Shelby watched the girls as they wandered, arm in arm over towards the nearest pond. 'So, what's this big idea of yours, Graham?'
'A war game.'
'A war game? We only recently had one. Have you cleaned up and reset the world by the way?'
'Yeeesss.' Gray sighed. 'Jesus, what are you? My mom?'
Shelby ignored that. 'Anyway, I thought you said you were getting bored of them? Hence your rather silly creature designs and ridiculous environment last time.'
'Yeah, well…I was just trying to spice things up a bit. It was getting a bit, you know, stale, all that recreating actual historical battles. Anyway, look…' He glanced at the girls. 'It's got a bit more interesting now.'
Shelby followed his gaze. He cocked a sceptical brow. 'You think those girls might be interested in a war game?'
'You kidding me? It was her idea.'
'Really?'
'We could make it doubles. Me and Jez verses you and Ellie.'
Shelby tapped his lips thoughtfully with steepled fingers. 'I'm not entirely convinced they'd take a war game particularly seriously.'
'You have no idea, Shelbs. Jez is quite a wild child. Very competitive.'
Shelby looked at him. 'You…you rather like her don't you?'
He made a face. 'She's pretty hot. And she's fun.'
'Let me guess, you're hoping she'll choose to stay when the supply shuttle comes?'
He smiled. 'She'll stay, Shelbs….she'll stay.'
'Oh my freg!' gasped Jez. 'I thought you were ragging me. These fish really do smile!'
'Uh-huh. Shelby says they're called Karma Carp.' Ellie squatted down beside the pond and dipped her fingers in the water. A school of fish swam towards where she was stirring the surface. Small human-like faces that made them look wise old men with long foo-man-choo whiskers. Their lips emerged from the surface curling into odd looking smiles. One of the bigger fish, muscled its way forward and gummed at her hand, its lips closing around one of her finger tips.
Jez giggled. 'It's sucking on you like a baby.'
She nodded. 'Tickles. Try it.'
Jez knelt down, leant forward dipped her hand in the water and chuckled as carp began to crowd around her hand, clamping their lips onto her fingers.
They watched the fish and giggled at the odd expressions they were pulling, not just improbable smiles, but bulges of flesh above their eyes that looked almost like human brows, folding and flexing making them look surprised, remorseful, disapproving, sceptical.
Finally Ellie broke the silence. 'Are you okay, Jez?'
'Okay? Sure!' She looked at Ellie curiously. 'Hang on….what do you mean by that?'
What exactly did she mean? She wasn't too sure. It was just that she was seeing a different side to Jez for the first time. Not the bolshy, mouthy, thick skinned, blabber mouth she normally was. Not the city-chik so used to casually picking up and discarding guys like fast food wrappers. Instead, here was Jez all doe-eyed and loved-up. Or at least she seemed to be.
'I don't know…I guess, it's just…I've never seen you like this before.'
'Like what?'
'All mooshy.'
'Mooshy?' She arched a perfectly formed brow. Then noted Ellie glancing across at the two young men. 'What?! You think I'm getting all luvvy-duvvy over Gray?!'
Ellie nodded.
'God! No!!' Jez was now doing the frown and puffy thing with her cheeks, the thing she did when she protested too much. 'He's just some easy fun, Ellie. He's a totally cool tool, and…to be fair, as geekoid brainheads go, he's not too bad looking either.'
'I just….you know, it just looks like you're totally getting into him. I've never seen you get like that over a man.'
'I'm just having a laugh, El'. That's all!'
'And…I'm kind of worried that he's….'
'What?'
'That…he's kind of, a bit….strange.'
Jez laughed. 'Oh, you mean that crazy world of his?
'It's not crazy…it's sick. Isn't it?'
'That's just men, Ellie. That's the kind of weird crud they dream up all the time. Give a baby boy some modelling gel, what's the first thing he makes? A gun, right? It's just normal man stuff.'
She was probably right. Ted had a habit of weaponizing anything he could lay his hands on. That, and torturing his toys. 'I guess.'
