by Alex Lamb
‘Okay, here’s what I want you to do,’ he said nervously. ‘Take that gun over there and keep Ash covered to stop him hitting Sam again. I presume that’s something you actually want. Can you do that? Or am I trying to rope you into a conspiracy to destroy Earth by keeping Sam’s face in one piece?’
Citra peered at him, hatred crackling from her gaze. ‘I can do that,’ she said at last.
‘Great,’ said Mark. ‘Sam’s life may depend on you. You know what Ash is capable of. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He left quickly, before she could reach for the weapon idly rotating in the air.
Mark struggled to not look back as he departed. He took the docking pod up through the mesohull to the shuttle and helped Zoe and Venetia down to the Gulliver’s med-bay. It took for ever and his guts churned with anxiety the entire time. His gambit to gain Citra’s confidence hinged on his having read the situation correctly. But Mark knew he wasn’t exactly a genius when it came to people. He half-expected hell to break loose the entire time.
When he finally returned to the lounge, things looked surprisingly unchanged. Ash had drifted across the room. Sam’s body had turned over. There was, perhaps, a little more blood in the air, but not much. Citra’s eyes had gone red from zero-gee tears. He had the lurking sense that maybe she’d tried something in his absence, but given the non-outcome, he didn’t care.
He kept his automatic levelled at Citra as he drifted in.
‘Now drop the weapon, please,’ he said.
She glanced at him bitterly and tossed it across the lounge.
‘How are you doing?’ he said.
‘As well as can be expected,’ she replied tersely.
‘Terrific. Want to help me get Sam to the med-bay?’
‘You mean he’s allowed to move now?’ she said. ‘You waited long enough.’
Mark fought back a retort. ‘His injuries are serious,’ he said evenly, ‘but Venetia’s are worse. Let’s get him some help.’
The two of them angled Sam’s limp body around the corridor’s tight turns. If felt odd to be collaborating with a woman who’d wanted him dead just minutes before, but if he was going to build bridges with Citra, he had to start somewhere. Besides which, he found it quietly satisfying to defeat her warped expectations.
They slid Sam into one of the repair cabinets just as Zoe slid out of another. Blue biopolymer slippers covered her feet.
‘Fixed already?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I have to wear these for a few days, then I’m all good.’
‘How about Venetia?’ said Citra tightly.
Zoe brought up Venetia’s stats and a window onto the repair cabinet where an army of microsurgeons toiled across the landscape of her face, laying tracts of new skin. Citra’s expression filled with horror at the sight of the damage.
‘With luck she’ll be fine, presuming her brain is still okay,’ said Zoe. ‘The biggest problems were down to carbon monoxide inhalation, as it turns out, not the heat.’ Her face became grave. ‘Mark, I have something to show you,’ she added.
‘Ash first,’ said Mark. ‘He’s in a bad way and may still be a risk to us or himself. If we’re going to get out of here intact, I have to help him.’
‘Mark,’ Zoe started. Then she saw the look on his face and exhaled. ‘It’ll wait,’ she said. ‘Do what you need to.’
He hurried back to the lounge, hoping his subcaptain would still be there when he arrived. Ash had bumped up against one of the couches. Other than that, he hadn’t moved. Mark would have felt less worried if his old friend had at least unclenched a little. This stillness spooked him. He tried opening a link to Ash’s interface and found his mind awake but unresponsive.
With the greatest of care, Mark inserted his avatar into Ash’s home node. Ash’s primary metaphor space had once been an immaculate luxury apartment from his native Drexler with a view out across one of the famous covered calderas. Now it was barely a space at all. Mark found himself hanging amid a scrambled mess of impressions – a landscape like a Cubist disaster. Pieces of Ash’s old environment had been mixed up with fragments of Sam’s grinning face and snapshots of the horrors wrought by the Nems. Perspective had vanished along with the furniture. Ash’s avatar floated in the middle of it all, foetal, just like his physical body.
