The Reality Dysfunction

  “Merde, now we’ll have to laser every latch clamp,” André complained. He could see that Brendon had cut loose half of the first pod. By his own timetable, they had nine minutes left. It was going to be a close-run thing. “Knock that bloody lifeboat out, Erick.”

  “No,” Erick said calmly. The lifeboat had stopped accelerating. Its spent solid rocket booster was jettisoned.

  “I gave you an order.”

  “Piracy is one thing; I’m not being a party to slaughter. There are children on that lifeboat.”

  “He’s right, André,” Madeleine Collum said.

  “Merde! All right, but once Brendon has those pods cut free I want the Krystal Moon vaporized. That bloody captain has put our necks on the block by defying us, I want him ruined.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Erick said. How typical, he thought, we can go in with lasers blazing, but if anyone fights back, that’s unfair. When we get back to Tranquillity, I’m going to take a great deal of unprofessional pride in having André Duchamp committed to a penal planet.

  They made it with forty-five seconds to spare. Brendon cut both cargo-pods free, and manoeuvred them into the waiting cargo hold in the Villeneuve’s Revenge. X-ray lasers started to chop at the Krystal Moon as the MSV docked with its own cradle to be drawn gingerly into the hangar bay. The remaining cargo-pods were split open, spilling their wrecked contents out into the void. Structural spars melted, twisting as though they were being chewed. Tanks were punctured, creating a huge vapour cloud that chased outward, its fringes swirling round the retreating lifeboat.

  The starship’s hangar door slid shut. Combat sensors retreated back into the funereal hull. An event horizon sprang up around the Villeneuve’s Revenge. The starship shrank. Vanished.

  Floating alone amid the fragmented debris and vacuum-chilled nebula, the lifeboat let out a passionless electromagnetic shriek for help.

  The word was out even before the Lady Macbeth docked at Tranquillity’s spaceport. Joshua’s landed the big one. On his first Norfolk run, for Heaven’s sake. How does he do it? Something about that guy is uncanny.

  Lucky little sod.

  Joshua led his crew into a packed Harkey’s Bar. The band played a martial welcome with plangent trumpets; four of the waitresses were standing on the beer-slopped bar, short black skirts letting everyone see their knickers (or not, in one case); crews and groups of spaceport workers whistled, cheered, and jeered. One long table was loaded down with bottles of wine and champagne in troughs of ice; Harkey himself stood at the end, a smile in place. Everyone quietened down.

  Joshua looked round slowly, an immensely smug grin in place. This must be what Alastair II saw from his state coach every day. It was fabulous. “Do you want a speech?”

  “NO!”

  His arm swept out expansively towards Harkey. He bowed low, relishing the theatre. “Then open the bottles.”

  There was a rush for the table, conversation even loud enough to drown out Warlow erupted as though someone had switched on a stack of AV pillars, the band struck up, and the waitresses struggled with the corks.

  Joshua pushed a bemused and slightly awestruck Gideon Kavanagh off on Ashly Hanson, and snatched some glasses from the drinks table. He was kissed a great many times on his way to the corner booth where Barrington Grier and Roland Frampton were waiting. He loaded visual images and names of three of the girls into his neural nanonics for future reference.

  Roland Frampton was rising to his feet, a slightly apprehensive smile flicking on and off, obviously worried by exactly how big the cargo was—he had contracted to buy all of it. But he shook Joshua warmly by the hand. “I thought I’d better come here,” he said in amusement. “It would take you days to reach my office. You’re the talk of Tranquillity.”

  “Really?”

  Barrington Grier gave him a pat on the shoulder and they all sat down.

  “That Kelly girl was asking after you,” Barrington said.

  “Ah.” Joshua shifted round. Kelly Tirrel, his neural nanonics file supplied, Collins news corp reporter. “Oh, right. How is she?”

  “Looked pretty good to me. She’s on the broadcasts a lot these days. Presents the morning news for Collins three times a week.”

  “Good. Good. Glad to hear it.” Joshua took a small bottle of Norfolk Tears from the inside pocket of the gold-yellow jacket he was wearing over his ship-suit.

