Earth Flight (36 page)

‘Hospital Earth’s doctors will do their best not to adversely affect your appearance, but functionality must override aesthetics.’

I was tempted to copy Colonel Stone, look up at the ceiling, and ask why Leveque couldn’t just talk ordinary Language instead of including lots of fancy words. ‘You’re saying I’ll look different. How different?’

‘The effect should be small.’

The question I was really trying to ask was if I’d still be human, but I couldn’t make myself say those words. I tried to forget that issue. ‘What will you do if I die? Clone me?’

‘If you suffer brain death before we stabilize your immune system, and your existing body is viable afterwards, then we would regrow your brain tissue. If your existing body was not viable, we would clone you, but in that case the clone would need to undergo the web implantation process.’

‘A clone would have a one in three chance of dying too,’ I said.

‘Our chance of the web implantation being successful would be improved due to the knowledge gained during the first attempt,’ said Leveque. ‘Unfortunately, there is a significant probability that either your own body with a regrown brain, or a clone, would be unable to activate the pedestal. Our tests lead us to believe it requires not only identical genes but similar brain patterns.’

‘What? Why?’

‘It seemed strange that an intelligent alien race would have reproduced asexually because it has evolutionary disadvantages. Those disadvantages may have been outweighed by some form of genetic memory.’

I looked at him blankly.

‘The alien offspring weren’t just identical genetic copies of their parent, they also inherited some memories and brain patterns.’ Leveque paused to check I understood that before continuing. ‘Either your clone, or your own body with a regrown brain, would be missing your current memories and personality. This would cause significant changes to brain activity.’

That meant it wouldn’t be me any longer. Everything that made me a person would be gone. Despite that, I couldn’t help thinking … ‘If you do have to use cloning and put them through this as well, can you do that before you … first wake them up?’

‘Of course, Commander. As a Threat specialist, I’m trained to supply information dispassionately, to avoid my personal emotions influencing my commanding officer’s decisions. That can mean I appear cold and indifferent in public, but I assure you that I have perfectly normal human feelings and compassion. I find the current situation extremely distressing.’

He let the carefully controlled mask of his face slip for a second, showing an expression of pure pain. I’d never really understood the reasons for the traditional emotionless act of Threat specialists. Now I did. The knowledge that this situation was hurting Leveque only made things worse.

‘How soon will I have the operation, sir?’ I asked.

Leveque went across to a panel at the side of the room, and did something that made a section of bars slide aside. ‘The doctors are ready to proceed with the stage 1 injection immediately. It will take effect within forty-eight hours, by which time they should have finished creating the web to match your individual requirements.’

I walked out of my prison cell. ‘I’d like to visit Lecturer Playdon before the operation and warn him what’s happening. His wife was killed four years ago, so he’s got the personal experience to help Fian if this goes badly.’

‘Lecturer Playdon has taken the Security Oath,’ said Leveque, ‘so there’s no problem with that so long as you don’t mention the chimera.’

‘I’d like to visit Candace too, but I’d better not. She knows me far too well. She could tell if I lied, and if I told her even part of the truth …’

I pictured how Candace would react to the news I’d volunteered for something that had a one in three chance of killing me, and winced. It wasn’t even as simple as that. Chaos, I could have coped with a one in three chance of dying, but the idea of some replacement me wearing my face, taking over my life, was …

‘While there is no medical urgency,’ said Leveque, ‘it would be beneficial if the web is implanted within the next ninety-one hours.’

‘Why? What happens in ninety-one hours time?’

‘General Torrek will be decanted from his rejuvenation tank,’ said Colonel Leveque. ‘He will be extremely unhappy with recent developments.’

‘General Torrek won’t blame you for this.’

Colonel Leveque shook his head. ‘General Torrek is normally a patient and understanding man, but he’s going to react strongly to the news that a girl he regards as his granddaughter is undergoing a procedure that has a 32 per cent chance of killing her. I confidently expect his first action after resuming command of Alien Contact will be to demote myself and Colonel Stone to the rank of Lieutenant.’

33

Fian can be incredibly stubborn. I knew he wanted to be stubborn about this, argue against me doing it, but he just accepted my decision. I don’t think I could have done that if I was in his place, but Fian is totally zan and a much better person than I will ever be.

