‘Talk to me.’ I didn’t answer her. ‘Pagan thinks we can fight Demiurge but…’ I ignored her. I could hear tears in her voice. ‘I’m trying to say goodbye to you.’
23
It was Earth. I was looking down on Earth. Even in the night it was so blue. The cities weren’t scars; they were ribbons and clusters of light. I was looking at the Pacific Rim from twenty-two thousand miles up. I’d never even set foot on that area of the world. It still looked beautiful and like home.
We were in the first-class departure lounge and the other passengers were giving the scruffy, rough-looking, half-drunk squaddies a lot of room. Much of the lounge was glass. We could see the elevator’s huge cable beneath us. We watched massive passenger and freight cars climbing towards us. Above us we watched the ballet of tugs, transfer shuttles and smaller craft docking with the entrepot. Curving away into the distance were other larger ships in various orbits, as well as satellites, stations, habitats and weapons platform. A lot of the ships we could see were military. It looked like a blockade. All the traffic made space seem a lot smaller and busier than it should be.
Prime Minister Komali Akhtar had been waiting for us when we returned, as had Sharcroft. The welcome hadn’t been much better than the one I’d got when I’d returned after the mutiny on the Santa Maria . They were less than pleased that Morag had killed Cronin.
I’d gone for them. Claws out. It was more a gesture. Mudge, Rannu and the others had made sure I couldn’t get to any of my weapons as we disembarked. I’d predictably screamed something about them selling me out. They’d been ready for me, and Mike and Lien, presumably on Akhtar’s instructions, had shown forbearance and not blown me away. There had then followed a very uncomfortable briefing. As much because half the people in the room couldn’t look at the other half, or maybe it was just me. Mudge and Merle had at least made up.
I now had a beer in one hand and a very fine whisky in the other. Rannu and Mudge were sitting either side of me. Pagan, Morag and Merle had disappeared with Sharcroft. Despite the amount we’d drunk and Mudge’s presence, we were still pretty subdued. All of us were just looking down on Earth.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked Rannu. He pointed at Asia, just above the Indian subcontinent.
‘So you’re determined to be a prick just because you’re Mr Squid Face now?’ Mudge asked. I turned to look at him expecting to see a sarcastic smile on his face. He looked serious.
‘Do you not think she’s better off without me?’ I asked him.
‘Oh yeah,’ Mudge said. Rannu was nodding as well. The three of us lapsed back into gloomy silence.
‘It’s not enough, is it?’ I asked. Rannu and Mudge shook their heads. I turned to Rannu.
‘You need to go home,’ I said.
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Did she tell you the plan for dealing with Demiurge?’ Mudge asked. Rannu gave him a warning glance.
‘I didn’t give her the chance.’
‘I wondered why you hadn’t killed Pagan.’ Then he told me.
‘That fucking bastard.’ Now I was really angry. Not the anger I was using for self-pity but the proper anger. The cold ball in my stomach that made me want to kill, that made it all right to kill. I just wasn’t sure who it was aimed at.
I looked down at the world. I knew what was down there. I knew much of it was squalid, dangerous, violent and degenerate. I knew that the nice parts of it were pretty much only for the rich and powerful professional arseholes in the world, but twenty-two thousand miles up it looked peaceful. I knew that when Rolleston came with four colonial fleets we would be able to see the results from here. It wouldn’t look peaceful then. It would look rotten and diseased if he had his way. I knew he would come tomorrow. I think Rannu was right that there was no point trying to hide from this. Besides, what was I going to do? Go back to Dundee and crawl into a sense booth and wait for the end?
‘God?’ I sub-vocalised over my internal comms link.
‘Yes, Jakob?’ God sounded weary. Maybe frightened. They would have to brief him sooner rather than later. He would be expected to carry the fight. I guessed that they were leaving it to the last moment, as God would then broadcast the plan to everyone. If Rolleston had any resources in-system, and I assumed he did, then they would know and be able to tell the bad guys as soon as they arrived.
‘Could you tell me where Pagan, Morag and Sharcroft are?’ I asked. We had a lot to do.
Sharcroft first. The echo of boots rung through the stark utilitarian corridor of the military port on High Pacifica. The place was packed with soldiers and spacecrew frantically preparing for the arrival of the colonial fleets. Security was high and frightened kids wearing military uniforms quickly stopped us at gunpoint. Whether it was us or the impending fight they were scared of was debatable.
Sharcroft had relented to our repeated requests. I think as much because we were requesting a meet through public comms, which meant everyone had access to the requests through God. He still looked like the corpse of a fat exec riding the skeletal remains of a metal spider. He’d learned though: his besuited security detail looked like they knew what they were doing.
‘I don’t have a great deal of time.’ Despite the modulation of the chair’s speaker and his lack of animation, I could still pick up the anger in his voice. He thought we were prima donnas. Maybe we were. We were standing in the corridor to one of the docking areas. Beyond Sharcroft and his security detail, troops and gear were being loaded onto shuttles.
‘You should have been dead a long time ago,’ Mudge said as an opener.
‘Look, I don’t have time for th-’
‘Rolleston. The Cabal went to a lot of effort to hide things about him, didn’t they?’ I demanded.
Sharcroft actually moved the multi-legged chair around to look at me better. There was no expression on his comatose features but a line of drool headed towards his Ivy League school tie.
‘I don’t see how this is relevant…’ the modulated voice started but there was something in it. He was unsure of something.
‘So we’re grasping at straws. You don’t have time; answer the question.’
‘Rolleston is younger than me but yes, he was with the Cabal from the beginning. We needed a true believer. He volunteered to be the test bed for the initial Themtech trials, except the most suicidal-’
‘Those you kept for Gregor?’ I asked.
‘There were others before him.’
I tried to control my anger. We, all of us, were just resources to people like this. They probably didn’t even acknowledge us as the same species. No wonder Rolleston thought like he did.
‘Where’d you find him?’ Mudge demanded.
‘You know where, Mr Mudgie. British special forces.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Rannu said, shaking his head. ‘How could he hide that level of insanity? He had to have had someone run interference for him with the psychological profiles at least.’
‘You know that SF can’t take the time to run a profile on every person who joins,’ Sharcroft began.
He was right. Anyway, lack of psychological fitness could be overcome with enough drugs and the humanity could be cut out of people with an abundance of cybernetics.
‘They did before the war,’ Rannu told him. I hadn’t thought of that.
‘This isn’t the time for secrets,’ Mudge said.
‘You have to understand we needed someone with a degree of moral flexibility,’ Sharcroft said.
‘Seriously, Sharcroft, we don’t care about justification, just explanations,’ Mudge told him.
‘We recruited him out of a very secure, very discreet and very expensive private mental hospital. He had done some things. His family had paid for the problems to go away and then they had him committed.’