Vanessa snorted. "'Foolproof' is a technical impossibility in this city," she replied. "Nothing can be "proof' from this many fools."

Navcomp skipped them onto an adjoining lane, curving back one hundred and eighty degrees. The main Baidu strip pa.s.sed below once more, flanked by mid-level office towers. A residential suburb lay beyond, then a bend of river, flanked by taller apartments. Light blazed on the water as they cruised overhead. Small craft made widening trails of wash, and light rain made the air glow yellow with ground light.

Security, she noted while shovelling her way through her meal, was exceptionally tight about Gordon s.p.a.ceport, many kilometres out past Ta.n.u.sha's westernmost edge. The new lemmings that Naidu had told them about at the briefing had not left the terminal. That made them nearly three hours overdue. Whatever the hold-up was, no one had thought to inform a couple of roaming SWAT operatives. No one even knew who the new lemmings were, nor where they came from. No one with her security clearance, anyway.

They cruised for another hour, letting CSA Central plot the cruiser's course with an uplink to the central traffic network. Everything was integrated. Their course, Sandy noted, wound conveniently past a number of ongoing "security concerns" in their particular region between Porcetti and Vanos, from Southern-Central to CentralSouthern Ta.n.u.sha. About one hundred square kilometres of urbanity, alive with remnants of late-weekend nightlife. Of the sixteen "security concerns" within their designated region, only three broke up and dispersed back toward their various hotels, their private security and bodyguards in tow. Still the lemmings had not left Gordon. But then, considering Gordon was a city unto itself, with some of the best duty free shopping within light-years a not surprising. The whole thing sometimes seemed more like a giant business junket than an interstellar, political, const.i.tutional crisis.

Another ten minutes, and it was 10 p.m. Vanessa got bored with listening to mundane radio traffic, and put on some music-Lattino rhumba, a favourite of hers, and infectiously rhythmic, even on low volume. Several sectors away, Parliament traffic picked up, and transmission traffic increased forthwith. The Senate had packed up for the night, from another of their after-hours sessions. No one really knew what went on in most of them-much was security sensitive, and sessions were closed to media. Sandy recalled her meeting with the President, and the alarm in the Senate over her own role within the CSA a among other things. In all likelihood they'd been talking about her over there. Well, at least a little.

"You want to go shopping with me tomorrow if we get a spare half hour?" Vanessa suggested. "I need a new outfit. Or two."

Sandy frowned, fingers tapping absently on the dash to the rhythms. "A new outfit for what?"

Vanessa shrugged. "I've got a date."

"Oh," said Sandy. Blinked in surprise.

Vanessa flashed her a sideways look. And grinned. "What, you thought I was going into a prolonged period of post-relationship celibacy?"

"Hey," Sandy replied with a faint smile, glancing back out at the hypnotic view as the cruiser performed a slow bank, "I'm the s.l.u.t here, remember? Who's the guy?" For a moment, the ground rose up on the cruiser's side, and she could look straight down onto the maze of streets, lights, trees, buildings and parks. A beautiful, relaxing spectacle of colour and detail.

"Girl," Vanessa corrected. "Sylvia Lopez, troubleshooter tech in maintenance. She helps with the suit calibration sometimes, you've met her."

"Yeah." Sandy recalled a tall, attractive, tanned woman with long brown hair. "You ever thought of going out with someone more your own size?"

"No way, I like tall, tall's nice. No offence."

"I'm taller than you," Sandy replied with a smile.

"Who isn't?" The cruiser levelled out, a gentle b.u.mp and wobble past the blazing side of a tower. "Anyway, I asked her today just before training, I've always liked her."

"How are you going to find time for a date?"

"Oh, I can wrangle a coincidental night off for two people. You've just gotta know who in admin you have to ask to make the schedules match."

"How'd you know she was gay?"

"I just did, I dunno a" Vanessa shrugged, theatrically. "Just her helping me get a few suit adjustments a" A sly, creeping smile. "a I could just tell. It's a subtle thing."

Sandy raised an eyebrow, faintly, eyes not leaving the view. "Nothing to do with the bite marks she left on your a.r.s.e?"

The alarm bleeper combined with Vanessa's hard, backhanded whack on her arm to cut off the sentence. Sandy touched the reception before Vanessa could stop looking annoyed.

"This is Snowcat," she announced.

