6 The Centre

The sun was just dipping below the black outline of the horizon when we left, the airlock door sliding shut behind us with a clang.

"Won't that be detected?" I asked, my voice muffled by the filter mask covering my nose and mouth. He shook his head.

"The sensors have been overridden." He glanced round at me, his expression obscured by his mask. "Don't ask how." Then he turned to the west, and began trudging up the wooded hill. I sucked a lungful of air through the hissing mask and set off after him, wondering whether he intended to walk all the way.

Twenty minutes after we'd set out, the light now fading fast, we reached the crest of the final ridge. Laid out beneath us was the wide marshy sprawl of the Thames, gently meandering from north to south. We paused for a moment, then began the descent into the river valley. I wondered what this area had looked like a century ago, remembering - as a child - being shown old photos of the Thames. Those faded images had shown a narrow, picturesque river, running gently between artificially maintained banks.

That was before the Chaos of course. Before a series of monsoon winters in the '50s and '60s had caused huge, widespread flooding. Before the carefully maintained landscape had been torn apart. Now, for most of the year at least, the Thames consisted of a dozen or more shallow channels, continually merging and dividing as they ran through a wide expanse of marsh and mud flats.

I left those thoughts behind as we reached the edge of the valley floor and plunged into the thick, waist-high reeds.

"Watch your footing," warned the Rook unnecessarily, "and keep down."

I grunted in acknowledgment, concentrating on following his footsteps. We carried on for a couple of minutes, and had probably covered less than a hundred metres when the Rook stopped dead, lifting his hand to tell me to stop. Beyond his crouched outline I could see the faint reflection of moonlight off still water. He shifted forward slightly, and looked carefully around.

"All clear," he told me in a whisper, "come on." He pushed through the last of the reeds then turned to the north. I followed him, finding myself on the bank of what I assumed - at first sight - was the Thames. But then I looked around as I trailed after him, and realised that assumption was incorrect. The stretch of water was in fact a long, thin pond running parallel to the main channels, one of thousands scattered along the river valley.

He halted again, so suddenly that I nearly tumbled into the lake, and whispered into the reeds. An accompanying whisper returned. The Rook waved me forward, and continued down the bank, following it as it curved round into a small muddy inlet that was almost roofed over with reeds.

Floating snugly in the inlet, almost brushing the muddy sides, was a boat unlike any I had seen or heard about. Evidently, my assumption that the pond was separate from the main channels was also wrong. The craft was a triamaran, two slim outriggers connected to the sleek main hull by a smooth, rounded deck, steeply raked on either side of the main hull. Behind the low glass canopy was a hovercraft style fan, with twin angled rudders behind that. Written upon the black hull, in simple red lettering, was the boats name - Wave Skimmer II.

A shadow stepped out from the surrounding stalks, a sub-machine gun cradled in his arms. It was Crazy Horse, with Doc - who was similarly armed - behind him. He caught my eye, but said nothing. I took the hint and stayed quiet also. It was the Rook who spoke first, introducing me to them.

"This is the other member of the team." Then he turned to me. "These are two associates of mine. They'll be taking us to the Centre, and then back when we've completed the job."

Crazy Horse looked up. "That's if you're back within four hours citizen. After that we go." He slowly pushed his hand away from his body, miming the threatened departure.

"Of course," confirmed the Rook. "Everything ready to go?"

Doc nodded. "I'm not completely happy with the fuel. Early 21st century stuff's a bit difficult to reproduce. It's all tested okay, but..."

I broke in. "You mean it hasn't exploded yet?"

"Something like that," replied Doc, grinning.

"Have you got my equipment?" asked the Rook. Doc nodded, stepping gingerly onto the sloping deck of the Skimmer, and opening up a hatch situated just behind the canopy. Inside were two grey plastic toolboxes and a large kit-bag.

"Catch!" called Doc, lifting the bag from the compartment and throwing it over to the Rook. I walked over, peering inside as the catches were snapped open. Inside were two military issue Hostile-Environment Suits, which were far more robust than the civilian work-suits we were currently wearing. The Rook pulled them out, and dropped them onto the deck of the triamaran. Also in the bag were two work-uniforms of a type that I didn't recognise. The Rook pulled these out also, handing one to me.

"Put it on."

I quickly stripped off my suit, and pulled the work-uniform on, the Rook doing the same. He then indicated the HE suits, lifting one from the deck and stepping into it. I grabbed the other and did the same.

"Ok, we're ready," he declared when I snapped the last seam shut. Doc shuffled over to the cockpit and slid the canopy back, revealing two aircraft style seats behind the controls and two small bucket seats squeezed in behind.

"Gentleman," he announced, "your ride awaits."

I carefully stepped onto the slanting deck, feeling the craft rock gently under my weight, walked cautiously up the smooth black plastic, and climbed into the cabin, taking the furthermost bucket seat. A few seconds later the Rook took his place beside me, followed by Doc and Crazy Horse who dropped into the front seats. Crazy Horse twisted around to speak to us, while Doc began flicking switches, the board in front of him lighting up.

"Better put the harnesses on," suggested Crazy Horse.

I found the straps and pulled them around me, snapping the catches firmly shut.

"Is the lake long enough?" asked the Rook, leaning as far forward as the tight-fitting harness would allow.

"Probably," muttered Doc, not looking up from his controls. An LCD screen mounted in front of Crazy Horse's seat flashed into life. Upon it, outlined on the grey screen by thin black lines was a winding string of channels and lakes, one of which contained a small cross. I guessed that it was the section of the Thames between us and the Centre.

"How long will it take?" inquired the Rook, pointing at the map-screen.

"It's about thirty-three kilometres," answered Doc, "so it should take us about fifteen minutes."

"How accurate is it?"

Doc shrugged. "Not particularly. There aren't any accurate plans of the Thames anymore."

"I know," the Rook pointed out, "I tried to get some, remember? Anyway what about the aerial photography I got you?"

"Well I was able to use that," admitted Doc, still checking his instruments, "but it wasn't complete enough, and some of it was taken during the winter - when the whole valley floods. In the end I had to get some pre-chaos maps and satellite imagery and patch the whole lot together by guess-work."

"Anyway," laughed Crazy Horse, "it ain't as if ya can get lost on a river!" Doc looked up from the control board, his right hand on the control wheel, his left hand on the throttle bar beside his seat. "Everyone ready?" he called, pulling on a set of night-vision goggles.

I nodded, along with the Rook.

"Let's go then," he proclaimed, feeding in a small amount of power.

We nosed slowly out of the inlet and into the main body of the lake, its far end only barely visible in the dim evening light. Doc turned the wheel to the right and the craft responded, the bow turning to point at the nearest end of the ribbon-like lake. He drove the boat to the end of the lake, then spun round through one-hundred and eighty degrees, to leave us stationary and pointed straight down the length of the water.

"Hold on," he instructed, pushing the throttle forward. Within seconds we were at full power, the fan behind us producing only a gentle whisper as we accelerated through the water. In our wake a series of waves split from the seething wash and hammered into the sandy bank. Ahead of us, the end of the lake was rapidly approaching. I frantically scanned the far bank, trying to spot the outlet channel, but even my vision couldn't spot it. Wherever it was, we going to hit it at one hell of a rate of knots.

"60," announced Crazy Horse, reading from the speed indicator, confirming my previous thought.

"70," he chanted as the noise from the hull rose to a roar. The far end of the lake looked very close now. Very close.

"80!" he called, and then the noise vanished abruptly. The line of rushes at the end of the lake disappeared just beneath us, the hull skimming over the marsh only inches above the top of the vegetation, still accelerating. Doc turned the wheel slightly as we reached one of the main channels, banking the craft slightly to take us along the watercourse.

We were cruising along the Thames at a cruising speed of a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, and an altitude of just under one metre.

"What is this thing?" I asked.