  Roland Frampton stared at it as he would a cobra.

  “This is the Cricklade bouquet,” Joshua said smoothly. He settled the three glasses on their table, and twisted the bottle’s cork slowly. “I’ve tasted it. One of the finest on the planet. They bottle it in Stoke county.” The clear liquid flowed out of the pear-shaped bottle.

  They all lifted a glass, Roland Frampton studying his against the yellow wall lights.

  “Cheers,” Joshua said, and took a drink. A dragon breathed its diabolical fire into his belly.

  Roland Frampton sipped delicately. “Oh, Christ, it’s perfect.” He glanced at Joshua. “How much did you bring? There have been rumours ...”

  Joshua made a show of producing his inventory. It was a piece of neatly printed paper with Grant Kavanagh’s stylish signature on the bottom in black ink.

  “Three thousand cases!” Roland Frampton squeaked, his eyes protruded.

  Barrington Grier gave Joshua a sharp glance, and plucked the inventory from Roland’s hands. “Bloody hell,” he murmured.

  Roland was dabbing at his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “This is wonderful. Yes, wonderful. But I wasn’t expecting quite so much, Joshua. Nothing personal, it’s just that first-time captains don’t normally bring back so much. There are arrangements I have to make ... the bank. It will take time.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll wait?” Roland Frampton asked eagerly.

  “You were very good to me when I started out. So I think I can wait a couple of days.”

  Roland’s hand sliced through the air, he ended up making a fist just above the table. Determination visibly returned his old spark. “Right, I’ll have a Jovian Bank draft for you in thirty hours. I won’t forget this, Joshua. And one day I want to be told how you did it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Roland drained his glass in one gulp and stood up.

  “Thirty hours.”

  “Fine. If I’m not about, give it to one of the crew. I expect they’ll still be here.”

  Joshua watched the old man weave a path through the excited crowd.

  “That was decent of you,” Barrington said. “You could have made instant money going to a big commercial distribution chain.”

  Joshua flashed him a smile, and they touched glasses. “Like I said, he gave me a break when I needed it.”

  “Roland Frampton doesn’t need a break. He thought he was doing you a favour agreeing to buy your cargo. First-time captains on the Norfolk run are lucky if they make two hundred cases.”

  “Yeah, so I heard.”

  “Now you come back with a cargo worth five times as much as his business. You going to tell us how you did it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so. I don’t know what you’ve got, young Joshua. But by God, I wish I had shares in you.”

  He finished his glass and treated Barrington to an iniquitous smile. He handed over the small bottle of Norfolk Tears. “Here, with compliments.”

  “Aren’t you staying? It’s your party.”

  He looked round. Warlow was at the centre of a cluster of girls, all of them giggling as one sat on the crook of his outstretched arm, her legs swinging well off the floor. Ashly was slumped in a booth, also surrounded by girls, one of them feeding him dainty pieces of white seafood from a plate. He couldn’t even spot the others. “No,” he said. “I have a date.”

  “She must be quite something.”

  “They are.”

  The Isakore was still anchored where they had left it, prow wedged up on the slippery bank, hull secure against casual observation b
y a huge cherry oak tree which overhung the river, lower branches trailing in the water.

  Lieutenant Murphy Hewlett let out what could well have been a whimper of relief when its shape registered. His retinal implants were switched to infrared now the sun had set. The fishing boat was a salmon-pink outline distorted by the darker burgundy flecks of the cherry oak leaves, as if it was hidden behind a solidified waterfall.

  He hadn’t really expected it to be there. Not a quantifiable end, not to this mission. His mates treated his name as a joke back in the barracks.

  Murphy’s law: if anything can go wrong, it will. And it had, this time as no other.

  They had been under attack for five hours solid now. White fireballs that came stabbing out of the trees without warning. Figures that lurked half seen in the jungle, keeping pace, never giving them a moment’s rest.

  Figures that weren’t always human. Seven times they’d fallen back to using the TIP carbines for a sweep-scorch pattern, hacking at the jungle with blades of invisible energy, then tramping on through the smouldering vine roots and cloying ash.

