Ally

  Jesus H. Christ. Shan hadn’t just got herself knocked up, just like Lindsay Neville, whose lack of iron discipline she despised—she’d aborted it herself.

  This was a Shan he didn’t know. There were too many shouldn’t-have-beens for a start—her age, brutal common sense, circumstances—but most of all there was a sense that she wasn’t some icon of invincibility after all, but a woman with frailties and trials like anyone. That was it: he never thought of her as a woman. She was Shan Frankland, and she happened to be female. When the world was divided into male and female, rich and poor, old and young, good and bad, or whatever category he chose, there would always be a single slot marked Shan Frankland, untouched by any other benchmark.

  He was aware of the coolness of the stone through his shirt. His mind darted, thought to thought: Aras’s, Ade’s, whose kid? He fought prurient curiosity, as he always had, not because he felt he owed Shan better than to speculate on the vagaries of her sex life with two-dicked aliens and chimeras, but because it stopped him thinking about his own lonely celibacy.

  “I’m sure they would discuss it with you,” said a voice at waist height.

  Eddie was so startled that he let out an involuntary grunt of surprise and jerked upright away from the wall. Giyadas looked up at him with cross-hair pupils that flared instantly into black petals.

  “Ah,” he said, utterly ashamed.

  “Shan was carrying an isanket, but she removed it,” said Giyadas. “And I understand her reasons.”

  Shan and Giyadas stepped out into the passage, and Shan’s expression was now one of the copper who could—and would—do anything to you now that the cell door was locked and nobody could hear you. Primeval panic gripped his gut.

  “Hi, Eddie,” said Shan, voice flat, eyes that dreadful dead gray of downtrodden snow. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Punch me out now,” he said. “Get it over with.”

  “I’ll take that as an apology.” She had an extraordinary capacity to switch off, but he’d seen split-second glimpses of the raw psyche buried deep beneath the casing. He still treated her as a human who could be hurt. She glanced back at Nevyan. “Ade’s going to Umeh with the detachment now, and Esganikan’s committing a section of ship to pick them up. If you want to go, get a move on.”

  “Can I come?” asked Giyadas.

  Shan’s expression was pure pain for a heartbeat and then vanished. Eddie had an impression of a face looming suddenly under the thick glassy ice of a frozen river, mouth open in screaming panic, and then swept away by the hidden current beneath to leave a lifeless calm behind again.

  “When we get the rest of the humans settled in, yes.” Shan was all instant, unexpected patience that made sense now. “Then you can compare the difference in their attitudes.”

  Nevyan went back into the main room and Giyadas disappeared after her, evidently satisfied. Shan made for the main door and Eddie followed her at a respectful distance. They emerged onto a terrace dappled with reflections from the nacre covering every flat surface. The air smelled of damp vegetation—not grass, not soil, nothing remotely like Earth, but vividly alive—and the throat-catching spices of someone cooking rov’la nearby.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said helplessly.

  Shan kept walking, but not at her usual brisk march. “Try knocking in future.”

  “I meant about—well, the baby.”

  “Thanks. Everything’s fine now.”

  “The hell it is. I should have realized something was wrong. I thought you were upset about Vijissi topping himself.”

  “That as well. Any more happy highlights from the last year you’d like to remind me of?”

  “If there’s anything I can do, ask.”

  He meant it. He’d veered between reverence and fear of Shan over the last few years, but sometimes he admitted that he liked her because there was something both admirable and tragic about someone who not only couldn’t be bought or intimidated, but who was also prepared to die as often as it took to defend some ideal. She was an obsessive hunter and a vengeful enemy, and the conscience of the world. Consciences were never meant to be comfortable.

  “Okay.” She did that displaced punch action, shoving her fists deep in her pockets as if she was stopping herself from using them. “Thanks. I know you mean well.”

  She still could say fuck off a hundred different ways.

  “What’s happening with Lin and Rayat?”

  “I don’t think you want to know, Eddie.”