"The proper term is a ground-effect vehicle," explained Doc. "It works because of the principal that a wing is far more efficient when it's only about a metre above the ground. This thing's specially designed to fly at that altitude - and only at that altitude. Because of the extra lift it's much more efficient than a plane, and because it doesn't have the drag of the water it's much more efficient than a boat. It's also - because it flies at a constant height - much easier to pilot than a plane. With a bit of help from the computers."

"Where the hell did you get it from?"

"It was a prototype, built by an Oxford research centre before the Chaos - only the second of it's type in the country. When the economy collapsed, they lost the funding they needed to transport it to its test site. So they mothballed it in foam - and that's how we found it."

"And it was still in working order?"

"Pretty much. Some of the electrics needed to be replaced, but they'd done a good job."

The Rook broke in. "It also has certain advantages for the journey we're making. The Centre is surrounded by a network of automated radar stations; but they can't detect anything at an altitude of less than two to three metres. An air-car couldn't avoid them - but we can. On the land there are three perimeter fences, combined with mines and automated machine guns; but we'll go past the first two of those. The river itself is protected by a network of wave sensors and mines. They'll catch either people wading in on foot, or using a boat or hovercraft. But we leave no wake. The weakness of the system is that it relies too heavily on automatic systems; which leaves loopholes we can exploit."

Crazy Horse's laugh boomed around the claustrophobic cockpit. "Well that's the theory!"

I looked out at the dead waters flashing past us. Yep, that was the theory.

"Approaching outer p'rimeter," announced Crazy Horse, studying the map display, "e.t.a. 2 minutes."

"Got it," confirmed Doc, banking the Wave Skimmer into yet another long, gentle turn to follow the wide sweeping meandering of the Thames. We flashed over the ruins of a pre-chaos weir, then shot past the wreckage of what was once a small hamlet.

"That was Benson," read Crazy Horse. Doc nodded, then increased the bank as we hurtled into the tightest part of the bend. I looked past the Rook, and noticed that the left outrigger seemed only inches from the river surface. Doc held the angle for a tense few seconds, then levelled out as the bend fell behind us. Lit up in front of us, just over a kilometre away was the five metre high, chain-link fence of the outer perimeter. Standing just behind it on ten metre stilts were the watch-towers, strung out at five hundred metre intervals along the fence. Set either side of the river itself, at the points where the fence reached the water's edge, were a pair of much larger structures, lit up like giant glow-sticks.

I nudged the Rook. "Are those things manned?"

"Yeah. But half of them asleep, and most of the others are just looking at the scanners. We're fast, small and low down, so..."

The towers approached rapidly. "Five hundred metres," warned Crazy Horse. "Four hundred. Three hundred. Two hundred. One hundred."

I held my breath as the tiny black shadow of the Wave Skimmer shot silently through the two hundred metre gap between the two huge blocks.

"No sign of activity," reported Crazy Horse, checking his sensors, "no active scanning, no movement."

I started breathing again. If we were spotted, and they scrambled air-cars, then we were sitting ducks.

"Middle perimeter in two kilometres," said Crazy Horse as Doc threw the craft into a tight sequence of bends. I sat in silence while we hurtled past yet another shattered village, still not able to believe what we were doing. This was the Centre, for god's sake, The Centre. And no way could four blokes and a shit-hot boat take down the Centre. No way.

"One kilometre," called Crazy Horse, disturbing my thoughts. Ahead was the even bigger rampart of the middle perimeter, growing as each second ticked by.

"We got company!" warned Crazy Horse. "An air-car eight-hundred metres north, altitude five-hundred metres."

I twisted my head round and frantically searched the northern sky. A few seconds and I had found it, its position given away by the glow of its small, dim navigation lights. "Got it," I told the others, "it's showing navigation lights."

"It's okay then," the Rook reassured us, "it's just a routine patroller."

"Seven hundred metres," said Crazy Horse, resuming his count-down. "Six hundred. Five hundred."

I hope they're asleep, I thought grimly, as we skimmed over the mud flats.

"Four hundred. Three hundred. Two hundred. One hundred."

The huge concrete towers glided smoothly by, so close that I could see the metal rails on the empty watch-platforms. Again I held my breath.

"All clear," chanted Crazy Horse as we left the barrier behind.

Once the nave had been a place of quiet solitude, the heart of an ancient church that had stood for centuries over two hundred metres from the Thames. But that had been when this was simply a quiet, sleepy village on the northern bank of the river. In the last fifty years that river had spread, flooding the narrow streets and tearing apart the fragile buildings, leaving the remains of the church standing alone. Now, the tiled floor of the nave was under nearly a metre of muddy water, open to the sky and with it's southern wall mostly fallen. But tonight it was in use again, as a secluded mooring point for the Skimmer.

"Ready?" asked the Rook, encased as I was in the HE suit.

"Ready enough," I assured him, picking up my toolbox and stepping off the Skimmer's deck into the dark, silty waters. He looked at the digital readout built into the suit's wrist section.

"I make the time, twenty-two-oh-twelve." He looked up at Doc for confirmation.

"Check," Doc confirmed, then added a warning. "Four hours, citizen; then we go."

We turned and began to wade towards the opening, but were stopped by Crazy Horse's call. "Hey you two! Good luck." He hesitated, then added in explanation. "They made me. They had no right."

After a couple of minutes wading between the flooded buildings we reached dry land, and I was able to fully see the scarred, sterile landscape for the first time. The only comparison I could draw was with twentieth century images of the Moon's surface. Not a single living thing grew, or disturbed the quiet of the night. The Rook waved me to a halt, and began firing instructions at me, his voice tinny through his mask.

"The area between here and the inner perimeter fence has thousands of land-mines laid. I have a plan of them." He paused, and indicated the comp-pad hanging from his suit's belt. "Obviously, it's vital that you follow my path exactly."

"How certain can you be of that plan," I interrupted. He thought for a moment.

"About seventy-five percent."

"That good?" I asked sarcastically. He ignored me and resumed.

"The whole area has also had various toxins and low-level nuclear waste scattered around, so it's vital that you keep your suit sealed for the whole period. Under no circumstances should you allow your toolbox to come into contact with the ground. Contact with soil could well contaminate it. Clear?"

"Clear."

"There are also various sensors, which detect body heat and other emissions. The suits have built-in shielding to prevent those emissions escaping. The weak point is your visor. The path I take avoids all the known sensor positions, so as long as you keep looking at the ground where I've walked, we'll be okay."

"Got it."

"Lastly, there are random security patrols. So keep your eyes peeled. There's a submachine-gun in your toolbox."

"Got it," I replied, taking out the weapon.

"Okay." He picked up the comp-pad, and spent a few moments keying in our coordinates. "Follow me."

I followed, making sure that I stepped only onto his footprints.

The inner perimeter fence was even higher than the previous two, standing fully ten metres high. The Rook halted some way before it, and pointed forward.

"That's it, the inner perimeter." He turned and pointed to where the fence reached the Thames. Unlike the others, this barrier continued across the river, huge concrete blocks stretching across the channels. "That's why we couldn't take the skimmer any further."

"Why aren't the other two fences like that?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Too expensive, I suppose. As it is, this one gets torn away every few years when the river floods." He started forward again, crouching down now, so I did the same, taking care not to allow any part of the suit other than the soles to come into contact with the poisoned ground. The apparently random, weaving path continued, with frequent halts to check the comp-pad. Finally, we reached the fence.

"Don't touch the wires!" the Rook warned while I made the last few steps. "The whole thing's electrified."

"How are we going to get through?" I asked, staring at the thick links.

"We're not," he replied, pointing to the nearest watch-tower, standing just behind the fence, about one-hundred and fifty metres along from our position. "There's a buried gateway in front of the tower. We'll go through that. We can walk along the strip in front of the fence - the metre in front is unmined." With that he set off along the fence. I followed, making sure I didn't look suspiciously at the watch-tower.

