“You don’t have access to outside files,” she said, “so I’ll have to assume you’re equipped with a headcomp.”
Damn, she knew about the things too. I know it had been fifteen years, but had everybody heard of implant computers now? I’d thought mine would give me an edge.
Yours is better, Jim assured me. None of the others come equipped with me.
Lucky me.
“And since my file would likely be compartmentalized,” Marakit surmised, “to have access to it, you’re undoubtedly with Fleet Intelligence.”
“Never denied it,” Deke said. “You helped organize a revolt among the Tahni on Hudson Bay. You were pretty high on the Patrol’s most wanted until their reorganization after the attempted coup.” He shrugged. “Now, of course, nobody cares. But that at least explains how you can command the respect of the Tahni and the Evolutionists. Still not clear on the Cultists, but I suppose they needed something else to believe in after the truth about what the Predecessors looked like came out.”
“You will speak with respect to Marakit!” the Cultist behind us bellowed, trying to sound scary. I grinned at him, unable to help myself.
“He sounded pretty respectful of her,” I told the Cultist. “It was you he was disrespecting. And I swear to God, I might pay money to watch if you want to have a go at him.”
“You know who I am and where I came from,” Marakit said, ignoring the byplay. “Does that help you understand my motivations?”
“It helps me understand why you don’t trust us,” Deke said, not showing even a hint of intimidation or regret. “Or at least why you didn’t trust the original Commonwealth. But I’m curious… the Tahni were the ones who put you in your current situation.” He gestured at her bionics. “How did you end up on their side?”
“They were victims of their government. Their emperor, their religion, their society forced them into fighting for a lie, then destroyed their view of the world and of themselves.” It was hard to make out much of an expression from a woman with half a face, yet the bitterness shown through. “Just like mine did, telling me I was fighting for the survival of the Commonwealth while the Corporate Council and their children and grandchildren sat in their towers and their vacation estates back on Earth and fattened their bank accounts with military contracts. I rotted in a military hospital, patched together with metal because the genetic surgery that would have made me whole, would have allowed them to clone parts of me and implant them, was too expensive, wasn’t authorized for veterans.”
It wasn’t hard to spot the weakness in her logic, that the Tahni had been more of a threat to the people who weren’t rich, the people who lived out in the colonies and bore the brunt of the enemy attacks. But trying to convince her that the Tahni War was justified wasn’t the job and wouldn’t help.
“You think we don’t agree?” I asked instead. I tapped my chest. “I’m an orphan from unincorporated Mexico. I spent most of my youth roaming the streets of the Trans-Angeles Underground, running from the cops and the gangs. I enlisted in the Marines because the only other choice was the Freezer. You think I did any of that for the rich executives in their towers? None of that shit matters anymore. We keep telling you that, but I don’t think you get it.” The step I took toward her was instinctive, but it was blocked by Vagabond, his green ocular glowing brightly. “None of those executives are alive. Not one survived. Earth is a wilderness and the megacities are crumbling ruins. The only thing any of us has is each other, and if we sit around holding onto old grudges, humans are going to regress into a dark age we might not make it back out of.”
The intensity in my own words surprised even me. What surprised me even more was that I meant them. I think Marakit must have sensed that, because she pushed Vagabond aside and advanced that step I’d wanted to take, so close that I could feel the warmth of her breath against my cheek. It was warm and smelled sickly sweet, like burned flesh.
“I believe you, Cameron Alvarez.” She laid a hand on my arm, and this time it didn’t scare me. “Perhaps you’re right. I’ll need to speak to more of your leaders, but I think we can come to some sort of accommodation…”
I didn’t see it coming, didn’t expect it, but worse than that, Deke didn’t either. I would have expected him to, given what he’d shown me so far, but I think we were both handicapped by the fact we didn’t know these people or their procedures. Didn’t know who they would or wouldn’t allow to carry a gun. When the half-dozen Tahni warriors entered the garden from the opposite doorway carrying Imperial-era laser carbines, they might have been sent to escort us to the shuttle or might have been in response to Vagabond calling for security when I’d taken a step toward Marakit.
Might have been… if they hadn’t leveled those carbines at us and opened fire.
Anyone who’s been in combat knows about the physiological reactions. Auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, and tachypsychia, the feeling that time has slowed down and you can see every detail, have forever to make a decision. It was an illusion of course. I was seeing the events of the last second projected on a screen for my conscious mind as if it were happening now, but I’d already made my decisions, chosen my course of action on a subconscious level from training and instinct.
But that imaginary slow-motion wasn’t totally useless. It gave my mind—and, in this case, my headcomp—time to analyze what was happening, the important details. The weapons were left over from the Tahni military, laser carbines designed for rear-echelon troops and shipboard combat, fed from crystalline power cartridges. Not the most durable weapons, nor the most tactical, with thermal signatures that could probably be seen from orbit. But looking at them at point-blank range, they were a lot easier to appreciate.
