Eden's Trial Read online

  He nodded. “They check to see if it’s secure. I want you to check if it’s habitable, capable of becoming a place people can call home. Where they can live out their lives, and…” He thought of Glenda’s third wish, but he couldn’t say it.

  She nodded slowly, though he sensed some hesitation. Zack had already told him about some earlier argument between her, Micah and Kat, back on Eden, right before leaving. He waited for her counter-suggestion.

  “Maybe Josefsson or –”

  “Josefsson will certainly take the credit, but a man with manicured hands doesn’t get them dirty willingly. Do you have a problem working with Micah or Sandy?”

  She tilted her chin upwards, just a fraction, then shook her head vehemently.

  “No, of course not. I’ll take the next transport to the city, Sir.” She stood, waited to see if there was anything else, and then picked up the flimsy, rolled it carefully, and handed it to him. As she left, he noticed her step was a fraction lighter.

  Blake spoke to the rippling canvas door and the empty tent. “A month or two working with Josefsson and Shakirvasta, Antonia, and you’ll become a much better liar.”

  “Nobody had time to scream.” Rashid’s voice was bereft of hope, like a rain-swept funeral at sea.

  Blake felt his stomach churn while Rashid recounted what had happened on his ship, as best he could. Unlike the other Council members gathered, he stared straight into Rashid’s coal-black eye sockets. He imagined two thousand eyes peering silently from the void through Rashid’s space-like portals. Rashid trembled once or twice as if crying, but no salt water emerged – the tear ducts had been cauterised.

  Blake recalled what Vince had told him earlier about Louise…

  “No one else would work with her. She was so Goddammed fast, way too brutal for even the tough guys, never took prisoners. During the War, she earned a reputation. She was behind enemy lines, tracking down a renegade who’d stolen a nuke, holed up in a village in the Thai foothills. While the generals were debating who to send in, she ashed the place with a fire-stormer. All that was left was human barbecue and the bomb, its plaz casing still intact, a charred corpse next to it, a bony hand fried to the detonator controls. You see my point? Louise selected that weapon because she knew the intensity would blind him so he couldn’t set the sequence. She just shrugged off the two hundred villagers who got toasted as collateral. After that little episode they nicknamed her ‘the baker’, though nobody said it within earshot of Louise, let alone to her face. Whatever her mission was, Blake, she got it done. She doesn’t care about collateral. So, if she’s after us…”

  Rashid finished. His head made those small movements Blake knew well from numerous nuclear-flash-blinded soldiers, trying to hear the reactions of the people seated around him.

  Zack split the graveyard silence. “Vince, I thought you said you killed that bitch.”

  Vince bristled, but Micah answered. “Trust me, Zack, part of her brain rained down on me in that hospital bed when Vince blew a hole in her head.”

  “Then how in the hell –”

  Blake raised his hand. “It doesn’t matter how. She’s after us, and she’s tooled up to take us down.”

  Vince folded his arms. “Maybe not all of us. You and me, Micah, for sure. And maybe your good self, Commander Alexander.”

  Ramires, who till now had remained a silent observer at the Ourshiwann council meetings, spoke up. “I doubt very much this is a private vendetta. They know we escaped. The Alicians want to eradicate humanity. This is a clean-up job.”

  Zack ran a hand over his near-bald pate. “We should send a ship to find Pierre and Kat. Maybe they’re still alive.”

  Blake’s fingers riffed once on the table, then he addressed Rashid. “Could we launch a rescue mission, Rashid?”

  Rashid tilted his head again, listening hard, trying to pinpoint the exact location of each speaker. “No, we most certainly cannot. Without the navigational log, showing how much distance was covered in each leg, we would never find it again. I am sorry.”

  Blake stood up. “We need to get everyone out of the ships. We’re moving into the city. It’s the only option: not enough tents, and no other natural shelter. Senator Josefsson, I’d like you to orchestrate the operation.” He watched Josefsson hesitate, and moved on before the senator could work out the angles. “I’ve already sent Antonia to the city where Micah, Sandy and several teams are determining habitation options. Professor Kostakis and Jennifer are also down there. They believe they may have found a weapon. Mr Shakirvasta, pick three engineering teams and try to find and disable the ships’ transponders. Vince, Zack, Ramires, you’re with me. Battle plan time. Let’s get to it everybody.”

