Matilda Boston?" Crane asked sincerely.
"I really need to review this Rapide." Neil pointed a thumb at the door. "Look, I can make my own way out if you want to…" he looked at the holo-hinge as it continued to play the CCTV footage. "If you've got other duties to attend to."
"No," Winters said after a moment's thought. "All of the Waypoint staff are docked out there. We should escort you to the racing paddock." He snapped the holo-hinge closed and slipped it into a pouch on his shoulder.
Crane grumbled sulkily, and muttered something about preferring to watch the video instead of seeing 'that Boston lady'.
Winters led Neil outside and he instantly recognized why he wasn't able to dock there that morning. The platform was awash with cobalt-blue and white, with almost all of the available docking stages holding Waypoint Security Thresher and Zaratan subs. Here and there were assorted other subs from news channels and media sites, but the vast majority of the personnel walking about were Waypoint officers.
A short way away, Neil recognized one of the men from the CCTV video. A heavy-set man who looked like this was far from the first time he'd been in a fight, he was slumped forward on a bench with rolls of bloodied tissue wedged in his nose, swatting irritatedly at a paramedic who was trying to attend to him. A Waypoint Officer crouched in front of the man and took a statement.
"Nah," Neil could just hear the man say. "She was tall, like six foot or more. She was screaming built too. She'd been at the weights."
The officer acted quizzical. "Official footage shows The Lindy-Hopper at around five-foot four and medium build?"
"No," the man said with a self-conscious sort of rapidity. "That's bone-silent! Are you saying I would have gone down that easy?"
They had walked out of earshot before the officer's response.
"What's going on here?" Neil asked absent-mindedly. "There's so much Waypoint. No wonder there's press all over this."
"Well," Crane said, "It is 'the home of Series Alpha-Plus racing'. I suppose command wanted to show we had the Marino City contract under control."
"Even so," Winters said thoughtfully. "It was only a small-scale incident."
"It's Rigoberto ODR the third, though." Crane said pointedly.
Winters pulled a tight-lipped smile as he apparently understood Crane's meaning.
"ODR," Neil said, recalling the Commissioner's statement. "As in Oakwood-Davenport-Reiner?"
Both officers gave him a meaningful glance, before looking away as they continued walking.
"Who are they?" Neil asked again.
"If you don't know already," Winters said without turning about. "Then that's classified."
"What is all this – " Neil started, but his handphone chimed with another message.
"Is that your editor again?" Crane was very clearly changing the subject.
Neil opened the message. "'Neil,'" he read allowed, noting that the EmoteLive graph in the background descended a notch as he did. "Mrs Molina wants you to please cheer up now. Are you at the sub yet?'"
Crane shrugged non-caringly. "Who's 'Mrs Molina'?"
"The chief director," Neil said flatly.
Both officers inhaled sharply through their teeth.
"Well, sir," Winters said, stopping dead. "You're here now." He stood in front of a razor-wire-topped fence, just in front of a massive sign proclaiming 'Welcome to the Marino Bowl racing paddocks!' Holding his hand out like a waiter, Winters beckoned Neil towards the now-opening gate.
"Well, cheers guys." Neil nodded at them both.
"Sir," Winters beckoned him closer. "Matilda Boston – she's not that bad."
Crane made a noise, but Winters shot him a look.
"You'll enjoy the sub review anyway." They started to make back for the hotel-building, Winters already slipping the holo-hinge from his vest pouch again.
"Thanks." Neil wasn't sure how genuine he sounded, but he made a good attempt at it. "Hey you think you'll catch her?"
Neither seemed to register his question. "Ask for Winters and Crane when you dock back up." Winters called back.
"Sure." Neil gave the two officers a wave as they made their way back to the hotel's main building.
"What did you say that for?" Neil heard Crane say in a hoarse whisper. "About that Boston woman."
"I just wanted to throw the guy a bone." Winters said.
"That woman terrifies me."
Winters shrugged. "You on break soon?"
"Sure."
"I've got some new cuts from the Doug Runner three-piece if you want to step it out?"
"Sounds good." The two officers entered the building again.
Neil rubbed his eyelids and exhaled slowly.
"Mr Ramsgate?" an Irish voice said behind him. "It's Dinah Cody."
"Sure," Neil said. "Hello."
