Nemesis (47 page)

The town that Den drove them through offered everything a poor Earther might crave. The dome had plenty of space, open skies and gaudy high-tech toys scattered about. Rave scooters, jump-packs and ped-sleds leaned up against walls gathering dust. What the place lacked were all the things most Earthers didn’t know to miss, like proper seals and rad-shielding. He coughed in the thin, dusty air, which probably hadn’t been filtered in months.

Worse than the cheap luxury was the way the place had been brazenly meme-hacked. Every crappy dustboard house they passed was painted with Truist designs. Murals everywhere depicted Earth’s early victories during the war and the burning of the First Wave Colonies. The screens in every window played video footage of old Truist propaganda. Animatronic Sanchez shrines sat on street corners, watching them pass with empty electronic eyes.

The religious immersion would have been depressing enough on its own, but Mark had started to notice the people. Women with heavy white make-up doubling as sunscreen watched from doorways. Mark could see their cheaply reprinted body parts – breasts, mostly. Dozens of thin children with plastic implants and bad skin stood quietly watching them pass.

It was, Mark thought, a refugee camp tricked out like a theme park. It reeked of exploitation. He’d imagined poor Earthers struggling with dignity. He saw no dignity here.

‘Don’t accept food or water here unless you have to,’ Venetia quietly warned him. ‘It’s all tweaked. Eat enough and you’ll never want to leave.’

Mark wanted to snap at her and tell her that things here couldn’t be so bad. But all the while his eyes told him otherwise.

They passed a row of ancient-looking exosuits lined up next to a building site. It occurred to Mark then that he hadn’t seen a single robot since they reached the dome. He realised with a start that
people
had built the houses all around him. With no reason to exist other than to establish a sect’s legal claim, the settlement was probably desperate to find things for their imported peasants to do.

The carts came to a halt outside the one building in the entire dome that looked properly constructed. It had high, reinforced walls of white printrock and a broad overhanging roof lined with metallic panels – rad-shielding, Mark suspected. An elegant arched door like that of a church adorned the front.

It opened and a man stepped through. He wore High Church white from head to toe, with gloves and a broad-rimmed hat that cast a shadow over his shoulders. He had a powerful face with a deep, rich tan, and what Mark assumed was artificially bleached hair. He looked like a weight-lifter disguised as an old-world pope.

‘Good morning, Den,’ said the man, with a broad, benevolent smile. His accent was pure Earth Leading. ‘My blessings to you and your team. What do we have here – an offering?’

Den bowed deeply, his hands joined in prayer. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘We find this lot up in the mines. Get this. They say they
want
to come here. They got data and claim the Moddies mean to harm us. Not sure if I believe.’

The head man turned to look them over. ‘Intriguing,’ he said. ‘Is this the case?’

‘We’re on the run from the New Luxor authorities,’ said Venetia. ‘Or should I say the Frontier Protection Party. They’re trying to hold us here to stop us getting back to our ship. We have evidence of a plan to attack Earth with alien weapons. Those same weapons are on their way here right now. They don’t want anyone in the sects to know – your settlement included.’

The head man listened patiently, his smile never diminishing.

‘Fascinating,’ he said. His eyes twinkled. ‘And why are you so keen that we should know this?’

‘We’re not Fleet,’ said Venetia. ‘We were on a diplomatic mission run by Yunus Chesterford and supported by the government of Earth.’

The head man quirked an eyebrow. ‘
The
Yunus Chesterford?’

Venetia nodded.

The head man turned to Den. ‘Blessings be on you and your team, Dennis Ochoa,’ he said. ‘You have done well. The Lord is pleased with your diligence and attention to duty.’

The collars of everyone on Den’s team chimed several times. There were whoops and cheers all round.

‘Kal found them,’ said Den. ‘And he kept that itchy finger of his off the trigger like you told him.’

‘Then Kal is particularly blessed,’ said the head man.

Kal’s collar chimed again. He beamed.

‘Don’t spend God’s bounty all at once,’ the head man told them with a knowing smile. ‘Remember, the Lord adores celebration in his name, but not when it interferes with your health. There is such a thing as too much pleasure.’