The gateway was actually a flight of concrete steps leading down into the ground, and opening out into a dark tunnel that led under the wire to a thick, steel door. The Rook halted in front of it, and pressed the dimly lit entry button set into the frame. I looked around nervously, just able to make out the tiny gas-holes and hidden flame-throwers. After a few seconds a bored voice sounded from a hidden speaker.

"State unit destination and mission code."

"Patrol AT54R - mission Y7EW3," replied the Rook in a clear, calm tone.

"State password."

"DFR73."

"Yeah, you're okay."

A moment later the door slid open, and we walked through, climbing up the far flight of steps to the surface beside the watch-tower. Some way beyond were the low buildings of the Centre.

"There it is," said my companion, setting off toward the nearest building. I shrugged to no-one in particular, and followed after him.

The air-lock door slid open in response to the Rook's quickly tapped combination, revealing the brightly lit interior. We stepped clumsily over the metal sill, then waited while the doors clanked shut.

"Beginning decontamination procedures," announced the air-locks synthetic voice. Jets of high pressure water erupted from the floor, walls and ceiling, washing over us for exactly ten seconds. Then the jets stopped, and were replaced by a blast of hot, drying air. "Decontamination complete," announced the air-lock as the inner door slid open.

"Come on," ordered the Rook, stepping into the room beyond. I followed him and saw that we were in a small changing room, one wall lined with racks of small personal lockers, with larger cupboards for outdoor equipment. The Rook opened two of the lockers.

"Make sure you keep your gloves on at all times - to stop fingerprints." He waited for my nod, then continued. "Stuff the HE suit in here - and don't touch the soles. They might still be hot even after the decon. And put the sub-gun away."

"Check," I replied, stowing the gun in my toolbox and stripping off the clumsy suit. A few seconds later it was secure within the locker. A clicking sounded from around my feet as the Rook poked a metal rod in their direction.

"Geiger counter," he explained, circling my feet, then moving onto the toolbox. "The whole complex is wired with radiation detectors. If we go in with any contamination they'll scream immediately.

"And there was me thinking you were worried about our long-term future."

He looked up at me, his face still. "When you join the movement, you cease to have a long-term future." He moved onto his own limbs, then finished at his toolbox. "All clear." He reached into the toolbox and pulled out a pair of badges, throwing one over to me. "ID badges. According to those we're a two-man maintenance team, with me as team-leader. The badge has got your name and ID number on it - memorise them."

I took the badge, read the inscription, then pinned it to the suit. Sapphire.

Sapphire: 22:57:26> Activated.

Store string Kevin Jackson 8745 as name_and_id.

Sapphire: 22:57:27>Stored.

Clear.

One thing was still bothering me. "How did you know the access code for the door? And why were we logged as a mission coming through the fence? There's someone on the inside, isn't there?"

"Yes," he admitted, "but that's all you need to know." He picked up my toolbox, and held one end out to me. "This end contains a hidden camera. Use it to film everything you see - except me of course."

'The Centre for Biohuman Research, Development and Production', said the sign attached to the wall, giving the official name of the Centre, and adding in smaller letters: 'Ministry of Biohuman Production'. I angled the toolbox, getting a shot of the sign.

The Rook looked up at the name, his expression briefly revealing his distaste. "Let's get going," he called to me as he set off down the carpeted corridor. "We're on a tight schedule."

"This is it!" breathed the Rook, tapping in another access code. "The production room." The heavy door slid slowly upward, revealing a small room beyond. "Air-lock," he explained. "The atmosphere in there's nitrogen rich to prevent fire. You can breath it, but you won't get any oxygen. There's a breathing set in your toolbox."

I found the set and put it on, hooking the small, metal oxygen cylinder onto the belt of my work-suit.

"Ready?" checked the Rook, standing by the inner door controls. I nodded, and he tapped in another access code, causing the inner door to slide upwards. Before us was a long room, filled with bank after bank of two metre long, bullet-shaped objects. I followed him forward, through the deep doorway, and onto the metre wide catwalk which ran along each wall. And then I realised what I was seeing, and I gripped the thin metal guard-rail as I tried unsuccessfully to take in, or even comprehend, the scene.

"Make sure you film all this," he commanded, his voice hissing through the mask's valve. I nodded numbly, and lifted the toolbox onto my shoulder.

The room was large, larger than any I had seen so far in the Centre. Longing down the central aisle, I estimated that it was about three hundred metres long, and about fifty metres wide. The rough untreated concrete of the floor was about ten metres below us, the metal ceiling about eight metres above. The room itself was packed with banks of metal racks, bank after bank after bank, rack after rack after rack. Each rack contained a metal and glass ovoid cylinder.

And each cylinder contained a human being, some new-born, some full-grown. Even through the glass and plastic of the breather mask I could smell the harsh tang of chemical nutrients. But the huge room itself was almost silent.

"Over here," called the Rook, standing a few metres away on a platform that hung on cables from the ceiling. I walked over, and stepped over the tiny gap between it and the catwalk, shutting the metal access gates as I did so. He fingered the small control board in the corner of the square platform, and we began to move away along the central aisle. I grasped one of the rough, metal cables and looked up, seeing that each of the four thick wires ran from a corner of the platform to a kind of inverted railway bogie, which hung from a network of grooves set into the ceiling. The Rook noticed my glance.

"This platform can get to any point in the room. There's also an automated crane, which uses the same system, and can be used to remove or swap any of the cots." He fell silent, as we moved slowly past rack, after rack, after rack.

"How many..?" I asked haltingly. He answered in a cold monotone.

"Each row has twenty cots, split over two racks with the central aisle between. Each column contains twenty stacked rows, and there are two hundred columns."

He left me to do the mental arithmetic: Twenty cots in each row. Twenty stacked rows in each column. Two hundred columns along the length of the room. Twenty times twenty times two hundred. Eighty thousand cots. Eighty thousand coders. Eighty thousand human beings.

Mass production.

The endless traverse past rack after rack was hypnotic. "How long are they in here?" I inquired, not able to stand the silence any more.

Again the deadened tones. "They're transferred to the cots directly from the synthi-wombs. For those of normal life-spans that's nine months after creation. For the ones designed for accelerated growth, it can be down to two months. They stay in the cots for an average of four years."

"Four years!" I interrupted, shocked. "Surely they'd just... waste away? Or get skin problems from lying on the same place."

He smiled grimly. "The cots don't contain air; they're filled with a liquid which is light enough to be breathed. Using a liquid means that they float, as though in the womb. It also enables drugs and nutrients to be continuously pumped into the fluid. Vitamins, proteins, antibiotics, growth hormone." He shook his head grimly. "Oh, and tranquillisers for the ones with higher brain functions. It's much cheaper and more automated than rearing them in the conventional way."

I fixed my eyes on a single cot and kept them on it whilst we slid past, unable to suppress a shudder. So this was how Crazy Horse was created. A thought suddenly occurred to me.

"Are there other rooms like this?"

The Rook nodded. "Three others in this complex. A total of three hundred and twenty thousand cots. Allowing for natural wastage and quality control, they'll produce about three hundred thousand coders over a four year period. That's about a fifth of the coder production for the entire country. Unfortunately the four rooms are at opposite points of the complex, and our passes can only cover us for this quadrant. So we'll only be able to do this room."

I turned to face him, horror seeping through me. "When you say that we're going to do it, what precisely do you mean?"

The fire of a fanatic burned in his eyes as he looked up from the controls.

"We're going to shut it down!"

He smiled, his tiny pink lobster-claw tapping gently on the glass as I leaned over his cot. I glanced down and read the white plastic plate affixed to the front. 34HP1A-07 was the only line in the inscription I recognised. I looked back, and rested my hand on the smooth, curved glass. His claw tapped beneath it, his confused smile broadening. I slid my hand a few inches, watching as the claw followed the movement. I moved my hand further, and saw his eyes following. I smiled back at him, and waved my fingers. He shook slightly, the liquid suddenly churning around his mouth.

