‘I’m sorry.’
He leant in closer. ‘Stop saying that.’ One hand strayed to Lolo’s stomach, pressing against the red dress fabric. ‘How far on are you?’
‘Two and a half months.’
‘You don’t show. Are you sure?’
‘Pregnancy tests are infallible. I took four.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was afraid. I mean, this isn’t the best day in the world, is it?’
‘This day wouldn’t have happened if you’d told me.’
‘It’s not my fault!’ sie blubbed.
‘I know. All right. I’m the one who’s sorry, okay? I shouldn’t be shouting at you. It’s just . . . timing, Lolo. Timing is really not your thing.’
‘They’re going to offer you a deal.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t do anything crazy, okay? I love you. I can’t do this without you.’ Hir hand went to hir belly.
He nodded brokenly. ‘Got it.’
‘Do you really think London will fall?’
‘Not now. Not for you. I’ll make sure of that. If nothing else, you’re a Utopial. You’re entitled to repatriation back to Akitha.’ He lifted his head up, hunting around for the sensors that must be there but remained invisible. ‘Hear that? And that’s before you make me an offer!’
‘I can’t go without you,’ Lolo said.
‘Let’s just see where this takes us, okay? They must need me pretty badly, or I’d be face-down at the bottom of the docks by now.’ Ollie gave the blank walls an expectant look.
The door swung open less than a minute later. Kohei Yamada walked in, still wearing the same jacket. Two armoured paramilitary guards stood outside.
‘Right, then,’ Kohei said. ‘Lolo, time for you to say goodbye to your boyfriend. Ollie and I are going to have a little chat.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Lolo insisted.
Ollie knew that tone well enough. He sighed and put his arms around hir, kissing hir gently. ‘It’s okay. This is our ticket out, so don’t blow it for me.’
Lolo scowled at Kohei, then made a show of standing up reluctantly. ‘Be careful. I don’t trust them.’
‘Me neither.’
‘You know they took Bik and your grandmother when they brought me in? They loaded their cocoons on a truckez.’
Ollie gave Kohei a sharp look. ‘No shit?’
‘So,’ Lolo said portentously. ‘What you said.’
‘Uh, what was that?’
‘You’re not paranoid if they are actually out to get you.’ Sie gestured around the cell.
‘Take care,’ Ollie said, and gave hir a kiss, resting his face on hirs. ‘And . . . eat properly, all that crap. And no nark, either.’
‘I’d stopped over a month ago. You never noticed.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Do you know what it is?’
Lolo frowned for a moment, then shook hir head in mild exasperation. ‘My genes are dominant, Ollie. Our child is omnia, of course.’
‘Good. That’s good.’
A last kiss, and Lolo walked out of the cell, looking back urgently as the door swung shut again.
‘I love yo—’
Ollie took a breath. ‘I meant what I said,’ he said firmly. ‘Sie’s back on Akitha before we even discuss any terms.’
‘Tough guy, huh?’
‘I know my rights.’
‘Fair enough. Zero isn’t a hard number to remember.’
‘Sie’s a Utopial citizen.’
‘Which entitles hir to exactly shit.’
‘Fuck you!’
‘But as a gesture of goodwill, I agree. Lolo Maude will be permitted to return to Akitha.’
‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’
‘Ollie, it’s a one-way trip. Sie won’t be coming back. And you’re a known criminal with a record file bigger than a Sumiko interactive file. You like Sumiko, right?’
Oh, fuck. ‘Yeah.’ If they knew that, they knew everything. He sank back onto the cot. ‘What do you want?’
‘Same as you: Nikolaj.’
‘You said you know where she is. What do you need me for?’
‘Ah, this is where it gets complicated. We can’t let her know we know about her.’
‘So just take her out. Snipers. Drone shot. You were going to do that to me, and I’m nobody.’
‘Far from it, Ollie. You’re a very important somebody. Today, anyway.’
‘Fuck you again.’
‘It’s like this. Nikolaj works for the Olyix—’
‘Why?’ he blurted. ‘I don’t get that. I never did. Her and Jade both. They both betrayed us.’
