Shit. Just what I was afraid of. “Tina?”
“I shifted to a private circuit. This is you and me.”
Jeez. Calm, unassuming Phil Friel can get all business when he has to. “I get it. But you can gradually flood the compartment if the inflow vents are still functioning—”
“They’re not. I checked them as soon as I got out of my couch. I’m guessing that during the fight, the hit on our fuel tankage warped the valve housing. So I don’t have any way to gradually cool the plant. Which will eventually blow on its own.”
“Or shred itself and us if it’s suddenly immersed in a rush of cold ocean water.” Damn it, I didn’t want to have to ask this. “Phil, I don’t know how to say—”
“You don’t have to say anything. Get Tina out of here. I can crank open the emergency depressurization vents. That will let the water in a bit at a time.”
“Yeah, but don’t stay a second longer than you have to.”
“I have no intention of being parboiled, Karam. Now, get Tina out of here so I can get to work.”
Karam watched the water edge up over the cockpit canopy, switched to the open circuit. “Tina?”
“Yeah?”
“We have to evacuate through the dorsal hatchway. You’re closest; check it, make sure it’s full-function, and pull the water-landing kits.”
“I’m on it.”
Karam unstrapped, rose: Lymbery and Sleeman were already at the bridge hatchway. His rueful and sardonic “Abandon ship” did not diminish the alacrity with which they entered the aft-leading corridor.
As they made their way back to the dorsal hatchway, Puller showed herself much worse for the wear. Lockers had sprung open, freshers were running and overflowing, access panels hung and swayed from both ceilings and bulkheads. But they reached the hatchway swiftly, helped Tina open it into a stiff breeze that mixed the smell of salt with that of musk.
“Where’s Phil?” Tina asked as she handed up one of the inflatable rafts.
Karam handed the raft down to Sleeman. “He’s coming.” Puller had settled on the bottom just after the water had risen up over the top of the bridge windows. Lymbery was standing on the hull, just beyond the reach of the lapping wavelets.
Tina Melah frowned. “He should be here by now. What’s he doing?”
“I asked him to secure the electronics,” Karam lied. “If we’re going to have any chance of raising this craft and flying her again, I can’t have a system-wide short out. We’ll inflate a second raft, leave it behind for him.”
Tina nodded as Sleeman and Lymbery avoided her eyes and inflated the second raft. As they clambered into their own slightly larger one, she glanced behind at the dorsal hatch.
Karam and Sleeman began paddling toward a small chip of rock that was almost an island: it actually had a single, wind-bent cone-tree on it. “I make that land about four hundred meters off,” Karam commented conversationally, hoping to distract Tina.
But her eyes never left the stricken Puller. “Something’s wrong,” she murmured. “We should go ba—”
She was interrupted by a sudden plume of steam hissing up from Puller’s stern, like the spout of a gigantic, superheated whale. Except that this spout did not relent; it only grew in volume and intensity as the water around the back of the ship growled and hissed.
Tina’s eyes widened. She rounded on Karam. “You bastard. You left him behind to cool the plant—and die. You lying bastard.”
Karam looked away. “Phil is a top hand at his job. If anyone can get himself out in time, it’s him.”
“Fuck you, you lying bastard. You made him—”
“Tina. He called me. He asked. He didn’t want you to be in there. He—” Karam stopped: if she didn’t already know that Friel was as quietly smitten with her as she was almost comically smitten with him, there was no point bringing it up now.
But Tina had turned from Karam to glare at the steam-spewing wreck of the Puller. “Well, Phil’s a lying bastard, too.” A single tear ran the length of her gracefully curved cheek. “A damned lying bastard.”
