Roboteer (32 page)

They slouched exhausted in the plastic seats as the little vehicle raced across the rocky expanse. For a while, all was right with the world. They’d escaped the city alive – something Will had seriously doubted was ever going to happen.

But their mood soon turned from exhilaration back to worry. They weren’t off the planet yet. And if they did make it into space, who knew what they were supposed to do next? They were still out of fuel, and even if they managed to run down some Earther ship, they had no John to make a soft assault. The Earthers now knew they were in the system and would be on full alert.

Will had to hope that somewhere between the nest archive and the Transcended in his head there was some trick that could save them. Assuming he still had a link to the Transcended, of course, now that his micromachines were gone.

After a long, uneasy silence, Rachel spoke up. ‘Why do you suppose the resistance wanted us dead at Earther hands?’

‘So they wouldn’t be implicated,’ said Will. ‘Or that’s my guess, at least. If they killed us themselves, the Earther forces would be all over them as soon as word got out.’

‘But why did they want us dead in the first place?’ Rachel pressed. ‘Why go to all the bother of healing you and then killing us?’

‘Maybe something bad happened during John’s negotiations,’ he suggested. ‘Or maybe the Earthers got wind of their plan, and so they sacrificed us to save themselves.’

There was no way to know. They just had to be glad they’d got this far.

Will slowed the transit before they reached the hangar and queried the building through the car’s information link. They couldn’t be too careful, he reasoned. There was always the possibility that the police had worked out their destination and set up an ambush. However, nothing appeared to be out of place. There were no new vehicles present and the life-support systems were idling on minimum. None of the site security had been engaged, either.

‘It all looks clear,’ he told the others. ‘I’m taking us in.’

‘How long do you think we’ve got before the Earthers work out where we are?’ asked Rachel.

Will shrugged. ‘I can’t say. With the authorities this edgy, our take-off is bound to draw some attention, no matter how good John’s hacking was. I think we should get out as fast as we can.’

As soon as they reached the hangar, Rachel took up lead position with her borrowed assault cannon while Will and Hugo brought up the rear. Will checked the cameras and habitat settings in advance as they moved from room to room. Fortunately they were all empty, and they quickly retrieved their environment suits from the lockers. From there, it was a quick walk to the final airlock and their shuttle.

Will activated the pilot SAP and took them up in what he dearly hoped was a suitable approximation of a normal freighter’s flight path. He kept an eye on air-traffic control as they went, expecting an alert at any minute. None came. The police system didn’t respond to any of his queries. Apparently John’s last crash program had been even more effective than Will dared hope. That was one blessing they could count, at least.

The flight out to the rendezvous point and the waiting that followed were horribly tense. Will spent the entire time checking and rechecking the scanners for signs of Earther pursuit. There was plenty of frenetic activity in New Angeles orbit and a few sorties into deeper space, but nothing that came near enough to consitute a threat.

Will could hardly believe their good fortune when the ship that finally descended upon them was the
Ariel
. It flashed in under stealth, swung up on its torches to meet them and cradled the shuttle to its massive belly.

As soon as the docking pod was extended, Will and the others made for the habitat module with all speed. Will tumbled through the opening door into the familiarly cramped cabin like a shipwreck survivor reaching dry land. He breathed in the familiar smell of recycled air with a grateful gasp.

Ira was waiting anxiously for them just inside the doorway, his face lined with worry. The last two days of sitting and waiting had taken a visible toll.

‘Where’s John?’ he said.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Rachel spoke.

‘John’s dead.’

Ira’s face grew solemn. ‘How?’

She set about explaining what had happened on the planet. Ira absorbed the news gravely, showing about as much emotion as a rock. When she’d finished her breathless account, he spoke again.

‘Not good,’ was all he said.

‘Captain!’ called Amy from her bunk. ‘We have six Earther pursuit ships closing on us, fast.’

Will’s heart sank. It appeared their escape hadn’t been quite so complete after all.

Ira grimaced and looked at Rachel. ‘Were you followed?’

Rachel shook her head vehemently. ‘No, sir. There was no sign of enemy activity at any point before we docked. They might have tracked the shuttle from a distance, but there was no sign of a tracer scan.’

