The Best of Us

by Karen Traviss

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if she wasn’t. We’re going to make it. It’ll be a real pain in the ass, but it’s going to happen.”

  Sometimes Chris felt he didn’t have any idea where he was heading and that he was just leading everyone towards a cliff edge. He’d taken a look at the underground shelters in Ainatio, and while they seemed solid enough, any survivors would have a very hard time. They’d be in a dead zone with nowhere to run, at least not nearby. But they still had vehicles. Chris would have preferred to see Jared and Marsha take one of those and drive as far as they could. He’d agonised about it all night. It busted his philosophy of everyone sticking together no matter what, but he couldn’t live with knowing he hadn’t given them a chance. He’d offer them a truck.

  The bar was filling up. Marsha had organised an impressive spread. It was the wrong time of day for cake and sandwiches, let alone beer, but most folks had been up all night, so it probably felt like lunchtime to them. And this wasn’t just Zakko’s big day. It was the last time for a while, maybe ever, that they’d get together to celebrate.

  Now Chris had to keep Jared’s upbeat tone going. He walked up to the bar and climbed onto a table to make himself heard.

  “Ladies, gentlemen — I know I owe you a speech, but I’m pretty crap at that, so we’re here to say well done to Zakko for all the sweat and commitment he’s put in to serving this community. Take a bow, Zakko.” Chris paused and spread his arms to get the cheers and clapping going. “I’m sorry I have to uproot you all again. But we’ve come through some pretty bad times in one piece, and we’re going to come through this the same way. So relax, eat everything you can lay your hands on, and we’ll be taking you over to Ainatio a group at a time when they’re ready for us.”

  At least this was better than Baltimore. Nobody had to run, nobody had to worry about being robbed or shot or worse, and there was time and room for everyone to take their few possessions with them. Chris was thankful for that.

  Jamie’s picture and the regimental colours were still on the shelf behind the bar. Chris knew he had to pack them away, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not yet. He’d leave them there until the last evacuee had gone. Taking down the little memorial too soon would feel like stopping Jamie from joining the party. It was crazy. Chris was sure he didn’t believe in that kind of thing, but just like his need to rebury Jamie on Opis, he felt in his gut that it had to be done. He’d leave the picture there for a while, then, and make sure it was the last thing he took with him tonight when he secured the huts.

  Secure the huts. Who am I kidding? There’s nobody left to rob us. And there’ll just be a mountain of radioactive splinters left after APS creams us.

  But he’d secure the camp anyway and run down the flag. Discipline had kept them going before, never skipping routine tasks even when it seemed pointless or just too hard, and he wasn’t about to drop it now. It was all part of the mental process of endurance that eventually brought them out alive.

  He grabbed some cake and went into the kitchen to see how things were going. Marsha, Jeanie, Nathan, and Nathan’s mom — Amy — were emptying the refrigerators, putting more food on trays. It was a lot to expect people to eat all that today, but they were going to be hanging around for hours waiting to be moved out, and food was a good way to pass the time.

  “Great cake, Marsha,” Chris said.

  “Thanks. Keep eating. So when you’ve transferred everyone, you’re going to go help ship out the Kill Line folks, yeah?”

  “Yeah. That’s going to take at least twelve hours. All night, probably.” He handed her the security key to the APC. “Hey, it’s fuelled up. If you and Jared want to, just ram it full of supplies, get in, and drive as far as you can.”

  Marsha looked at the key for a while. It was very old, one of the slot-card types designed to insert in dog tags. “Chris, you’re a sweetheart, but no thanks.”

  “It’s not like I want to see the back of you two, but — shit, you’re my best buddies. I don’t care if what I’m doing is fair or not. You could reach the coast.”

