No Direction Home (30 page)

Helping me with the carnage.

Because that was all it was now; remorselessly cutting down the spacesuit figures –
don't think of them as people
– who had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide and who couldn't even shoot back at their killers because neither of them had even shown their face. They hadn't had to…

Jesus, is this all we're good for – killing?

Back to the bridge: Kari and UNSEC patrolmen shooting down the Command Team as they reached for their weapons –
why don't they surrender? What kind of sense does that make to anyone?

Light sparkling in the upper field of vision and Vinter threw himself sideways as the panorama windows shattered and were blown apart by weapons fire, the bullets slamming into the seat he had just left as he rolled in mid air and grabbed a handhold on the side wall, pivoting round, his right hand already drawing the sidearm from its holster as he pulled himself into cover next to the window, feeling the vibrations of the bullets as they slammed into the armoured wall behind him.

Replay memory…
There they were, two EarthCorp troops at two o'clock clinging onto a framework girder, barely glimpsed as he had dived to one side and only recorded by his nanotech, but he had a fix on them.

The fusillade of bullets ceased; Vinter pivoted round, gun in hand, lining up instantly on the left hand trooper, two shots into the visor, then track round for the second, still frantically trying to bring his weapon up, as Vinter shot him twice in the chest, the suit instantly open to vacuum.

It's too fucking easy…

Movement out of the corner of his eye and Vinter saw the second shuttle beginning to roll slowly over towards him, its weapons suddenly silent and then he saw why – they were all training around towards the Control Centre. Vinter hit a key on the comp, then launched himself across the space between him and the door, diving through it as it slid open. Grab the vertical guiderail and yank himself upwards as the shuttle opened fire, a murderous blast of fire that reduced the Module to exploding debris in a matter of seconds, but by then, Vinter was taking position behind Gun Four, mounted thirty feet above the Centre.

OK, so he's gunning for me now – he must have run out of targets, so has to come after me… his conditioning won't let him do anything else.

Only he wasn't, not quite. There had been that pause in the bombardment as the shuttle rolled over when at least some of the guns could have been in action, the pause giving Vinter enough time to get out of the Module before it was destroyed and now it was the shuttle that was vulnerable because it was drifting helplessly and Vinter could target the shuttle's port rail gun, the one that was beginning to traverse towards him and
fire
, seeing the mounting buckling and finally collapsing under the impact of the shells, then switch to the other one that was slower to react –
because it wasn't under Vinter Two's control, it was merely automatic and hadn't identified any new target yet
– red hot impact flashes as it was destroyed –
but what was Vinter Two doing?

There.

In less than a second, the top of the pilot section was blown away and a large dark object came hurtling towards Vinter –
ejector seat
– and he was ducking away instinctively before he realised that it was going to miss and that it had only been a decoy because
there
was Vinter Two, emerging at speed from the hole in the pilot's section, wielding what looked like a portable Gatling and he was firing it, for fuck's sake…

The bullets slammed into the gun's shield as Vinter brought it round on the other man, who was in free fall and so couldn't take any avoiding action –
and he must have known that
– so Vinter simply centred the sight on Vinter Two's chest –
don't hesitate
– and pulled the trigger, watching as the bullets slammed into him, throwing him backwards, his arms moving slowly,
oh so slowly
, into the spreadeagle position as his suit was ripped to shreds across the chest before it exploded in an expanding red mist that seemed to take forever to dissipate…
Dying in slow motion. That's what this Augmentation does – means you can watch your brother die slowly.

Ain't Science wonderful?

Murmuring
Come on you Spurs
, in a voice that was more a sob than anything else, Vinter took his finger off the trigger and sat back, staring at the drifting, slowly rotating form that was Vinter Two, the nearest thing he would ever have to a brother…

The brother he had killed.

‘Fuck!'

Vinter slammed the gun round, smashing it furiously into the shield as he shook his head violently, swearing continuously, a litany of oaths intended to stop him thinking about what he had done… But it didn't work, not even for a moment.

He could have killed me at least three times… First, he could have targeted the Module right from the start, but didn't until he had no other New Dawn troops to kill, then there was no need for him to hold fire when he was rolling the shuttle over, and finally, he hit the shield instead of me – that had to be intentional, because he had to be at least as good a marksman as I am.

He could have killed me, but he didn't – why?

He suspected he already knew the answer, had known it for some minutes now, but he needed to think things through and now was not the time. Even so, one question still nagged at him.

Would I have done the same in his position?

