to help keep that from blowing his head apart.
And where to get a drink? Al imagined the little leprechaun being squeezed, as if his brain were one giant muscle. Slowly contracting.
A macromall on the intersection between Longwalk and Sunrise, Lovegrove squealed silently. There’s a specialist store there with liquor from every Confederation planet, probably even got Earth bourbon.
