Final Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

ceiling-mounted railings, shielding the dim silhouettes of laboratory equipment. This, then, Saul guessed, was where the analysis and gene-splicing took place. Enormous vats, concealed behind a tangle of pipework, wColony, Spsed for the mass synthesis of the pharm’s products, prior to shipping to markets in the Sphere and Coalition territories back home.
    Not for the first time, Saul felt the weight of knowing just how staggeringly inadequate the ASI was in the face of such mass industry. This was just one single black pharm, but it was filled with more contraband than Array Security and Immigration might hope to seize in any single year. And there were hundreds of pharms just like it, spread out across Kepler’s vast oceans.
    Two heavily armed Tian Di Hui street soldiers, identifiable by their nondescript baggy street clothes – perfect for concealing weapons – were waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.
    ‘Your contact lenses,’ one of them said to Saul in Mandarin. ‘Take them out.’
    Saul glanced at Jacob. ‘I won’t be able to understand one damn word they’re saying if I don’t have my contacts,’ he complained.
    ‘Just do what they say,’ Jacob muttered under his breath, already pinching his own contacts out. ‘They’re obviously not taking any chances on us recording anything. I can translate for you if I have to; my Mandarin’s pretty good.’
    Saul muttered under his breath, then tipped his head back and carefully pinched both of his own contacts out. Their embedded circuitry sparkled silver and gold as he placed them into a silver-plated case he kept for the purpose, tucking it into a pocket. Hsingyun did the same, then the second soldier swiped each of them in turn with a wand before finally patting them down.
    As Hsingyun addressed the two soldiers in rapid Mandarin, Saul listened to the up-and-down cadences of their dialogue, unable to understand a word without the benefit of auto-translation. He noticed that the walls were sprayed with some kind of insulating plastic presumably intended to keep the pykrete from melting. Indeed, the factory floor was swelteringly hot, and Saul was already starting to sweat by the time he’d pulled his heavy parka off and clasped it under one arm.
    ‘They want to see inside your briefcase as well,’ Jacob told him.
    One of the soldiers waved Saul towards a series of low trestle tables arranged next to a shoulder-high partition that stood to one side of the metal staircase. Saul kept his expression carefully blank as he placed the briefcase flat on a table and lifted the lid, spinning it around so the soldier could see it contained thick bundles of crisp new black-market currency. A small wooden box, painted matte black, sat on top of these bundles.
    The street soldier placed the box to one side and riffled through the notes, bundle by bundle, pushing his hands deep inside the case before pointing at the little box and barking something at Saul.
    ‘He wants to see inside the box,’ explained Jacob.
    Saul nodded and opened it up to show the soldier the arbitration unit nestling within, on a bed of foam plastic. Tiny, silver and featureless, it mit easily have been mistaken for a cigarette lighter. The soldier nodded, and Saul placed the box back inside his briefcase, snapping it shut.
    Apparently satisfied, the two street soldiers led the way. Hsingyun chatted with them as they proceeded, their words echoing throughout the station’s interior.
    They didn’t have far to go. One of the street soldiers opened a door to one side, and Hsingyun led them through. Saul found himself standing just inside a conference room such as one might find in any of New Kaiohsung’s commercial skyscrapers, except that it had no windows. The walls were panelled with strips of accelerated-growth wood, probably grown in another of the ice-pharms.
    The two soldiers followed the three of them inside. The room was long and narrow, and had a table, surrounded by several