by Ben Jeapes
Joel finally appeared. He was alone, walking unsteadily out of an archway, but his head was held high and there was a big smile on his face. Boon Round held his breath and tracked him as he crossed the flagstones, then disappeared underneath the lifeboat. Boon Round ran back to the airlock and opened the inner hatch.
Joel was slumped across the bottom rungs of the ladder. Human and First Breed gazed at each other across that impassable vertical distance of ten feet.
‘Can’t,’ Joel gasped. Boon Round swarmed down, grabbed Joel in his forefeet, propped him against the ladder.
‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘I’ll help.’
‘You . . .’ Joel took hold of the rungs, lifted a foot with obviously a great expense of energy. ‘Not going to stab me?’
‘I never was.’
‘You did, though.’ Another rung.
‘Not properly. I had to make them think I was sincere, so I had to make you think I was sincere.’
‘Blood . . . bloody good acting,’ Joel muttered. The next rung. The back of his weathersuit was stained red.
Boon Round’s peripheral vision caught movement.
‘Joel! Move!’
The malesna, the XCs, had entered the square. Boon Round recognized the steady, stilted walk. They were under the control of the locals.
He leapt for the ladder and climbed as far as he could before Joel got in the way.
‘Quick! Quick!’
Joel’s top half was inside the airlock. Boon Round shoved him the rest of the way with his forefeet, then swarmed up the rest of the ladder himself.
Joel lay on the floor of the airlock. Boon Round slapped the outer hatch control.
The hatch slid half shut, then struck the ladder attachment and stopped. Boon Round bellowed in frustration. The ladder needed to be raised manually and they didn’t have the time. Boon Round grabbed Joel and dragged him into the cabin, shutting the inner hatch behind them.
Boon Round dragged Joel over to a seat. ‘Lifeboat systems command, stand by for lift-off to orbit, power up main engine . . .’
‘No,’ Joel whispered. ‘Not yet. Get me to the front of the cabin.’
‘What?’ Boon Round exclaimed. ‘You surely don’t claim to be any condition to fly this thing?’
‘No.’ A faint croak. ‘I . . .’
‘I’ve just rescued you, human! Do you still think I’m incapable of . . .’
‘You’ve . . . you’ve done . . . bloody well.’ Joel managed a smile. ‘Please. Got to . . . rescue . . . the XCs...’
‘You’re mad!’ Boon Round raged. ‘Even if what you say about them is true, at the moment they’re under control and the outer hatch is jammed open.’ Boon Round glanced out of the viewports. A small crowd of locals had gathered around the lifeboat and the two XCs were at the base of the ladder. ‘We have to take off. They’ll work out how to cut their way in eventually.’
He looked down. ‘Joel?’
Joel had passed out.
A thump, another one. The XCs had bypassed the ladder and leapt straight up into the lifeboat. They peered through the porthole at their quarry. As far as Boon Round was concerned, that did it.
‘Lifeboat systems command,’ he said. ‘Override airlock safeties and take off for orbit.’
The city fell away outside the viewports and the lifeboat tumbled into the sky.
It was the usual dazed awakening, but with a thunderous roaring in her ears and bone-scraping agony in her arms. Her body felt as if it was being split down the middle.
Oomoing hung by one arm to a support within the airlock; the rest of her was half in, half out, and Fleet clung to her other, outstretched hand. It was a bizarre reversal of the way they had come on board in the first place.
Fleet was hanging on to her with his hunting claws. They dug deep into the flesh of Oomoing’s hunting arm; it was an animal self-preservation reflex that had kept him from death when the vessel took off. The tips of his claws grated against bone and Oomoing’s blood streamed out of her. With an effort, Oomoing shut down the pain reflex.
Half a mile below him, maybe more, and receding, Oomoing could see the city. She was standing upright, even though she could see the ground in front of her as the ship arced into orbit. She was held in the ship’s artificial gravity and Fleet was dangling away from her, pulled by the gravity of the planet. No wonder she felt she was being torn in two.
