Nemesis (48 page)

They raced over continents of tangled bio-tubing to a dark, flat ocean splattered with scarlet algal mats. Will used the shuttle’s remaining thrust to flatten out their dive and give them a shallow enough approach to survive. For a few brief minutes, the shuttle hit eight gees. Ann groaned.

Then, with a smack like a prizefighter’s fist, they hit water and bounced. Then again. And another five times in a row.

The shuttle finally skidded across the ocean in gouts of steam, its emergency floats kicking in like crash-bags in a transit pod. Will and Ann lay back in their couches and sucked air while the ocean undulated wildly around them. The shuttle creaked and groaned like a collapsing building.

‘Nice landing,’ Ann croaked.

Will wasn’t sure whether she was being ironic or not.

He checked the exterior cameras. Ocean surrounded them to the horizon in every direction. A deep blue sky hung overhead carrying weird, angry-looking bands of icy cloud – a testament to the atmospheric havoc the Nems had wreaked in some other part of the globe.

That was another thing they had going for them, Will thought. They might be trapped inside a dead shuttle in the middle of an ocean on a toxic world, but at least they hadn’t landed in a radioactive hurricane.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry I went for the
Ariel Two
. And sorry I shouted at you back there. Discovering that your entire life is a lie is … upsetting.’

Ann wiped her brow with a trembling hand. ‘Me too. If we’d told you sooner, we wouldn’t be in this mess. For what it’s worth, I hated every minute of it. It’s the worst thing I ever had to do. The League baited you, you know. They deliberately kept you angry to make you easier to control. That was unforgivable. I’m ashamed I was a part of it. We should have put all that effort into talking to you instead.’ She looked up into his camera with a weak smile.

Will was glad she couldn’t see his face properly. He was still processing some of his emotions.

‘Emergency crash beacon activated,’ said the shuttle calmly.

Will jerked out of his reverie. ‘Deactivate beacon.’

‘Cannot comply. Emergency beacon activation is irreversible.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Will shouted. ‘Cut the power.’

At the same time, he reached for the beacon circuit’s blueprint. As he scanned it, his hopes sank. The device ran on a sealed circuit, feeding off its own isotope store.

‘Shit!’

‘Can’t you stop it manually?’ said Ann.

‘It’s between the nuclear engine mountings. I’m strong, but not that strong. I’d have to rip through half the shuttle without blowing us up.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Ann. ‘If the League doesn’t spot that thing, the Nems will. Any chance you could subvert the
Ariel Two
and send us some help?’

‘From down here and with their power cut, not a chance.’

‘In that case we need to get out of here. As fast as we can.’

Will regarded her incredulously. ‘What, we
swim
to safety?’

‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to try swimming in this ocean. Believe me. But we need to get out of this shuttle. Do we have any thrusters left?’

‘A few. Nowhere near enough power for a take-off, though.’

‘We don’t need to do that,’ said Ann. ‘We can use the juice to cross the water to land. We’ll have to chance it that far.’

She tapped the screen in front of her, bringing up a map of the ocean, and pointed to a marked point about a hundred and fifty klicks away.

‘That’s the nearest science station. They’ll have craft there we can borrow. We make for the coast here,’ she said, moving her finger. ‘There’s an access port we can use. That’s less than a hundred klicks north-east. Then we head inland on foot and put as much distance between us and the beacon as we can. If we can get off this crate, we have a chance.’

‘You’re suggesting we go overland?’ said Will. ‘Is that safe?’

‘It’s safer than sitting in here, if that’s what you mean,’ said Ann. ‘I’ve hiked the surface as well as the tunnel system and we’re nowhere near a defensive node. The biome around here is designed to support life, not attack it.’

‘Okay, land it is,’ he said. ‘Does that continent have a name?’

‘Three,’ said Ann.

‘Love that League imagination.’

He fired up the shuttle’s thrusters.

The craft dipped forward abruptly, swung upward, and finally started off in the right direction. Will slowly piled on what power he had until they were sliding through the waves at an acceptable clip.

For the next hour, the sea had nothing much to offer them except sluggish waves, rafts of algal scum and pockets of weirdly effervescent water where streams of bubbles surfaced. No bombs dropped. No lances of energy appeared from the sky to vaporise them. And for those little things, Will felt grateful.

