Judge

  What if she made the whole mission unravel by compromising Esganikan? The Eqbas rescued planets for a living. Shan might have been an EnHaz veteran, but she was just a tourist compared to an Eqbas commander.

  But what if this is how c’naatat escapes into the human population, and I could have stopped it? What if that happens, and removing it isn’t as easy as it was with one human in a lab? Didn’t I try to die to stop this very thing happening?

  Yes, she had. But that didn’t mean she was right this time. She listened for some quiet word on the breeze from her commonsense guts.

  It told her not to hope for the best. This was Earth, after all.

  “Deadline’s getting closer,” she said. “Come on, let’s root for gentlemanly behavior and the rule of law.”

  Shan wondered how she would feel if she looked into Katya Prachy’s eyes and saw not a callous bureaucrat who dispensed careless genocide at 150 trillion miles’ remove, but an old woman.

  She was a copper, though, and she was long past feeling pity for criminals.

  10

  The FEU has until midnight to hand over ex-EFI5 agent Katya Prachy to the Canadian authorities for involvement in alleged war crimes in the Cavanagh’s Star system. The Eqbas Vorhi task force is also seeking custody of Prachy, but is said to be in talks with Canada about dropping the claim pending a UN war crimes tribunal held under Canadian law.

  BBChan 445 international bulletin

  F’nar, Wess’ej.

  “Are you coming to bed, Eddie?”

  Erica leaned against the doorframe and pulled an exasperated, weary expression that was exactly like Serrimissani’s disapproving scowl. Eddie didn’t risk telling her that she looked like a stroppy ussissi.

  “I have to watch this, doll. Sorry.” He gestured at the ITX link showing BBChan live. “You’ve got no idea how frustrating this is.”

  “You want to see Brussels wiped off the map, is that it?” She walked across the room in front of the screen and started boiling water and rattling glass cups. “Armageddon, live and uninterrupted. Lovely. But we’ve got hours yet. Time to get some beer and snacks in, and make a night of it.”

  “If I’d gone,” he said sourly, “I might have been some use.”

  “If you’d gone, poppet, you might have made it worse. And you’re still sticking your oar in, aren’t you? I saw that piece on Prachy. I can’t believe you did that.”

  “It needed saying.”

  “Shan needed you to say it, more like.”

  Erica made the tea and held the cup out to him, a beautiful piece of wess’har domestic art, all violet and gold swirls; they made the most wonderful glass. Transparency was their obsession. The drains running from terrace to terrace around the caldera were a kind of glass too, like all their utensils, and on Constantine, before Aras had let the nanites loose to erase all signs of human settlement, even the church bells had been royal blue glass like antique Bristol ware. One of the things Eddie had grown to love about wess’har was that what you saw was exactly, painfully, and unremittingly what you got. They hid nothing.

  If they said midnight was the deadline, they didn’t mean 2359 or 0001. And the consequences would be swift.

  “If anything,” Eddie said, responding aloud to his own thoughts, “Esganikan’s gone soft. I’m piecing together what I’m getting from the news with the little I hear from Shan, and I’m amazed no shit’s hit the fan yet. The Eqbas expect the death penalty. They can’t even imagine that a trial would acquit, either. Big cultural mismatch there. Lull before the storm, maybe.”

  “If memory serves, the Eqbas were hanging around here for ages before they started on Umeh.”

  “Did it scare you, knowing they’d turned up?”

  “Bloody right it did. You?”

  Eddie tried to remember. He’d logged and recorded a museum’s worth of experiences since he’d first come here, but recalling his emotional state accurately at any one point was hard. “I think I knew it was scary, but I was more wrapped up in the ethics of how I reported it all. My footage kicked off riots. It’s like realizing you’ve pulled the trigger without looking where you were aiming.”

  “What, like with Prachy?”

  “The alternative is never to report anything in case it upsets someone, and almost all stories do. That’s news for you.”

  Erica seemed to take some time thinking that over. She sat down beside him on the sofa, the one Shan had made with her own hands, which looked white unless you were wess’har. They saw the fabric as peacock blue. It had needed a few repairs over the years, but Shan had done a solid job of building it.