'And…before you say anything more, before you start worrying that I'm doing the 'L' thing. I don't do 'love'. Not for anyone…except myself that is.' She sat back from the fish pond. 'I'm just having some fun here, while we're waiting for that stupid supply shuttle to finally turn up.'
Ellie looked at her. 'You do know, Jez,….' she started.
'What?'
'Well, just saying, that if you ever happened to meet someone, you know, someone really special while we're on our travels…?'
On our travels? That was a pretty stupid way of putting it. On the run for our fregging lives was probably more accurate.
Jez suddenly reached out and grabbed Ellie's jaw in one of her large hands.
'Ellie? You and me are sisters. Right? Always. We go together. Wherever we go, it's together. If you're getting on that shuttle when it arrives, so am I. Understandy?'
Ellie found it hard to reply with her lips mushed up. She tried. 'I guesh sho.'
'Right then. So Gray's pretty hot. Pretty good fun. And I'm having a blast here at the coolest fregging place in the galaxy. But, when that shuttle turns up, I'm leaving with you Ellie. That's a double crossed heart promise. Okay?'
Ellie nodded.
'Good.' She turned round to look at the other two. 'But you know? While we're marooned here, why not try and have some fun as well? Huh? Hey, why not give ol' Shelbs a go? As pasty-faced rubber neck nerdoids go…if you can get past the whipped-cream hair and blubber lips, he doesn't look too horrendous.'
Ellie's eyes rounded at that. 'You cannot be serious?'
Jez shrugged. 'As far as I'm aware, you've never…actually…you know….'
'Jez! For crud's sake!'
'Just sayin', El'.'
'You're right! No. I. haven't! And I'm certainly not going to start doing that….with, well, with…'
'Fair enough.' Jez nodded slowly. 'Maybe you're right to save yourself.' She looked down at the carp still swimming in restless circles around the point where she'd dipped her hand into the water. Their pale pasty faces and slimy lips kept breaking the surface, their lips pursed into little eager 'O's.
'I guess you're right. Probably want to aim a little higher than Shelby for your very first time.'
Ellie shook her head and punched her friend's arm lightly. 'Can we just lay off talking about my non-existent sex life. Huh? As it happens I've got far bigger things to worry about right now.'
'What?'
'The Administration?'
'Oh, yeah…that.' Jez stuck her fingers back in the water and drew idle circles. She cackled as the carp hurried over and started jostling each other to suck on her fingers once again. 'Oh, by the way,' she said after a moment. 'Gray suggested we play some kind of war game. You up for that?'
'War game?'
'I'm not exactly sure what that means. Soldiers and guns and 'splosions I guess. But he was talking about me and him verses you and Shelby.'
Ellie sighed. 'Yeah, I get it, Jez….I go babysit Shelby while you get yourself some Gray-time in.'
Jez looked guilty. 'Kind of. It does sound fun though.'
'A war game, huh?' She rolled her eyes. 'Well….why not?'
CHAPTER 21
'Yes, if you're wondering…you are still alive.'
Deacon leant over the cocoon of the medi-pod, into the field of view of the young man lying inside. The volley of fire from the soldiers' high calibre weapons had made a mess of him, ripped his torso to tattered shreds. The regiment's senior surgeon had been hurried down from the orbiting cruiser to oversee the fixing up of this particular patient. Deacon had made it quite clear that the surgeon had better damn well make sure he was stabilized. Th
ere'd been a dozen hours of frantic surgery as the man had installed a number of artificial organs to replace those that had been torn to pieces.
The surgery had been followed by three weeks of induced coma to allow his ruined body some recovery time.
Deacon looked down on the remains of the young man now and almost felt pity for the terrorist. An arm and part of one shoulder was gone. The right side of his torso, from armpit to hip, was wide open exposing his rib cage and several of the plastex green replacement organs and the fluid pipes leading into and out of them. Deacon could see an artificial lung expanding and collapsing through a gap in his ribs. A protein feed tube linked directly into an artificial stomach, but beside his head there was a tube from which he could suck water.
