The two men holding Derrin against the wall turned. Syn’s netick legs whined as he sped towards them, launching himself high into the air at the last moment. A piston kick took one man high in the chest, flipping him backwards onto the ground. Syn landed, smashed a fist into the other guard’s temple, dropping him. The guard at the truck was screaming into his comm unit as his other hand brought his rifle to bear.
Cale pulled his shock-stick from his belt and hurled it. It spun in the air, then the butt end smashed into the guard’s face, knocking the commset from his hands and bouncing him off the metal tailgate. Cale was already moving, covering the distance at a sprint and driving a knee into the downed man’s jaw. He slumped and lay still, a thin trickle of blood coming from his nose.
A shot rang out.
Derrin was down, screaming, holding both hands to his gut where blood pumped through his fingers. The guard Syn had kicked had pulled a pistol and was taking aim again, his hand trembling. Syn knocked the pistol away with a roar of frustration, then booted the man unconscious. The mercenary scooped Derrin up in his arms and raced over to the truck. ‘Get your boy. You know any first aid?’
Cale nodded and helped Syn heave Derrin into the back of the truck. The youth howled in pain, then passed out. They returned for Bowden, leaving the heavy wheelchair behind.
‘What a fucking to-do,’ said Syn, helping Cale climb up. ‘Hold on tight in there.’ The mercenary slammed the rear doors shut, leaving Cale in the dark, smelling blood. A few seconds later the engine fired to life and they took off at speed.
Bask 45 – 499
Today as I looked out of the window I saw a speck on the hills which grew and became a transport skimmer. The cowards have returned.
Mason and I resolved at once to seal off the chamber – or to leave signs that we had. What we know now is just too big to release into the world. What the two of us have learned from our sessions with the Spark undermines the very fabric of the Hegemony, showing it up as the crawling thing that has wilfully kept us in darkness for almost half a millennium. What lives in this place, if used diligently, could change everything – we could catch up with the pre-Ruin, giving us another chance at the stars. Yes, I know it sounds insane – not only is the void a real, quantifiable thing, it is accessible with the right tools. The thought of it makes my fingers itch, then I have to remind myself that there are more immediate concerns. Namely, the thing’s appetite.
We’d pushed ourselves, making the sessions longer, exposing ourselves to more and more each time, seeing how far we could go. One would sit and watch from the platform while the other explored the data corpus, travelling that iridescent web of knowledge until called back. I began to develop a migraine, and so did Mason, but we blamed it on lack of sleep, or just the overwhelming, ceaseless breaking of boundaries. That was until one day, when he insisted on staying longer, to dive deeper than before. I tried to rouse him after thirty minutes but he was limp in my arms and his skin was like fire. I broke his contact with the torus and found the strength, somehow, to haul him to the safety of the platform. The Spark made a noise almost like a groan of despair – a deeply unsettling sound if ever I heard one. By the time Mason came to, I knew what the problem was, and the fact that we’d not seen it earlier was our own fault. So entranced by the complex beauty of the sea of knowledge opening up before us, we’d dived into technology, philosophy, history. What we’d ignored was the make-up of the thing that was the reservoir of all of this knowledge, the Spark itself that was administrator and heart of the data corpus. It needs us, craves us, to make sense of its own internal logic.
The damn thing was feeding on us.
Little wonder the thing’s creators never fully activated it. I don’t want to think what would have happened if we’d pushed ourselves any further.
We resolved, on seeing our inbound visitors, to stop anyone else going down there. They’d either kill themselves or run off to tell what they’d found, and I’m not sure which is worse.
I put on my best bored-for-a-whole-Death face and met them at the loading dock. The two imbeciles (who have reconciled – I wonder if he ever found out what she’d been doing?) were accompanied by none other than that oily grotesque Fermin. What he’s doing all the way out here, I have no idea – he’s cagey, spinning some bunkum about reviewing the geological findings from the original survey. I asked why he couldn’t have sent an underling or left it to me, but he shrugged it off.
