The Best of Us

by Karen Traviss

  Erskine parked, took out her radio, and called Beck. “Everything’s as secure as we can make it, Jesse,” she said. “Get the power back on.”

  She waited. It was only thirty seconds before the corridor lights changed from the emergency lighting to the normal illumination and she heard motors and fans starting up everywhere.

  Yes, she could understand why Cullen had said she was lying to herself about the survival chances of those left behind. Nomad’s best chance was the worst scenario for those marooned here, and she would be among them.

  Everyone had a price they were willing to pay to get what they wanted. Erskine had made peace with hers.

  * * *

  Temporary Shelter, Level U3,

  Ainatio Park Research Centre:

  1915 Hours

  The power came back on without warning, a sudden burst of light and machinery noise. Solomon heard the collective sigh and even a few half-hearted cheers as the evacuees realised what had happened.

  It wouldn’t make any difference to what was coming, but at least it seemed to lift the mood. Solomon debated whether to dock the sapper bot and slip into the quad to move around more easily. He couldn’t help search the access passages for Kim while he was in this frame. But that meant going back into the system for a few seconds, and however brief the transfer, he didn’t know if Erskine had persuaded Cullen to set any booby traps for him. Ninety minutes was a very long time for an outage if all she’d wanted was to drive him out. He’d have to guess what kind of sabotage or destruction had taken place instead.

  That didn’t mean he couldn’t access the system, though. He’d just have to use touch and eyesight like a human. He removed the backup copy of the FTL data, saved it to the sapper bot’s memory, and carried on.

  “Sol?” Trinder tapped on his back. “Remember what I said about not taking risks. Don’t be tempted to go back into the network.”

  “I won’t. But I need to work out what Erskine’s done during the outage. I can do that without leaving this bot. Any word on Kim?”

  “I’d tell you right away if there was. We drafted in Marc and Chris to help out Luce’s search team. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “My apologies. My impatience is more about my own naivety, not any criticism. I think I’ll go and find Alex, in case he feels guilty enough to give me any information.”

  “Fine, but be careful. I mean human careful. You’re not completely invulnerable.”

  Trinder was just showing concern, not scolding him. Solomon appreciated that. As he skirted around the private cubicles to reach the stairs — he didn’t dare trust the elevators — he saw a boy aged about ten wandering around with a tray of steaming mugs, handing out drinks to older people. Solomon paused a moment to watch. The boy didn’t seem to know the seniors: he hesitated and spoke to them as if he was introducing himself before they took the mugs, so he must have been one of the youngsters from the transit camp. It was rather touching. The boy finished his task and walked up to Solomon.

  “Hi. Chris says you’re the robot who went to Jamie’s funeral. I’m Howie.”

  Solomon couldn’t take offence at being called a robot. He was completely charmed. And the more he saw the good in these people, the more set he was on saving them, no matter what it took. Perhaps this was what Tad Bednarz had meant by parental. All that mattered was to keep these humans safe, and watch them thrive and be happy. Bednarz hadn’t had any more idea than Solomon what it meant to be a parent, but he’d certainly seemed to know how it felt to be a son. Solomon had learned a lot about humanity from reverse-engineering the man and noting the empty spaces in his existence that he seemed to feel had never been filled.

  “Pleased to meet you, Howie,” Solomon said. “It’s very kind of you to look after the old folk.”

  Howie shrugged like an adult. He seemed very old for a little boy. “They’re scared. They just need someone to tell them it’s going to be okay.”

  “It will be.” Howie probably needed someone to tell him it was going to be okay too. Solomon obliged. “It’ll be boring for a while, but after that, we’ll be heading to a new world. I’ve been there. It’s wonderful. You’ll love it.”

  Howie smiled as if he was doing it for Solomon’s benefit. “Everywhere’s the same, really.”

  Solomon didn’t know what to make of that. He really wasn’t skilled with children. He rarely had contact with them, which now felt like a serious gap in his knowledge.

  “I’m going to look for a friend,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Solomon wasn’t sure if Alex counted as a friend any longer, but they needed to maintain diplomatic relations. He climbed the fire exit stairs to the ground floor, aware that Erskine could keep tabs on him again via the security cams, but it probably didn’t matter. It was too late for either of them to stop the other. They were both up against separate deadlines and had wholly different tasks. Maybe, if they’d had a better relationship and discussed this reasonably, they’d have arrived at the same outcome, with a partial evacuation and everyone else sheltering until it was safe to move. But it hadn’t turned out that way. Solomon kept coming back to the same sticking point. Erskine was willing to sacrifice individuals for a hypothetical future, and he was not.

  Am I wrong? Is that really the only way out of this?

  Nobody took much notice of him as he made his way through the admin block and up to the management floor. He’d assumed that people would realise it was him inside the sapper bot, but they didn’t seem to, and there was no reason why they should. Despite his size, he was just another machine going about its business, one of many mobilised to secure the facility at short notice. He took advantage of the temporary anonymity, trying to decide how he felt about being completely ignored.

  Alex was in his office, staring at an array of personal screens laid out on his desk. He looked up when Solomon poked his front end through the door.

