‘We were bred to obey them! And that does it. I’ll go no further. I’ll not help or assist you in any way unless I receive your apology now.’
‘Hmmph,’ said Joel. The urge to laugh was growing ever stronger.
‘That does not translate. Was it another insult? And don’t give me the line about insults between friends being acceptable, because I’ve heard it before and we are emphatically not friends. Well?’
‘I . . .’ Joel sucked in his cheeks and bit on them to keep the smile off his face. ‘I apologize, Boon Round. I’m sorry I compared you to a donkey.’ Then, because he couldn’t resist it: ‘I never meant to impugn your intelligence.’
Boon Round was silent for a moment. ‘Your apology is accepted. Let’s finish our work out here and get back inside.’
‘Yeah.’ Joel climbed back to his feet and took a step forward. ‘Good idea.’
Something hit the ground where he had been sitting, and he looked down at it. It looked like a spear.
Time seemed to slow down; he was an outside observer watching the scene from afar. It looked like a spear, it was long and thin and had a point at one end and dammit it
was
a spear there was no getting around that but it couldn’t be a spear because . . .
‘Turn around, very slowly,’ Boon Round said. Joel did, and saw the attackers.
There were five or six of them, approaching slowly from a small alleyway between buildings that opened into the plaza. They were the size of XCs – in fact, superficially they looked very like XCs except that they walked on four limbs, keeping what would have been an XC’s hunting arms free for carrying things. Or, indeed, throwing them. They approached with every sign of caution, perhaps fear. Even with the four legs, it wasn’t the smooth flowing walk of a Rustie but more of a scuttle, like a forward-facing crab.
Part of Joel’s mind was screaming,
My God! Someone
survived!
The rest was more practical.
‘Can you get to the airlock quickly?’ he said.
‘I would recommend getting to the airlock slowly,’ said Boon Round. ‘We don’t want to surprise them.’
‘Yes we bloody well do. I want to surprise them with how quickly we can get into the airlock and fly away.’
‘We mean them no harm.’
‘Boon Round, we came out of the sky. How do you think they feel about us? Hold on.’
Joel’s hand was moving slowly to the aide at his belt. He could send a command to the lifeboat to throw a defence field around them, and then they would be safe. But it would have to be quick . . .
The nearest local, now only thirty feet away, lifted its spear into a throwing position.
Joel dived to one side and the spear flew past him. It hit one of the lifeboat’s landing feet with a dull clunk. Joel had his aide in his hand. ‘Lifeboat systems command! Activate—’
Two XCs fell out of the sky in front of him and landed in a crouch, hunting arms extended towards the attackers, claws out. A low rumble, an ominous growl that set Joel’s teeth on edge and vibrated in his ribs, came from both of them and it took a moment to realize it was the same two XCs they had brought with them, as if there could be more. The two had jumped clear over him and Boon Round to engage the enemy.
And engage they did. The big female sprang forward in a blur and flew into the nearest attacker, and they sprawled together on the ground. Her claws dug into its stomach area, and blood spurted as she lifted it up and flung it at another comrade. There was no screech from the creature, no high-pitched trill of agony. It was eerily silent.
Meanwhile the small male had wrested a spear from one of the others with his lower arms, which he reversed and buried in the guts of its former owner while his hunting arms tore the face off a second. A kick to one knee from the female shattered the leg of another attacker and it pitched forward into the dirt. Another swipe with those claws severed its neck while the female was already turning to deal with another. The male had leapt onto someone else and was gnawing at its shoulder, just one bite that almost took its arm off.
The one surviving attacker fled.
Joel stared at the XCs with a mixture of awe and horror. Their suits were spattered with native blood and they stood as if all the strength had drained out of them, like two exhausted prize fighters. Their shoulders drooped, their hunting arms almost trailed in the dirt.
‘More are coming,’ Boon Round said in a matter of fact way. Another group was lurking just outside the plaza, crowded into one of the alleyways and peeking out.
Joel gazed at them and his heart flooded with pity. He was getting tired of being the target of unprovoked aggression, but what could he expect? These were the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Possibly the last survivors, ever. He couldn’t set the XCs onto them and he didn’t want to.
‘Get back here!’ Joel shouted. The female XC looked up and Joel gestured, pointing at her and then at the ground next to him with abrupt jabs. ‘Get back!’
She understood that much at least, and took the male’s elbow to lead him into the shadow of the lifeboat. Joel could see spears and arrows being raised and he finished the command to his aide that he had begun less than a minute ago.
