“If you start thinking like that, we might as well commandeer the abattoir and start killing people humanely right now.”
“You’re right. I’ll cheer up. I’ll go see Chris.”
Trinder left the briefing room knowing that everything was in competent hands. Seeing his detachment willing to stand by him made this awful, weird day possibly the best of his life. Once the civilians were inside, he’d give the detachment another chance to leave with the shuttle — if Erskine hadn’t withdrawn her offer by then — but he was staying no matter what. If people survived the bombing, it’d be harder to handle the aftermath with his troops gone, but he’d worry about that when he had to.
He headed back to the lobby at the main doors, another space where staff congregated to chat, and found a small crowd. He was about to slip through the small side door unnoticed when he realised who they were clustered around. It was Erskine, and he wasn’t going to get past her without being seen.
Too late to change your mind. Face her.
She spotted him and extricated herself from the melee as if she’d been signing autographs rather than fending off agitated staff who wanted answers.
“Major,” she said, zeroing in on him. “I’m glad I caught you. I need to ask you some questions.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and steered him outside the doors. The humid night air hit him like a wet rag.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I need you to locate Dr Kim and stop her contacting APS. I also need to know if you have the kind of ordnance that can stop a quadrubot if Solomon’s behaviour becomes more erratic.”
Here we go. That explained the need to talk away from the direct gaze of the security cameras.
“Man-portable armour-piercing missiles,” Trinder said. “We don’t train with them, though. I’d have to check the armoury to be sure we still have any.”
“Will it stop him, or just slow him down?”
“He’s too fast and it’s probably ill-advised to try.”
“Oh. And Dr Kim? Is that ill-advised too?”
“It’s not my priority at the moment, ma’am.”
“And what might that be?”
“Getting everyone who doesn’t have a place on Elcano into a shelter.”
“Have I understood you correctly, Major? Are you refusing orders?”
Of course I am. Might as well say so. “If the orders are to destroy Solomon and arrest Dr Kim, yes, ma’am, I do believe I am. Although I’ll reconsider Solomon if he becomes a physical threat to civilians.”
“You can be replaced, Trinder.”
“So I can, ma’am, but I don’t think you’ve got anyone who can do our jobs, and if you have, they’re certainly not armed.”
“Is that a threat?”
Erskine took it all with a cold calm. Trinder realised he was scared of her for no good reason. She couldn’t fire him, she couldn’t harm him physically, and he didn’t care what she thought of him. This was no time to lose his nerve.
“It’s a statement, Director. You’ve failed to respond to a crisis. You know the drill. If we have a chemhaz incident or a radiation leak, we’re responsible for the safety of our own staff and any civilians living in a three-mile radius. The bombing qualifies as a radiation leak. So you do whatever you need to save your select list, and we’ll look out for everyone else. We’re converting the basement floors to an emergency shelter for Kill Line, the transit camp, and the staff who didn’t make the sort. We’re setting up now. We’ll be moving them in over the next thirty-six hours.”
“I didn’t authorise that.”
“I didn’t ask you. I’ve told you why.”
“I warn you, Major, there’ll be a reckoning for this one day.”
“It’s right here and right now. Just stay your side of the line and don’t impede me or my troops.”
“I really had you all wrong. My errors of judgement seem to be catching up with me today.”
“Me too,” Trinder said, and walked off.
He almost didn’t believe he’d said all that. It was an odd kind of rebellion. Nobody had been shot or strung up, and there were no tanks on the lawn. It was more like a married couple’s tiff, where the old man stalked off to the woodshed and the wife went to visit her mother. He was kidding himself if he thought it was going to be easy because it was bloodless, though. Maybe Erskine had a contingency plan that he didn’t know about. There were combat bots in storage. Perhaps she had someone in the robotics section who could deploy those without Solomon’s involvement.
“Sol, you bastard, you sure do pick your moments.” His absence was a major blow. Trinder wanted to believe the AI was doing something clever and world-saving behind the scenes. If there was ever a time he needed to talk to him, it was now. “Okay, screw you. We’ll manage without you.”
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” said a voice in his head, except it wasn’t nagging doubt or his conscience that had spoken. It was Solomon, in his earpiece. “I knew you could. I’m a very good judge of character.”
“Sol? Sol!”
But he was gone again. Trinder could only rely on flesh and blood now. He headed for the vehicle compound, pleased to see that Ray Marriott, whose lab tech parents almost certainly weren’t on the Elcano list, was already guarding the locked gates with an expression that said he’d stay there until Hell froze over.
* * *
Director’s Suite:
20 Minutes Later
They’d been up against the clock from the moment APS issued its warning, but midnight loomed in Erskine’s mind as the moment at which things had to start happening. Forty-eight hours was a simpler, starker number to grasp.
Word would be getting out by now. Trinder’s shelter plan was conspicuous and the chances were that everyone would know about the deadline by the time she made the announcement. They just wouldn’t know who had a ticket out.