So Fian held my hand while some doctors gave me the stage 1 injection and waved scanners at me. After that, Raven appeared, and the three of us portalled to our class dome on the California Land Raft to visit Lecturer Playdon.

Raven was grimly silent, and the expression on his face told me he was suffering his own personal hell over what was happening. He wasn’t just our bodyguard, he was our friend, and given he’d been the one who arrested me …

‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Raven,’ I said.

‘I put you in that prison cell.’

‘Which stopped me killing myself in a hopeless attempt to activate the pedestal.’ I tried to sound cheerful and optimistic. ‘There’s every chance this cure will work.’

We headed out of the portal room and walked down the corridor towards the hall. It was early evening, so I expected the whole class to be there, but it was deserted.

‘Where is everyone?’ asked Fian. ‘They surely can’t still be out on the dig site. Playdon’s a slave driver sometimes, but …’

I frowned as I saw something burgundy red and silver on the hall floor, and stooped to pick it up. ‘Why is one of Dalmora’s scarves lying …?’

I broke off and exchanged startled looks with Fian. He’d obviously had the same thought as me, because he led the way out of the hall and opened the nearest room door. All the storage spaces were open and empty.

‘They’ve packed and evacuated!’ he said.

‘But why?’ asked Raven.

‘There must have been a quake warning.’ I turned to head back to the portal. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t understand why …’

I broke off my sentence because a figure in a sealed Military impact suit was coming out of the portal room. The glowing name and rank markings on the front of the suit said that it was Major Rayne Tar Cameron, but she wasn’t that tall. Something was horribly wrong here.

If that fact was obvious to me, it was even more obvious to Raven. By the time I was reaching for my gun, Raven already had his aimed and was firing, or trying to fire. The gun did nothing. He gave it a single angry shake and shouted.

‘Guns are disabled. Run! Nuke it, run!’

Fian and I turned and ran for the dome exit at the far end of the corridor. Fian operated the door controls, while I glanced behind us for Raven. I’d expected him to be following us, but he’d stopped, turned, and was launching himself at the advancing anonymous person in the impact suit. He’d know there was no chance he could injure them when they were protected by the suit, but he was buying us time to get the door open.

It was then that I saw the blinding line of light appear from something in the intruder’s right hand. A laser cutter! It was pointless yelling warnings. Raven must have seen the laser when he told us to run. That was why an Adonis Knight had used the nuke word.

Raven sent the intruder flying against the corridor wall. I saw the material in the flailing left arm trigger, freezing it at a ludicrous angle, but the flexiplas wall wasn’t hard enough to trigger a whole impact suit. The laser cutter in the right hand swung round and went straight through Raven just above the waist.

Raven didn’t even cry out, just toppled apart in two, hideously gory, separate pieces. I forced my eyes away, saw the dome door was opening, grabbed Fian’s hand and ran. Raven had given his life to buy us precious seconds. We couldn’t waste them.

We sprinted down the path past the swimming pool. I was on the edge of tears, but fought them back. I had to be practical now, or Fian and I would soon be dead too. I let go of Fian’s hand so I could check my gun, and saw the red light warning it was disabled. I tried to use the lookup on my left forearm to send an emergency call, but that was dead too. They’d both been remotely disabled. Nuke it, what was going on here?

I desperately tried to think, to plan. Fian and I didn’t have impact suits. The intruder chasing us did. There was a good side to that. Impact suits wouldn’t protect us against a laser cutter, and we could run faster without them.

If I had a tag gun, I could fire tags at our pursuer, keep triggering their impact suit so we could grab the laser cutter. There were tag guns in the store rooms of both our dome and that of Cassandra 2, but we’d have to go back past the laser cutter to reach them. Nuke that!

‘We’re running out of path,’ said Fian. ‘We’ll have to go into the ruins.’

‘Chaos! I suppose we’ve no other choice, but we’ll have to stay between the safety lines or we’ll get killed by concraz blocks falling on our heads. That means we’ll be easy targets for a gun.’

‘If whoever is in that suit had a gun,’ said Fian, ‘they’d surely have shot at us by now.’

