The Best of Us

by Karen Traviss

  “Do what you need to,” Trinder said. “Sol, if you’re going back into the building, stick to the underground floors. Erskine already outsmarted us with the pythons, so don’t get cocky and think she can’t take you out.”

  “Major, this frame is designed to withstand attacks on the battlefield,” Solomon said. “Its constraints also protect me.”

  “Until your batteries run down,” Marc said. “Go and find a generator. Or a nice sunny spot.”

  Solomon lumbered on ahead. Marc handed the sat phone back to Trinder as they went back inside. “You better make sure that’s charged as well, mate,” he said. “And the other handsets.”

  “Thanks for putting the calls in. We’d have been screwed without that.”

  “We might still be.”

  “Yeah, but thanks anyway.”

  “No problem. Like I said, I don’t particularly want to end my days puking up blood in a pitch-black basement any more than you do.”

  Knowing what Tev had said about Marc’s state of mind, Trinder wasn’t sure whether to take that as an actual improvement in his outlook or a tactful lie. For all the time he’d spent with Marc, he still didn’t know the man, and he suspected he never would.

  “You could still go home,” he said. “You’ve made contact with your guys. They know you’re alive.”

  “I always could, they always did, and I’ve not been their guy for some years. And I’m not sure they’d make it in time anyway.”

  “Alex says he’s got spare cryo bays because some people don’t want to go. You’re welcome to mine. And there’ll be one for Tev.”

  Marc didn’t even blink. He just rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a spare magazine. “That’s decent of you, mate. I’ll let Tev know, but I’m staying until the job’s done. If we don’t pull this off, then it’s going to be tough for everyone over the next few months. Now let’s find that bloody woman. We can’t cancel the message now. Where’s Luce?”

  “He’s still working through the access passages in the accommodation block. He started in section five-G.”

  “I’ll ping him. Leave it to me.”

  “Understood.”

  The building was still running on backup power when Trinder got back to U3. He found Fonseca supervising some of Alex’s people, laying out mattresses and blankets in tidy rows in one of the empty warehouse units. She paused and walked over to him.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said, “everyone’s reported in and said thanks for the offer of a ride, but they’re all going to stay.”

  Trinder never felt a lump in his throat at times like this. It was more a pressure at the top of his palate, pushing at his sinuses and threatening tears. He swallowed it and nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s what I expected of them,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve seen the movies. The planet looks gorgeous, then you try to pick a flower and it shoots tendrils into your face and sucks your brains out.”

  She laughed and went back to wrangling bed spaces. Even if nobody outside this small enclave ever found out what people had done here and the choices they’d made, Trinder knew.

  It would not be forgotten.

  * * *

  Server Room F:

  1845 hours

  “It’s always gloomy in here anyway,” Cullen said, raking the flashlight beam around the walls. The room was like a forest of glass bamboo. Erskine couldn’t see where she was going and stood back rather than stumble into the translucent tubes. “I’m pretty sure I’ve isolated the physical storage, though.”

  He stood looking up the clear composite tube, all its memory components powered down and unlit. Erskine checked her watch again. She had plenty of time, but she wanted those modules removed before Solomon worked out exactly what she’d be doing. She was surprised that he hadn’t. But perhaps she was doing something completely stupid and ineffectual that he’d already considered and dismissed.

  “We need everything with data on FTL,” she said.

  “We’d better remove all storage for Engineering and related archives, then. Safest way. Then we won’t miss anything.”

  “Whatever you say. It’s not as if it’s a roomful of hardware.”

  “Well, it’s easier to put it on the shuttle than spend time trying to destroy it.”

  Cullen opened the tube by prying out a semicircular ring with his fingertips, then began removing individual modules like extracting vertebrae from a spine. Erskine edged forward to hand him a box to hold them, still disoriented by the transparency and reflections. She counted at least twenty small cylinders half the width of her palm and a couple of inches long. She hadn’t seen storage this antiquated for a very long time. It was secure, though, and it had never let Ainatio down.

  “What about all the information in people’s heads?” Cullen asked, closing the box. “You can erase everything, cut the relay, and collapse the wormhole, but you’ll still have sixteen hundred people who now know quite a lot about Nomad, and the existence of the planet itself was never a secret.” He paused as if he was re-ordering his thoughts. “And if people here survive — well, even if only one person does — then APS has a source. Director, you’re going to be here. Do you seriously think they won’t ask you a few questions, and not particularly politely? So this asset denial plan only works if you destroy the place along with everyone in it who can talk.”

  “How many times do we have to go through this?” Erskine had had enough. The only way through was forward. “It’s not a perfect plan. I know that. But the less information APS can extract, the better the mission’s chance of continuing uninterrupted. Even if removing the FTL data only delays APS by a year or two, it’s more time for the colony to prepare for... well, I don’t know what, but I have to imagine the worst.”

  “What did you tell Ingram?”

  “Nothing. What could I tell her that would be of any use?”

  “Stand by for APS arriving, maybe before we do?”

  “It’s too late for all this, Will.”

