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Back Final Days Save as PDF
Chapters (32)
  1. ONE
  2. TWO
  3. THREE
  4. FOUR
  5. FIVE
  6. SIX
  7. SEVEN
  8. EIGHT
  9. NINE
  10. TEN
  11. ELEVEN
  12. TWELVE
  13. THIRTEEN
  14. FOURTEEN
  15. FIFTEEN
  16. SIXTEEN
  17. SEVENTEEN
  18. EIGHTEEN
  19. NINETEEN
  20. TWENTY
  21. TWENTY-ONE
  22. TWENTY-TWO
  23. TWENTY-THREE
  24. TWENTY-FOUR
  25. TWENTY-FIVE
  26. TWENTY-SIX
  27. TWENTY-SEVEN
  28. TWENTY-EIGHT
  29. TWENTY-NINE
  30. THIRTY
  31. THIRTY-ONE
  32. THIRTY-TWO

Mitchell grinned, as if at a private joke. ‘You’re wrong. Somebody’s been held there ever since the incident at Site 17, and we’re going to bust him out.’ Mitchell stepped up to the van, slapping one hand on its ID plate as Jeff stared after him. The door made a clunking sound as it unlocked.

Mitchell looked over at him. ‘Get in the van, will you?’

‘What happened to you in that pit, Mitch?’

Mitchell climbed inside and touched the dashboard, a preprogrammed route springing up in response. Jeff shook his head, and went to get in on the other side.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Mitchell replied, as the van pulled away from the kerb. ‘But I’m wrning you, it’s going to take a lot of explaining.’

FOURTEEN

En route to 94 Aquarii, 1 February 2235

Fowler felt a slight vibration as the rail-mounted shuttle-car transported him across a hundred light-years in an instant.

The roof of the shuttle-car was attached to an overhead track that ran directly through the centre of the wormhole. One mouth of the wormhole was located on Luna, the other on board a star-ship already decelerating on its approach to the Galileo system. It was considerably smaller than the mass-transit models that carried thousands of passengers daily between Luna and the colonies, and existed primarily to transport the engineers and physicists whose job was to maintain the equipment that prevented either mouth of the wormhole from collapsing. Each of the mouths was capped by a vast steel torus containing trace quantities of highly unstable exotic matter, held at bay by enormously powerful magnetic fields, while the surface of the wormhole itself was hidden from sight behind dense layers of machinery and shielding.

Fowler had the sensation of falling for a few moments before he felt his weight return; the starship’s near-1g deceleration allowed him to walk around its interior in relative comfort.

His UP was already active, and he now used it to navigate his way to the observation suite, most often the first stop for documentary makers or politicians wanting to see where all the taxpayer’s money was going. He arrived to find Donohue already there, gazing up at the broad, curving bowl of the main display screen with tired eyes; Fowler guessed he’d only just got back from his trip to the Far East. When Donohue lowered his head, Fowler allowed himself a momentary satisfaction at the look of apprehension on the agent’s face.

‘I’ve read your summary report,’ he began, taking a seat opposite Donohue. ‘Your partner is dead, and you still haven’t found Jeff Cairns. If you’re deliberately trying to display unprecedented levels of incompetence, you’re doing an excellent job.’

Donohue regarded him levelly. ‘Mr Sanders did his best to follow your orders, sir. Maybe if we’d been told we were dealing with quite such resourceful targets, we could have—’