Crossing the Line (11 page)

The cabin was the only available accommodation for a woman, short of putting her in with the female ratings, and they would have liked that even less than she would. Natalie wasn't all that enthusiastic about sharing either. The two women retreated to the privacy of the sealed bunks if they happened to have downtime that coincided.

Pulling down the shutter felt like sealing the lid on her own coffin. She put her palm against the bulkhead to reassure herself that it wasn't pressing down on her, and the aftershock of Ade Bennett's revelation struck her yet again. They were so desperate for this bloody biotech that they would even dig up her son's body, just in case. They would dig him up without even telling her.
Her baby.

Lindsay tried to stifle the sobs. But nobody could hear her behind that shutter anyway. She wondered whether Shan wept in private too, or whether her police duties had numbed her emotions so much that she had no tears left for anyone, even behind closed doors. Lindsay could picture her in any number of situations; but she could never conjure up an image of Shan grieving or consumed by fear or even overwhelmed by love.

And that was what
she
would have to emulate. She would have to be Shan, and put aside normal humanity, and just get the job done.

A switch had been thrown somewhere inside Lindsay. The biotech had at first seemed wonderful, capable of being harnessed for its medical benefits. Then it had quickly grown into a commodity she resented pursuing; and now it had emerged as a monstrous threat that made men and women—
normal
people—abandon all decency.

The wess'har seemed to be able to take breathtaking technology in their stride without taking Pandora's box, upending it, and shaking every last woe and demon out of it. She'd hoped humanity might have grown up too, but it hadn't.

It was a weapon, a costly privilege, a bringer of social chaos. It was everything Shan had said it was. Lindsay understood why Shan wouldn't hand it over, not even for a child's life. It didn't lessen the grief or the pain one bit, but she finally understood that it was the only choice the woman had.

Lindsay wondered whether Shan had agonized over the decision or acted without a single flicker of emotion. It didn't matter. Lindsay almost sympathized now.

But that didn't matter either. It simply meant that now—even more than ever—she had to kill and destroy Shan Frankland.

 

The construction of the biosphere at Jejeno had given Eddie a break from endless shots of isenj buildings. News Desk had really liked the urban dystopia theme because it was alien: alien was big at the moment, apparently. The viewing figures were at an all-time high. Nobody cared why as long as they stayed that way.

He let the bee-cam wander round the construction site getting charming shots of isenj laborers and suited humans working together to lay foundations. He wondered how many isenj had been displaced to create this free space in a city where space was the scarcest resource.

“Several thousand,” said Serrimissani, translating the bubbling and chittering of an isenj worker. “And all happy to move, because humans will be valuable friends.”

Move where?
Eddie mentally conjured up the shot of Umeh from the orbital station and could recall only a few patches on the planet that looked unpopulated. They were deserts and ice plains. But then isenj were as physically adaptable as cockroaches—

He wished he hadn't thought that, not in those terms. Not
cockroaches
. It was biologically true and ethically unacceptable.

“Can I talk to the site foreman about materials?” he said, and shook himself out of his liberal guilt. He ambushed a civilian steering a loader laden with bales of translucent green rope at a sedate pace along a path where the foundations had already set hard. “Hey, is this the plumbing?”

The bee-cam danced attendance round the driver's head. She was making a valiant effort not to look directly at it. “It's the deckhead,” she said, bobbing her head slightly as if dodging imaginary bullets. “The roof. We web the lines across the framework and apply some chemical and current, and bang, it spreads out in a film and seals the dome.”

“When's that due to happen? Can I get some shots of that?”

The driver pointed towards a man in a vivid orange coverall. “Ask the foreman,” she said. Then she leaned a little further towards him. “Look, this biotech thing that woman's carrying. Is it true that it makes you live forever?”

“I wouldn't know,” Eddie replied, rather too fast. “And if it did, the likes of us wouldn't be able to afford it, would we?”

“Yeah,” said the driver. But her expression said that she thought it might be worth saving up for.

Eddie shook off the dull burn in his gut that mention of Shan's little refinements always seemed to give him lately. It was one more weight on the scale of burdensome knowledge that was disturbing his sleep: he hadn't yet mentioned
Here-ward
to Lindsay. If she knew about it, then she hadn't traded information with him as they'd both agreed they would. But if she hadn't known about Rayat, then it was possible that she might have been out of the loop completely. He'd give her the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

Eddie concentrated on being busy. A full schedule of filming for the next few days always made him feel purposeful and alive. Not that he cared if News Desk thought he was slacking, of course. Boy Editor was no longer pressing him on biotech stories: Eddie had heard that there were people who really, really wanted knowledge of it to stay off the air until they had managed to secure it for themselves. Time was when nobody, not even governments, could get away with leaning on BBChan. Times had obviously changed.

