Crossing the Line (33 page)

In zero g, the shattered rounds that were easing out of Shan's body simply drifted in front of her. It was like watching a film of yourself being shot, run backwards. Eddie would have been amazed by it.

Shan had wondered if she would ever get used to
c'naatat
's thorough healing procedures and now she knew she would never have the chance to.

She couldn't.

Vijissi was curled up in a ball beside her, panting. He was badly hurt. Shan nudged him with her shoulder, making him drift back against the bulkhead, and he opened his black hunter's eyes and focused on her. She hoped he'd make it. To his right, just in her peripheral vision, Ade Bennett was still fussing with the tape over his broken nose, checking carefully with the mirror of his camo compact held very close to his face. Shan had never taken him for a vain man. He looked upset.

Then he noticed she was looking his way. He snapped the compact shut. “How you feeling?” he said. He swung as close to her as he dared. “You still in pain?”

She stared at him. It was all she could do while gagged but she knew she could always convey a command without opening her mouth. He shot a few nervous glances in Lindsay's direction and then began easing the tape off.

“Leave that,” said Lindsay, looking up from the tracking screen.

Bennett took no notice whatsoever and peeled the last of the tape clear. It hurt. He winced as if he could tell. Shan looked into his earnest hazel eyes and the grubby dressing that separated them. They were almost nose-to-nose.

“Piss off,” she said.

If she'd head-butted him again, he couldn't have looked more wounded. He cared what she thought of him. He probably thought he'd done the honorable thing and faced down his superior officer to save her life. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an heroic act. But he really should have let Lindsay fragment her. It just made things a whole lot messier now.

“I'm really sorry, Boss,” he said to her. “Really I am. But I'll make damn sure they treat you right.”

“I bet,” said Shan, and she could have sworn his eyes looked a little glassy.

“Here we go,” said Barencoin. The shuttle was tiny: one main compartment forward, propulsion section midships, and two aft service compartments leading on to a small open cargo bay. Shan could hear everything. “Isenj codes, ussissi pilot. That's our escort. Twenty-eight minutes to intercept once we break course. On your mark.”

“Okay. Get us out of Wess'ej space.”

“Very good, ma'am.”

Shan pushed herself away from the bulkhead with her feet and rolled slowly to get a better look. Lindsay was leaning over Barencoin, looking at the readouts.

“I need a pee,” Shan said. She kept thinking about the grenades. Barencoin had them: she could see them tucked neatly into pockets on his webbing. It would be a damn shame to blow them on this fragile ship and take two good men with her, but she had run out of options. She just needed to get her hands and legs free, and she had less than twenty-eight minutes to do it. She tried not to think of Aras but it was impossible. “Does this thing have heads?”

Lindsay drifted over to her. Shan expected a boot in the face or something equally eloquent. It never came.

“You shot me point-blank,” said Lindsay. “Aren't you supposed to shout something like, ‘Stop—armed police'?”

“No, I was trying to kill you,” said Shan. “And I don't normally miss at that range. Not unless some bastard shoots me first, of course.”

“How many people
have
you killed?”

Shan paused to count. “Eight.”

“Including Parekh?”

“Maybe. I forget.”

Lindsay had never believed that. And now she looked scared. Shan thought she might be scared of her. Then it became clear.
Oh, it's not about revenge. Not entirely, anyway.

“Can't you wait half an hour?” Lindsay asked. Her tone was quiet, her expression seeking something.

“When a girl's got to go, she's got to go.”

“Not going to try anything stupid, are you? You know I need to hand you over.”

Lindsay had always found it hard to meet her gaze. Shan had spent a professional lifetime cultivating that gorgon's stare and she knew it worked, especially on Lindsay. But she was looking into Lindsay's eyes now, and it was very clear she was thinking something she wanted Shan to realize.

Ah.

Lindsay might have been gutless when it came to it, but she knew Shan wasn't.

“You know you can trust me to be sensible,” said Shan.
Go on, Lin, do something right for once.
“I know how much I'm worth.”

Lindsay almost looked relieved. “I'll take you aft.”

“I can do that,” said Bennett, who clearly didn't trust Lindsay any further than he could spit. “I—”

“Sod off,” said Shan. “I still have my dignity.”