  “It’s me, Alex.”

  “You’ve put on some weight.” Alex stood up. “You want me to come outside? You can’t get in here.”

  “I’m fine if you don’t mind me blocking your door.”

  “And the corridor.”

  “I’ll move if anyone needs access. Are all the systems back up?”

  “I think so.”

  “Erskine destroyed the comms mast.”

  “I know. I’m checking what’s down, because she timed that outage for a reason.” Alex gestured uncertainly. Solomon tried to work out if all this meant he’d taken a side, and if he had it could well have been Erskine’s. Trust was fragile. “So this is your war face, is it?”

  “Out of necessity. Would you check a couple of things for me, please? Or are you working with her?”

  “I thought I was neutral and washing my hands of both of you. What do you need to know?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find a terminal myself.”

  “Oh, give it a rest. You sound like my ex. ‘It’s nothing.’ She always said that when I was in the doghouse and then I had to spend the rest of the day working out why.”

  “It’s best that I don’t involve you.”

  “Fine. Whatever. We’ve now got sixty-eight cryo pods left to fill, by the way. If you want those places for anyone, well, you decide. Erskine wanted me to offer Chris the berths for his troops.”

  It was still too little, too late. There were several hundred children among the evacuees, and Chris would never leave any of the transit camp people behind. Solomon would ask as a courtesy, but he knew he might not have any takers.

  “What’s your deadline, Alex?”

  “Ten tonight, preferably. Because of the cryo. Although they’ll still be chilling people down when they get underway, so the fourteen-hour nothing-by-mouth is looking flexible.”

  “Very well. I’ll put it to them.”

  “So how are you going to
do a deal with APS now the comms are down?” Alex asked. “The main connection to the relay in here was trashed too. It’s going to take days to replace it. But I suppose you know that.”

  “I’ve already contacted APS.”

  “Shit. Seriously? How?”

  “You don’t need to know. I made the offer and told them that Kim’s here.”

  “Oh. Well, fuck. And? Did it work?”

  “We’ll see. Excuse me.”

  “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  “It’s all I can say.”

  “What did you come here for, then? To get me to tell Erskine you’ve screwed her over?”

  “I was just looking for a terminal I can actually work at. I’ll see you later, no doubt.”

  Solomon walked off to find a terminal, not giving Alex a chance to reply. The only doorway big enough to accommodate his bulk led into an open-plan office that had been disused for years. He trundled in, ramming chairs out of the way, and extended the bot’s EOD manipulator to boot up a terminal. Logging in manually and checking files was agonisingly slow now that he could only look at the list of changed files with a robotic lens.

  There were no surprises. Propulsion’s server was inaccessible. In fact, it didn’t exist. The error message told him that there were no memory modules. Erskine had done exactly what Solomon would have in her position: she’d dumped the data like the cypher officer of an ancient warship dropping the weighted bag of “CBs” over the side, to put the confidential books of secret codes beyond the reach of enemy hands. She didn’t appear to know that Solomon had copied the data already, but she should have guessed. Perhaps she was just taking precautions in case he hadn’t. Either way, she’d left nothing to be found.

  What else might she have done? One of Chris’s predictions had been accurate: Erskine had wiped the data just as he’d said. Solomon hoped he’d be wrong about Kim, and that she was just remarkably good at evasion. It was time to help out with the search as far as his cumbersome frame would allow.

  “Major Trinder, this is Solomon.” It was poor radio procedure, but Trinder wouldn’t mind. “I’ve completed my assessment as far as I can. All Propulsion’s data storage has been removed. I’d like to help look for Dr Kim now.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The admin block, second floor.”

  “The search teams are back. No sign of Kim. Marc thinks it’s taking too long. She’d have come out by now if she could, so they’re assuming the worst. Chris thinks it’ll be faster using dogs, so he’s heading for her apartment with Marc and Dieter to get some clothing for scent identification.”

  Solomon had put too much faith in Kim’s ability to stay out of Erskine’s way. It was his second mistake, another one he would never make again. “I’ll meet them there, then,” he said.

  Everything took a glacial age now that he couldn’t jump into the network to get around the site. This was nothing like playing around in the quadrubot for a few hours when there was no urgency. Now he was all too conscious of the passage of time, and even the fast trot that the sapper bot could manage felt impossibly slow. There were shortcuts he couldn’t take because of his size, too, which added minutes he couldn’t afford. As he made his way along the corridors, he scanned for heat traces in the rooms and offices he passed, hoping to stumble upon Kim by chance, but he knew he was indulging in a very human habit of wishing for the highly unlikely.

  I should have moved her to the camp right away.

  Have I ever felt this before, this anger with myself?

  He knew he hadn’t. He’d never failed this badly before.

  When he reached the apartment, Marc was already there with Dieter, standing at the open door and watching something. Solomon could do no more than stick his camera extension through the doorway to peer inside.

  The odd-eyed husky was nosing around Kim’s living room, pausing occasionally for longer, more considered sniffs at the sofa and a rucksack in the corner. Noises from the bedroom suggested that someone was ransacking the place. Chris came out with a pile of clothing in his arms.