  She was right. It would only plague him. He asked anyway, because it was in the fiber of his being to want to find out. “Try me.”

  “I know where Rayat is and you don’t need to worry your little hack head about that. Lin—Christ only knows where she is.”

  “Who knows about all this?”

  “Not the detachment, so keep your mouth shut around them until further notice.”

  “Is it a problem? I mean, a real problem?”

  “Don’t worry. Esganikan will sort it if I can’t.”

  Eddie considered what sort meant, and knew. He followed Shan all the way to the end of the terrace to the first flight of treacherously narrow steps cut into the rock that linked the terrace to the levels above and below. From the top, it was a curved cliff face, two hundred meters to the floor of the caldera, filled with curved and irregularly shaped pearl-coated buildings like bubbles in a cup. It was one of those moments when he tried out the feeling of never seeing the city again, and he didn’t like that at all.

  “So are you going home when Thetis shows up?” Shan asked. She looked him in the eye, a slight frown puckering the skin between her brows, and there was no hint of its being a suggestion to piss off. “Or are you waiting for the main task force to swing by?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t wait seventy-five years to get there, so I’ll probably catch the later express.”

  “Time to make up your mind, then,” said Shan. She looked down into the basin of the city and for a moment he wondered how many of her prisoners had had nasty falls during her police career on Earth. There was always that edge of violence glittering in her, even when she was being humblingly noble. “I know. I’m a bitch today. Sorry. You’ve been a good mate to me and those two buggers, and I know you’ve got a job to do. I’ll miss you when the time comes.”

  Shan turned away from the steps and walked away, arms swinging. Those two buggers. Ade and Aras: his mates, the blokes he’d shared a house with when she was dead, the only friends alive in his universe right now. Everyone else he once worked with, drank with, and argued with was either dead or close to it back on Earth now. Time dilation and chill sleep were a permanent exile, even if you went home in the end.

  I’ll miss you.

  Eddie felt tears sting his eyes, observed that Ade was correct—she did at least have a nice arse on her—and went back to grab his bag.

  Funny. He’d shared the house with Ade and Aras after Shan was declared dead, and he thought they were close. He still thought they were close when she was found alive. He was hurt to find they hadn’t told him about the baby.

  He wondered if they really trusted him at all, or if he was just the tame hack who had his uses.

  Eqbas Vorhi ship 886–001–005–6: preparing to debark in Jejeno, Umeh

  Esganikan Gai admitted disappointment—to herself—that she wasn’t erasing every isenj from the face of their utterly despoiled planet.

  She didn’t dislike the isenj. She’d just steeled herself to thinking that at least the issue would be resolved, buying her time, and then it was unresolved. There was a chance. Rit’s coup had to be tested.

  It was the contrast that brought it home to her, the stark comparison between Bezer’ej—wild, unspoiled, rich in life—and Umeh, a planet so destroyed that there was no natural, uncultivated life on the land, just a solid sprawl of buildings and a single dalf tree imported from the isenj moon of Tasir Var.

  She glanced down between her boots through the transparent
deck of the ship as it passed over the center of Jejeno. The city was both a tribute to isenj engineering skills and an indictment of their stupidity. The forest of asymmetric towers—bronze, brown, copper, tan—and narrow streets created endless canyons. Shapakti said that it was an echo of isenj origins as termite-like animals living in giant mounds, but Esganikan had seen almost identical soaring buildings in the images of Earth. It was how greedy species built: it showed space was at a premium because they had filled it and out-priced it—yes, she understood Earth’s economy now, she understood it very well—and they didn’t care about the intrusion on the landscape. It was a statement of their contempt for all other life.

  It was one thing that reassured her about Australia as host nation for the landings. They built underground now. It was the relentless daytime temperatures and fierce storms that motivated them, and not environmental modesty in most cases, but motive didn’t matter. Outcomes did.

  The six soldiers who had insisted on being brought to Umeh Station to do their duty, as they put it, were clustered on the port side of the bridge. Apart from Shan Frankland’s jurej, Ade, they spoke no eqbas’u and waited in silence to be disembarked.

