Billions would die, sooner or later, and Earth would be a very changed place.
F’nar, Wessej.
Barry leaned over Eddie’s shoulder and peered at the screen. “What are you doing, Dad?”
“Dusting off my adrenal glands.” Had Barry ever seen this footage? Eddie couldn’t remember. “I haven’t had a really urgent story in a bloody long time. I’d forgotten how good a deadline felt.”
“What is it?”
“Bodies.” Eddie leaned back to let Barry see the rushes that had been sitting in his archive file for years. It was much more graphic than he remembered, but maybe he was getting soft in his old age. “What effect does that have on you?”
“I can’t tell what they are.”
“Dead bezeri. After the bomb on Ouzhari.”
Barry watched the sequence intently. “Oh God. That one’s moving. Oh…its lights are still flickering. Horrible.”
“Thanks.” Eddie hit the edit point and marked the section for later. It was tough to get apes to empathize with squid, so he had to use a heavy hand. “Just testing. I just want to be sure that it says genocide, tragedy, dead aliens.”
Barry tried to show interest in his father’s trade, but he’d grown up in a world without mass media. “Tell me why it’s urgent.”
“I’m interfering again. I’m exposing a spook. Don’t you just love that word? I like it a lot better than spy. Anyway, when this breaks, there’ll be a big row.”
“Right.” Barry didn’t ask any more questions and just watched. Earth was as relevant to him as Mars, somewhere he knew a fair bit about but that wasn’t home or even the Promised Land, and didn’t hold any memories. “Why are you doing it? Keeping your hand in?”
Eddie was secretly disappointed that Barry didn’t find current affairs the most hypnotically addictive subject in the world, but the kid didn’t have that hunting instinct. I fathered a normal human. I was so sure he’d be a hack. Barry didn’t grasp the enormity of Earth’s predicament because he’d been a regular visitor to Umeh since he was a baby, and that was local for him.
“It’s to help Shan out,” said Eddie. Sod it, Barry was old enough to wrestle with the realities of the job. “The Eqbas went to Earth to sort out the people who authorized the bombing. It’s a war crimes thing. And if I name this woman and stir up some trouble, then the FEU might hand her over and avoid having the Eqbas cream Europe a city at a time to find her. Or the loony greens might assassinate her. That would avoid any international nastiness, actually. Maybe they’ll oblige.”
Barry frowned. “Is that what a reporter should be doing? Setting people up to get killed?”
That stung, but a fair bit of the job could be seen that way. You didn’t spike an uncomfortable story because there might be unhappy consequences for those scrutinized in it. Deliberately aiming to do that was only a few salami slices away from being impartial.
Yes, you did spike stories. You did it all the time. You definitely did the first time you saw what breaking the c’naatat story unleashed.
“It depends. The outcome could be slightly better than if I didn’t do it. So wess’har would say I should, and humans would say I shouldn’t, because I’ve set out to make something happen, not report the facts as objectively as I can.”
The look on Barry’s face said it all. It’s wrong. Well, at least his boy had a strong moral anchor, and that was no bad thing.
“Don’t you get scared, Dad? Being responsible?”
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I do.”
Eddie wondered from time to time what his life might have been like had he gone back to Earth with the Eqbas, but since the landing, he’d been thinking about it all day, every day, and admitted to himself that he regretted it. Not enough to sour the rest of his life, but a little niggle of pain when he thought what might be happening right now in Kamberra, and what he could be doing, and…shit, he’d be in his forties, not staring at seventy.
But going back when your news editor accused you of fabricating the c’naatat stories…no, that had been the turning point. That was the moment he rethought his whole existence, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.
I’m not like Shan. She let people think she’d fucked up, and didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of her, because she thought that the thing she was protecting was more important than her reputation. Me…I did the martyr act. But I cared what they thought of me, all right. I still do.
“I’m going out for a bit,” Barry said, obviously feeling he’d feigned the required period of interest in the item. He held his virin out so Eddie could see he was taking comms with him as a routine safety precaution. “I won’t go any further than the mesa. Okay?”