So, there we have it. All those months of locked-in cold were a total waste, I told them. The chamber below was just an attractive ruin, nothing more. I made sure I laid it on thick about their departure scuppering the enterprise – how we’d been unable to carry out the necessary mapping with only two of us present. They seemed guilty enough to not ask any questions. Fermin looks at me oddly though, even for him. I will keep a close watch.
vi. Overlooked
Kelbee had barely slept since she’d broken into her husband’s briefcase. She kept the compact recording device tucked away in her waistband, not daring for a moment to let it out of her sight, though she didn’t dare try to sneak away, not yet. On top of this was another looming presence, the words of the little medico that had slipped out so casually but had her heart stuttering every time she heard them back.
Paternity test.
The fear was so consuming she was almost glad to have a more immediate worry to take her mind off it.
Now the Lance Colonel was away again, staying away for a night, and she knew it was time to deliver what she’d found. By midday she’d worked up the nerve to go, checking for the tenth time that the device was secure under her clothes before locking the door behind her and taking the stairs to the foyer.
A woman was up on a stepladder near the doors, close against the large portrait of the Seeker, cleaning it. Her head was wrapped in a scarf and she was slowly passing a cloth over the glass, each stroke meticulous. Kelbee paused by the pitted message board with its collection of dog-eared notices and bowed to the portrait, as was expected. The cleaning woman ignored her, and she hurried the usual muttering of thanks.
As she was about to walk through the doors there was a prickling feeling on the back of her neck, not unlike what she felt when passing through a checkpoint or one of the controlled areas of the city where the speaker posts were everywhere. It was something primal, a sense of being observed.
It’s nothing, she told herself. Stop acting like a frightened girl.
She shot a glance behind.
The cleaner looked intent on the portrait, but there had been something just as Kelbee had turned, a flicker of motion, as if the woman had been watching her, then snatched her head away.
Pull yourself together, she thought. You’re jumping at shadows. Keep this up and someone will notice.
* * *
She asked to speak to Brennev, but Nebn told her he was away. He wouldn’t say where, and took her to a long room filled with desks. The low light was mostly the glow of flickering screens as a dozen men and women with headsets quietly went about their work, some moving with quiet purpose between stations, others motionless but for the blur of their fingers on keyboards.
‘We monitor military comm traffic from here,’ Nebn told her as he led her through the desks and to the back of the room where there was an alcove-office with a desk, a terminal and two chairs. He pulled a partition screen across; Kelbee could still hear the gentle thrum of keys, punctuated by the chirps and bleeps of monitoring equipment.
Only the military were allowed long-distance communications, that she knew of. A few weeks ago the idea of being next to people spying on them would have had her quivering, but she felt numbed to it now. She handed the tiny camera over to Nebn.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is all I could get.’ The hushed industry of the room behind the partition made her want to whisper.
He took it and flipped open a panel in its side, pulling out a black wire which he plugged into the terminal. She sat across from him and w
atched the light dance on his face as the pictures she’d taken flashed up on the screen. His eyes were intent as he scanned through them.
‘I was in a hurry,’ she said, feeling like she needed to explain.
‘These could be useful,’ he said. ‘But they all relate to his old job overseeing the labour camp provisions. Nothing about the new posting.’
‘What camps?’
He continued staring at the screen, absorbed. Then he seemed to register her question, though his voice remained distant. ‘I’ll tell you another time.’
She’d never seen him working, so absorbed in something else it was as if she were only an outline. It felt like an age before he finished reviewing the pictures. When he did, he flicked the screen off and unplugged the camera before pushing it across the desk towards her.
‘For your first try, you’ve done well,’ he said. ‘You’ll get more next time, I’m certain of it. We should get you set up for audio too, in case he lets anything slip when he talks.’
‘Next… time,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘Nebn, I’m not doing that again. I was terrified he was going to walk in and find me.’
