“Annis? You in here?” He moved into the locker area. “Annis — I’ve come to get you out. Make a damn noise or something.”
What the hell am I doing?
I’m helping her hand over the project to a foreign power.
And I’m going to get the shit kicked out of me.
“Annis?”
He thought he heard banging. It could have been Ben. But he followed the sound and realised it was coming from outside the locker room. The floor plan on his screen showed an unlabelled void. When he went around the side and walked down the access corridor, he realised it was an equipment store. The twin doors had been barricaded shut with a curl bar and a couple of hockey sticks wedged and taped between the handles.
He rapped on the door. “Annis?”
“You took your bloody time,” said a muffled voice.
At least she was okay. “You’re going to get your people to call off the bombing, right?” Alex started ripping the tape off. Why didn’t he carry a knife? Knives were always useful. He’d make sure he had one in the future. “Tell me that’s what you’re going to do. Because Sol’s contacted APS and offered to trade.”
“You’ve changed your tune, Mr But-This-Will-Destroy-
Nomad.”
“Yeah. So, are you?”
“Yes. That’s the whole point.”
Screw it, Alex didn’t care what happened next and who got to settle Opis in the end as long as he didn’t have to huddle in that shelter downstairs and watch the fear on the faces of people who didn’t even know the planet existed a few months ago. He didn’t want to watch the transit camp civilians who’d thought they were finally safe, only to find they’d walked into another disaster. And he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear seeing Trinder’s detachment, Chris Montello’s vets, and the two Brits sitting down to wait with the evacuees, either for death or an uncertain future, because they wouldn’t abandon the civilians. That was what he should have been like.
But I never was that kind of man.
He tossed the hockey sticks aside and hefted the curl bar. It was lighter than he expected, and the curved ends made it feel off-balance, but it would do as a weapon. The doors opened and Kim pushed her way out, looking rumpled but still defiant. He suddenly realised who had given Ben that black eye.
“Ah,” she said, looking past him. She held out her hand for the bar. “Better give me that.”
Alex glanced over his shoulder. Ben was striding down the corridor towards them. Then he broke into a jog.
“Whoa, stop right there, Alex.”
Thinking was overrated. Sometimes it was better to let the monkey brain take over. It had a million more years of experience at this sort of thing. Alex held the curl bar like a baseball bat and stepped in front of Kim.
“Don’t make me, Ben,” he said.
Ben stopped a couple of yards away. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would. Just go. Get out of here.”
“So you’re happy to trash everything you worked for.”
“APS is going to work it out sooner or later anyway. All I care about now is stopping them from frying us.”
Ben just shook his head as if he was dealing with a lippy kid. “Sorry, Al, she’s coming with us.”
Ben stepped forward. Alex charged at him and swung the bar, instantly and blindly angry, thinking Kim would have the sense to run. The blow didn’t connect, but he did. He crashed into Ben.
It was like hitting a brick wall. The bar went flying and bounced end over end with metallic crashes. Maybe the surprise of a smaller, unfit guy going crazy had improved Alex’s odds. The two men fell in a wrestling, gouging heap. Even now, even as some primal aggression possessed him, Alex could see himself and he knew he looked like an idiot.
“Go on, Annis, run.” He settled for trying to hold Ben down while she got away. “Get out of here. Run. Find Marc.”
For a moment he thought she was just hanging around, but she was trying to grab the curl bar. Then Ben threw him off and scrambled to his feet. Alex lunged for his legs and got a kick in the chest as Ben pulled free and reached for Kim.
Damn, he had her. He grabbed her arms, and she fought like a caged cat, but Ben was a big guy. He started dragging her down the corridor, her arm pushed up her back. She was kicking and yelling abuse. Alex ran after them.
No, no, no, no. It doesn’t end like this. I’m not letting you have her.
Nothing else mattered right then. The monkey brain was doing a great job of driving Alex where his common sense would never have dreamed of taking him. But long before he got within punching distance of the struggling pair, Marc came up the corridor from the other end, handgun aimed, not running but walking so fast and in such a straight line that Alex had no doubt what he was going to do.
Maybe Ben hadn’t seen the gun. Alex slowed. His monkey brain said that it was a really good idea to just duck, and by then Marc was two strides from Ben. For a second, Alex was certain that Marc was going to shoot him. His aim never moved from the guy’s head.
“Don’t tempt me, mate.” Marc caught Kim by the arm and shoved her one-handed behind him. His eyes were fixed on Ben’s. Alex didn’t doubt for one second that he was serious. “If it’s you or sixteen hundred people, this isn’t your lucky day.”
Marc backed away, then turned and marched Kim off. Alex wondered if Ben was going to go after them. But the guy just watched helplessly. It didn’t matter how fit you were if the other man was armed and had nothing to lose. Alex, still hyped up and ready for a fight, made himself walk away, his legs suddenly wobbly. He retraced his steps towards the main entrance.
Ben yelled after him. “Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve fucked the project. They’ll never let you leave now.”
Yes, Alex knew. He’d done what they all should have had the sense to do two days ago. It was an awful, difficult day, and he’d probably looked ridiculous fighting with Ben, but it was also the most alive and real that he’d ever felt.