“Be home in time for dinner, or your mum will go nuts this time.”
What was he worrying about? The worst that could happen to Barry was an accident. There were no drugs, gangs, perverts, murderers or drunk drivers out there. And you really didn’t need to lock your doors, unless the wess’har habit of walking in without knocking really bothered you. Privacy was alien to them, but wess’har made great neighbors; they’d trash your planet if you broke the rules, but other than that, the worst he could say about them was that they were tactless and nosy.
That’s worth staying for. I love ’em. Now I remember why I’m really still here.
Eddie had all the elements of the story now; the archive of the attack on Ouzhari—nice iconic mushroom cloud shot from a ussissi pilot, he’d forgotten that—and confirmation of Katya Prachy’s identity with a bit of life history. Added to a brief but au point piece from Esganikan saying that she wanted Prachy or else, and a no comment from the FEU supplied by the BBChan bureau on the ground, it said guilty, guilty, guilty.
Why bother, Shan? It’s not going to make any difference.
And why did Rayat wait until now to name Prachy? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he grassed her up before the fleet left—which was probably recent as far as the task force is concerned. I keep forgetting Esganikan’s been on a different time scale to us.
Eddie got back to editing the death sentence on Katya Prachy. It didn’t feel like he was doing that at all; it felt like any other story, one that he weighed and polished.
Eighty, is she? She looks like she’s had a stress-free life.
It didn’t feel like pulling the trigger until his finger hovered over the Send tab for a few seconds longer than normal.
He hit it anyway.
Former hotel restaurant, Immigrant Reception Center: three days to deadline.
“Here’s how you do it,” said Ade, happy to be useful again. He upended the tumbler and covered the saltshaker. “Spider and glass. It’s how the Eqbas took the Northern Assembly government building. Simple.”
The detachment and Aras watched the demonstration. Shan tapped her thumbnail against her teeth, lost in thought, and kept taking out her swiss and the borrowed handheld to stare at the screens for a few moments before putting them back in her jacket pocket.
“Not exactly covert,” said Barencoin.
“Doesn’t need to be, mate. Eqbas tech. We’ve seen that shielding bounce missiles, remember.”
“It’s okay with a salt cellar, because they’re pretty easy to subdue.” Barencoin reached across the table and lifted the glass to slide a pebble beneath it. “But put this bloke inside with his piece, and you’re still confined with him. They’ll have close protection for Prachy. All we can do is seal off a building from the air.”
“But it’s still a whole lot simpler than inserting covertly into God knows where in Europe and getting the old girl and us out in one piece again.”
“Does the FEU know the Eqbas have those kinds of isolating shields?”
“Thanks to Eddie, yes. Remember all the footage he pumped out from Umeh?”
“Oh well, knowing it’s there doesn’t mean they can do anything about it.”
“Except surround Prachy with a load of big blokes with big guns.” Barencoin turned to Qureshi with a smile. “O
r a load of teensy little women with big guns, of course.”
Qureshi shrugged. “Well, then it’s a case of who’s got the better body armor.”
Shan looked as if she was suddenly paying attention. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Might be simpler if I walked in and just slotted her like Esganikan wants.”
There’d been a time when a full-on nuke couldn’t have shifted Shan once she’d made up her mind. Now she was wavering. The one thing she couldn’t do that a good officer had to was to put her people in harm’s way. It was different for coppers; they usually expected to come home each night in one piece. And the detachment was her volunteer militia, civvies, not protected by international law. Shan cared about stuff like that.
“You couldn’t do it now,” Ade said kindly. “You have to insert. It means flying in, and any journey originating here is going to get FEU attention. Plus you’re a known face to the FEU, Boss. We’re doing it, period, and then it’s up to the Eqbas to process her.”
“It’ll all hinge on where they stash her, anyway,” said Becken. They had a small audience of ussissi now, all watching the discussion as if it was a chess game in a park. “One thing we know is that whatever building they use, we can isolate it without touching the ground, and then clear out whatever’s inside. No overground exfil.”