‘Yes, Father!’ said Den, grinning. ‘You got it. No messing.’ He gestured at the others. ‘Okay, you lot. Sleds back to the dock.’

Den and his team jumped onto their carts, leaving Mark and the others standing in front of the white villa with the head man. The only other people around were the malnourished children with blotchy faces watching them from the street corners.

‘Good morning. I’m Massimo Singh,’ said the head man. ‘Nice to meet you all, and welcome to Britehaven. I can’t remember the last time I had civilised company out here.’

He gestured towards the door. ‘Can I offer you breakfast?’

15.2: WILL

The shuttle fell relentlessly towards Snakepit and Will couldn’t do a damned thing about it. The shuttle lacked even the most rudimentary self-repair robots. Short of climbing outside himself and fixing it, they were stuck, and Will wasn’t sure even his abilities stretched quite that far. It galled him. It would take them hours to reach the planet – plenty of time for him to reflect on his folly. Had he headed straight for the
Chiyome
, they’d have been safely docked by now.

He lay sprawled in his couch while the shuttle rocked from wave after wave of blasts. Then, abruptly, the impacts stopped.

‘What happened?’ said Ann. ‘Why has it all gone quiet?’

Will scanned the surrounding space. To his surprise, the Nems appeared to have just kissed and made up. They’d gone from fighting to swarming cooperatively within seconds.

‘Apparently civil wars don’t last long around here,’ he said.

As he watched, the drone swarm changed from a random churn to directed motion, all pointed towards the remaining raspberry ship which was still trying to track down Pari’s station. The Nems fanned out, adopting a search configuration. That couldn’t be good news for the League. Eventually the drones would get over their stupidity and try swapping their swarming protocol. When that happened, the League ships would become instant targets.

The swarm changed their broadcast. Will piped it into the cabin.

‘Human friends!’ said the swarm. ‘There is no need to hide. We know you are here. We wish you no harm. We only want to give you the gift of happy incorporation! Show yourselves and let us grant you eternal usefulness! You will be located eventually. Why not spare yourselves the discomfort of waiting and enjoy peace now?’

Sooner or later those eerie bastards were actually going to come up with an offer that sounded appealing, Will thought. He hoped to be long gone by then.

‘Can they see us?’ said Ann.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Will. ‘They’re trying to infiltrate our systems, but they can’t hack any better than a five-year-old so I’m not worried on that count.’

Will checked his link to the
Ariel Two
. He could still feel the ship through what remained of the shuttle’s sensor array but Nelson still had the power out. And even if he could request an extra shuttle, the moment he did so he’d be telling both the League and the Nems exactly where to find him.

Ironically, their best hope lay in the several hundred pieces of drone shrapnel from the impromptu war falling alongside them. They slid towards the planet in long leisurely arcs. Under the circumstances, he would have been worried about the prospect of chance collisions. As it was, the fallout from the war just made them one more piece of broken technology drifting through the void. They might be out of control and plunging to their deaths on the most dangerous world humanity had ever discovered, but at least they had one thing going for them.

Will stopped trying to minimise their spin. They were less obvious while tumbling like a dead thing and there’d be plenty of opportunities to regularise their flight when they neared atmosphere. What he needed to do, he reasoned, was make the best use of the window of quiet he’d been granted and heal. It also gave him a chance to figure out why he had company.

He hooked his vision to the camera above Ann’s crash couch.

‘Tell me why you’re here,’ he said.

Ann stared at the camera with an expression of steel-edged disappointment. The fact that he’d landed them in this mess clearly rankled her.

‘Because you were right. The League plan is unravelling. The machines are changing too fast. After you told me about the cells in the bioblocker I did a little research of my own. Sam Shah set this project up to fail from the start. He wants Earth dead, and I did
not
sign up for that. So I thought, why not get out of here with Will and try to apologise to him? Could that possibly be any worse? Apparently, though, the answer was
yes
.’

‘So why
did
you sign up, then?’ said Will. ‘This whole operation is about smacking Earth down, isn’t it?’

