Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation

Ralph snorted at the name. “I meant to ask you, sir. What is it with DeVille?”

“Ah, yes; sorry about him, Ralph. That’s pure politics between us and our dear sister agency. DeVille is one of Ja

“Whereas you had the Princess appoint me as chief advisor . . .”

“Exactly. I’ll have a word with Ja

“Thank you, sir. It’d be nice to have him off my back.”

“I doubt he’d be much more of a problem anyway. You’ve done some sterling work tonight, Ralph. Don’t think it’s gone u

Ralph managed a contemplative smile in the half-light of the hypersonic’s cabin. “Sounds attractive right now.”

Roche Skark cancelled the cha

With his mind free, Ralph datavised a situation update request to Hub One. The squadron of Royal Marine troop flyers were already halfway down from Guyana. Twenty-five police hypersonics carrying AT Squads were arrowing across the continent, converging on Mortonridge. All motorway traffic had now been shut down. An estimated eighty-five per cent of non-motorway vehicles had been located and halted. Curfew orders were going out to every general household processor in Xingu. Police in the four Mortonridge towns were preparing to enforce the martial law declaration.

It looked good. In the computer, it looked good. Secure. But there must be something we missed. Some rogue element. There always is. Someone like Mixi Penrice.

Someone . . . who abandoned the Confederation marines in Lalonde’s jungle. Who left Kelven Solanki and his tiny, doomed command to struggle against the wave of possessed all alone.

All actions which were fully justifiable in the defence of the realm. Maybe I’m not so dissimilar to DeVille after all.

Twenty minutes after Neville Latham had issued his assignment orders, the station situation management room had settled down into a comfortable pattern. Sergeant Walsh and Detective Feroze were monitoring the movement of the patrol cars, while Manby was maintaining a direct link to the SD centre. Any sign of human movement along the streets should bring a patrol car response within ninety seconds.

Neville himself had taken part in issuing dispatch orders to the patrol officers. It felt good to be involved, to show his people the boss wasn’t afraid of rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in there. He’d quietly accepted the fact that for someone his age and rank Exnall was a dead end posting. Not that he was particularly bitter; he’d realized twenty-five years ago he wasn’t cut out for higher office. And he fitted in well here with these people, the town was his kind of community. He understood it. When he retired he knew he would be staying on.

Or so he’d thought until today. Judging from some of the latest briefing updates he’d received from Pasto, after tomorrow there might not be much of Exnall left standing for him to retire to.

However, Neville was determined about one thing. Nonentity he might be, but Exnall was going to be protected to the best of his ability. The curfew would be carried out to the letter with a competence which any big city police commander would envy.

“Sir.” Sergeant Walsh was looking up from the fence of stumpy AV pillars lining his console.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Sir, I’ve just had three people datavise the station, wanting to know what’s going on, and is the curfew some kind of joke.”

Feroze turned around, frowning. “I’ve had five asking me the same thing. They all said they’d received a personal datavise telling them a curfew was being effected. I told them they should check their household processor for information.”

“Eight people?” Neville queried. “All receiving personal messages at this time of night?”

Feroze glanced back at one of his displays. “Make that fifteen, I’ve got another seven incoming datavises stacked up.”

“This is absurd,” Neville said. “The whole point of my universal order was to explain what’s happening.”

“They’re not bothering to access it,” Feroze said. “They’re calling us direct instead.”

“Eighteen new datavises coming in,” Walsh said. “It’s going to hit fifty any minute.”

“They can’t be datavising warnings to each other this fast,” Neville murmured, half to himself.

“Chief,” Manby was waving urgently. “SD control reports that house lights are coming on all over town.”

“What?”

“Hundred and twelve datavises, sir,” Walsh said.

“Did we mess up the universal order?” Neville asked. At the back of his mind was the awful notion that the electronic warfare capability Landon McCullock warned him about had glitched the order.

“It was straight out of the file,” Feroze protested.

“Sir, we’re going to run out of net access cha

“I can’t—”

The door of the situation management room slid open.

Neville twisted around at the unexpected motion (the damn door was supposed to be codelocked!), only to gasp in surprise at the sight of a young woman pushing her way past a red-faced Thorpe Hartshorn. A characteristics recognition program in his neural nanonics supplied her name: Fi

Neville caught sight of a slender, suspicious-looking processor block which she was shoving back into her bag. A codebuster? he wondered. And if she has the nerve to use one inside a police station, what else has she got?

“Ms O’Meara, you are intruding on a very important official operation. If you leave now, I won’t file charges.”

“Recording and relaying, Chief,” Fi

“Actually, Miss O’Meara, if you bothered to fully access your legal file, you’d know that under martial law all proclamations are suspended. Leave now, please, and stop relaying at once.”

“Does that same suspension give you the right to warn your friends about the danger of xenoc sequestration technology before the general public, Chief Inspector?”

Latham blushed. How the hell did the little bitch know that? Then he realized what someone with that kind of command access to the net could do. His finger lined up accusingly on her. “Have you datavised personal warnings to people in this town?”

“Are you denying you warned your friends first, Chief Inspector?”

“Shut up, you stupid cow, and answer me. Did you send out those personal alarm calls?”

Fi

“God in Heaven! Sergeant Walsh, how many calls now?”

“One thousand recorded, sir, but that’s all our cha

“How many did you send, O’Meara?” Neville demanded furiously.

She paled slightly, but stood her ground. “I’m just doing my job, Chief Inspector. What about you?”

“How many?”

She arched an eyebrow, aspiring to hauteur. “Everybody.”