  Ade was learning slowly, but Shapakti said that was normal for humans with their poor language skills.

  “Teh, niyukal hasve?” Ade’s speech was more wess’u than eqbas’u, but the crew liked him for his unselfconscious honesty. He managed to make himself understood, but sometimes he did something that the other marines called crashing and burning. This was such a time. The bridge crew stared at him. “Did that make sense?”

  Hayin, the communications officer, felt compelled to try out his English. “You say you want closeness.”

  Barencoin, the big dark-haired marine, and the small female one called Qureshi laughed loudly. “Keep your mind on the job, you dirty bugger,” Barencoin said.

  “I thought I was asking what range the shield’s got.” Ade squatted with his rifle across his knees, staring down at the cityscape passing beneath them. “As in how much ship do they have to leave behind to provide cover for the whole dome area.”

  Hayin flicked the magnification in the deck to give Ade a better view of the faceted transparent dome of Umeh Station, and he flinched as the image beneath him snapped into larger scale.

  The damage to the dome was visible. A large opaque patch had crazed but not shattered, and twisted debris was still sitting on the panels.

  “That was done when, exactly?” she asked.

  Ade consulted the virin clipped to his pouch belt. “Yesterday. Bit too close for comfort.”

  “You know what they say about glass houses,” she said to Mart Barencoin.

  “What, that you shouldn’t whip out your cucumber if you live in one?”

  The other marines laughed. “You’re hilarious,” said Qureshi. “For a man who’s only got a gherkin.”

  Hayin appeared not to understand the joke. Esganikan decided to ask Shan later for an explanation of the comic value of vegetables. Her English was now fully fluent, but some nuances still evaded her.

  “You can just set us down by the perimeter, ma’am,” said Ade. “We’ll be fine. We’re not under fire. If we were—well, we’ve all done that a few times.”

  “If I didn’t provide some cover for you, then I expect your isan would have serious objections,” said Esganikan. “We have enough resources to leave a ship section to shield the dome.”

  “When do we get to meet the Skavu, ma’am?”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “I’d like to.” Ade was quietly insistent, and his scent was very wess’har, very much the dominant male in the pecking order. “We may have to fight alongside these blokes or work with them at the very least.”

  There were just six Royal Marines. Perhaps their presence reassured the humans in the dome, but Esganikan couldn’t see how a handful of troops with basic weapons could make a difference if Umeh Station came under attack. They could make little difference to the evacuation, either. But she did understand their compulsion to do their duty. Hers was taking her more than fifty years out of time, to Earth.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’ll arrange for you to accompany one of their patrols.”

  Ade brightened visibly. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I want Eddie to remain in the dome.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ade didn’t ask why. Eddie would. “What do I need to know about their command structure?”

  “They rank themselves in order of who will die.”

  The marines stared at her, their identical expressions—very slight frowns, lips slightly parted—giving them almost a family resemblance.

  “Well, it happens that way with us,” said Barencoin. “Only we don’t plan it that way.”

  “Educated guess, or is this a…well, suicide squad?” Ade asked.

  Suicide squad. It was a fascinating term. “If there’s an need to die to achieve a mission, then they have a numbered sequence of personnel. Commanders tend to go first.”

  “Works for me,” said Becken. “Bit extreme, though.”

  Ade shrugged, but he looked uneasy. “Not unknown back home.”

  “Not with a bloody numbered ticket. Gentleman’s understanding, maybe.”

  Esganikan decided to introduce the marines to the Skavu gently. She wasn’t sure how to explain the cultural gulf. “They are extremely rigorous about environmental policy, and intolerant of infringement, and they will kill to enforce balance.”

  “Best thing is to meet them,” said Ade, and his comment had a finality about it. “If they’re going to be in our backyard for the next few years, then we need to get to know them properly.”