She shook her head. ‘Because the threat of war was real. Something had to be done and this was the only option we could find. I’ve been working against genocide this entire time. My first tour of duty on the New Frontier made me sick. I went away and built my models because I knew the peace between the colonies and the sects couldn’t last. The Fleet was burning too much of its energy enforcing it. I wanted to do something.’

‘If you were looking for a way to help, throwing your time at a bunch of simulations was a funny way of showing it,’ said Will. ‘Models don’t save lives.’

‘I beg to differ,’ Ann snapped. ‘After you’ve spent years
trying
to break a model like that and keep seeing the same answer, you eventually get the message. We both know what’s coming, and it’s very simple. The colonies can’t afford to give up control of the New Frontier, and Earth can’t stand by and let them take it. And if war comes, the first consequence will be a massacre of Flags everywhere. It’ll be worse than the anti-Muslim horrors in the twenty-first century. This time, though, it won’t be one world shamed by violence, it’ll be all of them. Then will come the retaliation—’

‘I get it,’ said Will.

‘Do you?’ said Ann. ‘I presented my findings to the Fleet but they didn’t like what I had to say. Nobody paid any attention except the League. I was tearing my hair out before Senator Voss approached me. What would you have done?’

‘For starters I wouldn’t have fucked about with alien technology I didn’t understand,’ said Will. ‘You people should have come to me the moment you found this place.’

Will felt guilty for throwing accusations at her even as he did so but couldn’t stop himself. Pari had made it very clear why the League existed. He still felt the wound of Ann’s betrayal. She deserved to hear it.

‘And said what?’ said Ann. ‘Weren’t you already trying to avert a war? How were you going to help, exactly? Earth’s sects hate you. They always have. That’s despite you handing them limitless energy, new technologies and the rights to unfettered planetary habitation on the worlds of their choice. They kept hating you because if they’d won the war, they’d have gained those things anyway without having to say thank you or share them. Short of simply killing their entire leadership, what exactly were you going to do? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a lot easier to end a war with a big stick than it is to stop one starting in the first place. You proved that with the
Ariel Two.
We didn’t come to you because you had nothing we could use except a talent for political optimism that had already screwed things up.’

Will glared through the camera and hated that she was right.

‘I could have warned you what you were getting into,’ he said at last. ‘I could have helped you do a better fucking job.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ said Ann. ‘You’ve changed, Will. Everything I said to you at Triton was true. I
did
watch you on that mission to the Transcended. You
did
shape my career. I remember you back then, trying to make contact over and over again. You never noticed me, but I felt your despair. You were a different man then, Will Monet. Somewhere between then and now, you gave up being flexible. Maybe that’s what being superhuman does to a person. It makes you expect to get your way by force. That’s why the League didn’t want to touch you. Because you were wedded to your agenda and they knew they’d never change your mind. They’d have lost all control the moment they opened their mouths.’

Will put his face in his hands. He shouldn’t have started baiting her. She’d only reaffirmed what Pari had already spelled out. Apparently his political irrelevance had been obvious to everyone but himself.

‘Just because I was pushing didn’t mean I wouldn’t listen,’ he said. ‘I watched Gustav die. I held my friend while the blood ran out of him. I thought the whole government was going to come apart. Someone had to hold it together. And the people I was dealing with didn’t respect you unless you pushed, so I’ve been pushing ever since. I had to.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Ann. ‘There’s always a choice. You believed that once. Maybe you should try it again.’

Her words stung him. ‘If there’s always a choice, why did you screw me over when I trusted you?’

Ann looked away from the camera. ‘Touché,’ she said quietly.

They lapsed back into silence. Will sullenly busied himself prepping the shuttle’s failing systems for the inevitable crash-landing.

When they finally hit atmosphere, Will used what thruster control they had left to level out their spin. They still plummeted through the sky like a rock. Over the course of a few short minutes, the silence of space gave way to the roaring judder of re-entry. Will automatically compensated for the hammering the shuttle was taking as the atmosphere bludgeoned them. He watched Ann struggle. Their descent would have inflicted a concussion on any normal person but Ann’s Fleet augs gave her the strength to hold on. She lay white-faced in her couch as pieces rattled off the shuttle into the screaming air. To Will’s mind, she would have been better off unconscious.