Children of Time (19 page)

‘Or might be what?’ Nessel prompted him.

‘Or might just be a stark raving mad psychotic human being left over from the Old Empire, who’s taken it into her head that keeping us off the planet is the single most important objective in the universe,’ he managed, looking from face to face.

‘Fuck,’ said someone, almost reverently. Evidently something in Holsten’s testimony had sounded convincing.

‘Or maybe she’ll be having a good day and she’ll just take over the shuttle’s systems and fly you back to the
Gilgamesh
,’ Lain suggested sweetly.

‘Ah, on that subject,’ the pilot broke in, ‘it looks like our damage to the drone bays has paid off. There’s no sign of a remote launch, but . . . wait,
Gil
is launching a shuttle after us.’

Scoles spun himself around, and coasted over to see for himself.

‘Guyen is really pissed,’ came Lain’s voice
sotto voce
in Holsten’s ear.

‘He’s crazy,’ the classicist replied.

She regarded him impassively, and for a moment he thought she was going to defend the man, but then: ‘Yeah . . . no, he’s crazy all right. Perhaps it’s the sort of crazy you need to have got us all the way out here, but it’s starting to go off the bad end of the scale.’

‘They’re telling us to cut engines, surrender our weapons and give up the prisoners,’ the pilot relayed.

‘What makes them think we’d do that, now that we’re winning?’ Scoles stated.

The look that passed between Lain and Holsten was in complete accord that here, in spirit, was Vrie Guyen’s very double.

Then Scoles was hovering above them again, staring down. ‘You know that we’ll kill you if you try anything?’ he told Lain.

‘I’m trying to keep track of all the ways this venture is likely to kill me but, yes, that’s one of them.’ She looked up at him without flinching. ‘Seriously, I am more concerned about that satellite. You need to cut us free right now. You need me isolating the ship’s systems so that thing can’t just walk in and take over.’

‘Why not just cut the comms altogether?’ one of the mutineers asked.

‘Good luck on getting Mason to sweet-talk the satellite if we can’t transmit and receive,’ she pointed out acidly. ‘Feel free to have someone looking over my shoulder at all times. I’ll even talk them through what I’m doing.’

‘If we lose power or control for one moment, if I think you’re trying to slow us so the other shuttle can catch up with us . . .’ Scoles started.

‘I know, I know.’

With a scowl, the chief mutineer produced a knife and severed Lain’s bonds – and Holsten’s too, as an afterthought.

‘You sit there,’ he told the classicist. ‘Nothing for you to do yet. Once she’s done her work, you’ll get your chance with the satellite.’ Apparently he didn’t feel that making overt death threats was necessary to keep Holsten in line.

Lain – clumsy in the lack of gravity – flailed over to the comms console and belted herself down in the seat next to Nessel. ‘Right, what we’re after here . . .’ she started, and then the language between them got sufficiently technical that Holsten failed to follow. It was obvious that the work would take some time, though, both reprogramming and physically cutting connections between comms and the rest of the shuttle’s systems.

Holsten gradually fell asleep. Even as he was dropping off, he felt this was a ridiculous thing to do, considering the constant threat to life and limb, combined with the fact that he had been out of the world for a century or so not so long ago. Suspension and sleep were not quite the same, however, and as the adrenaline now ebbed from his system, it left him feeling hollowed out and bone-weary.

A hand on his shoulder woke him up. For a moment, stirred from dreams he could barely recall, he spoke a name from the old world, one a decade dead even before he embarked on the
Gilgamesh
, millennia dead now.

Then: ‘Lain?’ because he heard a woman’s voice, but instead it was Nessel the mutineer.

‘Doctor Mason,’ she said, with that curious respect she seemed to hold for him, ‘they’re ready for you.’

He undid his seatbelt, and allowed them to pass him unceremoniously hand over hand across the ceiling, until Lain could reach out and snag him, and drag him into the comms chair.

‘How far out are we?’ he asked her.

‘It’s taken me longer than I’d thought to make sure I cut every single connection to comms. And because our friends here don’t trust me, and kept getting me to stop in case I was doing something nefarious. We’ve shielded all the shuttle’s systems from any outside transmission, though. Nothing is accepting any connection that isn’t hardwired into the ship itself, except the comms – and the comms don’t interact with the rest of what we’ve got in here. The most Doctor Avrana Kern can manage now is to take over the comms panel and shout at us.’

‘And destroy us with her lasers,’ Holsten pointed out.

‘Yeah, well, and that. But you better get on with telling her not to, right now, because the sat’s started signalling.’

Holsten felt a shudder go through him. ‘Show me.’

It was a familiar message, identifying the satellite as the Second Brin Sentry Habitat and instructing them to avoid the planet – just what they’d got when they interrupted the distress beacon the first time.
But that time we’d signalled it, and it hadn’t noticed us inbound. This time we’re in a much smaller ship and it’s taking the initiative. Something’s still awake over there.

He remembered the electronic spectre of Avrana Kern appearing on the screens of the
Gilgamesh
comms room, her voice translated into their native tongue – a facility with language that neither he nor Lain had felt the need to comment on to the mutineers. Instead, though, he decided to keep matters formal just for now. He readied a message,
May I speak to Eliza?
, translated it into Imperial C and sent it, counting the shortening minutes until a response could be expected.