Mark felt a hot tide of empathy. In the end, Ash had been pretending to be a Drexlerite just like he’d been pretending to be an Earther. Both of them suffered through the same erratic childhood. Both were encouraged to cherish their roots without really knowing what that meant. And both had come out of that process desperate for an identity. They just happened to have picked different sides.
‘Are you okay?’ said Mark softly.
The words felt profoundly inadequate. By now, Mark had guessed what Sam must have done. Every roboteer knew about shock keys and felt about them the same way ordinary people felt about physical abuse. Ash’s mind had been violated in the most profound way imaginable. If he never came back to himself, Mark wouldn’t have blamed him.
Ash replied in a surprisingly lucid tone. ‘He broke me,’ he said simply.
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘He didn’t break you. He hurt you. That’s different.’
Ash threw a memory at him. Mark let it come. Suddenly, he felt what it was like to wake up blank and damaged, empty and afraid with chunks of his past missing. He recalled how gentle Sam had been, and how Sam had nursed him back together.
For a while in there, he’d loved Sam like a father. Pathetically. Desperately. With an intensity he’d not known since childhood. And he remembered hating Mark with all his soul, even while he could never completely believe what Sam had told him. Mark saw himself lying on the bridge bunk with a gun pointed at him and realised that Ash could have killed him in that moment. Ash hadn’t because he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
Mark let the foreign emotions power through him, giving them room. Tears squeezed out of his eyes. When he recovered his composure, he took Ash back to that moment in the penitence box when he’d come to understand that they couldn’t hurt him so long as he became something greater than himself. He waited for Ash to play that memory out in real time.
‘I need you back,’ Mark whispered. ‘This ship needs you. The human race needs you. We both have to heal but we need to do it later. Right now we have a job to do.’
Ash’s avatar reluctantly unfurled. The look in his eyes was distant but focused.
‘Then we’d better get on with it, hadn’t we?’ he croaked.
‘Will he be okay?’ Zoe asked from the hatchway.
Mark flipped back to his physical body and nodded. ‘We’re all damaged right now,’ he said. ‘But Ash is strong. He’ll make it. So what did you find?’
Zoe slid into the room with Citra behind her. The biologist looked even sicker and more nauseated than before. Zoe threw a display onto the wall.
‘Sam’s treasure trove of horrors,’ she said. ‘I knew there had to be one, so I went looking. I found the program he used to hack Ash. That was scary enough. But then I found this.’
She opened a package of signal-processing code. On the left hung the causal diagram for their comms system. On the right was the fiendishly complex web of logic that had been jacked into it.
‘When Sam talked to the machines at Tiwanaku, he used this encrypted code to layer content over the top of his message,’ she said. She showed him a data burst full of strategic information – Earth’s strengths and weaknesses, its population centres and response times. ‘Sam basically told the machines how to kill the homeworld.’
‘I …’ said Citra. She swallowed. ‘I believe I may have been party to something awful.’
She spoke in hushed, astonished tones. She sounded almost awed.
‘No more than the rest of us,’ said Mark gently. ‘I should take the helm. We need to get the hell away from here before the Cart
erites find some way of reaching us. They’re still out there.’
‘Wait a second,’ said Zoe. She launched from the wall and glided over to him. She fixed him with a deep stare. ‘You did great,’ she said. ‘I’m not the kind of woman who needs a hero. But you’re my hero anyway.’
She pulled him in for a kiss. This time, Mark wasn’t as surprised. Instead, he felt the waking of an intensely warm and bright emotion inside him so strong that it threatened to rob his lungs of air. It was, he thought, an all-encompassing feeling of not-loneliness – a connection with someone he admired who for some reason also admired him.
Their lips met. Bells rang, followed by a thunder-crack of Casimir-buffers firing and the grating siren of a radiation alert. Mark’s eyes flew open. He checked the sensors.
At the edge of the Carter System, behind a burst of hard light, a spread of alien ships had begun to flicker.
‘The Nems are here,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s end-of-the-world time.’
19.2: ANN
Ann put Parisa down and turned to Lieutenant Koenig – one of the few remaining command deck staff she recognised.
