No one could call Jill slow. “My God! They didn’t need the stores because they got them from ships they’d raided as pirates.”
“I didn’t get that far. While I was waiting for receipts I had requested, which was something out of the normal way of things – I shouldn’t have had to ask – I suddenly got promoted and transferred to Second Fleet. I thought that my request for transfer to a ship, to a station – anything to get into space – had come through. But no, General Wingrove put me in a back room.” She didn’t bother mentioning the part about him wanting to use her as his own private whore, though she felt sure Jill would believe it after her experience with him.
“But you received this mission, to come up to FTL-1.”
“Yes. And I didn’t put that in perspective, either, not until very late, after another piece had fallen into place. My job in Second Fleet bored the hell out of me. So I sent a note over to my replacement back in First Fleet, asking what had become of my investigation. Before I received the answer, I found myself up here. Promoted to stop me from asking questions? Two changes of venue to stop me from asking questions?”
She looked around. “Some promotion, hey?”
“Better chance than you would have had in Spaceport.”
Sharon took another look around. “I can think of worse ways to die than vaporization.”
“Think anyone will ever come for us?” Jill asked quietly.
“Owen said he would.” She recalled his touch, the warmth of him.
“Do you believe that?”
Sharon closed her eyes. “I hope he’s to hell and gone from this system already. I asked his father to see to it – right here in this room.”
Something in her voice must have told Jill something that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone here to know. When the woman spoke, she heard the amazement in her voice.
“You truly love him, don’t you? I thought – never mind what I thought.” When Sharon made no reply, Jill licked at her lips. She glanced down at the sidearm, now securely holstered at the officer’s belt. “If no one comes, how long do you think we should wait?”
CHAPTER 29
Scotland
Sunday 29 August
The ping woke Pierre Fontaine from his Sunday morning snooze. He jumped from the cot, and pushed himself into his seat, activating the receiver. Alarm caused his mouth to go dry as he noted that his ship received compressed micro-bursts.
He opened the channel, and heard the audio from FTL-1’s Command Center. Jill’s voice came through clearly. He recognized her, but none of the others.
The sound of the shots had him jumping in his seat. An invasion. And Jill Paxton left behind to deal with it, to ensure that he received all the information he needed. Each micro-burst lasted only a second, but contained two minute’s worth of data. What he heard had happened two minutes ago.
It sounded bad. He began his checklist, half his attention on it, the other half on the aud from FTL-1. Having completed the checklist, he waited, listening.
“No,” he whispered to himself. “Please, God, no.”
But he had heard what he had heard. Nuclear missiles had been fired. Many of them. From various nations. Missiles had impacted FTL-1, killing who knew how many. What had those civilians done to deserve that? What, for that matter, had any of them done? He closed his eyes against the tears. The end had come. Not with a whimper, but a bang.
He activated the final transmission his shuttle would make to anyone on Earth. Sidney’s pager should go off, and he’d head to the agreed-upon pick-up spot, where Pierre would meet him – and, hopefully, Kiera – in just over an hour. If Sidney failed to bring Kiera, Pierre didn’t know what he would do.
He heard more shots from the receiver, and Jill’s voice saying, “Good Luck, Pierre,” followed by a whole lot of cursing, and someone yelling, “Get them.” He smiled at that. Perhaps Jill might still get away. Then he quit smiling altogether.
The engines roared, and the shuttle lifted off. He flew low, conforming to the landscape, drawing ever closer to destiny.
Satellite feeds provided him with some news before they, one-by-one, failed. The European capitals were all ruins now. His favourite hotel, Charlemagne, with the staff he knew and appreciated – all gone. And he had done nothing to warn them. He felt sick.
If, if he could get Kiera away, get the seeds to Haida Gwaii, then perhaps God in his mercy would not judge him too harshly. But he, Pierre, would never forgive himself.
* * *
Scotland
Sunday 29 August
The first three days at the castle had passed slowly. Kiera enjoyed everything, but Sidney didn’t seem to want to do much of anything other than watch the news. He didn’t object to her going out by herself, but insisted that she take along a pager.
“And if I page you, you are to return to me immediately. No thinking that five minutes wouldn’t hurt. Immediately. Do you understand?” he had said.
She understood better than he thought. She had pouted, but agreed.
Kiera found that wandering about the castle grounds enchanted her. What must it have been like to live in the days before electricity, before modern conveyances, before pollution had nearly destroyed the world!
The caretakers maintained the grounds. The immaculate gardens fascinated her, and the growers allowed her to pick vegetables directly from the ground or vine, as it happened to be. She had never before eaten food fresh from the plant.
And the space! If she walked one hundred meters away from the castle wall, and stood with her back to it, she could look forever without seeing any people – let alone a crowd.
Fresh, clean air. Sunshine. This spelled life with a capital L. She sobered. This is what the very rich could afford. Not wait staff at a restaurant. Even if nothing happened in the world, even if she broke up with Sidney as she had promised herself she would, she would never regret having gone with him. Without him, she would never have experienced this. She owed him for that, if for nothing else. She had paid all other debts to him.