His eyebrows rose, just a fraction. He rested his elbows on the desk and leaned towards her. ‘Of course you can do it. You’re a natural. Believe me, it gets easier.’
‘You’re not listening to me. It’s not that I can’t do it. I won’t.’
‘Listen—’
‘No!’ The word shot out like a bullet, before she remembered the room full of people on the other side of the partition. Her cheeks grew hot and she lowered her voice to a hiss. ‘He was there, just a few steps away. If he’d been sober he would have seen me and I don’t think even the baby would have kept me safe.’ She rested her palm on her stomach. ‘You have to get Brennev to get me out.’
‘Tell me what happened, from the start.’
She told him everything that had happened to her, from the clinic to the moment she found her way into the Lance Colonel’s briefcase. He listened in silence, nodding at her to go on when she paused. It felt like she was being assessed, and the fact that it was him doing it made it surreal and worse. She left out the part about the briefcase code being her marriage date, not really knowing why.
‘It sounds to me like you did exactly the right thing. Did he know his case had been tampered with?’
‘No.’
‘Then it’s fine. Listen, I know it must have scared you. I was frightened too, the first time I did something like this. But you did really, really well. He was nowhere near spotting you.’
An image skittered across her mind of Nebn, half-naked in a cold apartment, sneaking a glance at stolen documents in the dead of night. ‘I don’t want to do it again.’
He sat back, contemplating her with a furrowed brow. The expression was alien, so different from the man she thought she knew; a detachment that reminded her of Brennev. This wasn’t the man that had snatched a furtive kiss under the shade of a tree, that had run his fingers over her skin. She felt disorientated.
‘I don’t want to do it,’ she repeated.
‘Kelbee, many people are risking a lot. For you.’
‘Just for me?’
He raised his hands. ‘For us, I know. But it’s more than that. This is about the greater good.’
‘I don’t care about “the greater good”,’ she snapped back. ‘I care that somewhere out there a lab is testing a sample that will tell him the child isn’t his. It could arrive any day, and you want me to go back to that? Don’t you care?’
‘Of course I care.’ He sounded angry now. ‘But Brennev’s a hard man, Kelbee. Fair, but hard. He’s lived outside the law for a long time and he doesn’t do favours for nothing. Either we help him or we’re out on our own.’ He reached for her hand and scowled when she snatched it away. ‘If I told you I had a way to make the lab test go away, would you feel better then?’
She looked away. Tears were creeping up but she used anger to force them back. ‘Fine,’ she said in a low voice. She wanted to ask more, like how in the world he could make a paternity test disappear, but couldn’t bring herself to say any more.
He held her gaze for a moment but then looked away. His cheeks were flushed. ‘Thank you,’ he said, sounding choked. ‘It’s for the best.’
The sound of the people typing on the other side of the partition was like a clamour. Nebn took a breath and forced an even tone. ‘When will you next have a chance?’
‘Tonight, maybe.’
He nodded and tapped the camera on the desk with his finger. ‘Hold onto this in case you get the chance, but we’ll rig you with a wire as well.’
She nodded, still avoiding his eyes. ‘He sometimes talks when he drinks.’ She slipped the camera into her pocket.
Nebn pulled back the partition. They left the busy room behind and she hated the idea that they’d been overheard, though as they went every face seemed intent on the screens. He led her along several turns of the tunnel, passing through some heavy doors, the silence hanging thick between them. They took some metal stairs down into what appeared to be a workshop, the walls covered with tools and the benches overflowing with equipment. There was grease in the air and dark marks on the floor.
Tani was at a worktable, leaning over a mad jumble of wires and tubes with a soldering iron when they entered; she saw them and straightened, waving them over. She tucked back a lock of her yellow hair with a grimy hand and flashed a wide smile.
For a second Kelbee hated her, hated her elegance, the way she looked even covered in grime.
‘How’s it, you two?’ Tani arched her back with an audible click followed by a grunt. ‘I could do with a break.’