Eventually, a black sliver of land appeared on the horizon. During the minutes that followed it grew into a coastline made entirely of overlapping tubes. It looked like a cross between a chemical works and a mangrove swamp, all the colour of soot. The tubes were as wide around as the twenty-lane mass-transit pipes on Mars – larger than Will had expected from a distance. Where they sloped down to meet the water they reminded him of rippled lava fields. Their arched backs were lined with stiff ash-coloured grass. The gaps between them had been filled with pockets of brightly coloured fungi like something out of a fever-dream, interspersed with charcoal-grey ferns.

As they nosed up to the shore, Ann scrambled out of her couch and clambered down the tube to the airlock. Will followed, noting as he went that the airlock interface was a mess of red warning lights.

‘Be careful,’ he warned her. ‘The exterior hatch is breached.’

She shot him an anxious look. ‘You’re kidding,’ she said.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Will. ‘I thought you said the biome is safe.’

‘It is,’ said Ann. ‘For me.’

Will opened the inner hatch. Ann climbed through and paused to take in the smashed, waterlogged remains of the emergency suit locker. She groaned.

‘There goes our best defence against an immune-response bomb,’ she said.

‘An immune
what
?’ said Will.

‘Like the bioblocker release up on the station, only a thousand times less pleasant,’ said Ann. ‘The Will-Monet-themed nuclear option. You don’t want to meet one.’

She hit the manual release on the scarred remains of the outer hatch and stepped out onto the slightly submerged wing, surrounded by slowly deflating airbags.

Will followed nervously. The air on the other side felt thin but surprisingly fresh, with a gentle bite of mould. He carefully sampled the air for microorganisms, prepping his lungs for another assault. None came. The life carried on the breeze was even more complex than the kind he’d seen aboard Pari’s station but appeared to hold no antagonistic intent.

Ann peered up at the sky and scowled. ‘I’ll never get used to the open sky,’ she said. ‘It’s not natural.’ She turned to scrutinise him. ‘You feeling okay? The air all right?’

Will nodded. ‘This place is weird,’ he said, glancing around. ‘Not like anywhere I’ve been before.’

‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’ said Ann.

She sloshed out to the tip of the wing and leapt gingerly onto the back of the nearest tube, grabbing the grass as she landed. Will leapt, flea-like, arriving beside her with dry feet. The rumpled surface felt surprisingly warm under Will’s boots given the chill of the air. Up close, the grass looked coarse and artificial with an iridescent sheen.

‘I wouldn’t leap about like that,’ she said, frowning. ‘Save your strength.’

Will gave her a long stare. Ann knew something she wasn’t saying.

She led the way carefully up the pipe to a ceramic Fleet-issue boarding-lock sunk into the ground and glued in place with some kind of resin. She stood beside it, a grim look in her eye.

‘Okay, here’s the bad news,’ she said. ‘Without suits, there are two ways we can do this and you’re not going to like either of them. Option one, we cover the terrain on the surface. We’ll move faster that way but the League will probably be able to get a visual fix on us. If they do that, we’re dead. I assure you that they’ll fire at us the moment they think it’s safe to do so.’

He eyed her uncertainly. ‘I find it hard to believe Pari would do that,’ he said. ‘Even now.’

‘Pari might not, but Jaco Brinsen definitely will, even if he has to go around her to achieve it. And he has command of the
Chiyome
, remember. If necessary, he’ll resort to a boser.’

Will wrinkled his nose. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘The League have two kinds of model for you, Will. Those where you get on board with their plan and those where you don’t. If you don’t, then you and the
Ariel Two
remain a one-man interstellar superpower and it’s you or them. The way they see it, they
have
to take you out. The only reason we’re still standing is because the Nems must be keeping them busy.’

‘What’s option two?’

‘We go inside. We’ll make slower progress in the tunnels but the League won’t be able to track us. The downside is that the planet will want to scope you out.’

‘More bioblocker?’

Ann shook her head. ‘It’s not nearly so bad, but it’s not pretty, either. When normal people go down there, they get sick at first and then they get better. Sometimes a lot better. The planet does threat assessment on their biology and then lets them go. But for some reason, Will, this planet doesn’t like your smart-cells. I’ve seen the test results.’ She looked anxious.

