Marauder

by Gary Gibson

  The storm continued blowing all through the next day, and then the day after that. Some more news trickled in: half the planet was now in lockdown under new martial restrictions – despite strong protests from the River Concord States, a rival Uchidan nation that had long shared a bitterly disputed border with the Demarchy. In her mind, the howl of the wind became an indrawn breath of suspense, as if the whole of Redstone was waiting for the Accord to begin its counter-attack.

  She dropped in on Bash late one night, when she knew the rest of the outpost was asleep. Megan had put him in the quarters opposite hers and Gabrielle’s, to make it easier for them both to look after him. He needed to be fed, washed and regularly guided to the toilet.

  She found him sitting on the edge of his bed, hands cupped in his lap, and wearing the fabricator-printed pyjamas she had dressed him in earlier. It was feeling slightly chilly, so she turned up the room’s thermostat, then tugged some of his blankets up around his shoulders.

  Next she returned to the door and locked it, since the last thing she wanted during the next couple of hours was to be disturbed.

  She sat beside Bash, placing a hand against the side of his head, feeling the rough furrows and bumps just beneath his hair. ‘Okay, Bash,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘you and I are going to see if we can talk to the Wanderer.’

  She closed her eyes, cleared her thoughts and prepared to open a mind-to-mind link with him.

  ‘You’re going away, aren’t you?’ said Gabrielle, a few days later, after easing herself on to a stool next to Megan in the refectory and absentmindedly rubbing at the back of her neck. Megan had made good on her promise to herself to see that Gaby’s inhibitor was removed from her neck and destroyed. Over just the last few days, the girl’s belly had started to round out at a speed Megan found terrifying.

  Megan stared at her, startled, before glancing around the room. There was no one else within earshot. ‘What the hell makes you think that?’ she hissed.

  ‘I can read people better than you think,’ replied Gabrielle. ‘You just look . . . furtive, the way you creep around, as if you’re trying to find a door you can escape through.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean—’

  ‘I saw you,’ said Gabrielle, ‘sneaking out of the garage the other day. The one where they keep all the trucks.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I was going to tell you,’ said Megan.

  ‘Does Martha know about this?’ asked Gabrielle.

  ‘As long as you’re not going to tell her, no, she doesn’t,’ said Megan. ‘Would you?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. But you know she’s going to be seriously pissed off if you steal one of her trucks.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ said Megan. ‘I have to do what I have to do.’

  ‘But what about us – me and Bash?’

  ‘You’re safer here,’ said Megan. ‘Especially given your condition. And as for Bash . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Gabrielle, glancing towards two members of Stiles’s staff, who were the only other occupants of the refectory, seemingly deep in conversation with each other. ‘I’ve already got a really good idea of how hard it can be with Bash in tow. I want to go with you, very badly. I don’t want to just be sitting here waiting to see what happens next. And I don’t really feel safe here, or anywhere else on Redstone, not so long as I know that Tarrant or any of the rest of them might still be trying to find us.’ A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. ‘But you are coming back for us, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I damn well am.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured.’ Gabrielle smiled faintly. ‘So, where exactly are you going to go?’

  ‘There’s an Accord outpost about four hundred kilometres west of here. I still have sufficient pilot accreditation that I can maybe persuade them to let me hitch a flight on a military ship to Aguirre.’

  ‘Aguirre? That’s where you told me to find that man Sarbakshian.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Megan. ‘He’s still the one I’m relying on to get us off Redstone.’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Gabrielle. ‘We all live happily after?’

  Megan hesitated.

  ‘Because I was thinking,’ said Gabrielle, ‘about what you told me the other night. About how you first met Tarrant, and Sifra, and what it is you all want from the Wanderer and why you want to fly out there to it. While you were explaining all that, I got this feeling from you that maybe you didn’t think you’d be coming back alive.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Gaby. I have to come back. I’m no use to anyone dead.’

  ‘But the Wanderer is dangerous, very dangerous – that’s what you said.’

  Megan nodded slowly. ‘That’s true. I did say that.’

  Gabrielle reached out and touched Megan’s hand as it rested on the table. ‘Back in Port Gabriel, I used to look in the mirror every day, once I knew what they wanted from me. All I saw was the face of someone who was waiting to die. You’ve had that same look on your face ever since I met you.’

  Megan sighed, and rested the fingers of her other hand on top of Gabrielle’s. ‘Look, I’m not out to get myself killed. You know that. But you also know I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go out there and find some way to stop the Swarm.’

  ‘I just . . .’ Gabrielle swallowed, with apparent difficulty, her eyes downcast. ‘I don’t know if being clones, or whatever it is we are, makes us sisters or maybe something else there isn’t really a word for.’ Her eyes came back up to meet Megan’s. ‘But you’re the nearest thing I’m ever going to have to a real family.’ She reached down with her free hand and cupped her increasingly protuberant belly. ‘Apart from her.’

  Megan’s eyes dropped towards Gabrielle’s stomach. ‘What makes you think it’s a girl?’

  ‘The medbox told me.’

  Megan shook her head and grimaced. ‘When I think of the things Tarrant did to the both of us . . .’