‘Activate defence fields now.’
A spear flew through the air. And another. Then a stone. Whatever the locals could find to throw. Meeting the field inches from Joel’s face, they stopped dead and their charred remains fell to the ground with a crack, a flash of light.
‘Get inside,’ Joel said quietly.
‘They won’t get through the fields,’ Boon Round objected. ‘We can still do repairs.’
‘Think what they’ve been through, Boon Round. Let’s not rub it in. We’ll take ourselves away and that will be that. You go first.’
‘You want me in the cabin alone with these two?’
‘Just do it.’
A still protesting Boon Round climbed back up the ladder and Joel indicated for the XCs to follow. He climbed up last of all and pulled the ladder attachment up. Then he sealed the outer hatch, opened the inner and headed for the flight deck.
He winced; the gritty feeling was back behind his eyes, stronger than ever. It was so strong that he was looking at the pilot’s display through tears, but suddenly the feeling passed again.
‘Aah!’
He jumped; the female XC had come up behind him. They looked at each other.
‘Look,’ Joel said, ‘um, thanks for what you just did . . . um, I know you can’t understand . . .’
He just had time to register that at least the claws were retracted before her club-like hunting hand whistled through the air and smashed into the side of his head.
PART II
Seven
Day Seven: 9 June 2153
The air was liquid and warm beneath the Roving’s tropical sun. The gentle breeze played like a lover’s touch over Michael Gilmore’s face and arms and legs. The calm rush of the waves was in his ears, an invitation to run down the beach and dive into the clear blue water. The white sand caressed his bare toes and soles, soft and supple beneath his feet.
And
very
hot. He leapt back on to the veranda of the beach house, sat down quickly and rubbed his feet. Once they had stopped burning, he pulled his sandals on and stood up again to survey his realm.
Living out fantasies, he decided, was for people with high boredom thresholds.
Well, this was what he had retired for. He had always wanted to work his way through every fantasy that a man of his age and position could respectably get away with, and the tropical island had been an obvious starter. He was the only sentient being, human or First Breed, for hundreds of miles in any direction: Admiralty Island
that
way, the wistfully named St Helena – the last repose of the Ones Who Command, the former masters of the Roving and the Rusties –
that
way. After five years as
de facto
head of the Commonwealth Navy, he had thought it would be good to get away from it all, be completely on his own and consider his options.
And bloody boring it was too. His skin was darker than it ever had been after a lifetime in space – mildly tanned, by more terrestrial standards. That was from yesterday’s hard work. In the morning he had lain on the beach, cool drink by his side, reading a book from the pile of books he had always wanted to read and listening to music from the pile of pieces he had always wanted to hear. In the afternoon, he had wrestled not very successfully with his creative muse who was meant to be helping him write his autobiography.
After the first half hour, he had begun to suspect that the attraction of a tropical island was palling. By lunchtime, he had known with a dismal certainty that after a week of this he would be bored out of his skull. For forty-eight years he had thought he was the kind of man who could do without the company of other people, basing this idea on the fact that he didn’t particularly like having other people around. Now, without the slightest chance of other people being around, he knew he was wrong. He liked the
option
of doing without other people. He loathed solitude enforced upon him.
Now it was Day Two and he wasn’t in the least bit looking forward to it. Maybe he could vary the programme by doing the book in the morning, the drinking and reading and listening in the afternoon. Bloody typical, he thought, gazing out at the surrounding blue waters, that after a lifetime in space he had never learned to swim. He picked his aide up from the veranda table and looked at the result of yesterday’s literary endeavours. The title was
Greatness Thrust Upon Him
and even that wasn’t his own idea. Joel had suggested it.
Beneath it, in a last-minute dash of inspiration before going to bed, he had written: ‘Chapter 1’.
‘No,’ he said, and deleted it all. The autobiography could wait, and the thought of Joel had given him an idea. He pulled up a chair.
‘Letter to Joel,’ he said to his aide. ‘Joel, my boy, here’s a hint. Never retire. Or if you do, make sure you’ve actually planned it out in some modicum of detail . . . Oh, bloody hell, what is it?’
The drone of an aircar had knocked his thoughts on to a completely different track. He looked around and spotted it, flying straight at the island.
They could have contacted . . .
he thought, then remembered that he had set his aide simply to take calls and not inform him of them.