A laugh.

He was cute, with sparkling blue eyes and barcodes stretched over chubby cheeks. I waved again, and his other claw lifted, moving slowly through the clear liquid as he reached out to me. Metallic footsteps sounded as the Rook walked up behind me, bending down to look at the inscription.

"There's nothing there," he informed me icily, "just a bundle of hand-to-eye reflexes. If you move something - the eyes track it and the claws try to grab it. Animal instincts, that's all there is. If that glass wasn't there, those claws would tear your hand apart."

"Maybe," I told him, "but it's still a baby."

"I never said it wasn't," he said, moving back to the access panel. I tore myself away from the cot and walked over to him.

"This is it," he muttered, as he removed the last retaining screw and pulled the two metre long panel away from the wall, placing it carefully onto the platform's surface.

"What's so special about this panel?" I asked, glancing inside and seeing only a shadowy space. "It's exactly the same as about fifty thousand others."

"It does look the same," he admitted. "But if you study the architectural plans of this place - and I have - you notice something rather interesting. You see, the oxygen for the cots comes into the room in ten separate pipes, from ten separate storage tanks."

"So that if one or more fail, the others can take over."

"Exactly. But for the others to be able to take over, they can't be totally separate. They've all got to link at some point."

"And this is it?"

"Yeah." He took a torch from his toolbox, switched it on with a flick of his thumb, and shone the beam through the opening, illuminating a network of vertical piping.

"So you're going to cut them, are you?"

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "You think it's that easy? You think they haven't thought of that? Each cot has a simple, robust, and totally independent life support system, which can run for upto ten hours in the event of outside failure. If you turn off the oxygen, or anything else for that matter, the life-support system takes over. The cots themselves are made of thick steel and toughened plasti-glass, with the life-support systems inside. You could fire off thousands of rounds and only destroy a fraction of them. A bomb would only destroy the few hundred around it. Even a fire would do no good. The air in this room's got damn-all oxygen plus a flame retarding gas."

"So what are you going to do?" I asked, exasperated.

"See the small cylinders on the pipes?"

"Yeah."

"Well the oxygen in this room is held at high pressure. But the oxygen in the storage cylinders is held at an even higher pressure. Those cylinders are valves that reduce the pressure to the degree needed. They should have been placed nearer the cylinders, and further apart; but they were placed together for convenience. What I'm going to do is rewire the sensors to leave them permanently full open, which will increase the down-pipe pressure."

"But surely there are other fail-safes."

"There are," he admitted. "Each pipe has an emergency valve which should clamp shut if there's any problem with the oxygen supply - if the pressure changes by more than plus or minus five percent. However, there's a bug in the software controlling the valve. It works fine for an oxygen increase of between nought percent and two hundred and fifty four percent. But when it increases beyond two-five-four it goes back to nought."

I tossed the concept around my brain. "So if the pressure increases by more that two-five-four percent it thinks that it's still within the limit. Until it gets to two-sixty, when it will think that it's increased by six percent."

"Exactly," he confirmed, crawling into the access space. "If the pressure increases by between two-five-five and two-five-nine percent - the emergency valves stay open. And according to the instruments in the control room the pressure will be up by between nought and five percent. They'll just make a note for a maintenance team to check the valves in the morning."

"And how do you get that increase in pressure?"

"By simultaneously opening seven of the ten valves."

"This bug," I queried, "was it accidental? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but those sorts of bugs only used to happen when computers were the size of rooms and powered by a bloke shovelling coal in the back."

He said nothing, and continued working. I crouched down and peered through the gap. He had pulled the covers away from seven of the cylinders and was deftly wiring multi-stranded cabling into the exposed interfaces. I tried another query.

"But can't the cots simply go onto internal life-support."

"Well that's what they'll supposed to do," he grunted uncomfortably, at the same time reaching for the furthest valve. "What should happen is that the cot's own safety valve detects the increase in pressure and shuts. The cot will then switch to internal life-support. But the safety valve is only designed to cope with an increase in pressure of upto one hundred and fifty percent."

"So it will blow apart immediately?"

"No, because the increase in pressure will be so sudden that it will never be able to shut in the first place. And its software is written on the assumption that the valve will close. Which means that the alarm will never be tripped, and so the cot won't go onto internal life-support."

"So what will happen then?"

He stopped his work for a moment. "The proportion of oxygen in the fluid will increase massively. That will cause oxygen narcosis - that's oxygen poisoning - which will kill the occupants of the cots."

"How long will it take?" I breathed, fighting the feeling of revulsion that was clamped around my throat.

"For those nearing full physical maturity, several hours. Those just out of the synthi-wombs will be quicker ----"

He meant the babies.

"---- their bodies will sense that they have too much oxygen in their blood and simply stop breathing."

"Surely that will trip all the alarms?"

"You'd think wouldn't you? Thing is, it wouldn't be efficient to monitor the life-signs of the coders themselves. To do it properly you'd need to attach sensors to their bodies - and then keep on reattaching them when they pulled them off."

"And with eighty-thousand you'd have quite a job."

"Yep. So instead, they work on the assumption that if the cot's okay, then the inhabitant probably is too."

"But surely the cot has another system to sense the oxygen level, as well as the one in the valve."

"It does," he confirmed, attaching the last of the cables, "but it's only there to determine if the oxygen level falls below the necessary level."

"So when will they detect it?"

He shrugged. "Well, eventually the level of nutrients will build up. Each cot does have a sensor to detect that since it indicates that the inhabitant isn't metabolising properly. But the build-up won't trip that alarm for at least five or six hours. At which point they'll find that they've lost eighty-thousand of their stock."

"Just like that?"

"Yeah. Just like that."

He crawled backwards out of the hole, trailing the plastic-coated wires behind him.

"How are you going to open the valves?" I asked him. "Aren't their workings internal?"

"They are," he replied, connecting the cables to a custom interface which he'd plugged into his comp-pad. "But I've got a program which will open them. That's why I was wiring into the interfaces." He tapped a few times on the comp-pad's screen and the custom program appeared. "That's it," he announced, "ready to go."

A final wave of disbelief rallied itself and swept through me. "You're really going to do it?" I cried. "You're really just going to tap on that screen and kill eighty-thousand people. I thought you were supposed to be in favour of coder rights?"

He snarled. "Why do you think I'm doing this? What sort of life do you think they're going to have? If they lucky - and most won't be - they'll be household slaves. And the rest of them? Well they'll either burn under a cancerous sky, or be used to provide fleeting pleasure for spoiled citizens. You call that life?"

I shrugged, not knowing what to say.

"Believe me," he muttered, "We're just putting them out of their misery. Correction - I'm just putting them out of their misery. Remember that - I'm the one who's pressing the button, not you."

I turned away, and walked over to the cot, while behind me his finger brushed the screen; a light touch of an icon that caused the seven valves to open wide, and the life-giving oxygen to surge down the piping. A light touch that caused eighty-thousand people to start dying.

The babies head turned as I approached, what might have been recognition in his eyes. He was sucking his claw, his tiny lips nibbling at the pink, shell-like weapon that he bore instead of a hand.

"Sleep quietly," I crooned to him, though I knew he couldn't hear my voice though the thick glass. "Sleep..."

His claws waved at me, and I waved back, seeing his smile widen. I remembered a lullaby that my mother would sing to me when she put me to bed, remembered how safe I had felt. His claws waved again, more vigorously this time. And again. And again. He was thrashing now, his limbs jerking violently, his gentle smile replaced by a confused, terrified expression. I became aware of the Rook, standing beside me.

"It's a seizure," he informed me, "bought on by the narcosis."

I noticed that his eyes were full of tears.

"What he would have had," he pleaded to someone, "it wouldn't have been a life."

