“Stephanie! Fuck, oh fuck, what’s happened?”
That was Moyo, his anguish and fright making her frown.
“Ho-lee shit! Those dudes shot her. Yo, Stephanie, babe, you hear me? You hang on. It’s like a scratch. It’s nothing. We’ll fix it for you.”
A dark demon was kneeling beside her, its carapace alive with wriggling sparks.
“I’m applying pressure. It should stop the bleeding. Focus your thoughts on repairing the bone first.”
Stephanie was receding from them, only vaguely aware of a dry liquid spilling all across her torso. It was deepest over her hips, exerting a cool weight. A beautiful opalescent cloud twinkled languidly in front of her eyes. Soothing to watch. She could feel her yammering heart slowing to a more pedestrian rhythm. Which brought her frantic gasps back under control. That was good. She still harboured a lot of guilt about using all that air.
“It’s sealing up.”
“God, the blood.”
“She’s all right. She’s alive.”
“Stephanie, can you hear me?”
Long shivers were rippling up and down her body. Her skin had turned to ice. But she could blink her eyes into focus. The faces of her dear friends were staring down, paralysed with grief.
Her lips flicked into a tiny smile. “That hurt,” she whispered.
“Just take it easy,” Franklin grunted. “You’re in shock.”
“Certainly am.” Moyo’s hand was clutching her upper arm so tightly it was painful. She tried to reach for him, offer some reassurance.
“The wound has been repaired,” Sinon said. “You have lost a considerable amount of blood, however. We’ll need to take you back to our camp, and get some plasma into you.”
Something familiar was creeping into her sphere of consciousness.
Familiar and unwelcome. Cold, hard thoughts, reeking of callous satisfaction.
“I told you so, Stephanie Ash. I told you not to come back here.”
“You piece of fascist shit!” McPhee bellowed. “We’re no’ armed.”
Stephanie struggled to lift her head. Annette Ekelund was standing at the head of some thirty or so soldiers. She was wearing an immaculately pressed pale khaki field commander’s uniform, complete with forage cap.
Three stars glinted unnaturally on her epaulettes. A powerful hunting rifle was cradled casually in her hands. Holding Stephanie’s gaze, she worked the bolt slowly and deliberately. A spent cartridge case was ejected.
Stephanie groaned, her shoulders sagging with dismay. “You’re insane.”
“You bring the enemy into our camp, and you expect to go unpunished. Come come, Stephanie, that’s not how it works.”
“What enemy? We came to see if you needed help. Don’t you understand?” She wanted to retreat back into the numb oblivion of pain and shock. It was preferable to this.
“Nothing has changed simply because we’ve won. They are still the enemy. And you and your loony bin refugee friends are traitors.”
“Excuse me,” Sinon said. “But you have not won. This island has no food. The air will run out in ten days’ time. All of us have to find a way back before then.”
“What do you mean the air’s running out?” Delvan asked.
Sinon’s voice became louder. “There is no fresh air in this realm, only what we brought with us. At the current rate, our breathing will exhaust it in ten days, a fortnight at the most.”
Several soldiers in the ranks behind Ekelund exchanged solicitous glances with each other.
“Simple disinformation,” Annette said dismissively. “It sounds very plausible. If we were back in our old universe I’d even believe it myself. But we’re not. We’re in the place of our choosing. And we chose an existence that would carry us safely down through eternity. This is as close to classical heaven as the human race will ever get.”
“You specified the boundary qualifications,” Sinon said. “A realm where you were cut off from the beyond, and night is a null concept. But that’s all you did. This realm isn’t going to safeguard you from folly. It’s not some actively benign environment that will happily provide every need.
You are responsible for what you bring here, and all you brought was a lump of lifeless rock with a thin smear of air on top. Tell me, I’m interested, how do you think this island is going to sustain you for tens of thousands of years?”