* * *
Caine Riordan stumbled into the small glade he’d designated as Point Bug Out: the place where the survivors had stored their gear before dispersing to their various defensive positions. There was water here, and he’d need it if he was going to…to…
Suddenly, the sun was glinting directly down through the trees. Riordan discovered he was on his back, gasping. Couldn’t breathe, despite the filter mask. He’d obviously lost consciousness and fallen, but couldn’t remember it. And still couldn’t breathe: his lungs worked, but his mask wasn’t allowing in any air—
He pulled off the mask, drew in a breath: ragged, tight, insufficient, but he could feel his ability to reason returning. The smell of the environment rushed in at him as he sat up, turned the mask over to inspect the filter warning indicator: had the filters failed, clogged?
The indicator’s small panel was still green. But whatever else was happening, it wasn’t allowing air into his lungs. Protocol was to never crack the hermetic seal on the filter compartment, but the resulting contamination wasn’t going to kill him any faster than outright suffocation, and he had to get moving. No time for a better plan: he popped open the filter compartment.
The first thing he noticed was that the wires leading from the filter sensor to the indicator had been cut and reattached so that the sensor had no power and the indicator would always read green. In the next moment, he saw that the filters were resting low in the compartment, almost as if—
He pulled out the filters: they had been shaved to half thickness, and the back side of them, the part that was in contact with the native air, was caked with green mold. Riordan shuddered, tossed the mask away, felt nauseous: there are a lot of ways to die, but betrayal by a friend, a team-mate, may be the worst.
So: the traitor had gotten a hold of his filter mask at some point, sabotaged it. But when, and who? Caine tried to think back along the events of the past two weeks—
But couldn’t. Possibly because he was still bleary from the pain and near-asphyxiation, but also because he was unable to still the contest between his most primitive impulse—screw this; you’ve got to run now!—and his rational impulse—take a few seconds, because if you run into the traitor, you’d better know it.
He closed his eyes, tried to push his mind past the fog that kept him from disciplining it.
But nothing. And even when he abandoned trying to figure out who had done this to him, he was too tired to think of any course of action, any plan, other than running as far and as fast as he could. The mind that had always been ready with options and alternatives was now just a froth of disorganized facts and memories. He kept trying to pull up a stratagem, a new approach to the current crisis, but it was like trying to draw water from a well that you could see was dry: no matter how many times you lowered the bucket, that repetitive act just didn’t bring up any water. He tried to rise, discovered that his limbs were all at once heavy but somewhat insensate, wondered how long he’d been sitting, dazed.
The southern edge of the glade rustled. He turned in that direction, tried rising again, fell on his side, wheezing—as Keith Macmillan came bounding out of the bush, florid, shiny with sweat. He saw Caine, froze, then rushed over. “What the hell—? Where’s your mask, Riordan? Are yuh daft? You’ll—”
“It was killing me.” Caine gestured toward where it lay in the low fronds. Macmillan stared, frowned; his teeth gritted. “Right. We’ve got to get you out of here, Caine.”
“No. You can still run. Better if. We split. Up.”
“Nonsense.” Macmillan rushed over to the packs. “I’m traveling pretty light, now. Fired the rifle dry. Tossed it. Only weapons we have left are these bloody combitools.” He grabbed one, snagged some rations as well. “Now let’s get you moving.”
Riordan knew he should reject the offer, order Keith to go on his own, but whatever part of his mind elevated rationality and duty by suppressin
g primal self-interest, failed. He tried to rise, did, then staggered and fell flat on his ass. How dignified.
Keith strode over quickly. “Here, I can help.” He reached out a hand—but before Riordan could clasp it, Macmillan’s thick paw grabbed his duty suit. His other arm slammed the combitool down into Caine’s left tibia.
Pain shot up and outward from the shattered bone. Riordan vomited as he fell backward, the treetops spinning around his narrowed field of vision.
“Wh-why?” he asked the sky, since he could not see Macmillan and was sure that if he moved his head, he would vomit again.
Macmillan sounded like he might cry. “Because they might want you alive, damn it.”
Caine seemed to dip down into and then rise up out of a heavy, hot fog; he wondered if he had blacked out momentarily. “No—why, why betray us? Betray Earth? You’re—you’re IRIS.”
“I’m a father before I’m anything else, Caine. And I wish it was me lying there. I surely, bitterly do.” His voice was choked, may have stifled a sob.