  “I’m fed up seeing you sit in judgment on yourself every night.” Erica slid her arm through his, slopping his tea. “You’re not the only person in the universe with free choice. You don’t run it. It’s as much the viewers’ bloody responsibility to react sensibly to what they see as it is for you to report it properly, so for goodness’ sake stop doing this to yourself.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Come on, you and Shan—you’ve got the same self-focus. Everything you do is of global importance. Only you can save or condemn the world. That kind of arrogant bullshit.”

  “You know what they say about great power.”

  “Is that in the Bible?”

  “I think it was in a comic, actually.”

  Eddie leaned back and watched the images in silence for a long time, Erica’s resting against him, and wondered if they’d woken Barry. Brussels mattered. The whole planet did. Barry, and the Champciaux kid, Jérôme, would be the last humans left here one day, a lonely fate however good the wess’har were as neighbors, and that meant that sooner or later—sooner, probably—they’d have to go to Earth to have any hope of normal life. Eddie now fully understood why Shan aborted her kid. It wasn’t just curbing the spread of c’naatat; it was saving a child from the fate of being utterly alone for a very long time. Having c’naatat parents there for you until Kingdom Come didn’t make up for not being able to have a lover and all that went with it.

  “Esganikan had better get this right,” Erica muttered.

  So she was thinking the same thing.

  “If she can’t, who can?”

  “If you’re going to wait up for the deadline, I can heat some soup.”

  “I’m not hungry. So you’re going to keep me company to watch the fall of Rome.”

  “Is that on the hit-list too? Can’t be much of the place left anyway.”

  “Figure of speech, dear, just so you know I’m not a totally uneducated oaf.”

  Eddie had once been used to waiting for deadlines to expire and wars to start. They were never called wars, of course, always something short of that to satisfy legal niceties, but he’d never seen one on his home turf. Umeh didn’t count. If he ever saw one of the British regions scorched and crushed like the Maritime Fringe, he wasn’t sure how he’d take it. Zammett had hit a nerve there.

  The room filled with the smell of leek and potato soup, grown in the Wess’ej soil still protected by a biobarrier to maintain a little bit of Earth a long way from home. Was it too hot or dry to grow good spuds in England now?

  “How long to go?” Erica asked, settling down again beside him to eat.

  “Four hours.”

  “Ah. You’d think they’d run some old movies, like the countdown to New Year.”

  Just hand Prachy over. She’s expendable. Ouzhari was.

  Would it make any difference in the end? Sooner or later, the Eqbas would use force.

  They were lovely neighbors, wess’har, until you crossed that line.

  PM’s office, Kamberra: two hours to deadline.

  “Okay, this is the agreement, or at least what’s in place so far,” said Storley. “We have a location for any handover that’s yet to be agreed. The FEU Mitterand Air Base.”

  Bari lined up the coffee in anticipation of a long night. Shukry looked in need of it too. “Why there?”

  “Access for Eqbas ships as well as the Can
adians.”

  “Talk me through the timeline.”

  “First critical thing is the response from Canada,” said Storley. “Because the Eqbas want Canada to agree to a death sentence, and they’re still kicking that around. Expectations will not match. The Eqbas assume that a trial will convict, because they don’t factor in motive. We have to prove specific intent in genocide cases, or else it’s just a list of murder charges, which won’t get the death penalty in Canada anyway. Either the Eqbas are blind to that, or they’re nodding and smiling with the intention of lynching her anyway.”

  “I’m not sure what Canada is playing at.” Bari got up for a walk around the office to keep his circulation going. The whole ADF was on standby now, because Bari could see this going off like a chain of firecrackers. “Once they have Prachy, and the Eqbas work out she won’t die, they’ve got a ticking bomb in their lap.”

  “They’re mindful of the risk. They’re looking at bringing a general war crimes charge based on the cobalt bombs, and seeing if a death penalty option can be attached to that. Cobalt is only there to wipe out life indiscriminately, no other use. Let’s not even get into the legal status of the assault. No war declared, obviously. It’s a mire.”