They didn't even have to take her alive to get a tissue sample. She had to be
gone,
really gone. And there were ways to be gone forever out here.

For exactly five vivid and painful seconds, she thought of Aras again and it was unbearable. Then she switched off, as she always had.

“I come too,” said Vijissi suddenly. He heaved himself straight and pulled himself hand over hand to the hatch. “She is not to be trusted.”

Shan gave Lindsay an imperceptible nod. Lindsay shrugged, clearly playing along. “If you bite, I'll shoot you, you little bastard,” she said. She fumbled with the locking straps and released Shan's legs. For a second Shan thought of putting the boot in, but it would only have satisfied her temper, not achieve her objective. She behaved.

Vijissi looked like it would take all his effort to accompany them a few meters. He trailed the two women through the propulsion section, through a barely hip-wide passage, and into the aft section that opened onto the cargo bay with its loading hatches on deck, deckhead, and three bulkheads. They were all closed. Through the pressure hatch, it was a black void.

Lindsay hit the hatch lock behind her. “What are you planning?” she asked.

“You know damn well or you wouldn't have secured that hatch,” said Shan. She turned slightly and gestured with her bound hands. “They'll never find a small cold object in space. It's about as dead as anyone can get. And it's quick. They reckon less than twelve seconds.” But twelve seconds sounded like a long time right then.
Where's my last noble thought? Why am I just walking through this? Where's my fear and regret and panic?
“Get this off me.”

“No.”

“If I go, I go with dignity, not fucking trussed up like some chicken.”

“I'm sorry.”

Vijissi struggled into animation. It seemed to have dawned on him a little late that Shan was planning an exit through the air lock.

“No!” He settled beside her. Zero g made his panic slow and undramatic. “No, I promised Mestin I would always look after you—”

“It's too late, mate.”

No, no, no, I don't want to die, and I want to see Aras again, and it's not the way I wanted to end it, and—

Then the other Shan took over, the one who always knew what to do in a crisis. “Free my hands,” she ordered.

Lindsay hesitated.

Then she relented and reached for Shan's wrists. Shan thought a final punch might have been satisfying, but there was no adequate amount of revenge she could ever exact for detonating ERDs on Christopher.

Lindsay seemed confident that the ERDs had detonated. Shan hoped Aras had been a long way from the explosions, but if he had survived, he'd be alone, and she knew he dreaded loneliness more than death.
My poor bloody Aras.
It wasn't fair to him.

The comms panel beside them lit up. Bennett was on the squawk box.

“Hey, what's happening back there?” he demanded. He must have seen the lock status show up on the panel. And they'd taken longer than he'd allowed for. “Commander? Come on, bloody well—”

“Stay out of this Ade,” said Shan. “Do me a favor and tell Aras I'm sorry and I didn't abandon him.”

“Christ, you—”

Lindsay shut off the sound. Shan wondered if Bennett had heard her, and if he could still hear her now. And then she looked round at the locked hatch behind them, and she could see his face pressed to the plate, all horror. She really wished she hadn't. She turned quickly back to the cargo bay.

“I've never doubted your integrity,” Lindsay said, and moved like a swimmer to the manual controls that would open both the aft hatch and all the cargo bay doors.

It was the compliment that hurt, not the hatred. Shan almost weakened. She had one last weapon. It was personal and it was vengeful. It struck her as very telling that in her last moments she still wanted to lash out and wound.

So that's what I am, then,
she thought.
And here's something to remember me by.

“Now
this
is how you do it, girlie,” Shan said, and stood as tall as she could manage. “Next time you lose your bottle and you can't pull that pin, think of me. Because you'd give anything to be just like me, wouldn't you? And you never will. I'm all the guts and conviction you'll never have.”

Lindsay said nothing, not with her mouth anyway. Her face crumpled for a second.

Gotcha,
thought Shan. Lindsay would have plenty of time to think on that until she died old and disappointed by her own inadequacies. It was better than a punch. Bruises healed.

I would have been dead by now anyway. Old age back home, or here with an isenj round in my skull. Borrowed time. And it's run out. Quit whining.

Then Shan stopped thinking. It was down to her brain-stem now, the lungfish-lemur-monkey within, and she let it do the panicking rush to destruction for her, because every second she examined the situation was a second closer to turning back and surrendering. The bezeri had died for this. Her life didn't matter a damn, except to her.

