No Direction Home (15 page)

The worst of it was that he'd never actually known her at all – not this version of Vinter. The memories were etched into his brain, but he had never spoken a single word to her, had never made love to her (laughing and giggling afterwards in sheer happiness because, once again, it had been terrific)… and none of it had ever happened, not to him, this… version… of Vinter he inhabited. Vinter 2.0? Was that all he was? He didn't even have proper parents, for fuck's sake, just the memory of them… A Frankenstein monster, pure and simple…

And Emma? The image of her mother, she'd been fourteen when
Terra Nova
had left Earth, so would only have been twenty-two when the human race had committed mass suicide. She wouldn't have lived long enough to become the surgeon she had always wanted to be… Had the three of them been together at the end?
Jesus, I hope they were… He – I – wouldn't have wanted it any other way…

And there was this appalling, numbing sense of loss, of guilt, even – he was alive and they weren't… He had left them behind to die. Shit, he hadn't even said goodbye to them… Rationally, he knew that this was the original Vinter's perspective, that there was no way that he could ever have said goodbye, but the memories were there and the overpowering one was that he had not been with them at the end – they had died while he was billions of kilometres away… It didn't matter that he had never met them, had never known Anji and Emma, because they were still there in his memory and they had left a huge hole in his life, one that he had not even known existed before he had listened to the album.

An hour ago, I didn't even know who they were… and now they're gone forever. Sixty bloody minutes – that's all the time I had with them… or ever will have.

Wish You Were Here…
Jesus wept, I do! He'd give anything to have them with him right now and it was more than he could bear to realise that he never would, that they were dead and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, nothing… He could feel the tears trickling down his face and then naked grief slammed into him and he broke down completely.

Anji… Emma…

Vinter rubbed his eyes tiredly, then looked around at the others seated around the table, wondering if they felt as weary as he did – he doubted if any of them had managed more than a couple of hours' sleep in the last forty-eight.
Serve them right – nobody said hi-jacking a starship would be easy…

Watanabe and Sharma were engaged in a desultory conversation about the overall tactical situation, but none of the others seemed inclined to talk, least of all to Vinter. It left him free to try and sort out the chaotic memories that were still buzzing around in his head. He had the distinct impression that he was two different people, the Vinter who had materialised during the last couple of days and the Vinter who had been in his head from the moment he had been revived. In a peculiar way, it felt as if the two personalities were gradually merging into one, even when the memories were mutually exclusive – like Anji and Livvy.

He could even remember Livvy from the new memories – she had indeed worked at UN Canberra in Economic Aid and Development and they
had
met, not at a dinner party but at a UN reception when Anji had been struck down by yet another variant of the flu and so hadn't been able to go; however, that had been the only time Livvy and he had ever interacted socially. She had made a pretty explicit play for him on the balcony overlooking Sydney Harbour, even giving him her comm number and he was honest enough to admit he had been seriously tempted, more so than at any time in his marriage, in fact, but had not responded; apart from two or three frosty encounters at work afterwards, that had been that. However, he still had detailed memories of her in bed, or out sailing off Sydney, or on the beach at Cairns that were mostly altered versions of experiences with Anji, but not all; Anji had never been into bondage, for example, but Livvy had, apparently, loved it…
Apparently…
That was the problem; none of it had never happened and yet he remembered it all – and her – vividly.

Just as vividly as Anji and Emma, in fact…

That was how New Dawn had done it, of course. They had combed his stored memories and found Livvy, the one woman he had been significantly attracted to in Australia (she
had
been sexy as hell, after all, even if she hadn't worn such a revealing outfit to the reception as she had in his fake memory) and had put her into his life instead of Anji. And somewhere, they had picked up on his own vague fantasies about bondage and threesomes and used them to heighten the erotic elements of his relationship with Livvy.
But nobody had known about them – he'd never told anyone about them, still less had any intention of acting on them, but they'd invaded his mind, his most private thoughts…

Bastards.

And what had they done with Naomi? The bitch who had dumped him and put him off any serious involvement with women, just so they could set up the casual relationship with Livvy? In reality, the romance with Naomi had lasted less than a year, before Anji had even arrived at Balliol, in fact, and had ended perfectly amicably; she had even been at the wedding and they had exchanged Christmas and birthday ecards for years afterwards.
Something else he couldn't forgive them for – taking away the memory of a good friend.

But part of him could still remember Naomi the Bitch and had never recovered from what she had done to him, and still had affectionate –
OK, and erotic
– memories of a Livvy who had never actually existed – and whose original would be long dead now.

They really did fuck you up, didn't they?