‘Fleet!’ she called over the roar of the wind. The invisible shield that surrounded the ship kept the air in its vicinity completely still, but the noise of it moving past on the other side was deafening. ‘Let me get you.’ She reached out with a feeding arm, trying to get a grip on his wrist. It was shorter than the hunting arm he clung on to and she couldn’t quite reach.
She glanced up; how long till they were out of the atmosphere altogether? Her lungs were tightening, her vision spotting.
She looked back at Fleet and he looked straight into her eyes. ‘I’m killing you, Learned Mother,’ he shouted.
‘No, Fleet, wait, just a moment longer . . .’
But she had already seen the resignation, the knowledge of duty, and the pain as he retracted his claws and they slid out of her was ten times worse than their going in. The gravity of the planet drew him away from her with deceptive grace and ease, and then he was gone.
Meewa approached the body slowly. It was shapeless and broken but there was no mistaking the malesna. The force of the impact had made a small dent in the stone beneath it and its innards had splattered in a messy circle. It had fallen much further than the other units, the ones swept up into the air when the vessel took off.
He gazed up from the body into the sky and pulsed a blaze of pure, righteous anger at the heavens. He didn’t feel it connect with anything. The other malesna was out of range.
One of the guard-units with him asked a tentative question.
How should we dispose of the remains, Processor?
Meewa transfixed the hapless unit with a glare.
However seems best, he pulsed. Bury it. Use it as fertilizer. Do what—
He stopped. There was something . . . it was like the subtlest scent, the vaguest hint of colour. It was tantalizingly familiar.
It was the feeling he had got from the malesna as they surrendered their force to the Processors. Surely this creature couldn’t still be alive?
No, one look showed that there wasn’t the slightest chance of that. Meewa crouched down by the corpse, tentatively reached out a hand. The legs, the body . . . nothing. But as his hand moved up he felt it more and more strongly.
His fingers brushed the malesna’s mane. He pushed it aside, gazed in wonder at the mass of dark nodules that had been hidden there. Hundred of little spheres that seemed to call out to him, beseeching him to take them . . .
Give me your knife, he pulsed urgently at the guard-unit. The guard handed the knife down and Meewa inexpertly cut at the cluster. Eventually he stood with the dark mass held in his hands, like a quivering jelly. He reached into it with his senses. It pulsed with vitality. It was everything they wanted from a malesna, and more.
He looked back up at the sky and pulsed: Thank you!
Nineteen
Day Twenty: 22 June 2153
Laser fire splashed across the connected boxes that made up Device Ultimate.
Donna kicked the nearest box angrily and bounced slowly back across the cabin. ‘I’m not even scratching it. This is made of strong stuff.’ She braced against a bulkhead to stop her movement.
Gilmore gradually uncurled from his ball, took his hands away from his eyes. The laser light had been blinding.
‘Look.’ He pointed. ‘Seams. Joints. This stuff has been worked. It was put together in a factory somewhere. It was made, it can be unmade.’
‘Maybe, but not with a suit laser. Something more industrial strength.’ They had tried everything they could think of. Donna slammed a fist against the bulkhead. ‘This boat armed?’
‘Nope. Civilian transport only.’
<
br /> ‘So,’ she said conversationally, and as if it were his fault. ‘We’re screwed.’
Gilmore gritted his teeth. ‘We are,’ he said, ‘but not necessarily the XCs.’
She looked at him. ‘Oh God, this is where we get heroic and suicidal, isn’t it?’
‘There’s probably fuel in the thrusters,’ he said levelly. ‘We can’t use the thrusters without the controls but we can get into the tanks. Your lasers are powerful enough to ignite it. We blow the boat up.’
Her eyes blazed. ‘That is only slightly less stupid than my own bright idea.’
‘Which was?’
‘We have air. We pressurize as high as we can, then blow the hatch. The reaction will knock us off course.’
‘Not a great deal,’ Gilmore said. ‘Chances are good the sun will still catch us, and hence, Device Ultimate. And, um, what happens to us?’
‘Oh, we still die.’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’
They looked at each other.
‘Funny thing,’ Donna said. ‘Maybe your way has a greater chance of success but either way, I’m extremely disinclined to do anything that actually results in taking my own life.’