“You are a machine. A machine designed with one purpose, to kill. That is all you understand. You have no soul. If you had, you would feel at one with this place. You would know its glory. This is where we longed to be. Where we are safe, and at peace. You have lost, machine.”
“Yo there.” Cochrane had raised his hand. He smiled broadly, radiating enthusiasm like an eager schoolboy. “Um, lady, I’m normally like organic I’m so in touch with the music of the land. And I gotta tell you, I don’t feel shit for this lump of mud. There’s no karmic vibes here, babe. Believe me.”
“Believe a seditious junkie? I think not.”
“What do you want?” Stephanie asked. She could see Cochrane losing his cool if he kept on arguing with Ekelund. That would turn out bad for everybody. Ekelund needed very little justification to exterminate all of them. In fact, Stephanie was wondering what was holding her back.
Probably just enjoying her gloat.
“I don’t want anything, Stephanie. You broke our arrangement and came here to me, remember?”
“In peace. Wanting to help.”
“We don’t need help. Not from you. Not here. I have everything under control.”
“Stop this.”
“Stop what, Stephanie?”
“Let them go. Give these people back their liberty. For pity’s sake, we’ll die here if we can’t find a way out, and you’ve got them fenced in by your authoritarian regime. This isn’t heaven. This is a huge mistake we got panicked into making. The serjeants are trying to help us. Why can’t you cooperate with that?”
“Ten hours ago, these things you’ve befriended were trying to kill us. No, worse than kill. Any of us they capture, they throw back into the beyond. I didn’t see you rushing to hand back your nice new body, Stephanie. You went crawling out of Ketton hoping to hide in the dirt until they passed over.”
“Look if it’s some kind of revenge trip you want, then just shoot me in the head and get it over with. But let the others go. You can’t condemn everyone on this island just because you have so much fear and hatred inside.”
“I abhor your assumed nobility.” Annette walked past Cochrane and Sinon to stand over Stephanie. The barrel of the rifle hung inches above her clammy forehead. “I find it utterly repellent. You can never accept that you might be wrong. You perpetually claim the moral high ground as if it’s some kind of natural inheritance. You use your own sweetness-and-light nature as a shield to ignore what you’ve done to the body you’ve stolen. That disgusts me. I would never try to deny what I am, nor what I’ve done. So just for once, admit the truth. I did what was right. I organized the defence of two million souls, including yours, and prevented you from being cast back into that horror. Tell me, Stephanie, was that the right thing to do?”
Stephanie closed her eyes, squeezing small trickles of moisture out onto her cheeks. Maybe Ekelund is right, maybe I am trying to ignore this monstrous crime. Who wouldn’t? “I know what I’ve done is wrong. I’ve always known. But I haven’t got a choice.”
“Thank you, Stephanie.” She turned to Sinon. “And you, death machine, if you believe what you say, then you should switch yourself off and allow real humans to live longer. You’re wasting our air.”
“I am human. More so than you, I suspect.”
“The time will come when we will throw the serpent back out into the emptiness.” She smiled without humour. “Enjoy the fall. It looks like being a long one.”
Sylvester Geray opened the doors to Princess Kirsten’s private office and gestured Ralph to go through. The Princess was sitting at her desk, with the French doors open behind her, allowing a sligh
t breeze to ruffle her dress. Ralph stood to attention in front of her, saluted, then put his flek down on the desk. He’d worked on the single file stored inside during the flight over from Xingu.
Kirsten looked at it with pursed lips, making no attempt to pick it up.
“And that is … ?” She said it with the air of someone who knew very well what it contained.
“My resignation, ma’am.”
“Rejected.”
“Ma’am, we lost twelve thousand serjeants at Ketton, and God knows how many possessed civilians went with them. I gave the order. It is my responsibility.”
“It certainly is, yes. You assumed that responsibility when Alaistair placed you in charge of the Liberation. And you will continue to bear that responsibility until the last possessed on Mortonridge is placed in zero-tau.”
“I can’t do it.”
