Heart of Granite

by James Barclay

  ‘Speed it up, Grim.’

  ‘I thought you won. Did I miss something?’

  Max turned back to her, trying to speak but not finding the words. In the end, all he could do was shake his head, knowing the news would break her. She followed his jerk of the head towards Kullani.

  ‘Shit,’ muttered Grimaldi, staring up at him.

  ‘Sorry, Grim,’ said Max. Grimaldi stiffened. ‘Don’t let on, okay? Gotta keep this from the brass.’

  Grimaldi’s eyes were full of tears but she nodded. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Yeah. You’re good to go. Good enough, anyway. Don’t let them take her.’

  ‘Trust me. No one gets her but you.’

  Max spun about and forced himself not to sprint over to Kullani. Halfway there, Valera fell into step with him. She was as half-clean as he was, the stink of lubricant sharp and powerful.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way.’

  ‘They can wait,’ said Max.

  ‘They can’t.’

  ‘I—’

  Valera caught his arm and glanced up at Flight Command, whose windowed control room spanned the entire deck fifteen metres up.

  ‘You’re not helping. Don’t draw attention to the situation. We’ll handle it.’

  ‘I have to check on Kullani.’

  ‘I’ll handle it,’ said Valera. Max started to turn away anyway. ‘Don’t even think it, Hal-X. The second you got out of that pouch, you stopped thinking.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I get how you feel. But Moeller is watching your every move right now. What conclusion do you think he’ll draw if you go straight to Kullani? You might as well march her into Landfill yourself.’

  Max stared down at the floor, fists clenching.

  ‘Go up there and take your medicine like a good boy. And while you’re distracting Moeller, I get the time to look after Kullani, get it? And if he asks, tell him I was chewing you out, cos he’s watching all of this and he ain’t stupid. Now get going.’

  Max closed his eyes briefly, cursing himself an idiot. He nodded mutely and headed for the stairs up to Flight Command, feeling everyone’s eyes on his back.

  The metal steps rang beneath his feet, two flights up to the gallery that ran along in front of the long windows. Max tried to appear unflustered while he walked to Moeller’s office through the world of screens and the myriad lines of data, graphs, blinking lights and schematics they displayed.

  He hated it in here but never more than today; Flight Command drones looked at him in disdain before returning to their oh-so-important tasks. It made him glad he still stank from the pouch; it’d give the desk monkeys a whiff of real life. Max flicked a bead of lubricant from his sleeve, satisfied to see it strike a screen, before marching up to Moeller’s open door, knocking on it and drawing himself to attention.

  ‘Max Halloran reporting as ordered, sir.’

  Moeller waved him in from behind his desk.

  ‘Close it behind you,’ he said. Max did so, muting the hum of the command centre, the echoing cries of drakes, the clanging of metal and the shouts of ground crew.

  Max took a glance round Moeller’s office. It was massive, relatively speaking, sort of a conference room and executive study in one. Moeller’s desk was a basic wooden affair boasting a pile of regulation textbooks, a beautifully sculpted model of a drake, three data screens and a half-empty mug of something. There were glass-fronted wooden bookcases behind the desk, both of them full, both neat and ordered. Moeller was a collector and this looked like the best of his collection. Max had thought about reading a book on the odd occasion but it had always seemed a bit of a waste of time.

  Moeller got up from his plain metal chair, pushed it back under his desk and gestured Max follow him. He walked round a gleaming oval wooden table set with twelve chairs that dominated the room. Voice and video conferencing equipment set dead centre and each chair was tidily tucked in.

  Moeller opened the sliding doors overlooking the flight deck where another squadron was on the runway. Two rows of five leather-upholstered seats were bolted to the balcony floor, relics from the days when VIPs and journalists had watched the drakes take off and land. Max had barely seen anyone up here in the nine months he’d been aboard.

  Moeller took in the scene before facing Max who snapped to attention once more. Moeller almost smiled and waved him at ease. There was never any malice in his weary face. He was in his fifties, grey-haired and fit with a gentle but precise manner. No one ever repeated the mistake of believing his gentle tone meant weakness.