I’d made my tactical choice already, and given that I was unarmed and unarmored, it involved throwing myself to the floor and hoping I wasn’t the primary target. As it turned out, I wasn’t. Vagabond was. Sparks flew and smoke billowed as half a dozen streams of laser pulses converged on the cyborg, slicing him to shreds. The cyborg was dead before my chest hit the floor, the vital organs stored inside that metal chest exploding in bursts of superheated fluid.
The other target was Marakit, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. She was in motion by the time the last shot hit Vagabond, making a run at Pol-Kai with speed that outstripped an Olympic athlete, but he already had a gun in his hand, something more compact and effective than the laser carbines. It was a Gauss pistol like the one Deke had left on the Dutchman, and the report of its discharge echoed off the walls behind the projected rain forest, metallic and magnetic and hypersonic in one indescribable chorus, an orchestra of deadly instruments combined in one shot.
But the shot was rushed, desperate with the knowledge of her speed, hitting her low in the hip. The slug ripped through the joint there, blasting black metal and carbon fiber into fragments that peppered the back of my neck in a hail of white-hot fire. Marakit stumbled, but she still moved fast enough to slash a hand down on Pol-Kai’s wrist. The bone cracked like a dry twig and the Tahni screamed, stumbling backward. I thought Marakit would grab him before he could get away, figuring she was faster than the old warrior even with only one functional leg, but the Tahni shooters had finally reacted to her attack.
Their rifles swung around, firing as they went, not particular about which one of us they shot first. The unfortunate Predecessor Cultists who’d been bringing up the rear got that honor, all that added muscle not doing a damned thing for their reaction time. Not only had they not managed to counterattack or run, they hadn’t even thought to duck. They’d never have to think about anything again, but I might never forget the smell of their burned and vaporized blood spraying through the air and splattering on the tall grass beside me.
Getting my feet underneath me, I prepared to charge at them, ready to sell my life at a high price, but I’d forgotten about something and so had the Tahni.
A gray blur passed across the line of Tahni, and where it touched, they died. Blood sprayed in broad arcs from throats torn open as if by magic, broken bodies tumbled, heads facing the wrong direction, necks askew. The blur was a man, and by the time he reached the last two Tahni gunman, he’d slowed down enough for it to be clear that man was Deke Conner. Deke spun into a kick that took one of the Tahni in the chest, splintering the sternum and sending the alien flying like a cannonball across the room. The last of them nearly turned the muzzle of his carbine around in time, but the motion halted abruptly when matte-gray talons sliced through his neck, his head bobbing backward. Barely connected by a flap of skin at the back.
Deke stood for just a fleeting moment, those talons extended, just long enough for me to discern that they came right out of the skin over his wrists. Implant weapons, anchored in each forearm, dripping arterial blood. He shook the blood off and the blades retracted back into his wrists, the frozen moment passing. I wanted to ask the same stupid question again.
What the hell are you?
There was no time for it though, because he tossed a laser carbine at me and retrieved another for himself, seemingly not bothered by the red stain on the side of it, then grabbed Marikit under the arm and lifted her to her feet. Her damaged leg hung limp, dead weight, but it didn’t seem like any of the vital organs that kept her human brain alive had been hit. Her sense of reality, though, looked to have taken a huge blow.
“Why?” she gasped, staring at the door back to the stairs, which Pol-Kai had retreated through during the shooting, then down at the torn and smoldering remains of Vagabond. “Why would he…”
“Snap out of it!” Deke barked at her. Red splashed his face, his arms, like he’d shoved them elbow deep into the dead Tahni, an image fearsome enough to shock Marikit out of her fugue. And maybe me as well.
“He wouldn’t have tried this if he didn’t have the rest of the Tahni in this place behind him,” I said. “We need to get the hell out of here.” I took a step toward the stairs, but Deke interposed the length of the laser carbine between me and my chosen path.
“Pol-Kai ran that way,” he reminded me. “And he knows we’d be tempted to make a run for the shuttle.” Deke nodded to Marakit. “You have people you trust. Can you try to contact them?”
Marakit’s one natural eye glazed over in concentration, and I figured she had to be transmitting via a datalink connected directly to her brain. Cursing softly, she shook her head.
“Nothing. All comms are jammed.”
“People will notice that,” I said, my eyes and the muzzle of the laser carbine flitting back and forth between the two exits. “He’s gonna be sending more troops in here to finish us off. Is there any other way out of this chamber?”
“Over there,” Marakit pointed to a section of the rain forest in the projection, indistinguishable from the rest as far as I could tell, but Deke half-carried her over to it and I followed, backing away from the center of the room, still trying to cover both doors.
Marakit reached through the trunk of a virtual banyan tree and hidden behind its gray bark, something clicked. A chill breeze kissed the side of my face, my neck stinging with the reminder of the half a dozen tiny burns there.
“Through here,” Marakit instructed Deke, and he didn’t question her direction, just walked her right through that projection. And disappeared.
Taking a deep breath, I risked a final look behind us. Bodies littered the floor, the tall, hydroponic grass making a valiant effort to conceal the worst of the carnage. They couldn’t. For Marakit, and for us too, everything had changed in the space of less than a minute. I turned and stepped through the light of the hologram. And into darkness.
[ 18 ]