"Hi, Snowcat a is that Ca.s.sandra?" It was hardly proper protocol.

"Yeah, this is Ca.s.sandra." With a curious, sidelong glance at Vanessa, who sent a similar one back. The voice was familiar, but the reception quality was not sufficient for identification. A quick mental probe of the link made her suspect that it might have been intentional. "Snowcat is my personal callsign, but tonight it covers a two-man unit. Who is this?"

"Um, it's Ari Ruben, Ca.s.sandra a do you need a direct interface to receive code?"

"No." Even more puzzled, though increasingly less surprised. "Why?"

"Well, then a I just wanted to see what you made of this. Stand by to receive a "

Sandy hooked reflexively into her linkups, and felt the interface kick in as a transmission code arrived a and recognised it immediately.

"That's a sleeper, Ari a I don't know if you know that coding, but that's a Blue Sigma, triple lock a"

"a with intercompatible C-grade interface, yeah," Ruben cut her off, and it can sing, dance, and cook you an omelette in the morning. What I don't know is how old it is, and I had this idea League software was better at cyclelapse deterioration than what I've got a"

"This one's been active three hours, twenty-three minutes and fiftysomething seconds," Sandy said immediately. "Why's that important?"

"I think we might have some bats in the belfry a hang on, I'll get back to you a " Click, and he was gone. Sandy looked at Vanessa. Vanessa looked at Sandy.

"Bats in the belfry?" said Vanessa, incredulously.

"What's a belfry?" Sandy asked.

"And what's he doing on direct ops, anyway?" Vanessa said. "I didn't think they'd let him in, he doesn't hang around Central much."

"He never said he was in Central." And Vanessa gave her another hard look. Sandy scanned further along her links, breaking down the signal. The further she got, the more complicated it became. "In fact, I can't tell where the h.e.l.l this is coming from."

"Which, considering that you can track pretty much anything, makes him one slippery little Jewish boy, right?"

"Logical conclusion." She scanned further. They were over Nagpur now, the other side of the winding, gleaming Pesh from Baidu. But if Ruben had contacted her because of her League software, there was no guarantee that his security concerns were located in her region. There was transmission traffic everywhere. Electronic data-mountains of it. More than a year spent living in a civilian environment, and she was still getting used to it.

"Got anything?" Vanessa asked after a moment of high-speed information deluge.

"Not yet." Then, "There's something."

"What?"

"Don't know. Sounds like shielded traffic." She scanned further. Someone's transmissions were running hot. "Private security, it looks like."

"Where?"

"Uh a Derry. That's pretty near." It was two districts over, back beyond Baidu.

"It's outside our region," Vanessa replied. Tapped manually through the cruiser's frequencies, frowning as she tried to find what Sandy was monitoring. "We also don't have any official call-in a private security don't qualify."

On the horizon, something bright caught Sandy's eye. She looked a and her eyes widened. She pointed, and Vanessa looked too. And swore, breathlessly.

"You think that looks serious enough?" Sandy asked mildly, as the fireball climbed into the middle-distant sky. At two hundred metres, it began dissipating. On the frequencies, all h.e.l.l broke loose.

"Jesus," said Vanessa as the auto-control reverted to manual and she fed in the destination a directly at the thick plume of black smoke and raining fragments of small debris, eight kilometres away. The cruiser leapt forward with impressive acceleration, sliding into a new lane with emergency beacons flashing on the navscreen, and traffic ahead sliding out of the way. "Oh f.u.c.k, that looks like a couple of kilos worth, oh s.h.i.t a"

She looked pale, Sandy noted with interest.

Incoming traffic was a garbled mess, saying something about boats and water traffic, and fires on a bridge a a direct location fix, and she could see it all-a large river boat with its stern section ablaze, and what looked like a large section of river foresh.o.r.e blackened and scorched, but with very little actually blown away a "Jesus, what'd they do?" Vanessa breathed, staring wide-eyed at her display screen. "It wasn't on the boat, right? Just on the foresh.o.r.e? That was one f.u.c.king huge explosion a"

"Amateurs," Sandy told her. Vanessa stared at her. Sandy continued to scan calmly through her links, observing the new vidfeeds coming in from the explosion site, and racing through the surrounding infrastructure for telltales.