  Marsha stuck her arm through his. “Don’t laugh at me, but I know I was spared for a reason. We all were. You think we survived because we all stuck together, but I say we all stuck together because we were meant to. My life’s been handed back to me to do something that matters. I know we need to stay here with everyone and it’s what we’re meant to do.” She stepped back and made that little jokey gesture of fanning her face with her hand, flustered and embarrassed. “Go on, tell me I’m full of woo-woo. I know it. But I don’t see you saddling up and riding off into the sunset. So you know you’re meant to be here as well.”

  “There’s meant to be and need to be. Maybe it’s the same thing.” Chris decided that if anyone else wanted to take a vehicle and make a run for it after they’d finished moving everyone else, he wouldn’t argue, which would cancel out the sin of breaking his own stick-together rule for a friend. “But I can’t leave. You can’t walk away when someone’s counting on you.”

  “Chris, you’re not going to change history and make your dad a better person by trying to be everything he wasn’t.”

  “That’s not why I do it.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  Chris just didn’t want anyone else to feel betrayed the way that he had been, more than once and by those he trusted most. If he couldn’t find it in himself to trust others now, at least he could make sure other people’s trust in him wasn’t misplaced.

  No, I trust the guys here. And Trinder. And Doug Brandt. That’s plenty. I don’t need to trust the whole world.

  “I like to keep my word,” he said. “That’s all.”

  Marsha handed him a big cake in a plastic container. “Okay, take this over to Trinder.”

  “Damn, that’ll make us family.”

  “You guys are forming your own little joint force anyway. Go on. Off you go.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When Chris rode up to the Ainatio gates, now unmanned but monitored, they swung open for him. He parked the quad bike near the main doors and tried to raise Trinder on the radio. The corporal answered instead, the guy he’d first spoken to when he found Kim, and told him to head down to level U3 and try the radio again. Ainatio had just given Chris free run of the place. He couldn’t have imagined that six months ago.

  He clutched the box of cake to his chest, wondering what he’d say if he ran into Erskine, but he wasn’t sure if he’d even recognise her. Coups weren’t supposed to be like this. There wasn’t even a demarcation line to mark territorial boundaries. It was like two teams occupying the same space in different dimensions, but the facility was big enough to make it easy to stay out of someone’s way.

  The ground floor was busy with people, mostly the detachment, but there were a few civvies as well, and they all had that odd calm of people who’d made up their minds that this was going to be their last stand and there was no point in worrying about it any more. Chris had been at that stage a few times. He wondered now if it was clarity or simply overload. Did it matter? It got you through the day.

  They’d regret not removing Erskine, though, or at least not locking her up. Solomon could still be staging some elaborate distraction, ready to turn the tables on her, but Chris had now placed his bet on the AI being too civilised, just like Trinder. Poor old Sol: for all his stupendous intellect, he still seemed to think people would do the decent thing if he gave them the chance and behaved like a gentleman. Chris suspected that Trinder wasn’t quite as naive, but he’d hadn’t had to make truly ruthless, essential decisions yet, the kind that you had to forget afterwards.

  I have. I’ll do it for him if it needs doing.

  Chris waited for the freight elevator. A bot rolled up beside him, a plain metal load carrier stacked with inch-thick mattresses that would plump up instantly into full-depth ones when bent with a little force. Chris rem
embered guys setting them off in the barracks for laughs during basic training, although they hadn’t found it quite so funny when they got three months’ shit-pit duty for it. The bot scanned him with a quick swipe of light to work out if it could fit in the elevator with him, then paused and rescanned the rifle slung over his shoulder before resuming its passive mode. Chris hadn’t seen one like that for years.

  But Ainatio was full of bots of all shapes and sizes, and now he understood why the company had specialised in them for so many years. It wasn’t just about making money. It was about developing autonomous bots for space, to do the work that was too dangerous for humans or to lay the groundwork for manned missions. Damn, Bednarz had been one single-minded son of a bitch. Everything Ainatio had done on his watch had been geared towards Nomad. Bednarz couldn’t have foreseen that the bots would be needed to replace a dwindling population, but he’d covered all the bases. Chris adjusted his verdict on the man from creepy nerd to prophet.