He cadged a lift back to the back to the grounded shuttle and sweet-talked the pilot into letting him have a comms channel to watch the news.
His
news.

“You see your own material when you edit it,” she said, as if she were going to put up a verbal fight. “Why'd you want to see it broadcast as well?”

“It's more real when it's broadcast.”

“Yeah.”

“And I want to see if they've hacked it about.”

She considered him carefully. “Okay.”

Eddie tended to lose track of Earth time zones even though he had several clock displays set on the editing screen he carried with him. He unrolled it to check: he was early for the evening European bulletin. The pilot made a “wow” noise at the sight of the near obsolete tech and peered at it as if it were a valuable antique, which—when he finally got home—it probably would be, if it hadn't had
PROPERTY OF BBCHAN
coded into every component.

Eddie caught the tail end of a call-in debate instead. A man in a suit (and they never changed with time, he noted) was being interrupted by an angry taxpayer.

“They're going to overrun us,” said the caller, his irate face framed in an insert in the corner of the screen. “You've seen the reports on the news. Just take a look at what their own planet's like. And you're letting them land here?”

“I can assure you—” the suit began, but he was shouted down by the studio audience. Global comms or not, nothing could equal the collective anger of humans in the same room within sniffing range of each other's pheromones. Eddie was glad to see that some old TV formulas had survived. The interviewer struggled to restore some sort of order, but even with the bee-mikes in the studio silenced, Eddie could still pick up the clamor of voices. The trails for upcoming shows were already running in the icon slot on the screen.

“I think they were talking about our generous hosts,” said the pilot.

“I think you're right,” said Eddie. “I don't need to see the news now, thanks.”

He rolled up his screen and slipped it into his pocket. He was experiencing the first few seconds after a car crash, when something had been done that could not be undone, however much it wasn't your fault, and however strongly you willed time to run back.

“Window,” he said, and the pilot looked at him as if he were mad.

Asajin was dead. Mestin hadn't known her well but she noted her disposal with regret. Her four
jurej've
walked through the fields carrying the
dhren
-wrapped body on a pallet and Mestin's heart went out to them. Other wess'har who were harvesting yellow-leaf stopped and glanced before going about their business.

Mestin was managing F'nar the only way she knew, by walking about the city, seeing what was happening and what people were saying, with Nevyan and Siyyas at her heels. She was conscious that it was a theoretical hierarchy and that there was no true hormonal dominance to warrant the two junior matriarchs bothering to defer to her: she was only dominant because a
gethes
—unpredictable, unfathomable Shan Frankland—had ceded her rights. The common good would hold a consensus together, but Mestin worried that she would lack the
jask
, the ferociously protective decisiveness, to make the right choices in a true crisis.

She was not afraid of her peers turning on her. She was afraid of failure. Failure was something she felt Wess'ej would not be able to afford in the coming years.

Mestin stared after the sad little party disappearing into the shimmering amber heat haze. The males would leave their dead
isan
out on the plain for the real
gethes,
the many native species that ate dead flesh, and come back to face an uncertain future.

“Who will take them?” she asked. Asajin had died earlier that morning and it was high time other matriarchs came forward to give homes to the children and
oursan
to the males. Nobody liked splitting up a family. It was a difficult calculation to work out which male would fit in best to which household. Once they were mated again, it would be all harmony and contentment but there was a brief, awkward time when matriarchs would ponder over which genetic qualities they might add to the family mix.

Mestin thought they had better be quick about it. The males looked in poor condition, dull-skinned and lacking a decent sheen to their hair. Asajin had been ill for some time; her
jurej've
had not had the frequency of
oursan
they needed to stay fit. The youngest one, still suckling a child, looked worst of all.

“I will,” said Nevyan.

Mestin thought of stopping and arguing with her daughter but decided against it. “What's in them that you would add to the clan, then?”

“It's more that they're in need of an
isan,
” Nevyan said. “And if I'm to follow you one day, then I must learn duty.”

Nevyan had never shown signs of bonding with any junior male in particular, and there had been much speculation about what she was looking for in a
jurej.
Mestin had always thought another shot of genes from the confident Fersanye clan would have done the line no end of good, as well as cementing a clan bond. But Nevyan had to make her own choices.