The fit was out of control now, his tiny claws banging repeatedly on the sides of the cot, the clear fluid inside churned up by the violent movements. Then a merciful stillness swept over him, his limbs floating limply within the liquid.

"He's stopped breathing," whispered the Rook. "He'll die peacefully now."

I looked at the cots above and below, and at the cots alongside, then turned to face the opposite side of the aisle, repeating the process. All I could see, from floor to ceiling, and from one end of the aisle to the other, were hundreds of cots.

And in each cot was a single, sleeping baby.

"That was stage one," whispered the Rook to me, while we strolled down yet another sterile, white-walled passageway. "The most important part of the plan. Now that's accomplished, we can carry out stage two."

"And what's that?" I asked. He went to answer, then paused when a white-coated worker stepped out from a side corridor.

"Evening citizens," the worker called out cheerfully as he approached us. "Working late?"

The Rook pulled a face. "No rest for the wicked!"

"Too true, citizen, too true," the worker chortled as he departed. We carried on walking, passing under yet another discretely sited security camera.

"Won't we be on camera?" I queried, thinking about the lens behind us. "I mean, when they've figured out what's happened - they'll be able to get pictures of us."

"The security system for this section malfunctioned earlier this evening," he said, trying to keep a slight smile from his face, "I hope."

I gathered my thoughts. "So what's stage two?"

He shot a fierce sideways glance at me. "Destroy targets of opportunity. That's all you need to know at the moment." He made another turn, into a small side-corridor. At the end was a set of double doors, with a small security keypad beside it. Above was a standard Centre nameplate, proclaiming: Spinal Research Unit - Ministry of Health. A few taps, and yet another access code later, the doors were open and we were through. It appeared to be a common-room, with easy chairs scattered around a small coffee table.

"Who's that?" called a frightened voice from the room beyond. Cautiously, we pushed through the swing doors. In the centre of the room was a large surgical table, with a near-naked coder lying motionless upon the soft, ribbed plastic. As we watched, the mattress altered, some ripples inflating while others deflated. I remembered a hospital visit I once made, and recognised it as a ripple mattress, designed to stop patients who were perpetually lying on their backs developing pressure sores. I sniffed, smelling the sharp tang of urine from his catheter mixed with the clinging stench of faeces from his incontinence pads. Unwiped saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes fixed frantically upon us as we approached. "Who are you?"

"It's okay," I reassured him. "We're not going to hurt you." Meanwhile the Rook wondered round the table to the coder's feet, and gave them a quick flick with his forefinger. The coder carried on looking at me, apparently not noticing.

"Can you feel your feet?" the Rook asked, walking back up the other side of the table. The coder made an almost imperceptible shake of his head. "Can you move your feet?" Again the coder shook his head. "Can you feel or move your arms?"

"No," stuttered the coder, "I can't feel nothing below my neck."

The Rook stopped by him and sank down, bringing his head level with the coder's. "Can you remember a time when you could feel and move below your neck?"

"'Fore I came here. Then I could."

The Rook moved past me, muttering under his breath: "Bastards!"

I turned and followed him over to the corner. He looked up as I approached, and whispered to me. "This unit's dedicated to spinal research - presumably how to repair broken spinal cords. Well to do that, it's helpful to have a broken spinal column to play with."

"So they found him, and broke his back?"

"I don't suppose he's the only one. They've probably got a load out the back. He's just the one they're working on at the moment."

"So are you going to kill him and the others then?" I whispered sarcastically, making sure I was facing away from the coder.

He shook his head. "No point. They'll just get some more victims. All we'd accomplish would be to put their research back by a few months." He looked around, his eyes searching the room. "No... we need to take out the research team."

I didn't believe what I was hearing. "You what! Take out the fucking research team! Are you mad?"

He grabbed my collar, and forced me back into the wall. "What is this? Killing coders is fine..? But if I mention killing citizens...then you start getting cold feet?"

"I'm not wild about killing anyone," I protested.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the coder. "Look at him, at what they've done to him. Are you just going to let that go?"

"It's not that simple!"

"No it's not," he admitted, a far-away look in his eyes. "A long time ago I thought it was. I thought it was black and white, and that I could write all the wrongs. But I can't. I haven't got a magic scalpel that can cut the cancers from society, and leave all the healthy flesh untouched."

"What you've got looks more like a sledgehammer to me!"

"Yeah it is. So I'll just have to hammer away. And one other thing citizen ----"

"What?"

"If you want any answers from me, you'll hammer alongside me. Besides, you've already done enough to send you to the labour camps for a slow death - if we're caught!" He moved away from me, and started to search the room. A few seconds later he called out.

"This is what we need!" He leapt onto the table where the coder lay, and reached up. Above him, attached to the ceiling by heavy iron bars was an additional light-box, this one unlit. "It's used to give extra illumination during surgical procedures," he explained, pulling off the near-transparent glass cover. Inside was a set of six large, old-style light bulbs, arrayed in two rows. "Perfect!" He jumped down and lifted his toolbox onto the table, snapping the top open. After a few seconds search he pulled out an unmarked packet that contained a putty-like substance.

"Plastic?" I presumed.

"Yes," he confirmed, climbing back onto the table, then looking down at me. "Can you have a look through the drawers and cupboards?"

"What am I looking for?" I asked.

"Nuts, bolts; anything small and dense."

I walked uneasily over to the wall and began searching through the white, metal units. Behind me the Rook was busily wrapping the plastic around the necks of the bulbs.

"Found some," I told him, after pulling open a lower drawer, and finding a clear plastic box full of surgical nuts and bolts. I lifted the box out and handed it to him.

"Orthopaedic stuff?" he mused. "Wonder why they've got that?"

"Perhaps this place is kitted out for everything..?" I suggested.

"Must be." He snapped open the box and pulled out a handful of metal, lifting the objects upto the first bulb and squeezing them into the putty. He grinned savagely, and repeated the process for the other five bulbs. Finally he took some more of the putty and reached round the edge of the box to apply some of the explosive to the upper surface. Then he snapped the glass cover back onto the box, and hopped down to the floor.

He looked back up at the light, and surveyed the room. "When the light's turned on," he whispered to me, "the plastic will begin to heat up. After about five minutes one of the blobs will reach its critical temperature and detonate, setting off the others in turn. The force of the explosion will throw the lightbox up through the false ceiling into the concrete ceiling above. That impact should detonate the plastic on top of the box, hurling the box down onto the table, and ensuring that the coder is taken out cleanly and relatively painlessly. Meanwhile the initial explosion will not only have blown throughout the room, it will also have hurled the nuts and bolts across the whole area. Hopefully by that point most of the team will have assembled. Hopefully!"

I glared at him. "You sound like you're almost relishing it."

"With people like that?" He thought for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose I am." Then he turned, and led me over to the coder.

"What's happening?" the man cried pitifully. The Rook placed his hand on the man's shoulder, withdrawing it a few seconds later when he realised that it could not be felt.

"It's okay," he reassured. "It will all be over soon. All you have to do is not tell anyone about us. Can you do that?"

"Not tell? Yeah I can do that. Not tell."

"That's it," smiled the Rook. "Then it will all be over." He took my arm, and led me from the room, leaving the paralysed coder behind.

The noise was incredible, the continuous rattling of the bars as the cages shook merging with the animal screams of the penned coders. Joining the assault on our senses was the smell - the smell of hundreds of terrified, dirty, sweaty bodies.

"Keep clear of the cages!" warned the Rook as we walked between the rows. "If you get too close they'll grab you, and crush you against the bars. I heeded his warning, turning in circles as I followed to ensure that the hidden camera captured the whole scene.

"What is the place?" I asked, continuing to film. He turned to look back at me.

"The holding pen. This is where they're kept after they're removed from the cots and before they're taken away for training. That's why they're totally wild. They might be physically mature - but on the intellectual and emotional side there's nothing."

