“Don't rush things, Baz. You need time to-”
The poor lad yanked off the sheet covering his leg and began screaming. Meanwhile, Mason and I tried not to laugh as he looked down on the chewed-up piece of wood taken from a table and fastened to the stump of his missing limb. Thor had done a good job of carving eyes and a nose into the bark and he'd even shod the end with a bit of an old tin can.
“Good as new, mate!” I said. “You'll be running around in no time.”
Riggs looked at me, his face a picture of stunned confusion.
“Welcome to TRIDENT.”
EPILOGUE
Alice hadn't exaggerated. The retreat was located deep in the western hills on Titan 5's less-industrial landmass that hadn't yet been given a name. Maybe nobody wanted to spoil the place with a name. Maybe no one wanted to claim direct ownership of it. I didn't understand that until the shuttle arrived and dropped us three clicks from the site. The pilot informed us that we'd have to walk the rest of the way.
“Orders from the boss,” he said as we gathered our things. “Part of the experience.”
Then he'd dusted off and we watched it go. When the air was quiet again, it finally hit us.
“Earth,” I said. “It's like Earth.”
“More specifically, England,” said Mason. “Good choice, Alice,” he said aloud. “Good choice.”
The land was rich and green and filled with endless swathes of pine and birch that stretched off into the distance on a carpet of lush grassland. The sky was a crystal blue and the sun, now cresting the horizon, gave a comfortable warmth to the air which was thick with the scents of the forest I'd known from my youth. Bees danced between wildflowers and the hum of insects came and went in our ears.
I took a deep breath, shouldered my bag and took Jo's hand in my own. Thor and Jimmy were right behind us and Mason helped Baz as he got used to the genuine synthetic leg he now wore and not the one we'd made for him.
“Let's go,” I said and began to walk.
As we reached the knot of low-rise buildings at the end of a marked path, we saw two figures waiting for us by a wooden gate in the fence. One was Alice who we hadn't seen since returning. The other was Angel.
“Welcome!” said my sister as she slid the latch open and let us in. She was in a summer dress of bright colours and her hair, normally styled for business, was free on her shoulders and made her look like a little girl again. “You made it!”
We hugged and I felt hot tears pricking my eyes. For the first time in a great many years, it actually felt like I'd come home. She buried her face in my shoulder and I felt her sob.
“You do it every time,” she whispered. “Every time you come home it's like I nearly lost you.”
“You nearly did,” I said. “I love you, sis.”
“I love you too, you big oaf!”
We broke away and she moved to embrace the others in turn. I looked at Angel who stood aside, waiting. Her hair was still the same shocking purple I'd last seen as she'd been carried away yet now it had grown in length and was tied back in a low pony. She wore loose pants and a shirt and yet on her feet were the same boots she always wore. She avoided looking directly at me until I was stood before her and then I noticed how red her eyes were.
“Carter,” she said, her hands by her side. “Good to see you.”
“Likewise,” I replied. Then I moved in and wrapped my arms around her and she let go. The tears flowed onto my chest as her arms wrapped themselves tightly around me. When she reigned herself back in I put my arm around her shoulder and we walked away towards a glistening lake I could see just beyond the fence.
We sat by the water's edge and watched the waves gently lap the stony shore at our feet. We said nothing at first and she avoided looking at me again. I was okay with that. I sat side-on to her and began throwing stones into the water, watching them skitter across the reflection of the sky. I had a sudden desire to never leave that place ever again, never set foot inside an exo-shell or pick up a weapon. That wasn't going to be a feeling I could entertain for too long.
“You suspected,” she said eventually. I nodded. “Why?”
“I saw your face. You were resigned to it the moment they said your name at the platform. Like it was something you'd been waiting for all along.”
“It was,” she whispered and threw a stone herself. “I knew after the first mission I flew that Bourmont was handing information over to the Martians. It was obvious. When one of the team approached me afterwards I told him I was fine with it, that I had my own reasons. He wanted to know what they were so I told him.”
“Your Father.” She nodded.
“He wouldn't leave when the war started. He didn't agree with the whole thing but he felt that he had a duty to Mars to stay and fight. He didn't even mind when I told him I was joining up myself but on Earth's side. He said he was proud of me and that he hoped I did well for myself, maybe even go up the ladder.”