And this wasn't really getting him anywhere, because what he needed to be doing was trying to sort out how he was going to deal with this situation, rather than brooding on events that, to put it bluntly, had happened to someone else. It was all in the past, and there was damn all he could do about it, so it was time to start thinking about the future. Specifically, how he was going to use the information Vinter – the
real
Vinter – had sent him.

The documents and files that he had mentioned had explained a lot about how New Dawn had managed to infiltrate the Delta Pavonis project to such an extent. The fact that New Dawn had been involved in supplying not only the necessary finance, but also a good deal of the equipment, particularly the computers and digital electronics that were essential to the entire Habitat section, meant that it was relatively easy for them to gain access to supposedly secure systems, thus enabling them to place their own sleeper cadre aboard
Terra Nova
. Given that the project had been ten years in the making, it was perhaps inevitable that it would be compromised to some extent, but there was no doubt that senior UN officials had been bribed or coerced into assisting New Dawn – payments into Swiss bank accounts, accelerated promotions, lucrative job offers in New Dawn's secretly owned companies, or places aboard the
Terra Nova
itself – on a scale that resulted in anything up to five per cent of the allocation in the cryosleep chambers being given to high-ranking New Dawn executives and their families, taking both the places and the IDs of those originally selected. Another five per cent had gone to Ferreira's troops, most of whom had been recruited by New Dawn during those ten years, either just before or after signing up for the UN Peacekeeping Force, with the sole intention of providing the necessary military force to stage the coup at PlanetFall; until then they had all been model UN soldiers, even to the extent of being involved in firefights with New Dawn forces on several occasions. Ferreira had apparently been suborned while still serving in the Brazilian Army, long before he had joined the UN – he had been the deepest embedded sleeper of them all. Over the years, following transfers in and out, the Peacekeeping Unit he commanded had been ‘assigned' to
Terra Nova
, by the which time virtually all of its personnel were New Dawn sleepers; the others were almost certainly those who not been revived ‘due to malfunctions in the cryosleep equipment', as Ferreira had put it.

Back on Earth, Vinter had done a pretty good job of uncovering all this, but, by then, it was too late –
Terra Nova
was already on its way, the damage had been done and many of those who would have faced arrest for corruption were aboard the starship anyway… But at least it gave him an idea of what he was up against.

And that's supposed to help me deal with a hundred trained soldiers and who knows how many politicos?

Although the political cadre didn't seem to have been revived so far, probably because Ferreira regarded the situation as purely military at the moment. The original plan – that of staging the takeover after PlanetFall – would have involved them staying in cryosleep until Ferreira's troops had taken control, before they emerged as the overall leaders of the colony and so, presumably, Ferreira would be sticking to that same approach.

Of course, there might be another reason; according to the dossier that the real Vinter had prepared, Ferreira didn't seem to have a lot of time for politicians, or for any kind of authority, come to that – he seemed to thrive in situations where he was given independent command and so might delay reviving the politicos until it became absolutely necessary. Certainly, he was the sort of officer who would relish sorting out this situation by himself, who would see it as a challenge…

Sounds a bit like me, in fact.

So, in a nutshell, what he had to do was neutralise Ferreira and his Command Team, then their troops –
and, by neutralise, what we are probably talking about is killing all hundred of them
– somehow deal with whatever threats Stalker might pose and hope that any collateral damage to the ship that might be involved wouldn't be fatal to their chances of ever reaching Delta Pavonis…
How hard could that be?

Piece of cake, really.

Abruptly, the door opened and Ferreira came in, muttering his apologies, and gesturing for them to remain in their chairs –
one thing you could say for him, he wasn't a stickler for military protocol
– before taking his seat at the head of the table.

‘Right,' he said, briskly. ‘Major Watanabe?'

Watanabe nodded. ‘Colonel, gentlemen and lady – we have constructed an electromagnetic accelerator, or a rail gun as Major Vinter would call it, and it is now ready for testing.'

‘Excellent news, Major. Have you a ready supply of projectiles?

‘Yes, sir. We are manufacturing small ball bearings to load into the device.'

‘Cannonballs, you mean,' Vinter interrupted.

There was a flash of irritation on Watanabe's face –
well, you shouldn't have put in that comment about me calling it a rail gun, should you
– before he said, ‘Indeed. But still effective and easy to produce as we do not have to precision engineer them – any shape will suffice if truth be told.'

‘Very good. Let me know when you're ready to begin the bombardment.' He glanced at Vinter as if expecting some comment, but Vinter was staring down at the table, his face expressionless. ‘However, I wish to discuss another option. Major Vinter?' He wasn't using ‘Inspector' any more, Vinter noted; slowly but surely, Vinter was being drawn into the military hierarchy, whether he liked it or not.

