Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)
Page 9
And we did, William thought.
He shook his head slowly as he rose. Children on Tyre didn’t know how lucky they were, even commoner children. They were surrounded by luxury as soon as they first drew breath, luxury so commonplace they never noticed it. The terminal at his belt held more e-books than every library on Hebrides put together; a child’s terminal, loaded with movies, games, and other interactive entertainments, would have seemed a fantasy to him back when he’d been a boy. And yet, there was a hardness about his peers that was lacking on Tyre, a grim awareness that the world could turn hostile at any moment. They would survive anything that didn’t kill them outright.
His terminal bleeped. “Captain,” Shannon said, “the drones report four people making their way up the track towards the croft.”
“Understood,” William said. The shuttle would have been seen as it descended. Someone would come to investigate. “I don’t think there’s any need to panic.”
He walked back outside and peered down the long track. The fields were heavily overgrown; the stone walls his family had used to mark their property almost invisible. He smiled as he saw the orchard, spotting the telltale signs that children and teenagers had been taking apples from the trees. The abandoned croft had probably served as a courting place for young couples, he thought, feeling an odd hint of nostalgia. Young men and women both knew the rules of courtship and understood the consequences if they were broken. His cousin had needed to marry her boyfriend in a tearing hurry after going a little too far and ending up with child.
And her father gave her boyfriend a black eye, William thought as a small group appeared at the bottom of the track. But he was still a good husband and father.
He sobered. He’d been taught that he would marry a good woman, perhaps someone from the next town, bring her back to the farm and give her children, eventually passing the croft on to his eldest son. But that had never happened and never would. The young boy he’d been was restless, unwilling to settle down; the old man he’d become didn’t fit in on his homeworld any longer. Even if the world hadn’t been poisoned, he couldn’t make a go of the farm any longer. Better to leave it for a new family.
There won’t be a new family, he reminded himself bitterly. The entire planet is doomed.
He held up a hand in greeting as the newcomers came into view. An old woman, a middle-aged woman, and two young men, all carrying hunting rifles. The old woman, he reminded himself, might well be the same age as himself, merely worn down by the hardships of the desperate struggle to survive. All four of them would be good shots too; they’d probably been practicing on the occupying forces.
The old woman studied him for a long moment and then froze.
“William?”
William stared at her. Could it be . . . ?
“Morag?”
“William,” Morag said. “You look very much like your father.”
“Thank you,” William said. Morag had been a year younger than him, back when he’d lived on the croft. He’d tried to court her, but her father had been flatly against the match and refused to allow his daughter to walk out with him. “It’s been a very long time.”
“It has,” Morag agreed. Her voice turned ruthlessly practical. “What happened?”
“The planet has been poisoned,” William said flatly. “You’ll have to leave.”
Morag didn’t look impressed. William didn’t really blame her. She didn’t have the background to understand what had happened. For all he knew, she might not have seen the occupation force for herself. She lived forty miles from the nearest enemy base. Her world was limited to the farm, a handful of nearby communities, and little else. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend how far William had traveled since he’d joined the navy.
One of the men leaned forward. “What do you mean, poisoned?”
“The Theocracy detonated a number of very dirty nuclear weapons on the surface,” William said. He kept his voice calm with an effort. Hadn’t they heard the radio broadcasts? But then, they might not even have radios! “The poison is already spreading through the biosphere. You’ll need to prepare for evacuation.”
If we can evacuate them, he added to himself. Kat had sent a courier boat to the nearest fleet base for emergency supplies and as many transports as they could scrape up, but the logistics of evacuating an entire planet were nightmarish. We might have to sit and watch them die.
“You’d better come speak to the vicar,” Morag said, finally. “Do you remember the way?”
“You’d better show me,” William said. A stranger in uniform . . . he might end up being shot by his own people. “Let me speak to my pilot first.”
He called Shannon to tell her where he was going, then allowed Morag to lead him down the road towards the small town. It hadn’t changed much, he noted; the fields were still full of cows and sheep, the roads nothing more than muddy tracks . . . the only real change was a handful of prefabricated buildings on the edge of Kirkhaven itself. The town was tiny, so small that it would barely pass for a hamlet on Tyre. A single church, a handful of houses, a schoolhouse, and a town hall . . . little more. Most of the nearby farmers cared little for the town’s government, such as it was. Even the vicar had little power over his flock.
But he didn’t need it, William thought as they walked towards the church. We kept ourselves in line.
It wasn’t a pleasant admission. He’d learned the value of freethinkers during his time in the Commonwealth, although there was little room for them on starships. To have people who questioned, to have people who constantly sought new answers . . . they were a necessary part of a growing society. But Hebrides had tried its hardest to remain firmly stuck in the past. If the pirates hadn’t shown up, the planet would probably have declined Commonwealth membership when it was offered.
