Context (83 page)

Travel
plans: itinerary, temporary cover ID. Once in place beyond the local realms’
borders, his short-term ‘legend’ would be switched for a new, deep-cover
persona.

‘Your access phase,’ said Jay, ‘will
take a little time. We’ve recruited some help, who are inclined to be a little,
shall we say, spectacular. But they’ll get you there safely.’

‘All right.’

Tom checked through multifaceted
parole/countersign tricons; tight-beam ciphers (for short-range use) and
entangled-crypto keys; ingress and egress of the holomapped target zone, until
he was certain of every safe chamber and code drop location.

Can I really maintain the
subterfuge?

In the past, as a Palace
servitor, he had hidden his ambitions and plans for vengeance from his
noble-born masters; but he had relied on his legal status rather than a
fictionalized biography for his protection.

‘Here are your incidentals.’ Jay
waved open a membrane-covered wall niche. ‘Check them through.’

Tom fingered the garments:
convincingly aged Grand’aumique clothing.

‘There are some crystal-stored
personal messages,’ Jay added, ‘in convincing idiom, I’m told. You’re OK with
tunnel-slang?’

‘No problem.’

His cover persona’s first
language was Belkranitsan, in the Middle Lintran dialect.

‘Corporal Wilnasz sang your
praises.’ Jay smiled bleakly. ‘I don’t need to tell you how rare that is.’

Wilnasz was Lintran-born, and she
made a point of talking to both transient Lintran refugees and the local
resettled populace, keeping up with current linguistic usage. She was a
stickler for exactitude.

‘Please thank her for me. Have we
finished the preliminaries?’

‘Very nicely.’

The
briefing’s final phase:

A holo-tesseract shone steadily
in the chamber’s gloom.

‘Let’s review objectives.’

This was the crux of things.

Under Tom’s direct local command
would be two dozen agents, divided into two overlapping teams. The smaller team
comprised resistance-fighter types (led by one Tyentro Liushkasz: a hard,
driven man) whose role would be to take care of the rough stuff.

The others were undercover
agents-in-place: those who had infiltrated strategically useful positions to
glean intelligence. Among them were a police officer, two
demesne-administration servitor-bureaucrats, a baker, several cleaners, and two
prostitutes.

They could be classified in
another manner, which cut across both groups: those who were Academy-trained,
and those who were locally recruited inside the Blight-occupied Grand’aume.

‘Your first formal mission will
be risk assessment of a potential defector.’

When Jay gestured, it was a
familiar image which hung above the blue-grey tabletop: a blond, bearded man
with an amber ovoid inset below his left cheekbone.

‘Ralkin Velsivith?’ Tom shook his
head. ‘This is a trap, I can tell you now.’

Glistening blood-red, the torture
chamber’s slick acidic walls
—

‘Don’t make this personal, Tom.’

With the man responsible for his
arrest? But... No, this was a mission.

‘There’s no chance of that. He’s
passed preliminary vetting?’

‘Correct. Your number two,
Tyentro Liushkasz, has already made contact.’

‘An infiltration attempt…’

‘Our—
your
people have
taken full precautions.’

Quietly: ‘They better have.’

There
was a strange air in the cavern. Masses of movement, yet the huge crowds of
people were quiet, disciplined: loading cargo, boarding arachnargoi and
lev-transports. Emptying the Academy.

‘We always seem’—Sylvana’s voice
sounded strange- ‘to be saying goodbye.’

It was a line from a holodrama,
but she meant it.

I couldn‘t leave,
he wanted to tell her,
without
seeing you again.

But, ‘I know,’ was all he said.

‘Tom—’

Gently, he took hold of her soft
hand and kissed it.

He
pushed his way through the throng of people, holding his plain blue cloak tight
around himself, hood pulled forward. Past queues, past crying children and the
adults who tried to calm them.

‘Excuse me.’

Then he passed into a narrow
tunnel, where the air was cold, and the rough path led him into raw, natural
caverns. He walked beneath an archway beside a ceramic guard-booth, but the
place was empty, and the booth was unmanned.

Abandoned, like the Academy
itself.

Tom pushed back his cloak’s hood.
There was no-one here to recognize him.

Pebbles scrunched underfoot as he
walked on. Small echoes, answering back from broken stalagmites, sounded like a
tiny distant marching army; but Tom Corcorigan was journeying to war alone.

~ * ~

43

TERRA
AD 2142

<Story>>

[14]

There
was a crump of sound. Over the roof of the old granite residence, a column of
dirty smoke rose into the cold leaden sky.

A military TDV, very long and low
to the ground, swerved into the courtyard, spattering slush, whipped into
position and hovered, quivering: a hound straining to be loosed. A side door
snapped upwards.

‘Inside, now!’

Zoë’s hands pushing against her
back, Ro threw herself inside, landing sideways on a hard black bench, with Zoë
following.

Who was he working for?

And why would the gardener be
trying to kill her?

They were already in motion as
the door snapped downwards, locking, and the residence—pale watching faces of
faculty and students at the windows—was fast receding behind them.

‘Could’ve done without the
audience,’ muttered Zoë.

Up front, the driver spun the TDV
hard around, while the four soldiers—sitting in the central outward-facing
seats, between the driver’s control seat and the rear bench where Ro and Zoë
crouched—snapped their helmets’ flash-visors down, ran through capacitor-status
and micromissile-mag checks on their lineac shoulder guns.