  “So if anyone survives, if they can get the comms mast working again, if Solomon can access Shackleton — do you really think they’ll let him fix the ship when they find we’ve stripped the place?”

  “If they let Elcano leave, they’ll let Shackleton leave,” Erskine said. “The ships are of no interest to them. They’d have moved in on them by now if they thought there was anything they wanted.”

  Cullen looked around the server room and checked another pole before consulting his screen and taking out a few more memory modules.

  “I think you’re still lying to yourself,” he said.

  “Maybe, but the only bit that works is getting as many people away as we can, while we can, with as big a head start on APS as we can. If you’ve suddenly had a flash of inspiration, though, let’s hear it.”

  Cullen put the extra modules in the box and handed it to Erskine. “I haven’t. We’ve got no guarantee that giving APS everything would make the slightest bit of difference. We’re just assuming that it would. I find everything more distasteful after sleeping on it, that’s all.”

  “You think I don’t? Will, we’re out of time. I need to go talk to Propulsion now. And we still haven’t found Kim. She can’t get a message out, but we have to keep her away from APS. Permanently.”

  Erskine picked her way out of the darkened room, almost stumbling into the storage columns in her hurry to leave, and started the buggy. Right then, she hated Cullen for chipping away at her resolve after she’d made an agonising decision. She drove down the dimly-lit passages, aware she’d walked off without a goodbye, and that she might not see him again to put that right.

  As if that’s the worst thing I’ve done today.

  Propulsion was at the far end of the corridor that ran under the accommodation block. While the system was down, she couldn’t check in advan
ce whether Ben and Javinder were in there, but it was the obvious place to start. When she reached the doors to the department, she had to get out of the buggy and dog them open by hand. As soon as she pulled one door back, she could hear voices. Javinder was in the front office, then. Erskine parked the buggy to one side of the corridor and put her head around the office door.

  The first thing she saw was Ben sitting at one of the desks, blood spattered on his light blue T-shirt. Javinder was leaning over him with an antiseptic wipe. It took her a moment to notice the cut above Ben’s eye, right on the brow bone.

  “What happened? Did you walk into something when the power went off?”

  “No, I walked into an angry physicist,” Ben said. “Kim. She slammed my head in the door. And I mean in the door. Between the door and the frame. She was trying to hack into files she isn’t allowed access to.”

  “Damn, Ben, we’ve been looking for her for hours. Where the hell is she? Why didn’t you call it in?”

  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Because the power was out by the time I locked her in the equipment store.”

  “Which files? Did she manage to get into them?”

  “Wormhole,” Ben said. Javinder didn’t seem to be having much luck stopping the bleeding. He pressed a lint pad on the cut and put more pressure on it, making Ben wince. “I confronted her, we had a row, and it escalated from there. No idea if she accessed them. I didn’t even see her come in today. I just noticed the activity on the system and found her in the other office.”

  Erskine held up the box of memory modules. “Well, no need to worry about that now. Cullen removed all your data storage. It goes with you to Opis.”

  “So she really is a spy, isn’t she?”

  “Whether she is or not, she’s an intel source for APS.”

  Ben took Javinder’s hand off his dressing and held the pad in place himself. “Is it true she wanted to trade our research for postponing the bombing?”

  This place was a sieve. Erskine decided to give up worrying about how things leaked and concentrate on her next task, making sure that Kim got on the shuttle. She looked Ben over more carefully. He was pretty fit, and if he’d manhandled Kim into the storeroom, then he wouldn’t be afraid of using a bit of force to make sure she boarded Elcano as well.

  “I don’t know if it was her idea,” Erskine said. “It was put to me in a meeting, and I felt it would compromise the mission. And we don’t know if it would persuade APS.”

  Erskine braced for yet another speech on whether it was really so bad to hand over information. But Ben just nodded.

  “Damn right,” he said. “This is our last chance. They could just wait out the contamination, walk in, and take over.”

  “Exactly. So I can’t risk her surviving the blast, and I don’t have the backbone or means to shoot her. So you have to take her with you.”

  “Terrific.”

  “I do mean take, Ben. I can’t call on Trinder’s people now, but I need someone to physically restrain her if she won’t go voluntarily. Just grab her and subdue her.”

  Ben peeled the lint off his cut and checked the blood. “Okay.”

  “If she hits you again, hit her back.”

  “It was the door. It was deliberate, but it was the door.”

  “Fine, then jam her head in the door if that makes you feel it’s a fair fight. She’s a risk. Treat her accordingly.”

  “So what do we do with her between now and the launch?” Javinder asked.

  “I’m going to speak to her.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “Perhaps not, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

  “Okay,” Javinder said. “One moment.”

  While he was gone, Erskine passed the time helping Ben put a dressing on his cut. Javinder returned holding a hockey stick that looked like it had seen a lot of service.

  “For self-defence,” he said, handing it to her. “Please don’t break it. It was my dad’s. I still play, too.”

  “You think she’s that violent. Seriously.”

  Ben scowled. “No, she’s an angel, and this is fake blood.”

