Bombings: part 4

Schemes are thwarted, but are they the right ones?

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Three bombs exploded across the triverse. One threatened the stability of the space elevator on Max-Earth, another took out the Koth embassy in Mid-Earth London, and the third demolished a university tower on Palinor. The SDC are investigating and have a lead on the possible perpetrators…

London.
2543. November.

Max-Earth had processes for this sort of thing. Someone in the upper atmosphere, at the other end of the elevator cable, the megaships were coordinating efforts to stabilise the counterweight station. At ground level, in London, there was only a low-level, simmering panic, despite the severity of the situation: the AI ships handled such scenarios, never failing, always making adjustments before true calamity ensued. This had been unprecedented but it sounded like matters were in hand. The London anchor for the elevator tripod was far from the actual fall trajectory of the cable, should anything catastrophic happen. Everyone had faith in the AI, so life carried on largely as normal.

That is, except for the portal station and the transit to the space elevator. Everything was paused, causing a backlog of cargo and passengers that was already unwieldy. Even with AI assistance it would take days to untangle the mess.

As such, Logan Jeffries was having a bad day. All of his monitors displayed endlessly scrolling lists of delays, alarms were blinking on and off and the comms channels were cycling from one concerned voice to another. The complexity of the space elevator trade route was such that it was impossible to safely manage without AI intervention. With their attention temporarily elsewhere, everything had ground to a halt. There were attempts to transfer some of the cargo load to the non-elevator transports, which were slower and more expensive, but all the ports were backed up, from trains to shuttles to boats.

The response was obvious and Logan winced at the inevitability of it all. One-by-one he adjusted the inspection and safety protocols, dropping a few down a tier to streamline the checks. There would be fewer scans and searches, as traffic was allowed to flow faster to cope with the bottleneck. It was far from ideal and ordinarily he prided himself in not cutting corners, but it wasn’t every day that someone tried to blow up the elevator. He swivelled his chair and wheeled over to a different screen, showing a live news feed from space. He flicked between the various available cameras that were pointing in the direction of the station, which was still surrounded by a visible halo of dust and debris, caught by the asteroid’s meagre gravity. That was going to be a hell of a thing to clean up, and it would cause more delays even once the elevator was stabilised.

Running everything on a lower security tier for even a few hours would ordinarily be considered out of the question, and this looked like he might have to keep it like this for several days. Hopefully nobody would take advantage of that: Logan was already thinking about ways to retrospectively check cargo shipments without delaying actual movement within the system, but, then, what would be the point? Even if something were flagged up, the shipment in question would be well on its way to wherever it was going.

Early shift
On duty: DC Frank Holland & DC Marion Hobb

London.
1973. November.

It was done by the book. The raid was slick: fast, efficient and no fatalities. Only one officer was injured, and that was while getting in via a window rather than during fighting. The warehouse in which the gang was holed up was covered with posters and flags depicting the group’s shoddy logo: the Earth wrapped in the embrace of a metallic symbol of some sort. Holland thought he might have seen it in a history programme about Max-Earth’s timeline, but he couldn’t be sure.

“You notice how these idiots always have these grand motifs?” He stood next to Hobb with his arms crossed as the gang members were led out one-by-one. “The planet Earth, or something green and pleasant. Like they speak for all of us.”

Hobb sneered at the state of those being arrested. “This strike you as a little easy?”

“I was thinking just the same.” She was right, and Holland had been worrying about it the moment they’d stepped foot into the place. It was amateur hour, all pamphlets and slogans rather than terror and weapons. A coordinated attack across the triverse was impossibly unlikely. “They definitely did it, or some of it,” he said, pointing at the home-made explosives lab nestled in the corner of the warehouse, just next to the coffee machine and bean bags.

“Had help, though, for sure,” Hobb said. “I doubt they’d even have thought of the idea on their own.”

“This group feels like they were just gearing up to start a poster campaign. Perhaps harass some people coming out of a theatre, or wave some placards outside Westminster. It’s a big leap to blowing the shit out of the Joint Council tower.”