‘Odd, that.’
‘How long till we reach the sun?’
‘Three days, I think it was.’
‘The boat can support us that long, can’t it?’
‘All the way to the bitter end,’ Gilmore confirmed. ‘We’ll get a grandstand view of what it’s like inside the sun and we’ll be able to watch this thing go off without any kind of obstruction.’
And then . . .
‘Shielding!’ they said together. To survive getting that close to the sun, the pinnace’s fields had been heavily enhanced, to direct the light and heat away from the hull and not have both boat and Device Ultimate vaporize before the latter could do its work.
They could certainly disable the fields. The pinnace and Device Ultimate would be destroyed before any harm was done.
‘Well, that’s that, then!’ said Gilmore.
‘And the great thing is,’ Donna said, ‘we still die!’
‘That’s a relief.’
They looked at each other again for a moment.
‘So here’s the plan,’ he said, more soberly. ‘We disable the fields. We coast into the sun and we let it do all the killing for us.’
‘That sounds about it. And in the meantime we get religion and pray earnestly for a miracle.’
‘While there’s life, there’s hope,’ Gilmore agreed piously. ‘Or so I’m told.’
‘Oh, it’s true,’ she said. ‘Believe it.’ She worked her way into a clingstrap against the bulkhead; it saved floating around. She seemed quite calm, now, and Gilmore wondered how much of it was a façade. For that matter, how much of his own calm wasn’t entirely real either?
‘Voice of experience?’ he asked. There was another clingstrap opposite her, across the cabin, and he pulled it around himself.
‘Five years’ service in the Anzac Marines, two of them spent in the Pacifican Campaign,’ she said. ‘Taught me everything I know. Two years trudging through hot, sweaty, insect-ridden jungles. I saw a lot of action if you count the sheer number of five-minute firefights.’
‘That so?’ Gilmore was impressed. He was still well aware of their impending death but to his surprise he found he could push the subject away with a conscious act of will; the final act of defiance by a rational man against overwhelming fate. He had lived his life; if anything distressed him now, it was that Joel would be upset to hear of his death. But if the universe wanted him to give in, to depart his life a gibbering, sobbing wreck, he wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. So he made conversation instead. ‘Aren’t you, um, over-qualified for King James’s toy marines?’
‘Am I ever! But I wanted to get to the Roving,’ she said. ‘When the Campaign ended it was still pre-Rusties and space wasn’t a very interesting place. So I tried the mercenary lark – I mean, the Confederation was nearby and it had so many enemies that there was always work – but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t want to fight someone else’s wars. But then the whole Commonwealth thing happened, and I finally figured that the Roving was the only interesting place to be. Only they didn’t have any openings for someone with my, um, skills. UK-One did, so I reckoned, why not join UK-One and spy out the Roving from a distance, see if this great Commonwealth thing is really worth joining?’
Gilmore grinned. He enjoyed talking about the Commonwealth, one of the few things in his life that had his unequivocal approval. ‘And was it?’
‘Eventually. I pretty soon worked out that UK-One –’ she pulled a face – ‘was a mistake. I joined the marines because it was new and exciting and I got a commission and more pay. The first retrograde step was being junior to Bill . . .’ She paused and Gilmore knew what the montage of thoughtful expressions meant. Perry had been nothing but a pain to him, but to Donna he had been a friend, a colleague, someone she had worked with and fought alongside. It forged bonds that didn’t just vanish with death. ‘Bill, who was a nice guy if you got to know him but, let’s say, limited in his outlook and let’s be frank, the teeniest bit of a dork at times. And then, then I learnt what it means to work for King James. That was when I hit bottom and began to dig.’
Gilmore laughed. ‘I could have told you, if you’d asked.’
‘I mean, my supreme commander was a man whose idea of good soldiering is to dress up in smart uniforms. Whose idea of good leadership is to wear a slightly smarter uniform with a fancy hat. Oh, and he’d quite like us to be good at our jobs too, but buggered if he’d show the way at all.’ She smiled and a faraway look came into her eyes. ‘I was ready to chuck it before very long, but then I got my first leave, and I went down to the Roving, and I met someone who persuaded me it was worth staying.’