He shook his head slowly. The church hadn’t changed either: stone walls; wooden carvings of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus; pews he knew had been designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. A handful of young women sat to the left, their heads covered with white cloths; their mothers, sitting behind them, turned their heads to stare as Morag led William into the building. The male side of the church was deserted, save for the vicar himself. William felt a flicker of dislike, which he ruthlessly suppressed. The vicars weren’t evil, not like the pirates; they were just intensely conservative, ready to order the shunning of anyone who questioned their authority.
And that could destroy the strongest mind, William reminded himself.
Morag spoke briefly to the vicar, then nodded to William. “William?”
William nodded to the vicar, studying him thoughtfully. He was tall and thin, his head shaved bare; he wore a long black robe, completely unmarked. Some vicars were corrupt, but it was rare to encounter one away from the major towns. The farming communities never tolerated corruption in their vicars.
“It’s been a long time,” the vicar said. “I am Father Larry.”
“Pleased to meet you,” William said. He rather doubted the vicar was old enough to remember him. Life in the vicarage wasn’t just preaching and praying. Everyone was expected to help with ploughing the fields and harvesting the crops. “You have to prepare to evacuate.”
The vicar stared at him in shock. William explained, as best as he could, but he knew the vicar wouldn’t understand more than one word in ten. Vicars had been the only people, before the planet had joined the Commonwealth, to get any form of further education, yet it had been solely focused on religion. The vicar probably didn’t know that matter was made up of atoms, let alone that they could be split. Explaining what a radioactive cloud was took nearly an hour.
“I must pray,” the vicar said, finally. “I . . .”
“You have to start preparing the town for evacuation,” William said. He glanced down at his terminal. The radiation level had increased, slightly, since the time of his arrival. “You don’t have a choice.”
“We can’t leave,” one of the mothers objected. “Where
can we go?”
“I don’t know yet,” William said. It was possible, he supposed, that protected habitats could be established on the planetary surface. The marine engineers were already considering the potential options. “But if you stay here you’re going to die.”
He ignored the muttering sweeping through the church as he turned back to the vicar. “I’ll have a proper radio shipped to you,” he said firmly. “Make sure you stay in touch with the evacuation committee.”
Shaking his head, he turned and left the church. His mother had always sent her children to Sunday school with a coin for the vicar, but his father had had his doubts. William tended to agree with his father. He saw no point in giving money to the Kirk when the family needed every last penny to survive. Besides, the Kirk was rich enough already. And it played a role in keeping things precisely the same, year after year.
But now change is forced on the community, he thought as he looked around the town. Word was already spreading, thanks to the mothers ordering their daughters out of the church and straight back to their homes. And who knows where it will lead?
He shuddered as he looked towards the empty schoolhouse. It hadn’t changed a bit, not on the outside; he’d bet half his monthly salary that the interior hadn’t changed either. The masters had been tyrants, ready to apply the rod to any students who misbehaved; he couldn’t help wondering, deep inside, just how many of the masters had been trained to dull the impulse for learning, rather than encourage it. If asking a question could get someone in trouble . . . it wouldn’t be long before they stopped asking questions.
And the parents tended to agree, he reminded himself. Would his life have been different if his parents had lived longer? They didn’t want children who put on airs and graces, but children who could inherit the farms when the parents died.
Morag caught up with him as he reached the bottom of the track. “William,” she said, “are you married?”
William had to laugh. “That’s your first question?”
“I have a daughter in need of a husband,” Morag said. “She isn’t the only eligible girl around town, but she does come with a good dowry.”
“Oh,” William said dryly. “And why isn’t she married now?”
Such affairs struck him as silly to worry about when the entire planet was doomed, but he could see Morag’s perspective. If William accepted the offer, he’d be obliged to look after a wife, no matter what else happened. Morag might not know precisely what would happen after she and her family were evacuated, yet attaching themselves to William might give them their best shot at navigating the uncertain waters ahead.
“She’s picky,” Morag said. She shrugged expressively. “And her father indulges her.”
“Good for him,” William said. He had no idea who Morag had married, but he didn’t really want to know. Probably one of the other young men in the region. Maybe a townsman, if he was genuinely indulgent. “Right now, you have other problems.”
He turned to look back at the gray town. There was something oddly tranquil about the settlement, despite the men and women running through the streets, but he knew the peace was an illusion. The entire region was in deep shit, even if the radiation levels didn’t rise any higher. They just didn’t have the resources or mindset to cope with the impending doom. Even the Commonwealth would have found it almost impossible to cope.
“I know,” Morag said. She cocked her head. “I was serious.”
“I know,” William said. He looked down at her, knowing she wouldn’t understand. “But I’m not interested.”
The flicker of embarrassed anger that crossed her face almost made him reconsider. Her offer would have been a good offer, he had to admit, if he’d wanted to come home for good. A wife young enough to bear strong children, a set of very well-connected relatives . . . it was a good offer. But it wasn’t one he wanted, not any longer. His life was bound to the navy.
“Tell your family to prepare to evacuate,” he said instead. “And make sure they understand just how serious this is. They may not get a second chance to leave.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I think you need to go to sleep for a week,” Kat said as Pat entered her cabin. “You look ghastly.”