“And trying to knock down a ‘space elevator’.”

“Yep. And whatever’s happened in Bruglia.” Holland snorted. “Nah, this feels like the tip of the iceberg. We’re not even seeing what’s underneath.”

The White Horse was the busiest it had ever been. The bartender rang a bell above the bar. “If you’ve got a badge, you’ve got a pint! Drinks on the house tonight, lads and lasses!”

A cheer went up. Clarke stood in a huddled group with the other members of the SDC, feeling a curious mixture of pride and concern. They’d solved the case, found the bombers, shut down the terrorist cell. All of that was true, but Holland’s quizzical shrug when they’d reconvened at the office had said it all. Too easy.

“Hey,” Styles said, punching him in the shoulder, “this is a good night! Be happy! It’s OK to celebrate a win, you know.”

“I don’t know, feels strange when three bombs did go off. People died.”

“Yes, but it would have been a whole lot worse without the SDC.”

“Without Frank Holland punching many, many people in seedy bars across town, you mean.”

Styles scrunched up her face in an uncomfortable grimace. “That part wasn’t my favourite, no. But that group’s shut down, at least.”

“‘Dimensionalists’,” Clarke said, as if testing out the word. “What does that even mean, anyway?”

“It’s like ‘nationalist’. Or ‘socialist’.”

“Yes, but what does it actually mean?”

“Someone who sees their own dimension as being superior than all the others,” Styles said. She leaned closer and winked. “I looked it up earlier.”

There was a commotion by the entrance and everyone already in the pub shuffled out of the way of Commissioner Matthew Graves, who strode in with a broad smile on his face, flanked by DCS Walpole and DCI Miller.

Kaminski whistled quietly, somewhere nearby. “Holy shit,” he said, “I guess this is a big deal after all.”

There was clapping and whooping, which the Commissioner seemed to find somewhat awkward. He waved a hand and everyone quietened. “Thank you, all,” he said, his voice carrying through the building easily, “but you should be congratulating yourselves. A remarkable operation today, from the detectives in the SDC to the officers taking part in the raid that put an end to this awful incident. Everyone, from support staff through to logistics, performed admirably. I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say that I wish we could have moved even faster, but the facts are the facts: you found those responsible and prevented further atrocities in only a matter of hours.” There was a general harrumph of agreement, less overtly enthusiastic. “I’ll leave you to it in a moment,” the Commissioner continued, “but I wanted to deliver some news in person. As a result of today’s successes, the Joint Council in association with the Metropolitan Police have agreed to a budget injection. Long story short, it means the SDC is receiving more funding, as are some of the rapid response teams in the city. Congratulations, and there’ll be more in the coming days.”

As the Commissioner retreated to the rear of the pub with Walpole, Miller navigated his way through the crowd to where Clarke and the others were standing. “Good to see the whole team here,” Miller said, clapping Clarke and Holland on the shoulders. He leaned in and gave Styles a hug, which Clarke could see she was less than thrilled about. “Kaminski, how are you holding up, buddy?”

Kaminski held up his hands and shrugged. “So-so. Nearly back to normal. Nisha’s got it worse than me.” He pointed towards the bar, where Chakraborty was sat on a stool nursing a drink.

“You both had us worried for a while there,” Miller said. “Lola Styles! How much longer do we have you?”

Styles smiled. She really didn’t like him, Clarke realised. It wasn’t often they were in the same room as Miller, as he was usually off doing press and buttering up politicians, but there was a definite iciness there. Probably imperceptible to Miller, but Clarke could tell that her usual bubbliness was absent. “Through to the end of the year. Lots of paperwork to do, then I’ll be off to Palinor.”

“How exciting,” Miller said, “the first proper liaison officer the Met has had on the other side of that portal. It’s a big deal. Well done.” He held up his hands. “Everyone hear that? Our high-flier here is moving to Palinor! Anyone wants anything from her, make it quick.” He actually winked at Clarke, then took Holland’s arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to cover a few things with Detective Holland before the press conference tomorrow morning.”