She knew what she had to do. An amputation was best executed fast and decisively in the manner of an old ship’s surgeon. Her best shot was only a gamble, though. She was banking on Solomon blinking first.
Berman brought in another pot of coffee. “Are you going to delegate the bad news to department heads?” he asked, filling her favourite Limoges cup.
“No, it’ll just look like I’m shifting the blame. We can’t afford to export blood feuds to Opis. If people are ever going to recover from this, it’s better that they focus their resentment on me. A common enemy unites people.”
“And you’re set on a mass meeting.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to post a list on the wall and make them scrabble to see if their names are on it.”
“Reading it out in public is worse. And it’ll take a painfully long time.”
“But I need to show my face. Sending them notifications feels cowardly.”
“It’s not about your feelings. It’s about theirs.”
Erskine admired Berman’s ability to know when she needed to be challenged. “Well, I’ve still got to make myself available.”
“Do you actually want them to stone you? Is this some penance?”
“I want them to know that I didn’t take the decision lightly and that I’m willing to face them,” Erskine said. “Actually, you’re right. This is about me. So perhaps I should send a note with the list to explain why people made the sort.”
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Children — well, only Dr Mangel would dare challenge that. Mothers — that’ll probably be accepted, but some will argue about fathers because we’ve never really outgrown the women-and-children-first logic. Then you’ll get into who’s worth more to the mission, which is a minefield. So I wouldn’t offer any detailed explanation if I were you.”
“They deserve one.”
“The argument isn’t winnable.”
“Okay, I won’t even try. There’s no time left anyway.”
“That’s more like it,” Berman said. He was like a sports coach, prodding and pushing until she upped her game. She tended to forget that. “No backsliding. Because then you won’t save anything or anybody.”
“I fall for it every time, don’t I?”
“It’s my job to make sure you do yours, Director.”
“Phil, do you think I’m wrong?”
“About stopping Kim talking to her government? You and Solomon believe in a different Nomad. You see a principle. He sees individuals. They’re two entirely different goals that overlap in places. Just be sure why you’re doing this, and that you’re not just protecting Nomad because it’s what you were expected to do.”
Put in those terms, Erskine knew that Nomad came first. It was about a different kind of survival.
“If our work’s hijacked by APS, it’ll be militarised,” she said. “Or Opis will be appropriated by the super-rich and heads of state as some kind of bolthole.”
“Director, the entirety of Ainatio and Nomad was a tech oligarch’s pet project.”
“Is this all leading up to persuading me that we should trade it in and hope APS is nice to us? They could take it all, cherry-pick a few personnel, and still erase the rest. It all depends on how much value they place on our expertise and a few thousand lives. They might regard us as irrelevant in the global scheme of things.”
“If I was sure you were a hundred per cent wrong, I wouldn’t be standing here helping you.”
Erskine drained her coffee and handed Berman a folded sheet of paper to indicate she had things to say that weren’t for Solomon’s ears. “Have you read my draft statement?”
“Let me take another look.”
Berman read the note and raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t a statement at all, of course, but a list of points: Kim hadn’t been located yet, Trinder had mutinied, Kim would therefore need to be detained some other way, and that all this had to be co-ordinated with the power-down of the entire facility. It was tedious to have to scribble notes or go outside to escape Solomon’s scrutiny, but outsmarting an AI that had free run of the entire system was never going to be easy.
“I hadn’t realised that.” Berman nodded as he read. Erskine assumed he meant Trinder. “But there might be a more diplomatic way of wording it.”
Berman bent over the note and wrote on it, then slipped it back to her carefully to avoid the security cameras picking it up. It didn’t matter that Solomon knew they’d try to counter him. As long as he didn’t know exactly how, they stood a chance. Erskine pushed her chair back to the wall to make sure she hadn’t missed any line of sight over her shoulder, then studied the note.
Berman had surprisingly untidy handwriting for a diligent man. He ambled over and stood beside her, blocking all camera angles.
TIME TO GO SEE KENT ABOUT THE SHUTDOWN. DON’T WASTE TIME LOOKING FOR KIM, GET THE COMMS SHUT DOWN ASAP.
“I think that’ll do,” he said. “I’m going to visit the hangars and see how the prep’s going. Do you want to come?”
“Of course.”
Erskine rarely saw most of the facility. Neither did most staff, come to that. It was sprawling and empty. Berman drove the buggy down nearly half a mile of deserted passages to the hangars, occasionally steering around maintenance bots and sending them retreating into alcoves or up walls.
Erskine was now committed to a shifting flow chart that depended on the responses of an AI that was probably a better strategist than she was, had human assistance, or at least lack of opposition, and might not behave rationally. It was like playing squash blindfold.
“Solomon,” she said. “Solomon, if you can hear me, I hope you understand why I’m scared of APS getting involved. They’ll take a few people who’ll be useful to them, but the rest of us won’t matter. We’ll lose control of Nomad. It’s our last chance to rebuild on our own terms.”