A long, muscular arm shot out from a cage when I walked past, the pink claw at its tip snapping frantically on empty air as it attempted to reach me. I swivelled round to face the cage. A tormented, barbaric face stared back at me, the unkempt beard and moustache smeared with food. A scream erupted in its throat as it repeatedly hurled itself against the bars of the cage, the skin on its chest splitting on the rough steel bars.

I stepped back, away from its claws and continued down the aisle, angling the toolbox to capture further details. Just in front of each cage was a long trough, filled with a pale yellow sludge I guessed was food. "What's the food made out of?" I asked.

"Various crap," came the answer. "It's a mixture of proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates and so on. Mostly from algae, plus they recycle deceased coders back into it."

The idea seemed somehow more sickening that what I'd seen in Oxford. "You mean if one dies, they just grind it up and feed it to the rest?"

"Basically."

"How come this place is deserted - I mean how come there's no workers around?"

"Why would they be needed? The coders are in separate cages, so that they can't kill each other. They've been fed. So in the morning they'll just come in with hosepipes and blast all the crap away. Remember this place is a high-security establishment. As they see it, the more workers they have, the more the risk of a security breach. That's why the place is so automated." We reached a door, and he stopped speaking, then briskly tapped out another code, causing the door to slide open.

"How come you can remember all those codes?" I asked as the door slid shut behind me.

"Good memory," he quickly replied. What I had seen behind still bothered me.

"How the hell do they train those things?"

"It's not as hard as you'd think," he commented. "Just use food as a reward, and a hefty electric shock as a punishment. After a few weeks they learn to do what they're told."

I followed him along the corridor in silence. I was certainly seeing a side of coder production that I'd never seen before.

I looked at the HE suit's watch: oh-one-fifty-one. A few hundred metres away was the nave, standing clear of the still, dark waters. We had made it by about twenty minutes. I was about to follow the Rook into the muddy water when I heard a distant clank of metal. I quickly waded after him and tugged at his HE Suit.

"There's someone behind us," I whispered, then turned to scan the horizon behind us. About two hundred metres away was a five-man patrol of security troops, armed with standard, military issue assault-rifles, and protected, like us, by camouflaged HE Suits.

"They haven't seen us," said the Rook, straining to make out the shadows, "and their route will take them behind us. Let's just keep going."

I gave him an okay sign, and we continued into the flooded village, the only sound that of the air being sucked through our masks. While we moved I continued to check behind us.

"Get down," I muttered, seeing one of the five-man team halt. We crouched down as much as we dared, allowing the filthy water to come within inches of our masks. The lead men of the patrol peeled off and took up firing positions, as did the last two men. While they did so the middle man - who was presumably the leader - lifted a small box which had been hanging around his neck and lifted it to his mask. I swore under my breath. Light-intensifying binoculars - just what we needed. He turned, scanning around him, rotating slowly to our direction, and stopping when the lens were pointing at us.

"He's seen us!" I warned as he lifted his rifle and began to fire short, precise bursts towards us. I snatched up my own submachine-gun and sprayed a long burst along the whole patrol, attempting to disorientate the other four men before they themselves spotted us.

"Let's go!" shouted the Rook, firing a short burst, then turning to run. I followed him, forcing my way through the silty water with slow, giant steps. Splashes erupted all around us as the patrol opened up. I spun round briefly and fired another long burst, hearing a startled cry as one of the shots found a target. More shots whistled past my head as I waded toward the ruined church, still nearly fifty metres away. Too far, I realised; until more bullets whined past me - in the opposite direction. From the darkened bulk of the church a submachine-gun was spitting fire, the muzzle-flash flaring repeatedly.

I put in a last burst of effort, pushing hard through the water while the gun from the church hosed repeated, long bursts above my head. Another scream of pain echoed though the quiet night. I twisted round to fire another quick burst and saw the injured man sliding slowly into the waist-high water, a stream of bubbles disturbing the surface when his mask dipped below the surface and he began to breath silt.

The Rook had already reached the church and was sheltering behind the wall, firing short, accurate bursts of fire at the patrol. A few more frantic strides and I was with him, the Wave Skimmer's fan already spinning as Doc fired up the controls. I hauled myself onto the deck and into the cabin, while Crazy Horse fired a last burst through one of the church's glassless windows.

"Let's go!" he called to the Rook as he jumped off the window-ledge, the boat rocking violently as he landed on the left-hand outrigger. He slithered into the co-pilots seat and the Skimmer started forward. The Rook fired a long final burst, the firing pin clicking loudly as the magazine emptied, then dived for the outrigger which was gliding past him. The craft spun slightly to the right, to point up-river, then straightened, allowing the trailing Rook to pull himself out of the water and onto the deck. A wild hail of bullets churned the water in front of us.

"Get in!" screamed Crazy Horse at the Rook's prone figure, the Skimmer already starting to accelerate. The Rook pushed himself to his knees, hooked his foot around the leading-edge of the deck, and began to rifle through his suit's chest pocket, pulling out a spare magazine.

"Get us out of here!" he ordered Doc, throwing the empty magazine into the river and snapping the replacement into place. Then he lifted the submachine-gun to his shoulder and began firing short bursts past the fan toward the still-firing patrol, struggling to keep the barrel steady as the Skimmer bucked and slithered across the water. To the side of us an additional patrol opened up from the river bank, a stray bullet punching through the Skimmer's angled fins when we passed their position.

Doc nudged the Skimmer slightly to the left, placing the engine between the cabin and the guns. The Rook shifted his fire to the new threat, the muzzle of his gun spitting short, regular three-round bursts.

"60," read Crazy Horse as we picked up speed. The Rook's second magazine ran out, the click echoing loudly through the darkness. He snapped in a third and resumed fire.

"70." Another hail of bullets blanketed us, one round scoring across the fibre-glass nose, another smashing into the right-hand outrigger.

"80," announced Crazy Horse as the Skimmer clawed clear of the water, the shuddering motion ceasing abruptly. The Rook fired a last burst, the Skimmer's smooth flight enabling him to aim accurately, then threw himself toward the open cockpit. The bullet caught him as he reached for my outstretched hand, ripping through his the shoulder and throwing him back onto the deck. He screamed in agony, a scream that changed to fear when the rushing air hit him. He twisted round, grabbing for the leading-edge of the deck, but he had already began to slide down its sheer, steep surface. He screamed once more, and was gone, his body tumbling into the dark waters. I pushed myself out of my seat and looked back over the rear of the cockpit, the airflow from the fan tugging at me.

His head rose above the surface once, his arm waving, but his suit filling with water. Then he slowly sank down into the poisoned river.

"Shut the canopy!" shouted Crazy Horse, his voice almost lost amid the rush of air swirling though the open cockpit. I reached back, grasping the edge of the glass bubble, and pulled it forward, the latches snapping shut against the fixed windshield. Approaching fast was the fearsome rampart of the middle perimeter, its twin towers already spitting flak, huge orange puffs of flame dancing across the stretch of water between them.

"Increasing power to a hundred and twenty percent," warned Doc, pushing the throttles forward and red-lining the engine. A sharp, beeping alarm sounded loudly around the cockpit.

"They're scanning!" called Crazy Horse, "I'm reading radar emissions from the towers."

Doc pushed the craft into a violent, corkscrewing path. "They shouldn't be able to bounce anything off us, not at this height. The radar's on their roof, and we're too far below."

"They've seen us!" snapped Crazy Horse unnecessarily, the flak zeroing in on us. "They must be firing on visual," he added. An instant later my head was thrown hard against the canopy by a shell exploding beside the Skimmer, the blast nearly flipping us over and leaving the left outrigger only inches away from digging into the water. Doc tugged on the steering yoke and we slowly righted.