“Enjoying the morning, Lassie?”
She turned to find Mr MacDonald standing behind her. He ran the day-to-day operations of the Castle.
“Yes, Mr MacDonald, very much so. You don’t know how lucky you are to live here.”
“Ah, but Lassie, I do. I lived for a time in London. The city grinds ye down. Out here, I may not have certain opportunities, but I enjoy my life. I don’t need all the fancy gimmicks.”
“A man after my own heart,” she said smiling. And if he were about thirty years younger, she could have gone for him. He must have been a handsome man in his prime.
“Would ye like to see anything in particular?”
“Why, yes. I understand you have a dungeon.”
He laughed. “And why would a young lassie like yerself wish to go into a dark, dank dungeon on such a wonderful day?”
“I want to see everything, Mr MacDonald. I want to see everything, and there’s not as much time in this life as we think. Things change.”
They began walking back towards the castle. “Do you know, I’m not even sure how long we’ve been here. Time just seems to have no meaning. What day is it?”
MacDonald laughed again. “It’s Sunday, the 29th of August.”
“So soon? Summer is almost over and I–”
Kiera froze in mid-step. The pager vibrated. Why now? Maybe she could take just a quick look at the dungeon. Then she recalled the insistence with which Sidney had given his instructions.
“I have to go. I forgot something. Maybe I’ll look at the dungeon later.”
With that, she left a surprised MacDonald, and began to run towards the castle. She arrived out of breath to find Sidney packing his bag.
“Quick,” he said, “pack. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving? Why?”
“It has started. War.”
Her eyes grew round. She stared at him for a long minute. “But it will be weeks before any possible enemy of the ETO
can get to us here,” she said. “And this castle isn’t worth bombing.”
“They’re using nukes,” he said. “And if they’ve gone that far, who knows how much farther they will go.”
“How do you know?”
“Fontaine sent word. In just a minute or two, nuclear missiles will land on European cities. London, for sure. Maybe even Glasgow and Edinburgh. Depends how many they’ve got.”
“Marie! She’s in London. If you knew, why couldn’t we have brought Marie with us?”
“Can’t save everyone,” he said. “And stop thinking about Marie or anyone else you knew in London. In two minutes they’ll all be dead. We’ll still be alive. But we won’t stay that way unless you calm down and do as I say. Pack. Pack, or I’ll leave you here.”
Tears streaming from her eyes, Kiera obeyed. Marie. Poor Marie and her husband, their child. What had they done to deserve this? Who had ordered a nuclear strike? Who would dare?
She finished packing her bag, and closed it. The lock snapped shut with a startling finality. She started thinking again.
“Then Pierre must have known. Why else would he have sent us to this remote location? Why didn’t he warn everyone? Someone could have stopped it.”
“No one could have stopped it,” Sidney snapped. “If Pierre or anyone else had said anything, they would have started the war earlier, that’s all. Got your bag? Good, let’s go.”
“Go where?” Where could they go that fallout wouldn’t get them? Why not wait here in the castle. Prevalent winds came from the west. It might take weeks for radiation from America to reach them. They had food here.
“Pierre has sent a shuttle to pick us up. We’re going somewhere safer.”
“What about Mr MacDonald? The Laird? The people here who have looked after us so well?”
Sidney shook his head. “There’s room for two. That’s us. Come ... or stay with them if you want to die.”
She didn’t want to die. They carried their cases down to the entrance, meeting no one on the way. Their hosts had nothing scheduled until lunch, and likely everyone sat glued to the vid.
“Better if no one sees us,” Sidney said.
And no one did. They didn’t walk down the road towards the village, but around the castle to a large level field. At its far edge, Sidney allowed her to stop and put down her case, which had grown heavier with each step.
Tears still ran down her face. By now, if Sidney had the truth of it, they had destroyed London. Marie and her husband had died in the fireball that had incinerated them. And if they had destroyed London, Paris likely had suffered a similar fate. All those nice people at the Hotel Charlemagne incinerated like Marie. What, what could possibly make this worthwhile to anyone?
“They’ve gone mad,” Sidney answered. “Those in power on both sides – on all sides – still believe that they can win a war.”
He seemed utterly calm. She looked closely at him. He really didn’t care about the people. He really didn’t care.
“Why did you bring me?” she asked. If he didn’t care about any of them, he probably didn’t care about her.
“Pierre likes you. Even with what I’m paying him, he might not have done it for me alone.” He smiled at her. “But he likes you. You did a good job. A good job for both of us.”
Kiera wondered if Sidney thought that would make her feel better. It didn’t. She just felt used. The sun still shone down, warming them, and Sidney suggested that she might as well lie down and sleep if she could. How could she sleep? She couldn’t.
She felt Sidney’s hand on she shoulder shaking her.
“Wake up, it’s coming.”
Bleary-eyed, she struggled to sit up. “What’s coming?”
“The shuttle.”
She suddenly became aware of where she lay, and what had happened. She had fallen asleep. She shivered as a cool breeze slipped under her jacket. Then she craned her head, looking up into the sky to find the source of the roar. All too soon she saw it, a shuttle on approach. She lay down again, and covered her head with her arms, fearful of what might happen. She had seen old vids of aircraft firing guns at civilians during war.
