Engine City by Ken MacLeod

Author:Ken MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2004-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

The dark side of Lucifer. Susan liked the idea; she knew that the Lightbearer was a dark power in some perverse mythologies. The interstellar flotilla, the Investigator and its five companions, hung in starlight a few hundred meters above the planet’s cracked surface. This was lower than many of its mountains; their chances of detection equivalently small—

“We’ve been pinged,” said Ann.

The two Multipliers pounced toward their apparatus. Their hands scrabbled over it and each other. Outside, the dish aerial moved, tracking.

“There appears to be a small artificial satellite in polar orbit.”

“We can improvise a control system to send one of your missiles toward it.”

“Within two of its orbits.”

Phil Johnson looked over at Matt. It was Phil who gave orders to the crew, but it had been well established that it was Matt who was leading this expedition.

“Go for that?”

Matt rubbed his nose. “No,” he said. “I have a better idea.”

He turned to the Multipliers. “Could you ask one of the skiffs outside to go after the satellite, catch it, and reinsert it in equatorial orbit?”

Even he could hardly have expected the speed with which his suggestion was carried out. The orange Multiplier tapped at the apparatus. Within seconds one of the skiffs riding alongside disappeared. Two minutes later, it was back.

“We have picked up and redirected the satellite. It was approximately one meter in diameter.”

“Fucking sputnik,” said Matt. ‘Now let’s shift a thousand or so kilometers out of the way.’

“Why?” asked Johnson.

“We’ve been spotted by what is probably a scientific satellite mapping Lucifer,” Matt said. “Within about one minute, the information will reach Nova Terra. If it’s a purely scientific probe, the likely result is that it won’t be processed for months. If it’s not, if it’s part of their space-defense network, we could be burned by a particle beam in about five or six minutes. So let’s move.”

They moved. It wasn’t a lightspeed jump, just a very fast move. The landscape below didn’t look any different.

“Right,” said Matt, “now we set up a jump to Nova Terra. Make it somewhere on the surface with plenty of cover and far away from any settled areas. Ann, could you patch up that map again?”

Matt peered at the map for a moment, then pointed at a zigzag line marking the northern border of the Republic of New Babylon. “There,” he said. “In the forests just north of the mountains, on the north side of the border. It looks pretty well uninhabited.”

Everybody just stared at him.

“I was wrong about Lucifer,” he said. “It’s not a safe place to lurk. The safest place I can think of is Nova Terra itself. If you’re watching for invaders from space, where’s the last place you’d look?”

“They’ll have spy satellites,” Telesnikov pointed out. “They’ll see something.”

“Yup,” said Matt. “I’m counting on it. I’m also guessing that the spy satellites are not likely to be those of”—he peered again at the map—“the Free Duchy of Illyria, and that it and New Babylon are not exactly friends.”

“And if you’re wrong?” said Phil.

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