Redemption Protocol (Contact) (74 page)

~    ~    ~

Tyburn leaned out of the shuttle.

“Come on, Weaver!”

Ekker spoke from the cockpit.

“The United Systems is telling us to move away from the cabins. We have incoming. I think they’re warning shots.”

The first explosion blasted a crater in the ice three hundred meters away, scattering ice in all directions. The second, third and fourth explosions came in quick succession. They were moving in a line toward the cabins.

Tyburn willed Weaver on.

“Hurry, Weaver!”

Tyburn turned to Ekker.

“Give her some encouragement.”

“You don’t want me to fire back, do you?”

“Of course not. But she doesn’t need to know that.”

Ekker grinned.

“Got it.”

~    ~    ~

Weaver ran toward the hovering shuttle with her hands raised over her helmet. Micromissiles from the shuttle streamed over her head, burning through the atmo like meteors as they sought to intercept the United Systems fire.

The snow around her lit up brilliantly. Ice shards pummeled her suit as she fought to stay on her feet. Her progress became a series of time lapse photos as she ran through the swirling tempest toward the outline of the hovering shuttle.

A stunning flash burst overhead and time sped back up as the debris rained down around her. Tyburn leaned out of the shuttle with his hand outstretched.

“Come on, Weaver!”

Explosions burst around her.

She jumped. Tyburn grabbed her and flung her toward a seat. The engines howled and the door slid shut as they catapulted upward. The wind and snow stopped abruptly. She looked down through the window as they lifted away. Havoc's smoking body lay stretched out on the ice with flames guttering around it. She slumped her head back.

Thank goodness, she was safe.

 193. 

Havoc couldn't hear. He was looking into a waterfall. The roaring water bombarded his senses as it crashed down on him.

He stumbled forward. The world revolved around him, tilting and swaying. The front of his suit was missing sections, burned away. He was blundering and incoherent, drunk with shock. There were massive holes in the ice around him. He was running through a river in spate. He tripped and toppled over backward.

He rolled onto his front. He crawled for a moment, then pulled himself onto his knees. His vision was streaked with white noise. He couldn't see his left arm. He fell forward again. Liquid splashed the ice in front of him. His blood? Where was he?

He staggered upright. His legs were jelly. He couldn't balance properly. He needed to get to the medstation. What could it do for him? He fell against the second cabin. The lock opened.

The outer door of the lock closed behind him. He couldn't concentrate. He tried to remain upright, wavering. The inner lock opened. He blacked out and fell in.

 194. 

Weaver sat in the seat of the shuttle with her knees pulled up to her chest. Tyburn stood over her, hanging off a support strap. Ekker turned to look at her from the open cockpit. He smiled then turned away. She didn't feel reassured.

“You ok?” Tyburn said.

She nodded. No, she thought.

“Ugh. That was too much.”

“It was you or him.”

She nodded again.

Yamamoto's voice cut in.

“Tyburn, where are you heading?”

Tyburn gazed at Weaver as he answered.

“We’re heading north.”

“We track you on a course to make orbit.”

Weaver hugged herself. She kept seeing Havoc flailing on fire.

Tyburn nodded.

“That is an affirmative,
Intrepid
.”

“Your course is flawed for reaching the platform. You may have instrumentation issues.”

“Affirmative,
Intrepid
, we took hits from a United Systems drone.”

Weaver looked around, confused.

“Did we?”

“We see no damage from your telemetry information, Tyburn.”

“We’re checking our systems now,
Intrepid
.”

“Your course is wrong, Tyburn. It will converge with... the ORC platform.”

Tyburn smiled at Weaver as he pointed his tricannon at her. He lifted a finger to his lips.

“No comms.”

Weaver stared at Tyburn, horrified. Oh no, no, no. She felt crestfallen.

“I shot Havoc,” she whispered.

“Tyburn, please make your intentions clear immediately.”

Tyburn turned to Ekker and nodded.

“Alright Ekker, it's time to see what the EOS
Brilliance
can do.
”

A tsunami rolled over Weaver’s senses as reality dawned.

“Now?” Ekker said.

Tyburn grinned.

“No time like the present.”

 195. 

Havoc was swimming amongst indistinct shapes. He thought his kids were nearby but he couldn't find them. A brightly colored fish swam up to him. Its wide eyes were vivid and clear. It looked like a wise fish; he thought it would have some answers. The wise fish hovered in front of him, flicking its tail to stay in place. He stared at the wise fish and the wise fish stared at him. It was trying to tell him something.

A little fish swam up to his neck. It was a tiny one-toothed payara. It nibbled him, tickling his neck. It distracted him. He wanted to listen to the wise fish – he knew it had something important to say. The tiny payara swum back a little and, with a flick of its tail, it thrust forward again. The payara’s sharp tooth stung as it pricked his neck.

He opened his eyes, suddenly conscious. He was greeted by a pleasant sight. Stephanie leaned over him, her long hair falling around his face. She looked startled. She’d probably thought he was dead. She jerked back as he awoke. He'd frightened her. He was still partly dreaming. All women are scared of men at some level, he thought; one of their field psychologists had explained to him that it’s built in, hardwired from evolution. He looked at Stephanie, questioning.