Riordan rolled his head around, fought through the pain to frame a question. “What do you mean, a father?”
Macmillan rose, listened for something in the bush, then crouched back down. “This time last year, I was just a highly trained grunt from Dundee with a wife and a daughter in Aberdeen. I’d been sent to Australia during the war. I was security for where the Dornaani were being stashed; we called it Spookshow Prime. That was where I met Downing and Rinehart, heard about you, was recruited into IRIS to be back-up security to Sigma Draconis. But I was granted leave, first.”
Macmillan’s voice became thick. “There was no external communications at Spookshow Prime, so the first I knew of my daughter’s leukemia was when I walked through the door to surprise my family.” He choked, went on. “Quite a surprise. She’d been a solid little tomboy when I left; less than half a year later, she was a wee ghost of a thing. ‘A highly aggressive and unusual sub-variety,’ they said of the leukemia.”
He spat. “It was their way of saying they’d never seen it’s like before. And I found out soon enough why they hadn’t. First time I took her for one of her follow-ups and treatments, some unctuous bastard of a suit sidled up to me in the waiting room. ‘It’s a shame so many of the children here don’t have a chance,’ he says. ‘How fortunate that your daughter does.’ I stared at him, because it was the only alternative to beating him senseless. And that’s when he put the hook in: he had a treatment. Highly effective, he said. Almost miraculously so.”
Macmillan ground his fingers together until they were white on the handle of the combitool. “I knew what I was agreeing to. But I would have done anything for my little Katie. Anything. And by the time I left, she was running around the house like a wild thing, once again.” He smiled and tears ran down his face. “Complete remission, they said. A miracle, they called it.” He looked at Riordan. “These people—whoever or whatever has infiltrated and infected CoDevCo and other megacorporations—are bloody monsters. There’s nothing they won’t do.” He stood, wielded the combitool, stared at Caine for several seconds. “Since the regret of a damned man isn’t worth a pin, I can only offer you one thing you might value.”
“What’s that?”
“I can kill you, make it look like I had no choice. Better that than—”
The ferns on the southern side of the glade whispered apart: Pandora Veriden emerged from between the leaves, frowning. “You bastard. You fucking bastard,” she whispered. Riordan wasn’t sure whether she was cursing at Macmillan’s perfidy, or annoyance at her own inability to sneak up on him silently.
Macmillan stood. “Guilty as charged, Ms. Veriden.” He studied her, saw what Caine had noticed immediately as well: she no longer had her rifle. The flaps of her bandolier were all open; she too, had shot her weapon dry. Without turning back toward Caine, he strode steadily, even grimly in her direction.
And stopped when a water strider crashed into the clearing from the east, evidently having followed Caine’s path. The huge creature surveyed the tableau, snuffled in Caine’s direction, emitted a vaguely distressed grunt.
Riordan knew that Veriden was fast, but had never realized just how fast: before Macmillan had recovered from his surprise, she had sprinted to the strider, bumped into its leg. It was startled but did not flinch away as Dora remained in contact with, and seemed to rub herself against, that faintly shaggy leg. Then she darted toward the survival packs.
But Macmillan jumped to interpose himself between that source of combitools and Dora. She shied back, tried circling around to get at them; he shifted with her, slipped the hammer covering off his tool. Now he had an axe.
Dora glanced at it. “You’re crazy if you think they’re going to let you live.”
“Who?”
“Whoever bought you, asshole. You think you can get rid of us and return home as the sole survivor of the legation? That you alone, Ishmael, have lived to tell the tale? Bullshit: you’re a loose end. They’re going to snip you off.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. They may have other uses for me. Hardly matters, though. My Katie is cured. Nothing else—”
Veriden feinted left, lunged right toward the handle of the closest combitool. But Macmillan was quicker than he looked, too; the axe head swept around so fast that it whistled. Veriden had to bend back sharply at the waist to avoid it. She danced away; he side-stepped warily forward.
