“What about Quineau?” Ten Lee asked. “They said they sent him to make contact, but last night you thought that they sent someone called Klien to stop him?”
“They’re lying,” Bennett replied. “They obviously want us to think they sent Quineau, that they want to be found.”
Ten Lee smiled to herself. “I’m sure my Rimpoche didn’t send me all the way out here to play detective,” she said. “But now that I am here, I admit I’m intrigued.”
“You’re becoming too involved in this illusion, Ten,” Bennett warned.
Ten Lee gave him a pleasant scowl.
“So we sit tight and see what happens,” Mackendrick said.
Bennett nodded. “As you said earlier, there’s little else we can do. At least,” he added, “the coffee substitute is drinkable.”
After lunch Miriam James collected them for their journey to the coastal settlement. “We’ll be travelling in a convoy of crawlers,” she said as they left the lodge and climbed the hillside to the track.
Tenebrae hung overhead, gales swirling the bands of its gaseous fleece. The day was humid, an electric charge in the air filling the valley with an atmosphere of pre-storm expectancy.
Three balloon-tyred crawlers were waiting on the track above the lodge, the first and last vehicle swarming with green-uniformed guards. De Channay was standing beside the middle crawler.
Ten Lee climbed on to the flat-bed with Miriam James and another armed guard, while Bennett and Mackendrick occupied the front seat next to De Channay.
“We’re going to the settlement of New Marseilles on the coast,” he said. “A journey of some twenty kilometres.”
De Channay started the motor and the crawler purred into life and accelerated down the rough track. Instead of descending into the valley, they took a turning through a high pass. On the crest of the rise, Bennett stared at the revealed scene. The mountainside fell away steeply, the incline striped with cultivated terraces. Ahead and far below, between an embrasure of headlands, the sea shimmered like silver lame made liquid. The first balloon-tyred vehicle bounced ahead of them, the half dozen guards staring up the mountainside, rifles at the ready.
“Three years after the crash-landing,” De Channay was saying, “our forefathers moved to the valley. The land was fertile and sheltered from the frequent storms. Over a period of years, as we expanded and developed our manufacturing industries, we settled the coast. Now New Marseilles is Homefall’s largest centre of population, home to some ten thousand citizens.”
“Are you anywhere near building further starships?” Mackendrick asked.
De Channay glanced at him, shaking his head. “Sadly, no. Perhaps in twenty, thirty years…”
“And yet you repaired a shuttle twenty years ago?”
De Channay nodded, staring ahead. “Unfortunately, we don’t possess the mining capabilities to extract the necessary materials to produce more ships.”
“About the power structure of Homefall,” Mackendrick said. “You said you were an elected Council of Elders?”
“I used the term ‘elected’, I must admit, only loosely. We are not a democracy as such. The population doesn’t have a free vote in anything other than the equivalent of local council affairs. The Council of Elders is a self-elected body of members of the Church of Phobos and Deimos—”
“A meritocracy?” Mackendrick suggested. Bennett detected a certain irony in his tone.
De Channay pursed his lips. “More of a theocracy. The power structure is based on the system of rank that maintained among the church officials who crewed the liner before the crash-landing. It was only ever meant to be a temporary affair, until such time as the colony found its footing, but as things turned out it proved successful and we’ve never seen any reason to change to another form of government.”
“Convenient for the self-elected members,” Mackendrick commented.
De Channay shifted uncomfortably. “The population is happy with the system,” he said. “They’ve had no complaints.”
Bennett refrained from mentioning the terrorists.
So, whatever it was that Homefall did not want known to the Expansion at large, the duplicity was sustained by the system of self-electing its ruling members. The Council of Elders of the Church of Phobos and Deimos, quite apart from running the affairs of the colony, was also in a position to ensure that the colony remained isolated.
No wonder, Bennett thought, that they had overreacted when we arrived on Homefall.
They edged around the flank of the mountain on a track barely wide enough to take the crawlers. Bennett glanced down to his left, saw the vertiginous drop, then looked away and kept his eyes fixed ahead.
Perhaps one hour later, still clinging to the high track like tiny insects, the first balloon-tyred vehicle came to a halt. De Channay braked, muttering with impatience. One of the guards on the first vehicle jumped down and examined the battery beneath the hood. A minute later he stood and waved his arms over his head to De Channay.
Something in the posture of the guard and the attentiveness of the others on the back of the vehicle filled Bennett with a sense of foreboding. He was aware of movement behind him. He glanced back and saw Miriam James on the flat-bed. As he watched, she lifted her rifle.
De Channay sighed and made to climb from his seat. Oddly, Bennett wanted to say something to stop the elder, delay him from whatever was about to happen. He said nothing, and watched with appalled fascination as De Channay climbed from the crawler and walked towards the stalled vehicle.
He was halfway between the crawlers when the firing began.
Miriam James fired the shot that hit De Channay between the shoulder blades. Bennett ducked, the blue light of the laser blinding him. He heard James grunt with satisfaction, and when his eyes adjusted he saw the elder’s body fall in slow motion. A silence stretched and no one moved, as if the players of the drama were too stunned or disbelieving to take in the consequences of what had happened—and then all hell broke loose.
The guards on the first truck sprinted towards Bennett’s crawler and, using it as cover, began firing at the third balloon-tyred vehicle. Fire was returned, lasers and conventional projectile shots which narrowly missed the crawler. Bennett was aware of fire from above; he saw dark shapes in the mountain appear and disappear as they fired down on the third crawler.
He tried to make sense of what was happening. Obviously some of the guards were in on the ambush; the figures on the mountainside were terrorists; and the guards in the third crawler? They were evidently militia loyal to the elders.
Miriam James screamed, “Out! Climb down!” her face transformed into something ugly, an adrenalin-charged mask of terror and delight.
She almost dragged Mackendrick from the crawler. Bennett dived after him and followed as they staggered across the track and behind the cover of a rock. The air sang with the sound of the fire-fight—the burn of laser charges and the ricocheting whine of bullets. Bennett looked around for Ten Lee. A guard was pushing her from the back of the crawler. She landed nimbly, crouched to gain her bearings, and then launched herself across the track towards the cover of the rock.
The bullet hit her with a spectacular force, all the more dramatic for being unseen. One second she was sprinting from the crawler, the next she was sprawling across the track. She hit the ground hard and lay very still, a small red shape on the sandy ground, bullets chipping spurts of dust all around her.
Bennett screamed and ran from the cover of the rock, ignoring shouts from Mackendrick and Miriam James exhorting him to get back. He reached Ten Lee and scooped her up, aware only of the pumping of his heart, the rattle of bullets against the nearby vehicle. He hugged her to him like a child and staggered back to the rock, James dragging him to safety amid the din of the fire-fight.
He scanned Ten Lee in panic, trying to assess the extent of her injuries and fearing the worst. Her torso was fine—no blood!—and her head… no blood there either. Then he saw the stain spreading through the fabric of her flight-suit. She had been hit in the upper leg. He felt a wave of relief, followed by panic at the amount of blood she was losing. The material of the legging had been ripped by the bullet. He tore it the rest of the way and used it as a tourniquet to staunch the flow of blood. It seemed, though he was no expert, to be only a flesh wound. Ten Lee was staring up at him, childish disbelief in her big eyes. Bennett stroked her cheek. “You’ll be fine, Ten. Stay calm. Chant a mantra or something.”
He looked up, praying for an end to this hell.