‘What happens?’

‘The biome just keeps interacting with your tissue,’ she said. ‘Never invasively, but it doesn’t stop. Eventually, in every test we ran, your cells died.’

Will peered at her, trying to assess the risks. He could achieve a lot more as a complete entity than his cells could manage on their own. He had to hope that counted for something.

‘After how long?’

‘Even for a tiny sample, it takes hours,’ said Ann. ‘And that might be enough for us to get where we need to go. But I’m telling you, it won’t be fun in there. I think it’s our best shot, but there’s no way I’m stepping inside unless you’re ready.’

‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ said Will. ‘Lead on.’

15.3: MARK

Massimo led them into his house. Servants in white smocks with shaven heads manually closed the door behind them.

The interior looked surprisingly modern and spacious, if ecclesiastical in tone. A lounge area with low couches and white carpet lay to their left. The far wall-screen showed slowly alternating panoramic landscapes of the famous biosphere worlds. Ahead of them, through another arch, Mark could make out what appeared to be a study area. But instead of robots, Massimo had people – all young and androgynous in appearance.

Two of them moved quietly around the lounge, dusting the surfaces. Another pair stood by the wall, simply waiting for instructions. They all wore matching smart-collars. The sight of them gave Mark the creeps. The submissive way they crept about smacked of the worst elements of Triton society.

Massimo stripped off his long gloves and tossed them to the nearest servant.

‘I hate wearing this stuff,’ he confided. ‘Part of the job, I suppose. And more fun than skin cancer.’ He threw his hat to a willowy teenager who caught it with one hand. ‘Don’t worry. You can relax in here. The walls are properly shielded and the house has its own air filters.’ He shucked off his long white coat, revealing relatively normal T-shirt and sweats underneath, also white. ‘The next shipment should bring better shielding,’ he told them. ‘When we finally move into the new tower, I won’t have to wear this crap all the time. The whole place will be properly rad-blocked. I can’t wait.’ He slumped down on a tall chair set against the wall to swap his formal trainers for flip-flops.

Mark watched their host’s casual behaviour and wasn’t sure how to feel. The man looked genuinely pleased to see them and something about the way he carried on felt normal. Except the transition from death threats to houseguests had been too abrupt, and the context was too strange. He couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow they were still seconds away from being shot.

Massimo surveyed the three of them with a private smile.

‘You all look uncomfortable. I can understand why. The trip out here was probably pretty jarring. Still, you can relax now – if you want to, of course. Let’s have something to eat.’

He led them to a doorway on the right. Servants opened it for them, revealing a sunny dining room with a single place set. More bald servants entered from what looked like a manually run kitchen, carrying plates for the rest of them. Through the open door came a strong smell of cooking. Mark’s stomach roared at him loud enough to solicit an amused glance from Massimo.

‘Hungry, then?’ he said. ‘That’s good. Don’t worry, by the way. The food here’s all good. It’s not the stuff we give the Following outside. This house has its own fab, and a little farm in the basement for organics.’

Mark and the others awkwardly took their places on the hand-carved dining chairs.

Food arrived. Plates and plates of it. Toast, prote-scramble with fresh herbs, sizzled strips of artfully printed makeon, coffee, fresh fruit. Even if the whole thing was a trap, Mark had lost the ability to resist. He’d never tasted anything so good. Since arriving on Carter he’d eaten nothing except some fragments of an emergency ration bar aboard the raft and a couple of mouthfuls of hideous-tasting water from the tunnels, which Venetia had insisted was safe.

Massimo watched as they devoured the breakfast before them and asked no questions except ones pertaining to the meal.

‘Did you try the orange juice?’ he said. ‘You should. I have my own orange vines running downstairs. I make sure that one of them’s always in season.’

Mark wondered whether most hostages got the same treatment. He suspected not.

‘Thank you for taking us in,’ he said carefully. ‘We’re all a little fried right now. We didn’t expect to be on Carter for more than a couple of hours – that was nearly a day ago.’

Massimo winced. ‘I’m sorry. That sounds awful. And
Carter
, of all places. Not the greatest world to get stuck on.’