Veriden studied Macmillan carefully, then glanced at Riordan, who saw that, in a split second of partial distraction, she was computing odds, making a decision. She dodged in toward Macmillan, who swung at her again, but missed more widely. Eyes narrowed, calculating, she studied the big Scotsman closely. Then she glanced over at Caine, nodded briefly, and darted for the tree line on the west side of the glade.
Whatever Macmillan had been expecting, it obviously had not been that. Looking quickly from the leaves shuddering where Veriden had plunged through them, and where Caine lay wheezing and bloody, he grimaced. “Bollocks,” he muttered and turned to sprint after Dora.
Riordan felt as though he might vomit again, pushed that feeling away, looked around. What could he do? He had no weapons and he couldn’t flee anymore. Maybe he could hide—?
He turned toward the northeast edge of the glade. The group had scouted this site quickly—they’d had little chance to do otherwise—but there were two bumbershoots which had fallen, side by side, just inside that tree line, with a sizable depression between them. Riordan frowned: the chance that an enemy would fail to detect him there was next to zero—
He angrily dismissed that thought: there was no other plan. And odds that are slightly better than zero are, well, better than zero.
Gritting his teeth against the pain of dragging his broken left tibia behind him, Riordan began to crawl the ten meters toward the fallen bumbershoots.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Dora Veriden sprinted hard for the far inland clearing where Riordan had sent Nasr Eid to stand watch on that flank. Most likely to keep him out of the way of people who can stand up in a fight. But now, Eid—and what he was overseeing—might just be her salvation.
Well, that and Macmillan’s physical condition. He was a big man, but beefy; a bear, not a tiger. And she could outrun a bear. All day long, if she needed to. But she didn’t have all day.
She stopped, caught her breath, listened. Yes, there was Macmillan, bashing his way through the brush, following the trail she was carefully leaving for him to follow. Keep running, big guy; keep pushing and sweating and gasping. She angled away from Eid’s position: can’t get there too soon. Have to make sure Macmillan is exhausted, first. So let’s you and I take the scenic route, you traitorous asshole.
Dora stretched her almost disproportionately long legs into an easy, deerlike stride. As she ran, she chose her path by the terrain: first a patch of rough ground, then a large clearing—yeah, you’l
l see that and try to make up the distance between us by sprinting. She stopped again, listened for Macmillan’s approach, heard it faintly. He’s less tired than I thought; probably got a little stamina back when he was talking with Riordan. Well, you’ll be running out of that second wind any time now. And you can’t afford to let me go, can you? Not only would that displease your masters, but knowing your story, I might pop up on Earth someday, surrounded by Slaasriithi diplomats and ruin you. Or your sacred memory, if the bastards who hired you clean up their loose ends.
Dora swung back toward the clearing where Nasr Eid was waiting. Or rather, where he was supposed to be waiting. Either way, though, that little glade is the ace up my sleeve. From the start, she had been worried that the unknown traitor might become active once the attackers arrived. So she had not gone immediately when Riordan had sent them to their first defensive positions, but had lagged behind, had heard Caine instruct Nasr “to watch a large clearing that is on our other flank—and you’ll have some local help.” Intrigued, she had stayed around long enough to learn about the nature of that local help. And now she was very glad that she had.
Macmillan’s thumping progress was a bit louder. Good; spend yourself. She picked up the pace: she’d need a few extra minutes to locate Nasr and set her plan in motion.
She scanned for anything that would serve as a reasonable weapon as she ran, but was disappointed: no serviceable rocks amongst the few she passed, and the plants on this planet did not tend toward hardwoods with heavy branches or shoots. No crude clubs or spears lying ready to hand, therefore.
As she neared the clearing, she called out to Nasr, concerned that if she approached too quietly, he’d be startled, let out a shout, and ruin everything.
Eid responded, rising up from the blind that the convectorae has fashioned for him. “Ms. Veriden, what has happened? I have heard much shooting and then—”
“The battle is not over yet, but it will be soon. You only have to do one thing.”
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