Inkers (33 page)

“Hi, Amber,” Dryer said.

“Hi,” Amber said.

“We had eyes on that. We were a little concerned, for a moment, there, when the girl turned that gun on the baby. That was a good shot. Well timed.”

“Thanks,” Amber said.

“I might consider reinstating your ITSA contract on the grounds of that shot.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

“No problem,” he said.

“Don’t suppose you’d be able to pick me up?” Amber said.

“As it happens, the drones tell me we might have a very small window,” the General said. “Head down to the lighthouse and we’ll try, if you like.”

“Thank you,” Amber said. She began to run back down towards the lighthouse. The light from the nukes had faded and mushroom clouds were developing on the huge mass over Scotland.

“Hey!” Lwazi said. “Where are you going?”

Amber paused and looked back at him. “I’m getting out of here,” she said.

“Can I come?” he said.

“Yeah, come on then,” she said, and she ran towards the lighthouse. They ran through the bracken, falling every now and again, the ground stabilising a little for a few seconds and then shaking again, the GSE bigger than ever, gravity slightly less than it should be, their steps sending them a little further into the air than they should.

They reached the lighthouse just as it toppled over. Amber pushed Lwazi back and they both narrowly avoided being crushed by the great old blocks of stone. Amber was already on her feet, looking up at the sky, staring into the swirling clouds. Dust was spreading everywhere and it was getting hard to breathe. Amber just looked up, and Lwazi did too, shielding his eyes, but there was nothing there.

Then it burst through the clouds, a great black ship, engines dots of fire, spinning and swirling down through the buffeting wind. It rushed down towards the ground, and Lwazi was sure it was going to smash straight into the island, but at the last moment there was a blast of flame and it slowed and halted, landing quite gently on an area of grass fifty yards from them. Red letters along the side spelled ITSA OPTIONS DIVISION. The ship had no windows.

No door was visible, but Amber was already running towards it and Lwazi scrambled after her. When they were almost upon it a hatch opened from nowhere and a ladder shot down into the earth. There was a rabbit with great metal arms, beckoning them on, and Amber was already up to the door when Lwazi reached the ladder. Flames burst from the jets and the ship started to lift again. Lwazi leapt, getting both hands on the bottom rung, and cried out frantically, the ladder starting to rise with him on it. He looked up and Amber’s grey face and grey arms were reaching down, grabbing him under the arms and with a scream at the effort the immune pulled him into the ship and the door closed behind them against the dust.

Lily and Tia crossed the vacuum, reached what was left of the GSE and were enveloped in the last remaining cell. Lily held Tia. They floated together in the darkness. Tia began to show Lily the universe.

Another part of Tia watched alongside Chance as Amber and the General and Lwazi met on the bridge of the ITSA escape ship OD
Time
, having to grip onto consoles and chairs as the ship struggled to make headway against Earth’s fluctuating gravity well. The dust was thickening rapidly as the outer layer of the earth’s mantle started to shear off.

The singularity that had been nuked over Scotland began to move towards them, devouring everything. The ship began to spin and fall. Tia listened to Amber’s shouts, broadcast via Emily on every frequency, using the whole ship as an antennae, shouted out loud onto the bridge but lost within the roar of the engines and the creaking of the ship’s structure. Tia and Chance heard it all anyway. Tia made a brief suggestion, which Chance relayed to the Meta–Intelligence, which consented.

The GSE’s nanites built a tunnel of space above the
Time
, up through the dust and through the stratosphere into space, and the ship shot suddenly upwards, throwing everyone on board painfully to the floor. The ship accelerated, its pilot drone seizing the opportunity as only a computer could.

As the
Time
reached space General Dryer sat down heavily in the captain’s chair, his great prosthetics resting on the carpeted floor on either side.

“Welcome back,” he said to Amber. He looked at Lwazi. “I have no idea who you are,” he said.

Amber and Lwazi watched the huge viewscreens on the wall. The earth was disintegrating, the great singularity–masses growing as large as continents, jets of flaming molten matter shooting towards space. Only glimpses of nature–blue and nature–green were now visible. Bright lights accelerated away in all directions. Amber saw a pair of them spiralling away together, heading straight upwards, spinning faster and faster until they disappeared. Most of the lights were headed towards the sun.

The sea was full of plastic and nano–scale fibres from people’s washing machines. The atmosphere was thick with carbon dioxide. The ground was covered in concrete and farm–land. Nature was slaved to the support of ten billion of the hungriest dirtiest creature that ever lived. It was a testament to the sheer robustness of the biosphere that it had not already completely collapsed. Yet, Amber was surprised to find, she had loved her species and her planet entirely.

A chunk of the earth came fully away. Amber felt an emotion she had never felt before as she saw the redness inside, the surface of the planet darkening and unrecognisable, disappearing within the machinery and destruction. The molten heart spread blackening into the vacuum.

Then the GSE arrived.

If it had been moving slowly enough, they would have been able to see that it was now only five times bigger than the earth. As it was all they saw was the cracking planet and then a completely white screen. When the light had faded enough for the cameras to cope there was nothing left but a vast field of molten debris shrinking rapidly out of zoom range into the distance.

The General was on his feet, shouting commands now, personnel running about the bridge and hunched over consoles, eyes white.

Amber left Lwazi weeping into his hands. She walked back to the General, who sat down again, looking at a screen at his side, his eyes flickering between white and human. Out of the central viewscreen in front of him Amber could see hundreds of the black ships lit up against the stars, most similar to this one, sleek, windowless, huge bulbous engines at one end, blue ion engines glowing on their flanks as they adjusted their relative positioning. There were a few older donut–shaped vessels, spinning for the centripetal gravity. Most of the ships she could see had ITSA OPTIONS DIVISION emblazoned on their hulls.

“Do you have a plan?” she said, resting a hand on the back of his chair.

“That’s classified,” he said, not looking up.

Amber was about to respond, but decided against it and turned away. She would go and comfort Lwazi. That was something she could do.

“We do have something in mind,” Dryer said quickly. She looked back, and despite the fatigue in his face and the blood and dust on his uniform and on his huge metal arms, he was almost smiling at her.

The fleet accelerated away.

The heart of the GSE survived the impact. It began to move away, too, in a different direction. Deep inside, in a black room with no doors or windows, Lily was laughing, her baby in her arms, her eyes completely black.

She could see everything, everywhere, forever. She could see something descending on the universe from nowhere, something vast, something impossible, a scarred and ruined lump of metal larger than a galaxy. It was collapsing as she watched, tearing itself into black holes under its own weight. Letters like nebulas on the ship’s hull were still just legible, spelling out a single word:
Heterochromia
.

The End