‘Colonel?'

‘Your opinion is that Stalker's meteor defence lasers would be able to destroy these projectiles?'

‘It's what it's designed for – it's what ours does and theirs is going to be at least as good as ours.'

‘Would these lasers be able to destroy something bigger – say one of our shuttles?'

I was hoping he wouldn't think of that…
‘Probably not, no. They could make a mess of it, but they couldn't destroy it completely.'

‘And if they were to use a nuclear missile against it?'

Vinter shrugged. ‘They'd have to get lucky to hit it, given the kind of relative velocities we're talking about. Obviously, if they had a really sophisticated, accurate defensive setup, their chances would be improved, but… Odds of fifty-fifty perhaps?'

‘So if we were to send an unmanned shuttle back, along with your…
cannonballs
, there would be a good chance of hitting Stalker?'

Vinter shook his head. ‘No, there wouldn't.'

‘Explain, please.' Ferreira's annoyance was only too apparent.

‘Look, we're using a scattergun approach with the projectiles – we launch hundreds of them in the hope that one will hit – the chances are that they will all miss or be destroyed. Launching one shuttle means that you only have to be a fraction out in the aiming – even only a few metres – and the shuttle will miss. It won't have enough fuel to make a second run, even if you fit a guidance or homing system. Within thirty seconds, it will be a hundred thousand kilometres astern and only just beginning to decelerate. It will run out of fuel long before it even reaches zero velocity relative to Stalker, let alone start chasing after it. You'd get just one pass and the odds of hitting at that kind of range are infinitesimal. You'd just be throwing away a shuttle.'

‘What if the shuttle had a pilot with superhuman reflexes?' Ferreira asked, an edge in his voice.

‘Are you asking me to volunteer?' Vinter asked, an amused smile on his face.

‘I could order you.'

‘And I'd tell you where to shove it – sir. In any case, the simple answer is No. You need computer level processing power even to analyse the situation at that speed and I'm not
that
fast, even in Augmented Mode. And even if I were, as I said, the shuttle would not carry enough fuel for any significant manoeuvres, not if you're trying to alter course at that speed.' He could see the sceptical expressions on their faces, then rubbed his face tiredly. ‘OK, I'll slow down a bit,' he said quietly, realising that the problem was that they were, literally, trying to keep up with him.
Not surprising – even
I
didn't realise that I knew all this and even if I did, the old me couldn't have worked it all out this fast.
‘OK,' he said again. ‘Look, Stalker is moving at three thousand kilometres a
second
faster than we are, so that's going to be the shuttle's approach speed relative to Stalker. That's the speed I'm talking about. So you make a decision to alter course and you take just one second to implement it and you're already three
thousand
kilometres further on before you've even started to change direction. This isn't a case of sticking a hotshot pilot in a high-tech warplane and expecting him to pull off multi-gee aerobatics in aerial combat – this is a
shuttle
, for God's sake, a bloody workhorse, that's all, which at that kind of relative velocity is going to have all the manoeuvrability of a supertanker at full speed trying to avoid a seagull that's just landed in the sea right in front of it.'

‘How about packing the shuttle with explosives and detonating it at the closest approach?' asked Ferreira.

Vinter shook his head. ‘You really don't get celestial mechanics, do you, Colonel?'
Come on, be fair: they didn't do space battles in whatever military academy they went to – there's never actually been one, has there? We're making this up as we go along… These guys would be fine in a conventional ground battle, but they're having to deal with a war where their weapons just aren't any use…
‘I don't think we have any kind of weapons control system that could operate within the kind of parameters we're talking about. At three thousand kilometres per second, you're only going to be at any kind of close range – say within a couple of hundred kilometres – for about one
fortieth
of a second at the most, for heaven's sake. And that's assuming you only miss the target by a matter of metres. In any case, there is no blast effect from an explosion in space – all you can hope for is that
some
of the debris strikes the target and if you're more than, say, two kilometres away, not enough will hit to cause even minor damage. If you want to get the explosion to take place within those two kilometres, you've got to get the aim exactly right over a distance of billions of kilometres and then you've got a window of about one four thousandth of a second, after several weeks of travel. And even if you somehow get all that right, all it needs is for Stalker to be moving ever so slightly faster or slower than we've estimated, or be not quite on the course we think it's on and we'll be nowhere near the target.' He saw the glum looks around the table and gave a mental shrug.
Your problem, not mine…