‘You,’ she said. ‘Koenig. Senator Voss has been relieved of command, effective immediately. Give me a status report.’
Koenig stared, her eyes shuttling anxiously back and forth between Ann and the senator. Ann started to lift Voss off the ground a second time.
‘Do we really have to debate this?’ she said.
Voss didn’t comment.
‘The station has been maximally evacuated,’ said Koenig quickly. ‘As many staff as possible have been placed in coma-storage aboard the Ariel Two. The rest of us remaining here are volunteers. There just aren’t enough berths for everyone at this time, particularly now that we’ve lost the senator’s shuttle.’
‘What happened?’ said Ann.
‘The swarm stumbled across it during their search,’ said Koenig. ‘It had Nem-cloaking but no active stealth. We were able to get the Chiyome out of the way but the scout didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been – there were only three people aboard.’
Three more hosts, Ann thought. Three more human minds for the Nems to explore.
‘Frankly, it’s a miracle you escaped that fight intact,’ Koenig added. ‘Snakepit produced an incredible number of drones during that surge. There are nearly ten times as many of them out there now as came in with that nestship.’
Ann shook her head. ‘Then all the new drones sided with the mutant faction? That’s bad.’
Koenig looked confused. ‘Mutant faction?’
Ann sighed. The League officers still had no idea what was actually going on. She’d have to do something about that.
‘Tell me about Kuril Najoma,’ she said. ‘Is he still alive?’
It embarrassed her that she’d relied upon Kuril when it might have cost the man his life. She’d caused him nothing but trouble and he’d absorbed it all without comment. She at least owed him a rescue.
‘Give us some credit,’ said Parisa, gently trying to remove Ann’s clenched fingers off her jacket. ‘He’s under arrest here on the station. We weren’t about to give him a berth after what he’d done, but we’re not murderers.’
Ann shot the senator a dry look. ‘We’re all murderers here, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ said Ann. ‘I want Kuril brought to me at once.’ She had her shadow unlock the comms. ‘Now tell me about the Nems. What’s happening?’
Koenig brightened slightly. ‘They’ve fled to the out-system, thank goodness, and appear to be preparing for a return to Tiwanaku.’
‘That is most definitely not good,’ said Ann. ‘How far away are they?’
‘About thirteen AU.’
‘How long till their estimated departure?’ said Ann.
Koenig shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Our SAP models have kind of given up. Brinsen is probably the best man we have on Nem swarm behaviour.’
‘Then get him up here, too,’ said Ann. ‘Now!’
Koenig mumbled into her visor.
[Open a channel to the entire station, please,] Ann told her shadow. [These people need to be filled in.]
[Done.]
While Voss stood there staring at her with exhausted contempt, Ann ushered a camera drone over and addressed the League.
‘People of the League,’ she said. Her voice echoed from speakers all across Snakepit Station. ‘There has been a change of plan. We always assumed the Nems represented a retaliation mechanism. Now, however, we know that’s not what they’re for. Their real purpose is to react to threats and incorporate their enemies’ weapons back into Snakepit’s reasoning matrix. In this case, the weapon they collected was human sentience. Like it or not, we have inadvertently given birth to a new alien species – one that apparently requires human minds as part of its operating system. It is now almost as intelligent as humanity and getting smarter all the time.
‘The Nems returned here to assert control over their homeworld and prepare it for the wholesale incorporation of the human race. Will Monet blocked that but the mutants are still out there. For whatever reason, they didn’t accept Will’s supremacy. I have to assume that means they’ve selected a new nest site: Earth.
‘As humanity’s acting ambassador for alien contact, I am hereby taking charge of this operation. This has become a game of species survival and the stakes are now so high that your political concerns must be set aside. As Will Monet’s envoy, I will personally vouch for every member of this organisation and ensure their protection from political fallout caused by the League’s work, with the exception of Parisa Voss and Sam Shah. I will shortly be leaving on the Ariel Two to attempt to prevent the Nem swarm departure. The League has a chance to redeem itself. We’re now the people best equipped and informed to defend the human race. Good luck, everyone. We’ll be back for the rest of you as soon as we can.’