  All four of them were wounded to some extent. Nothing seemed to extinguish the white fire once it hit flesh. Murphy was limping badly, his right knee enclosed by a medical nanonic package, his left hand was completely useless, he wasn’t even sure if the package could save his fingers. But Murphy was most worried about Niels Regehr; the lad had taken a fireball straight in the face. He had no eyes nor nose left, only the armour suit sensors enabled him to see where he was going now, datavising their images directly into his neural nanonics. But even the neural nanonics pain blocks and a constant infusion of endocrines couldn’t prevent him from suffering bouts of hallucination and disorientation. He kept shouting for them to go away and leave him alone, holding one-sided conversations, even quoting from prayers.

  Murphy had detailed him to escort their prisoner; he could just about manage that. She said her name was Jacqueline Couteur, a middle-aged woman, small, overweight, with greying hair, dressed in jeans and a thick cotton shirt. She could punch harder than any of the supplement-boosted marines (Louis Beith had a broken arm to prove it), she had more stamina than them, and she could work that electronic warfare trick on their suit blocks if she wasn’t being prodded with one of their heavy-calibre Bradfield chemical-projectile rifles.

  They had captured her ten minutes after their last contact with Jenny Harris. That was when they’d let the horses go. The animals were panicking as balls of white fire arched down out of the sky, a deceitfully majestic display of borealis rockets.

  Something made a slithering sound in the red and black jungle off to Murphy’s right. Garrett Tucci fired his Bradfield, slamming explosive bullets into the vegetation. Murphy caught the swiftest glimpse of a luminous red figure scurrying away; it was either a man with a warm cloak spread wide, or else a giant bat standing on its hind legs.

  “Bloody implants are shot,” he muttered under his breath. He checked his TIP carbine’s power reserve. He was down to the last heavy-duty power cell: twelve per cent. “Niels, Garrett, take the prisoner onto the boat and get the motor going. Louis, you and I are laying down a sweep-scorch. It might give us the time we need.”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  Murphy felt an immense pride in the tiny squad. Nobody could have done better, they were the best, the very best. And they were his.

  He drew a breath, and brought the TIP carbine up again. Niels was shoving his Bradfield’s muzzle into the small of Jacqueline Couteur’s back, urging her towards the boat. Murphy suddenly realized she could see as well as them in the dark. It didn’t matter now. One of the day’s smaller mysteries.

  His TIP carbine fired, nozzle aimed by his neural nanonics. Flames rose before him, leaping from tree to tree, incinerating the twigs, biting deeply into the larger branches. Vines flared and sparkled like fused electrical cables, swinging in short arcs before falling to the ground and writhing ferociously as they spat and hissed. A solid breaker of heat rolled around him, shunted into the ground by his suit’s dispersal layer.

  Smoke rose from his feet. The medical nanonic package around his knee datavised a heat-overload warning into his neural nanonics.

  “Come on, Lieutenant!” Garrett shouted.

  Through the heavy crackling of the flames Murphy could hear the familiar chugging sound of the Isakore’s motor. The suit’s rear optical sensors showed him the boat backing out from under the cherry oak, water boiling ferociously around its stern.

  “Go,” Murphy told Louis Beith.

  They turned and raced for the Isakore. Murphy could just targeting graphics circling his back.

  We’ll never make it, not out of this.

  Flames were rising thirty metres into the night behind them. Isakore was completely free of the cherry oak. Niels was leaning over the gunwale, holding out a hand. The green-tinted medical nanonic package leaching to his face looked like some massive and grotesque wart.

  Water splashed around his boots. Once he nearly slipped on the mud and tangled snowlily fronds. But then he was clinging to the side of the wooden boat, hauling himself up onto the deck.

  “Holy shit, we made it!” He was laughing uncontrollably, tears streaming out of his eyes. “We actually bloody made it.” He pulled his shell-helmet off, and lay on his back, looking at the fire. A stretch of jungle four hundred metres long was in flames, hurling orange sparks into the black sky far above.

  The impenetrable water of the Zamjan shimmered with long orange reflections. Garrett was turning the boat, aiming the prow downriver.