  Eqbas didn’t like mires. They wouldn’t wait through a year of legal pretrial argument. Bari had no intention of saying it explicitly, but he knew Storley and Andreaou thought it too: the cleanest option would be for the Eqbas to kill Prachy there and then, leaving the FEU to decide if it was up for a shooting match with a massively advanced alien navy. It was going to be ugly, but not quite as ugly as the same scene happening on the soil of an ally.

  “Who do we have at the location now?”

  “Just a diplomatic service observer. No visible involvement to drag us in—the Eqbas are sending the private military contractors and a few Skavu to ride security.”

  “By contractors, you mean the former marines.”

  “And Frankland. No, she won’t be on the ground. No risk or hint that we might hand her over, accidentally or otherwise.”

  “Okay, so this is only a question of the size of the turd entering the turbine, not if the turd will hit it.”

  “I’m afraid so. But we’re within the law, and observing.”

  “Niall, your precision is laudable, but the Eqbas are the law from now on. And if they do have a legal system, I’m too scared to look at it.”

  “The air force is on alert five, anyway,” said Andreaou. “But I would still like to see the trial, and let the Eqbas loose later.”

  Bari drained his cup and refilled. “Damn, you said it…”

  It was just a matter of waiting. Bari waited another ten minutes before the desk system chirped and Persis’s voice said: “They’ve agreed. It’s on.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not.

  FEU Mitterand Air Base: 2330 hours CET, 30 minutes to deadline.

  It was a big airfield, and Ade felt edgy and exposed in the middle of a lake of fierce light.

  To the marines’ left, the Canadian handover party waited; a diplomat, and what looked like cops in anonymous black coveralls with no signs of armor or weapons. To the right, an FEU military police vehicle was idling next to a group of men and women in suits; diplomats or lawyers, by the look of them. Above, an Eqbas command ship hung motionless at five thousand meters, projecting a defense shield that took in the whole airfield and tower right to the perimeter.

  And just in front of them, four Skavu waited in a line, completely silent and stock-still in the mild night air.

  Chahal nudged Ade. “Tempting,” he said.

  “I hope they took their calm pills.” Ade could hear chatter from the command ship in his earpiece. Shan was talking to Esganikan, reminding her that the Canadians were worth being nice to. “Shame, I really fancied a proper raid, one last time.”

  “Careful, or the FEU’s going to ask for our rifles back,” said Qureshi. “For the museum.”

  They were a remnant of a proper commando outfit, reduced to standing around in battered kit, minus any badge or rank to wear. They looked like a weekend skirmish hobby team, but with real and serious ESF670 assault rifles. The rifles might have been obsolete weapons now, but they could still do the business. Ade assumed everyone realized that.

  “Boss, what’s happening?” Ade checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes to go.”

  Shan’s voice popped in his earpiece. “They’re bringing her onto the tarmac now. Watch for the police vehicle.”

  “Here she comes,” said Barencoin.

  The police car came to a stop at the line of FEU lawyers and someone jumped out to open the door. The woman they helped out wasn’t the frail old lady that the description suggested, but one in reasonably good shape and walking well.

  “Bang goes her sympathy vote,” Barencoin muttered. “She needs to get that helpless granny look down a bit better before she goes on trial.”

  Prachy, accompanied by a lawyer, walked across in front of the Skavu and stared at them for a second or two before the Canadian diplomat stepped forward and some words were exchanged. The two men nodded at each other, taking those little gradual steps backwards that preceded turning and walking away. Prachy looked as if she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do next.

  Once she was in the Canadian vehicle, it wasn’t Ade’s problem any longer. The men turned away from each other as if on cue and Prachy was left standing between them, exposed for a moment.

  Something zipped past Ade’s head like an insect. A loud crack split the night air.

  Prachy stumbled forward, arms held away from her sides like a diver for a moment before she crumpled onto the concrete. The marines dropped instinctively into a contact formation; there was no cover unless they ran for the cars. For a second, everyone froze, including the Skavu.