‘Display calls,’ he said, and whistled at the list that scrolled up on the display. All dated within the last twenty-four hours, all from the Admiralty and all tagged ‘Urgent’, which even with the Admiralty’s general sense of self-importance was quite unusual.
He looked thoughtfully back at the aircar as it spiralled into its final approach, and held up an arm to shield his face as it touched down amid whirling sand. The door swung up and a four-legged form came bounding up the beach. He recognized Spar Mild, assistant to Arm Wild, who had been Senior of the First Breed nation and co-leader of the Commonwealth for the last four years. Spar Mild would only be here for one reason, representing its master. Gilmore was so glad of the break that he didn’t even remind the Rustie that he had come here, among other reasons, specifically to get away from Arm Wild.
The Rustie hurried up to him, its breath whistling through the ring of nostrils at the crown of its head.
‘You won’t like this,’ it said, and the words ‘Don’t bet on it’ died on Gilmore’s lips as it went on to deliver its news.
Admiralty Island grew in a few moments, but not few enough, from a black blur on the horizon to a sizeable landmass, serene amid the ocean blue with a beauty that was quite lost on Gilmore.
And there was the Admiralty Building, a series of white terraced structures set into the side of a hill that overlooked the sea. Somewhere in there the meeting was being held to discuss the SkySpy crisis. Gilmore already knew as much as Spar Mild; he knew of the attack, and of the lifeboat’s escape, and there was the garbled report of Joel jumping off the lifeboat before it stepped through.
That was all he needed to know.
Seven days!
he thought.
Seven days!
That was how long ago the attack on SkySpy had been. Anything could have happened since then. Anything at all.
The lifeboat wouldn’t be at the Roving for another week; it had stepped through from the XC system into a solar system that was completely empty but for two gas giants and another step-through generator on the far side of the sun. It was a set-up dictated by the rules of step-through and astrophysics. It was also a quarantine measure in the unlikely event of the XCs getting hold of SkySpy’s step-through generator and making it work.
Getting to the second step-through generator, and hence to the Roving, through normal space would take days. However, the lifeboat could transmit a report ahead for the generator to relay beam . . . but first it had to be far enough around the quarantine sun so that it was in line-of-sight with the generator in the first place. And it had taken seven days to do it.
Seven
days!
The aircar swung round in a tight curve over the old launch promontory, with its disused gantries and museum-piece launch vehicles, and came to hover beside the Admiralty Building, setting itself down in front of the lowest level. Gilmore was out even before the door had finished opening and he ran up to the main entrance, taking the steps two at a time. Spar Mild ran beside him.
The sentries – one human, one Rustie – drew themselves up smartly.
‘Commodore,’ they said by way of acknowledgement, and he was in too much of a hurry to correct them.
The sentries outside the main conference room were more switched on. They too drew themselves up but it was Spar Mild that they were acknowledging. The human blocked Gilmore’s way.
‘I’m sorry, sir, may I see your pass?’
‘I don’t have one,’ Gilmore said impatiently, and tried to push past. The man blocked him. ‘Do you know who I am?’ Part of him was instantly ashamed at trying to bluster on the basis of rank – he had always despised the habit in others – but right now he had more important things to worry about.
‘I know you resigned, Commodore, and I also know this meeting is for approved personnel only.’ The man at least had the grace to sound genuinely regretful. ‘I’m very sorry, but . . .’
‘The commodore has been reinstated
pro tem
and is here on my authority,’ Spar Mild said. Gilmore and the sentry both looked at the Rustie; Gilmore knew, and the sentry probably suspected, that Spar Mild couldn’t actually do that.
But the sentry stood back. ‘A pleasure to have you back, sir,’ he said. Gilmore grunted and followed Spar Mild in. What sounded like angry voices were ringing around the meeting chamber and his ears immediately pricked up.
He had to take one of the public seats around the edge of the chamber, which was easy because most of them were empty. This meeting really was for approved personnel only. At the head of the central table were Arm Wild and Valerie duPont, the co-Seniors of the Commonwealth. Arm Wild had his the Rustie Space Minister and John Chase, First Admiral of the Commonwealth Navy. Chase was speaking. Next to Chase . . .
The shock of seeing the man there was like being drenched in cold water. James Windsor – King James – met Gilmore’s glance briefly, gave a cool nod and looked back at the First Admiral.
Gilmore became aware out of the corner of his eye that someone further along the row was also looking at him. A man and a woman sat a few seats down from him. The man was tall, broad shouldered and blond, straight out of a recruitment poster; the woman was more slender, less brutally Aryan. She would be about Joel’s age, he reckoned; the man a bit older, late twenties or early thirties. The woman sat nearer to Gilmore and the quick blur of her face as she looked forward showed she had indeed been looking at him a moment ago.