‘Let’s see who’s home,’ Lain murmured in his ear, peering over his shoulder.

The response came back to him, and it was disturbing and reassuring in equal measures – the latter because at least the situation on the satellite was as he remembered.

The translation came easily. Nessel, poised at his other shoulder, made a baffled noise.

Eliza, we will not interfere with Kern’s World. We are a scientific mission come to observe the progress of your experiment. Please confirm permission to land.
Holsten thought it was worth a try.

Waiting for the reply was just as wearing on the nerves as he remembered. ‘Any idea when we’ll be in range of its lasers?’ he asked Lain.

‘Based on Karst’s drones, I think we have four hours nineteen minutes. Make them count.’

Eliza, I would like to speak to your sister Avrana
, Holsten sent immediately, aware of time falling away, their limited stock of seconds dropping through the glass.

‘Brace yourselves,’ Lain warned. ‘If we didn’t get this right, we might be about to lose everything, possibly including life-support.’

The voice that spoke through the comms panel – without anyone giving it permission – was sticking to Imperial C at that moment, though to Holsten its haughty tones were unmistakable. The content was little more than a more aggressive demand that they alter their course.

Doctor Kern,
Holsten sent,
we are here to observe your great experiment. We will not alter anything on the planet, but surely some manner of observation is permitted. Your experiment has been running for a very long period of time. Surely it should have come to fruition by now? Can we assist you? Perhaps if we gather data you may be able to put it to use?
In truth he had no certain idea what Kern’s experiment was – though by now he had formed some theories – and he was simply bouncing off what he had gleaned from Kern’s own stream-of-consciousness thoughts, transmitted along with Eliza’s sober words.

You lie
, came the reply, and his heart sank.
Do you think I cannot hear the traffic in this system? You are fugitives, criminals, vermin amongst vermin. Already the vessel pursuing you has asked me to disable your craft so that they may bring you to justice.

Holsten stared at the words, his mind working furiously. For a moment there he had been negotiating with Kern in good faith as though he was actually a mutineer himself. He had almost forgotten his status as hostage.

His hands hovered, ready to send the next signal,
Why don’t you do just that . . . ?

Something cold pressed into his ear. His eyes flicked sideways to catch Nessel’s hard expression.

‘Don’t even think it,’ she told him. ‘Because if this ship gets stopped, you and the engineer won’t live to get rescued.’

‘Shoot a gun in here and you’re likely to punch a hole straight through the hull,’ Lain said tightly.

‘Then don’t give us an excuse.’ Nessel nodded at the console. ‘You might be the expert, Doctor Mason, but don’t think I’m not catching most of this.’

Typical that
now
I find an able student
, Holsten thought despairingly. ‘So what do you want me to say?’ he demanded. ‘You heard what I heard, then – that she knows what we are. She’s receiving all the transmissions from the
Gilgamesh
and the other shuttle.’

‘Tell her about the moon colony,’ Scoles snapped. ‘Tell her what they wanted us to do!’

‘Whatever we’re talking to now has been in a satellite smaller than this shuttle since the end of the Old Empire. You’re looking for
sympathy
?’ Lain demanded.

Doctor Kern, we are human beings, like you
, Holsten sent, wondering how true that latter part could possibly be.
You could have destroyed the
Gilgamesh
and you did not. I understand how important your experiment is to you –
another lie –
but, please, we are human beings. I am a hostage on this vessel. I am a scholar like you. If you do as you say, they will kill me
. The words passed into cold, dead Imperial C like a treatise, as though Holsten Mason was already a figure long consigned to history, to be debated over by academics of a latter age.

The gaps between message and response were ever shorter as they closed with the planet.

‘No,’ Holsten shouted, ‘not back to Eliza!’ startling the mutineers.

‘What’s going on?’ Scoles demanded. ‘Nessel—?’

‘We’ve . . . dropped back a step or something?’

Holsten sat back numbly, his mind quite blank.

Suddenly Scoles was speaking in his ear. ‘Is that it, then? You’re out of ideas?’ in tones crammed with dangerous subtext.

‘Wait!’ Holsten said, but for a perilous moment his mind remained completely empty. He had nothing.

Then he had something. ‘Lain, do we have the drone footage?’

‘Ah . . .’ Lain scrabbled and clawed her way over to another console, fighting for space with the mutineer already seated there. ‘Karst’s recording? I . . . Yes, I have it.’

‘Get it onto the comms panel.’

‘Are you sure? Only . . .’

‘Please, Lain.’

Circumventing the comms isolation without opening the ship up to contamination was a surprisingly complex process, but Lain and one of the mutineers set up a second isolated dropbox with the data, and then patched it into the comms system. Holsten imagined the invisible influence of Doctor Kern flooding down the new connection only to find just another dead end.

Doctor Avrana Kern
, he readied his next message.
I think you should reconsider the need of your experimental world for an observer. When our ship passed your world last, a remote camera captured some images from down there. I think you need to see this.

It was a gamble, a terrible game to play with whatever deranged fragments of Kern still inhabited the satellite, but there was a gun to his head. And besides, he could not deny a certain measure of academic curiosity.
How will you react?

He sent the message and the file, guessing that Kern’s recent exposure to the
Gilgamesh
’s systems would allow her to decode the data.

Bare minutes later there was an incomprehensible transmission from the satellite, very little more than white noise, and then: