by Gary Gibson
‘But there has to be some reason they wanted that particular shipment. They wouldn’t have planned things that carefully just for the hell of it.’
‘They got wind of the fact that we had discovered wormhole generators the size of your fist.’ Donohue coughed. ‘They were right, but they didn’t realize it was an alien technology. Maybe they suspected it . . . all I know is, they wound up grabbing the wrong shipment.’ Donohue groaned, clutching at his injured leg. ‘For Christ’s sake, let me go. I need to see a doctor.’
Saul shook his head in astonishment. ‘I can’t believe this. Billions of people are going to die, all because you people fucked up. Did you ever think it might have been better just to let the Sphere have their own damn wormholes?’
Donohue grunted, baring his teeth from the onslaught of the pain. ‘You really think technology like that would have been better in the hands of men like Hsiu-Chuan? Then you’re a fucking idiot.’
‘Tell me what you know about Hanover. Where does he come into it?’
‘We found out that he was taking bribes from organized smuggling gangs on Kepler. We kept him in business on the understanding that he could stay out of jail as long as he funnelled information back to us, but it backfired.’
‘Backfired? How?’
‘Hsiu-Chuan’s people found out he was playing both sides, and threatned to kill his entire family in front of him if he didn’t give them what they wanted. That meant access codes, times and places, delivery dates and security hacks. Everything they needed to send a team into Florida, and walk right back out with the shipment.’
‘Jesus.’ Saul had a mental picture of Donohue running up and down a leaking dam, trying to plug up hundreds of ever-widening cracks. ‘You really made a mess of this, didn’t you?’
‘Listen to me,’ rasped Donohue, his voice growing weaker. ‘About Mitchell Stone.’
‘He’s still alive, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is, and whatever you do with me, you need to help us find him. And stop him.’
‘Why? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘We interrogated him. Put him under, and asked him questions. The things he told us, he’s . . . he’s not even goddamn human any more.’
‘What?’
‘That shipment we sent you to look for?’ Donohue coughed. ‘There’s no reason why the Sphere drone carrying it should have gone out of control the way it did. Those things are near as damn fail-proof. Then we found out that the Sphere lost contact with it at exactly the same instant Stone—’
The shot came from nowhere, blowing out the car’s front windscreen. Saul ducked instinctively, slamming the accelerator down, without pause for thought. The car surged forward.
More shots followed, and Saul grabbed hold of the steering wheel as it emerged from the dashboard. Donohue scrabbled at him with claw-like fingers, attempting to wrest the wheel from his grasp.
Somewhere amid the din and fury, Saul realized the terrible mistake he had made in not forcing Donohue to remove his contacts. The whole time they’d been talking, rescue had already been on the way.
Troopers scattered as the car hurtled towards them, their outlines shimmering. Donohue wrenched at the wheel and the car side-swiped a Black Dog, ripping the passenger-side door away. Donohue screamed and held on tight, as Saul managed to accelerate away again. Saul let go of the wheel just long enough to raise one leg and boot Donohue hard enough to send him tumbling out of the car.
He then grabbed hold of the wheel again, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see Donohue rolling to a halt behind him. Saul nailed the accelerator to the floor, gunning the vehicle for a ramp down which daylight filtered from above. He twisted the wheel wildly, skirting another Black Dog making its way down the same ramp, and cursing as troopers darted out of his way with only centimetres to spare.
Suddenly, miraculously, he was outside, the early morning sun pale and wan behind clouds. A cordon of tanks and Dogs surrounded the Array directly ahead of him. He kept his fot on the accelerator, swerving past several vehicles heading towards the ramp from the direction of a hopper, then past the armoured cordon and on into the no man’s land separating it from the crowds. The car ploughed through a dense tangle of barbed wire before jarring to a sudden halt.
He stumbled out of the vehicle and saw that spiked steel balls, scattered all around, had blown the tires. The crowds of refugees were just metres away, hidden behind a cordon of cars that had been pushed over on to their sides, mirroring the ASI’s own defences.
Shots came from there, aimed at the cordon of tanks. Hunching over, Saul ran forward, hoping to lose himself in the mass of people surrounding the Array. The sonar tanks let out an ear-splitting blast and he dropped to his knees, hands clasped to his ears.
Somehow he managed to get up again and keep running, half blinded with pain and unable to hear a damn thing. He squeezed between two torched cars, and seconds later was caught up in a great mob of people desperate to get away from the tanks.
Another sonar blast rolled over him, and he collapsed on to churned black mud and vomited noisily. Barely avoiding getting trampled, he balled himself up, his breath emerging in shuddering gasps as people thronged past him.
It had started to rain, a gentle pattering of it cool against his skin and washing away the blood and sweat. Saul stood up and staggered away, the world so silent in his deafness that it felt as if he were in a dream, yet pushing and stumbling past an endless mass of humanity. Passing a burned-out shopping mall, its windows shattered and its shelves stripped bare, he kept moving until the muted sound of fighting faded with distance.
