Embedded

DAN ABNETT

Praise for
DAN ABNETT

"Dan Abnett is the master of war." 

  SFX

"
Embedded
is a nail-biting, seat-of-the-pants ride – which also has serious things to say about war and the news media – by a master of the adventure novel." 

  Eric Brown

"Rips across the page like a blast wave from a barrage of low orbit launched kinetic impactors. Abnett makes hard bitten, high concept mil-fic fun again." 

  John Birmingham

"If there's one thing Abnett does well, it's write a kick butt action sequence." 

  SF Signal

"With a firm grasp of character and a superior ability to convey action… Abnett delivers a great, readable science fiction novel and earns his comparisons to an SF Bernard Cornwell." 

  Wertzone

"The cinematic scope and dizzying vision we're shown puts most of the recent SF movie epics into deep shade. Dan Abnett entertains from the ground up." 

  SF Site

"The king of noir-infused military SF." 

  Mark Charan Newton

ALSO BY DAN ABNETT

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero

Doctor Who: The Story of Martha

Torchwood: Border Princes

Primeval: Extinction Event

Warhammer 40,000 Novels

The Gaunt's Ghosts series

The Eisenhorn Trilogy

The Ravenor Trilogy

Horus Rising

Legion

Prospero Burns

Original Audio Adventures

Doctor Who: The Forever Trap

Torchwood: Everyone Says Hello

Comic Collections

Nova

Guardians of the Galaxy

Legion of Superheroes

Kingdom

Sinister Dexter

For Adelie and Cal, and thirty years

ONE

The digital brooch at the throat of his regulation unitard read
Fanciman, Major Gene Gillard, S.O.M.D.
, but from the handshake and greeting it was clear that the major affected a more mannered pronunciation of his surname, something along the lines of
Funsmun.

  He suggested the chair Falk should occupy with a
su casa
wave, then resumed his seat at the desk. As he sat down, he pinched the thighs of his unitard to hoist up the slack in the legs.

  "When did you get here?" he asked.

  "Last night," Falk replied. "I came in by spinrad a month ago, but I've been in acclimation out on the Cape for twenty days."

  "You won't have seen much of Eighty-Six yet, then. You'll discover it's fine country, Mr Falk. Beautiful country."

  "Country worth fighting over?" Falk asked. He meant it lightly.

  Major Fanciman favoured him with an expression of distaste, as though Falk had just skilfully farted the first few bars of the Settlement Anthem.

  "Did I say something wrong?" asked Falk.

  Fanciman prepared and lit a smile, slowly and expertly, like it was a
Corona Grande.

  "We are very conscious of vocabulary, Mr Falk. The word you used has negative connotations. It's, uhm, sensitivity-adverse. I'm not blaming you, God knows. You only just got here, and you haven't had time to digest all of our guideline document packet."

  "Sorry," Falk lied. There hadn't been much else to do during the adjustment quarantine. The guidelines had run to several hundred thousand words, and had been remarkably informative. They had made it abundantly clear to Falk just how much stonewalling was going on.

  Major Fanciman was keeping his smile alight, tending it to make sure it didn't go out.

  "There is a message, Mr Falk," he said, "and we like to stay on it. We like all our sponsored correspondents to stay on it too. We are a mature species, and we no longer find it necessary to resort to crude practices such as fighting."

  Falk leaned forward slightly.

  "I understand, Major," he said, "but isn't this entire situation military in nature?"

  "Undeniably. We have five brigades of the Settlement Office Military Directorate boots dusty here in Shaverton itself. Their role is entirely one of safeguard. Public safeguard."

  "But let's just say," said Falk, "if the public was placed in immediate threat, their role of safeguard might require the SOMD to use its weapons?"

  "True."

  "And wouldn't that be fighting?"

  "I can see why you came so highly recommended," Fanciman said, opening a file on his desk. "Probing questions. Incisive. Agile mind. I like it."

  "Oh good," said Falk.

• • •

"Where are you staying, sir?" asked the driver who Major Fanciman had summoned for Falk.

  "Doesn't matter. Where can you get a drink?"

  "A bar?" the driver replied with a little halt in his voice that suggested he thought there might be a trick in the question.

  "Where do
you
get a drink?" Falk asked.

  "The mess, or the Cape Club sometimes."

  "Either will be fine," Falk smiled. He closed the vehicle door and grinned at the driver encouragingly.

  "They're both serving," the driver replied. He seemed uncomfortable.

  "Good. I don't want to go to a bar that isn't serving," Falk said.

  "No, I mean they're both reserved for serving personnel. You people use the Embassy or the Holiday Inn or the GEO."

  "Me people?" asked Falk.

  "Press," said the driver. "There's a list of clubs and bars that correspondents can use, provided you've got accreditation."

Falk had accreditation. It was one of the few things he was certain of. Most of everything else was a fuzz. It was hard to peg time of day. His body wasn't telling him. He reflected that he hadn't had a steady diurnal rhythm in about five years, and the stay on Fiwol with its frantic, twenty-minute days had utterly fucked his bioclock.

  It looked like it was late afternoon. The sky over Shaverton's glass masts, blocks and pylons looked like a late afternoon sky. It was the colour of lemon Turkish Delight with an icing sugar dust of clouds.

  He didn't know how long the day/night cycle was on Eighty-Six. It wasn't that he'd rushed his presearch, he just wasn't much interested in the physical ecosystem. He'd learn that by living in it. During acclimation, and the trip in-system on the gradually decelerating spinrad driver, he'd studied the political, military and social content of the briefing packet, and any other documents he could access. The SO was doing a more than usually extravagant job of redacting material and neutering news outlets, even the big networks and authorised broadcasters.

  His meeting with Major Fanciman had been designed to deliver a specific message. The message was: Lex Falk, you are an acclaimed correspondent with several agency awards to your name and a reputation for hard facts and penetrating coverage, therefore the SO is very pleased to welcome you to Settlement Eighty-Six, and to validate your accreditation. Having you here proves to the public back home that, despite reports of open conflict, the Settlement Office has nothing to conceal on Eighty-Six, and your reportage will be received as unvarnished and credible.

  You will, of course, report only what we permit you to report.

  That had been pretty much it. Fanciman had told him all of that without expressly using any of those actual words. Falk needed to understand it, and needed to make it clear he understood it. If necessary, the message could be reinforced through further meetings with SO execs more senior than Fanciman. If really necessary, an accommodation might be reached where the SO surrendered some juicy nugget to Falk, something that would lend any correspondence he filed the bat-squeak of raw truth. One hand washes the other.

  Falk sat back in the bodymould seat as the driver turned west onto Equestrian and accelerated towards the hazy megastructure of the Terminal. It amused him to think that the Settlement Office had precisely fuck all idea how uninterested he was in any of it. He was bone-light and lagged from too many years riding drivers, he was having trouble finding anything he actually engaged with any more, and he'd only agreed to the Eighty-Six commission because the fee-with-expenses was generous by any network standards, and the whole thing smelled just like another Pulitzer. He had issues. He had a few things he should have taken care of long since, things he couldn't really work up the enthusiasm to tackle head-on. He had a vague plan (which he'd share with anybody who asked because it made him sound layered) of going home, rebuilding his health and leasing some place on the ocean for a year while he switched gears and wrote That Novel. The addendum he didn't share was that he was no longer sure what That Novel was about, or that the prospect really didn't get him all that fucking thrilled, though living beside the ocean sounded nice.