The roar increased until it almost deafened her. Then it stopped.
“Get up, get up!” Sidney ordered. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
She struggled to get up, and blindly followed Sidney, aware that he carried both cases in his hands. A ramp lowered, and Sidney ran up it as best he could with his encumbrances. She stopped. Two hundred yards away and running towards them, she saw some of the castle staff.
“Get in!” yelled Sidney.
“We have to wait for them.”
Sidney cursed, came running down, picked her up bodily and carried her into the shuttle. She saw Pierre behind the controls. He gave her a quick smile, then returned to them.
“Belt her in,” he ordered.
She felt Sidney comply. Then he took a seat in front of her, the roar began again and the shuttle started to shake.
“No, no! We have to wait for them.”
But they didn’t wait. The acceleration pressed her back into her seat, and the tears started once more.
* * *
Somewhere over Scotland
Sunday 29 August
“How long,” Sidney asked. He felt a fine exhilaration as the shuttle sped across the land, keeping reasonably low. When he had flown up to Spitzbergen on the company jet, it had quickly climbed above the clouds, and he had lost sight of land. This gave a far greater impression of speed.
“Three hours more or less,” Pierre answered. “I need to keep below the defence radar. Even though we are heading away, I do not want any fighters after me, and nor do I want anyone to know where we are going. It eats up more fuel, but our research discovered that we can refuel when we get there.”
He turned back to piloting full-time. Sidney’s eyes roved across the instruments. He couldn’t make much out of them, so he returned to watching the land whiz past.
“Where are we going?” came Kiera’s voice from behind him.
“North,” he replied. “Nobody cares about the far north. We’ll be safe there.”
“We could have taken Mr Macdonald,” she said.
Pierre intervened, for which Sidney felt grateful.
“No, Kiera, we couldn’t. We’ll have a crush as it is. And northern Scotland is far from being a strategic target. They should be safe there.”
Pierre stopped speaking abruptly. He seemed to be listening to something. Sidney saw him go pale. He licked at his lips, and then winced.
“What’s that?” Sidney asked.
“Reports from upstairs,” Pierre replied.
He didn’t seem to want to speak any more, but Sidney persisted. He had put his life at stake, too, he deserved to know everything.
“What is it?”
“We didn’t expect this,” Pierre said. “They’ve taken their quarrels into space. All stations and ships are under attack. The Families have lost at least one ship, and they are abandoning FTL-1, our first station.”
Sidney felt his stomach drop. “But that’s where we wanted to take the cargo – until things settled down on Earth.”
“I know.”
The shuttle altered course slightly. Change in plan, or just to avoid radar stations?
“Now what?”
“Now we go to Spitzbergen, and wait for more information.” Pierre shook his head. “They’ve all gone mad.”
“London?” he asked.
“Gone. The madmen on all sides secreted nuclear missiles – mostly on submarines. The USNA attacked the ETO, who responded. China attacked Russia and India – as well as retaliating against the USNA. Israel used the opportunity to take out all enemies, real and imagined – they even targeted Athens. Do not ask me why.”
“Dear God.”
Pierre looked at him. “After this, I do not think you will find too many people who believe in God. I have my doubts, too.”
Sidney sat quietly for
a time. “The Moon. We have bases on the Moon.”
“I received word that the various sides have used biological and chemical agents. The war has spread system-wide.”
“Then there’s nowhere to go.”
“Oh, there is somewhere – if it survives.”
Sidney felt his drooping hopes revive a little. “Where’s that?”
“Haida Gwaii. Our new station. We positioned it far from Earth, closer to the Moon. It may survive.”
“And we can reach it?”
“Yes. This shuttle and the others can make it to the Moon. And we have one more fallback, if all else fails.”
“Where’s that?”
“A better question is, ‘When is that?’ In one week, after things have died down ... ‘died’, an appropriate, if unfortunate word. In one week, a ship – or several ships – will come back to pick up refugees that make it to the collection point.”
“A week?”
“Right. So we should not make any plans to take off from Spitzbergen soon. We may want to stay there a few days in order to let the killing upstairs stop, and also to conserve the air and food that we’ll need.”
Sidney didn’t like the thought of remaining on an Earth, where countless nuclear bombs had just gone off. Nuclear winter approached – if the old scientists had not made a mistake. But it would take time for all the material that went up into the atmosphere to spread out all over the world. Perhaps they had a couple of days.
The shuttle headed out over the ocean. As they drew further and further away from land, the shuttle gained in altitude.
Pierre looked grimmer and grimmer, as he listened to whatever came in through his earphones. Kiera had finished crying, and appeared to have fallen asleep. Sidney desperately wanted to go into his case and take a good stiff drink of whiskey, but those two bottles would have to last him God knew how long.
Eventually, Sidney closed his eyes. The endless blue water beneath him could not hold his interest. Unlike during his previous trip, he had nothing to read, no vids to watch, no music to listen to.
Not With A Whimper: Preservers Page 31