Marauder (10 page)

Sifra himself was the last to board. He threw a single, uninterested glance at her before stepping on through into the cockpit, closely followed by Luiz. The craft rose immediately, so Megan had
only a last brief glimpse of Cockaigne.

Just fifteen minutes later, they dropped to a landing at Avilon’s primary spaceport, where Luiz herded her and Bash towards a nearby dropship. A tannoy boomed indecipherably some way off
in the distance, with the electronic chime of an automated cargo truck dopplering somewhere to her right.

There was, she realized, no one around to wonder why two of the people now boarding the dropship had their hands cuffed behind their backs – and even if they had noticed, Luiz’s
high-level security clearance would probably have given them the perfect cover.

They were led up the dropship’s broad ramp and inside its cockpit, where Luiz again strapped first Megan and then Bash and the two zombies into acceleration couches.

As the craft lifted up, the force of acceleration pushed her deep into the couch. Within minutes they were weightless, and well on their way to whatever destiny Sifra and Otto Schelling had
planned for them. And, despite the circumstances of her departure from Avilon, there was a part of her that nonetheless felt safer in being far from the constant tug of gravity.

Half a day later, the dropship rendezvoused with the
Liberia
, an inter-system transport ferry. This consisted of little more than a framework of girders, modular
docking ports and habitats arranged around powerful anti-matter engines. It followed a perpetually looping orbit that threaded together 82 Eridani’s scattered collection of planets. Avilon
soon dwindled to aft as the
Liberia
boosted sunwards, carrying them and numerous other small craft towards Redstone and the inner system.

She watched as Luiz and Sifra unbuckled themselves, casually discussing as they did so the various entertainments and distractions to be found within the communal malls and restaurants of the
Liberia
’s bow as they made for the hatch.

‘Hey!’ she yelled from where she was still strapped tightly into her couch. ‘What about me and Bash?’

‘What about you?’ said Luiz, looking back at her with a smirk.

‘How long are you going to be?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t just leave us strapped into these couches! What if I need to pee? What about Bash?’

‘She’s got a point,’ Luiz said to Sifra.

‘Come back later and take care of all that,’ Sifra replied to him.

‘But what if I need to pee
now
?’ demanded Megan, hating the plaintive tone creeping into her voice.

‘Then I guess you’ll have to just hold it in for a while,’ said Sifra, and the two men laughed.

‘At least take the damn cuffs off!’ she screamed after them as they departed, still chuckling.

She could already feel a mild pressure growing in her bladder. If she had to pee on their damn couch, it would serve them right. But then again, she was the one who’d have to sit in it all
the way to Redstone.

She found a part of her hoping Bash took a dump right there on his own couch. It would just serve the two of them the hell right if they had to clean up his shit. Literally.

On the other hand, it was clear she was going to be left here alone with the zombies for quite some time. She almost couldn’t believe either of the two men could be so dumb . . .

‘Oh, but they are,’ she said quietly to herself, through gritted teeth.

She twisted her head around until she could just about see the two bead-zombies in their own couches. Didn’t
they
need to pee? Somehow she had never thought to wonder about
that.

She rolled her shoulders to relax the muscles, then slowed her breathing until she could focus more clearly.

Then she went to work.

Focusing was always the hardest part of this kind of work. A single break in concentration could ruin everything. Through her implants, she studied the flow of data between the pair of zombies
and the dropship control systems to which they had now been slaved for the duration of the journey.

There was, she knew, no way a dropship’s auto-control was up to that kind of job. But hacking the two zombies was still going to take a great deal of effort, and not a little time. It
looked, however, as if time were something she would have in abundance.

She painstakingly tested each potential point of entry, one after another. Buckled into the couch and with her arms cuffed behind her back, it was far from easy to get a line of sight on the two
zombies, to see if either of them reacted in any way to her remote prodding. Soon her neck was starting to throb like a bitch.

She took a break after a couple of hours that were rewarded with little success, and tried not to let self-doubt and despair swallow her up. Then she got back to work, studying and exploring
each potential backdoor into either the dropship or the zombies themselves.

It wasn’t long before she felt a band of tightness across her forehead that heralded an oncoming migraine.
Respond, damn you.
She kicked her feet against the couch in frustration,
but it made no difference. No matter what she tried, it just wasn’t working.

She glanced around at the zombies, and . . .

Had she imagined it when she saw the hand of one of them twitch?

Of course she had.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the throbbing of her muscles and the dryness of her throat.

Maybe she hadn’t imagined it.

She restructured various custom routines she had created in order to probe the potential points of entry she had identified, keeping her gaze focused on that zombie in particular.

This time, she saw it. Definitely a twitch.

Megan rocked her head from side to side to try and alleviate the painful kinks that had developed in her neck and shoulders. Her wrists were sore and chafed from the cuffs they had left on
her.

She modified another routine and set it loose. The zombie twitched again, then shifted suddenly in its seat, the fingers of both its hands spasming in a kind of rippling motion.

Megan let herself fall back with a laugh of triumph, all her pain and despair suddenly forgotten. She still wasn’t home free yet, not by a long shot; and it wasn’t long before
elation gave way to fatigue. She had slept barely at all on that cold basement floor.

She closed her eyes, intending to rest them for just a minute or two, and fell immediately asleep.

She began to dream of the events following her return from the disastrous
Beauregard
expedition twelve years earlier. She had used the money she got from Sifra and Tarrant to rent an
apartment in an upmarket district of one of Corkscrew’s principal cities, and soon discovered there were easy ways of attaining the mental oblivion she now craved.