Her gaze, her tone made Gilmore smile with a faraway look of his own. ‘I know that face. Sounds like he was special.’ He assumed it was a he.
‘Yeah, eventually. Background completely different from mine, but opposites attract and we agreed on . . . well, the basics. He’d been brought up not to take nonsense, to be straight. Like me. And you see, all my life I’d been on the move. I found I was really in a place where I could settle, put down roots, give a meaningful answer when people ask me where I’m from. And I saw that with this guy I’d never be lonely. Apart from the times he disappeared into space for months on end, but you know what I mean.’ Gilmore knew. ‘Still took me some time to realize he was the one, though.’
‘What changed it?’
‘Time, and getting to know him. But the best bit was when he took his lieutenant’s exam. Normally it’s a panel of captains who conduct the exam –’
‘I’m familiar with the procedure.’
‘– but this time Admiral Chase himself sat in on it and the admiral asked him about navigating an EVA pod near to an asteroid. What could cause it to develop a spin? He trotted out all the correct answers; gravitational anomaly, over-emphasis on one or other of the thrust controls, misjudging the distance visually without referring to the instruments. The admiral asked him, supposing you misread a decimal point on the display? Now, bearing in mind that the decimal point is fixed on the display and the size of a grapefruit, he replied – and I quote – “What kind of idiot would do that?” And the admiral said, “I did when I was a middie.” And he said, “I’m sorry sir, but I wouldn’t.” And the admiral said, “So you think you’re a better pilot than me?” And he said—’
‘ “Too bloody right I do. I mean, sir.” ’ Gilmore stared at her. ‘He’s your boyfriend?’
Donna shrugged, looked almost apologetic. ‘Anyone who can speak to an admiral like that is my kind of guy.’
‘There . . .’ Gilmore trailed off, quite taken aback at this sudden revelation. He wasn’t quite sure why it put him out – like, his son’s love life was any of his business – but it did. ‘There were some, like the commodore of the Navy at the time, who would have
said that an answer like that was hot-headed, indicative of a certain immaturity in a grown man of twenty-three, not at all best suited to someone in a position of command over subordinates.’
‘I was given too many orders by too many idiots during the Campaign,’ said Donna. ‘His kind of attitude kept me alive.’
‘It got him sent to SkySpy.’
‘Yeah, that was a drawback.’
‘Joel . . .’ Gilmore said. ‘He, um, never mentioned you.’
‘You know, I’d gathered that. I’m still trying to decide if I should take it personally or not.’
Gilmore thought for a moment. ‘Not. Twelve to eighteen, he lived with his mother and we were on opposite sides of the solar system. I think he got used to telling me what I needed to know and keeping the rest private. If you didn’t come up in casual conversation, that means he doesn’t think of you as casual. You’re more important.’
A pause, while Donna worked through this slightly inverse logic. ‘Right. Thanks.’
And after that, there didn’t seem to be any more to say for a minute or so.
‘We heard about the Pacifican Campaign,’ Gilmore said eventually. ‘Never really understood it. At the time I was commanding an asteroid sweep. HMS Australasia. One thousand tons, one hundred feet long, crew of fifteen. I thought it was as far as my career would go and we’d never heard of the Rusties.’
‘Happy days,’ she said.
‘No, not really.’
‘Never thought you’d end up as the founder of a great nation, did you?’
‘I didn’t found a nation. It was just an idea that worked at the time.’
‘But you believe in it, don’t you? I’ve seen the look in your eyes when you talk about it.’
Gilmore paused for thought. ‘Yes. I’d been running myself into the ground for my entire life, trying to conform to other people’s patterns. Then the Rusties came and everything changed, but people just kept on in the same old ways. Look at the Roving Mission.’ He snorted. ‘Look at this one. The Commonwealth was the first ever totally new thing in . . . in anyone’s life. The Commonwealth could change all the old ways. Still can, if Pathfinder can get back home with a united crew and no act of xenocide on its hands.’