‘So did you, Ollie. You tried to take down the Croydon power relay station. Without that – without the power it supplies to the London shield generators – we’d all be cocoons stored inside the Salvation of Life right now.’
‘We didn’t know, okay? We were stupid, yes, but the Legion didn’t betray nobody. We done it for the money. We thought we were working for a London major, that’s all. Not fucking aliens! But Nikolaj and Jade, they knew. And they still did it. They had to have some deal going with the Olyix, right?’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘There’s nothing else, no other reason. I’ve thought about this for two years. That’s why I was going for her.’
‘I understand that. Revenge is hardwired into all of us, right back there behind all our civilized behaviour. It’s primal. And when we lose everything else, that’s what we have left.’
‘No, you don’t get it. Nikolaj was going to be my leverage.’
Kohei gave him a curious look. ‘You wanted to make a deal with her?’
‘I was going to force her to deal, yeah. I didn’t have anything to lose. Then all this shit happened.’ He flapped his hands at the cell. ‘And Lolo – I mean . . . fuck!’
‘What deal?’
‘She knows the Olyix. The Olyix know how to reverse cocooning. They must do. They can give me Gran and Bik back.’
‘Ah.’ Kohei smiled.
Ollie didn’t like that smile. It wasn’t in any way sympathetic.
‘I get it now,’ Kohei said. ‘That was a smart move.’
‘Yeah? Then how come I’m here?’
‘Fate. And poor old Karno Larson. What did you do to him?’
‘Nothing! I swear. He just died. You can’t blame me for that.’
‘No. But we still have the raid against the Croydon station, and the house on Lichfield Road. Those charges are still pending.’
‘Yeah? So? What are you going to do? Lock me up? How long’s that going to last?’
‘About ten hours.’
‘Huh?’
‘The London shield will fail in maybe ten hours at the most, unless we stop Nikolaj’s sabotage operations. They’re chewing away at the generators, one bite at a time.’
‘But . . . if you know about that, stop them.’
‘There’s a bigger picture here, Ollie. Even I don’t get to see all of it.’
‘Wait. You’re going to let London fall? You can’t mean that.’
‘To stop London from falling, we need to eliminate Nikolaj first – and in a way that doesn’t cause any suspicion. That’s you, Ollie. A gang kid with a grudge hunting for vengeance – nothing suspicious about that. You’re not smart enough to be anything else.’
‘Shit. You want me to kill her?’
‘I’m not a politician, so I’m not going to use crap like “threat cancellation” or “conflict resolution”. Yes, we want her dead. But when you do it, she has to know it’s you, and you’re doing it out of revenge for the Legion.’
‘I don’t get it. If she’s dead, what does it matter if she’s suspicious – and anyway, suspicious about what?’
‘That we know about her. That we sent you. Okay? So just do what we ask. It doesn’t make any difference to you.’
‘It does. You’re asking me to kill someone. I’m not even sure I can.’
‘You killed Karno Lar
son.’
‘I didn’t! He . . . It wasn’t my fault!’
‘Sure. And what about Nikolaj?’
‘What about her?’
‘You’ve been trying to find her for two years. What were you planning on doing when you did catch up? Go out for a romantic meal, maybe a club after?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Ollie, we’re running out of time here, okay? I need to know your answer.’
‘Tell me why she can’t know about you,’ he said stubbornly. It was all he had left now, making sense of the shitstorm that had become his life.
‘Think about it. She works for the Olyix, right? They’re in communication with her, so if she gets suspicious, then so will they. And we cannot allow that under any circumstances.’
‘But if she’s dead, she . . . Oh!’ Ollie wanted to curl up into a ball. Some zero-nark would be good, too. ‘If she’s suspicious I’m working for you and kills me – riiight. Fuck. You don’t trust me to do this.’
‘Actually, I do. The problem is, you’ll be walking into an exceptionally hostile environment. There are no certainties. So we have to plan accordingly.’
‘Yeah. I suppose.’
‘Let me add a sweetener,’ Kohei said.