"We're going through," he whooped, gunning the Skimmer forward. A shell burst on the water in front of us, sending a huge spout hundreds of feet into the air. I flinched instinctively as we thudded through the wall of water, the craft's structure groaning in protest. A thick film of water settled onto the windshield, leaving us blind until Doc flicked on the wipers. I looked out of the rear of the canopy, watching the twin towers recede, their guns still spraying fire at us. One down, one to go.

"Fifteen hundred metres to middle p'rimeter," chanted Crazy Horse. I hope they're still asleep, I thought grimly, as he continued the count-down. They weren't. Crazy Horse had just called out the seven-hundred metre marker when the next set of guns opened up.

"These guns should be less powerful," shouted Doc, "they're only the outer line."

"But they've had more time to wake up!" I pointed out, an observation that was confirmed a few seconds later when the flak guns were joined by several heavy machine guns, long streams of glowing tracer arcing lazily from the side-balconies of the towers.

"Five hundred metres," called Crazy Horse, barely audible over the screaming of the strained engine, which was pushing us forward at over a hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. "Three hundred metres." More lines of tracer arced out from the towers, the river spitting water as they crisscrossed its surface. A shell burst in front of us, forcing air underneath the Skimmer and throwing us metres into the air, the nose pointing insanely at the sky. The on-board computers saved us, instantly manipulating the rear fins to bring us level. We fell back toward the water, regaining lift as the air-cushion beneath the wings was recreated.

"One hundred metres," screamed Crazy Horse. A stream of bullets ripped along the left-hand wing, flaps easing out of its trailing edge, the computers automatically compensating for the loss of lift. The fire eased while we flew through the gap, then resumed with increased vigour, shells bursting all across the river.

"They're scanning again!" warned Crazy Horse, the alarm sounding again. Behind us, four anti-aircraft missiles shot from the towers on long pillars of fire.

"They're firing blind!" shouted Doc, watching the missiles eat up the distance between us and their launching point, leaving twisting smoke trails through the night sky as they flew overhead. "They've overshot!" A last few bursts of flak crashed around us and then we were gone, the towers left far behind.

"Yes!" exulted Crazy Horse, shaking his fist while we sped through the night.

"Intruder!" Crazy Horse screamed, looking up from his status-screen at the air-car diving out of the darkness, the cannons in its side-pods hammering as it screeched over us.

"We've been hit!" Doc called, the board in front of him lighting up, dozens of LCD indicators showing red. Another shadow ghosted over, launching two heat-seeking missiles that weaved aimlessly across our course, one splashing down into the river, the other exploding into the valley floor. The Skimmer shuddered again, more shells crashing straight through its thin structure, the light plastic composites being too weak to fire the detonators. More warning indicators flashed on the control-dash.

"Engine temperature rising!" shouted Doc, "reducing power to eighty percent." Another warning alarm sounded.

"Lift indicator!" revealed Crazy Horse, looking sideways at the damaged left wing. "We're not getting enough lift." Doc pushed slightly at the throttles, halting the slow downward movement.

"Power to eighty-five percent - engine temperature still rising. We must be losing coolant!"

I pushed against my harness, twisting round to look behind us. A black shape swung across the charcoal clouds, vanishing from my view while it passed through the rear blind-spot, then reappearing the other side.

"They're coming back round!" I warned helplessly, watching the two air-cars forming up to begin their approach, this time at a speed only marginally greater than ours. "They're going to match speed and blow us out of the... whatever!"

"Get us down!" ordered Crazy Horse. "Now!"

"Not in the main channel," I added, "they'll just blow us out of the water. Get into the marshes."

"If you insist..." muttered Doc grimly, banking sharply. Within seconds the channel was some way to the side, and we were flying over a sea of rushes.

I took another glance behind, and shouted: "They're coming up." Meanwhile, Crazy Horse had been searching the area in front of us.

"There!" he called, his finger stabbing the air. "A longish pond running east-west."

Doc followed the finger. "I see it! Do you think it's long enough?"

"Who cares?" Crazy Horse and I screamed in unison.

"Okay... reducing power." A furious scratching noise developed as Doc began to drop the Skimmer as early as he dared, the triple hulls actually slicing through the top inches of the reeds. A series of cannon shells burnt harmlessly past us. But then the pilot corrected his aim, and the right-hand outrigger exploded with a dull boom. The Skimmer immediately began to bank, the right-hand side now relieved of the weight of the outrigger hull, the computer controlled flaps again trying to compensate, but failing.

"We're going down!" screamed Doc, realising that the craft was out of control. A ball of flame erupted from the left outrigger as it slammed into the ground and was ripped away, sending the Skimmer cartwheeling high into the air. We sat, strapped helplessly to our couches for what seemed like an eternity, watching the ground rotate away, leaving us staring straight up at the sky. Then we reentered the marshy waters, the impact snapping the rear fins like twigs and turning the wreckage of the Skimmer onto its side before it finally crashed down into the pond.

We settled onto the lake bed upside down, just over a metre below the surface. For a moment the canopy held, but then a jet of muddy water exploded through a hairline crack, and the interior rapidly began to fill up. I roused myself, unsnapping the catches of my harness and fighting free of its grip, to fall in a heap onto what had been the canopy's top. In front of me, Doc and Crazy Horse hung limply from their seats, blood dripping from Doc's hair. I shook them violently, for the water had already reached a depth of about twenty centimetres, and was rapidly rising. They groaned, muttering in confusion. I forced myself between their seats and ripped at Crazy Horse's harness. He swore, and pushed my hand away.

"I'm alright, get Doc free."

"Okay," I confirmed, twisting to Doc's side of the cockpit and scrabbling frantically at the catches, cursing the thick gloves of the HE suit. Finally, they snapped open, and I made a grab for Doc himself, just managing to grab him before he fell into the rising water. Beside us, Crazy Horse was kicking at the canopy.

"Come on," he shouted as the side of the canopy gave way, the last of the air bubbling to the surface within seconds. The water was so thick and silted that I was barely able to see him pull himself through the opening. I braced my feet against the side of the cockpit and pushed Doc towards the hole, letting go when I felt Crazy Horse pulling him through from the other side. His feet disappeared into the murky darkness, and I followed, my boots slipping on the muddy bottom of the pool as I pushed upwards to the surface, and the night air beyond.

I snatched a breath and got a mouthful of dirty silt from the flooded mask. I ripped it off and looked around, seeing Crazy Horse dragging Doc through the several metres of chest high water to the pond's bank. Hearing the approaching whine of air-cars, I waded after them, catching up as Crazy Horse reached the muddy bank, and helping him drag Doc onto the dry land, and into the long grass. The whine increased to a scream, and a light swept past us. I stupidly looked up, and was dazzled by the near-incandescent searchlight mounted onto the front of the air-car.

"Keep down," I whispered, snapping open the HE suit's right wrist seams, and pulling off the glove. Then I carefully tugged the sleeve up my forearm, exposing the point where the gun's barrel reached the skin and raised my arm. Sapphire.

Sapphire: 01:56:43> Activated.

Activate targeting system.

Sapphire: 01:56:46> Targeting system activated. Clearing text.

The green cross-hairs glided across the sky, following my arm as it swung towards the hovering air-car. The military vehicle gliding in closer, so close that I could make out the pilot's helmet behind the bullet-proof plasti-glass canopy.

"Come on you bastard," I muttered at the slowly rotating craft, the illuminated spot on the ground edging ever closer. I shifted my aim slightly, moving across the smooth curved nose to the wide maw of the front air-intakes, and clenched my fist for an instant, sending a stream of five bullets through the dark opening and into the whirring impellers beyond. A tortured scream rippled along the body of the air-car as the entire drive system tore itself apart, puncturing the fuel tanks with multiple fragments of titanium. It hung in the air for an instant, then exploded.

"Nice one," muttered the recovering Doc, watching the burning fragments flutter down into the still-churned waters. I stood up slightly, taking in the apocalyptic scene. Wreckage, from both the Skimmer and the downed air-car, littered the pond and the surrounding area, illuminated only by the light from the burning wreckage and scattered grass fires, all accompanied by the harsh smell of synth-gas. I felt a tug on my arm - Crazy Horse.