He watched as Vinter Two caroomed into the shuttle behind him, spinning slowly round in a boneless fashion, looking more like an inflated rag doll than what had once been a living human being. Never mind that he was – had been – a clone. The poor bastard was dead, the only person in the entire fucking Universe who was remotely like himself – and he had killed him, the same as they had killed almost everyone in the Shuttle Bay.

What did those bastards do to us, to make us like that?

‘Thanks, bro…' he murmured.

Finally, as if from a distance, he became aware that there was a voice coming through the comms system: Kari's.

‘
Inspector Vinter, are you there?
'

Vinter took a deep breath, forcing himself to concentrate. ‘Yeah… I'm here.'

‘
Thank God for that. Are you OK?
'

‘Yeah… I'm fine. What is your status?'

‘
We've secured the ship, sir.
' He could hear the undertone of excitement in her voice. ‘
We won, sir
.'

‘Yeah, we did, didn't we,' he said, tonelessly. He supposed he ought to feel some semblance of triumph – OK, they still had whatever was left of EarthCorp to deal with, but they'd be powerless now. After all, this was what he had been working for ever since Ferreira had taken over, the day when the UN took back its own starship and now it had happened…

His triumph.

His
.

He looked slowly around the Shuttle Bay, seeing nothing but drifting spacesuited figures, scores of them, motionless, all dead because even if you were only hit, say, in the arm or leg, a wound that would be treatable in anything but a vacuum, you were dead from the instant your suit was pierced. And all of those floating forms –
dammit, they were men and women, real human beings, that's what they were, so face up to it
– all of them had been alive less than an hour ago. And, but for him, most of them probably would still be… How many dead? A hundred? Two? Not his triumph, no…

His responsibility.

His
.

‘You're right – they
did
lose a hell of a lot of their iceshield,' said Kari, staring up at the image displayed on the main viewscreen; it showed a side on view of
Atlantis
as the other ship was being manoeuvred into position a thousand kilometres to starboard of
Terra Nova
.

‘About a third, apparently,' Vinter replied, absently. They were both in what had once been Lahtinen's office, then had been Ferreira's – and was now his, the effective, if unofficial, captain of the ship. He had even restored the aircraft carrier image behind the desk, for no particular reason beyond the feeling that Lahtinen would have wanted it that way, but he was thinking of changing it if he were going to be using the office for any length of time. Which he almost certainly would be; there was a lot to do over the next few months, if not years, with the immediate priority of initiating repair work to the Shuttle Bay. The hull had somehow managed to take the impact of the two wrecked shuttles without cracking, but it had been distorted far beyond safety limits and would effectively need rebuilding along a seventy metre section down that side. Then there was the other external damage to be taken into account… according to the experts, repairs could take up to a year.

And then, of course, there was the major project to be undertaken, that of deciding exactly how the largest number of colonists could be taken on to Delta Pavonis, one that would require every engineering and astrogation expert on both ships, then some form of agreement would have to be reached on deciding who would survive and who would not…

Who would play God, in other words.

Draw names out of a hat? Come up with some sort of ranking order based on age or skills or according to some intricate formula that would include both plus possibly other criteria, complicated still further when spouses or partners were taken into account?
Jesus…

He pushed the thought aside because all that would be months, if not years, away yet. He needed to focus on more immediate problems: drawing up new shift rotas, how to deal with Shadrin and the other EarthCorp command officers who had surrendered within minutes of receiving the news of Vinter Two's death, appointing a skeleton crew to take over
Atlantis
for the time being, maybe replacing the aircraft carrier image with
The Fighting Temeraire
…

‘Has Naragama finished his survey yet?' asked Kari, cutting across his wandering thoughts.

Vinter nodded, forcing himself to concentrate; Ferreira had been right when he had said that Augmented Mode was exhausting, even for him.
I feel totally knackered…
‘She's clean, as far as he and his team can tell. There aren't any nasty surprises waiting for us over there. No auto-destruct devices or anything like that. The comp system passwords that Shadrin handed over to us have been genuine so far.' He shrugged. ‘No reason why they shouldn't be, of course – he knows as well as we do that the only chance for EarthCorp now is to co-operate.'

‘And he'd rather do that with the UN than he would have done if he'd been dealing with New Dawn.'

He nodded to her. ‘Thanks again for handling that side of things. It can't have been easy.'

‘Needed to be done, sir.' She stared at him for several seconds, before she said quietly, ‘At least I didn't have to fight my own clone.'

Vinter glanced sharply at her, then nodded slowly. ‘True… Not something I especially enjoyed, to be honest.'

Again, she seemed to hesitate. ‘I heard he'd left you a message.'