"Oh Christ," Vanessa said, breathlessly, "don't tell me that's not serious! "

"No, they were serious. They were just stupid a that was basic plastique, backyard stuff, big fireball and no real shockwave, it's mostly flammable chemicals and doesn't generate much punch. You see any crater? No heavy debris in the explosion cloud either." As she spoke, calmly reasoning, shouts and cries for a.s.sistance and support were howling over the frequencies, and about fifty media outlets were simultaneously screaming for information on the broader net. "Looks like they took out some of the boat's windows, but those fires are mostly chemical, they won't catch."

The boat was big, perhaps a one hundred capacity. On one vidfeed, there were people in the water, amid patches of flame. A splash, as another jumped, and another. Panicking, thinking the boat would sink. She shook her head in disbelief, scanning further, seeing a bridge overpa.s.s with a wrecked car, and more flames. That looked more serious. By the riverside, some trees were blazing like matches. A nearby building was missing some windows, and the gardens were smouldering. She hoped no one had been walking along the riverside when it went off. But the people in the boat should be fine. If the fools didn't drown.

But where did a couple of amateur pyrotechnicians hide when setting off a device that size? Where would they be if, as it seemed, they had been reading the instructions from the side of a box?

In the driver's seat, Vanessa was engaged in a desperate conversation with someone on a frequency. Sandy recalled Ruben's sleeper code, wove it into her most advanced scanner function, and went hunting.

She found a trace almost immediately, in a nearby com relay. She followed it, noting the mutations as it went, allowing her software to adjust for it, tracing the patterns a racing through ma.s.sive, mult.i.tudinous relays and network branches, a staggering, sprawling complexity that baffled any visual scan and tried to split the brain into a million different directions at once. She unfocused slightly, allowing the programs to do their job, monitoring on automatic as Vanessa continued shouting something into her voicelink a They banked about another towerside, the drifting plume of smoke now clear ahead, flames burning at a broad bend in the river, aircars coming to hover in close proximity-a confusion of multi-coloured, flashing emergency lights, flaring off building windows already alive with chemical fires.

"Back off," Sandy said, eyes half-focused on the chaos in front. "Keep us out of the mess. I think I've got something in Lagosso."

A pause as Vanessa broke off her conversation a "You think? Lagosso's fifteen klicks in the other direction."

"Just hold off a second a" Internally focused as the patterns converged, racing through the ma.s.s of network chaos, chasing the thin, repet.i.tive strain of data-trails. A throb of engines declining as Vanessa bled off their velocity, and the navcomp blinked a query a Civilian traffic being quickly rerouted, emergency programs overriding to keep the onlookers away, and their airs.p.a.ce was rapidly clearing of company. Another query from navcomp.

"Dammit, Sandy," Vanessa exclaimed, "what d'you want? If we go in now we might get something on the ground."

"There's nothing on the ground," Sandy murmured. "It'll be crawling with suits in a few minutes, anyway a" Ahead, an emergency flyer had arrived in a howling downdraft of multiple engines, the fire scene erupted with foaming spray. It smothered crowding civil ians on the boat's foredeck, a sea of fending arms submerged by carpeting foam a "Oh good lord," Vanessa muttered. Someone had undoubtedly hacked a surveillance camera by now-illegal, of course. News media would have this footage. "Oh Jesus."

More people were jumping, more frightened of the foam now than the fire. Vanessa stared through the windscreen, jaw open, hands fastened unthinkingly to the control grips. Aircars were landing, foam blowing every which way from the flyer's downdraft, struggling civilians in the water now whipped with flying spray and rippling chemical fires still alight. Personnel sprinted from landed aircars, leaping headfirst into the water after the swimmers. Nearby pleasure craft were manoeuvring closer in to help. Someone was nearly run over. Another slipped and fell from an a.s.sisting hand, awkwardly. The flyer lifted away, perhaps warned of the havoc it was creating, and huge billows of greasy smoke blasted all and sundry with lung-choking mouthfuls.

"Oh no." Vanessa's hand had gone to her mouth, her voice weak. Ta.n.u.shan emergency services. With no real idea of how to handle an emergency. It did, Sandy thought with tired irony, sum the place up rather well. And then she found what she was looking for.

"Vanessa, Lagosso, right now."

Vanessa raised no word of protest, merely set in the coordinates and let the emergency navprogram a.s.sign them the fastest course. The cruiser banked steeply as it accelerated once more, up and away from the carnage of entangled, converging police, CSA and emergency units. Still the smoke billowed from riverside fires. Sandy hoped someone would attend to the wrecked car on the bridge.

