by Gary Gibson
The Tsiolkovsky didn’t need air to work, so the supply, the AI informed him regretfully, again revealing the limitations of its replicated emotions, was good for only another few hours.
He slid the interface card from around his neck with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking and wondered if the machine could read body language, and if so, how well.
‘I need to plug this in,’ he said, holding it up so whatever hidden lens the Tsiolkovsky was watching him through could see it.
‘Use the console to your right,’ the machine informed him.
Sam pulled himself into a seat and searched around until he found a slot set into the face of a console and pushed the card in. He heard a faint beep and waited for something to happen.
And waited.
‘There is a problem with the interface card,’ the machine said at last.
Sam blinked, staring at the card still pushed deep in its slot. ‘A problem?’
‘The card is damaged,’ the machine explained, synthesised regret creeping into its voice. ‘The data has been scrambled.’
Sam swallowed, heart thudding. ‘You can’t read it at all?’
‘I’m afraid not, no,’ the machine replied, with all the sympathy its circuits could muster.
Sam laughed.
And kept laughing until the tears nearly rolled down his cheeks. He was going to die here, alone, for all he knew the last living man in all of existence, because of a faulty fucking interface card.
The greatest tragedy was that there was no one else left alive to appreciate the irony.
He asked the Tsiolkovsky how much air he had left. When it told him, he felt a hollowness in his gut. Not long at all.
And then an idea came to him.
‘Tsiolkovsky,’ he said aloud. ‘My cortical tap. Can it upload, as well as download?’
‘Of course.’
Sam nodded to himself. The air tasted close and warm, and yet he dared to hope. ‘Can I do that right now? How?’
‘The data can be uploaded directly from your tap, but I require your spoken permission.’
‘Granted.’
‘Thank you.’ A pause. ‘The process has begun.’
Sam felt nothing—not that he’d expected to; indeed, the entire process proved distinctly anticlimactic.
‘How long does it take?’ he asked, feeling suddenly short of breath.
‘Not long. A few minutes.’
‘There’s something else I need you to do. Or I need you to tell me if it can be done.’
‘Of course.’
Sam kept it simple, so the Tsiolkovsky understood his request. He kept talking, even as the air grew warmer and his heart began to thud as it worked to push less and less oxygen towards his brain. He was terribly afraid the AI might refuse to do what he was asking of it. That, he thought, would be the worst thing of all—to have discovered this one crumb of hope, only to see it dashed.
And then at last it was said and done, and the AI did not refuse his request, even as his breaths grew deeper and more strenuous, and the blood beat in his veins and flecks of darkness formed at the edges of his vision. He drew a faltering breath, and then another, and then, at last, he grew still, and the silence of centuries fell back across the mothership.
32
THE LAST EXPEDITION
—awoke to cool darkness.
Sam blinked, remembering—
…remembering…
It came back in a rush: the lander, Vic Traynor, the mesa—all of it.
The Tsiolkovsky.
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and he licked lips dry with the memory of thirst.
His first thought was that he must still be on the mothership, up in orbit. The only explanation was that the ship had found some way to keep him alive…
Then he became aware of the tight confines in which he now found himself. He was in another coffin-like pod: a window set into its lid afforded him a view of a ceiling of ribbed metal, a few metres above him.
He listened, hearing a muffled voice from outside of his pod. A face moved in front of its window, little more than a silhouette. Sam squinted, trying to make out who it was.
Then the face moved, and he saw.
Sun. His heart beat hard and wild with joy. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t make out her words through the window. Then came a sudden hiss, and the lid lifted up along one side.
She reached down and helped him slide the corrugated tube from out of his throat. He sat up, coughing hard, and she passed him a small paper cup filled with water.
He stared at her in baffled amazement. ‘Sun,’ he said. ‘It’s really you.’
Her face registered shocked surprise. ‘You…you know me?’
She blinked, then handed him a rolled-up jumpsuit. He took it from her.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she said, helping him out of the pod, ‘that’s the one question we’ve all been asking.’
* * *
It was immediately clear that he was inside another lander. Because he was still weak, and still a little disoriented, it took him a few minutes to get dressed. But once he was done, he let Sun guide him through the craft and down to its lower cargo bay. The ramp was down, and he heard voices from beyond—familiar voices.
‘You know my name,’ she said, guiding him down the ramp, ‘but I don’t know yours.’
‘Sam,’ he said. ‘Sam Newman.’
By now, he remembered everything he had done in those last moments aboard the Tsiolkovsky. When he’d asked the AI to delete the existing copy of his memories from its computer banks and replace it with his more current mind state, it had offered no objection: more recent cortical uploads, it explained, automatically took precedence over older recordings, and the hard limits on its intelligence made it unable to appreciate the purpose behind his request. The memories of the man he’d become back on Earth were lost forever, but he found he had no regrets.
He closed his eyes against the bright dazzle of daylight. He was in yet another clearing, but one that lay close to snow-capped mountains, their peaks obscured by clouds. The air felt cooler here, suggesting they were much further from the equator than the previous expedition had been.
He saw there were people gathered close by the base of the ramp. He saw Joshua, and Ethan, and…
And Jess. He saw no recognition in her face when she turned to look at him.
Of course.
