The man said, “You wouldn’t.” Then less certainly: “You can’t!”
Garrett bared his teeth and pulled the trigger, twice. The gun kicked up in his hands. He stepped back as the prisoner slumped. There was blood all over his hand and he was staring at something that couldn’t possibly have been human. Scum. None of it was real.
The others were staring in disbelief when Eaton stepped up and executed the next in line. The prisoners tried to get up but people were clubbing them back down. Garrett aimed and fired, Eaton aimed and fired, Garrett put the barrel against a pirate’s ear and fired.
The gun fell from his hands; it didn’t belong there. He slumped to one knee with the spell of his concentration broken and the magnitude of what he’d done hitting him. Everyone was staring. It was self-defense. I had to. There was no choice; can’t you see? I had to!
No. He’d made a choice, all right.
Though shaken and hurt, Garrett made himself stand. There was work to do and people needed him. “I choose to live!” he called out. “If you’re with me, let’s tend the wounded and start fixing things!”
There would be hell to pay, but that could come later.
Author’s Note: some of Duke’s words to Leda are lifted from the 1741 sermon “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God,” by Connecticut preacher Jonathan Edwards.
PART THREE
1. Garrett
Eight dead. Seven pirates and Phillip lay on the Dockside floor, with several people wounded. Garrett had thought that “wailing and gnashing of teeth” was just an expression, but the Pilgrims who clustered around Phillip’s body proved him wrong. A cloth lay over what was left of his face. Everywhere there were moans and sobs so that Garrett put his hands to his ears and heard himself crying too, in time for the pain in his left arm to kick in.
“Hold still,” hissed Eaton, and sprayed clotting foam onto Garrett’s arm.
It burned where the bullet had torn through. He murmured, “I deserved this.”
“No. You did okay for coming from a generation that doesn’t know how to fight. Now get off your ass and work.”
Garrett stood, bracing himself against a box. His right leg was dead, a block of metal and plastic, and he could hardly walk with it. Eaton saw him staring at the thing and said, “Would’ve been an artery wound. You’d probably be dead if you were a full human.”
“I’m human,” said Garrett. “I’m not a machine. Nobody’s puppet.”
He wavered on his feet from adrenaline aftershock and blood loss, and from the fact that he was ruined. He was a murderer. In the minutes after the battle he’d said brave things he didn’t mean and could hardly hear from the ringing in his ears. He’d spouted something about how Castor would remain open no matter what, then hurried to put out a lingering fire from the explosion and get people regrouped with their families.
Eaten tended him with the first-aid kit. People had swarmed away and Garrett couldn’t blame them for running off — but then most of them returned from their rooms and boats, running across the water to bring emergency gear. It was like watching an immune system at a wound site: nobody had to tell people what needed doing; they just did it. Even in the brawl it had been like that. A hundred people with several dozen knives between them trumped seven goons with guns, once they stood up.
Tess cowered in a corner with one of her birds on her shoulder. Garrett knelt carefully. “Hey, Tess. We’re alive.”
She looked up with shining eyes, heaving sobs with her arms and knees pulled in. On her shoulder the bird whispered, My God we’re gonna die they’re gonna kill us all and throw us in the sea where the waves will eat us and we’ll be all alone and they’ll kill us --
Garrett grabbed the bird in one hand and threw it aside, where it thunked onto the floor. She was still wearing the headset, hidden in her hair. “Tess, listen to me! It’s over. I’m going to take that thing off now, okay?” She gulped and nodded. He reached out again and tugged the digital crown of thorns from her, setting it aside.
She threw herself at him, burying her face against his chest and leaning on him. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. After thousands of years of civilization he felt he was re-enacting a moment that had happened millions of times.
Why did I come here and put people in danger? To grow kelp? To feel like a big shot? He didn’t know, anymore. He had no good reason to go on.
Then Zephyr was there, his hide cracked and dented. “Captain, it’s — I can’t—”
Garrett looked more directly at him. “Are you badly damaged?”
“No, but it’s awful! They were going to—”
“Shut up. Turn off your emotion chip or something.” He didn’t need anyone else out of action.
“I don’t have one. It’s not that simple.”
“Then quit whining! Live up to the cold, rational stereotype for once!”
Zephyr stared at the floor, his remaining ear drooping. “Yes, Captain. I think you need to return to your duties.”
Garrett was about to yell at him, but Zephyr was right. He squeezed Tess and told her, “Let’s work.”
This time she sat there, shaking her head.
Garrett sighed. He couldn’t stay with her right now. “Pilgrims! I need one of you over here.”
A haunted young man in Pilgrim garb came over to sit with her, saying, “There are no Pilgrims anymore.”
Only now did Garrett realize that the pirates had beheaded the largest subgroup here. The Pilgrims were such mind-slaves to Phillip that without him, who knew if they could survive? It made Garrett feel empty to know someone so important to Castor, good or bad, was gone. It had to be even worse for the cultists.
They were clustered around the body, still with a few acting on their initiative to tend the wounded. Garrett had been thinking of them as a lump of unskilled (but quickly learning) labor, a herd of sheep under Phillip’s command, but here were dozens of individuals who for some reason had come here and put total faith in their prophet. Whatever personal horrors or mistakes each of them had made, to get them caught up in a cult, they’d had a peaceful and honest life under Phillip’s rule. Each had made some kind of choice of how to live. He couldn’t blame them for being willing to come to Castor; they’d trusted him at least indirectly, too.
“What do we do?” the Pilgrims asked each other.
Garrett cleared his throat and took charge. “I need an inspection of the station and a complete headcount. Look for any hidden threats or unaddressed damage.” He was fairly sure the thugs were all dead (God, he’d killed them!), so the order was busywork as much as an actual need.
One of the Pilgrims sneered at him. “Who are you to order me around?”
Others joined in. “Yeah, you’re a damned unbeliever! A murderer! You killed Sir Phillip!”
“I did not!” said Garrett, surprised at how angry the accusation made him. “He fought to the death to defend us all, and I’m not going to let that go to waste.”
The Pilgrims were about to protest when someone distracted them. Leda had taken Phillip’s body by the shoulders and was struggling to lift him. The cloth fell from his face, exposing shredded, bloody flesh. Leda looked not at him, but at Garrett.
Garrett seized the body’s feet to bring him level. “What are you doing?”
The Pilgrims wanted to know, too, grabbing Phillip and making conflicting threats and demands. “Unbelievers, both of you!”