  Esganikan went to break the news to Eddie. He was in the aft section of the ship as it was configured at that moment, using his remote camera to record images of the fighters forming from the hangar deck material and coalescing with it again. It fascinated him. Joluti had left him in the hands of the air group staff because he wanted to see it demonstrated so many times to get all the angles.

  It was basic technology, unchanged in years. Esganikan wondered what the reaction would be on Earth when she broke out sections of the ship on landing, if Eddie hadn’t tired his audience of the spectacle by then.

  “So what can I cover?” he asked. “Where can I go?”

  “Umeh Station,” said Esganikan. “The combat zone is closed to you.”

  “Oh.”

  “The Skavu aren’t used to embedded journalists. That’s the right term, yes?”

  Eddie looked about to argue, chin lifting slightly, but then he lowered it and nodded. “Okay. Onboard footage?”

  “Perhaps.” How much carnage did he need? “Stay with Ade Bennett. There’s nothing new for you in this phase.”

  “Are you going to deploy bioweapons?”

  “I’ll assess the situation after the Skavu have begun the assault on the Maritime Fringe.”

  “Can you estimate how long you expect this to last?”

  “Possibly weeks. The more dust that bombing throws into the atmosphere, the more remediation work we have to do. Bioweapons make less impact, however much the idea repels humans.”

  Eddie looked down and put the back of his hand to his mouth, knuckles against his lips. He looked deep in thought for a moment. When he looked up again, his face seemed to have sagged slightly.

  “I don’t know why this doesn’t shock me any longer,” he said. “Because it bloody well should.”

  He turned to summon his bee cam with a gesture and closed the small ball in his palm. Esganikan indicated the forward section of the ship and waited for him to notice that he was being sent elsewhere.

  “Join the marine detachment,” she said.

  Eddie gave her a mock salute of the kind the marines used, hand to brow, and left the hangar. Joluti knelt down on the gantry to rest and surveyed the deck below.

  “The Skavu are in position. They aim to cut off the Maritime Fringe forces just before your squad enab
les Minister Rit to take control.”

  “How far inside the border is the Fringe now?”

  “Thirty kilometers.”

  “Untidy.”

  “Yes, there’ll be heavy Northern Assembly casualties. There’s nowhere to move civilians in this kind of infrastructure.”

  “Then we’ll deploy the bioagent as soon as possible. It won’t be tidy, but the more Fringe genotypes we can wipe out without bombardment, the better.”

  “You know what the Skavu will do.”

  “Oh yes. I know that very well.”

  There were plenty of Northern Assembly citizens—and even troops—who opposed their government now. Even the bioagent tailored to the Fringe’s majority genome wouldn’t target all those resisting the restoration. Esganikan said the internal politics of the isenj were irrelevant, but it still made her uneasy.

  “With Earth,” she said, “we have time to select those who want to cooperate. No crude lines across a chart. We can select those who can sustain the planet responsibly.”

  “Is that what happened with Garav?”

  “No. The Skavu seemed to be culturally prone to radical conversions.”

  Joluti got to his feet again. “Then let’s get this done,” he sighed.

  The engineered pathogen would take a few days to work through the target population. Rit didn’t have that long. If she couldn’t hold the government together, then the erasure option would follow. Esganikan returned to the bridge to begin transforming Umeh, and paused at one of the screens that showed a view of the hangar bay hatch. Sleek bronze fighter craft formed from the body of the ship, configured in this sortie to seed clouds, were slipping out of the hatch at regular intervals that almost created a strobe effect in the field of view. She turned to watch through the transparent bulkhead section as they streaked south towards the Fringe.

  I want this to work. I’m tired of slaughter.

  She hoped this would be the last world she ever had to restore by global destruction. It was as well that worlds needing such radical measures were very, very rare.

  “Aitassi,” said Esganikan. “Call Minister Rit.”

  The minister had progressed a great deal in terms of confidence and sheer audacity since Esganikan had first met her in Umeh Station to discuss a kinder, slower way of reducing the isenj population with contraceptive agents in the water supply. They could have done this without conflict. But if they’d had that foresight, she wouldn’t have been here in the first place.