His left leg was gone at the hip, so shattered by the high velocity rounds that there was a very real danger that fine splinters of bone might find their way into his blood system. Under different circumstances, with care, a bio-mechanical replacement and many years of therapy he might have walked again, albeit with a pronounced limp.
But, that wasn't important. Or relevant. Or going to happen.
He was alive for now because Deacon needed to interrogate him. The leg had been cleanly removed and the remaining stump's arteries cauterised and encased in a sealant gel.
The young man had been stabilised, as requested. Nothing more. In theory, he could live as long as any other person, but, it would be a life permanently encased in this clear plastic sarcophagus.
His body might be a wretched sight from the collarbone down, but from the neck up he was entirely untouched. A young face. Deacon suspected that without the scruffy beard, and with a little colour on that waxy pale skin, he might be what teenaged girls on this planet would call: something of a total jiggamuffin.
Good looking. A pretty boy.
Hollander's covert ops unit had done well. Not a single shot had hit him above the neck, nor damaged his heart; head shots might guarantee a priority target was brought down and unlikely to trigger any explosive device, but it also guaranteed no likelihood of gathering any useful intelligence.
The young man's blue eyes slowly settled on Deacon. '…I….know…I'm alive…' His words came out in sync' with the wheezing of the artificial lung.
'My men thought you were just about to detonate a vest.'
The young man turned his head slightly and sipped water from the tube beside his mouth. He swallowed noisily and released the tube. 'You…should have let me die.'
'You must realise I'd never do that. My aim is always to catch your type alive, if I can.'
The young man tried to shake his head. His movement was limited by a padded restraint strap cinched tightly around his forehead. Not to prevent him escaping, but to stop any chance of a seizure resulting in the machinery attached to him being shaken loose.
'I'm not going…to tell you…anything.'
'Of course you're not.' Deacon smiled. He nodded almost proudly. 'I wouldn't expect any less of you. You'd happily choose to die before betraying your cause, right?'
'In a…heartbeat.'
'That's a pity.'
It was balls-to-the-wall courage like this that made Deacon's job so hard sometimes. A small part of him wanted to embrace the young man and tell him he was worth more than a hundred lazy and corrupt law marshals. Cut from far better stuff than the shuffling dregs out there on the streets.
He pulled up a stool and perched on it. 'So perhaps I'll just cut to the chase and tell you what we already know. Then we can work forward from there.'
'I told you…I'm not going to…tell you anything!'
'Not willingly, of course. I know that.' Deacon tapped his wrist screen and pulled up some notes. 'So….I'm afraid we're going to proceed on the assumption that what I don't know, I'm going to have to coerce out of you. But, let's start with what we do know about you. You're twenty-six years old. Originally born to Roth and Tauren Ritter, on Holstein in this system.' He tapped the screen. 'Full name, Alex S. Ritter. Citizen number; M104957773920.'
The young man said nothing. He looked away from Deacon.
'You left home when you were still very young. Local records show you were a particularly bright young lad. High citizenship exam scores right across the board, particularly in maths and combined stage 3 science.'
Still a silence; still looking away from him at the pale blue wall of this small, one-pod ward.
'Unlike the vast majority of teenagers…it seems you had such a keen mind. And a powerful desire to travel far, to see some of this universe.'
Still nothing. Except, Deacon noticed a solitary tear rolling down one smooth cheek onto the pillow.
'You travelled quite a lot by the look of it. We've got records of you entering and leaving a number of worlds in this system. Then it seems our records get a bit sketchy.' Deacon looked up from his small wrist screen. 'I'm guessing that's when you found your calling…your faith. You converted to the Rebornist faith? And not long after you began travelling under a false ID?'
The young man finally stirred. 'Yeah…I got a false…citizen number.'
'You started using a false name.'
The young man tried to shake his head; it was little more than a subtle rocking motion, constrained by the head strap. 'Took my mother's surname. And….and I used my…middle name. So no…not a false name.' He smiled, another tear rolled down his cheek. 'It's what mom and dad called me…all the time anyway…never called me 'Alex'. Never.'
'They called you Sean.'
He tried to nod.
