No Direction Home (26 page)

‘But what about the others?' demanded Sharma. ‘Teixeira, Barzini and whoever polluted the water? They weren't New Dawn.'

‘True – and they weren't armed, either, but with Barzini and the sewage merchant, they were much more opportunistic – a case of using their own jobs to cause damage. They happened to be awake, so they reacted to the order. As for Teixeira, Vinter Two would also have known that most of UNSEC would be awoken once Stalker showed up on our screens, and Teixeira would be one of those.' He shrugged. ‘It might not be a hundred per cent effective – there may be people who he assumed would be awake who aren't – but he's still producing a pretty respectable strike rate, I'd say.'
The boy's done good…

Sharma was leaning forward in his seat, following up the implications. ‘But for them to do all this, they must have set it all up before we even left Earth, correct?'

Vinter nodded. ‘Absolutely correct, Captain. They were thinking long term. They knew New Dawn had infiltrated
Terra Nova
, but couldn't prevent it happening, so they managed to gain access to some of the people on board here to – well, to put it crudely, to mess with their heads, so that they'll react to specific coded instructions. You could do it by post-hypnotic suggestion or, apparently, by injecting nanobots that would have the same effect – either way, it wouldn't take long. The injection could have taken place during a medical examination, for example, or the post-hypnotic suggestion could be implanted during a period of unconsciousness – falling asleep while with a sexual partner or a prostitute, perhaps.'

‘But this was eighty years ago!' Teymourian protested.

Yeah, and you're trying to remember who you slept with after you were selected for this mission, aren't you – same as everyone else in this room…

‘As I said, they were thinking long term. If EarthCorp couldn't send Stalker straight after us and had to go for the later option – sending their own starship that would arrive after you and would then have to take the colony from you – then these sleepers would kick in then. As it is, they're using them now, but they always intended to use them at some point. They weren't going to let you have Terra Nova, or whatever you intend to call the planet, without a fight.'

‘And let us not under-estimate the effect they are already having,' said Ferreira grimly. ‘Fifty percent casualties is not exactly an insignificant number, but that isn't even the primary reason for these incidents. They are doing this in order to achieve the kind of disruption and panic that we are now seeing. We are having to change our procedures – for example, we will probably have to start searching everyone going into the Social Area from now on, or even declare it off-limits, and we are going to have to institute a three man unit system as opposed to two throughout the ship. Extra guards for the Engineering and Environmental Sections, extra precautions to be taken when logging into the Ship's Network, along with limiting access to it in any case, because we still don't know how these commands are reaching the sleepers, and so on. It is causing a good deal of disruption for little effort on their part – and I apologise to Major Vinter for stealing his thunder, because that was the very point he made to me when this all started.'

Vinter shrugged. ‘OK by me. The thing is, Captain, that it almost doesn't matter if it
is
unco-ordinated. It's the simple fact that it's happening at all that's got us running around, expending energy and resources that could be better used to defend this ship.

‘But there's worse to come, I'm afraid. We can be sure that they won't have used up all their sleepers by the time they make their attack. That's when they'll really go for it. We can expect a full-scale outbreak of these berserker attacks while we're trying to fight off their main assault. We're going to have to deal with both at the same time.'

Ferreira nodded emphatically. ‘And, in the meantime, we must remain vigilant. We now know that these sleepers can strike when and where they please.'

‘And we will not know who we can trust,' said Sharma gloomily.

‘It's worse than that,' said Vinter. ‘We don't even know if we can trust
ourselves
, when it comes right down to it. Any one of us
could
be a sleeper. And that is exactly what they want us to be thinking.'

Ferreira nodded. ‘Exactly.' He rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘I think that is all for the moment, lady and gentlemen. In fact, I think it is more than enough. I'm afraid you will all need to draw up revised duty rosters asap. So, unless anyone has anything else to contribute…?'

It was a thinly veiled dismissal, but as the Command Team to their feet, Ferreira said, ‘Not you, Vinter. There's one more thing I need to discuss.'