  “After you,” Chris said as the elevator doors opened, but the bot waited until he stepped in first. “Hey, Sol? You around?”

  Chris knew the AI could hear him on some level of awareness, but he tried not to view Solomon’s silence as some kind of cyber-sulk. This wasn’t like his mom cutting him dead at the dinner table for a week to make a point about something. This was just Sol choosing to focus elsewhere. It wasn’t personal. Chris had done nothing to offend the AI.

  “Okay, you’re busy,” Chris said. “Sorry.”

  “My apologies, Chris.” The voice drifted out of the speaker in the elevator. “Yes, I was trying to cut corners again with Shackleton, but repurposing parts takes the time that it takes.”

  “Cutting corners is never a good look where space stuff’s concerned.”

  “I can make no promises, but I feel more positive now than I did yesterday.”

  “Is that why you’re talking to us again?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So do you have some plan we don’t know about?”

  “I’m continuing to re-evaluate the situation.”

  That was a non-answer worthy of a politician. The elevator stopped on U3 and Chris got out to let the bot exit, then leaned against the doors to keep them open while he finished his conversation with Solomon.

  “Sol, I know you’re a million times smarter than me, but have you ever heard the saying, ‘It’s too quiet’? Well, it is. Don’t assume Erskine’s going to honour a ceasefire just because you do. Humans aren’t like that. And women... what they lack in upper body strength, they make up for by stabbing you in the back.”

  “I try not to escalate a situation.”

  Chris lowered his voice. “Yeah, well, let me put it like this. You’ve got two cards to play, the FTL data and Kim. Non-violent cards, anyway. If Erskine’s as bad as my ex, she’s going to wipe or doctor that data so that it’s useless, if she hasn’t done it already. And I’d make sure I stashed Dr Kim somewhere safe.”

  “Thank you. I understand what you’re saying. Dr Kim knows she’s a likely target.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re tough, Sol, but then I worry that they set your morality chip too high.”

  “It’s not a chip.”

  “That was a joke.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, cover your ass, okay?”

  “Chris, if those were the non-violent cards, what did you have in mind for the violent ones?”

  “If Erskine really is the only problem standing in your way, shoot her. Or I can do it.”

  “She isn’t, and I’m sure she’ll see sense. But I’m grateful for your offer.”

  “Any time.”

  “Did you really have a violent and lawless past?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Have you taken me off your righteous meat-bag list?”

  “I take the view that you’ve saved many more than you’ve harmed.”

  “Maybe.” So AIs made excuses for their favourites just like regular people did. “I can’t tell.”

  “It’s possible to be moral and kill people, isn’t it?”

  That sounded like a personal question rather than a general observation. “Yeah. I think it is.”

  “I’ve thought about it a lot recently. I’m a moral AI who’s killed men. I wonder what that makes me.”

  “Buddy, that makes you one of us,” Chris said. The last thing anyone needed right now was a guilt-ridden AI. “A soldier.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chris adjusted his hold on the cake box. “Okay, I’ve got to deliver this, but you know where to find me.”

  He followed the signage to the section allocated to the transit camp. Fonseca stepped out just before he reached the doors.

  “Saw you coming,” she said. “Come and take a look.”

  The underground floors were divided into warehouse-sized compartments. Space wasn’t a problem, but privacy was. Chris had imagined the evacuees would end up with something that looked like a county emergency centre, rows of mattresses on the floor of a basketball court, but Fonseca’s team had divided the space into cubicles.

  “Hey, this is great.” Chris walked down the paths between them, peering inside. The units all had individual lighting, some form of bed, and a table with seats. “Your guys must have been working all night.”

  “Bots. They’re really good at dividing up a space and building composite structures.” Fonseca spread her arms and pointed to both ends of the chamber like a flight attendant. “Showers, toilets, and food prep facilities on both sides.”

  “How are you going to decontaminate the water?”

