"Should I pop the sunbitch?" one of the troopers asked. Falk tensed suddenly. There was no missing the fact it had a genuine suggestion.
"Don't be a dick, Benet," replied the squad leader. "There's a procedure."
"A procedure?" asked Falk. "What kind of fucking procedure?"
"The kind where you shut the fuck up," replied the squad leader. "This whole situation is in the control of SO Human Services, and that means it's a few trillion miles above your head."
"What's Human Services?" Falk asked. He'd never heard of it. But he could guess.
"Human Services is us," said the trooper, Benet.
"Back off, Benet," said the leader. "This is an ultra-high confidence operation, Bloom. It is Bloom, right?"
"Yeah," said Falk.
"Ultra-high confidence, you understand?" asked Essley. "There are certain matters at stake. Issues we have to deal with."
"I understand," said Falk. He risked a look up at Essley. The man was clean-shaven, thin-lipped, lean, anonymous behind his glares.
"I understand," Falk repeated. "I've seen what's down there."
The men around him muttered. The one called Benet swore.
"You've seen it?" Essley asked.
"Yes."
"You understand what it is?" Essley asked.
"I don't seem to be as retarded as some of the men in your command," said Falk.
"You seem pretty fucking dumb to me," replied Essley. "You've just talked your way into much deeper shit." He turned to one of the other men.
"We may need to arrange rendition here," he said.
"Why fucking bother with that?" asked Benet. "We should just clean house."
Essley looked back at Falk.
"How many of you are there, Bloom?" he asked. "How many have seen it?"
"Why? Are you going to silence all the inconvenient witnesses?" asked Falk. "Scorch all the expendables? I thought that was the Central Bloc method. I understand what this is, Essley. US-sponsored SO efforts to effect cover-up, thus protecting US interests. It won't stand, and it won't work."
"Really?" laughed Benet. It was not a humorous laugh. "But you're the one kneeling in the mud with a gun at his head."
"I know something you don't," said Falk. "So the faster you wake up to the idea that you need me alive, the better it will be for you."
"Start talking," said Essley.
"Not to you," Falk replied. He looked past Essley at the huddle of SOMD personnel behind him, hunting for the code he'd seen a few minutes earlier when they first approached. "I won't talk to you, Essley. But I'll talk to her."
"Who?" asked Essley.
"Her. Tedders."
Tedders pushed to the front beside Essley.
"He wants you," said Essley, frowning.
"Do I know you?" Tedders asked, looking down at Falk. "Bloom, yeah? I think I saw you at Lasky."
"I'm going to stand up," said Falk. Essley nodded. No one stopped Falk from rising. He faced Tedders. He realised he was seeing her at a different angle from the last time they'd met.
"I don't know you," she repeated. "Except by sight."
"So let's have a conversation," said Falk. "Get to know one another."
"Why?"
"Because I have a position to communicate," he replied. "It was going to be a hard sell, a really hard one. But seeing you gives me a tiny chance to make it easier."
Tedders glanced at Essley, then stepped away from the group with Falk. They walked a short way along the shelf, the members of the special unit waiting and watching them intently.
"So, you're Human Services, huh?" he said.
"What's it to you?" replied Tedders. "Human Services has no public remit. It is not an acknowledged department. No accountability."
He looked up at the rain.
"No accountability, huh?"
"That's right."
"How many times has this happened, Tedders?" he asked.
"This?"
"Yes."
"It's never happened. That's why it's a big deal. Now what can I do for you?"
"Humour me for a second. Seberg found it by accident, didn't he? Kept it hidden while he worked out how to parlay it into the best result for him?"
"Yes."
"How long ago?"
"A few years, as far as we can tell."
"And the SO found out because somebody let it slip, and wanted the whole thing secure. But some of Seberg's speculative partners from the Bloc had already got wind of it."
"That's not how I'd care to characterise it," she said.
"There was a counter-intelligence war to discover the actual location of the site, because Seberg had kept that detail hidden to protect his prize. That war escalated into a real war."
She stared at him, compact and unmoving.
"You remind me of someone," she remarked.
"I know I do. And I'm right, aren't I?"
"I couldn't comment."
He grinned.
"The SO is backing the US in a secret war against the Bloc to locate and achieve private control of the most valuable find in history."
"There's never been anything like it," said Tedders. "Three hundred years, hundreds of worlds, and finally we find proof of the one thing we no longer thought was possible. It changes everything."
She looked at his face. "Have you seen it?"
"Yes."
"Is it amazing?"
"I don't know. I don't know what it is," he said. "It's an artefact. Big. There's technology to reverse-engineer. Decades of study and analysis. Fuck alone knows where it came from or how long it's been down there. Yes, it's amazing."
She sighed.
"You can appreciate why this is high confidence," she said. "Something like this, it has to be contained, controlled. It's sensitivity-adverse. The implications…"
She looked at him.