‘What? You’re already sending Lolo home.’ He glanced up sharply. ‘You are, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but I need you committed to this – and I mean truly committed. We have one shot, and it has got to work.’
The cell door swung open again, and Ollie stared at the woman who came in. She was wearing a plain white shirt and dark trousers, so not someone who cared about appearance, then. And her face was pretty plain, too. Maybe some Asian ancestry, light hazel eyes, black hair trimmed neatly – the kind low-level corporates would have to demonstrate style and individualism. A person you’d struggle to remember, the perfect everywoman.
‘This is Lim Tianyu,’ Kohei said.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Lim said.
‘Sure.’
‘Lim is part of Alpha Defence’s medical team, right, Lim?’
‘I have that privilege.’
‘Medical?’ Ollie said. ‘For defence?’ This wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, which wasn’t good.
‘Lim has been researching cocoons.’
‘Research?’
‘My team has been looking into reversing the process,’ she said. ‘And we have had some very promising results.’
‘You’re fucking kidding me!’
‘No. The process is at an experimental stage, but in order to advance it, we need to move up to full human testing.’
‘Oh, bloody hell. You’re talking about Gran and Bik, aren’t you?’
Kohei shrugged. ‘Somebody’s got to be first. This is their chance, Ollie. Otherwise, they’re going to be sent off to a green zone refuge, along with all the millions of others we’re holding on to. So you tell me. Even if London survives into tomorrow, how confident are you that the government population recovery programme will get around to them before we defeat the Olyix and send them packing?’
‘You bastards. What if it doesn’t work?’
‘Truthfully,’ Lim said, ‘I give the process a seventy-five per cent chance of providing them a full recovery into a regrown body.’
‘And what odds did you have of forcing Nikolaj to make that happen?’ Kohei asked mildly.
Ollie knew what his answer was going to be. Of course he did. It was just that saying it out loud – admitting it – was another defeat. But then he’d lost the game of life the day the Legion took their first payment from Jade. ‘You take them off Earth to do this,’ he said weakly.
‘My laboratory is in the Delta Pavonis system,’ Lim said.
‘So Lolo can confirm we’re playing straight with you,’ Kohei said. ‘Ollie, I need an answer. Time is not our friend today.’
‘Okay. I’ll do it.’
*
Leipzig fell as Kohei walked Ollie up to the deployment room they’d set up on the Greenwich tower’s third floor. The news splashed into his tarsus lens while he was still on the stairs. A single shield generator had been brought down by darkware, simultaneous with a power shortage from physical sabotage against a cable. In ordinary times, the secondary power supply would have responded instantaneously. But components overstressed by two years of abuse were too degraded, the darkware threw sand in the eyes of the management G8Turing, and the rerouted power dropped out for too many milliseconds. The generator blew, kicking off a cascade as the remaining generators were unable to compensate.
Orbital spysats watched the protective wall of artificially solid air burst apart. Seconds later, the Deliverance ships switched off their energy beams. It made little difference. The ravaged air outside crashed down like a deluge of electrified magma. It was as if the city was struck by an earthquake. Millions of windows shattered, roofs collapsed, walls fissured. The taller buildings swayed alarmingly. Some began to topple, falling amid a thunder of dust clouds that spun into ferocious whirlwinds as storm air roared in to scour every road.
Civic sensors revealed people staggering along the streets, barely able to stand in the hurricane-force squalls, their screams lost in the cataclysm’s howl. Airborne debris became shrapnel, slicing into skin. Desiccated grass and barren trees started to smoulder.
Every network link into Leipzig went out at once as the remaining portals into the city were switched off. Kohei was obscurely pleased about that. He’d seen what happened after a city shield collapsed – the humans hunted, subdued and collected. He didn’t need to see it again.
Yuri’s icon splashed across Kohei’s lens. ‘Did you see Leipzig?’
‘Yeah,’ Kohei said. He gave Ollie an uncertain glance; it wasn’t as if they could motivate him any harder by allowing him to access the feed.
‘According to our latest intelligence, there’s a new type of Olyix warship on its way. They’ll be here in another five days,’ Yuri said. ‘We don’t want to leave it that long before we launch Strikeback, but it’ll be another day before everything we need is in position. If you’re going to shut down the sabotage against London, it’ll have to be soon.’