  “Underground source. We never drew water from the river.”

  “So this is a bunker.”

  “Almost. It may well be enough.”

  So maybe we are going to make it. It was the first time Chris had let himself think that. “Great. Can we start shipping people in, then?” He handed Fonseca the box. “Jared’s wife sent this cake over, by the way. From Zakko’s passing-out.”

  “Damn, we promised to come. Sorry. Don’t worry, we’ll have time for a few beers with him while we’re waiting this out.” She made surviving sound like a done deal. “Hey, here’s Dan. Good luck with Kill Line.”

  Trinder appeared, screen in hand. Fonseca’s optimism, nicely laid-out shelter, and shared cake receded into a distant past right away.

  “I just spoke to Doug Brandt,” Trinder said. “We’ve got a few problems.”

  “Livestock?”

  “You’re clairvoyant.”

  “No, I’ve got Dieter fretting about his dogs, so I could see it coming.”

  “I don’t think we can save the livestock. Even if we could get them into shelters, they won’t have any grazing when the fallout clears. And if they survive that, I still don’t know how we’ll put them in cryo. But we’ll deal with that when it happens.”

  “Give me a moment up top to call Jared and get our people moving, and then we’ll go sort this out.”

  “I don’t want to take you away from your own evacuation.”

  “We said we’d help out with yours once we finished moving our people. They can do that without me, but if we’re going to hit any delay with Kill Line, I want to head it off now. I don’t want my guys having to rescue stragglers at the last minute. You never know how good APDU’s timekeeping is. If the bombs are a few minutes early, that’s the difference between making it back here and getting caught on the surface.”

  “We’d cover the stragglers, but I take your point.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  Chris read the op order on the Caracal’s dashboard screen while Trinder drove. It was well organised: names, the order and time in which households had to be moved, the troops responsible for them, and where people had to be taken once inside the facility. Time would be tight, but it was doable even if some ended up sleeping on
floors while the bots caught up with mattresses. There wasn’t much leeway in the timetable for coaxing people out of their farms and businesses or chasing animals, though.

  “So who’s refusing to leave?” Chris asked.

  “Liam Dale. Dairy, mostly. Some pigs and chickens.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember him from the meeting.”

  “Where do they think we’re going to put herds of cows and pigs and enough feed for a couple of weeks?” Trinder asked. “Let alone dispose of or store their shit in an enclosed space. Hell, all the gases it gives off. It’s dangerous.”

  “Unless they’re willing to settle for transporting frozen embryos and semen, this conversation was going to have to happen sooner or later.” Chris wished people could think these things through. “How were you planning to produce meat on Opis?”

  “Vat-grown. We already do that here anyway.”

  “Well, I’m happy to spell it out for them,” Chris said.

  “Thanks, but it’s my responsibility. Maybe it’d help if I took a couple of them inside to show them what the space is like and why it isn’t going to work, but that’s just more time wasted.”

  There would be no happy outcomes to any of this. Chris stared out the side window on the short drive, imagining himself telling the farmer that he could choose to face the bombing in a cowshed, but that Chris wouldn’t be risking anyone else’s life by sending someone out to save him. It felt like a rehearsal for drawing the line. He didn’t like himself for it, but this wasn’t like Dieter’s dogs. The dogs were Dieter’s kids. The farmer’s animals were going to end up on a plate, either in the short term or at the end of their milking, egg-laying, or wool-producing lives. It was just a matter of how and when.

  As the Caracal turned into the town, Chris thought he heard a gunshot. Trinder parked the vehicle and switched off the engine. They listened. A second gunshot followed. Chris jumped out, rifle ready, and Trinder drew his sidearm.

  “Too late for shooting rabbits for the pot tonight,” he said.

  They stood trying to work out which direction the shots were coming from. A shotgun was routine background noise in a rural community, but events had reshaped Chris’s idea of what was normal now, and evidently Trinder’s as well.