Vinter stared back at him, aware of the resentful looks from the others as they left, then shrugged. ‘OK.' He waited until the door had closed behind them, then said, ‘One more thing?'

‘Lieutenant Sondgren. Is she ready to return to duty?'

Vinter hesitated for a moment, taken aback by the abrupt change of subject. ‘I don't know. I'd have to talk to her.'

‘She came to see me with a suggestion about dealing with any sleeper attacks that EarthCorp launch during their final assault. That was before she had to shoot the berserker, however.'

‘Indeed?' Vinter hoped he wasn't overdoing the surprised expression.

‘Indeed,' Ferreira echoed. ‘I take it she hasn't mentioned it to you?'

Vinter shook his head. ‘Until the shooting incident, we hadn't exactly spoken very much recently, to be honest.'

‘I see… Anyway, her suggestion was that UNSEC deals with any sleeper incidents, leaving my troops available for front line combat duties. After this latest development, I am inclined to agree to that.'

Vinter nodded slowly. ‘Makes sense. Strictly speaking, such incidents
are
security matters, when all's said and done. It's exactly these scenarios – terrorist incidents, that sort of thing – that they're trained to deal with, after all.'

‘
They're
trained to deal with?'

‘I don't think any of them regard me as part of their team any more.'

‘Probably not, I suppose… Sondgren suggested drawing up teams that can be rapidly deployed, with one New Dawn member in each, as part of our anti-berserker policy.'

‘Again, sounds good.'

Ferreira stared directly at him. ‘She also suggested that she be put in overall command of these teams. In effect, she would be taking over as Senior UNSEC officer. How do you feel about that? Is she up to it?'

‘Have you seen her record? Of course she's up to it.'

‘Even after the shooting incident?'

‘As I said then, she's pretty resilient.'
She'll damn well have to be, unfortunately…
Vinter leaned forward in his chair. ‘Look, Colonel, thanks to you and your control device, they won't take orders from me, but they will from her, so she's pretty much the head of UNSEC anyway. I don't see that you have any other choice. And this
is
the most sensible option for the berserker situation. When the attack happens, you don't want
your
troops chasing off after them – that'll be playing into EarthCorp's hands.'

Ferreira sighed. ‘True. Very well – I'll put her in charge, but I'll have one of my officers monitoring her.'

‘You mean you don't trust her.'

‘I don't trust any of you, to be perfectly frank, Vinter. But I also don't see why I shouldn't adopt this approach – and, as you say, she is the best choice for it.'

Nicely done, Kari…

*****

‘Who is it?' said Kari's voice from the speaker next to her door.

‘Inspector Vinter.'

‘Oh… Oh, OK. Come on in.'

The door unlocked and slid open to let him in. Kari was rising to her feet from the sofa, but he motioned her to sit down again; there was a bottle of wine and a glass that was two-thirds full on the table in front of her. She noticed his look and smiled bleakly. ‘Don't worry, sir – I'm not drunk and incapable. Honestly. Well – not yet, anyway.'

‘Wouldn't blame you if you were.' He gestured at the bottle. ‘Do you want a hand with that?'

Again, a trace of a smile crossed her lips and she nodded. ‘There's a glass next to the sink.'

He found it and brought it over, sitting down opposite her in the armchair.

She poured him a drink. ‘
Skoal
.'

‘Cheers.'

‘OK, have you come to check that I'm – what? – bearing up under the strain?'

‘Something like that, yes.'

She nodded. ‘I
think
I'm over the worst of it. It was just the shock of it – it all happened so quickly.' She drew in a long breath. ‘My first time, you see. I've never even had to draw my weapon on duty before, let alone use it. I guess I hoped I'd never have to.'

‘That's because we generally
don't
have to – we're not soldiers, when all's said and done. We're there to try and defuse situations like that if we can.'