Kristen gave him a sympathetic look. “Sit down, Ralph.” She indicated one of the chairs in front of the desk. For a second it appeared as though Ralph might refuse, but he gave a subdued nod and eased himself down.
“Now you know what being a Saldana is like,” she told him. “Admittedly, we’re not faced with quite such momentous decisions every day, but they still pass across this desk here. My brother has authorized fleet deployments which have resulted in a far higher cost of life than Ketton.
And as you of all people know, we indirectly license the elimination of people who would one day cause trouble for the Kingdom. Not very many, and not very often, perhaps, but it mounts up over the course of a decade. Those decisions have to be made, Ralph. So I grit my teeth, and give the necessary orders, the really tough ones that the Cabinet would have a collective fit over if they were ever made to take them. That’s genuine political power. Making the decisions which affect other people’s lives. The overall daily running of the Kingdom is our domain, us Saldanas. Now call us what you like: ruthless dictators, heartless capitalists, or benign guardians appointed by God. The point is, what we do, we do very well indeed. That’s because we take those decisions without hesitation.”
“You’re trained to, ma’am.”
“True. But so are you. I admit the scale here is vastly different to what an ESA head of station is accustomed to. But in the end, you’ve been deciding who lives and who dies for some time now.”
“I got it wrong!” Ralph wanted to shout at her, make her see reason.
Something in his subconscious held him back. Not out of respect, or even fear. Perhaps I just want to know I did the right thing. Nobody else in the Kingdom, except perhaps Alaistair II himself, could provide that assurance and have it mean anything.
“Yes Ralph, you did. You got it very badly wrong. Squeezing the possessed into Ketton was a bad move, even worse than using electron beams against the red cloud.”
He looked up in surprise, meeting the Princess’s uncompromising stare.
“Were you looking for compassion, Ralph? Because you won’t get it in here, not from me. I want you back on Xingu revising the advance across Mortonridge. Not just because you’re there to stop me and the family from taking the blame. I remember you the night we discovered Ekelund and the others had landed on this planet. You were driven, Ralph. It was mighty impressive to watch. You didn’t compromise a single decision to Jannike or Leonard. I enjoyed that. People of their rank don’t often get publicly stone-walled.”
“I didn’t realize you were paying me that much attention,” Ralph grunted.
“Of course you didn’t. You had one job to do, and nothing else mattered. Now you have another job. And I expect you to see it through.”
“I’m not the right man. That drive you saw, that’s what landed us with the Ketton fiasco. The AI gave me several options. I chose the brute force approach because I was too fired up for a rational alternative.
Hammer them with overwhelming firepower and battalions of troops until they capitulate. Well now you know what that policy leaves us with. A damn great hole in the ground.”
“It was a painful lesson, wasn’t it?” She leant forward, determined to convince rather than alienate. “That just makes you better qualified to carry on.”
“Nobody will trust me.”
“Snap out of that self-pitying bullshit routine right now.”
Ralph almost smiled. Sworn at by a Saldana Princess.
“This is what war is about, Ralph. The Edenists aren’t going to carry grudges; they were part of the decision-making process to storm Ketton.
As for the others, the marines and occupation forces, they all hate you anyway. One more cock-up by the chief isn’t going to make any difference to their opinion. They’ll get their orders for the next stage, and the lieutenants and NCOs will make sure they’re carried out to the letter. I want you to issue those orders. I’ve asked you twice, now.” Her finger pushed the flek back over the desk, a chessmaster going for checkmate.
“Yes ma’am.” He picked up the flek. Somehow he’d known all along it would never be that easy.
“Right,” Kirsten said briskly. “What’s your next move?”
“I was going to recommend my successor change our assault policy again.
One of our principal concerns over the Ketton incident is how the inhabitants and serjeants are going to survive. Even if the possessed were stockpiling all the town’s supplies, there can’t be much food left wherever they’ve gone.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Yes ma’am. But unless we have totally misread the situation, it is a logical one. Prior to this, the possessed have removed entire planets to this hidden sanctuary dimension of theirs. A planet gives them a viable biosphere capable of feeding them. Ketton is different, it’s just rock with a layer of mud on top. It’s just a question which they run out of first, air or food.”