“But?”
“But nothing. I sat back and flew those missions until I knew that the biggest one was about to happen. Noctis Labyrinthus. I still had a way of communicating with my Dad and when I found out that he'd be deployed to defend the mines I was glad – I knew that Bourmont's information would save him if the Martians knew about the attack. I just didn't-” She broke away and stifled a sob. “I didn't think that he'd be on the front-lines when the fighting started.”
“And he died anyway,” I said.
“Along with thousands of my comrades,” she said. “Thousands, Carter. They butchered Earth forces and buried them under tonnes of rock and sand. And I did nothing. I weighed their lives against one. My dad. And in the end, I still lost it all.”
“What happened when you realised that?” I asked.
“Do you want the truth?” she said, turning for the first time to look at me. I nodded. She took a moment to compose herself, then lifted both hands to her head and moved her fingers to the edges of her scalp. In a moment she was lifting back her hair in one piece, exposing plates of molanium covering places where her skull should have been. I felt my stomach clench in momentary revulsion.
“I blew my brains out,” she said and returned her scalp back into place. When it was fitted, you couldn't see a single hair out of place. “But the pistol miss-fired. The round entered my head and blew off the top part of my skull and a lot of brain tissue that, ironically, turns out I didn't need. A medic found me and I was rushed into surgery. A few days later and I woke up to find that I'd been given top-market implants by an anonymous benefactor.”
“Your Dad.” She nodded.
“It was in his will. He'd made a lot of money in Martian mining before the war, that's how he'd bought his commission. In his will he'd added a clause that would cover any of my medical bills through third-party channels, keeping the whole thing a big secret. Ironic, right? I tried to save him, failed and managed to kill him anyway, so I try to kill myself and he saves me. No implant in the world will help me get my head around that.”
I nodded and we returned to that silence again, knowing that we still hadn't moved forward. There was something left unsaid or undone or...
“I'm resigning,” she said flatly. I nodded again.
“You know you won't be able to work in this trade again, don't you?” I said, trying to sound helpful and not threatening. “Even though you were found not guilty it'll stick. No one will hire you with that kind of suspicion hanging over you.”
“I can't carry on like this,” she said. “I can't bear to see your face every day knowing what I did.”
“I don't excuse it, Angel, none of us do, but we understand it. You made a bad call, I'll give you that one. You have to bear the burden of those who died but so do all of us who do the kind of work we do. War, fighting, it's not clean and simple, it isn't a set of instructions you follow and get perfect results every time. People die. Some days the right people die and some days the wrong people die. Behind us is a team who knows deep down what that means and not one of th
em stands in judgement on you – only yourself.”
She looked at me then and I could see in her eyes that the last thing she wanted to do was go. She wanted something from me that maybe I could never give her. Absolution? Forgiveness? I didn't know. Instead, I reached into my pocket and handed her the data cube.
“What's this?” she asked.
“The only proof that you were involved,” I said.
“But I-”
“Aleksei got what he needed to get you off the charges. I dug this one out myself. I guess it means we're all involved in what you did now. I could be executed as a traitor just for holding it.”
I stood up and helped her onto her feet. She stared at the cube and then at me.
“You have a choice here,” I said. “You can keep that and know that with it you could send us all to the block. There's enough there to convict you, me, Baz, Mason and the others. I'm giving that power to you.
“Or you can take it, the last piece of that guilt-pie you're feasting on and hurl it into that lake along with all the pain and suffering you're putting on yourself. Then we can go back up the hill and go forward from here together. The choice is yours.”
She held the block in both hands and sniffed some of the tears back. Then, nodding to herself as if reaching a conclusion she knew was the right one, she began to crush the thing between her palms until it was nothing more than a handful of fragments. Turning, she hurled the rest into the water and let out a pain-soaked scream that followed it all the way down into the deep.
I began to make my way back up the hill to where the others were waiting.
“Is she going to be okay?” asked Mason. I shrugged.
“Probably about as much as the rest of us are.” Mason slapped me hard on the back and laughed.
“Alice brought cake,” he said. “And ice cream.”
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