Embedded by Dan Abnett Page A

believe the Bloc scorched it with some form of autoguided surface-to-surface munition device."
      "They walked a drone bomb onto an SOMD Special Focus base?"
      "You saw the size of the hole," said Apfel. "They just walked a drone bomb into the general vicinity."
      "Why?" asked Falk.
      "Best guess," Apfel replied, "is that the SOMD had got their hands on something. Data of some sort. They'd sent it to their Special Focus centre for processing or unpacking. And the Bloc did not want that information shared."
      He looked at Underwood.
      "Well?"
      "I need to wait for a few results," she said, "and I have some concerns about a few things. Bone density, for one. Renal function. A few additional items. I wish I had a week or two to process him and–"
      "You don't," said Apfel.
      "On the basis of this, then, he's reasonably sound."
      "Thanks for the glowing reference," said Falk.
      "You can put your shirt back on," Underwood said.
      "So I'm in?" asked Falk.
      "We'll work on that assumption," said Apfel.
      "So tell me about the procedure."
      "You ever seen a Jung tank?" Ayoob asked.
      "A what?"
      "A Jung tank," said Apfel. "It's a theoretical concept."
      "Funny, I don't see many of those."
      "It's a theoretical concept everywhere outside of the GEO actualisation division," said Ayoob. "Very much conjectural technology. It's based on some of the breakthrough telepresence tech GEO evolved back in the Early, mixed up with some realtime sensory reposition hardware we've been tooling around for about a decade. We've repurposed stuff designed to help pilot drone probes in ultra-hostile environments."
      "What does it do?" asked Falk. "Allows for remote viewing?"
      "Sort of," said Ayoob.
      Falk stood up, slipped on his shirt and then relinked his celf. He buttoned up his shirt, and tucked it in, all the while looking at Apfel.
      "So what, Bari?" he said. "Are you proposing to jack a pirate feed off a Mil-secure signal to let me look through the glares-cam of some poor SOMD shavehead? I've seen that sort of shit before, and it blows. It's all novelty. The feed quality is generally fuck-awful, and the POV is lousy. You're always looking at completely the wrong thing. I'm really not interested. In fact, I can't think of a single credible network that would take anything like that, unless you managed to scoop some stand-out clip by accident. They wouldn't carry it for the news content. I mean they wouldn't take it for the solid, message-related reasons you'd want them to take it. They'd buy six seconds of exclusive explosion on camera. They wouldn't buy a story."
      "I know," said Apfel. "This isn't a pirate feed to let you see through some joker's glares."
      "Really?"
      "This lets you see through his eyes, Falk," said Cleesh. "This lets you be someone. This lets you go in inside someone's freeking ® head."
     
 

NINE
     
 
    It was getting dark by the time he got off the tram downtown. Lights were shining in the windows of the commercial properties, and the streetpost bug zappers had started to glow. Over the roofline, a purple silhouette, the glass masts were lit up like neon ladders.
      Neon ladders with many rungs missing.
      Falk felt pretty good. His response qualified as excitement, despite various misgivings. A really inviting possibility had opened up, and even if it turned out to be hollow, it was going to make for a very saleable story.
      He walked down the street as trams hummed past. Street boxes trailed the latest headlines about the Letts incident. There was talk of a publicly funded meteor defence programme.
      Classic misdirection.
      He stepped into a ProFood, and ordered a coffee. While he waited for it, he stared out of the front windows into the darkening street and considered his misgivings. Poplite trilled in the background.
      He felt an uncomfortable measure of guilt and responsibility towards Cleesh. That wasn't like him. He