  ‘Holy Mother, you stink, boy.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, but I was in a rush to—’

  ‘Stop.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Where to begin with you, Halloran,’ he said, frowning until his bushy eyebrows almost met.

  ‘Sir—?’ Max said, before clamping his mouth shut on the careerlimiting question he’d been about to ask.

  ‘I’ll do the talking, Halloran,’ Moeller said, mildly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Max.

  ‘Tell me: how many squadrons of drakes do I command on this behemoth?’

  ‘Six, sir.’

  ‘That’s eighteen chevrons. One hundred and forty-four active drake-pilot pairs. With their ground crews and Tweaker teams, that’s four hundred and seventy-seven people on the flight deck alone before I even start on the ground forces.

  ‘Order and discipline are essential, and every single person out there had them today, except you.’

  ‘Sir, that’s—’

  ‘It’s true.’ Moeller looked directly at Max. ‘You’re a fantastic pilot, Halloran but you’re reckless and undisciplined. This was the fifth time you’ve been late to my flight deck and every time, you’ve risked your squad going out short and left your wingmate looking an idiot because it’s implicit in your behaviour that you don’t respect her. This is your last warning. Once more and you’ll never fly for me again. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Sir. You’ll ground me, sir?’

  ‘I’ll transfer you to a training duty . . . one that reminds you every day how badly you screwed up.’

  Max wondered if Moeller ever raised his voice.

  ‘You’re late for your appointment with the Marshal General, and she’s not as understanding as I am, you’ll find. Later, you can thank me for resisting her calls to have you grounded.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘The rest of your performance with the cap was outstanding, though. Very much worthy of InfernoX. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Shame about Kullani.’

  Max froze with his fingers cramping around the door handle. ‘Sir?’

  ‘It comes to you all. Remember those signs, because there’s never any more warning it’s started.’

  Max turned, his mind churning. ‘I’m not with you, sir.’

  ‘Loyalty is a wonderful thing. But,’ Moeller pointed to his eyes, ‘These work and I have a decade’s experience with drake pilots. You can’t bullshit me.’

  Max shrugged. ‘Kullani had a near miss with an Águila in the dust cloud. Shook her up a bit. But she flew exceptionally today.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You know, I have your best interests at heart so I’ll give you a little advice: there are more sides to this war than you can count and not all of your enemies are in the sky. If you’re going to extend your life to its maximum everyone has to be peak every time. One passenger and you could all go down. Where’s your loyalty then?’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind, sir,’ said Max.

  Moeller shook his head slowly. ‘It’ll sink through that thick skull of yours eventually, Halloran. I hope it’s sooner rather than later. Dismissed.’

  Max saluted and walked to the door, pulling it open and all but walking into Marshal General Solomon. He backed up hurriedly and stood to attention.

  Solomon looked exactly like her press shots. Dark eyes that missed nothing, greying hair braided tight to her head, and beautiful mid-brown skin. Sh
e wasn’t one for a lot of make-up and her uniform was creased from a long journey in the questionable comfort of a ground lizard, but her sheer presence made the details irrelevant.

  ‘You stink.’ She walked in, those eyes analysing him, daring him to make even more of a prat of himself. ‘Good of you to let me freshen up before reporting to me, Halloran.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘I know you didn’t. I’ve been waiting like a good girl for you to come a knocking only I’m not a good girl and I hate being made to wait. Careers have folded for less. Don’t look to your Flight Commander, he can’t help you, especially as it seems you can’t work out the chain of command. Guess that leaves you in pretty deep, doesn’t it?’

  Max couldn’t speak, although he did manage to swallow on a dry throat.

  ‘You were an unprofessional arse out there, Halloran. Pick up a shovel. Let’s see if you can dig yourself out.’

  Chapter 5

  When alien technology and biological matter was discovered on the Ark asteroid, you could sense the world holding its breath. The day the commencement of experimentation on the fusion of alien and Terran DNA was announced, global politics changed forever.