“God, John, I was checking for a pulse. I thought I'd lost you.”

He smiled at her. She frowned. Maybe his smile didn't come out right. His senses awakened. Stephanie gazed at him, concerned.

“What hit you?”

He pulled himself up on one elbow and looked down. The chest area of his suit was missing; the flare star was designed to dwell on the armor and destroy it. His flame retardant thermal was also missing. His chest was smooth and hairless but otherwise unmarked. The thermal would have burned away at three thousand degrees, give or take. What had the Morvent Academy done to him?

“I'm... not sure.”

Stephanie trailed her fingertips over the smooth skin on his chest. She looked mesmerized. Covetous, even.

“It's amazing.”

He watched her hand.

“Did you get Fournier and Touvenay?”

“No. They got away, up to the platform.”

“Great.”

“You lost Weaver?”

He remembered the ball of glowing plasma bursting through the lock.

“Yeah.”

“Where is she?”

He exhaled slowly.

“If she's not here, I imagine Tyburn has her. How are the others?”

“Useless.”

He flinched a little, startled. He knew that tone. She was pissed off.

“What do you mean?”

Stephanie sighed.

“Kemensky's dead. And there was a major disturbance at the pyramid, John. The alien escaped somehow – the Gathering let it out after you left the site unsecured.”

Wow, Havoc thought, Stephanie was really pouring it on here. She shook her head as she went on.

“Jafari is dead and Abbott seems to have gone over to the Gathering. We think that he might have been, well,
taken
, by the alien. A Talmas or something.”

“The Gathering managed to get into the pyramid? And Abbott has been
taken
?”

She transferred Jafari's feed of the pyramid incident as she nodded.

“Yes.”

Havoc skimmed through it. It looked grim.

“Do we have Abbott's location?”

Stephanie shook her head.

“No. Do you know of any way to get into the library?”

“No.”

“Is anyone left in there?”

“I don't think so.”

“What happened to the energy systems?”

He felt like he was being debriefed by a senior officer, who was writing 'poor' in his file as they tabulated his growing list of shortcomings.

“The ORC took them.”

“Oh, for fucks sake, John.”

“Stone's alive.”

Stephanie stood up.

“Oh well that’s just great then.”

He knew the body language. It was odd, incongruous. He recoiled somewhat.

“Stone feels pretty good about it.”

Stephanie walked to the lock.

“I’m sure he does.”

He blinked in confusion.

“Hang on a minute.”

“No, you hang on.”

Stephanie stepped into the lock.

He inspected his suit. It was completely fucked. He had a drop pod with another suit in it less than two klicks round the perimeter of the Colosseum. He gazed through the walls of the cabin. There were a lot of figures moving around in suits.

United Systems suits. Stephanie was standing beside one. He could see her in the ghostly image formed by his wide spectrum vision.

The United Systems was here.

He felt cognitive dissonance; the dislocating sensation of believing two mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously. His mind fought to rationalize, throwing up spurious justifications to enable it to return to its comfortable, self-consistent world. His emotions flooded with denial.

The United Systems was here and the Alliance wasn’t.

It wasn't possible that his ex-fiancée was the enemy agent but it fitted all the facts. The truth drove into him like a stake through his heart. He’d been skewered on his own trust.

He knew from bitter experience that there was no gentle way to find out you’d been played. There was no transition time. When you trusted someone was on your side and then you found out that they weren’t it was a binary switch with no middle ground.

His head dropped back against the floor of the cabin. He'd rather die than be betrayed again. Betrayal was dying without the release. He didn't know how to live in this universe – he'd been born into the wrong reality.

She’d debriefed him. The United Systems would either take him or kill him. Why would they take him? He was just excess mass. He thought about the look in her eyes. She might want a sample of his skin. He looked around at the equipment racks. Stephanie had no idea about how augmented he was – after all, he hadn’t. All they knew was his suit was fried and he'd been unconscious. He was a wounded, broken prisoner.

Stephanie probably wouldn't come back in now. It would be a United Systems commando to finish the job. If they even bothered to come in. He would have to give them a reason. Give her a reason, he corrected himself.

The look on her face when she’d stroked his skin reminded him of her shopping for designer shoes. He laughed in disgust at the truth of the insight.

His lip curled in anger.

 196. 

Yamamoto sipped her coffee on the bridge of the
Intrepid
. It wasn't as good as Fournier's. She glanced down at the cup. It might have been better if she'd never drank Fournier's coffee at all.

Yamamoto thought the mission was going to hell in a handbasket. They didn't know what had happened at the pyramid or the shaft. Allegations were flying back and forth. They'd lost touch with Abbott. Darkwood's shuttle was gone. Nuclear explosions had detonated across the surface. Two lawyers stood on her bridge, on either side of her biggest headache of all. Her pathetic, whining, ass covering mission lead.

She walked back over to the mission holo, on the opposite side to Whittenhorn.

“Well I'm not sure. I don't think there is a precedent for it,” Humberstone said.

“Clearly you cannot be held responsible, Commander. It was a diplomatic decision,” Bergeron added.