  “What about the Kulu team?” Louis asked. He’d taken his shell-helmet off, showing a face glinting with sweat. His breathing was heavy.

  “I think that was a sonic boom we heard this afternoon,” Murphy said, raising his voice above the flames. “Those Kulu bastards, always one move ahead of everyone else.”

  “They’re soft, that’s all,” Garrett shouted from the wheel-house. “Can’t take the pressure. We can. We’re the fucking Confed fucking Navy fucking Marines.” He whooped.

  Murphy grinned back at him; fatigue pulled at every limb. He’d been using his boosted muscles almost constantly, which meant he’d have to make sure he ate plenty of high-protein rations to regain his proper blood energy levels. He loaded a memo into his neural nanonics.

  His communication block let out a bleep for the first time in five hours; the datavise told him that there was a channel to the navy ELINT satellite open.

  “Bloody hell,” Murphy said. He datavised the block: “Sir, is that you, sir?”

  “Christ, Murphy,” Kelven Solanki’s datavise gushed into his mind. “What’s happening?”

  “Spot of trouble, sir. Nothing we can’t handle. We’re back on the boat now, heading downriver.”

  Louis gave an exhausted laugh, and flopped onto his back.

  “The Kulu team evacuated,” Kelven Solanki reported. “Their whole embassy contingent upped and left in the Ekwan this evening. Ralph Hiltch called me from orbit to say there wasn’t enough room on the spaceplane to pick you up.”

  Murphy could sense a great deal of anger lying behind the lieutenant-commander’s smooth signal. “Doesn’t matter, sir; we got you a prisoner.”

  “Fantastic. One of the sequestrated ones?”

  Murphy glanced over his shoulder. Jacqueline Couteur was sitting on the deck with her back to the wheel-house. She gave him a dour stare.

  “I think so, sir, she can interfere with our electronics if we give her half a chance. She’s got to be watched constantly.”

  “OK, when can you have her back in—” Kelven Solanki’s datavise vanished under a peal of static. The communications block reported the channel was lost.

  Murphy picked up his TIP carbine and pointed it at Jacqueline Couteur.

  “Is that you?”

  She shrugged. “No.”

  Murphy looked back at the fire on the bank. They were half a kilometre away now. People were walking along the
shoreline where the Isakore had been anchored. The big cherry oak was still standing, intact, a black silhouette against the blanket of flame.

  “Can they affect our electronics from here?”

  “We don’t care about your electronics,” she said. “Such things have no place in our world.”

  “Are you talking to them?”

  “No.”

  “Sir!” Garrett yelled.

  Murphy swung round. The people on the shore were standing in a ring, holding hands. A large ball of white fire emerged from the ground in their midst and curved over their heads, soaring out across the river.

  “Down!” Murphy shouted.

  The fireball flashed overhead, making the air roil from its passage, bringing a false daylight to the boat. Murphy ground his teeth together, anticipating the strike, the pain as it vaporized his legs or spine.

  There was a clamorous BOOM from behind the wheel-house, the boat rocked violently, and the light went out.

  “Oh shit, oh shit.” Garrett was crying.

  “What is it?” Murphy demanded. He pulled himself onto his feet.

  The boxy wooden structure behind the wheel-house was a smoking ruin.

  Fractured planks with charred edges pointed vacantly at the sky. The micro-fusion generator it had covered was a shambolic mass of heat-tarnished metal and dripping plastic.

  “You will come to us in time,” Jacqueline Couteur said calmly. She hadn’t moved from her sitting position. “We have no hurry.”

  The Isakore drifted round a bend in the river, water gurgling idly around the hull, pulling the fire from view. A duet of night and silence closed over the boat, a void surer than vacuum.

  Ione wore a gown of rich blue-green silk gauze. A single strip of cloth which clung to her torso then flared and flowed into a long skirt, it forked around her neck, producing two ribbonlike tassels that trailed from each shoulder. Her hair had been given a damp look, it was bound up and held in place at the back by an exquisite red flower brooch, its tissue-thin petals carved from some exotic stone. A long platinum chain formed a cobweb around her neck.