  “Bathrobe, jacket, jeans,” he said. “These don’t feel laundered. Here you go, Girlie.”

  The husky shoved her nose into the fabric. Dieter made encouraging noises at her. “Find her, Girlie,” he said. “Go on. Find her.”

  The dog put her head down and went outside, then cast around for a few seconds before trotting off purposely as if she’d acquired a scent. Dieter let the leash pay out as she ran on. Chris tried to keep up with her, almost breaking into a run.

  “Old school,” Marc said, walking beside Solomon. “Can’t beat it.”

  “I’ve made some serious mistakes, Marc. I’m sorry. If I’d been more decisive, none of this would have happened.”

  “We’re not beaten yet, mate. You think every operation goes to plan? Most don’t. This job’s all about thinking on your feet and keeping going. So buck your ideas up and apply that bloody big brain to the problem.”

  “Yes, Marc.”

  “I can’t believe I’m giving a pep talk to a metal box.”

  They caught up with Chris and Dieter further down the corridor. Girlie had stopped dead and was nuzzling a door that led to the access passages.

  “Dr Kim did as she said she would, then,” Solomon said. He opened the door with his EOD manipulator and put his camera extension inside. Girlie tried to push past him. “Check your building plan, gentlemen.”

  “I’m going to let her off the leash,” Dieter said. “Can I get all the way through these passages?”

  “Yes, they’re designed for human access.”

  “Okay, I’m going in.”

  Marc handed him his ID pass. “Keep this on you and we can track it. Better still, stick it on the dog. If you lose her, we’ll see where she’s gone.”

  Dieter clipped the pass to Girlie’s collar and let her off the leash. “I’ll see you guys at the end of some tunnel, then.”

  He disappeared into the passage. Solomon heard him jog away. Now all they could do was try to keep up, Marc and Chris using their personal screens, Solomon following the two heat profiles inside the passage using thermal detection. He managed to follow the heat sources as far as the end of the building, but the gap between the two was growing, and then they both dropped away beneath him.

  “It’s okay, I’ve still got ’em,” Marc said. “They’ve gone down a floor. Fire exit.”

  When they emerged on the staff restaurant floor, Girlie appeared to have led Dieter a little way along the passage, then doubled back again. She was heading for the ground floor. Solomon followed Marc and Chris down the next flight of stairs and came out at the exit that led to the gardens. He could detect Girlie casting around inside the passage while Dieter waited. Then the access panel a few yards away opened as Girlie burst out, dragging a breathless Dieter in her wake. She nosed her way along the tiles until she came to the next access panel, where she sat down and stared expectantly at the opening.

  “There’s a fire door in there we can’t get past,” Dieter panted. “Kim probably couldn’t either, so she stepped out and went back in via the door on the other side of it. Which is why Girlie’s sitting there like that.”

  “No need to go back in,” Solomon said. “That section leads to Propulsion. Although that’s a foolish place for her to go under the circumstances.”

  “Got it.” Marc strode off at a fast walk. “If she isn’t there, we’ll come straight back and send the dog in again.”

  “Why the hell didn’t she stay put?” Chris asked, catching up with him. Dieter coaxed Girlie away from the access door with and followed. “A field agent should know better.”

  “Maybe someone detected her and she needed to go to ground,” Solomon suggested.

  “Or she couldn’t be arsed to wait until we could retrieve her.” Marc slowed down to compare floor plans
with Chris as they walked. “Does the access passage go right into Propulsion?”

  “Yes,” Solomon said. “But there’s no door. Just a grille at waist height when it gets there. She could get through that easily enough.”

  Propulsion was the dead end of a single-storey building that looked out onto the reactor, a long walk down a corridor. When they reached the entrance, Girlie circled around for a few seconds, then sat down to stare at the doors as if she was willing them to open.

  “Well, Girlie says she’s in there, then,” Dieter said. “How do you want to play this?”

  Marc checked his screen. “Three ID chips moving around. I’m up for walking in and searching the place.”

  “Javinder Singh, Ben Tusa, and Laurie Ross.” Solomon cycled through the sapper bot’s sensors and tried the heat detection mode again. “And there’s someone in the storeroom. Unchipped. No cameras in there, but I suspect that’s Dr Kim.”

  “Well, plenty of cameras out here, so Singh knows we’ve turned up, and so will Erskine.”

  Chris tried the doors. He didn’t have a pass, but Propulsion was off limits for most people’s chips anyway. He tapped the intercom.

  “Dr Singh, this is Chris Montello.” He made it sound perfectly routine, as if he was just passing through and had decided to drop in for a chat. “Can I come in?”

  There was no answer. He waited a few seconds, then buzzed again, but nobody opened the door.

  Solomon wasn’t surprised. Dr Singh could easily see who was outside. If Kim hadn’t been in there, he’d have opened the door and told them so, but the fact that he didn’t even respond on the intercom confirmed Solomon’s suspicion.

  Chris looked at Marc and nodded. “Maybe she’s in there because she wants to be.”

  Marc was still following the trackers on his screen. “I’ve got three IDs including Singh moving away from us.”