by Guy Haley
Leonid was appalled, but powerless. The tools of the Pointers had turned on their masters. If he told Anderson to lay down his arms, what then? Would he? Leonid was not sure. If it came to it, he would tell him to, but the truth was far bitterer. He had not had Anderson stop, because Leonid agreed with him. Defence was their first concern.
They strode along the water pipeline, finished now and undergoing testing. Connected to a regular supply of water, they’d be able to up production of food in the hydroponics on the East Mesa, and begin irrigating plots in the open. Once there was more to eat, Leonid was certain opposition to his government would abate long enough for him to get the colony established. He would reinstate the council when the colony was safe. He promised himself that. If only he could shake the image of Ilya, nodding approvingly at him, that stole unwanted into his imagination.
Out in the fields, Anderson led Leonid to a place where a table had been set out. Three heavy guns lay upon it. One of Anderson’s men and a colonist wearing the black band of Anderson’s new militia stood to attention by the table. Danowicz waited with them, and a fourth man whose name Leonid did not remember, who wore the green suit flashes of a scientist. A target, a piece of a dead native’s shell, hung from a pole two hundred metres away.
“Here we have the first batch of the new weapons,” Anderson said, holding out his hand. His man passed one to him. “Railguns. Triple magnetic coils” – he indicated three pipes running the length of the weapon – “accelerate a solid iron round to eight times the speed of sound. Heavy and fast, the round will punch through anything. Observe.”
He put the gun to his shoulder and depressed the trigger. The gun hummed briefly. There was a crack as the projectile broke the sound barrier, followed almost instantly by an organic crunch. The shell target swung on its pole, a large hole blasted through its centre.
“We needn’t worry about the natives now, sir,” said Danowicz. He wore a serious expression, but Leonid could see he was crowing beneath it.
“Thank you, councillor,” said Leonid. “It is very impressive.” He licked his lips. “When can we return to our previous plan?”
“When we have fortified First Landing, and dealt with the native threat.”
Leonid looked to Anderson. “Surely the weapons are enough?”
Danowicz smiled kindly. “Sir, Captain Anderson recommends wiping them out. Only then will we be safe.”
“But food production, the farm...”
“They need to wait, sir,” said Anderson. “I will not allow the Petrovitch family to be endangered.”
“And if I order you to stop?”
Anderson stared down at him. Leonid had never felt comfortable around the Alt, but Ilya’s revelation of his heritage had made him hate being near Anderson all the more intensely. His menace smote him like a brick. His silver eyes were reptilian, and Ilya looked out at him from behind them. “It is your house I am to protect, from itself if necessary. There are two of you,” he said.
“You are saying you require only one of us?”
Anderson looked away from him. “Work continues on the weapons, sir. Once we have destroyed the natives, we shall concentrate on food production. We have enough rations until then to sustain a viable population. We are done, sir.
“This way,” he said. “I wish to show you the work on the riverside wall.”
SAND GRIPPED THE poles of the tent and threw up copiously into the hole that passed as the airfield’s latrine. She would have preferred to have kept her vomiting secret, but doing it silently just wasn’t going to happen. She could hear voices further down the strip, the rustle of the canvas in the wind reminding her how thin the barrier between her discomfort and day-to-day life was.
She was past caring. All she really wanted was something to hold onto at ground level, so she could kneel down while she was sick. She’d tried that last time, and had nearly gone into the hole. Standing up it was.
“Are you alright, Sand?” asked Kasia.
“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute. Oh God.” She threw up again. She was still trying to keep it quiet, resulting in her breakfast being forced out through her nostrils. It burned, and she coughed, sneezed and threw up again all at once.
“You’re not okay!” Kasia’s voice moved closer to the tent, shattering what was left of Sand’s delicate illusion of solitude. “Are you sure you’re good to fly?”
Sand let go of the tent poles and leaned forward, hands on her knees, shaking. “Just give me a minute!” she said weakly. She wiped her face, then swilled her mouth with water from her bottle, snorting it through her nose. A waste of her ration, but the vomit burned her sinuses.
She stood and groaned. “I’m okay,” she said, more for her own benefit than Kasia’s. “I’m okay.”
She walked out of the tent.
“You stink of puke,” said Kasia.
“Thanks,” said Sand shakily.
“Are you sure you’re good to fly?”
“I’ve got to be, baby. If Anderson gets wind of this, I’m grounded for good, and nothing nice will come from that.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“If I can fly a fourteen-megaton asteroid into a processing fac with a stinking hangover, I can get that itty bitty parachute into the air. It’ll pass, trust me.” They walked from the latrine back to the airstrip office, another adapted container. A hangar constructed of curved panels woven by the base fabricators towered over it; they went within. What flight crew Anderson had left was inside. They all knew about her vomiting, but she trusted them enough not to mention it outside their group. They didn’t know why for sure – Sand hadn’t told them – but they could guess.
The hangar was small, but even so, it felt cavernously empty. Two two-seat paragliders sat in the centre, looking tiny as models.
“Okay, we’re on a scouting mission today. Anderson wants us to find where the natives are coming from. Kasia’s coming up with me in UL-1; get it out on the runway. Once we’re gone, I want you all working on UL-3. It’d be good if we could get that finished by the end of the week.”
