Jana shook her head. 'No, Prof,' she groaned. 'That was Kaz. The only reason he had that pass was 'cause you sent us to the guy who had it.'
Kairos went pale. 'Predestination.'
'If you say so,' muttered Jana. 'You refused to tell us much because you didn't want to risk creating a paradox. Now I'm back and it looks to me like the events played out exactly as they did first time round. We didn't manage to stop the assassination attempt, so I don't know if we changed anything or not. You have to tell me now. In the original timeline, what happened next?'
Kairos and Quil looked at each other seriously, then Quil nodded gently. 'We'd better show her,' she said.
The way she said it made Jana terribly nervous. Quil rose to her feet and reached out a hand to help her up.
'Sparks, remember,' Jana said caustically as she rose under her own steam.
Kairos and Quil led Jana back up the stairs to the conference area in the old undercroft. They sat round the big table and Kairos called up a screen.
'The events you lived through on Mars took place only three days before we rescued Quil from Earth interrogation and created the quantum bubble,' he said. 'So for me, what you are about to see is very recent history.'
'You have to understand,' added Quil, 'that all broadcasts from Mars are strictly controlled. The only version of events made public was officially approved. You'll see what I mean.'
Kairos waved his hand and the screen came to life.
Over an opening shot of the city, filmed long-distance so it looked small and fragile huddled beneath its dome on a vast plain, a male voice intoned:
'This morning, the Mars peace conference was due to begin with a public ceremony, but events took a dramatic turn before talks could get under way.'
Shaky footage of the city plaza, shot from above, so probably a drone camera. Godless troops lined up across the entrance of the hotel, blocking entrance and exit.
'At around 9 a.m. Mars time, Godless troops cordoned off the hotel where they had been staying, taking hundreds of journalists and hotel staff hostage and delivering a stark message.'
Close-up of Quil's mask, and her voice saying, 'The Godless are coming for you. We will descend and we will swarm and we will ferret you out, no matter how deep you bury yourself, how far you run. We will find you and you will see justice.'
It occurred to Jana that being unable to see Quil's lips move was a great advantage to the Earth propaganda machine - they could film her mask and edit her voice to say whatever they wanted, although in this instance they hadn't needed to make too many changes.
Cut back to the plaza and footage of the battle raging outside the hotel.
'Earth forces attempted to negotiate with the terrorists, but it was hopeless, and the massacre of the hostages began.'
The picture then cut to inside the hotel ballroom, showing people running for the exits in panic. The picture floated above the crowd zooming in on Godless troops firing. The way it had been edited made it look as if they were firing into the crowd rather than at the camera drones. A flash, and the picture went blank. The screen stayed black for a moment as the voiceover continued ominously.
'The Godless were forced to retreat, but when Earth soldiers entered the hotel they found no survivors.'
Now the report cut to the bridge of the Earth flagship, the one that had featured so prominently in the news reports in the days before. The scene was utter chaos, with explosions and smoke, the captain's face lit by flame as he bellowed orders.
'Earth's flagship, the Redoubtable, in geostationary orbit above the city, had no warning of the cowardly surprise attack, launched simultaneously with the Godless attack in the city below. Overwhelmed, she took heavy damage and the captain was lost in the first volley.'
The next shot, filmed through the dome from high above the city, picked out a bright bloom of flame in the sky above before panning down to show the streets around the plaza and the conference centre. Jana could see the tanks, but they were not firing. People scurried everywhere - soldiers and civilians, fleeing and fighting.
'In the city, the Godless pressed their advantage by attacking local residents in their homes.'
A close shot of a housing block crumbling - crucially, there was no footage of the tank's laser, which had cut through it the moment before the film began.
'Faced with such indiscriminate slaughter, our tanks had no choice but to open fire in the hope of saving lives.'
A spectacular shot of the tram being sliced in half. Then the screen abruptly cut to a studio and the news anchor, looking solemnly into the camera.
'But despite all the efforts of our heroic soldiers to save the innocent residents of the city, it was not to be. The Godless monsters cut a bloody, merciless swathe through the fleeing civilian population.'
Bodies in the street. Hundreds of them lying like fallen dominoes, in layers like scythed corn.
'Dear God,' whispered Jana.
'Not us,' said Quil. 'By the time these people died, we were three streets away. They were killed for the cameras.'
Jana felt sick and turned away.
'No,' said Quil angrily. 'You've got to see this.'
Jana looked back at the screen as the voiceover continued.
'The Redoubtable, mortally wounded by a cowardly attack, could no longer maintain orbit,' said the anchor solemnly.
And now, without voiceover, a shot of a bright streak racing through the skies of Mars, burning a blinding trail through the upper atmosphere. A massive sonic boom and the camera shook. Debris fell from the dome itself, shaken loose by the force of the blast, raining down diamond shards and steel on to the buildings below. But that was irrelevant in the end, as the fireball raced closer and closer. Jana gasped as she realised it was going to smash straight into the city.
The picture became a single huge ball of flame and then cut to black.
Kairos waved his hand and the screen vanished. Jana sat there in shock at what she'd seen.
'How many?' she whispered after a moment's silence.