-4-
In the lift cage on the way down, both Neil and Dinah stared out over the sub paddock below. It was a central wooden marina secured over the Old Pelletier's east-wing with floating jetties extending off at intervals. The concrete rooftop of the hotel below made the water an eerie rectangular patch of grey. The whole area was in a cool shadow underneath the platform, but here and there were rays of light lanced down from spaces left by descending docking stages. Despite there being even more news-network and Waypoint subs tied up, there were far less people down there and the pontoons were quietly rising and falling with the water.
"So," Neil said, knocking his knuckles on the handrail in front of him as he centred on what to say. "Matilda's got a bit of a…"
Dinah finished his sentence for him. "She's got a reputation alright."
"Yeah. Bit of a reputation."
"It's only because she threw a couple Waypoint officers off of the platform the other day."
Neil looked at her, his eyebrows raised as high as they could go.
"They're all a bit sore about that."
He nodded, fidgeted on the spot uncomfortably, then returned to looking out over the pontoon. His EmoteLive beeped.
"They were fine, by the way. We sent them all hampers." Dinah looked down at her handphone screen. "They're pressing charges though. Getting her away from this circus is going to be difficult."
"And you're her assistant?" Somehow the concept still didn't fit for Neil.
Dinah shrugged. "Where are your throttle palettes?" she said, changing the subject.
"That’s the second time I've been asked that," Neil said, puzzled. "I gave them to someone when I docked up."
"Really?" Dinah was equally surprised by Neil's response. "I didn't think they did that here."
Neil reached into his pocket for the plastic chip – with the Old Pelletier logo on one side it looked genuine enough. He returned it to his pocket.
The lift-cage reached the bottom with a rattle and the shutter was hauled open by a few sub pilots waiting on the pontoon. Neil stepped out and waited for Dinah to follow.
She twisted past the pilots and began to stride away down the marina. "Ok," she said, consulting her handphone as she walked. "So the Lockman-Bracker T-Forty-Nine-L Rapide is the company's newest addition to its already illustrious high-performance sports-sub line-up." She spoke flatly, evidently reading from a script. "With a completely retooled carbon-fibre fuselage, the new model's Fifty-Seven-P Andesite twin-screw engine provides up to eight-hundred and fifty horsepower and with Bellamy Manufacturing scoops, intake has been vastly upgraded, meaning the Rapide can reach submerged speeds of up to – "
"Hold on," Neil said, puzzled. "Shouldn't I be talking to Matilda about this?"
Dinah stopped and spun on her heel to face him. "Well," she said, beckoning to the next jetty with a half-smile. "You can certainly try."
Tied up in the berth was the pastel green Rapide. Instantly recognizable with its sharp delta-wing design, this new model now sported a vertical rudder rising up from each wing-tip, instead of lowering down as with previous models. About twelve meters from nose to rudder, it rested flat in the berth, water just pooling at
the edges of the wings. A small dark-haired woman of about thirty was stood on the pontoon just behind the port-wing, doing some sort of work on its aileron.
"Nice colour," Neil said stalling, unsure of his next move.
"She picked it," Dinah said. "I hate it."
"That's Matilda then?" Neil nodded at the woman, taking note of the large torque wrench in her hand.
"Go on with you." Dinah said, amused.
He looked from Matilda to the sub and back to Dinah. After another moment's thought, he steeled himself with a single breath and walked out onto the jetty.
"Matilda Boston?" he called in greeting.
Matilda gushed like a socialite. "Green signal!" She threw her hands up as if for an embrace and in doing so launched the wrench out of her grip and into the water. She apparently didn't notice. "Gar'gee shakes, bold! You're the journalist?"
Neil's pace slowed as Matilda sped forward to meet him. "I'm here to review the – "
"My life's story," she said. "How noisy!"
She bustled into him and swung an elbow towards his torso. Neil instinctively ducked away. "What are you – ?!"
"No, diver," she said, with a chuckle that disconcerted him. "Don’t be so silent."
"Silent?" Neil was still unsure how close he should let her get. "What – ?"
"Silent: bad. Noisy: good." Matilda grabbed his wrist with one hand and forced his elbow forward with the other. "Like that, scream it?" Leaving his elbow pointing out, she swung her own and knocked them together.
Neil started to understand "Like a… tag greeting?" They knocked their right elbows together again and finished by bumping the sides of their fists.
"Bellow, bold," with the enthusiasm of a teacher. "Green signal!"
"Bellow?" Neil said, "Green