And to Aras.

Stop it.

The cargo bay hatch opened and Shan stepped over the coaming. The opening in the bulkhead was closing in two sections, top to bottom, like a pair of scissors.

Vijissi shot through after her.

“For Chrissakes, Vijissi, get back
now,
” Shan yelled.

But Vijissi tried to look after Shan to the very last, and as the deckhead opened and the escaping atmosphere whipped her hair, her lungs began struggling and he grabbed her hand hard in his oddly soft paw.

So this it,
Shan thought. She really was dying. It didn't feel that momentous, just disappointing. She gripped Vijissi, not wanting to look into his face.

It was agonizingly cold. Her chest hurt. She had seconds.

She pushed out from the open hatch and let go of Vijissi and didn't see where he went, because she had screwed her eyes up tight to shut out the bottomless, distanceless, silent void that had no up or down or near or far.

She was holding out in vacuum longer than any human. That was something. It felt like walking under the sea to apologize to the bezeri for the last time, only much, much colder.

Her last thought before her lungs gave up straining for one final breath and the final blackness engulfed her was that she had never told Aras that she loved him.

I think I do.

Maybe he knows anyway.

Maybe—

“He lies,” said Ual.

Eddie thought of the urine vial in his inside pocket and the way the ruby bead and the fragment of quill rattled, pricking his conscience. He hadn't let the container out of his sight. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to hand it over to Shan now.

He was stranded on Umeh. But it was still a safer haven than
Actaeon
.

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

Ual shimmered with emerald beads. “How did he expect to take this Frankland off Bezer'ej if they landed by dropping in cloth suits?”

“You know a lot.”

“There are no restricted frequencies on what you call ITX. That concept is one we have to learn from you, I think. Unless you speak in that odd code some of you employ, all hear everything if they choose to listen.”

“And you do.” Eddie was still finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that enemies could share an open ITX relay. Humans wouldn't. But then if there was a serious threat of the wess'har trashing the thing in a fit of pique, and the isenj couldn't nip out to repair it…no, he was starting to grasp how they thought. Nobody poisoned a shared water supply. “I would like to broadcast a story on this. Can you confirm how serious the situation is?”

There was a cup of coffee and a bowl of some isenj beverage on the polished cube of a table between them. Ual didn't seem to be in a drinking mood. Even without a facial expression to guide him, Eddie knew the minister was scared.

“The ussissi are saying the environmental damage to that area of Bezer'ej is severe and that the bezeri are dying in very large numbers,” said Ual. “You will recall what happened when we did the same thing unintentionally. Your kind appear to have used a very unpleasant device indeed, one containing cobalt, a persistent poison to add to the initial destruction.”

Eddie didn't know much about physics, although he had an extensive mental catalog of things that people could use to kill each other. He checked his database. Salted bombs, especially cobalt, were at the far unethical end of ordnance, a terrorist's weapon. They were ultra-dirty.

“They weren't leaving anything to chance, then,” said Eddie quietly, ashamed beyond belief. He could hardly believe it of Lindsay. He still found it hard to accept how ruthless women could be. “I have to tell this story, Ual. People on Earth need to know what we've done.”

“Humans have no difficulty saying negative things about their own kind, then.”

“I certainly don't. But sometimes the likes of me are the only ones who will tell hard truths.”

“And why are you asking me for help?”

“For facts I might not know.”

“Your masters might not broadcast them.”

Eddie was caught off guard. He had grown up in a world where information couldn't be suppressed easily. There were simply too many routes and too many connections between people and nations for anyone to control it, except…except if you were isolated on one end of a line 150 trillion miles from home. They could cut him off.

He couldn't call anyone except via that ITX line, and the FEU was controlling the Earth end of that. There was no chance of placing the story elsewhere or slipping a note to someone down the pub. If he had a story, it went through BBChan, and BBChan was reliant on the FEU relay. The station could make all the brave stands it wanted, but if it didn't receive the information, he was stuffed.

“I took my eye off the ball,” he said. “But I'll find a way through.”

“I think you might not need to,” said Ual. He leaned forward, rattling musically like fine crystal, and pushed the now tepid coffee towards Eddie. “And I assume you will stay. I enjoy our chats. This isn't a sensible time to return to
Actaeon.
”

“Thanks,” said Eddie. “I know.”