  Everyone rose except Rashid, who remained rooted to the spot. Blake headed toward him but Zack arrived first.

  “Come on buddy, you’re with me.” Zack led him out of the room, nodding back to Blake that he’d catch him later.

  Vince spoke as soon as it was just him, Blake and Ramires. “What’s your real plan?”

  Blake eyed them both. Vince’s steel blue eyes were always head on, like a samurai’s. But he thought Ramires’ fresh-mown stubble fringed with his moustache concealed a wry smile. Blake realised he was too used to military, the chain of command, not being second-guessed. These men were laser-sharp. But he had to stay in charge. “You tell me.”

  Vince nodded, with a twitch of his mouth indicating he knew all too well the little tricks Blake was trying to play. His voice was firm and clear. “Plan A: we stay here with the ships as bait. If she gets close enough we take her ship down; we have two short-range tactical nukes left, but no delivery system other than a couple of sling jets – we need her to land, or at least enter the atmosphere, or come to our ships. Maybe some of us go down with her, but the city will survive. Plan B, to be executed in parallel: we find another one of those Hohash craft that Pierre and Kat were on, and materialise onboard her ship with a nuke. It’s another sacrificial plan, with Zack the best option as pilot. If you’ve got a Plan C, I’m interested to hear it.” Vince folded his arms.

  Ramires pitched his head forward like a boxer just before a fight. “I’ll take Plan A.”

  “You know how to set tactical nukes?” Blake asked.

  Ramires’ wry grin reappeared. “Not my first time, Commander.”

  These men aren’t just sharp, Blake thought, they’re serrated. But he still had an ace. “Good. We’re on the same wavelength. There is a plan C, but I warn you now, Vince, you’re not going to like it.”

  Sonja heard Zack’s heavy footfalls approaching the cramped Q’Roth ‘grotto’, as he liked to call their allocated room. She glanced in the dented tin wall mirror to check she looked presentable. She hoped her boisterous black afro compensated for the hunger rings around her eyes; she gave most of her food share to Zack and their two children, and wore baggy clothes to conceal her lean frame.

  Their address was 43 Beta West, deck seven in the twelfth ring from the central ramp that spiralled its way to the ship’s control room. It wasn’t home, but she tried to pretend. She and their two boys stood behind the meal simmering in two pots on a makeshift stove they had loan of one night in three. She’d spent half the morning begging and borrowing the ingredients. But as Zack entered, she could tell that the smell of coriander and lemon beef substitute, one of his favourites, barely registered against his sombre mood. Another wasted effort. Zack had no stomach or taste for food these days. Nothing she did reached him. She braved a smile. That was when she caught sight of the man behind her husband.

  She froze as she saw the stranger’s wounds, resisting the urge to gather her kids behind her.

  “Hun, this is Rashid. Look after him while I’m gone.”

  She gaped at Zack, who’d turned on his heels, ready to leave. He hadn’t kissed her, had hardly even looked at her. It had been getting steadily worse since they’d left Eden, and he refused to even talk about it, just brooded all the time. “Wait, Zack… What... whe
re are you going?”

  “Gotta go kill an Alician bitch.”

  He disappeared, leaving the tan-skinned Rashid standing alone in the middle of the room, his black curling hair grown wild. Sonja walked over, reached out towards him, touched his bare arm. It felt cool, unlike Zack’s steam-pipe forearms.

  “I am most sorry for this imposition,” he said. “I had thought he was taking me to a medical facility.”

  Sonja inspected his eye sockets; she’d seen worse, but only once. “Kind of. I used to be a nurse, well, paramedic actually. May I?”

  Rashid’s head jiggled sideways. Zack had talked to her before about Rashid, so she knew this odd motion, a natural habit from his native India, signified a yes. Her fingers scouted his face. He flinched once, then acquiesced, keeping his head steady. She ignored her two children who hung at her waist gaping upwards at Rashid’s face. Her fingers skated over the holes where his eyes should have been.

  “Peter, fetch me the flashlight, please.” The torch nudged her hip seconds later. She brought it up to Rashid’s face, inspecting the cavities. “Minimal scarring, nerves cleanly cauterised.” She switched off the light. “Whoever did this work on you did a hell of a job. Who was it?”