She waited for a response, head tilted a little closer to her collar mike, but she didn’t really expect one. She checked the trackers on her screen to locate everyone else of significance. Trinder and the two Brits were moving around the storage areas on floor 1U, and Alex was in the main lobby with clusters of other trackers around him, indicating he was besieged by staff. Kim’s tracker was still in her apartment, but Erskine had already had someone check it out, and the woman was gone. The question was how much time and effort to put into finding her. It was a huge site, she was probably experienced at evading capture, and a big search would just alert Solomon and perhaps force him to contact APS.
If he hasn’t already. He’s had time. But if he had, I’d have heard from them by now. He hasn’t done it yet because he’s bluffing. Or because he can’t.
Solomon knew Elcano’s hatches could be opened manually once the shuttle was docked by the onboard AI. His lockout was all theatre. It was potentially dangerous for personnel unused to EVAs to suit up and work in vacuum, but it would be done, even if it meant losing an engineer in the process.
No, I don’t think he’ll jeopardise lives. I just wish I could be certain.
It was the kind of mistake Erskine would only get to make once, and the type of operation that needed a full team of men like Marc and Tev, with watches synchronised and charges set. But she was going to have to rely instead on a handful of managers who couldn’t even use the comms system to co-ordinate their actions.
The buggy rolled out of the last set of doors into humid night air and fierce white lights. One of the shuttles sat in the middle of the apron, trailing pipelines and cabling like a patient in intensive care. Everything suddenly seemed much more real and final.
“There,” Berman said. “We’re out of Solomon’s earshot now. We can talk like normal adults. Let’s go find Greg.”
A bot the size of a packing case rolled slowly alongside the shuttle, scanning the hull for defects. Erskine stood back to let it pass. Eventually Kent appeared at the top of a ramp and beckoned her inside. She’d flown in shuttles a few times in the early days, but never in one like this. The cramped rows of seats and the utilitarian fittings made it look like a budget airline that had seen better days.
“We put in some extra seats,” Kent said. “We’ll be done in thirty hours. So we can launch at noon the day after tomorrow.”
It wasn’t much time for staff to pack and say goodbye. “When do we need to start moving them up to this part of the campus?”
“As soon as you can. It’s going to be time-consuming. Do it in batches. We can park people in the office blocks on the other side of the runway as they’re shipped in, though, because there’s plumbing and enough room to have a nap. So it’s not perfect, but tolerable for a few hours.”
“Good. The next issue is Kim. Trinder’s refused to take orders and he’s setting up a shelter in the underground floors. So the detachment isn’t looking for her, and may well turn a blind eye if they run into her. We’re still searching as discreetly as we can, but the priority now is to shut down the power and hope she doesn’t find a way to get a message out before then.”
“I’m ready to go on that,” Kent said. “You want to see what I’m using to take out the mast and its power supply? It’s pretty low tech.”
Kent led Erskine and Berman out of the shuttle and across the tarmac to a small marquee in which he’d set up a temporary workshop with a standalone generator. On a workbench, he’d assembled a collection of long, flexible snake bots. Their scratched, matt-black coating indicated heavy use over the years.
“Pythons,” Kent said. “The basic design hasn’t changed in a couple of centuries. They’re great for working in confined spaces, but they’re also hard to spot moving on the ground. Solomon won’t see them coming, not unless he’s looking for them in the right place.”
He picked one up and activated it. It writhed like a snake, then ejected an array of tools wi
th a metallic zing. There was a clean, soulless efficiency about it.
“And not networked,” Erskine said.
“No. I just programme them here. Imagine where a real snake can go, then give it tools and basic instructions. They’ll make short work of the comms mast before Sol knows it. They could crawl to their target on their own, but I’ll drop them off a little nearer to save them time.”
Erskine trusted Kent to know what he was doing. If she could have brought the shutdown forward, she would have, but it was hard enough to co-ordinate a precise sequence on watches alone without trying to change timings now.
“We’ll talk again after I’ve made the announcement,” Erskine said. “I’d better do it now. It’s late, but I don’t think it can wait until the morning.”
“I don’t think people are going to get much sleep anyway,” Kent said.
Erskine went back to the buggy with Berman. When she put her hand on the narrow ledge of the dashboard, she could see a tremor.
“Can you get the conference room opened?” The cool air in the corridors was a welcome relief. “I’ll send the message to staff right away. I’ll start the meeting in half an hour to give everyone time.”
“Certainly, Director.”
“Do you think Trinder’s right? About the underground levels being suitable shelters, I mean.”
“There’s nowhere else.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I just don’t know, Director. Only that it’s better protection than being on the surface. I’ll find out soon enough.”
“Phil, I’m sorry, that was crass of me — ”
“My choice, Director. Don’t beat yourself up.”
Erskine could only think of those floors buried under rubble, with air vents blocked, or contaminated rain trickling in. There was no way of knowing how much protection they’d really provide until it happened. The building was designed to keep hazards in, not shut them out.
And there’s nothing I can do about it now.
The Best of Us Page 38