  Marie Rodriguez, New Age Politics: The Rise of the Multi-Faith Alliance

  Max let the tepid water soak over him for a good long time before getting on with cleaning his flight suit and wishing he’d let Grim do a proper job. Lubricant and shock-absorbent fluid had dried in streaks on it while the Marshal Gen had given him a piece of her mind. He’d have gone to Gargan’s Bar on tenways junction straight afterwards but for the fact that Kullani was in the Inferno-X rack. He wanted to check on her more than anything.

  Valera had ordered him into the wash block where he’d stalked around the eight shower heads on his own in an ever worsening mood. He’d given his suit a particularly close scrub, then walked naked and dripping out of the showers to dump it at Valera’s feet. She was sitting on a recliner, half-watching the news.

  ‘There you go. It’s clean, I’m wet, I was in there long enough to calm down. Now let me see Kullani.’

  ‘Don’t be a child, Max. And get dressed. Kullani doesn’t need a naked dickbrained hothead right now.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I left her in her pod, trying to sort her head out. She wants to see you. Sort yourself and your suit out first.’

  ‘Moeller knows,’ said Max.

  Valera looked up at him. ‘Moeller suspects. Don’t worry about it right now. Go on.’

  Max nodded, scooped up his suit and hung it at the end of the rack. The duty flight crew would wheel it down to the flight deck later on. He grabbed a towel from the pile by the washroom door and wrapped it round his midriff before walking to his pod under the sympathetic gaze of the squad. He pushed open his door and found Risa Kullani sitting on his bed, looking at a picture them taken just after he’d joined the squad.

  ‘You’re supposed to be in your pod. My lucky day, is it?’ said Max.

  ‘Well it certainly isn’t mine,’ said Kullani.

  ‘Don’t talk like that. It’s not what I meant.’ Max gathered up some clothes, just jockeys, black tee-shirt and dark grey fatigues, and began pulling them on. ‘Anyway, my door’s always been open to you.’

  ‘Yeah, but y’know, you were never quite my style, were you? And now everything is different.’

  Max didn’t know what to say so he just nodded, sat down next to her, and dragged his tee-shirt over his still-damp body. They both stared at the picture.

  ‘So I’m going to ask the stupid and obvious question,’ said Max. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  Max bumped her with his shoulder. ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘I feel fine.’ She shrugged. ‘Now I do. It’s hard to explain how I felt before. But I couldn’t keep my drake out… she was right in my head with me, not beside me, inside me, suffocating me. It was frightening, Max.’

  Max worried at his lip. He knew what it added up to and so, of course, did Risa.

  ‘I bet. And you were saying some weird shit up there.’

  ‘That makes me feel so much better.’ But she smiled and punched him on the arm. Max made a play of being hurled aside by the blow and she laughed a little. ‘It might have been weird but it was real. I could feel the cold. I saw the blood. It was in my head.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Risa shook her head. ‘Only freaks like you give their drakes names. It’s an Extra Reptilian Construct, Max.’

  ‘They aren’t robots, though. Martha has personality and intelligence– though it’s mostly locked away. And we can all feel them.’

  Kullani shook her head.

  ‘Not like this. It was speaking to me.’ Risa’s eyes closed briefly. ‘I think it was, anyway . . . so many images. Shit. I don’t know what to think. I didn’t want this to happen.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. You—’

  ‘I touched the Fall, Max. It’s started.’

  Then her arms were around his neck and she had buried her face in his shoulder. He clutched her hard, feeling her shiver as she tried to regain control.

  ‘Too soon,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘Don’t let them put me in Landfill.’

  ‘Not on my watch,’ said Max, stroking her short fine hair. ‘No one is taking you from my wing.’

  Risa choked on laughter and tears and pulled away. Her eyes were bright and scared.

  ‘We all know where it ends. Fuck it, Max. I should have had more time. Years.’

  ‘Trust Valera. Trust the squad. We’ll think of something. First we have to convince everyone nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Great . . . so we do what we always do after a win? Gargan’s for the toast.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not feeling much like celebrating.’