The rain became torrential, thunder booming out across the Array and its surroundings, so he sought shelter under the corner of a vast tarpaulin that roofed an impromptu chapel, where several hundred worshippers kneeled on the grass to listen to a preacher deliver a sermon from the rear of a flat-bed truck. As he slumped down to the ground, the air was filled with hosannahs, at which point he realized he could hear again.
He waited until he’d recovered his breath, then put in a call to Olivia.
TWENTY-FOUR
Florida Array, 8 February 2235
‘Saul? What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?’
‘I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean,’ Saul replied over the link. He had to clamp his hands over his ears to be able to hear Olivia’s voice. ‘Can’t say it wasn’t a close call a couple of times.’
‘Jesus, Saul, I really thought . . .’
The preacher’s voice grew to a roar, full of the promise of damnation. Saul ducked back outside from under the tarpaulin, deciding he’d rather take his chances with the rain, after all.
‘I know what you thought. Listen, those files I found at Jeff’s cabin? I cracked them. I know what they are now.’
‘Saul . . . I’m in Arizona, with Jeff.’ She paused. ‘And Mitchell.’
He stopped dead in his progress. ‘You’re fucking kidding me? Do you have any idea what he was hiding round the back of that damn cabin?’
Her words came in a nervous rush. ‘Yes, he told me everything. About the growths, Mitchell, the Founders – all that, and a million and one other things. But he doesn’t have a copy of the files himself. He’s going to need them. We all are.’
Saul started moving again. ‘I’ve seen classified videos,’ he said, aware of the hysteria lurking at the bottom of his throat, ‘and I’ve read documents all telling me how the world is coming to an end. I’m even scared to let myself think about it too much, in case I go crazy.’
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I don’t know, Olivia. How the hell should I be?’
‘I don’t know either,’ she replied, her voice choking on tears. ‘I wish I did.’
Goddamn her. A part of him still wanted to hold her in his arms. He thought of Jeff, and felt a simmering resentment that he thought he’d outgrown long ago.
‘Look, I can send a copy of the files over to you right now.’
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‘No, don’t do that. I found out they’ve got routines built into them that give away your location if they’re transmitted over any kind of network.’
Saul groaned, remembering that Donohue had told him much the same thing. ‘I sent them to you,’ Saul reminded her, ‘when they were still encrypted.’
‘Then it’s a good thing I didn’t stay at home, where I could be found.’
‘Fine, so what exactly does Jeff want to do with the files?’
‘Broadcast them,’ she replied. ‘People need to know what’s really going on, especially out there in the colonies. By the time the news starts spreading, we’ll be on our way to somewhere safe, and then it won’t matter if those people who tried to kill Jeff figure out where we are.’
‘Why Arizona?’
‘We’re at the Launch Pad facility,’ she said. ‘With the same people that took you and Mitchell up on your sub-orbital jump, remember?’
He ad a sudden mental flash of sleek black VASIMRs extending in ranks across the desert sands. ‘Like I could ever forget. But why are you there?’
‘Because they also run flights to the Moon, old-style Moon launches for people rich enough to afford it. It takes about three days to Copernicus City, the hard way – especially if you want to avoid passing through the Florida Array, for any reason.’
He realized, with a start, what she was telling him. ‘You’re seriously telling me you’re going to fly to the Moon?’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s only Mitchell that’s flying there.’
The rain started to ease off. ‘But what about you and Jeff? How are you getting there?’
He heard her sigh. ‘I’m not going to the Moon,’ she explained, ‘and neither is Jeff.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Saul listened as Olivia told him their plans to head for the Jupiter orbital platform.
‘You’re crazy,’ he said, once she had finished. ‘The research platforms weren’t designed to sustain independent populations. They need constant gate contact with Earth to function, as it is. And even if you could find some way to survive indefinitely, you’d be cut off from everything you’ve ever known.’
‘And, out in the colonies, we wouldn’t be?’
At least on some of the colonies you’d have open air to breathe, he thought.
Saul’s feet were getting numb from all the walking. He came across an army truck, with trampled bodies scattered all around, and pressed both hands over his mouth and nose, to avoid inhaling the dreadful stench of decomposition. He next made towards a maintenance shed, in hopes of finding a car that hadn’t been trashed or burned out.
‘What about Galileo?’ he asked, once he’d left the foul-smelling truck behind. ‘There’s nothing to stop you and Jeff both going there, and Mitchell too.’
‘The new wormhole gate won’t reach orbit around Galileo for months.’
‘Doesn’t matter. There are enough emergency supplies on board that starship carrying the gate to keep several people alive for months, maybe longer.’
‘No,’ her voice was adamant, ‘I’ve talked this over with Jeff. I know you think we’re crazy, but we spent a good chunk of our lives on the Jupiter station, and the people there need us.’
‘I . . . guess I understand.’
‘For you it’s easy. You can just head through to the Lunar Array and make your way to the Galileo gate.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Not any more. There are people out looking for me here.’
‘What happened?’
‘It’s a long story, but if they find me or if I try and get back inside the Array, I’m a dead man. But if I can reach the Lunar Array some other way, I have a fighting chance of getting through.’
‘Then that’s it. You need to come to Arizona, and ride up with Mitchell.’
‘That’s doable, is it?’
‘Christ, Saul, of course it is.’