  Rashid sighed. “That is a long story. May I sit down?”

  She glanced around. “Of course you can, how rude of me. But we don’t have chairs, I’m afraid.”

  “That is good, they are bad for the spine, you know.” His beaming smile disavowed her of any residual repulsion over the way he looked. He dropped down fluidly into a cross-legged sitting position. He held out his two hands in the vague direction of her two children, and they each gingerly took one, all the time staring wide-eyed at Rashid’s cavernous face.

  Sonja stared at Rashid. Her kids never reached out to strangers. There was something about this man, a quality of openness and honesty that led her, and apparently her kids, too, to trust him. She ran her fingers through her thick black curls, coiling her hair around her fingers. Zack, what the hell are you doing?

  Zack loped through the corridors like a giant rat who’d had enough of the maze he’d been cooped up in. The flashbacks to the Thai jungle during the War were getting worse. For the first time in ten years he could remember fragments, snippets of detail about what happened after his platoon was wiped out, when he’d been declared missing in action for ten days. He still couldn’t recall much detail, a few faces he didn’t know, a weird-looking lab, and the Eiffel fucking tower of all things. None of it made any sense.

  There’d been a theory on the Ulysses that one of its crew had been implanted with a killer psychosis by the Alicians, one that could be activated by some special code. He knew he was the only remaining suspect, and he didn’t care much for the way that Carlson, the resident shrink, kept looking at him, searching all the time for tell-tale signs. He knew he was being shitty to Sonja, but inside he was unravelling, barely in command.

  He sensed something malevolent deep inside, watching and waiting for some signal. He needed to keep his distance from Sonja and the kids, to protect them – he felt unsafe, as if he might go off the rails at any time. He’d heard Rashid tell the story of what these implants could do to people, instantly transforming them into rabid killers. Once Louise was out of the way, he decided, he’d submit to Carlson to get the thing out of his head, no matter what it took, or how long.

  Zack reached the bay doors that led him out of the ship. He hadn’t meant to leave; he was supposed to join Blake and the others. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths of crisp air. He shrugged, feeling better already. It’s nothing, he thought, just deep trauma. Loads of War-vets have nightmares. He headed back inside, jogging up the central ramp to find the board room. But he slowed down as the face of a blonde woman flickered into his mind, hanging there for a second, as if staring at him, saying something he couldn’t quite catch. He’d heard Louise described often enough to guess it was her. Yet it felt like a memory, as if he’d actually met her in that lab somewhere near Chiang Rai. There’d been something else, too, a strange sing-song voice.

  Thick fog billowed into his mind, dampening the image, as if his brain was trying to recall a holo-mail that it had never intended to send. Zack struggled first to remember the face, then to hold on to what he was forgetting. It slipped away as surely as a dream upon waking. When the mist in his mind evaporated he found himself standing on the ramp, leaning his head against the slimy wall, wondering what he was doing there. He couldn’t remember. He’d just left Rashid with Sonja; that was the last thing he could recall. He was late for a meeting with Blake and the others, that much he knew for sure.

  Zack set off at a jog up the ramp, picking up speed, feeling better than he had in weeks. He’d apologise to Sonja later. He’d tell her he’d see Carlson; that would cheer her up. But later. First he and the others had to rid themselves of Louise. He’d never killed a woman before; he hoped they could do it at a distance. Idly, he wondered what she looked like, then dismissed the idea – best not to think about it.

  He arrived, a little out of breath, facing Blake and the others. “So, what did I miss? Are we on Plan C yet?”

  * * *

  Hannah whispered to Jarvik, as quiet as autumn leaves rustling in the wind. “We need to strike first. She’ll kill us both sooner or later. You know I’m right.”

  Jarvik’s hand snapped around her throat, muscles firm. “Maybe just you, Hannah.” He glared at her, then let go. He sensed the tension in his own shoulders, and his features felt leaden – this mission had not exactly been the brave new world he’d been expecting. And he’d seen the nannites. The three of them would perish soon one way or another unless they found the planet and their inferior cousins. Right now he needed Louise, because she was above all a survivor. “She’s too strong, too fast,” he said.

  “Then talk to them, the humans – you’re taking the stealth-pod down to the planet when we arrive. Talk to them. Tell them… tell them we can be reasonable.”