"Let's get the hell out of here!"

"Agreed."

"How far do you think we've gone?" asked Crazy Horse. I did a quick mental calculation.

"About eight Ks I'd guess."

"So how far to go then?" he pressed. I glanced over to Doc, who ventured an answer.

"Probably about five Ks to the Pleasure Dome and about six more Ks for us. That's if we leave the Thames at Burcot - which was a pre-chaos settlement - and cut straight across to the Pleasure Dome. That way we cut out a long loop of the river."

I peered forward through the thick reeds, the sky ablaze from the rising sun. "There's no way we can hike across the hills in daylight, they'll spot us immediately. Better hole up here for the day, then make the rest of the distance tomorrow night."

Crazy Horse looked at Doc, who grudgingly nodded agreement.

"Guess we'd better rig up some sort of shelter then," Doc said, his voice thick with forced jollity.

Even with the reeds we had woven over us, the heat of the day was intense, my HE suit awash with my own sweat. Doc and Crazy Horse, who were wearing lighter, civilian suits, weren't faring much better. But with our makeshift sun-shield only screening out about fifty percent of the sun's rays, taking off the suits was not a particularly healthy option. Sleep, or in fact any sort of rest was impossible. We had no option but to stay still and listen to the sound of the air-cars patrolling up and down the valley.

"Fucking mosquitoes!" swore Doc, slapping the arm of his suit. They were the first words anyone had spoken in over an hour. I realised that this moment might be my last chance to get any sort of answers out of this crazy expedition.

"There's one thing that's puzzling me..?" I ventured.

"What?" muttered Crazy Horse, irritably.

"Why did you get involved in this? I mean beyond wanting to see those in charge get a good hammering!"

"Ya mean what was in it fo' us? What was we getting out of it?" Crazy Horse spat harshly.

"Well, yeah..." I admitted uneasily, wondering if I had said the wrong thing, and was about to get my throat slit.

"Ya ask a lot of questions."

"I need a lot of answers."

He thought about that. "Ya not the only one. I mean who the hell are ya man? What the hell are ya doing here?"

"Fair enough," I conceded, realising that I'd have to trust them if I expected them to trust me. I sat back, and told them everything. Well - nearly everything; beginning with Jenny's death and my visit to Kerensky's, then continuing through Bristol and Glastonbury till when I'd met them in Oxford, and finishing with my time at the Pleasure Dome. They were silent for a while when I finished.

"You had a shoot-out in Avalon?" Doc finally queried, disbelievingly.

"Yeah."

"And before that in the bar in New London?"

"Yep."

"And someone tried to blow you up in Bristol?"

"Yes."

He smiled at Crazy Horse, then glanced back at me. "What'd they call you - Jonah?"

Crazy Horse shook his head, and looked straight at me. "So ya not working for anyone? Ya simply want t' find out what happened t' ya sister?"

I nodded.

"And the only reason ya came after us was 'cause the Rook had come t' Oxford, and she'd been with him?"

Again, I nodded.

"Ok," he said, "so ya want some answers - t' why we did this? And t' why we've been helping the Rook? We do it because he gets us stuff. We ain't got no cause."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Weapons - the submachine-guns you saw; explosives; food; various equipment; HE suits, like these."

"The weapons and equipment, what type are they? Civilian, military?"

Crazy Horse nodded to Doc, who considered the question. "Not civilian, not the weapons. Nor some of the sensor equipment neither."

"Sensor equipment?"

Doc grinned. "How did you think we detected you? Our scanners picked you up while you were still more than half a k away!"

"The equipment - it was military then?"

"Some of it, but some of the other stuff..." He paused, searching for words. "Take the submachine-guns for instance? Now I'm not a military expert, but I did my basic training like any citizen - and I know that the military only use assault rifles. They're more accurate, and because you can fire single shots they can use less ammunition. Now the subgun - that's better for us. It's smaller and lighter, and it's much easier to conceal. And since we don't intend to get involved in any long battles, we're not so worried about ammo consumption. But the military don't have any of those requirements. They don't need submachine-guns. They don't use submachine-guns."

"So who does?" I probed, "I'm mean someone must make them. The Movement can't produce those sort of items. So he must have got them from someone."

"There are a handful of agencies licensed to have armed security - like BioMagic, for instance."

I shook my head. "I don't know about the others, but BioMagic only uses pistols - I should know! You sounded like you had another theory?"

Doc shot a quick sideways glance at Crazy Horse, seeking permission. He waited for the slight nod, then resumed. "The military might not have any use for subguns... but IntSec would."

"IntSec!" I exclaimed. Internal Security? "You think he was being supplied by the secret police? Why the hell would they supply the Movement?"

"Maybe he wasn't just the Movement," suggested Doc, "maybe he was one of theirs, who then joined the Movement. It'd make sense for Intsec to infiltrate any group which was attempting to overthrow the state."

"Yeah, but - he just threw a huge fucking spanner in the works of the Centre. Do you really think an IntSec agent would do that?"

"IntSec moves in mysterious ways."

"True."

"There's one more thing," said Crazy Horse, rejoining the conversation. "Since we started dealing with him - 'bout eighteen months ago - we've had a lot less trouble with the gov'ment. Before that they used to send gunships over every few months to try an' blast us out. Now they don't."

"You think he warned them off?"

Crazy Horse shrugged.

"So what are you going to do now?" asked Doc.

"I don't know."

It was twenty-three thirty-six when I finally returned to my suite at the Pleasure Dome. I dropped my jacket by the door and slumped down in front of the sofa, taking care not to disturb Dana who was curled, sleeping, on the sofa. I wondered when she'd last been fed.

I found the remote on the floor and turned the vid-set on, taking care to keep the volume turned low. The current programme was a cheap American quiz show. I lifted the remote, and switched to a news channel, just as a new item started.

"Early reports are coming in of a terrorist explosion earlier today at the Centre for Biohuman Research, Development and Production in Oxfordshire. Due to security reasons some details are not being released. However, it is known that the explosion occurred within the Spinal Research Unit, killing five members of the team, and critically wounding three others. Among the dead was the leader of the team, Doctor Frank Darlow, a world leader in the treatment of spinal injury." The female newsreader looked up blankly, presumably listening to the voice of the producer. "I've just been told that a statement has been made by a colleague of Doctor Darlow."

The image changed to one of reporters surrounding a doctor who stood in front of the entrance to New London Central Hospital. The Doctor, who looked emotionally shattered, lifted up a comp-pad and began to read.

"Doctor Frank Darlow was one of the finest surgeons of his generation. His murder is a grievous loss, not only to his family, and his many friends, but to all those who now and in the future will suffer spinal injury. We have only one message to the scum who performed this treacherous act. You have achieved nothing, and helped no-one. You have simply condemned many people, some of them children, to a bitter future in which they will be paralysed and unable to walk." He finished reading the statement and turned away from the camera, tears dotting his eyes.

The programme switched back to the newsreader. "The Police have reported that no terrorist group has admitted responsibility. Government leaders have promised that no effort will be spared in the search for the attackers. Meanwhile, a fierce debate has begun over how the terrorists could have penetrated the Centre's security. The Secretary of State for Biohuman Production - whose ministry runs the Centre - has promised an immediate investigation." The newsreader paused, smiled, and spoke: "And now the sports news."

I turned the vid off, agonising. What had I done? Storm Rider, the movement had code-named me. Well whatever I was riding, it was one hell of a storm. And the further I rode it, the more impossible it became to stop. I leant back against the edge of sofa, and stared at the wall.

Eventually my thoughts focussed, onto finishing what I'd started. With the Rook gone, the trail had died. I knew now that if I wanted more answers, I would have to go to the place where it had started. To North City, and WaveX.

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