‘That’s great,’ he said, feeling enormously relieved. No, more than relieved; it was a real chance at survival. ‘But before we talk about getting those files to you, or anything else, there’s something important we need to talk about – something seriously fucking important. One of Jeff’s video files showed Copernicus City in ruins, sometime in the future. The entire city was devastated, like a meteor had hit it. That must have been caused by whatever it is that’s caused the growths back down here.’
‘I guess,’ said Olivia, hesitantly.
‘But how could it – whatever it is – get there except through the Array? And if it can come through the wormhole gate all the way from Florida, then who’s to say it couldn’t spread through the rest of the gates, to the colonies as well?’
‘But . . . surely the gates will all have been shut down before that can happen?’
‘Which is exactly what I assumed,’ Saul replied. ‘But then I got to wondering why they hadn’t closed down the Florida gate before Copernicus was destroyed? If the footage I saw is anything to go by, the Lunar Array is going to be reduced to a ruin – but there’s no way of telling whether the gates themselves will be shut down before it’s too late.’
‘You think it’s possible they won’t be?’
‘What I think is that, if they’re going to shut anything down at all, it would have to be the Florida gate. That way they can still save Copernicus City and keep a foothold not just on the Moon, but also our solar system. But since we know they won’t manage to shut it down, that tells me something went wrong – and maybe they didn’t manage to shut down any of the Copernicus gates. Whatever happens to us,’ he said, ‘nothing is more important than making sure the worst scenario doesn’t happen. If it does, the colonies are finished, and the human race along with them.’
‘So what exactly is it you want to do?’
Saul looked and, suddenly and irrationally worried that someone nearby might overhear what he was about to say, and cry out in accusation.
‘I’m saying we ourselves need to destroy the gates at the soonest opportunity. Right now, if possible.’
He waited for what felt like a long time before she finally replied.
‘You can’t be serious,’ she said finally.
‘I’m entirely serious. Just think about the tens of millions out in the colonies who’ll wind up dead if we don’t do this. We’re talking survival of the species here, Olivia.’
‘We could still save some people—’
‘No.’ He shook his head violently. ‘At most you’d save a few thousand, if even that. There are billions more who are going to wind up dead, either way.’
When she spoke again, her voice sounded neutral, carefully controlled. ‘And how exactly do you intend to do this?’
‘We can use the Emergency Destruct Protocols to collapse the wormholes.’
‘Wouldn’t work,’ she replied immediately.
‘Why not?’
‘You need a minimum of two people, to activate the codes simultaneously, or it won’t work, and it’s not like they hand those codes out to just anyone who asks for them. You’d need special clearance from an executive committee, and I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.’
Saul thought for a moment. ‘Fair point. In that case, who does possess that kind of clearance?’
‘Not many people, for a start,’ she replied. ‘I’d guess a few dozen at most.’
‘Then maybe we need to try and find some of them. We need to track them down.’
‘Jesus.’ She laughed. ‘You really think it’s going to be that easy?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he replied. ‘That’s the one thing I don’t think. But I don’t know what else I can do.’
‘I’m not sure I should even consider helping you do this,’ she said, with a touch of outrage in her voice.
Saul punched the air in frustration, barely able to contain his anger. ‘Listen to me, goddammit. I’ve been through hell ever since you came asking me for help, so unless there’s some genuine flaw in my logic, some reason why we shouldn’t do exa
ctly what I just described, I can’t see why the hell you wouldn’t want to help mequo;
‘All those people—’
‘Are never going to make it into the Array alive,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m here right in the thick of it, and nobody’s going in who isn’t being allowed in. The whole place is surrounded by soldiers, tanks and drones, and I’ve already seen more dead bodies than most people get to see in a lifetime. It’s a war zone, Olivia. No other word for it.’
Another trumpet-like blast from the sonar tanks a way off in the distance briefly drowned out the clamour of the crowds.
‘Do you realize what I’d have to do to find out who has that kind of clearance?’ she said. ‘You’re asking me to hack into the ASI’s own databases.’
‘To which,’ he reminded her, ‘you have privileged access as an ASI employee yourself.’
‘That makes no difference. It’d set off a trail of security alerts leading straight back to me.’
‘I think we’re long past the point where we need to worry about stuff like that. There are much more important things to consider than what happens to either of us, Olivia.’
‘Okay, okay,’ she said, sounding defeated. ‘But I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to locate that kind of information, even assuming that I can find it.’
‘All I’m asking is that you try.’
‘You really do sound like a callous son of a bitch, you know that? Between you and Mitchell, I don’t know which one of you has changed the most.’
Saul stiffened as he remembered Donohue’s unfinished warning. ‘What about Mitchell? How has he changed?’
She made an exasperated sound. ‘Why?’
‘Just humour me.’
‘Nothing I can really put a finger on, okay?’
‘Please,’ he said, ‘just try.’
‘There’s just something about the look on his face that sends chills through me. I don’t know how else to describe it. Maybe that’s because I know what happened to him. Anyway, why? Is it important?’
‘I don’t know,’ Saul replied. ‘Go and find out what you can, and get back to me straight away. We can talk about Mitchell later.’