“I lose, then,” said Shan. “And shouldn’t we have a pilot here for the planning?”
Aras raised his hand. It was a peculiarly human gesture and he almost looked as if he was taking the piss.
“I am,” he said. “I can do this.”
Shan didn’t look convinced. “You’ve never flown an Eqbas ship.”
“I was a pilot. All wess’har ships have much in common. Besides, you want to return to Wess’ej before the Eqbas fleet withdraws, don’t you? How do you imagine you’ll do that?”
“Good point,” she said, without emotion. She turned to Ade. “Look, when this kicks off, you won’t be able to stroll into Ankara afterwards, so if you’re going to visit the war graves, you’d better get on with it while you can. It’s going to be tense enough getting into Turkish airspace as it is.”
She walked out into the main lobby. Barencoin gave Ade a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “I reckon so. It’s not going to be like the Fourteen-Eighteen War, playing football with the Hun in the tea break between shelling. Get going.”
Chahal and Webster spent the next couple of hours working through the live map databases of Europe, speculating on where Prachy might end up, which seemed to entertain the remaining ussissi. The money was on the main FEU complex in Brussels, because that was the kind of up-yours gesture that Zammett would make; he’d defy the Eqbas to trash the center of government because they hadn’t zapped any of his ships, Barencoin reckoned. Ade couldn’t work out why they didn’t just hand the woman over. She was expendable. Everyone was in the end. And they had to know by now that they weren’t getting Shan, whatever pressure was brought to bear.
“Fucking mess,” Ade muttered to himself, and made a conscious effort to stop his mind wandering back through the timeline to the point where it had all started to come unraveled. He knew it was that day on board Actaeon, back in orbit above Umeh, when Commander Lindsay Neville tasked him to find a way of infiltrating Bezer’ej to capture Shan Frankland.
Jesus, don’t I ever learn? I’m doing it again, aren’t I?
No, it wasn’t then. He could have clawed it back after that. It was the moment in the armory when Rayat asked him if the BNO bombs could be transported to the planet, and he said he…he said they could be, but shouldn’t be. Ade had lost count of the times he’d imagined himself telling Rayat and Lindsay to fuck off, because there was nothing they could have done to force him, and he was bloody certain that the rest of the detachment would have dug their heels in too, regardless of disciplinary action.
My fault. I tipped events.
He didn’t dare talk about it to Shan any more. She always got exasperated and went through a long list of all the other ways that the nukes could have been deployed on Bezer’ej, and maybe with even greater loss of life all round, but it never quite made the guilt go away completely.
Fuck it. It was done now, and the least he could do was clean up the last turd. He took out his virin and began planning the trip to Ankara.
“I’ll pilot a shuttle,” Aras said, looking over his shoulder. Ade hadn’t realized he was watching so closely, but Aras had that wess’har mood radar. “It will be excellent training for the mission.”
Aras was a good bloke. There was no doubt about it.
An hour later, Shan walked back into the restaurant. Her expression was that odd mix of chalky unblinking anger and something that might have turned into a smile, but a humorless one. Someone had just lived up to her worst expectations, or she’d been outflanked. Ade knew it. Aras tensed and stood up.
“God bless the Canucks,” she said. “Now they’ve upped the ante. The UN backed their extradition idea.”
“To where?” said Chahal. “Surang?”
“Canada.” Shan pointed at Barencoin, cueing him. “Now, may I have an opinion from m’learned friend Judge Barencoin over here?”
Barencoin perked up. The mouthy, aggressive image hid the fact that he did international law at university, a regular intellectual, but he never liked revealing that side. “Do they have the death penalty? Come to that, do they do piddly nitpicking stuff like real trials, and risk acquitting people? Because if they won’t lynch her, Esganikan won’t consider the case closed. I won’t bill you for the legal advice. It’s common sense.”
“I’m obliged, Your Honor. That’s the question the Aussies are putting to them now.” Shan looked at them all, asking for a response. “Well, do we still want to get involved?”