“Yes, Sand,” they said.
“Right, then,” said Sand. She pulled her goggles on as two of her crew pushed the ultralight onto the runway. They arranged it for takeoff, then laid out its parachute on the ground. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Big moment,” she said to Kasia as they walked to their seats. There was no cockpit, just a frame of carbon and aluminium bars, and a large, caged propeller mounted behind it.
Kasia nodded. “I’ve got to go into the air if I’m going to be a pilot, right?”
“That you do.”
“What’s it like, being pregnant?” asked Kasia as they settled into the frame.
“It fucking sucks, honey,” said Sand. She pressed the on switch, and the electric engine whirred into life.
“Have you told him yet?”
“Not yet,” she said. She accelerated down the airstrip. “Not yet.”
“Are you going to?”
Sand did not reply. The parasail made a muffled snap, and she felt it tug as it filled with air. She shouted with joy, her sickness forgotten. She pulled back on the stick. The wind teased her hair back as they soared up from the landing field. The craft was primitive, simplistic, horrendously dangerous. She loved it.
Beside her, Kasia clung on to the frame sides, her face set and lips thin. She had gone pale. Her enthusiasm for flying had been growing all the more intense recently, but this was the first time she had been airborne since the crash.
“Relax, honey!” Sand yelled. “We’ll be fine!” She levelled out at three hundred metres. Radio crackled in her ear. Traffic control; grandiose title, really. It was one girl with a radio in a shack.
“We’re going out,” she said. “See you soon.”
“Copy that, Sand.”
The radio cut off.
They circled lazily around the mesas, dropping low so they could pick out the tracks of the natives in the scrub. Kasia spotte
d it first, where tyre marks and scuffing from human feet broadened the trail. Sand lined the UL up and flew straight for five kilometres. They passed the burned-out wreck of the ATV, the evidence of that fateful first encounter between the colony and the natives. Shortly past that, signs of human activity dried up – no one dared go that way on the ground – and they were flying solely over native footprints. The natives travelled single file, and had left a deep score in dry earth.
The craft scared up something large from the scrub below, but it was gone before they could identify it.
The ultralights had been flying for a week, fast-tracked by Anderson, who wanted to pinpoint the location of the native’s village, or watering hole, or wherever the fuck they lived. She supposed she’d better be thankful for that, even if he was an A-grade shitbag. Sand found it strange to be in the air again. The wait had been interminable, and yet now she was, it was as if no time had passed at all. Her grounding was but one of a bunch of bad memories.
“You okay?” said Sand. “For a few minutes back there it looked like it was your turn to start barfing.” The craft’s electric motor was very quiet. She hardly had to raise her voice over the wind.
Kasia nodded. She was peering over the side, wonder edging out fear. She relaxed. Sand suppressed a mischievous urge to send the craft into a dive. Kasia wasn’t ready for that.
“What do you think?” Sand asked.
“It’s marvellous!” shouted Kasia.
“Do you want a go?” Sand said. Before the younger woman could say no, Sand let go of the stick.
“What are you doing?” shrieked Kasia.
“Yeah, what they hell are you doing?” shouted the girl in the shack. Sand ignored her.
“What are you doing?” said Sand. “If I were you I’d grab the stick, or we’re going to crash.” Kasia grabbed at it in panic. The UL swerved. “Easy now! Remember what I told you. Just a little flight. Just a taste, okay? I’ve got the pedals.”
“But I’m not due to start lessons until I’ve finished my ground training.”
“You’re my apprentice; I say, the sooner the better.”
Kasia grumbled, and Sand grinned. She remembered her own first flight. Back in flight school, the simulator was so accurate that once she’d been up in the clouds, the two were indistinguishable. But that first time, she was profoundly conscious of the difference, and her hands sweated so much she thought they’d slip right off the stick. Already hooked, she’d become a flight junky from that day.
“Good?” she said. Kasia nodded. She was biting her lip with concentration.
“Steady, keep her level, that’s right.” Sand looked down. “A little to the right, we’re drifting off the path. Another kilometre now, alright? Then I’m taking it back. Right, I’m taking over. Ready? In three, two, one...”
Sand took the stick smoothly.
Her sickness, the problem of her pregnancy, Anderson’s coup, she forgot it all when she saw the look on Kasia’s face. She was in, hook, line and sinker. Sand smiled widely.
“Welcome to the pilot’s club, kid.”
“Wow,” said Kasia.
“Wow, indeed,” said Sand. She looked down and frowned. “Dammit,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re losing the trail. Do me a favour and keep your eyes peeled.”
They circled and circled, but of the trail, there was no sign
“Control, you better tell the generalissimo that we’ve lost it. It just disappears. We’ll keep trying, but I don’t think we’ll find anything from the air. I think they go underground.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Battle of First Landing
“YOU REALISE,” CORRIGAN said quietly to Dariusz, “that he intends to activate his radar fence.”