Kaminski and Styles moved in closer to Clarke. “You still think this was all a distraction?” Clarke couldn’t help but feel that Kaminski was right. The bombings had caused a lot of chaos but were never going to achieve the supposed aims of the perpetrators.

“Yeah,” Kaminski said, lighting up a new one. “Something happened that we missed, I’ll bet. While we were all running around like headless chickens.”

“You’re always so cynical,” Styles said. “Maybe sometimes a bomber is just a bomber?”

Raising his eyebrows, Kaminski gave her a withering look. “You really believe that, Styles?”

London.
2543. November.

The shuttle left the spaceport on the outskirts of London around midday, departing from a private hangar. It was a heavy lifter, used for ferrying cargo from one place to another, usually in orbit or on short runs. It wasn’t designed for efficient atmospheric flight, which made it expensive to run. Its engines whined against Earth’s gravity as it lifted through the atmosphere, away from the gleaming towers of the city, away from the tripod support strut of the space elevator. The rattling and buffeting ceased once it exited the atmosphere, where it picked up speed, heading on a trajectory towards empty space.

Inside the shuttle’s cargo bay was a single shipping container, one which had made a long journey from the deserts of Palinor, through the Atlantic portal, across the ocean to Mid-Earth’s London, and finally through the portal station to Max-Earth. The shuttle had a skeleton crew, just enough to operate it without the usual AI assistance. They were flying dark, out into the void.

After the initial burn the shuttle drifted silently, engines disengaged, an invisible dot amongst the stars. Speed was no longer of critical importance. The rendezvous would take place in four days. The final piece of the puzzle, delivered at last.

---

Thanks for reading! That concludes this storyline and also wraps up what I’m loosely defining as the third part of the Tales from the Triverse overall story. As the SDC heads into 1974 there’s going to be a lot of change. Exciting story times!

Do have a lovely Christmas weekend, and I’ll see you all back here next week.

I’ve chopped 50% off a subscription to the newsletter through to the end of the year, for anyone who would like to delve into the author notes…

Author notes

A trend in Triverse storylines is that I often bypass the ‘big showdown’ moments. Hence the raid at the start of this chapter is pretty low-key and mostly happens off-camera. While there have been big action moments (notably, the kengto storyline), that’s often not really what Triverse is about. In the case of the ‘Bombings’ storyline that’s especially the case, with the attacks being little more than distractions from the main thing, which was transporting the container undetected.

Why all the subterfuge? Because it’s become considerably harder to get illicit cargo through the portals in the year-and-a-bit since the story began, largely due to the efforts of the SDC (as well as cops like Birhane out in Ethiopia).

We wrap up part 3 of the story with some significant tweaks to the status quo:

1. The SDC is about to receive a big funding boost. Woohoo! Of course, that’ll also mean greater scrutiny. Hmm.

2. Lola is about to head off to Palinor, leaving Clark without a partner. Exciting for Lola, not so much for him. Exciting for us to have a proper foothold in that dimension.

3. Hobb, who has very much been a minor background character, has got her transfer approved and will be leaving the SDC, resulting in Holland also being without a partner. Hm, what to do, what to do?

4. A crucial delivery was made at the end of this chapter. We already know what has been inside these dodgy containers. If this was the final part needed, what does that mean?

What else? We know there’s a cool monster hunting gang in Palinor. Be cool to see them again. We’ve also met a bunch of rebels, albeit only fleetingly - at least one of them was an acquaintance of Laryssa, the unfortunate victim of the trafficking operation way back in part 1 of the story. Oh, and we also have the ‘conspiracy of light’ within the SDC, who are trying to figure all this out and what to do about it.

That’s a lot of spinning plates. I hope it’s all making sense to you, the reader. This thing is structured much more like a television show than a typical novel. The way characters come and go, plotlines spin up and down, and the overall pacing, is me riffing on all the things I liked about 90s science fiction TV.

Right, I need to go make some homemade sausage rolls and decorate some gingerbread.