She slowly immersed herself in the city’s street culture; the highly narcotic drug known as
sans de sezi
was everywhere on Corkscrew, which was hardly surprising since the medusa
trees from which it was derived grew wild there. At certain times of the year, if the weather was just right, these trees released their orange spores in clouds ready to be gathered and processed
before being smuggled off-world.

The streets were littered with the casualties of the drug, but this made no difference to her. She soon became something of a connoisseur of the orange spore, and before long a considerable
portion of her fortune had thus evaporated.

But, in the end, even those hazy visions produced by the drug hadn’t been quite enough to wipe out the memory of what had happened on her trip out to the Wanderer, and consequently Megan
had slowly, albeit reluctantly, found her way back to the real world. She had even managed to re-establish some kind of career for herself as a machine-head pilot, but this time taking advantage of
her growing inside knowledge of the routes by which
sans de sezi
found its way off Corkscrew. Before long she had found a way to gain employment through men like Kazim who had an intimate
knowledge of the underworld and its workings.

In this way, she eventually found herself a new life. It was one that led her to believe she might finally lead a normal and happy existence, but her discovery regarding the approaching Swarm
had put an end to all that.

Now on the
Liberia
, she dreamed that Bash was talking to her as they walked along one of Ladested’s broad avenues, back on Kjæregrønnested.

Megan Jacinth, as I live and breathe
, he began in surprise, gazing at her sideways.

She stared back at him in wonder, wondering how he could be here, and able to speak to her. Then she remembered that it was a dream, and not actually real.

I came back for you, Bash
, she said.
Maybe not for all the right reasons, but I did, as soon as I knew you were still alive
. A breeze whipped at her hair.
But you
don’t know how much it broke my heart when I saw you lying there in that basement. You didn’t even realize I was there.

Didn’t I?
He chuckled.
Well, I’ve been away from the old place for a while
. He shook his head as they walked on.
But I figured it was time to come and pay you a
visit, in view of the way things are shaping up for the future
. He glanced at her with a grin.
The things I’ve seen, baby, you just wouldn’t believe
.

She began to have the uncanny sense that this was not, in fact, a dream after all.

I’ve missed you so badly
, she said, a lump forming in her throat.
I’ve been so alone all these years since I returned – so alone you can’t even
imagine
.

I’m always with you, baby
, he said, coming to a sudden halt. She did too, and he reached out with one hand to brush the hair away from her face.
I’m here right now,
aren’t I?

I know you are
, she said, looking up at him. She realized she was crying.
Just not the way I need you to be
.

His expression grew troubled, and he touched the side of his head with trembling fingers.
It’s like having to share a house with an
unwanted guest. Do you understand? I used
to hide away where it
couldn’t find me, deep inside. But nowadays I can’t even come and visit that house too often, except for when I get to sneak in and say hello, like
now.

Are you talking about the Wanderer?
she asked, with a horrible chill. Her dream muscles were rigid with despair.
I’ll find someone who can fix you, I swear I will
.

He brought his hand back down and folded it around one of hers.
You don’t understand
, he said, shaking his head.
There’s nobody that can fix me. I know that
.

His smile faded, his gaze becoming blank and vacant even as the intelligence faded from his eyes. She thought of candles guttering out in an abandoned house.

Wait!
she cried, grabbing hold of him.
Stay with me. Please
.

I’ll be there when you really need me, baby
, she heard him say, as if from the far side of the universe.
You just take care of yourself until then
.

She woke with a start, to find Luiz unbuckling her restraints.

‘Time for you to take your pee,’ he said. ‘We brought you something to eat as well.’ He waved a hand at some food on a cardboard tray set next to her couch. The two
bead-zombies had been given their guns back, and had them pointing at her.

‘Dumb and Dumber here are going to keep an eye on you,’ he said. ‘And, while you’re at it, take your buddy to the head as well, before he shits himself or something. I am
right in thinking he’d do that, if we just left him there long enough?’

’You tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m not the one who’s kept him locked up in a fucking dungeon.’

‘You keep talking as smart as you do; see where it gets you,’ said Luiz, finishing with the restraints. ‘Turn over on your side so I can get your cuffs.’

Megan did as she was told and felt her wrists suddenly coming free. She tried to rub at them, but hissed between her teeth from the pain. It felt as if the skin had been scraped raw.

‘Now go get yourself to the head,’ said Luiz. ‘And don’t take too long in case I have to come looking.’

She got up out of the couch, feeling her muscles stretching painfully, and then waited while Luiz also released Bash. Once he was out of his couch, she took hold of Bash and led him, not without
difficulty, out through the cockpit hatch.

‘Down the far end,’ Luiz shouted after her. ‘Second cubby on the left.’

Fuck you too
, she thought, and wondered if it had been Luiz’s job to clean up Bash before her arrival on Avilon. If so, he’d been doing a very poor job of it.

She pushed Bash up against a bulkhead next to the head and stared into his empty, unseeing eyes. ‘Were you inside my head just a minute ago, Bash? Or did I really just dream all of
that?’

It hadn’t felt like a dream. It had felt
real
.

But if it
had
been real, that meant there was at least some part of Bash that was still aware of everything happening around him.

The implications chilled her. If that really was the case, then Bash had remained locked in the prison of his own body, unable to communicate with the outside world . . . for more than a
decade.

Gabrielle had hardly slept during the night, and when she woke the next morning, on the Eve of Ascension, Cassanas was still avoiding her gaze. When Gabrielle asked to dress
herself, the old woman’s only response was a mumbled nod.

An hour later, Gabrielle made her way up through the tiered decks, trailed by several of Karl’s guards, until she came to an observation deck on the very uppermost level of the great
barge. More guards under Karl’s command waited in an anteroom as she leaned against a railing, looking out towards the distant horizon, a view coloured slightly by the containment field
keeping a breathable atmosphere around the deck itself.