  ‘Just promise you’ll be back,’ said Gabrielle. ‘That’s all I want to know from you. You have to, Megan, because I don’t want to lose you just when I found you.’

  Megan felt something welling up deep inside her. She had worked so hard, for so very long, to hold her emotions in check; and now this girl – this child – threatened to overcome that carefully maintained balance.

  ‘Of course I’ll be back,’ she said, meaning it with every ounce of her being.

  THIRTY

  A week later, once the worst squalls had died down, leaving relatively clear skies, Megan broke into the base’s garage with the intention of stealing a truck.

  She had already scouted out the three vehicles parked there. She had heard stories from one of Stiles’s staff about people sometimes getting stuck out in trucks for weeks or even months on end before they could be rescued, and for that reason all three vehicles were kept stocked with up to half a year’s flash-frozen rations. Drinking water could be obtained by scraping snow and ice from the ground and running it through the filtration system. As far as power and heating went, the trucks ran on miniature fusion packs that’d last near as damn forever. Even if she got lost or stranded, she’d be able to survive.

  Megan had meanwhile discovered, through casual chat, that Stiles had come to Redstone following the death of her teenaged daughter from a prolonged illness. She now had a sense of why Stiles was so willing to help them, and Gabrielle in particular.

  She waited until night had fallen before quietly making her way along one of the sealed passageways connecting the base to the garage. All she needed to do was cycle the air out, board one of the trucks and ease it outside. By the time she was gone, it would be too late for Stiles or anyone else to stop her.

  So she was more than a little chagrined to find Stiles already there, waiting for her.

  ‘Martha,’ said Megan, dropping her rucksack by her feet. Stiles stood right beside the immense treads of the nearest truck but was, so far as Megan could tell, unarmed.

  ‘I figured you’d pick about
now to make a run for it,’ said Stiles, coming forward. ‘Weather’s getting better . . . but you know that’s temporary, right? Another couple of days and it’ll come down even harder than before.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Megan stubbornly.

  Stiles sighed and gave Megan a pitying look. ‘You should know that even if you’re not willing to tell me anything about yourself, Gabrielle’s a different matter. The two of us got talking, though I’m still not sure whether I quite believe everything she said.’

  Megan stared at her. ‘Does that mean you’re going to try and stop me?’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I could really do to stop you taking one of these trucks if you really wanted to,’ said Stiles, ‘and besides, this isn’t a prison. Gabrielle told me you were going to try and make it to Aguirre, so you could try and arrange safe passage for all three of you off of Redstone.’

  ‘That’s all true,’ said Megan.

  ‘You know,’ said Stiles, ‘you strike me as the kind of person who attracts trouble, even if you’re not looking for it.’

  Megan shrugged. ‘Sounds like a pretty fair assessment of my whole life so far.’

  Stiles stepped closer. ‘Didn’t you consider just telling me the truth earlier, about why you needed to leave?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d believe one word.’

  ‘You’re right, I wouldn’t have, but hearing it from Gabrielle is another matter. I do believe her, but that’s at least partly because of who she is. And that’s one reason I’m letting you go – because you need to find some way to get her off Redstone.’

  ‘I will,’ Megan promised, then hesitated. ‘So what are the other reasons?’

  ‘All the people in this station are my responsibility,’ said Stiles. ‘I care about them – really, genuinely care about them. They’re smart, dedicated people, and my hope is that the further away from here you are, the better chance the rest of us will have of avoiding any of that trouble.’

  ‘It’s Gabrielle they want,’ said Megan, ‘not me.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Stiles shifted her balance. ‘We both know she isn’t going anywhere, the state she’s in, but you’d better swear on your life you’re coming back for her.’ Then her tone became angry. ‘Tell me I’m not just a stupid old fool who’s being too goddamn trusting.’

  ‘You’re not, Martha. I swear, on my life, I’ll be back for them both.’

  Stiles looked at her hard for a long time. Then she shook her head and muttered something under her breath, before turning to the truck beside her.

  ‘Don’t try and keep pushing on once the weather turns bad,’ she said, slapping one hand on the side of a tread. ‘That’s the main rule. Find somewhere low and sheltered, and stay put if or when it worsens. The onboard AI is preprogrammed to locate shelter when things get rough, so more than likely all you’ll need to do is sit back and let it do its thing.’

  Megan nodded slowly. ‘Stay put for how long?’

  ‘As long as it takes,’ said Stiles. ‘Head out too soon, while the weather’s still bad – and, believe me, it will get very, very bad – you could get yourself killed. Got all that?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Megan.

  ‘Just remember,’ Stiles added, ‘I’m not doing this for your sake. It’s for Gabrielle’s. Got that too?’

  ‘Got it,’ said Megan.

  Stiles came towards her and pulled Megan into a brief hug. Then she turned and walked towards the door leading back into the base.

  ‘Now get the hell out of here,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘before I come to my senses.’

  At first, Megan thought she might have an easy time of it, but the clear skies evident on the morning of her departure proved to be little more than a temporary lull in an ongoing tempest.

