Nightside 03 - Nightingales Lament

that's been the pattern ever since. As fast as we fix things, something else goes wrong. It's costing us a fortune in spare parts alone. There's nothing sophisticated about the sabotage, just brutal, senseless destruction.
    "No-one ever sees the saboteur. You've seen the security I've hired, but they haven't made a blind bit of difference. I've got cameras everywhere, and they never see anything either. I've had the videotapes checked by experts, but there's no trace of anything. We can't even tell how the bastard gets in or out! The destruction's getting steadily worse. Repairs and reconstruction are starting to fall behind. It's only a matter of time before it starts affecting our power output. And a whole lot of people depend on the electricity we produce here."
    And if Prometheus Inc. goes down, so do you, I thought, but I was still being polite, so I didn't say it aloud.
    "How about rivals?" I said. "Perhaps someone in the same line of business, looking to profit at your expense?"
    "There are always competitors," said Vincent, frowning. "But there's no-one else big enough to take over if we go under. Prometheus Inc. supplies 12.4 per cent of the Nightside's electricity needs. If we crash, there'll be power outages and brownouts all across the Nightside, and no-one wants that. The other companies would have to push themselves almost to destruction to take up the slack."
    "All right," I said. "How about people who just don't like you? Made any new enemies recently?"
    He smiled briefly. "A month ago, I would have said I didn't have an enemy in the world. But now . . ." He looked at the wedding photo on his desk again. "I've been having dreams . . . about Melinda and Quinn, and the day they died. And I have to wonder ... if the bastard who killed them is coming after me."
    I hadn't seen that twist coming. "Why you? And why wait six years?"
    "Maybe the killer thinks I know something, though I'm damned if I know what. And just maybe it's all started up again because you're back, John. An awful lot of old grudges and feuds have bubbled to the surface since you returned to the Nightside."
    He had a point there, so I decided to change the subject. "Let's talk about the actual damage here. You said it was . . . unsophisticated."
    "Hell yes," said Vincent. "It's clear the saboteur has no real technical knowledge. There are a dozen places he could have hit that would shut the whole plant down if they were even interfered with. But none a layman could hope to recognise. And, of course, there's the secret process at the heart of Prometheus Inc. that makes this whole operation possible. I invented it. But that's kept inside a steel vault, protected by state-of-the-art high-tech defence systems. Even the Authorities would have a hard time getting to it without the right pass codes." Vincent leaned forward across the desk and fixed me with a pleading gaze. "You've got to help me, John. It's not only my livelihood we're talking about here. If Prometheus Inc. is forced offline, and power levels drop all across the Nightside, people are going to start dying. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk."
    I should have seen what was coming. But I always was a sucker for a sob story.
    Vincent took me on a tour through the plant, the underground section that outsiders never got a chance to see. It was all spotlessly clean and eerily quiet. The actual generators themselves turned out to be much smaller than I expected, and made hardly a sound. There were panels and gauges and readouts and any amount of gleaming high tech, none of which meant anything to me, though I was careful to make impressed sounds at regular intervals. Every bit of it had been designed by Vincent, back when he was the Mechanic, rather than the Manager. He kept up a running commentary throughout the tour, most of which went right over my head, while I nodded and smiled and kept an eye out for the saboteur. Eventually Vincent ran out of things to point at, and we stopped at the end of a cavernous hall, before a large, closed, solid steel door. He looked at me, clearly expecting me to say something.
    "It's all ... very clean," I said. "And very impressive. Though it's hard to believe you produce so much of the Nightside's electricity with . . . just this. I was expecting something ten times the size."
    Vincent grinned. "None of the power comes from this. All the machinery does is convert the power produced in there into electricity. The secret lies in my own