  Erskine wasn’t any more used to fisticuffs than most of the staff here. She’d never even had to deal with a toddler having a tantrum, but the sight of the stick alone might persuade Kim to behave herself.

  “I’m too old to slug it out.” Erskine hefted the stick in both hands. “Okay, open the door. And if you’re really worried about me, wait outside. If I need rescuing, you’ll hear thuds.”

  Javinder led Erskine along the corridor and pointed to the storeroom door. There was a safety glass panel down the centre, and Erskine could see Kim sitting at one of the desks, doing nothing in particular. It was a much bigger room than she expected, more like a small office. She hoped that Kim hadn’t made an improvised weapon out of the cleaning supplies.

  “Open it,” she said.

  Kim looked around when she walked in, but didn’t get up. She glanced at the hockey stick. Erskine stayed near the door and just leaned casually on the stick, ready to deploy it if Kim so much as twitched.

  “You’ve upset Dr Singh,” Erskine said. “And Ben.”

  Kim shrugged. “He’ll live.”

  “So you don’t want to come to Opis. We’ve saved you a cryo pod.”

  “I never said I would. I said I’d work on FTL and the follow-up missions. I’ve still got family in Australia. I can go back to the civilised world.”

  “For as long as it lasts.”

  “Long enough to see me out.”

  “Solomon thinks you really are a spy after all.”

  “Did I ever say I wasn’t?”

  “Actually, no. You’re right. You just asked if a spy would do what you’d done. So there’s no Grandma Park or family honour to be avenged, then.”

  “Oh, Grandma Park’s real, all right. She really was my great-grandmother and you really did steal her research. And I really do want payback for her. Why does anyone serve? We’ve all got our reasons. I didn’t hitch thousands of miles to the arse-end of the world to make up for not having a gap year.”

  “Then you know why we can’t let you speak to your contact.”

  “Is there a cut-off level for you? Sixteen hundred people aren’t worth sharing Nomad for, but how about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Half a million?”

  Sharing. That was an interesting word. “If I were to hand over all the data on Nomad, what would your people do with it? Would they thank us for our generous contribution to the sum of human knowledge and wish us bon voyage?”

  Kim gave her that snoozing alligator look. “They’d want you to co-operate.”

  “They’d want control.”

  “They’d be concerned about something with profound significance for the whole world being run as a private and pretty well-armed project, yes.”

  “Dr Kim, I have nearly two hundred people on Opis. Thousands of others put their lives into this project over more than a century, not because they thought it would make money, or for some movie-villain world domination nonsense, but because they knew mankind would have to relocate or go extinct one day. And most of them knew they’d never live to see what they’d created. That’s service too.”

  “And what do you think APS is going to do with Opis? Die-back hasn’t been eradicated, it’s mutated at least four times to our knowledge, and, let’s face it, the West never dealt with the politics that caused its release in the first place. It was fine as long as it wasn’t happening to well-off people like you. Now you’ve been stuffed. Millions dead. Cities gone. But Asia-Pacific isn’t going to go down like you did because you were too genteel to deal with violent lunatics. And we need space as well.”

  “It’s precisely because there are so few of us left that I’m willing to make sacrifices to make sure we’re not erased.”

 
Was that how Nomad had started, to save Western civilisation? She was sure it hadn’t. Her father always said that Bednarz was less culturally focused than that. She’d only been four when he died, and her one hazy memory of him was more about the big office with glittering lights and bright red chairs than the man she was shown off to. But her father said Bednarz believed in a general quality of human excellence that could be found by sifting through the population.

  Then he’d created an AI and left it to decide what that excellence was. But she’d found that out much later.

  “So how do you want to play this, Director?” Kim asked. “Because you’re just postponing the inevitable and getting a lot of people killed for nothing.”

  “You’re going to Opis. Because you’re a source of information on Nomad that I’m not going to surrender, and Solomon needs you to prove to APS that he’s got something to trade. We’ll get your bag packed for you. Until someone comes for you tomorrow morning, you stay here.”

  “Toilet?”

  Erskine had just started to learn that prisoners were a lot more effort than she’d bargained for. She pointed to one of the plastic litter bins.

  “Toilet,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

  She backed out of the room as casually as she could and shut the door. Javinder locked it behind her right away.

  “Keep her here until I tell you we can board her,” Erskine said. “She’s got bottled water in there, and you’re supposed to fast for at least fourteen hours before cryo, so you shouldn’t need to let her out or feed her. Anyway, I’ll be back before then. Just keep a lid on things. And send Ben down to Mendoza for a quick check, just in case the blow to the head is going to affect his cryo process.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happens now?”

  “I’m going to put the power back on,” Erskine said. “Which means Solomon can get back into the system, so be discreet.”

  “Okay. Are you sure he’s that much of a risk?”

  “Possibly. And possibly is enough.”

  Erskine got back in the buggy and drove off. If she wanted to do anything else out of Solomon’s range, she’d have to do it now before she got Beck to power up again. This game with Solomon, like the one with APS, was about buying every possible second of time, and the longer that Solomon couldn’t locate Kim, the less chance he had of selling out Nomad.