Her lips flicked into a tiny smile. “That hurt,” she whispered.
“Just take it easy,” Franklin grunted. “You’re in shock.”
“Certainly am.” Moyo’s hand was clutching her upper arm so tightly it was painful. She tried to reach for him, offer some reassurance.
“The wound has been repaired,” Sinon said. “You have lost a considerable amount of blood, however. We’ll need to take you back to our camp, and get some plasma into you.”
Something familiar was creeping into her sphere of consciousness. Familiar and unwelcome. Cold, hard thoughts, reeking of callous satisfaction.
“I told you so, Stephanie Ash. I told you not to come back here.”
“You piece of fascist shit!” McPhee bellowed. “We’re no’ armed.”
Stephanie struggled to lift her head. Annette Ekelund was standing at the head of some thirty or so soldiers. She was wearing an immaculately pressed pale khaki field commander’s uniform, complete with forage cap. Three stars glinted unnaturally on her epaulettes. A powerful hunting rifle was cradled casually in her hands. Holding Stephanie’s gaze, she worked the bolt slowly and deliberately. A spent cartridge case was ejected.
Stephanie groaned, her shoulders sagging with dismay. “You’re insane.”
“You bring the enemy into our camp, and you expect to go unpunished. Come come, Stephanie, that’s not how it works.”
“What enemy? We came to see if you needed help. Don’t you understand?” She wanted to retreat back into the numb oblivion of pain and shock. It was preferable to this.
“Nothing has changed simply because we’ve won. They are still the enemy. And you and your loony bin refugee friends are traitors.”
“Excuse me,” Sinon said. “But you have not won. This island has no food. The air will run out in ten days’ time. All of us have to find a way back before then.”
“What do you mean the air’s running out?” Delvan asked.
Sinon’s voice became louder. “There is no fresh air in this realm, only what we brought with us. At the current rate, our breathing will exhaust it in ten days, a fortnight at the most.”
Several soldiers in the ranks behind Ekelund exchanged solicitous glances with each other.
“Simple disinformation,” Annette said dismissively. “It sounds very plausible. If we were back in our old universe I’d even believe it myself. But we’re not. We’re in the place of our choosing. And we chose an existence that would carry us safely down through eternity. This is as close to classical heaven as the human race will ever get.”
“You specified the boundary qualifications,” Sinon said. “A realm where you were cut off from the beyond, and night is a null concept. But that’s all you did. This realm isn’t going to safeguard you from folly. It’s not some actively benign environment that will happily provide every need. You are responsible for what you bring here, and all you brought was a lump of lifeless rock with a thin smear of air on top. Tell me, I’m interested, how do you think this island is going to sustain you for tens of thousands of years?”
“You are a machine. A machine designed with one purpose, to kill. That is all you understand. You have no soul. If you had, you would feel at one with this place. You would know its glory. This is where we longed to be. Where we are safe, and at peace. You have lost, machine.”
“Yo there.” Cochrane had raised his hand. He smiled broadly, radiating enthusiasm like an eager schoolboy. “Um, lady, I’m normally like
“Believe a seditious junkie? I think not.”
“What do you want?” Stephanie asked. She could see Cochrane losing his cool if he kept on arguing with Ekelund. That would turn out bad for everybody. Ekelund needed very little justification to exterminate all of them. In fact, Stephanie was wondering what was holding her back. Probably just enjoying her gloat.
“I don’t want anything, Stephanie. You broke our arrangement and came here to me, remember?”
“In peace. Wanting to help.”
“We don’t need help. Not from you. Not here. I have everything under control.”
“Stop this.”
“Stop what, Stephanie?”
“Let them go. Give these people back their liberty. For pity’s sake, we’ll die here if we can’t find a way out, and you’ve got them fenced in by your authoritarian regime. This isn’t heaven. This is a huge mistake we got panicked into making. The serjeants are trying to help us. Why can’t you cooperate with that?”
“Ten hours ago, these
“Look if it’s some kind of revenge trip you want, then just shoot me in the head and get it over with. But let the others go. You can’t condemn everyone on this island just because you have so much fear and hatred inside.”
“I abhor your assumed nobility.” Annette walked past Cochrane and Sinon to stand over Stephanie. The barrel of the rifle hung inches above her clammy forehead. “I find it utterly repellent. You can never accept that you might be wrong. You perpetually claim the moral high ground as if it’s some kind of natural inheritance. You use your own sweetness-and-light nature as a shield to ignore what you’ve done to the body you’ve stolen. That disgusts me. I would never try to deny what I am, nor what I’ve done. So just for once, admit the truth. I did what was right. I organized the defence of two million souls, including yours, and prevented you from being cast back into that horror. Tell me, Stephanie, was that the right thing to do?”
Stephanie closed her eyes, squeezing small trickles of moisture out onto her cheeks. Maybe Ekelund is right, maybe I am trying to ignore this monstrous crime. Who wouldn’t? “I know what I’ve done is wrong. I’ve always known. But I haven’t got a choice.”
“Thank you, Stephanie.” She turned to Sinon. “And you, death machine, if you believe what you say, then you should switch yourself off and allow real humans to live longer. You’re wasting our air.”
“I am human. More so than you, I suspect.”
“The time will come when we will throw the serpent back out into the emptiness.” She smiled without humour. “Enjoy the fall. It looks like being a long one.”
Sylvester Geray opened the doors to Princess Kirsten’s private office and gestured Ralph to go through. The Princess was sitting at her desk, with the French doors open behind her, allowing a slight breeze to ruffle her dress. Ralph stood to attention in front of her, saluted, then put his flek down on the desk. He’d worked on the single file stored inside during the flight over from Xingu.
Kirsten looked at it with pursed lips, making no attempt to pick it up. “And that is . . . ?” She said it with the air of someone who knew very well what it contained.
“My resignation, ma’am.”
“Rejected.”
“Ma’am, we lost twelve thousand serjeants at Ketton, and God knows how many possessed civilians went with them. I gave the order. It is my responsibility.”
“It certainly is, yes. You assumed that responsibility when Alaistair placed you in charge of the Liberation. And you will continue to bear that responsibility until the last possessed on Mortonridge is placed in zero-tau.”
“I can’t do it.”
Kristen gave him a sympathetic look. “Sit down, Ralph.” She indicated one of the chairs in front of the desk. For a second it appeared as though Ralph might refuse, but he gave a subdued nod and eased himself down.
“Now you know what being a Saldana is like,” she told him. “Admittedly, we’re not faced with quite such momentous decisions every day, but they still pass across this desk here. My brother has authorized fleet deployments which have resulted in a far higher cost of life than Ketton. And as you of all people know, we indirectly license the elimination of people who would one day cause trouble for the Kingdom. Not very many, and not very often, perhaps, but it mounts up over the course of a decade. Those decisions have to be made, Ralph. So I grit my teeth, and give the necessary orders, the really tough ones that the Cabinet would have a collective fit over if they were ever made to take them. That’s genuine political power. Making the decisions which affect other