The ground car was waiting outside the ministry, parked so close to the entrance that when he opened the front door he could step straight into its open side without walking on pavement. Serrimissani was waiting inside the vehicle, absorbed by moving images on her text pad.

“You exceed even the isenj's crimes,” she said. She wasn't her usual impatient, stroppy self: she seemed very subdued indeed. “What have you started,
gethes?
”

Eddie bristled. “Don't lump me in with them,” he snapped. “I am
not
crew. I am
not
military. I'm an independent civilian and I'm as disgusted as you are.”

She stared at him. And then, overtaken by an impulse, he squeezed past her, the back of his hand brushing against that odd stiffly ridged coat for the first time, and stumbled out through the car's other side opening onto the street and into the tight-packed crowds of isenj.

He almost fell, but the press of bodies held him up and he regained his balance. So many isenj stopped in their tracks that the river came to a halt at his point in the stream. He heard a chattering commotion from a distance where the flow had not stopped as fast, a motorway pile-up in the making. He wondered if any isenj had been crushed or trampled. But there was nothing he could do except move or not move with them.

For the first time, he walked the roads of Jejeno. He had no choice. This was not a crowd. It was a current and he drifted on it. The scent of wet wood and leaves, incongruously sylvan for a world with no forests or open land to speak of, filled his mouth. He couldn't speak their language and he had no idea where he was going. He looked down on the top of thousands of spider heads.

The chattering and rasping was rising in volume. “Anyone here speak English?” he shouted.
Oh, you tourist. You swore you'd never say that.
He was near the ministry. There might be government staff in the throng. They might speak—

“Why you do this attack?” rasped a voice behind him.

Eddie tried to turn his head. The isenj sounded about three or four meters away. “I don't know. They're afraid of
c'naatat.
Lots of humans would want it.”

“Fool,” said the voice.

“Don't you want it?”

“Look around you,” said the isenj. “
Fool.
”

It was a great moment in television, but Eddie couldn't get his arm free to release the bee-cam from his pocket. He accepted it as a lesson in reality. This moment was about him, and not an event to be filtered through a lens into distant entertainment.

And how was he going to get out of the crowd?

“Michallat,” called Serrimissani. There was an exchange of chittering. He craned his neck as far as he could. Serrimissani was clambering over the mass of isenj like a sheepdog running across the tiled backs of a tight-packed flock. “Move diagonally. Swing round.”

He tried. He changed direction. It was like being a container ship. He could turn, and he could stop, but it was a big U-turn and a long time stopping. Serrimissani caught up with him, the angry mongoose again, and seized his sleeve to steer him. The cacophony around him was deafening now.

The ussissi held onto him until they had eased around a full arc and the car and the ministry building were in sight again. She shoved him the last meter and he fell into the open car.

As he was scrambling to his knees, Serrimissani cuffed him hard across the back of the head and he felt hot needles plunge into his shoulder. He yelled out.

She had bitten him. She was enraged.

Eddie rolled over and hoisted himself backwards onto the seat by his triceps. He hurt all over, especially his head and shoulder.

“Next time it will be your throat,” she hissed. “
Never
do that again. You cause chaos. You cause injury. Your kind will never learn to control your impulses.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. He felt his shoulder: it was wet with something he suspected was his own blood rather than her saliva. He wondered what you could catch from a ussissi bite.

“Take me back to Umeh Station,” he said. “I want to hear what you all have to say. I want to show humans back on Earth what you think of us, in case it helps bring us to our senses.”

Serrimissani gave him her scorpion-snack look and stared deliberately out of the opening. Then she turned back to him.

“I am afraid for you,” she said. “And you should fear us too.”

“Will your people talk to me on camera?”

“Let us hope you continue to be useful to the isenj, or there will be no
gethes
left alive in this system by the end of the season.”

Eddie took that as a yes.

 

The ussissi were one now: they prowled around the quiet disorder of Constantine's evacuation, oddly synchronized in their movements, sniffing through the final ranks of colonists who were waiting to embark from the Temporary City. High-pitched chattering filled the air but the humans were silent.