Siyyas said nothing. There was no scent at all to add a silent comment on the conversation; and Siyyas was not the
isan
her sharp-minded, perceptive aunt the matriarch-historian Siyyas Bur was. So much for genetics, Mestin thought.

“Most considerate, not to break up a family,” said Mestin. However warmly the males and their children would be welcomed into new clans, separating house-brothers was painful. Establishing a household anew with an unmated
isan
was a pragmatic and compassionate move. It wasn't what she had wanted for Nevyan, but she was proud of her. Nevyan would one day make far better choices for F'nar than she ever could.

“I can join them in Asajin's home,” Nevyan said. “There's no purpose in taking them from the environment they know. What will Shan make of this? It would be good for her to learn how things are done here.”

Mestin did then stop and turn. Her daughter was leaving home, in a sentence, in a decision taken as they strolled around the city. She was accepting four new husbands and their children, males she hardly knew. But that was irrelevant because once they had mated and the
oursan
bond had been formed, wess'har biochemistry would ensure that they would be what she wanted and would defend against all threats. And they would consider her their perfect
isan
for the rest of their lives.

From what Mestin knew of
gethes,
she didn't think Shan Frankland would understand it at all.

“Why does it matter to you what Shan Frankland thinks?” It wasn't a challenge: Mestin was genuinely curious. Nevyan had given the woman a
dhren,
but that wouldn't make a matriarch out of a
gethes.
“Do you need her approval?”

“She has characteristics we'll all need in the years to come,” said Nevyan.

“You can't acquire them by
oursan.
”

“Then I'll learn them by observation.”

The thought of Frankland becoming a cousin-by-mating wasn't as distasteful as Mestin imagined. She couldn't think of any of her
jurej've
who would agree to the act of
oursan
with an alien, with or without
c'naatat,
but the human definitely had an edge that spoke of a capacity for survival.

It was a pity not to be able to absorb those genes into the clans.

They waited in silence, watching for the return of the former
jurej've
of Asanjin Selit Giyadas, who would be surprised to find themselves accepted wholesale into the household of Nevyan Tan Mestin but would accept it and—eventually—be completely happy with the arrangement. The males came back into view, almost appearing to reform into solidity from fragments shattered by the mirage of hot summer air. They were walking faster now. One carried the pallet; another clutched the
dhren
and other fabric.

There was no point wasting good textiles. Even the colonists of Constantine spared the rockvelvets the extra task of digesting the clothes of their dead. They had that much in common.

Nevyan suddenly exuded a cloud of anxiety. Mestin wanted to hold her and comfort her, but the uncertainty was something her child had to face.
And now she becomes an
isan. She wouldn't be coming home tonight. It was a cause for rejoicing. By the morning, she wouldn't miss her family. She would be immersed in a new reality.

Mestin thought humans would all have been a lot happier if their copulation resulted in the stable bond that
oursan
ensured wess'har. Fersanye, who was more scientifically minded, said their promiscuity was a consequence of their need to propagate their genes through offspring. Mestin decided it was part of their innate greed to always have something extra, and preferably something that belonged to someone else.

She wondered if Shan Frankland had some of that sexual acquisitiveness in her.
C'naatat
would be a hard lesson for her if she had.

 

Marine Ismat Qureshi had rigged a temporary securing bar across the hatch that separated the Kilo deck cargo area from rest of
Actaeon
.

It made Lindsay feel better. There was no indication on any safety repeater or state-board to say that the hatch was locked. The bar simply stopped anyone walking in on them. She wanted to brainstorm this plan to infiltrate Bezer'ej in private, without observers, and without Okurt realizing she was maneuvering into a position where he had to allow her to lead the mission.

She stared at the flaccid bag of fabric on the deck and tried to get the idea straight in her mind. And the Royal Marines were all staring at her: Barencoin, Bennett, Qureshi, Chahal, Webster and Becken, all Extreme Environment Warfare Cadre, all relaxed, all apparently unconcerned by the nightmare lying at her feet.

“Dear God,” she said. She prodded it with her boot. It was a white, man-sized quilt: it looked like fabric, but it acted like a gel pack. When the fabric moved, the surface rippled with embedded softglass, throwing up slow billows of black like oil welling through milk. There was one totally black area that showed small currents of white when she kicked it gently. It reminded her rather unpleasantly of a bull's-eye target.

It certainly didn't look much like transport.

Qureshi, leaning against the hatch as if her slight weight would add to the bar's effectiveness, folded her arms. “We never said it was comfortable, ma'am.”

It was a Once-Only suit.