I did it. That’s not too shabby.
He looped around the building and caught up with Marc and Kim outside. Marc, pistol still drawn, was checking around them as he walked, as if he was expecting more trouble. It felt like a very long way to the Lammergeier.
Kim glanced over her shoulder. “Thanks, Alex. What a pair of gents you are. There was no bloody way they were getting me on that shuttle.”
“Yeah, but if you’d stayed put, we wouldn’t be pissing around like this, would we?” Marc was angry. “Why didn’t you stay in the access passages?”
“Because I had a feeling Erskine would wipe the wormhole data, so I had to try and retrieve it, didn’t I? You’d have done the same.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nah, Ben caught me.”
“Okay, now it’s your turn. Get those bombs stopped. Are you planning to go home after this? They’ll come and extract you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you get Tev back to Fiji? It’s in your neck of the woods. He hasn’t seen his kids in ages.”
“I’ll give it a go,” Kim said. “It’s the least I can do. Do you want a ride back to the UK?”
“I’m staying, thanks,” Marc said, and walked on.
It wasn’t like him to snap at people, but Alex thought better of asking him if anything was wrong. He just trailed after them and ended up waiting outside the Lammergeier while Solomon was brought out to supervise Kim’s call to APS. Everything felt very unreal now. Marc sat down with him on the tilt rotor’s ramp.
“She’s just relaying messages through some bagman,” he said, and looked at his watch. “Still, we’ve got at least twenty-four hours for them to call this off.”
“You think we’ll make it if they don’t?”
Marc shrugged. “As long as the shelter’s sealed and we don’t have any leaks letting contaminated dust a
nd water in, I think so. It won’t be pretty. But we’ll come out alive. I know I always do.”
Marc didn’t say anything else and sat staring up at the sky. Eventually Kim walked past them down the ramp and stood on the lawn, stretching.
“Well?” Alex said.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t speak to Pham direct. I’ll have to wait and see like everyone else. It’s early morning there, after all.”
“Did you point out that we’re not much use to them trashed and glowing in the dark?”
“I did. And I made a big thing of how shitty and obsolete your ships are, and that they should let you clear out as soon as possible so we can take over the facility. I think it’s for the best that my people don’t find out what Sol is.” Kim stretched again. “Oh, and Sol impersonated you when he made the initial call. So if some bloke says that he spoke to you on the sat phone, just say yes.”
“Great. What did I say?”
“Just that Erskine was as mad as a box of frogs and that she’d sabotaged the comms, but you were the main man to talk to, and that you’d hand over the goods if they called off the bombing.”
Alex thought that was a pretty fair assessment of his own thoughts. “Close enough.”
“I’m going to grab a shower, then, if that’s okay with you,” she said.
Marc stood up. “Then you’ll have it downstairs in the shelter. I’m not letting you walk around without close protection until this is sorted one way or the other. Erskine’s persistent.”
Alex thought Marc was flirting with her for a moment, but the guy looked deadly serious. Someone would have to guard her now until the shuttle left. It was only fourteen hours or so. It would soon be over.
It was decent of her to look out for Sol like that, though. Maybe it was time to rebuild a few bridges with him. Alex realised how fast his finest hour had faded and left him deflated. Adrenaline did that, apparently, but he’d experienced nothing like it before to prepare him. The aftermath was a thumping headache and a dry mouth. Maybe he needed that beer after all, seeing as Kim was safe and the message had been sent.
But he had to sit it out until midnight, because the passenger list needed to be finalised. He went back to his office, feeling a few strained muscles, and busied himself checking out the bruises that he didn’t realise he’d acquired in his scuffle with Ben. Poor old Ben — this was a guy he drank with and regarded as a friend, and he’d ended up trying to brain him with a curl bar. Maybe Ben was now sitting somewhere licking his own wounds and wondering why a buddy had kept Opis a secret all those years. Neither of them had really known each other until survival was at stake.
A message arrived on Alex’s screen at 2230. It was from Erskine, just one word.
TRAITOR.
It didn’t hurt. Alex was more worried about the problems she’d cause by staying here, because she wasn’t one for giving in gracefully. He had the feeling that the rules would change once the bulk of the Ainatio staff were gone. He could see Trinder taking over, maybe with Doug Brandt and Chris, because they’d be the majority. Life wasn’t going to go on as before even if they never made it to Opis. He thought about Marc and Tev, and how fast they took control of situations, and bet himself that things here would run on more military lines in the future.
But he had to reply to Erskine. He wondered whether to tell her that Kim had contacted APS to horse-trade, but she’d have worked that out by now, and it wasn’t going to change anything. He stuck to the basics.
I HAVE 68 BERTHS EMPTY. I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND AND TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEAVE IN ELCANO. THEY’LL NEED SOME LEADERSHIP. WE ALREADY HAVE OURS.
Alex tapped SEND. It felt good.
It also made him feel guilty. In a way, Erskine had done the right thing. They both had. They just operated in different realities that put them on a collision course, and Alex had discovered that he was one of the guys who worried about the faces looking at him right now, not a vague future full of people he’d never live to see.