  “Sniper!” Ade yelled. If anyone had gone to Prachy’s aid, he couldn’t see. The round had passed him. “Ground level, over there—”

  Another shot rang out; it sounded as if it came from behind them this time. And that was the one that plunged the handover into disaster. Ade knew it as soon as he heard the wet thwack of a round hitting flesh. Turning, he saw a Canadian officer on the ground and his buddies aiming their short automatics as if they thought the shot had come from the Skavu. Then the Skavu turned towards the Canadians, rifles raised. It was as if a switch had been thrown: the shooting started.

  Ade’s brain slipped into a different time frame. Everything ran slowly, agonizingly, and Prachy was forgotten. In the crossfire, Ade heard another thwack and Becken slumped forward. Shan’s voice filled Ade’s earpiece saying, “Get them out—” but the sound cut off.

  “Cease fire!” Ade yelled. “For fuck’s sake, it’s snipers, you twats—”

  The firing stopped. He could hear everyone panting. He looked around frantically, checking where his people were. He couldn’t see Qureshi.

  “Jon?” Chahal scrambled towards Becken. “Jon? Jon!”

  “Izzy? Where the fuck’s Izzy?”

  Barencoin must have caught something in his scope; he opened up at a position right of the tower that was well inside the perimeter. Ade ran at a crouch to Becken and tripped over Qureshi.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit, shit, shit…”

  It was all over in thirty or forty chaotic seconds.

  The airfield was silent for a moment before the sirens started. Ade, still running on adrenaline, checked who was alive and who wasn’t; one Skavu was down and so were three of the Canadians, two of them with visible burns from Skavu energy weapons. The civvies were squatting or lying flat on the tarmac, too scared to move, and Prachy’s head rested in a pool of tarry blood.

  So did Jon Becken’s.

  Chahal was checking Becken’s pulse, fingers on the man’s neck. It was a waste of bloody time. Becken was an ordinary bloke, not c’naatat like Ade, with miraculous powers of recovery; a chunk of his head was gone, and he wasn’t going to regain consciousness a few days later and carry on as normal like Sha
n did back on Bezer’ej. Ade shut down at that point. If he let himself feel anything right then, he’d slot the next bastard who moved. He ignored the sudden noise around him—ambulances, shouting, recriminations, the noise of vehicles screaming into position—and concentrated on Qureshi.

  Barencoin leaned over him.

  “Fucking idiots.” Barencoin spat out the words. Ade felt the spray on his face. “Fucking amateurs.” He started yelling, but his voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. “Medic! Get a fucking medic over here!”

  Qureshi lay on her side with her legs bent awkwardly behind her, blood spilling from her mouth and spattered over her jacket, but still alive. She was making a gurgling sound. Ade’s emergency first aid kicked in. He checked the wound; a ballistic round had penetrated her neck below the larynx and she was choking in her own blood. Airway, get the airway clear first—

  “Mart, help me keep her neck stable. Izzy? Can you hear me? Don’t you dare bloody well die on me.” The blood was frothy. Her eyelids fluttered. Barencoin pulled off his jacket as used it as a pad to cover the wound while he held her head steady. “You’re going to be okay, Izzy, hold on.”

  It was a lie; Ade knew it.

  He tried to clear her mouth of blood with his fingers. Then a hand grabbed his shoulder and he batted it away before he realized it was the ambulance crew taking over.

  “About fucking time,” said Barencoin. “What’s the matter, you got stuck in traffic or something?”

  Ade watched numbly as the paramedics clustered around Qureshi and tried to stabilize her. But she stopped making that awful rattling sound and went limp. They worked on her for what seemed like a long time; it was probably minutes, no more, but Ade had lost all sense of time. Barencoin tried to haul him away.

  “Come on, mate, nothing we can do now—”

  “Is she dead?” He pulled away from Barencoin and caught one of the paramedics by the arm. “I said, is she dead?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” said the paramedic.

  Ade knew the words had sunk in, just as he knew Becken was dead too; but it was all still unreal and distant, as if events were so fresh that he could change what had happened if he tried hard enough. It had all gone to shit in moments. That was how big the gulf was between life and death: not hours of battle, but a fucking stupid stray shot after some bastard got spooked and started firing.