She cast a sideways glance at Vanessa. Vanessa looked in shock. Her hands were tight on the moulded control grips, turning instinctively to stay within the low-level lane navcomp had prescribed. Their velocity hit six hundred, legal maximum for any trans-Ta.n.u.shan air traffic, even emergency services. At fifty metres alt.i.tude, the tree-cov ered suburbs were flashing past below at an impressive rate, blurring glimpses of brief, lighted neighbourhoods and traffic.

"I don't think we'll call any backup for this one," Sandy remarked after a moment, over the unaccustomedly powerful multi-toned whine of the engines. A slight bank pressed her forcibly into the seat, towers and speeding horizon leaning sideways. "Do you?"

"s.h.i.t no," Vanessa muttered. "They'll crash into each other and level a suburban block." She looked pale, in the wash of speeding, swinging light from beyond the windows, a tower rushing by. Levelled out of the slight turn, and the downward pressure eased.

"Hey," Sandy offered, "if it makes you feel any better, I'm not very surprised. They don't exactly get a lot of business here."

"Oh G.o.d, I don't want to talk about it." She sounded decidedly shaken. "I was under the impression that I was working within a system that was actually capable of responding to emergencies without turning them into catastrophes. I'm suddenly terrified that this entire city is just one more stupid mistake away from wiping itself out."

Sandy shrugged, observing their high-velocity perspective with interest. Air traffic was about them again, mostly above. Some were heading in the same direction they were, quickly overtaken and left behind at speed, a brief flash of motion to their sides and above.

"It's a big city," she replied finally.

"All the more reason for terror," Vanessa muttered. Glancing at the navscreen. Lagosso was approaching. Fifty seconds. Towers fled past the windows. Faint patches of rain came and went, lit yellow by streetlight. The cruiser's com-link beeped, and Vanessa hit receive.

"Snowcat," she snapped.

"Snowcat, what are you doing?" asked Ruben's curious voice.

Vanessa looked at Sandy. And Sandy realised that she couldn't exactly lie to a direct inquiry.

"I think I might have found a trace of that sleeper code over in Lagosso," she said reluctantly. "It might be nothing."

"Um a well that's funny," Ruben replied, "because I think I might have found something similar. We'll compare notes later a would you like some backup?"

"That depends."

To her surprise, Ruben gave a snort of nervous, tense laughter. "Oh G.o.d," he sighed, "it's a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare, isn't it? Um a well, fair warning, Sandy, I've already got some people onto it, but there's no CSA available unfortunately. They're all at the bombing or off elsewhere a who knows. " He sounded, Sandy thought, as if the whole thing would be quite darkly entertaining if it weren't so serious. She knew how he felt. She wasn't certain Vanessa did.

"Who'd you get?" she asked, with trepidation.

"SIB," Ruben replied shortly. Sandy swore, lightly, surprising herself. It was a very civilian thing to do. "Please don't hurt me, they were all that's available. "

"What are you doing on Ops, anyway, An?" she asked him, somewhat testily. "Don't you have something boring and meaningless you should be attending to?"

"Look, don't pick on me, Sandy, I'm just on work experience a hey, I gotta go and mop some floors. Be careful a "

Sandy outright grinned, as the connection clicked off. And gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head.

"Since when did he start calling you Sandy?" Vanessa asked tersely.

"I don't care," Sandy sighed. "He's a pain, but he's cute. And he might just be my only chance to get laid, now everyone knows what I am."

"Maybe he's gay," Vanessa muttered unhelpfully.

The cruiser was slowing, bleeding velocity amid a brief, buffeting turbulence.

"I'll convert him."

"That'll be a task."

"I can do it. I'm a s.e.x G.o.ddess, didn't I tell you? Turn a gay man straight a long and hard in five quick, easy steps a Fifty bucks, full refund if unsatisfied."

"Oh G.o.d," Vanessa murmured, scanning the way ahead, "you're in a mood again. Bad things happen when you're in this mood."

Sandy turned an appraising blue gaze upon her friend and blinked in mild affront. "I beg your pardon, my dear?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Behave yourself, we're in a civilised place."

"My behaviour has been impeccable of late."

"Tell that to the SIB."

"I did."