  Towards the end of her first day of driving, Megan came to the banks of a river that the truck’s AI assured her was shallow enough to ford. She sat there for a while, staring out through the windscreen at the primordial tempest sweeping past in front of her, and guessed that, with the Tabernacle’s satellites out of commission, the truck’s maps probably hadn’t been updated since several days before the storm hit.

  She reversed back the way she had come for a couple of kilometres, the vehicle bouncing and shifting from side to side as it made its way over rough and broken terrain, then drove upriver until evening fell. Eventually she found a point where the river was just about shallow enough that she could finally get the truck across. After that, she had to drive all the way back downriver again, so she could get back onto the optimal route that the truck had picked for her. Before long she was driving into the foothills of mountains that looked like a smaller version of the Montos de Frenezo.

  The journey brought her the visceral realization of just how very sparsely inhabited Redstone really was. Most of its major population centres clustered around the equatorial coastal regions. Beyond that lay only a few scattered outposts amidst a windblown and icy wasteland. It would be all too easy for her truck to break down and get buried in snow within hours.

  She parked in the lee of a canopy tree’s roots, and woke up again to darkness. At first she thought she had been roused in the middle of the night, but on investigation it proved to be already late morning. The storm had returned, filling the landscape with a rising howl and blanketing out the sun. She took a chance and drove on for a few hours, until the truck flashed a warning that she needed to find shelter as fast as possible.

  The wind kept building in force until the truck rocked on its suspension with such violence that Megan feared it might be blown over, regardless of its size and squat, bulky shape. The storm howled unceasingly like a demon out of hell, striking terror into Megan’s heart.

  Sleet and snow came down in vast billowing clouds that reduced visibility to just a few metres. The truck finally identified a possible hiding place in a steep-sided arroyo lying to the north. She gave up trying to steer manually and let the truck itself take over, and it finally found shelter less than half an hour later.

  There she stayed for more than ten days. Occasionally she thought about ignoring the truck’s strident warnings as soon as she suggested possible escape routes to its AI, but one look out of the window at the howling chaos beyond the windscreen was always enough to give her second thoughts. And she had not forgotten Stiles’s warning either.

  Much of her time was spent sitting in the truck’s front cabin, a mug of hot coffee cradled in her hands as she stared out at the black sky. As a distraction she tried reading – the truck had a database of several million volumes – but nothing would stick in her mind. All she wanted was for the storm to be over.

  When it finally abated, the truck started to dig its way out of the vast drift that had by then filled the arroyo. Its treads slid and slipped around on compacted snow as it fought its way free like some huge and ponderous beast emerging after a long hibernation. At one point Megan had to get out with a shovel and dig away some of the compacted snow herself, setting about it with a furious energy. She had been stuck on board the truck now for just about as long as she had spent at Stiles’s outpost, yet she had covered no more than three hundred kilometres – with another hundred to go – before she could reach the Accord military outpost that was her destination. Once it was freed, after long hours of effort, the truck carried her along the narrow gorge that was the only possible route through the mountains, only to find the way blocked by a landslide that, again, did not show up on the truck’s increasingly outdated and useless maps. Megan stared through the windscreen at boulders the size of houses, piled on top of one another, and felt a depth of frustration and anger such as she had never known she was capable of feeling.

  The only way to circumvent the landslide was by driving back the way she’d come, for a good hundred kilometres or so, then head either north or south to skirt around the furthest edges of the mountain chain. But such a journey would take her thousands of kilometres – and long weeks – out of her way.

&nb
sp; Or, instead, she could walk the rest of the way. Just because the truck couldn’t go any farther, didn’t mean she herself couldn’t.

  She thought hard about the potential risks, for if she got hit by another storm as bad as the one she’d just lived through, her chances of survival were not likely to be good. But getting to the Wanderer and back – even assuming she was successful in her mission – would take her half a year, and by then the Swarm would be getting dangerously close to the Accord. Time was fast running out.

  The truck had emergency gear stowed in the back, including an inflatable tent, several high-quality breather masks, some portable water and air filtration systems, not to mention the emergency rations. It was indeed a risk, but one she decided she had to take.

  She set out at dawn the next morning, beneath a bright and clear sky. She had uploaded a map of the terrain to her implants, and fixed for the truck to transmit constant weather updates to her in case the weather did decide to get bad again.

  Two days after she set out, it did, and she had to fight her way through a wind threatening to carry her off bodily, until she at last found a narrow ravine. She pitched the tent in the most sheltered part of it and settled in to wait.

  Six more days passed before Megan finally emerged beneath clear skies, feeling grimy and cold and slightly unhinged. Her breath smelled foul inside her breather mask and her skin itched beneath clothes she hadn’t been able to take off for a week.

  She reached the military outpost a whole two weeks later, only to find it deserted, and half the buildings bombed out from some kind of attack.

  She crept cautiously across a landing field on which sat the still-smoking remains of a dropship. At one point she came across the body of a Freeholder lying in the shadow of a huge storage shed, his kill-ratio tattoos vivid above the collar of his white-and-grey camouflage. After that, she moved with even greater caution. Even if the Freehold had moved on, it might have left gun-drones behind to guard the place.