Resolution (74 page)

NULAPEIRON AD 3426

Tom stilled the display, let it minimize and hang off to one side. He leaned back against the bulkhead, staring into nothing.

Kian, burned. His hand ruined.

Tom rubbed his own face, as his missing left arm blazed with nonexistent fire.

‘It
was
you.’

There was no-one in the chamber; Tom’s voice had a strange flat echo, as if uttered by an ancient machine. But in his mind’s eye he could see only the poor tortured Pilot on Siganth, flensed inside the vivisection field tended by alien components of the Anomaly. A Pilot with a half-ruined, silver-scarred face, and a right hand hooked into a claw.

‘Kian McNamara.’

Tom took a deep breath, then immersed himself again in the centuries-old tale.

~ * ~

45

TERRA & MU-SPACE

AD 2166

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[13]

Deirdre called Paula. She wept as she begged for help, unable to look away from Kian’s ruined face and the taut, charred remains of his right hand. All around, scattered across the parking lot, blinded demonstrators and policemen moaned and whimpered. Some clutched the bodies of the fallen dead.

Dirk stood silent, unmoving.

Stub-winged UNSA ambulances accompanied by unmarked armoured flyers came hurtling down from the sky, two minutes before the civilian authorities arrived. No-one argued as medics rushed Kian aboard the nearest ambulance. It rose immediately, its crew not waiting to help anyone else, and headed back towards the base.

‘Oh Christ. Oh Christ.’

Deirdre could only watch as security officers mag-cuffed Dirk and led him into one of the unmarked flyers. Paula took hold of her.

‘Come on, Deirdre. Let’s get out of here before those bastards start arguing jurisdiction.’

Green-uniformed cops of some kind were jumping down from a sky-blue flyer, mouths grim, eyes hidden behind mirrorvisors.

‘All right. Is Kian going to be ... ?’

Deirdre let her voice trail off.

‘Come on.’ Paula’s arm encircled Deirdre. ‘I’ll look after you. Promise.’

But they both knew, as they climbed a ramp and took their seats in a too-cold passenger cabin, that Kian was close to death, and that even UNSA would not be able to keep Dirk from captivity and subsequent trial in the local court.

Deirdre was sure Arizona had the death penalty.

‘Oh, my boys ...’

The ground dropped away beneath the flyer.

The cell had a narrow bunk and a tiny chemical toilet which stank of ozone. Dirk sat on the bunk, staring at the door’s triple mag-locks. He had said nothing as the medic dressed his forehead wound, or when the guards removed his cuffs and offered to bring him water.

Kian. What’s happening to you?

Some part of Dirk felt that his brother must still live: that no-one as close as Kian could die without the universe shrieking as the bond between them ruptured. But perhaps that was a delusion brought on by an awareness of the things that made them different from ordinary human beings ... from folk who outnumbered Pilots by millions to one.

UNSA can get me out of this. They’ve invested too much money to let the mob take me down.

But the mall had security systems, bead cameras that would have recorded everything. Maybe UN Intelligence could swoop in and take over the logs,
if
they moved fast enough, if no-one in the local police or newsNets got there first.

And if UNSA had the political will to bury the case. Perhaps they did not.

Perhaps they, too, would turn against him.

Against all our kind.

Deirdre, her arm in a silver cast, stood beside Paula, watching through the glass wall while robotic arms and human surgeons toiled over Kian.

‘Are you all right?’ Paula touched Deirdre. ‘Want a drink of water?’

‘No.’

‘OK.’

They stood together. Deirdre’s arm throbbed inside its cast. She did not know when it had broken. Perhaps when the bald man grabbed her.

Perhaps when Dirk took hold of her and—

Oh, sweet Jesus.

And—

She turned and buried her face on Paula’s shoulder.

At 3 a.m. the door slammed open.

Dirk jerked up, expecting burly men to rush inside with batons upraised. But there was only one guard visible, and he remained standing in the doorway while his colleagues waited around the corner.

‘They told me to tell you ... Your brother’s condition is now severe. No longer critical.’

‘You mean he’s—’

‘Going to live, they think.’

‘Thank—’

But the door was closed before Dirk could finish what he had to say. Inside the mag-locks, coils hummed with energy as they drew the bolts into place.