Nebn ignored the question. ‘We need Kelbee fitted with a wire. Something discreet.’
Tani arched a perfect eyebrow at Kelbee, who looked away. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We can do that. Follow me, please.’
She led Kelbee over to one of the other benches and rooted around under piles of gear, at last coming back with a bright orange case made from hard plastic. Nebn wandered over to the other side of the room and poked around in the equipment spilling from a cabinet.
Tani opened the orange case and pulled out a grey disk as thick as her thumb attached to a thin belt. Next, she retrieved a tiny beige nub.
‘This is a microphone,’ she said. ‘This round bit is the control box. Lift up your shirt so I can fit it.’ Tani strapped the band around Kelbee’s hips and tightened it. ‘How’s that?’
‘A little higher,’ said Kelbee. ‘It might show if I wore a dress.’
As Tani moved the belt to sit just below her bump, Kelbee watched Nebn out of the corner of her eye. His eyes looked sad. She felt a pang of remorse, but still the anger was there. The sight of him at work – focused, determined – was unsettling, at odds with the gentle hours they’d spent together. Which was the real him?
A bitter little voice whispered in her ear. Did he want her for her, or for her husband? Perhaps that’s why he’d sought her out, drawn her away from everything she knew into a danger that seemed so irresistible at the time but now made her sick to her stomach with worry. She looked away as she saw him turn, rather than meet his gaze. Not for the first time, despite everything that had happened, she wished that it would all just go away.
Tani tightened the belt. ‘Just a moment, I need to calibrate.’ She fiddled with the control box until it chimed. A light on the grey disk blinked on. Tani hummed, satisfied, then helped Kelbee to rearrange her clothes.
‘There, all set to go. Touch the casing twice to activate, three times to turn off, like so.’ Tani tapped a long finger on the hard shape under the dress three times in quick succession and Kelbee felt the unit pulse. ‘Got it?’
She nodded, smoothing her shirt down. The control unit was invisible.
Tani handed her the beige nub, which was sticky on one side. ‘Put it where you think it’ll get the best feed. Cleavage is good, but make sure it’s not showing.’ She caught Kelbee�
��s eye and tilted her head at Nebn in a silent question.
Kelbee closed her eyes and shook her head.
Tani sighed but gave her an encouraging smile, reaching out to give her upper arm a gentle squeeze, then called out to Nebn. ‘You can leave that alone, you’ll break it.’
Nebn put the power drill back in its cradle on the wall. ‘This place is a mess.’
‘Great minds thrive on clutter. I don’t expect you to understand. Now maybe you should walk Kelbee out.’ She gave him a meaningful look.
Nebn’s brow furrowed; he reddened, but held the door open.
Kelbee shot her a grateful look, feeling guilty for how insecure she’d allowed herself to get. Tani wasn’t the problem, Nebn was. The way he’d been with her, like he was her employer instead of the man who’d fathered her child. How could he treat her like a piece to be moved around? She tried to breathe deep, to clear her mind, but the sharp little voice saying terrible things soured the air.
Nebn followed her out and they made for the sewer entrance. After some minutes of silence, she felt a tentative hand in the small of her back. A fresh burst of irritation made her walk faster, pulling away.
The outer door was manned by the usual masked guards. They flanked the door like statues, eyes staring straight ahead. As they approached, Nebn stopped her with a touch on her shoulder.
‘Be safe,’ he said.
She stared at the ceiling, her voice terse. ‘I hope so.’
‘You’re still angry with me.’
‘I’m fine, I just need to get home,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do.’
He took a step closer. ‘I want to see you again. By ourselves, in our own place. It feels like it’s been for ever.’
‘I’m sorry you feel so neglected,’ she snapped.
He winced, shook his head. ‘I know this is hard for you. I wish I could go myself.’
Her smile was bitter. ‘I bet you do. Tell me something: have you? Done this before?’
His face went pale.
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