Their uniforms almost made Gilmore laugh out loud. Dark trousers, with a gold stripe running down each leg; bright scarlet jackets; white belts; gold buttons that were a purely decorative adornment to their clothes’ sealseams. The uniforms said exactly who they were and who they worked for.
‘Madam Co-Senior,’ Chase was saying, ‘I’m baffled by this lack of security. The news came on a secure channel from the lifeboat—’
‘It’s spilt milk, Admiral,’ said duPont. She waved a hand at a number of document images hanging over the desk in front of her. ‘The fact is, they know, and I have had messages from all the Earth ambassadors, ranging from polite enquiry to a demand to be represented on any mission that we send to SkySpy. We’ll have to accommodate them somehow. If the XCs learn about step-through then they could reach Earth just as well as us, so I can see their points. Please, Admiral, back to the briefing.’
‘Very well,’ Chase said, and it sounded as if he were saying it through his teeth. Gilmore could sympathize. Civilian diplomats getting involved? The situation was difficult enough as it was. ‘As I was saying before Madam Co-Senior dropped her bombshell, we are agreed that the first priority is to find out exactly what has happened to SkySpy. We know no-one else was able to make it to the lifeboat but that doesn’t mean no-one else is still alive. There may be pockets of resistance on the base, holding out against the invaders. There may not be. We can make guesses until we’re blue in the face but we’ll never know until we go there.
‘And that,’ Chase finished, ‘is why I asked King James to be present. He has a suggestion that may be useful. Sir?’
‘Thank you.’ King James had aged. Still a slim man in good trim, but the hair and the moustache were greying. The original mission that had brought humans to the Roving and led to the foundation of the Commonwealth had been four years ago, and the then Prince James had inherited his throne unexpectedly in the course of events.
The mission hadn’t gone quite as James and his father had hoped, but the man couldn’t complain. His kingdom, UK-1, orbited the Roving and acted as the official port of entry to the planet. Plan A, rebuilding the British Empire on the Roving with the First Breed as its loyal subjects, hadn’t quite worked out for the Windsors but as far as Gilmore was concerned, Plan B was a bloody good second best.
‘Before we came here to the Roving,’ James said, ‘UK-1 had very little in the way of a defence force. We had the Royal Space Fleet, a small space service, but nothing much. Nothing demanding.’
As if by accident, his eyes met Gilmore’s as he said that; or at least, his gaze drifted past Gilmore. Gilmore, of course, had been a captain in that small, undemanding Royal Space Fleet.
So had John Chase, and from the way James blinked, Gilmore suspected James had suddenly remembered this fact. The king hurried on.
‘Our main defence was our isolation and the fact that no-one had any particular need to attack us. That changed when we came to the Roving – we became a far more desirable target and, due to the decision of the Commonwealth to make its technology available to the nations of Earth, our enemies suddenly acquired the ability to attack us.’ Another lighthousebeam glance around the room again caught Gilmore’s eye. James was blaming him.
Well, what was I supposed to do
? Gilmore thought. Everyone knew the nations of Earth would soon catch up with the Roving technologically, and if they were left to do it in secret then they would get there without the Roving knowing it. Far better to have it all out in the open; and so, admittedly with qualms, he had decided the Navy should make the principles of its ship technology generally available. None of the Earth nations had put that technology to use yet, but it was only a matter of time.
‘And so,’ James said, ‘we decided to build up a proper defence force, should UK-1 ever come under attack. We now have two troops of marines, a couple of hundred men and women in all, and we intend to build up a complete regiment in time.’ He looked up, not this time at Gilmore but at the couple sitting by him. ‘Stand up, please, you two.’
They both stood smartly to attention.
‘May I present Captain Bill Perry, two-i-c A-Troop, King Richard’s Regiment of Royal Marines and officer commanding Able Platoon,’ said James. ‘Next to him, commanding Baker Platoon, Lieutenant Peter . . .’
The king trailed off, realizing that the marine next to Bill Perry wasn’t a Peter at all. ‘Lieutenant, ah,
Donna
McCallum, officer commanding
Charlie
Platoon,’ he said. Donna McCallum gave a small nod. Gilmore took a brief moment to work out, from the swirl of names, who was commanding which phonetically named platoon, then turned his attention back to the meeting.