Deacon looked again at the projected information screen. 'And so that's the name you used when you arrived on Harpers Reach six years ago. Sean Eltwood.'
The young managed the slightest nod.
Deacon leant on the hood of the medi-pod; their faces were now no more than a foot apart now, either side of the plastex hood. Their eyes meeting.
'Why don't you tell me what you've been doing here on Harpers Reach for the last six years? You do realise….one way or another, we'll get right inside your head and have that answer, don't you, Sean?'
Sean narrowed his eyes. 'I…know what kind of…mind-scan probes you can stick into my head.' His dry laugh was more a stuttering wheeze than anything else. His laboured breath clicked and wheezed mechanically. 'But I also know how…' He sipped on his water tube, '…how unreliable the data can be. The digital signature of a…a thought…a memory-'
'Can be interpreted many ways. I know,' said Deacon. 'Sometimes little better than reading tea leaves.'
Sean nodded. 'So…why don't you.. just let me die?'
'Because we can do a lot better than a primitive mindscan. And…because you're our only link to Ellie.' Deacon noted the young man's eyes flicker, widening ever so slightly. 'Yes, Sean. We know all about her.'
Actually, Deacon knew next to nothing about what she was. And even less about what the Rebornists were hoping to achieve with her. What he did know about her were a few details on her childhood life at that remote farm.
'We know that for several years you went to the Quin's home to teach her math. We also know you managed to get very close to her. To appear to be her friend. Her only friend it seems.'
'She…' Sean struggled against his head restraint. Rocking gently, and grimacing as he did so. 'She was…my friend. That much…was genuine.'
'Were you indoctrinating her, Sean? Teaching her about your faith?'
The young man was looking away again, rocking, fidgeting insistently inside the pod.
'Sean? You might as well talk to me. If you don't…we'll find a way to get inside you. And I don't want to do that if I can help it, lad. I think you deserve better than that.'
Sean turned to look up at him again. Beneath the red rim of his sad eyes, a track of tears soaked down the side of his face onto the gurney. 'She's gone. She's flown…far…far…away.'
'She's flown offworld. At best. We've got her bottled up in this system, Sean. We're going to find her sooner or later. Trust me.'
Sean studied him for a moment. '…you're frightened…'
Deacon allowed him a small nod. 'A little. I'm concerned. I want to find her before she becomes too dangerous. And if I have to dig around inside your head to find out where she's hiding, Sean…I will do so.'
For the briefest moment, Deacon thought he spotted the ghost of a defiant smile flickering onto the young man's dry lips.
'Not…if I'm already…dead.'
It was then that Deacon noticed the young man had worked the lower part of his one remaining arm free of the wrist restraint; although still anchored to the gurney by a strap around his elbow, his hand and forearm were free.
Deacon cursed.
Sean quickly reached across his bare belly, and fumbled blindly for the fluid tubes and effluent out-pipes spilling like macaroni from the open left side of his torso.
'Surgeon!!' Deacon shouted.
Sean's fist was now clenched tightly around a nest of fluid pipes, he looked up at Deacon. '…time is coming…you'll all be….swept away…' With a savage jerk he yanked them out of his body. Dark fluid spattered the underside of the hood and he began to convulse and scream inside the medipod.
'Surgeon!!' Deacon turned round. The door to the small ward room was open and an orderly was standing open-mouthed in the door way.
'Godammit! Go get the senior surgeon! NOW!!'
CHAPTER 22
'It's like…it's just like a viddee game projection booth,' said Ellie.
Shelby stopped what he was doing. 'That is almost exactly right.' He turned to look at her and offered something close to a nod of approval. 'This is a Deluxa Sushatz GamePro 360 suite. The company had a number of these installed up here in the control tower for our designers to use as editing tools.'
They were standing in a small cylindrical chamber, no more than eight feet in diameter and about a dozen feet high. The wall consisted of one circular high resolution projection screen.
'We use these suites to explore a world design from the user's point of view. Wander around it, inspect it up close, that sort of thing. It's quite amazing how many glitches and potential fabrication errors you can spot from ground level that you don't see from what we call the 'God's Eye View', using the design desks.'