“Unless they find one of the other planets where they can take refuge.”
“I hope they can do that, ma’am, I really do. I don’t know what kind of conditions exist wherever they are, but they would have to be very weird indeed if it enables them to land that section of rock on a planet. In fact, we believe the strongest possibility is that they’ll return once they realize how much trouble they’re in. The geologists say that’ll cause all kinds of trouble, but we’re preparing for the eventuality.”
“Good grief.” Kirsten tried to imagine that vast section of countryside coming down to land in its own crater, and failed. “You realize, if they do come back, it will have a profound implication for the other planets? That would be proof that they can be returned as well.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“All right, this is all interesting theorizing, but what was the change of policy?”
“After we reviewed Ketton’s problems, we started to consider the supply situation on Mortonridge itself. Thanks to the deluge, there is no fresh food left at all; the satellites haven’t managed to find a single field of crops left intact on the whole peninsular. Some animals managed to survive; but they’re going to die soon because there’s nothing left for them to feed on. We know the possessed cannot use their energistic power to create any food, not out of inorganic matter. So it’s only a matter of time until they run out of commercially packaged food.”
“You can starve them out.”
“Yes. But it’s going to take time. Mortonridge had an agricultural economy. Most towns have some kind of food industry, either a processing factory or warehouse. If the possessed organize properly and ration what they’ve got, they can hold out for a while yet. What I’d suggest we do is continue the front line’s advance, but modify the direction they’re taking. The serjeants can still engage small groupings of possessed in the countryside without too much worry. Larger concentrations in the towns should be left alone. Set up a firebreak around them, leave a garrison to watch, and then just wait until the food runs out.”
“Or they pull another disappearing act.”
“We believe Ketton happened because the possessed we’d trapped there were pressured into reacting by
the assault. There’s a big psychological difference between seeing ten thousand serjeants marching towards you and simply squabbling among yourselves over the last sachets of spaghetti bolognese.”
“The longer we leave them possessed, the worse condition the bodies will be in. And that’s before malnutrition.”
“Yes, ma’am. I know that. There’s also the problem that if we just simply contract the front line the way we have been doing, we’ll push a lot of possessed into one giant concentration in the middle. We’ll have to split Mortonridge into sections. That’ll mean redeploying the serjeants to drive inland in columns and link up. And if we’re leaving serjeants behind as garrisons, the numbers available for front line duties will be depleted just when we need them most.”
“More decisions, Ralph. What I said to you the other day about providing political cover still stands. Do what you have to on the ground, leave the rest to me.”
“Can I expect any improvement in the medical back-up situation? We’re really going to need it if we start sieges.”
“The Edenist ambassador has indicated that their habitats will take the worst cancer cases from us, but their voidhawks are badly stretched. Admiral Farquar is looking into making troop transports available, at least they have zero-tau pods in them. In fact, I’ve asked Alaistair for some Kulu Corporation colony transport ships. We can start storing patients until the pressure on facilities eases off.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
Kirsten stood and datavised Sylvester Geray that the audience was over.
“The most fundamental rule of modern society: Everything costs more and takes longer. It always has done, and always will do. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it, General.”
Ralph managed a small bow as the doors opened. “I’ll bear it in mind, ma’am.”
“I think I can manage to walk now,” Stephanie said.
Choma and Franklin had carried her back to the serjeant’s camp on an improvised stretcher. She’d lain on the muddy ground beside Tina, a sleeping bag wrapped round her legs and torso and a plasma drip in her arm. Too weak to move, she’d dozed on and off for hours, falling victim to vague anxiety-drenched dreams. Moyo had stayed at her side the whole time, holding her hand and mopping her brow. Her body was reacting to the wound as if she’d come down with a fever.