“I was sleeping in the suit,” Pat said. He did look tired, his face pale and wan; his eyes dull, almost lifeless. “It wasn’t very pleasant.”
Kat nodded as she gave him a tight hug, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Pat and her flag captain had threatened to handcuff her to her command chair if she tried to go down to the surface herself, but she knew she’d only get in the way. The last ten days had been chaotic as her marines and their support crews had struggled to cope with a humanitarian crisis on an unimaginable scale. It would be months, she suspected, before the fleet could truthfully say that they had the situation under control. God alone knew how many people would die before then.
Pat drew back slightly. “Tell me there’s help on the way.”
“I’ve called every ship and medical crew in the sector,” Kat assured him. “Hopefully, most of them will come.”
“It won’t be enough,” Pat predicted.
Kat was inclined to agree. They’d built up vast stockpiles of supplies—medical supplies, humanitarian supplies—for the liberation campaign, but the atrocity on Hebrides had made a mockery of their careful planning. Even if they kept the Theocracy from bombing other planets again and again, they’d still have to save as many people as they could from the planet below. And she knew the resources to do that simply didn’t exist.
“They wanted us to suffer,” Pat said. “They could have used antimatter if they wanted to sweep the planet clean of life.”
“I know,” Kat said. Her analysts had reached the same conclusion. The Theocracy had wanted to ensure that the Commonwealth was tied up rescuing as many people as possible from the radiation. The bastards had succeeded. “And what’s to stop them from doing the same to the other occupied worlds?”
“Nothing,” Pat said. “What’s to stop them from doing it to Tyre?”
Kat winced. Tyre was surrounded by extensive deep-space tracking networks. It was unlikely that anyone could get a missile, even a c-fractional projectile, through the network without having the missile intercepted and destroyed before it struck the surface. But unlikely wasn’t the same as impossible.
“I don’t know,” she said. The Commonwealth could do the same to Ahura Mazda and every other Theocratic world too, if it wanted. She’d assumed, they’d all assumed, that deterrence would be enough to keep the Theocracy from committing mass slaughter. They’d been wrong. “I don’t know.”
She looked up at her lover, feeling a twinge of sympathy. Pat liked to have tasks he could accomplish, objectives he could reach. He wanted, he needed, to feel there was something he could do. But there was nothing he could do for the planet below. His marines had worked themselves to the bone, recovering survivors and shipping them to orbit, but their valiance wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
“Go get a proper bath,” she said, nudging him towards the washroom. “Take as long as you need.”
Pat merely nodded. The lack of any suggestion that she join him—or mock irritation at her suggestion he needed to wash—bothered her more than she cared to admit. If what he’d seen on the planet below had broken him . . .
She watched him walk into the washroom and close the door, silently cursing the Theocracy. To her, the horror the enemy had unleashed was abstract; to him—and William—it was all too real.
She sat down at her desk and scanned the latest report. Nearly a hundred thousand survivors had been pulled out of the blast zones, almost all in urgent need of intensive medical treatment. The stasis pods were already full, even though thousands more civilians would die if they weren’t put in stasis. Her medics were frantically triaging the patients, trying to ensure that the ones with the greatest chances of survival were given the best treatment . . . but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
The situation was an utter nightmare. Some towns and villages had accepted the warning with good grace. Others seemed to believe that it was all a plot to steal their land . . . or that there was no difference, at base, between the Commonwealth and the Theocracy. They killed enemy prisoners and fired on Commonwealth shuttles without hesitation. She had no idea how she was going to get through to them, but she had no choice.
We have to keep warning them, she told herself. But they won’t listen.
Her intercom bleeped. “Commodore, a courier boat just dropped out of hyperspace,” Wheeler said. “She’s transmitting a recorded message, your eyes only.”
“Understood,” Kat said. She’d hoped for more than just a courier boat, but Admiral Christian would probably have sent it ahead of 6th Fleet. “Download the message to my terminal, then order the courier boat to hold position.”
“Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said.
Kat waited for the message to blink up in her terminal, then pressed her hand against the sensor, allowing the terminal to query her brain implants and check her identity. A moment later, Admiral Christian’s face popped up in front of her. He looked grim.
“Commodore Falcone,” he said. “I’ll make this brief. We have received your report and forwarded it to Tyre. For the moment, significant reserve elements have been ordered to Hebrides to assist in the relief efforts. Once those elements arrive, you are ordered to take your task force and rendezvous with 6th Fleet at McCaughey.”
Kat blinked. He expected her to leave Hebrides?
“I appreciate that this decision may cause you some problems,” Admiral Christian continued, firmly. “Therefore, you are authorized to transport as many stasis pods and evacuees as you can cram into your ships to McCaughey. The planetary authorities have been informed and are already preparing holding compounds and medical centers. However, I must reiterate that I expect you to depart your current station and make your way to McCaughey. This is not an opportunity for creative disobedience.”