Voss glared at her as she closed the channel. ‘Singling people out for punishment is a little petty, don’t you think?’ she said.
Ann glared at her. ‘This has nothing to do with punishment. You made poor leadership decisions and now you’re going to take responsibility for them. That’s how leadership works. I can assure you that I will be strictly factual in my report. I’ll even let you read it before I submit it to the IPSO tribunal.’
Jaco stepped in from the pod bay, a sick, guilty look on his action-hero face.
‘Ma’am,’ he said weakly.
‘Jaco,’ she said. ‘You’re familiar with Nem behaviour patterns. Take a look at these swarm vectors and tell me how long we have before the drones exit the system.’
She threw the data onto a screen for him to review. Jaco pored over it.
‘On one hand, they’ve got a lot of drones to carry,’ he said. ‘On the other, they came in with a nestship, so their carrier is likely already geared for a large envelope. I’d give them two hours at most.’
Ann glowered. It’d take them that long just to reach the out-system.
Kuril stumbled in between a couple of Spatials.
‘Release that man immediately,’ Ann snapped. The circuits in the walls echoed her command, turning her voice into a deafening electronic shout.
The Spatials stepped rapidly away from their charge without another word.
‘How are you?’ said Ann. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘Oh, please,’ Parisa sneered.
‘I’m fine,’ said Kuril. ‘Interrogation wasn’t fun but I’m in one piece. The drugs have worn off, at least.’
‘I have one last favour to ask of you,’ said Ann.
Kuril’s eyebrows crept upwards. ‘You’re kidding. Another one?’
‘I need to you take command of the Chiyome for me. Jaco Brinsen will be your subcaptain. The command keys will be irrevocably cued to you. If you die, that ship will be floating in space until some
one finds it, which at this rate may be never.’
Kuril let out a single ragged laugh and rubbed his untidy mop of hair.
‘Why me?’ he said.
‘Because right now you’re the only person I trust to be in charge of an invisible planet-buster,’ said Ann. ‘And if we get out of all this alive, I will do my best to make sure that ship stays yours. Your mission is to head straight to New Panama as fast as you can to muster support.’
She turned to Jaco Brinsen. ‘Jaco, are you prepared to accept that subcaptain position?’
‘Of course, ma’am,’ said Jaco. He sounded indignant. ‘I’m loyal to the greater cause of the human race. Hopefully you recognise that. I always have been. Before, that meant serving the League. Now it means cleaning up.’
Ann shook her head. Even now, Jaco Brinsen still managed to be sanctimonious and annoying. Unfortunately, he was also useful.
‘From the moment the League reveals itself, we’ll have a problem,’ said Voss. ‘Fingers will be pointed. Don’t assume the human race will automatically get behind us. Someone’s going to have to rally the team.’
‘Let me guess,’ Ann snarled. ‘You want that job. You think I should just let you leave with Jaco rather than make you come with me. And then, hopefully, I see you later and everyone’s friends again. Is that it?’
‘I’m proposing that you let me help,’ said Voss sharply.
‘No deal,’ Ann growled. ‘You’re coming with me in the Ariel Two whether you like it or not. We leave immediately.’
Ann’s second attempted shuttle crossing to the Ariel Two couldn’t have been more different from her first. This time, there were no drones to avoid or League soldiers to escape. Rather than being thrown around by Will’s evasives, the shuttle flew on a straight-line boost at three-point-eight gees of thrust. Ann could barely feel it.
Parisa Voss lay in the couch behind her looking ill from the persistent acceleration. But Ann’s attention wasn’t on her former boss. She spent the time fighting back the urge to scream while she watched the Nems readying for exit.
When they reached the Ariel Two, Nelson Aquino was waiting for them in the docking pod. His bloodshot eyes suggested he’d taken Will’s apparent loss harder than the rest of them. He looked at Ann oddly.