Erskine’s reply came back ten minutes later. I WILL NOT FORGET THIS. GOODBYE.
It wasn’t an expression of gratitude.
“Goodbye, Director,” he said.
He put her out of his mind and started looking through the list of people who weren’t going, intending to contact them and ask if they’d changed their minds. But there were no names on the standby list now, and all he’d do by asking was undermine hard decisions that had already been taken. They’d made up their minds.
He’d ask Solomon if he felt like a chat. At least he could look the AI in the eye now, because he’d done what a man was morally obliged to do.
A clean conscience was a wonderful comfort.
* * *
Kill Line:
1130 Hours, Next Morning
Doug Brandt hadn’t heard that low rumbling noise for a long time, but he knew exactly what it was.
He tried to recall the last time that Ainatio had launched a shuttle. The sound always made everyone stop and look up, and today was no exception. He paused and got out of the truck, shielding his eyes against the sun as he tried to work out where the ship would emerge above the trees, and waited for the whine.
After the initial rumble, that whine would start low and work up the scale, followed by something he always heard as a scream of frustration as the shuttle picked up speed. He’d only ever glimpsed it in flight, never on take-off, but he’d seen SSTOs like it take off on TV, zipping along a launch rail set in the runway to boost speed before finally lifting off.
Ah, there was the scream. In a few moments he’d see the charcoal-grey, missile-like shape lift into the sky, leaving a shimmering haze in its wake. When it finally rose above the trees it looked too sleek to be real.
I suppose we could have been on that flight. The whole family.
Doug stopped himself right there. Everyone would get where they were meant to be, and it was better to stay together in the long term than sow divisions now. But if he understood the schedule right, he would only be the mayor for a couple more months until Shackleton was ready, and then the next thing would be waking up forty-five years later in a new world with an established settlement. Would Kill Line integrate? Would they become a suburb, a quarter, a separate community?
There was no Kill Line any longer, even if it was still on the map. He couldn’t let himself grieve about it. The future was all that mattered now. He chose to believe that there would be one, and that it would start tomorrow.
He got back in the truck and carried on through the deserted town. The fire and rescue committee had already searched to make sure every building was clear, and checked the evacuee list, but he wanted to do one final sweep himself before driving out to Liam Dale’s farm. It was for his own closure.
Even in the middle of the night when nobody was out on the streets, Kill Line had always felt alive, but this morning it seemed truly empty for the first time in Doug’s life. A few chickens were poking around in the grass. Wisps of smoke rose above the roofline in the town square as the carcasses of Marty Laurenson’s sheep still burned. It was an apocalypse without any visible damage. Every home that Doug passed was shuttered. In the fields, cattle were still grazing. Those who hadn’t shot their livestock had left them to roam, and Liam Dale was the last farmer left.
At least he’d been consistent. He hadn’t wanted to leave when Opis was an option rather than a necessity, and he still hadn’t wanted to leave when the die-back started again. It wasn’t surprising that even the threat of salted bombs hadn’t shifted him. But he wasn’t crazy.
He was cleaning the milking parlour when Doug arrived. It was so quiet out here — no tractors, no sawmill, no pumps — that Doug could simply follow the sound of the high-pressure hose to find him. Liam looked up as he walked in. The air felt damp and fresh like the aftermath of rain.
“Come on, Liam,”
Doug said. “You’ve done all you can. Let’s go. Come and have something to eat. Nicola’s waiting with the kids. She needs you there.”
Liam didn’t say anything. He put the hose away and switched off the power at the box on the wall. Doug followed him back to the house a few paces behind, just letting him be, and stopped when he stopped. He waited outside until Liam came out with a small suitcase, shut the front door, and rattled the lock a few times to persuade himself that it was secure.
He put the case in the back of Doug’s pick-up. “Give me a moment,” he said.
Doug could guess where he was going. Liam didn’t have many animals — some pigs, his prize herd of Jerseys, a few chickens that were more pets for his kids than anything — but they were as much his family’s legacy as a rich man’s estate. Doug left him for a respectable time. When he eventually went to find him, he was leaning on the fence, watching his cattle. The Jersey bull was watching him back. It was the meanest animal Doug had ever come across, a stark contrast to the small, friendly cows with their pretty deer-like faces.
“Liam, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but Ainatio’s trying to negotiate with APS to call off the bombing,” Doug said. “They’ve offered to trade their secret research. We’re waiting to hear.”
Liam half-shrugged. One of the cows ambled across to him and presented her muzzle for scratching. “Yeah. I heard the rumour. If they do, I’m going to feel bad for the guys who’ve shot their livestock.”
He hung around a little longer, then shook his head and walked away to the truck. He didn’t look back as Doug drove off. If the bombing went ahead, this was probably the last time anyone would see Kill Line in one piece.
No. Look forward. We have to.
It wasn’t a long drive back to the shelter at Ainatio, but it was still a lot of silence to sit through. Just once, Doug glanced at Liam, expecting to see him staring out of the window or keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead, but he wasn’t looking at anything at all. His eyes were shut and his face was streaked with tears.
The Best of Us Page 48