‘I know – but that was what upset me. I'm supposed to protect people, but I didn't. I know you can't always do that, but…'

‘Actually, you
did
protect people. If you hadn't intervened, he'd just have gone on and killed others and it would have been someone else who stopped him. As it was, it was you – so you saved the lives of all those others. And there was really nothing else you could have done. If you'd gone through the proper warning procedures, telling him to put down his weapon and arresting him with minimum force, all that crap, you'd have ended up dead as well. You had to stop him then and there – and you did. You did your job, Kari – it's as simple as that.'

Her eyes had never left his face; now, she nodded slowly. ‘Thanks for that, sir. I really do appreciate it, but… But that wasn't what I was thinking at the time – you know, doing my job. I just wanted to kill him before he killed me – and I wanted to make damn sure I
did
kill him. It was pure terror that drove me, to be honest.'

‘So? You don't need to beat yourself up about it, Kari. You were confronted with someone who was effectively a killing machine with enough firepower to murder twenty people. So what if you
were
scared? You still did what you had to do – nothing else would have stopped him. And if you
weren't
scared in that situation… well, there'd be something wrong with you, wouldn't there? Even
I
would have been scared – and I'm supposed to be a super-warrior, remember?'

Now, she smiled tiredly. ‘Again, thanks for that, sir – even if I didn't believe that last bit at all.'

‘Just for the record, it's true…' Vinter hesitated, then said, ‘Look, I didn't really want to ask you this so soon, but how do you feel about returning to duty? Ferreira's gone for your suggestion about UNSEC being put in charge of sleeper incidents, so–'

She glanced sharply at him. ‘He has?'

‘Yes. You'll have someone monitoring you, but we were expecting that anyway. He's going to put you in operational control.'

She stared at him, then nodded. ‘OK… I'll be back tomorrow, then.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Absolutely.' She saw his dubious expression and said, ‘Honestly, I'm up for this, especially now. You need me for this, don't you?'

‘Yes, but–'

‘So we'll do it. Look, sir, I can handle it, really.' She shrugged. ‘I'd just as soon report back for duty, anyway, just to stop me brooding.'

‘You don't need to brood about what you did. Like I said, you couldn't have done anything else.'

‘I know… but it isn't just about shooting that guy – well, some of it is, but not all. I'm not making much sense, am I?'

‘Not a lot, no.'

She pulled her knees up in front of her and hugged them, pressing her chin against them. ‘It's just that I can't help feeling we're so alone out here, on a journey that we won't finish for another two hundred and fifty years and with no way of going back to where we came from. And then I start thinking about Earth and… Everyone I ever knew on Earth must be dead… And, OK, it's the same for everyone else, but…' She shrugged. ‘I suppose it's because I don't know how all this is going to turn out… I just seem a long way from home at the moment. Only there isn't one any more, not for me, because…' She broke off again and looked away from him.

‘Go on,' he prompted gently.

‘It… it's Mom and Dad, you see.' Her eyes came back to his face. ‘I knew I'd never see them again once we left Earth, but they insisted I go – gave me their blessing, said it was the chance of a lifetime. And I suppose I thought that, by the time we reached Delta Pavonis, they'd be long gone anyway and I'd be able to live with that. They'd promised to send a message every year on my birthday, just filling me in on what was happening, how everyone was, that sort of thing, so that I'd still be in touch, in a way, and I'd know how things turned out for them – but now they're gone… They only ever sent eight birthday messages before – well, you know… before we lost contact with Earth.'

Vinter stared at her, realising that she had never seen the footage Lahtinen had shown him, seemingly ages ago now; she had no way of knowing what had happened on Earth, not for certain.

‘I don't know if they ever grew old together, the way they wanted to,' she continued. ‘Those messages are all I've got left of them now and they just
stop
…' He could see tears glistening in her eyes. ‘I'll never know what happened to them after that… I've got nobody now.' She wiped her eyes with an impatient gesture, then forced an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry about this, sir.'