Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [84]
Whitfield shook her head sadly. ‘The system is voice activated. When the central computer discovers that a suit has been stolen, it flags it. Then, anyone who knows the codewords can immobilize the suit.’ She reached down and unclipped the wrist computer. ‘This has been recording your every move since you put the armour on. Shall we have a look at it back in my office?’
It had lasted only a minute, but reports were still coming in from everywhere on the planet. Sightings of ghosts, disruption to energy, water and information supplies.
Provost-General Medford sat in one of the communications rooms of Icarus station. Around him his most loyal personnel were at their screens, assimilating the information, trying to uncover any pattern to the disruption. The manifestations were limited to the planet’s surface: there had been no sightings in the Skybase or on any of the ships in orbit.
Dattai’s armada was an hour away, holding its position.
During the attack the Provost-General had toyed with the idea of signalling for them, but he decided that he couldn’t until the extent and nature of the alien threat was better known. Wait for the aliens to show their hand. They’d see the Adjudicator presence on the colony, they’d see this Skybase and they’d make assumptions about the planet’s ability to defend itself. Then they would make their attack.
Medford was the only person on the planet that was aware of the reinforcements. The Chief Scientist didn’t know about them and the Scientifica computers and Bureau Databases both thought the Fleet was on patrol in another section of the Empire. It was a classic manoeuvre – not letting the enemy know the size of your forces.
There was an incoming call for him. He accepted it, and a full-sized hologram of Whitfield rezzed up by his side.
Her uniform was as crisp as ever. Judging by her movements she only had a flatscreen monitor at her end.
‘Lian, there’s been a breakthrough.’
‘Yes,’ the Provost-General said.
‘You know?’ she asked.
‘We have just been attacked, Juno.’
‘Attacked? By terrorists?’
‘By ghosts,’ Medford said.
‘There are no such things as ghosts, she warned him sternly. ‘Every recorded “ghost” has a ‘perfectly rational explanation: ball lightning, optical illusions, freak cloud formations or movements of air.
He didn’t want to tell her that he’d seen them with his own eyes at the Scientifica, watched them slaughter his men. ‘Seven hundred sightings in one minute? Sightings across the planet? Most were in the frostlands, as before, but there were some in the Strip.’
‘One minute? When was this?’
‘Fifteen minutes ago. Everything went crazy for exactly one minute.’
‘That was when we activated the Machine.’
‘You’ve got it working?’
‘For exactly one minute. We’ve not processed all the data yet, but the initial findings are that the power fluctuations distorted the local time field. The rate it generates energy is incredible, if we can tap just a fraction
–’ Her voice was the most animated that he could remember, and he had known her since childhood.
The Machine must have been responsible for the ghost sightings. Medford tried to rationalize that idea. Had the device induced mass hysteria somehow? A thought struck him: the Machine could be a vast holographic projector, a giant archive of a lost civilization. But why would such a machine affect time?
Whitfield appeared bright, as if she had the explanation.
‘My people reported atmospheric disturbances here in the cavern – that’s all that happened. I’ve not confirmed the hypothesis yet, but I think they might have been a side effect of the time spillage: Manheim radiation perhaps, or Vendermann Flux. Temporal theory is one of the uncharted frontiers of science. At the moment we know so little about it.’
‘Juno, you have to face the possibility that there really are ghosts. Call them what you want – this is the attack I’ve been warning you about. It looks as if they are linked to the Machine in some way. I’ll send a battalion of my men to secure the chamber.’
‘We