‘All right, everybody,’ said Ira, ‘it’s time to use up what little antimatter we have left. You three get to your stations. This is going to be rough.’

Rachel nodded and did as she was told.

Will yanked off the gloves from his suit. As the second one came free, a peculiar puff of smoke rose from the fitting.

Suddenly, Will discovered he couldn’t breathe.

‘Ca—’

That was all he managed to say before a black tide of nausea overwhelmed him. Then there was only darkness.

13.2: WILL

Will woke to a sense of profound discomfort. His skull felt horribly compressed, as if from the world’s worst head cold, and his limbs were leaden and shot through with pins and needles. He opened gummy eyes and found himself sprawled out on a plastic floor, looking at several pairs of brightly coloured boots.

‘Awake already?’ said a voice. ‘Sit him up.’

Two pairs of boots strode forward. Will was grabbed by the arms and hauled upright. For a moment, his vision narrowed again into nauseous darkness. He groaned. By the time his senses cleared, he’d been propped against a wall like a rag doll. He blinked hard and took his first focused look at his surroundings.

He was in a windowless room of lifeless beige. It could have been in any one of a thousand habitats across the human galactic shell. Four members of the Protectorate Police stood on either side of a plump man dressed in gold, red, yellow and black. His soft, round face and coffee-coloured skin were at odds with a pair of shrewd, pale-brown eyes. He looked inordinately pleased with himself.

‘I wouldn’t try to move if I were you,’ the man said, bouncing on his toes.

That was the last thing on Will’s mind. He was still reeling from being manhandled.

‘You’re recovering from a disabling immune response,’ the man explained. ‘I recommend remaining still and taking shallow, even breaths.’

Will attempted to voice his contempt but his throat was both constricted and raw. All that came out was a harsh wheeze.

‘I expect you’re wondering where you are,’ the policeman said. ‘The answer is the Protectorate Command Station in orbit around New Angeles.’

Will shut his eyes in misery.

‘Ah!’ the man said enthusiastically. ‘Your associates are beginning to recover. Galatean physiology is a remarkable thing. Put them against the wall, men. They’re not going anywhere in a hurry and I want to see their faces while I talk to them.’

Ira was dumped up against the wall beside Will.

‘Let me introduce myself,’ said the soft-faced man. ‘My name is Civil Coordinator Enrique Chopra, and I’m the man who caught you. Who’d have thought it: a ship full of pure-bred geniuses captured by a peasant from the prote-farms. Where’s your racial pride now, I wonder?’ He chastised them with a wagging finger. ‘You geniuses should have taken a closer look at your environment suits before you got back into your clever little shuttle. Once we received the tip-off that you were here, it was relatively easy to work out how you’d arrived. Just a process of simple deductive reasoning.’

It sounded as if he considered the reasoning anything but simple.

Chopra watched as Hugo, Amy and Rachel joined their crewmates in the line forming against the wall.

Will tested his limbs. He could move them a little if he tried hard. And it was getting easier to breathe, thank Gal.

‘However,’ said Chopra, ‘I do have to congratulate you on the ingenuity of your security systems – Galatean software is indeed as good as I’ve been led to believe. Without the comms leeches I had attached to your shuttle’s hull, we would never have been able to get into your habitat sphere to rescue you. However, you should feel fortunate that I took the steps I did,’ he said with a grin. ‘Without an antidote, the toxin you inhaled is quite fatal.’

He waved a hand. ‘But here I am, talking about myself when I couldn’t have done it without the help of our friend.’ He surveyed the
Ariel
’s crew with a kind of hungry curiosity. ‘So which of you do I have to thank for this moment? Which one of you is
Will
?’

Will’s blood ran cold.

‘No reply?’ said Chopra with a cocked eyebrow. ‘Well, I imagine it’s still a little hard to talk, isn’t it? Sergeant Wu, why don’t you give them each another dose of clarifier.’

One of the police officers stepped forwards and started administering a hypodermic gun to each of the Galateans’ necks in turn.

