McCowan. 'Not like you do: no revelation, no firm sense that this is absolutely the right thing to do.'
'Kendrick, for most of the people going with us there is no other way. Even if they felt they were just taking a chance they'd still take it. It's either that or stay here on Earth, hated and despised, and wait for a long and lingering death. It's not much of a choice. Remember, I hate Draeger just as much as you do. I want you to find the proof you're looking for. I just don't like the thought of staying here and dying slowly, maybe locked up in a secure ward somewhere.'
Kendrick shook his head. 'Look, the one thing I know about Draeger is that he doesn't lie. He could stab you in the back, but he's too proud of his achievements to ever make claims that are unsupportable.'
'You're talking about that cure he offered you, right?'
'I met someone out at Angkor Wat who assured me that his rogue augments had been stabilized by Draeger's treatments. The same treatments that I was receiving from Hardenbrooke.'
Buddy regarded him sceptically. 'So you're saying that you'll return from the Archimedes with evidence to incriminate Draeger, but then you'll still take his cure?'
'If Draeger's really found a way to control the Labrat augments, then other people can develop the same techniques. But even if there were no cure yet, I'd still want to come back. There's always hope.'
'Maybe for you, Kendrick, if you want to take that chance.' Buddy shook his head. 'But I already told you, I've got more faith in the Bright than I have in any number of spurious claims about curing something that I don't believe can be cured.'
The funeral service never happened, because Doctor Numark had felt constrained to incinerate Caroline's remains immediately as a precautionary measure. Kendrick felt his temper rise when she told him that he couldn't even keep the ashes for a ceremony later as she wanted to keep them isolated. To Kendrick, the need to mark Caroline's passing in some way felt vital, necessary.
It was in case, Doctor Numark argued, there was even a slight chance of a containment breach. Kendrick almost laughed in her face, insisting that since he himself constituted a walking containment breach it wasn't likely to make much difference to him. She replied stonily that unfortunately there wasn't much she could do about him.
In the end, he dragged Buddy back out onto the deck, since he was the only other Labrat still alive who had really known Caroline. They took sips from a bottle of whisky that Buddy had acquired from a crewman and stared silently out to sea. There really wasn't much either of them could bring themselves to say.
Within the hour they were ferried by boat to the launch platform and each of them was given a lightweight spacesuit to wear, marked with the colourful logo of Sabak's private launch company. A hundred or so Labrats trooped onto the platform, looking not so different from the kind of rich tourists who'd spend an afternoon orbiting the Earth as an alternative to skiing in the Alps.
Kendrick soon found himself inside a steel-walled hut set high up in the gantry, from where he and the rest could look down the length of the shuttle, to its engines far below.
27 October 2096 Cocha Canyon offshore launch platform
The evening skies above them were still clear, the sea still calm. Ancillary launch technicians wearing jumpsuits and hard hats carefully inspected each of the space-suits three times. Kendrick could hear continuous, incessant systems checks crackling over a nearby intercom.
Just as the checking procedures were completed, the attack finally came.
First, there were dark spots on the horizon. Then, just as Kendrick and the rest were being guided through the gantry and along an elevated platform towards a door set in the side of the shuttle, three sleek silver shapes rocketed past the platform, moving over Draeger's ship in a flash and continuing onwards in a long, curving trajectory.
At the same time, Kendrick noticed a helicopter lifting from the deck of Draeger's ship. It landed on the launch platform's landing pad barely a minute later and he watched as several small figures stepped out and looked around, half bent over under the whirring blades, before stepping quickly to one side. He could see Draeger among them, and the others, he was sure, were the men he'd seen waiting in the shadows of the ruined buildings of LA. They all wore spacesuits modified with black Kevlar body armour.
A moment later another figure stepped out of the helicopter just before it lifted to return to the tanker. This time it was Smeby.
'Jesus Christ,' he heard someone mutter. Kendrick turned to see Sabak standing nearby. 'Will you look at that?'
They all turned to look as one, as three simultaneous explosions of light shot upwards from the main deck of the tanker. Something flared, arrowing in towards the three jets which were now twisting round in their trajectory to take another pass over the launch platform. This time, Kendrick was sure, they would fire on it.
He glanced around, seeing how utterly exposed they all were on the gantry. There would never be enough time to get them all inside the shuttle, and even that was far from the safest place to be.
Then he saw the jets veer in a curve that would bring the shuttle directly into their line of fire. A moment later two of the aircraft twisted away in a high-speed manoeuvre as the missiles launched from Draeger's ship rapidly closed in. Kendrick felt his heart crawl into his throat as two of the pursuing missiles sped into the ocean in an explosion of salt spray.
The third missile, however, zeroed in on the third jet, whose pilot had veered too close to the waves, and as he pulled up and away from the ocean the missile gained on him. The two met in a blossoming ball of fire a few hundred metres away from the launch platform. People yelled and screamed around Kendrick as shredded pieces of the jet's fuselage shot overhead. A deep shudder ran through the platform's structure.
He gazed, dry-mouthed, at the shuttle. That had been far too close.
'We've got to launch now,' Kendrick yelled at Sabak who was standing just a few feet away. 'For Christ's sake, get everybody on board!'
Sabak shot him an angry look. 'What the hell do you think we're already doing?'
Kendrick looked around to see the remaining two jets swoop off into the far distance, half a dozen of Draeger's choppers in pursuit of them.
There was a sudden altercation at the head of the line. Kendrick watched silently as an elderly couple, their faces distorted and ugly from runaway augmentation growth, refused to get on board. He could easily understand, since he had his own doubts about boarding a flying bomb while it was coming under attack. He watched as they hurried back past him: the old woman weeping, her partner stony-faced but clearly frightened. Kendrick turned and watched one or two people at the rear of the line break away and go towards them, presumably to attempt to persuade them not to turn back.
'Is this going to be safe? Are those planes going to come back?' asked the woman standing in front of Kendrick. She was wide-eyed with fear. Like the rest, she carried her helmet in a knapsack over her shoulder, but she wore an incongruous brightly coloured scarf that covered most of her neck where it was exposed under the heavy rim of the spacesuit's neck ring.
'I think we'll be just fine,' Kendrick lied, his voice tight. 'We'll get on board, and then…'
She nodded. Kendrick could see how badly she was trembling. He looked up and down the line, shocked by how many of those around him were obviously in the later stages of rogue augment growth. These, then, were the ones who had nothing to lose, who possessed only the belief that, in some far-future place, they might have everything to gain.
Kendrick looked again towards the horizon but could see nothing from where he was standing. If the choppers were still in pursuit, they were far away on the other side of the platform.