'Everyone,' said Quil. 'Everyone who was still in the city when the ship hit. Over half a million souls.'
'We hoped you would be able to save them,' said Kairos quietly. 'But after this, and Beirut, I think we have our answer about time. We can't change the past unless we deliberately create a paradox, and the risks inherent in that are too great. I have to conclude that to all intents and purposes time is a single line, fixed, unchanging and unchangeable. It's self- correcting and we're powerless in the face of it.'
'I don't give a damn about time, Professor,' said Jana, coldly furious at his analytical detachment. 'I give a damn about my friends. About Dora and Kaz.'
Jana turned to Quil. 'How did you escape?' she asked. 'You obviously weren't there when the ship hit. How did you get out?'
'The report was edited, full of lies, you saw that,' explained Quil. 'They conflated time. A lot happened between the tram being shot and the ship crashing, it was over an hour.'
'So tell me.'
Quil was having trouble keeping it together.
The war had been raging for a decade, so this was not her first taste of action. She'd been under fire before, pinned down, outnumbered and outgunned, desperately hunting for a way to beat the odds and turn the tide of battle. All those times she'd remained calm and collected, even the first time. The manner of her birth had inured her to fear and horror from the very start. She had survived that, she could survive anything.
So why now, in yet another firefight on yet another planet, was she finding her pulse racing, her thoughts misting, her panic threatening to overwhelm the calm focus that lent authority to her command?
It was almost as if there was something wrong with her head. It felt indefinably wrong, like she was suffering from concussion or a migraine. Her hands flew to her hair in momentary panic - had she been hit by something and not noticed? She could detect no bruises or wounds.
Maybe she was finally losing her nerve.
There's another one,' shouted her lieutenant, pointing back down the boulevard. She followed his gaze and saw a second tank open fire on one of the residential blocks behind them, sending debris across the street, blocking their retreat.
'If we don't move now, we'll be trapped!' he yelled.
Quil knew he was right. She had to make a decision quickly, even though her thoughts felt as jumbled as the debris she was staring at. She couldn't work out how this situation had gone south so quickly and completely.
When she had agreed to the peace talks, she'd done so from a position of strength. Her forces were so overwhelmingly superior that she'd felt reasonably safe coming to Mars with a small security force. The government knew that if they tried anything, the retaliation would be swift and decisive. She would be exposed, but what would be the point in trying to kill or capture her? It would only hasten their defeat. None of what was happening made sense to her.
She forced herself to speak.
'You, you and you,' she said, picking out three soldiers. 'Stay here and lay down covering fire. The rest of us will make for that cross-street.' She pointed to the entrance to one of the spoke roads that led to the dome's edge. The buildings on the corner had been demolished by the tank ahead of them, but now the dust had cleared somewhat she could see it was passable, albeit with a bit of climbing that would leave them briefly exposed. There was no other option, though.
'Once we're safe, join us,' she said, knowing that the three soldiers covering her escape would not be joining her at all.
'Yes, ma'am,' they chorused, unquestioning.
'Bring the girl,' she added. Her lieutenant nodded and hoisted Dora, still unconscious, across his shoulder again.
'On three. One, two—-' A massive burst of laser fire cut across them from the junction of the road they'd recently exited, cutting down one of the soldiers.
'GO!' screamed Quil and she led the retreat as all but three of the Godless broke cover and ran for the debris. Laser fire burned the air around them as they ran. They only had to run the length of a street and scramble over a pile of rubble; at most it took twenty seconds, but they felt like the longest seconds of her life. She reckoned she had about thirty soldiers when they broke cover; by the time they made it to the other side of the rubble and were running down the street, no longer under fire, she counted eighteen. Her lieutenant, and Dora, were not among them. She cursed inwardly at the loss of the mysterious time traveller, but there was nothing she could do. Their only chance was to make it to the spaceport, commandeer a vessel and break for the fleet. She glanced up, wondering if news of the situation down here had reached the ships. A bright flash in the sky, like a star flaring so bright it could be seen in the daytime, gave her the answer. She had little concern for her ships - the Godless vessels massively outnumbered the Earth fleet. The enemy's ships may be impressive, but they were few. The best they could hope for would be to delay the advance for a while.
They were not alone on the street. Slow-moving civilians, or those who had stopped to gather possessions from their houses rather than just running, were still struggling down the road away from the fight. All had their backs to Quil and her group, so it was only as they drew level or overtook them that the civilians realised they were there. Most screamed and ran sideways into buildings, some turned and ran back towards their homes in total unreasoning panic. One young man actually ran at them wielding a baseball bat, but her lieutenant cut him down.
On they ran, to the end of this street and straight across the next circular boulevard. The crowds of civilians were thicker here so they had to push and shove their way through panicked people who didn't know where to run. Their progress slowed, especially when one group of men decided to have a go and charged at them. They managed to bring down two of her soldiers and were kicking and stamping them when a single sweep from her gun-beam put a sudden stop to the violence. After that the crowd peeled away from the Godless and their speed increased again. Behind them, towards the centre, they could still hear explosions and gunfire, which made no sense to Quil. Who were the Earth forces shooting at?