‘I’ve got all my teams in position. We just need Ollie to do his stuff. Another thirty minutes max.’
‘Okay. Well, good luck. I’m really sorry to put these restrictions on you.’
‘I get it. Don’t worry.’
‘Look, if Ollie screws up, get yourself back here to Delta Pavonis.’
‘Thanks for the offer, chief, but there are a lot of people down here who deserve to get out. Not just me.’
‘Don’t be a martyr, Kohei. There’ve been so many over the last two years that nobody will ever notice another. Besides, your wife is expecting you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘One thing. Whenever you do come out here, I’m not going to be around, so I just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you’ve done. You’re an excellent security operative, Kohei.’
‘What do you mean, “not around”?’
‘We all have a part to play.’
‘Didn’t someone just say something about being a martyr?’
‘I’m not. You’ll find out eventually. But we won’t ever see each other again.’
‘Chief,’ he implored.
‘You’re a good man, Kohei. I trust you to save London. Now goodbye.’ And Yuri’s icon vanished.
‘Shit!’
Ollie gave him a worried look. ‘What?’
Kohei paused, realizing his arms were trembling. Then he looked at the stupid young man’s face. Ollie had been given several new peripherals Lim had brought, created by some fancy new technology developed by Alpha Defence. The units were supposed to be undetectable, but they’d had to rush the implantation. As a result Ollie was clearly in pain, his face hot and sweaty, grimacing constantly.
‘Nothing,’ Kohei replied as cheerfully as he could.
‘Didn’t sound like it,’ Ollie said sullenly.
‘You’re not t
he only operation I’m running, sonny. Don’t flatter yourself.’
The deployment room had a three-metre portal set up. A five-strong squad of paramilitaries was waiting; Kohei’s lens data showed him fifteen had already deployed. Eight counter-insurgency drones were already flying high over the city, heading for Chelsea.
‘Let’s go,’ Kohei said. He wanted to keep Ollie moving, not give him time to stop and think. There was something about him, a vulnerability, that Kohei found unsettling. It had taken ten minutes just to coax him out of his fleshmask and bomb collar. Ten minutes they couldn’t afford.
Ollie glanced uneasily at the portal and its guard of paramilitaries. ‘Where does it go?’
‘I told you. Nikolaj is in Chelsea, the Paynor family’s house on Pelham Crescent. This portal goes to a house on Onslow Square, just around the corner.’
‘Pelham Crescent?’
‘Yes, it’s on the Fulham Road. Let’s go.’ He gestured impatiently.
Ollie looked around without much interest at the room they emerged into. Typical old posh London: a sitting room with high ceilings, big sash windows and expensive furnishings – which had all been pushed against one wall. Made Claudette Beaumant’s place look cheap. The paramilitaries followed him and Kohei through. Another squad of them was already in the house, making it seem cramped.
Kohei walked him through into the hall with its classic black-and-white marble floor. ‘Right, Lolo is online. You have one minute to confirm sie’s okay and that we’ve kept our side of the deal.’
It took Ollie a moment to understand what he’d been told. The pain from the peripherals they’d just inserted was pulsing into his brain despite the local anaesthetics. His thoughts were foggy, numb, as if everything around him was on some kind of time delay before it registered. Lolo’s icon splashed across his tarsus lens.
‘Hey, you,’ Ollie said. ‘So where are you?’
‘Back on Akitha. I’m really here, Ollie! I’m somewhere in the capital; I recognize the skyline.’
‘What about Gran and Bik?’
‘They came through the portal with me, but then Lim Tianyu went with them somewhere else. I’m not allowed to go there, apparently.’
Ollie scowled at Kohei.
‘It’s an ultra-secure facility,’ Kohei said in a jaded voice. ‘Sie’s not got anything like the clearance to visit. But sie’ll have full observation access to the procedure. Right now, the escort team is waiting for hir family to arrive. As you can imagine, they’re in quite a state.’
The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.] Page 11