Dariusz nodded. They walked the road out into the field, toward the pumping station. Corrigan held his assault carbine at the ready. The pipes had been online for a fortnight; water flowed from the aquifer directly to the mesas. Dariusz and his team had been reassigned to wall-building duties alongside Plock, but the pump needed checking every day, and he and Corrigan took the time to talk. Work continued in shifts around the clock. The inner perimeter defences were complete. Far from signalling a refocusing on civilian activity, Anderson had unveiled his plans for an outer ditch and wall.
“It’s not long until people will start to starve.”
“He’s calculated all that,” said Corrigan. “The children are expendable as far as he’s concerned. He’ll stop feeding them first. He’s obsessed with the wall.”
“We are all in danger,” said Dariusz. “He’s more of a threat than the aliens.”
“It’s more than defence, it’s a statement of power,” said Corrigan. “I’ve had a look into his personal files.”
“How did you manage –”
“Ex-cyber ops, combat wing,” said Corrigan. “I have my ways. The systems here wouldn’t keep your grandmother out.
“He’s been drawing on emergency social plans of the Pointers. Population crashes, a bottleneck. Minimal genetic diversity, that kind of thing. He’s working on the basis of a minimum population of 4,000. He’ll not let the other 2,000 distract him from his priorities.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” said Corrigan. “It’s not the worst of it. We’re going to have to act. If he sets up this radar deterrent, according to Moore, we’re going to drive the natives insane.”
“Moore’s been trying to speak to me,” said Dariusz. The biologist had last caught him out on the wall. He’d been agitated. “Does he know anything?”
Corrigan spat. “No. He came to you because he knows you’re opposed to Anderson. He has no idea what we’re planning.”
“When does the fence go on?”
“Tomorrow. We’re on full combat readiness. The bastard knows what’s going to happen. He wants to provoke them so he can kill as many as possible, and keep the colony cowed through fear of them.”
“Can we get to it before it goes on?” They were getting close to the pumping station, and Dariusz paused, as if inspecting a join in the pipeline, to buy them a little more time.
Corrigan shook his head. “He’s got his Alts guarding it. Not all the regular men are happy about this, but the Alts, well, they don’t give a fuck. They just do what he tells them. Tomorrow, or the day after, whenever the natives attack. We could act then, in the confusion.”
“That’s no good,” said Dariusz. “Too much could go wrong.” They reached the pumping station.
“You got any better ideas?”
“No, not really. I’ll speak to Moore. He wants to talk to me again tonight.” Dariusz opened an inspection panel and took down his readings onto his tablet.
“Don’t tell him anything.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll work on the assumption we’ll go into action during the attack.”
Dariusz closed the panel. He did a quick circuit of the pump head. “All looks fine. We better head back.”
“There’s another thing,” said Corrigan. “It’s not going to end here. We foil this, he’ll do something else stupid.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Corrigan fixed him in the eyes. “We’re going to have to kill Anderson.”
LEONID WATCHED AS the science staff made a couple of adjustments to the computer that coordinated their communications through the mast.
“Is it done?” said Leonid.
“Yes, sir.”
“I expected more of a fanfare,” said Yuri wryly.
“Most of the work has been done outside, sir; the alterations are to the comms mast emitters, not here. All we have to do in here is input the frequencies that we know are the most painful to the natives.”
“Everybody has become so literal these days,” said Yuri. He looked his guard, his gaoler, up and down. “Isn’t that right, Janosz?”
Janosz stared straight ahead.
“See?” He took his brother by the arm. Leonid st
arted. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Anderson says so.”
“Anderson! What happened to you, Leonid?”
“Disaster,” said his brother. He left, his own bodyguards following him. Yuri turned back to the equipment. “Do you think this is a good idea?” he asked the technicians. They ignored him, too.
“Fine,” said Yuri, “fine.”
The tech checked his watch. “Okay, testing in two minutes.”
“All systems are nominal. Shut it down.” The technician addressed Yuri. “We’ll begin connection to the comms mast primary emitters now. We’ll be all ready for activation on time tomorrow, sir.”
“Oh, fantastic,” said Yuri, deadpan.
MOORE WANTED TO meet Dariusz out at the airfield. There was a new spares store there, a container with a partition at one end for an office.
When Dariusz walked in through the open doors, he knew he had fallen into a trap. There is a look a cornered man has, a sheen of moral disease. Moore wore it.
“I’m sorry.”
Anderson stepped out of the partitioned room and levelled his assault carbine at him.
“I’m afraid your little conspiracy is over,” said Anderson. “A pity, as your skills are very necessary.”
A couple more men came in the store. One covered the other as Moore was hauled out, looking helplessly at Dariusz as he was taken away.
Anderson walked up to Dariusz. Alts were supposed to lack conceit, their emotional centres were wired differently, but Anderson swaggered up to him with a self-satisfied look on his face.
“Now. Tell me who you were working with.”
Dariusz wanted to spit in his eye, to tell him it was he who had brought the ship down. He didn’t. “Kill me, I don’t care.” With his capture, the knot in his chest he had carried since the crash loosened a little. It would soon all be over.
Anderson wagged a finger and whistled. “You don’t care about you, I think. But what about her?” One of the other Alts brought Sand, her hands tied behind her back, into the store. Anderson left Dariusz’s side and walked over to the pilot.