  Hannah’s eyes had that cornered animal look, like a goat he’d once seen being led to the slaughter. She made to speak, but Jarvik cast a look that stopped her dead. “No, Hannah. We see this through. We didn’t sign up with the Alicians to behave like normal humans, divided and rife with corruption.” He continued, pre-empting the riposte he knew she would launch. “And yes, even if our Grand-Mistress, Sister Esma means us to die, then we die for the cause.”

  Hannah glowered. She held her head up, tossing her copper hair back. “Alright. We do it your way, for Sister Esma, for the cause.”

  Jarvik’s eyes tracked her as she strode back to her own console. Now he had two women he needed to watch very carefully.

  Chapter 8

  Ossyrians

  Pierre felt the warm liquid spill through his helmet seal, flushing down into his suit. Lifting the helmet a few centimetres with both hands, he took one last deep breath, and saw Kat’s shocked features, but he also detected something like pride in her eyes. It was enough. He lifted off the helmet, the warm liquid swirling around his head like a hot, wet towel, and let it drop behind him. It sank to the floor with a small clunk. He kept his eyes closed, holding his breath even as the lighter-than-water fluid assaulted his nostrils. He forced open his eyes, expecting the fluid to sting, but if anything it was soothing. Everything was slightly out of focus, tinged pink. Kat gripped his shoulders.

  He felt the tug of anoxia beginning in his lungs, sucking in and down on his diaphragm, begging him to breathe in, unaware of the consequences. A couple of bubbles escaped his nostrils, letting the liquid rise higher into his nasal cavity, making him blink. He heard a swishing noise. Kat released him and took a slow-motion step backwards. Something was behind him. With difficulty, trying not to fall over in his last seconds, he turned around. He was so startled he almost breathed in, there and then, face-to-face with an upright-standing dog in an Egyptian pharaoh’s head-dress, with its alternating horizontal bars of gold and blue, shrouding a strong black collie
-like face with silver eyes.

  Pierre’s mouth opened a fraction and the fluid lost no time in entering, tasting of nothing, fizzy on his tongue. The creature in front of him seized his arms, and he felt something punch him very hard in the stomach, evacuating all remaining air from him in one large, noisy gurgle. He doubled over in pain. The creature wrenched him upwards, causing him at last to inhale.

  The liquid charged into his lungs, cool as menthol, numbing his throat. An instant urge to cough and splutter vanished, like a sneeze that threatens but never arrives. He assumed it must be some kind of anaesthetic, but then with a shock realised he no longer felt the pressure to breathe in. The creature held onto his wrists, and placed another limb on his stomach, pushing gentler this time. Pierre understood – it was telling him to breathe the fluid. What the hell. He tried it. He pulled in his stomach and raised his diaphragm to expel some of the liquid, then – and it required conscious effort – reversed the movements to inhale it, as reluctantly as if sucking in acid through a straw.

  He tried it a few times, and amazement surpassed his fear. He guessed it was a hyper-oxygenated fluid of some kind. It made a low squirting sound each time he breathed, but, if anything, he could breathe slower than with normal air. The creature released him, and he turned around to show Kat he was alright.

  But she wasn’t. She had a pulse rifle aimed at the creature. Pierre held up his hand. He tried to talk, but could only gurgle. He laid a hand on the barrel of the rifle, gently pushing it downwards. Eventually she let it fall, and he found her arms wrapped around him, her helmet pressing uncomfortably against his face. She squeezed him so tight he found it hard to breathe again.

  Pierre cradled Kat in his arms on a curved bench of indeterminate material: it looked metallic but felt like sitting on dry moss. The undersized conical room reminded him of a tepee, inside all white and smooth, the bench running around three quarters of its perimeter. Light emanated from the walls, the air still. Air. It was good to breathe normal air again. The worst part had been getting Kat’s helmet off when her supply ran out. That hadn’t been pretty, even if she’d seen him breathe the liquid. In the end, as she’d stood holding her breath, stiff as a man on the gallows waiting for the drop, he’d kissed her, held her tight, and persuaded her mouth to accept a little of the fluid from his own. And then she’d thrashed violently, convulsing almost, lacerating his left cheek in the process with a fingernail, though there was no trace of it now.