Aras stood and watched from a distance. All he wanted was Josh Garrod and Dr. Mohan Rayat, but he wanted Josh more. He had never felt quite like this. Wess'har were not vengeful. They would balance, and do the job without hesitation as he had done at Mjat, but they didn't invest emotion in the act. Now Aras not only wanted to hurt Josh: he
needed
to.

He wasn't proud of it. It was a human legacy. But he felt no guilt either.

And where was Shan? She still hadn't called in. He would have to search for her. He was beginning to worry, even though she was the one person other than himself who had least to fear from violence.

The ussissi were still searching, staring up into faces, comparing features to the images in their
virin've.
Aras was reminded of pictures from Constantine's history archive, of dogs set to guard humans. He didn't want to dwell on the parallels. He was responsible for the humans being here and he was ultimately responsible for Shan becoming a magnet for human greed. He hadn't set the bombs, but his actions had led to this point. He had to clear up the mess he had made.

No, Josh betrayed me. He betrayed the bezeri. He could have chosen otherwise.

Aras had been watching the search of the line for a while when someone new joined it and approached one of the ussissi.

It was Josh Garrod.

He wasn't making any attempt to slip unnoticed into the queue. The ussissis' single, constant, chittering voice stopped abruptly and they all stared as one at Josh.

For a moment Aras thought they were going to disobey him and rip the man apart where he stood. They were certainly agitated enough to do it. But they didn't, and simply surrounded him as if he might make a run for it. The other colonists made a sudden and large space around them. Josh spotted Aras and moved towards him, one arm outstretched as if in plea.

When Aras saw Josh's face—stricken, anguished, drained of blood—something in him welled up and took him over in a way it hadn't when he destroyed Mjat. This was a man he had held as a newborn, whose father and grandfather and ancestors right back to Ben Garrod had been his friends. They had almost been his family. He had come as close to loving them as kin as a wess'har ever could. And now in an instant they had smashed everything he had struggled to restore for five hundred years.

He grabbed Josh by his collar. His eyes hurt, as if there was an unbearable pressure building inside them, and he had never felt that before. He tried to shake the sensation aside. It was constricting his throat.

“Why did you betray me? Why did you do this?” Motive didn't matter, but a part of him needed an answer. “Tell me. I thought we shared the same purpose. I thought you were my friend.”

Josh's voice was almost a sob. “We didn't know what was in the bomb, Aras. We didn't know.”

“You took the
gethes
there to carry out their desecration. You
knew.
How could you do this?”

“But we didn't know they were going to use such a persistent poison.” Josh's breath was coming fast, scented with the sourness of an empty stomach that was almost more pungent than the acrid scent of panic. “They told us it would dissipate in days, or we'd never have helped them. We'd never have risked the bezeri like that. We thought that burning the island was better than allowing
c'naatat
to be exploited. Tell us what we can do now to help. Anything. Just tell us.”

Josh sagged against Aras's grip. Aras believed every word of his repentance.

But words weren't enough to soothe his pain. He envied Shan her profanities. A ussissi seized his other sleeve, trying to pull him away from Josh.

“We will do this,” she said. “This will distress you. Just go.”

Aras shook the ussissi off. He let go of Josh and stood looking at him and almost drowning in the pain that was threatening to overwhelm him. And he felt Josh's anguish and regret too, because Josh was a good man who had never wavered from a path of respect and noninterference until the
gethes
drove him to it.

“I'm sorry, my friend.” Josh appeared to be weeping. He put his hand out to touch Aras, something he had always avoided for fear of contamination. Aras stepped back. It was too late for that now. “We never meant this to happen. God forgive us.”

Aras knew that and it made no difference. His human side wanted to comfort Josh but his wess'har mind—and he was still wess'har, however altered—said that the man's apologies and tears and true intent counted for nothing.

Aras felt himself reach for his
tilgir
and pull it from its sheath as if he was going to do some harmless pruning. “I truly cared for your community, and I truly cared for you.” He should have let him pray first, he knew, but prolonging the agony wasn't the wess'har way. “Now I have to balance. I'm sorry. I am so very, very sorry.”

Josh opened his lips as if to speak and Aras swung the blade two-handed, right to left. Josh fell and the only sound was two thuds as he hit the ground.

The silence around Aras was complete and lasted three seconds.