Then he saw the rest of them, spread out across the clearing: Kim, DeWitt, and more, all alive, all of them strangers once again.
From somewhere nearby, he heard rushing water and guessed they must be close to a river, perhaps, or some other body of water.
Ethan came towards him and extended a cautious hand. ‘Name’s Ethan,’ he said. ‘How about you?’
‘Sam,’ he replied.
‘Don’t suppose by any chance you know what we’re all doing here?’ asked Ethan. ‘Because the last thing any of us remember—’
‘I do.’ Sam nodded. ‘There’s a lot I need to tell you.’
He stumbled, a wave of dizziness washing over him. Ethan put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Easy there,’ said Ethan. ‘We already had someone nearly crack their head open.’ He turned to look around at the others. ‘Hey—this one says he knows something.’
‘Well, thank God for that,’ said Joshua, coming up to look at him. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve got work I need to get back to.’
Sam shook his head, trying to shake off the last of the grogginess. ‘You won’t be going back to work.’
More of them came over to stare at him. They all regarded him with slightly stunned expressions.
‘Vic Traynor,’ asked Sam. ‘Is he here?’
They all looked at each other. ‘I don’t—’ Ethan started to say.
‘Vic?’ Sam looked around and saw it was Wardell who had spoken. He nodded towards some trees. ‘There’s someone with that name back here.’
Sam let go of
Ethan and stepped towards Wardell. ‘Show me.’
* * *
He found the new Vic Traynor leaning on a rock next to the shore of a river, past some trees, deep in conversation with Angel. They both looked around as Sam pushed his way through the undergrowth towards them, followed by several others. So far as he could ascertain, none of them had been awake for more than a few hours.
Traynor stood, perhaps seeing something in Sam’s expression as he came walking straight towards him. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘who are—?’
He never got to finish the sentence. Despite his disorientation, despite the weakness that still afflicted his new limbs, Sam shoved him hard with both hands. Traynor stumbled backwards, losing his balance and landing in the rushing water with a splash.
‘Hey!’ someone shouted from behind Sam. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He turned to see it was Jess. ‘Stay back,’ he growled, and she came to a halt, confused and angry.
Traynor began to struggle back towards the shore, but Sam moved towards him, shoving him back.
‘What the fuck?’ Traynor shouted.
‘I’d like to say I’m sorry about this,’ said Sam, ‘but I’m not.’
He punched Traynor hard on the jaw, and this time he went down and stayed down.
Sam grabbed hold of the collar of Traynor’s jumpsuit before he could drown and dragged him back onto the shore, letting him drop onto the not-grass. Then he looked around at the rest of them, now gathered in a loose semi-circle, all of them looking at him with varying degrees of shock and confusion.
‘I really hope,’ said a clearly alarmed Joshua, ‘that you’ve got a damn good explanation for this. Because there’s a hell of a lot more of us than there are of you.’
‘There’s a very good reason,’ said Sam. ‘But it’s going to take time to explain, and you’re going to have to take a lot on trust.’
Joshua glanced between him and Traynor, clearly trying to figure out whether Sam was crazy. ‘Do you know him?’ he asked, nodding towards Traynor, supine on the grass. ‘Why did you attack him?’
‘He was sent here to kill you,’ Sam explained. ‘Except he hasn’t figured that out yet. He will soon, though.’ He pointed around at the rest of them. ‘Irish,’ he said. ‘Piper, Karl, Kevin…I know every one of you by name. I can tell you things you told me about your lives, even if you think you don’t know who the hell I am.’
‘What kind of nut job,’ said Ethan, his face twisted up in a scowl, ‘just walks up to some guy and wallops him like he’s—!’
‘Wait.’ Joshua put up a hand to stop Ethan, a look of intense curiosity on his face. ‘All right. Let’s say you’ve got our attention. So what gives?’
‘If any of you want to stay alive longer than the next couple of days,’ said Sam, ‘you need to listen closely to what I have to tell you.’
He took a deep breath and started from the beginning.
About the Author
Gary Gibson’s writing career spans sixteen years and fifteen books, including STEALING LIGHT, FINAL DAYS and EXTINCTION GAME. His work has been translated and published around the world, including Russia, Brazil, Germany, and France.
For updates and notifications of new releases, visit his website at www. garygibson.net or follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Or join his newsletter (and get a free ebook!): https://eepurl.com/b1ma4L.
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And thank you to my Patreon subscribers, new and old, for their support and help in bringing this book to print.
Standalone books:
ANGEL STATIONS (2004)
AGAINST GRAVITY (2005)
GHOST FREQUENCIES (2018)
DEVIL’S ROAD (2020)
Shoal Sequence:
STEALING LIGHT (2007)
NOVA WAR (2009)
EMPIRE OF LIGHT (2010)
MARAUDER (2013)
Final Days Duology:
FINAL DAYS (2011)
THE THOUSAND EMPERORS (2012)
Apocalypse Trilogy:
EXTINCTION GAME (2014)
SURVIVAL GAME (2016)
DOOMSDAY GAME (2019)
Story Collection:
SCIENCEVILLE & OTHER LOST WORLDS (2018)
You can connect with me on:
https://www.garygibson.net
https://twitter.com/garygibsonsf
https://www.facebook.com/garygibsonsfwriter
https://www.patreon.com/garygibson
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