The crowds gradually thinned. It seemed those people who were running were mostly heading in the opposite direction, towards the elevator. The civilian population here, where the fighting still seemed a few streets away, were not yet pouring out of their homes in panic. They passed trams stopped dead in the street; the system must have been shut down to prevent them hijacking another vehicle.
'Half a mile, ma'am,' grunted a soldier running beside her.
'There'll be resistance,' replied Quil breathlessly. She pointed to one of the ubiquitous security cameras that hung from the lampposts. 'They know where we're heading.'
Their progress was unimpeded, and though their presence provoked extremes of fear or anger, all they had to contend with were jeers or screams from bystanders until they reached the outermost circular boulevard, the one that ran inside the rim of the dome.
The spaceport buildings, a huge complex of warehouses used to store materials for both import and export, were two streets to their left, about a hundred metres, built into the edge of the dome itself. Outside the dome, on the other side of the diamond sheets that composed the city's skin, were a series of runways and landing pads designed to receive all kinds of vessels. Quil zoomed in on the craft currently in dock and quickly identified the best suited for a quick clean escape - a nimble, rugged little mining craft that sat among rows of large, slow haulage vehicles.
She counted her soldiers. They were down to sixteen.
'Can anyone see fortifications, checkpoints, any kind of barricade?' asked Quil urgently.
Nobody could, which made Quil deeply uneasy. She was sure there were soldiers lying in wait everywhere. She felt a deep fear, a kind of overwhelming paranoia about the silence and stillness ahead of her, but she fought it down and turned to her soldiers.
'All right, listen,' she said, projecting calm resolve but unable to hide a slight, uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. 'This is almost certainly a trap. They know where we are, they've had time to prepare. But we have no choice but to carry on. So, see that mining vessel there?' She pointed to the ship she had picked out, still connected to the dome by the airlock tunnel used for passage to and fro. 'Everyone make for that. The first person inside, prep for take-off. And understand - the person at the controls is in charge. They get to decide when they cut their losses and take off. If you're all aboard and I'm stuck behind, don't come get me. That's an order.'
The soldiers nodded.
'Fan out as soon as we break cover and run for your lives. Good luck to us all.' Quil crouched, ready to run. 'On my mark. Mark!'
She took off like a sprinter from the starting blocks, her loyal guards at her side, and she ran as fast as she ever had.
She had been half expecting a volley of fire the moment they broke cover, but when they'd covered half the distance in a few seconds, she began to think they would make it.
Almost the instant she had registered that thought, there was a blinding flash of light and a deafening hum. Unable to see or hear, her fear overwhelmed her and she froze in the middle of the street, blinking away the blindness, shaking. Even in the midst of what she was beginning to think was a panic attack, she was still questioning her responses, unable to accept that her reactions were natural, so out of character were they.
As her vision returned she turned through 360 degrees, looking for her soldiers, hoping against hope that some of them had made it.
All sixteen of them lay around her in various pieces.
She was the only one still standing, and that didn't last long for she fell to her knees and screamed her fury at the sky as she noticed the snipers on the rooftops all standing, no longer hiding their presence, all their weapons trained on her.
'Do it then!' she bellowed, crying. 'What are you waiting for?'
A single Earth soldier strolled casually out of the nearest port warehouse. An officer, tall and confident, he did not s
eem bothered at all by the carnage that surrounded him.
He walked up to Quil and looked down at her.
'Get up,' he ordered contemptuously.
He was right, realised Quil. What the hell was she doing on her knees? She wasn't going to be taken like this. She took a deep breath and rose to her feet as elegantly as she could, but her knees were shaking and her bottom lip was trembling. She faced down the officer with all the defiance she could muster.
He sneered and held out a tablet.
'Take it,' he said.
She did so, and looked at the screen to see the face of the president looking out at her. The desk and the window were familiar - she was calling from the Oval Office.
'Take off the mask,' said the president.
Slowly, Quil reached her free hand up and undid the clasp at the side, holding the edge of the mask between her fingers and pulling it away. Hot, dry air caressed her face. She stared through the screen into the eyes of the president, in direct contact, in full sight for the first time. They had exchanged messages through intermediaries and diplomatic channels, traded propaganda videos and speeches, even talked briefly on an audio channel once the peace talks had been finalised.
But they'd never looked each other in the eyes, even on screen.
Quil had been waiting for this moment all her life. She had dreamed of it, fantasised about how she would unmask herself, the shock and surprise of it, the delicious pleasure of seeing realisation dawn in the eyes of her vanquished enemy.
This was not how she had imagined it at all.
The president looked out at her calmly from the glass tablet screen, and Quil realised that she had already known. Somehow, despite all Quil's precautions, the president had learned her identity long before today.
Which left only one thing for Quil to say.
'Hello, Mother.'
Henry Sweetclover felt light-headed and nauseated.
The stump at the end of his right arm throbbed angrily, but the anaesthetic Dora had administered was blocking the worst of the pain. That didn't stop the world swirling around him as the shock took hold, though. The Beirut sky seemed to swoop and twirl above him while the roof beneath him undulated like a boat in choppy waters.
Second Lives Page 21