“It’s legal,” said Becken. “I’m up for overseeing a handover too. Even if it’s not as much fun as extracting her.”
Qureshi nodded. “Better, actually.”
“Shame it wasn’t that Sinostates place, right on the African Assembly border,” said Ade. “Last time we looked, they were beheading everyone for anything, just to be on the safe side.”
“It’s Canada,” said Shan, and Ade knew everyone was thinking the same thing; they’d still have to go in and haul out Prachy anyway. “And if Prachy had any sense of duty, she’d save everyone the trouble and top herself. Ade, if you’re still going to Ankara, make it very soon.”
Shan wandered off.
“If Prachy does stand trial,” said Barencoin, savoring his bit of legal exercise, “it’s going to be fascinating procedure.”
9
Okay, do you remember the first contact we had with the isenj in the 2300s? One of their ministers told us that wess’har made their soldiers “immortal” in the past and could do it again, so we shouldn’t underestimate small numbers. The isenj aren’t primitives. I think we should take the threat as seriously as they did. Look at Umeh if you don’t see why.
BENEDYKT JANIAK, FEU Foreign Office,
at ministerial briefing
Immigrant Reception Center’s airstrip, late afternoon.
“Do you have time for this trip?” Esganikan demanded. “Shouldn’t you be planning the arrest of Prachy?”
Aras watched Shan for signs of a reaction but she remained glacially calm. Knowing her temper, he thought it was a remarkable feat of self-control when she almost certainly wanted to round on Esganikan for her deceit more than she wanted to remove her. Aras didn’t think Shan wanted to remove her at all. There was no rage or passion in this, just that dull sense of having been deceived again, and he remembered how much that rankled with Shan when she discovered what the politician Perault had done to her.
As always, Shan chanelled the sense of betrayal into the strict performance of her duty, by way of vengeance.
“This will only take seven hours, tops,” Shan said quietly. “Canada’s discussing the handover and there’s nothing useful I can add to that. Ade’s never going to get the chance to visit th
e graves again, and I intend him to have his wish. I hope we’re clear on that.”
“I’ll come too,” Esganikan said. “As will Kiir and Aitassi. We have never seen war graves, and Aras needs an experienced shuttle pilot with him.”
“I don’t think either Kiir or Ade would welcome that.” Shan’s tone was completely neutral, not that Esganikan would have been swayed by her emotional state anyway. “This is a very emotional event for Ade. Kiir had better stay behind.”
Ade lowered his chin. “It’s okay. He might as well see it. I think he’ll understand humans better if he does.”
Esganikan paused for a moment, then motioned Kiir on board. It was hard to tell if the Skavu had been ordered to come or if he was genuinely curious. He said nothing and stepped into the shuttle, saber slapping against his back with each stride, and vanished into the gloom of the ship.
Shan nudged Aras discreetly. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” she whispered. “You concentrate on learning to fly that bloody thing properly.”
Esganikan was totally unperturbed by the tension. “We shall need to extend this area to accommodate all the vessels,” she said, changing topic completely and gazing around the dilapidated field. Slabs of cracked concrete poked through dead grass as if there had been other buildings here once, or at least parking. She seemed to have made up her mind. “An area of fifty square kilometers so we can bring all the Skavu inside the perimeter. Then we can make this a temporary city.”
That was what wess’har called their garrisons; there was never an intention to remain. Empires prized permanence, but wess’har were simply passing through, putting things right and enabling the native population to maintain what they had re-created. That was how they saw it, anyway.
“Well, I think it’s time we made a move,” said Shan. “Seeing as you’re concerned about my time management.”
Aitassi let Aras slip into the pilot’s seat and watched from the position beside him with wary matte black eyes. None of the controls felt as familiar as Aras had hoped, despite his training. Shan settled down on a seat that emerged at her touch from the bulkhead, and Ade gave her a silent thumbs-up. Aras wasn’t sure why. It was just something he did to bond with her. Perhaps it was approval for not punching Esganikan when she must have wanted to.