Lindsay knew how they worked, more or less, but she had hoped never to test one. There were far better ways to escape a stricken vessel and far more efficient lifeboats, but ships kept a few of the suits stowed away on board just in case. And it really was the absolute, final,
last
of last resorts. It was bailout when all else failed.

Its design dated from the first days of manned space flight. Even the name was borrowed from another primitive emergency escape suit that mariners had used centuries before.

And it
looked
it.

“So you just zip yourself into this bag.”

“No, you put your spacesuit on before you get in. Then you pull the pin and the insulating foam fills the inner skin.”

“Oh, that's totally reassuring. And
then
I plummet towards the planet?”

“We like to think of it as guided descent,” said Bennett. “You can steer and orientate.”

“Forgive me, but I'm still thinking of it as getting into a glorified sleeping bag and dropping into empty space from orbit.
High
orbit.”

“You've done your pilot training,” said Qureshi. “If you've parachuted and ejected, this isn't that much worse. Not really.”

“Have you
done
this?”

Qureshi nodded, looking bemused, as if everyone did a spot of free-fall through a planet's atmosphere now and then. Extreme environment commandos did. “We've all done it from a hundred kay, anyway. It doesn't make you feel any more sick than a spacewalk. More or less.”

“I seem to recall something about reaching supersonic velocity,” said Lindsay.

“Correct,” said Chahal. “And we're all alive to tell the tale.”

Lindsay chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I don't need to point out that this thing doesn't take off again, do I?”

“That's why they call it a Once-Only,” said Bennett, and Lindsay wasn't sure if he was being stolidly literal or sarcastic. “But I have an idea for that too.”

“Go ahead.”

“The colony ship.
Christopher.
They said they mothballed it, remember?”

“You reckon it's feasible?”

“Maybe not the vessel itself, not without a lot of prep, but it's still got a couple of tillies.” It was an odd archaic word for a runabout vehicle, and Bennett was the only one who used it to mean shuttles. “And they're built to start first time. So we land, do the biz, and shoot through. Job done.”

“Provided we don't land looking like barbecue briquettes.”

Bennett joined in the ritual boot-prodding of the crumpled suit. “I know it looks like liquid, ma'am, but once it's activated, it's a heat-shield—all that black and white stuff automatically positions itself where you need it, black stuff to burn off at the hot-spots, white stuff to deflect all round. As long as you get shot of it as fast as you can once you land, it's as safe as houses.”

Lindsay's image was of houses falling down in disrepair, then hard landings in a soft suit. “Why do you need to dump the shield?”

“Because it goes on getting hotter after you've landed, ma'am.” Bennett's expression was silent wonder at how she ever made commander. “A
lot
hotter. Remember you're coming in through atmosphere.”

“Oh,” said Lindsay. She thought of the suit moving patches of black and white
stuff
around, unbidden. “At least I'll plunge to my doom looking like art.”

Wherever they were planning to land, whatever their task at the end of it, the Once-Only was the most stealthy system they had.
Actaeon
hadn't come equipped for covert missions. But she
had
come with plenty of ordnance, even if she hadn't been expecting to deal with a massively equipped wess'har defense force.

The armory held a lot of what Chahal called “insurance ordnance”—tactical nukes, neuts, emergency BNOs, chems, FAEs, and even ultra-yield conventionals, and plenty of interesting modes to deploy them together. On Earth that made you a world power; out here it would just irritate the wess'har for a few hours. And there were no resupply chains twenty-five light-years from home.

Lindsay rubbed her forehead. “Okay. You do this all the time. I don't.”

Bennett appeared to be watching her calculate the odds. “If we were going to land, ma'am, that's our
only
way past their defnet. It's the smallest possible profile.” He was trying hard to convince her. “We've removed all the survival kit to make room for—well, whatever we tool up with.”

“I prefer to work backwards from objectives,” Lindsay said. She knew damn well what her objectives were now. The problem was what objectives she would have to feign to get the hardware, personnel and access she needed to get within killing range of Shan.

There was also the small matter of what it would actually take to kill the woman. She had no idea. It wasn't a bullet, silver or otherwise. If the miraculous survival of Shan's alien friend was anything to go by, it wasn't a serious crash either.

“I can see one small snag,” said Lindsay.

“What?” asked Bennett.

“How do we get into orbit around Bezer'ej for the drop without triggering the wess'har defnet? It's going to take a shuttle, and the shuttle is bigger than the isenj fighters. That means they
will
see us coming.”

“Thought of that,” said Webster.
“Maiale.”