Ah, there was Trinder now. Chris heard the whine and crunch of a Caracal coming up the track. A faint ellipse of light expanded in the darkness, and then the vehicle rounded a bend and Chris was blinded by the beams until Trinder dimmed them. The Caracal pulled up beside him and Trinder got out.
“Sorry I didn’t call ahead, Chris,” he said. “You’re not patrolling tonight, are you?”
“No, I was looking for you. One of your people said you were coming over. What’s with the lights at your place?”
Trinder glanced back over his shoulder. “They’re prepping one of the shuttles. That’s why I’m here. We’ve got a really big problem. We need to move your people and the townsfolk inside the facility ASAP.”
“Why?” Chris’s first thought was die-back. He couldn’t work out why that would mean an evacuation, though. “And where are you going to put that many people?”
“I’ll cut to the chase. We’ve got forty-eight hours before APS drops salted nukes to sterilise the area. They spotted the die-back spreading. Erskine’s shipping out as many as she can in Elcano, Sol’s locked the ship to stop her abandoning the rest, and I’m not taking orders from her any more.”
Chris felt a moment of cold nausea. All he could see was Baltimore, those months of hell, and the people who’d struggled to come here with him because they trusted him to keep them safe.
And I just brought them to the last big target on the East Coast.
We should have kept going south. Wrong call.
He’d plummet into despair for a few seconds, and then he’d go numb and clarity would kick in. He took a breath. It always went like this. There: now he could think and breathe again. There was just a shadow of formless anger left and he didn’t know who he needed to be angry with.
“When you say Sol’s locked the ship, has he lost it or something?” he asked. “I can’t imagine him risking people’s lives.”
“He isn’t, strictly speaking. The shuttle can dock at the orbital using the on-board AI, and they’ll send an engineer out in a suit to open all the hatches manually. It’s a pain in the ass, and none of the engineers are used to EVA, so it’s dangerous. But it can be done.”
“So can we get people clear of here? Has APS given you a forecast for the fallout? Are they going to use the same ordnance they did last time?”
“Sodium or lithium, I’d think. They say it’ll be contaminated for a few weeks, then it’ll be safe to return. Provided you don’t mind going back to a wasteland and a lot of building damage, that is. Erskine’s going to talk to them again in the morning.” Trinder opened the passenger door for him. “We don’t have enough vehicles to evacuate without repeat trips, so we’ll run out of time, but even if we can ship people out, what happens when we get there?”
Chris was thinking about Kingston and if it was far enough. But there was no power, probably no safe water, and a whole raft of other problems. Establishing a camp for a hundred people with one survival-trained guy to each civilian had been hard enough. Setting up somewhere in forty-eight hours for fifteen hundred others who’d never had to live rough, and with no real logistics support, was going to mean weeks of chaos, shortages, and then disease and malnutrition.
“Have you got a bunker in there, then?”
“It’s the underground floors. It’s not designed to be a bunker, but it’s a long way down, we’ve got a few months’ supplies, and it’s the best we can do.”
“And then what? We come up to the surface. The facility’s trashed. The farmland’s dead. Can Sol even finish the work on Shackleton?”
“I don’t know.”
Chris had moved folks so many times that the thought of it made his stomach sink. But he knew exactly how to do it. Routine took away the fear. “Okay. Our people know the drill. Kill Line, though — they’ve never done this.”
“I don’t have the right to ask you to help us out.”
“What else are we going to do, sit and watch?” It had been pretty good here. Chris had known it would probably have to end one day, but he hadn’t expected anything like this. “Poor Zakko isn’t going to get his passing-out ceremony, then. The party food’s all ready for tomorrow.”
“We’ll fix something for him.”
“So Erskine decided to let us in.”
“I didn’t ask her permission.”
“Aren’t you supposed to shoot deposed leaders in a coup?”
“We’re not very good at this whole coup thing. We just have a hissy fit and ignore each other.”
“But you’ve got all the weapons.”
“Yeah. We’re not that dumb.”
“How long can we survive down there?”
“With eleven hundred fewer mouths to feed, we’ve probably got food for nine or ten months. Maybe more if we limit portions.”
That sounded like enough time to work out something, although Chris didn’t know what. “But how about Sol’s link to the other ships? Will you still have comms after the blast? How about shuttles? There’s going to be a hell of a lot of damage, even with salted bombs.”
“They can lower the shuttles below ground like a carrier’s hangar deck. Storm protection.” Trinder parked outside the bar. It seemed to be the natural centre of the camp for him. “But we’re probably going to lose some gear. That’s inevitable. I need to talk to Sol about protecting the uplink.”
“What are our chances?”
Chris knew that he and Dan would lie to each other, and know they were lying. That was part of the business of not giving up until they absolutely had to. It was what you did. You put on the uniform, and you didn’t quit until someone or something knocked you down for the last time. But it broke his heart. He forgot he still had one until times like this.
They all trusted me. And look where I brought them.
“Well, not as good a chance as being in Elcano,” Trinder said. “But probably better than trying to run.”
“So she ditched you guys too.”
“No, we were on her list. But there was no way I could abandon hundreds of our own people.”
“Did you order your guys to stay at their posts?”
“I told them they could quit the detachment. But they all stayed. Plus the two Brits.”
Honour — service, responsibility, running towards trouble instead of away from it, whatever folks called this thing — was weird. It was a shitty survival strategy. It got you killed. But there were those who couldn’t think any other way, and those who never would. They might as well have been two species. Chris knew which one was his.
“There you go,” he said. “Keep the faith, huh?”
Jared’s lights were still on when they got to his hut. Chris rapped on the door, rehearsing the words and paring them down to what was needed. Marsha opened the door and glanced at Dan, and her face said it all. Jared walked up behind her.
“How bad?” she asked.
“This area’s going to be nuked by APS in forty-eight hours and we need to get everyone ready to move into Ainatio tomorrow,” Chris said. “They’ve got underground shelters set up. There’s more, but it can wait.”
“On it.” Jared was used to very bad news and took it as calmly as Chris knew he would. He went back inside and emerged in his tactical vest, pockets stuffed with gear. “How much have you got room for, Dan?”
“Everybody, plus whatever really matters to them. Plenty of room, plenty of food, and water.” Trinder paused. “Yeah, the dogs too. We can set up compounds.”
“Piece of cake, then,” Jared said, and jogged off down the road towards Dieter’s place.
Within a couple of minutes, lights were coming on all around the camp. The sound of activity — voices, footsteps, doors opening and closing — suddenly grew. This was their cascade system. Jared alerted Dieter, and Dieter would alert two more troops, and each would go call on two more until everyone was cove
red. Then all they had to do when they got their instructions was go to the civilian assigned to them and make sure they were briefed, packed, and ready to roll. It would probably work just as well with larger numbers, but it was too late to set it up for Kill Line.
Jared came back up the road. “I’ve opened the mess hall for a briefing. Five minutes.”
“You’ve played this game before,” Trinder said.
Chris nodded. “Ready to tell them the whole sorry story?”
“Sure.”
Chris had to admire Trinder. Whatever had gone on with Erskine couldn’t have been easy, but he didn’t let any of that creep into his briefing. It was all neutrally worded and stripped down to the facts: where they’d need to go, what to expect when they got there, what everyone should bring with them, and a frank description of the uncertainties. Erin Piller watched Trinder carefully. Chris guessed she’d taken a shine to him, and that was no bad thing in these times.
She raised her hand. “Dan, just so we know how to handle the Ainatio staff, how did Erskine decide who gets to leave?”
“The last I heard was families first, then a spread across departments, then — well, usefulness to the mission.”
Erin nodded. “Okay. So there’s going to be some real resentment in there.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not going either,” Chuck said.
“Would we put them before our own if we had the ship?”
She had a point. But there was something else Trinder hadn’t told them. Chris could see it in the way the guy paused for a second when he was summing up the situation they were facing. Chris had questions, like whether Erskine had negotiated this forty-eight hours, and if she’d tried hard enough to come up with a solution that APS would buy, but he wouldn’t pin Trinder down on it in front of everyone. He’d ask later.
When Trinder had finished his briefing, Chris stood up.
“Okay, so we go knocking on doors now and put everyone on standby tonight,” he said. “We start moving out at eleven hundred. But before we do, we will hold Zakko’s pass-out, okay? Zero nine hundred, here. It’ll be shorter than planned, but it’s on. Don’t forget. Okay. Dismiss.”
They banged the tables and did their best to cheer. For once, Zakko didn’t manage a smile. He just looked awkward. Chris stayed behind and waited with Trinder until the mess hall emptied.
“There’s something else going on, isn’t there?” Chris said.
“I’m not hiding anything from you.”
“I realise that, but I know there’s more. Did Erskine just accept this and roll over? And Sol. What’s he really up to?”
Trinder looked as if the day had finally sucked everything out of him. “He thinks Dr Kim can talk APS into delaying long enough for him to get Shack operational.”
“How?”
“By trading technical secrets for time. Erskine thinks they’ll just shut Nomad down and commandeer it. So she refused.”
“But Sol can call APS any time. He can fry the whole facility, too. What’s stopping him from taking over?”
“You ask him. He’s not responding. I can’t tell if he’s giving Erskine the chance to do the right thing. I think that’s part of how he judges people. But it’s a dumb time to do it.”
“So is Kim a spy after all?” Shit. Maybe I should have shot her there and then. “Damn.”
“It doesn’t matter. She knows what she knows, and if they decide they want her back, it doesn’t matter why she knows it. She’ll tell them.”
“I’d take the risk,” Chris said. “Where is she?”
“She’s not chipped, but Sol must be keeping an eye on her somehow.”
Chris didn’t spend every waking hour with the detachment, but he’d done enough patrols with them and spent long enough inside Ainatio to fall into the habit of expecting Solomon to pop up in the ether whenever a question needed an answer. The AI’s silence was conspicuous. Chris fished out his Ainatio radio, part of the stash that Fonseca had sneaked out to the camp, and tapped the general frequency. Solomon was bound to be monitoring it.
“Sol? Sol, it’s Chris. If I were you, Sol, I’d get off my ass and move Kim to a place where Erskine can’t get at her. Like here. Your call, buddy.”
He waited a few seconds. There was no response.
“He must know what he’s doing,” Trinder said. “I want to believe he’ll pull something off at the last minute, but I think this is down to you and me now.”
“Yeah. Let’s go see Doug.”
Chris was happier fixing problems for himself anyway. He realised he’d started to think of Solomon as a lifeguard who could always dive in and save people when they got out of their depth, but maybe some things were beyond even him. It was healthy to be reminded of that. Dependence was a weakness. But the AI should have had the decency to tell them that it was their shit to sort out.
How, though? How do we get out of this?
Sort out APS.
Trinder got into the Caracal and they headed for Doug Brandt’s house.
“Is Sol betting on Erskine blinking first?” Chris asked. “Because apart from trading secrets with APS, I don’t think she’s got any other options. She can save some folks or none, but not all. She’s decided to put her tribe first. I did the same. I’d do it again.”
“Sol wants to save individuals with the right stuff, as he sees it. That’s more like what you did in Baltimore.”
No, it wasn’t. Chris had made a conscious decision not to save people with the wrong stuff, which wasn’t quite the same thing. His unit had just saved as many as they could of the ones who most needed saving, and anyone who was a risk didn’t make the sort. The thugs and chancers along the way would have been more useful and a lot less effort to move, but they didn’t need rescuing like lone kids, women, and old folk. Chris had made some choices that looked a lot like Erskine’s.
“It’s not about how many we save,” he said. “It’s about how many we abandon after we’ve promised to save them. Building people’s hopes and then crushing them is worse than walking by on the other side.”
Solomon had made promises he was struggling to keep — to himself, to the crazy inventor guy who built him, and, in a roundabout way, to everyone in Kill Line and the transit camp. Chris could have told him that keeping promises always came at a price.
14
So you didn’t want the rich and distinguished to populate your new world, even if they were still around. And you think you can do without the hoi polloi as well, by the looks of things. So who do you think should carry the torch for what’s left of the West? You’ve only got scientists, engineers, and technicians. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Skills aren’t personal qualities, though, and that’s what Sol’s interested in.
Dr Annis Kim, discussing the Elcano list with Alex Gorko
Transit Camp, Near Kill Line:
0900 Next Morning
Chris was struck by how much a crowd of one hundred could change size according to the moment.
When they’d been trying to get out of Baltimore and find refuge, a hundred had felt like thousands, a struggle to feed, shelter, and protect, even though they managed it. This morning, assembled outside the bar on a beautiful June day in a peaceful wooded landscape, the same crowd looked like a handful. Everyone — everyone — stood in their Sunday best or the nearest they had to a parade uniform, watching as Jared placed the cap on Zakko’s head, presented him with the rifle that he’d already been using for months, and saluted. Zakko returned the salute with a precision that looked like he’d been practising in his cabin for days.
Jared conducted Zakko’s passing-out ceremony as if it had been done this way since time immemorial. It hadn’t. This was nothing like any passing-out that Chris had ever seen: no parade, no swords, no band, and no displays. It was kind of hard to do it properly when Z
akko was the only one passing out and they were fresh out of bands, so Jared was making it up as he went along. But he was good at that kind of thing. He understood symbols and the emotional attachment to them better than Chris ever had. Somehow he made it all into something more meaningful than just handing a guy a battered cap, a rifle, and a heavily-patched jacket. Those everyday objects became talismans that invested Zakko with responsibility for the survival of his tribe. Chris was impressed.
“You proved me wrong, Zakko,” Jared said. “And I’ve never been so glad to be mistaken. Welcome to the Community Defence Force. We’ve got a big job ahead of us that isn’t just vital, it’s going to be historic. Play your part and make us proud. Now let’s go eat.”
Chris batted away an insect and waited for the applause to die down. Jared had the inspiration and bonding thing down pat. The best Chris could do was to make things work, and then people followed him because they believed in his competence and steadiness under fire. Charisma was never going to be his thing.
He caught Jared going into the bar and nudged him with his elbow. “Historic, my ass,” he muttered.
“Hey, it’s true. We’ll be settling a new world. Pioneers. Hell, how many people get to do that?”
It was like Jared had forgotten all the issues about surviving salted nukes, accessing a flightworthy ship, and what would happen if they couldn’t take off from here. Chris chose to play along with the optimism. There was no point in focusing on the worst scenario. They’d done all they could and now it was a case of keeping their nerve and seeing what happened next.
“You’re actually excited about this,” Chris said.
“Yeah. I am.”
“Is Marsha?”
The Best of Us Page 40