We ran out of the park and along Gap 15, careful to keep safely in the centre and away from the buildings. I took another glance over my shoulder, saw the Military impact suit was well behind us now, and slowed to a safer speed. We couldn’t afford a fall or a trip because an injury would kill both of us. I wouldn’t leave Fian and I knew he’d never leave me.

Fian was looking behind us too. ‘They’re still chasing us. Where’s Raven?’

I realized Fian had been concentrating on opening the dome door. He hadn’t looked behind us, and there’d been no scream to tell him what had happened.

‘Raven’s dead,’ I said. ‘Whoever is in that suit has a laser cutter.’

Fian made the sound of someone trying not to be sick. I’d be sick myself when I had time. If I had time.

‘I didn’t see …’ Fian looked over his shoulder again. ‘I still can’t see a laser beam.’

‘They’re obviously not stupid enough to run along with it turned on.’ I looked back at the figure myself. ‘They aren’t very fast. An impact suit always slows you down, but it looks like they aren’t used to wearing one.’

‘Who do you think is inside the suit?’ Fian asked. ‘It’s not Rayne Tar Cameron, because the shape looks like a man.’

‘It’s not Rayne in the suit, but if she’s involved then it would explain how our guns and lookups got disabled, and why we didn’t get a mail from Playdon about the class evacuating. You know how paranoid he is about safety. He’d have sent us a mail message to warn us not to come back here.’

‘You’re right. Rayne’s the Command Support team leader. She’s got the authority to remotely disable guns and lookups. She’s filtering our mail messages. She’s authorizing portal access to …’ Fian broke off his sentence as the ground suddenly rocked under our feet, and the buildings on either side of us rained heavy lumps of concraz.

I gave a laugh of pure despair. This was utter nightmare.

The instant the ground stabilized, we started moving again, but a glance over my shoulder told me the figure behind us was moving as well. ‘I think it’s Qwin Marston in that suit,’ I said. ‘He’s a supply clerk, so he wouldn’t have a gun, but he could get access to a laser cutter.’

‘That would explain why he’s slow in an impact suit,’ said Fian. ‘Supply clerks wouldn’t wear them very often. It’s a good job he didn’t think of bringing a hover belt or we’d be in real trouble.’

‘You don’t think we’re in real trouble already?’ I asked.

‘At least we know help is coming,’ said Fian. ‘Raven’s implant will have sent a signal to SECOP when he died.’

I’d forgotten about that. I did some hasty mental calculations. ‘Military Security must be on their way, but they can’t possibly catch us up before we reach the edge of the island.’

We jogged on in silence for a few minutes. We were running out of time. When we reached the edge of the island, we’d be trapped.

‘Qwin Marston doesn’t know this place,’ I said. ‘We do. It’s our only advantage, so we have to use it.’

‘Hiding inside the buildings would be far too dangerous,’ said Fian.

I had a truly mad idea. ‘Playdon brought the class down Gap 15 to show us the view from the edge of the Land Raft. Remember seeing all the birds? Qwin doesn’t know about them. We’ll collect a few rocks as we go along. When we get to the edge of the island, we wait for Qwin to get close and then throw rocks at nests.’

‘The birds will mob all of us,’ said Fian. ‘Qwin’s got a suit to protect him, but we haven’t.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Those beaks and claws are nasty. They’ll hurt us, they won’t hurt Qwin, but they will keep triggering the material of his impact suit. If his right arm locks up, we may get a chance to grab the laser cutter.’

Fian groaned. ‘That’s a fast way to lose a hand, but … At least it’s a chance, and losing a hand wouldn’t be fatal if we made a tourniquet with something.’

We ran on. The edge of our Land Raft island was in sight now, so I paused to grab a few rocks.

‘Why?’ Fian loaded up with rocks as well. ‘Why would Rayne help him do this? She always seemed such a perfect Military officer.’

‘Plenty of people who’ve never even met me want to kill me. Why shouldn’t Rayne want to kill me too? I always had the impression she didn’t approve of us being recruited.’

‘It’s a bit of a leap from not approving to committing murder,’ said Fian.

We were getting close to the crumbling remains of the wall that guarded the edge of the Land Raft island. I looked up at the buildings, looking for nests on windowsills, then turned to face our attacker. There was a flash of light as he triggered the laser beam. He must have seen us gathering rocks, but he’d naturally expect us to throw them at him.