  ‘I get it, but if we don’t show there’ll be questions. I’ll look after you.’

  Risa’s smile was fragile but at least it was there. She shrugged. ‘Just don’t leave me?’

  ‘I’ll get Stepanek to buy all my rounds. How long do you need to get your head together?’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘Actually no, I was being unusually sensitive,’ said Max.

  ‘Uniquely,’ said Kullani. ‘Just a few minutes to hide the blotches.’

  Max pulled deck shoes onto his bare feet and the two of them walked out.

  ‘I think she knows her way home,’ said Valera from their left. ‘I need a word, Max. Several words, in fact.’

  Max followed Valera through the squad, sprawled on their sofas and recliners. There were none of the usual comments or thrown missiles, which he supposed was a mark of the day’s events, but he didn’t like it – or their eyes following him. The computer games were suddenly profoundly irritating and the drone of reporters overlaid on images of the Marshal Gen’s cortege boarding the Granite was loudly tedious. Mind you, the I-X drakes flashing into the flight deck looked bloody impressive.

  ‘She’s fine, all right?’ he said very loudly. ‘Get your arses ready for a toast at Gargan’s.’

  Valera took his arm and steered him to an empty seat where a mug of coffee and his named pill pack were waiting for him on a low table.

  ‘That strikes me as a potentially disastrous plan. Take your settlers, coffee’s yours too.’

  ‘Thanks, boss.’ Max picked up the mug and took a sip; it was strong and bitter just as he liked it. He sloshed the liquid around in his mouth, fed in the pills and swallowed the lot. They equalised his mind after prolonged drake contact, helped him relax like they did for every pilot. ‘I’ll look after her.’

  ‘Keep her off the spirits, all right? You too. Sit down.’ Max complied. ‘How are you doing? It’s your first time facing the Fall and it’s poor luck it’s your wing.’

  ‘I don’t know . .. angry? This can’t be it . .. we can’t let her go, Skipper.’

  ‘No we can’t,’ sa
id Valera. ‘And we won’t.’

  ‘But she can’t fly thinking like she is,’ said Max.

  ‘No, she can’t.’

  ‘What about Moeller? He saw it straight away. I denied it, but he knows.’

  ‘But he can’t get her tested until her settlers have taken effect or he’ll get a false positive so we have an opportunity to hide her condition from the brain-scrapers. You know how, right?’

  Max thought for a moment. ‘You’re talking about heaters? But they’re . ..’

  Valera laughed. ‘Wow, something went in that big head of yours and stayed there. Yes, they are but if you’re facing Landfill how much would you care about the legality of the drug that kept you out? She’s your wing so it’s your responsibility. I’ll get the squad to chip in, and get you an introduction to the Blammers. After that, you’re on your own. You’re up for this?’

  ‘Yes. Right now?’

  ‘Patience! Remember, you’re crossing a line from the moment you agree.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a line Moeller knows we’ll cross. Why doesn’t he do something about it?’

  Valera grimaced. ‘Well, it’s complicated. Commander Avery practically sleeps with the regs manuals; she’d haul Kullani out of service now if she suspected anything. Our ExO wants to keep us in the pouch to the last second to save money. And Moeller’s . .. well, he’s stuck in the middle. He does what he can . . . look, never mind. Assume no one but the squad will support you.’

  Max scrubbed at his head. ‘I really need a drink.’

  ‘I’ll find you at Gargan’s later. Tonight, just look after Kullani or I’ll rip your balls off and wear them as earrings.’

  Chapter 6

  Chronic cognitive disassociation, The Fall, is an incurable complex condition with only symptomatic relief currently available. The earliest symptoms, hallucinations, nervous complaints and temporary paralysis, can appear up to eighteen months before the condition’s trigger point. We have been unable to detect which factors combine to produce the trigger point, hence the potentially devastating effects of The Fall occurring while in flight.

  Professor Carl Aldus, Neurological science research lead, ERC Programme