"Even the Bloc understands that," she said. "They came in silent and ruthless for precisely the same reason. They wanted it contained as much as we did, just under their terms. They understand what's at stake."
"Everyone should know," said Falk. "Everyone. This is too big to swallow up and classify."
"That's a naive attitude."
"Not really. It's a matter of public interest, Tedders."
She shook her head.
"I've heard enough, I think," she said. "Sorry, soldier. I'm sorry about this situation. I can't pretend it's not going to get difficult for you. You simply don't get it. You're not seeing the whole picture."
"You just don't know me very well, Tedders," he replied. "Don't walk away. I've got six people down below. Three SO troopers, three civilians, Bloc nationals. All seven of us are going to be escorted out of here and looked after. We're not going to be rendered and silenced."
"I'm not in charge of anything, I–"
"You're going to have to persuade Human Services that it's just not in their interests to harm us," said Falk.
"Well, they won't see it like that."
"They will when they realise the story is already out."
"This whole operation is secure," said Tedders. She cleared her throat. "This zone has been unlinked for seventy-two hours."
"Not as secure as you think," he said. "The story's out, Tedders. Out and gone. It's too late to pretend you can contain it. So it's too late to bother trying to win or enforce our silence."
"That's not true," she said. She smiled and shook her head sadly. "Nice try. I can see you're desperate to help your people. But there's no way the story has got out of this zone."
"Reuters already has it."
"Bullshit," she said.
"No, actually. Do you know what I'm going to do now, Tedders?"
"What?"
"I'm going to show you my A game," said Falk.
She narrowed her eyes, stared at him.
"My name is Lex Falk," he said.
"What? Falk? More bullshit."
"Lex Falk. The sooner you believe it, the sooner we can deal. My name is Lex Falk."
/> "Shut the fuck up. I've met Lex Falk, and–"
"I'm connected by sensory repositioning to a location in Shaverton," he said. "The exact location is, as you fucks like to say, hardly material. Reuters has it. Reuters has the story. Even this conversation we're having is being relayed, word for word, real time."
"What the fuck is this nonsense?" asked Tedders.
She turned and began to walk away.
"It was a small, family-run place off Equestrian," he called out after her. "And the best part was, the chickeneffect parmigiana arrived during your lifetime."
She stopped walking away.
THIRTY-THREE
They gave him a cane, and after he had learned to walk with it, he kept it for effect. An unseasonable heat had descended on Shaverton. The windows of the glass masts glinted like mirrors. The bugs were swarming, and everyone smelled like they had been embalmed with Insect-Aside.
The sky was a spoiled cream shade of yellow when the car brought him to the veterans' hospital on the Cape Highway. The place was pleasant-looking, a sun-baked compound of white Early Settlement style buildings on a plot planted with snowgums. He showed his papers at the front desk, and then again at a guardpost outside the trauma ward. The SOMD staffers went through his press accreditation, and the embossed permits with the Human Services hologram tags.
"This way," said the nurse who came to meet him inside the ward. "It's just down here."
She looked flushed, but the place was quite cool. He thought it was probably a byproduct of her pink tunic and the beige walls.
"How is he?" he asked.
"Stable," she said. "Not out of the woods. I'm sorry, I meant to ask, are you family?"
"No."
"A colleague?"
"Something like that."
She led him into a small waiting area. A glass wall looked into a private room. Through the glass, he could see the figure in the bed, pale, still, linked to full life support. He could just hear the rhythmic ping of the monitors, the pump of the ventilator.
He saw the dressing covering the cheek. The memory was physical, like a bruise. He raised his hand involuntarily and touched his own cheek.
There was no hole, or trace of a scar.
Having come all that way, he felt he ought to go in. Say something. Anything. The reminder on his celf had pinged just before he arrived at the hospital. Diary update. His driver was scheduled to leave in four days and he was due to report to the Terminal in two hours. He didn't have long, and he was pretty sure he was never coming back. He could surely manage some platitude about how everything had changed, and they'd been part of it?
"Can I go in and sit with him?" he asked.
"I suppose so, Mr Falk," replied the nurse. She opened the door, then lowered her voice. "Please don't expect too much," she said. "Private Bloom has very limited periods of consciousness. He drifts in and out. He probably won't recognise you."
"I understand," he replied, smiling.
"To be honest," she added, leaning forward to confide, "I don't think he knows who he is most of the time."
Falk nodded.
"I know how he feels," he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Abnett is a New York Times bestselling novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written over thirty-five novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt's Ghosts series and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. His novels Horus Rising, Legion and Prospero Burns (for the Black Library) and his Torchwood novel Border Princes (for the BBC) were all bestsellers. His novel Triumff, for Angry Robot, was published in 2009 and longlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.
Follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett and online at www.danabnett.com
With Thanks to Marco and Nik.
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Copyright © Dan Abnett 2011
Dan Abnett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-85766-092-3
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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