he’d been infiltrating. He had held out, and the Thuggees were known to be vicious bastards. It wasn’t torture that had done this to Rannu; it was what he saw as failure. He thought he’d let us down. He thought he’d betrayed us.
‘Everyone breaks,’ I told him. Though most lasted longer than I had. I was the disgrace, for so many reasons. ‘They had the RV points covered, nothing more. Did they try to brainwash you?’
Rannu shook his head.
‘Rolleston was there. He was really angry. He wanted to torture me. Wanted to see me break the old- fashioned way, a mixture of psychology and pain. He said that once I was broken then he’d take ownership of my soul.’
It made sense. It was pretty much what they had planned for me with the added bonus of killing Morag in front of my eyes. Don’t think about Morag.
‘What happened?’
‘I escaped.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. Two, maybe three weeks ago.’
After everything he’d been through he’d still been able to escape. I was pretty much in awe of him at that moment. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain this to him, make him feel better, because he set the bar way to high for himself.
‘And you’ve been hiding up here for all that time?’
‘Not just here, all over the place. They hunted pretty hard for the first few days, lots of close calls, but they must think I’ve either escaped or died. I’ve been quiet as a mouse.’
‘Why didn’t you get out?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. It’s locked down pretty tight, but I think I’ve got a way out. I stayed when they got you and Morag to see if I could do anything.’ He turned to look at me. It looked like he was about to cry. ‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t… I was too… Rolleston, the Grey Lady… too frightened.’
‘Rannu, there was nothing you could do, you know that, don’t you? They would have killed you.’
He looked away from me and shook his head despondently. There was nothing I could say to him that would help.
‘You said you have a way out?’ Rannu nodded. ‘I want to kill Rolleston first, I don’t care if I die doing it.’
He looked frightened. The expression looked alien on his face.
‘He’s not here. I was very quiet. I was lying over a grille listening to them. So quiet.’
‘The Citadel?’
‘He’s gone to hunt the resistance – him, the Grey Lady and Kring. They said they wanted to deal with them once and for all. They’re going to destroy them and then Cronin will use it for propaganda.’
‘What’s your out?’
‘Where’d you get the parachutes?’ I asked.
We were crouched in a tight air tunnel next to what looked to be a heavily armoured vent that led to the outside world. The facility we’d been held in was quite close to the point of the stalactite that was Moa City.
‘Apparently nearly everyone who lives here can base-jump, just like they can climb. It was popular as a sport before the war and has survival applications as well. They’ve just started doing it recreationally again. I stole them from some lockers.’ The talking was keeping his mind off other things. Mine too. I was struggling into a bulky parachute harness in the confined space.
‘What’s to stop their defences from burning us out of the sky?’ I asked.
He stopped strapping on his parachute and looked at me. He seemed to come to a decision and pulled a cobbled-together radio transmitter out of the pocket of his combat trousers. I stopped as well. I felt my heart drop.
‘It won’t work,’ I told him. ‘Demiurge will be able to control it.’
Rannu shook his head. ‘He will, but by then the signal’s gone.’
I gave this some thought. He could be right. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it but right now I didn’t give a shit.
‘The explosives?’ I asked.
‘That was the easy part. Made them out of cleaning supplies that I stole. The receivers for the radio detonators were the hardest thing. No big charges. They needed to be small so they wouldn’t get found. Just enough to take out a few vital components on the batteries in our flight path.’
Something about this wasn’t adding up. Rannu was clearing loose rock from round the edge of the vent. Someone had spent a long time chiselling out the rock the hard way. The explosives, the vent, the sabotage – I was suddenly overwhelmed with horror.
‘Rannu?’ He paused but didn’t look at me. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
‘I told you, I’m not sure. Two to three weeks.’
He went back to removing the rock he’d replaced to disguise his work. He couldn’t deal with how long he’d been here but he must know. Even I’d started to make sense of the calendar and clock on my IVD.
Rannu ignored me as I stared at him. He finished removing the loose rock and kicked at the vent. It didn’t budge. Rannu lost it. He started screaming, kicking at it wildly. Finally the vent exploded out of the rock and I could see the ultraviolet light of the subterranean night.
There was a flash of red light and a loud bang. It was so unexpected that I jumped. Some hardened combat veteran. It was a point-defence laser taking out the falling vent.
Rannu held up the radio transmitter and pressed the transmit button. Nearby I heard a few pathetic-sounding explosions. Rannu threw the now-infected transmitter past me deeper into the air tunnel before he pulled himself over the ledge and out into the sulphurous night air.
16
Mudge calls it the vertiginous moment. Pulling yourself over the ledge. The ground distant and less fixed in your perception than you like ground to be. It should pretty much be a constant. I was too weak and the tunnel was too cramped to pull myself over properly. I lost some skin and left a bloody smear on the outside of the stalactite. It didn’t matter despite what the warning icons on my IVD said. Like the OILO drop, the ground seemed to want me much more than it ever had on Earth and Sirius.
There was a moment’s free fall and then I pulled the ripcord. The ground wasn’t moving towards me so suddenly. Looked up to see the large canopy they have to use on Lalande fully deployed. Looked down to see the ruins of mansions and huge bonfires casting flickering light over scratch-built bestial statuary. Was where we were going any better? Tailgunner had told me that the End was some apocalyptic religious cult of deserters.
The harsh beam of a spotlight cut through the UV light playing over our parachutes. They’d be scrambling gunships and coming looking for us. I made a decision on the way down: enough of the self-pitying bullshit. I had Rannu to look after. I owed him. I had to get back to the others and see if I could undo some of the damage I’d done. I also had a purpose. I didn’t give a fuck about Earth, the colonies or any of the politics. Mother was right: what difference did it make who was in charge? Rolleston, on the other hand, had to die as hard as possible. Then I could give suicide some serious thought.
The ground came up and hit me hard. I shrugged off the parachute harness and ran out from underneath the canopy. Still some stims left in the reservoir. They’d drained off the painkillers but that’s fine, the pain is fine. We ran in the opposite direction from the most direct route out. Escape and evasion training – go the way they don’t expect you to.
We were running over scarred Earth, through scrub foliage, what was left of landscaped gardens run wild for fifty years, past the rubble of cave-like mansions cut out of the stone, our gauss carbines at the ready. I could hear the gunships and copters in the air now. Just think about the job, nothing else. The Demiurge-controlled remotes would be the biggest threat.