‘Come now,’ said Chopra. ‘It must be one of you? Who sent us the tip-off with the rendezvous coordinates?’

Will was appalled. He didn’t understand. Why would someone do such a thing and claim it in his name?

‘Will, what’s going on?’ croaked Ira.

‘I don’t know,’ Will gasped back.

‘Ah!’ said Chopra gleefully. ‘So we have a face for our friend.’ He fixed his gaze on Will.

‘Fuck you,’ said Will. ‘I sent nothing.’

Chopra rolled his eyes in amusement. ‘Well, we received a tip-off from someone.’

‘Traitor!’ Hugo hissed. ‘He betrayed us, Captain. I knew he would.’

Will felt a fresh surge of hatred towards Hugo. Suddenly it all clicked together in his head – Hugo’s bitterness, his cryptic smiles, his urgent desire to get out of the car the moment they were captured. He’d thought it was safe to sell them all out to save humanity from his imagined alien menace. But he’d reckoned without the resistance and their inside knowledge of the police. No wonder the poor bastards didn’t feel they could trust the Galateans any more.

‘You did it, didn’t you, you stupid fuck?’ Will grated. He tried to turn his unresponsive head to look Hugo in the face, without success. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Because you couldn’t bully me into talking?’

‘
Me?
’ sneered Hugo. ‘I never touched a keyboard the whole time we were there. You were the one with the data link on your neck.’

‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ said Chopra with a gleaming-white smile. ‘It’s refreshing to see such a team spirit at work among the most highly evolved people in the galaxy.’

Will ignored him. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘you have to believe me. I sent nothing.’

Ira remained silent.

Chopra pointed at Will. ‘Separate him from the others,’ he told his men.

The guards picked Will up. He struggled feebly and, for a single horrible moment, got to gaze upon the faces of his shipmates, who were all staring at him. Their expressions revealed their opinions of him with awful clarity. Only Rachel’s was free from doubt. Hugo’s was red with hate.

In the next second they were gone and Will was being carried, helpless, along the gently curving corridor. They took him to an interrogation room and propped him up in a plastic chair on one side of a scratched and dented table. Chopra seated himself with some decorum in the chair on the other side.

‘Leave us,’ he told the guards, shooing them away with his hand.

‘Sir—’ started one of the guards.

‘I said
go
.’

For a moment, Will glimpsed the hard man beneath Chopra’s soft exterior. The last guard shut the door behind him.

Chopra arranged himself slowly, sitting at an angle to the table, his legs casually crossed, one elbow braced on the tabletop.

‘It’s okay now,’ he said with a conspiratorial smile. ‘You can drop your little subterfuge. No one believes you anyway, and nothing you say here will go further than these walls.’

‘Fuck you,’ Will growled.

Chopra sighed. ‘Then you still claim you didn’t send us the tip-off?’

Will glared at him.

‘It will go easier for you if you confess,’ said Chopra, ending his sentence on an expectant rise, but Will gave no reply.

Chopra looked genuinely confused. ‘Why else was a note sent to us on a private channel identifying you as a willing defector?’

Will would have liked to know, too. Why had
he
been picked out to look like the traitor? Hugo’s spite was the most obvious answer. However, the only reason Will could think of to explain why Hugo might betray them was if he believed the Transcended posed a greater threat to humanity than the Earthers. That certainly fitted the pattern of the man’s behaviour, but it required him to have engaged in some very subtle spy work. Will tried to calculate when and how Hugo could have informed the authorities without the rest of the
Ariel
’s crew noticing.

Another possible culprit was the resistance. They’d provided him with the incriminating data link, and their animosity had been clear from the outset. But why would they have chosen to give his name in particular?

The last possibility was that Hugo was right, and Will
had
sent the message himself. Or rather the Transcended had, via Will. But he didn’t believe they’d bother doing something as petty as that. They’d had plenty of chances to directly intervene in his actions before and taken none of them.

Whatever the answer, Will would certainly look like the guilty party to the others. And he’d further reduced his credibility with his crewmates by accusing one of his own people without thinking. Not that it mattered much now. The Kingdom of Man didn’t have a great track record for human rights when it came to dealing with prisoners.