‘He did, yes. They found it in the comms system on
Atlantis.
' He could see her expression, frankly curious, and, for a moment, was tempted to tell her it was none of her business, but then realised again how much he owed her – she and her UNSEC squad had had to deal with Ferreira and his Command Team as well as their security detail on the bridge when Teymourian had been the only one willing to surrender and so they had been obliged to kill the rest of them where they stood. Had they been conditioned by New Dawn not to lay down their arms? He'd almost certainly never know. The point was that if Kari hadn't been prepared to do that, especially after her experience with the berserker gunman, his own plans would have come to nothing, so… ‘OK. It was basically his entire memory bank, his life as he remembered it. He must have uploaded it before leaving
Atlantis
, knowing he probably wouldn't be coming back… It's mostly the same memory as I had when I first woke up here.'

‘The one with – Livvy, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, that one, but with less detail, by the looks of it. There was almost nothing about his childhood, but then there wasn't much in mine originally either. It was primarily about his career as a security officer, although they added the idea that it was EarthCorp that had secretly funded him through University and had then recruited him to work undercover with the UN, so they didn't have to alter more of the Livvy set than they had to. They didn't even bother to hide the fact that he was a clone from him. He was a tool, right from the start, as far as they were concerned.' He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Although so was I, really… Perhaps that was why they never really had his loyalty, not deep down, because he knew they were messing with his head all along. I suppose he just wanted me to know about him – at the end of the message, he said he wished we'd had more time to talk. So do I, actually…' He broke off, staring down at the desk, remembering Vinter Two's very last message, the one he had not told anyone about and never would, sent in a microburst transmission at what must have been the moment he had thrown himself out of the pilot section towards Gun Three, perhaps a second before his death:
Reckon we did it, bro. Time to die.

Vinter had found the message in his personal comms section on the ship's system and it had been those last three words that had almost made him break down:
Time to die
… The replicant Roy Batty's last words in
Blade Runner
– but there was no way that Vinter Two would have had any knowledge of the film in the Livvy set of memories. No way… so were Vinter Prime's memories closer to the surface than either of them had realised? If he had told him to play
Wish You Were Here
, would they have burst through the way they had with him? He had never even thought of doing it and now it was too
fucking
late, a lifetime too late…

‘So – he
knew
he wasn't going to come back?' Kari asked.

Again, Vinter hesitated about answering, then reached down to the bottom drawer of the desk and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses, holding them up to her interrogatively. Seeing her surprised expression, he explained, ‘Found these earlier on. Must have belonged to Lahtinen, because I can't see Ferreira having his own stash of booze somehow, but, even if this sounds a bit callous, neither of them will be needing it now, will they? So… this is the closest thing to a memorial, or even to a wake, that Vinter Two's ever going to get, so join me – please?'

‘OK… It's the least we can do.'

He poured out a drink for each of them, then held up his glass in a toast. ‘To Chris.'

‘To Chris,' she echoed softly. They clinked glasses, then drank, each one settling back more comfortably in their seats.

‘OK, to answer your question. I don't know the answer for certain, and I never will, but I think he never intended to come back, no. He'd come to the same conclusion that I had, that the only chance of saving as many people from both ships was to get rid of the military elements on both sides, but, more than that,
I
had to be the one to survive, because I wasn't under Ferreira's control. If he'd won, he'd have been obliged to obey Shadrin's orders because of his conditioning, but I would be free to make my own decisions. So he subverted his own Augmented Code as much as he could.'

‘How the hell did he do that? Shouldn't that have been impossible?'

Vinter nodded. ‘Should have been, yes, but, like me, he had to have some flexibility of action if he were to function properly as a military expert because there were times when he'd have to act as a devil's advocate during planning sessions, pick out the faults in their thinking, that sort of thing. He couldn't do anything directly against EarthCorp interests, but he could act tangentially, I suspect. Remember that we're talking about a technology that has only ever been tried on two individuals – well, one, really, if you think about it. They couldn't know for certain how much control they had over him. He couldn't actually have opened fire on any EarthCorp personnel or vessel, because Augmented Mode stopped him doing that, but he could still pick and choose, to an extent, who lived and who didn't.'

‘But he
was
shooting at you, wasn't he?'

‘Only at the end, when there weren't any more New Dawn troops left for him to target. They probably expected him to go after me right from the start as being his biggest threat, but as long as I wasn't shooting at him, he was able to focus on other targets in the meantime. When he
had
to go after me, he managed to put himself in a situation where he was at a tactical disadvantage – he was in free fall and I wasn't – so he gave me enough of an edge to win. The poor bastard was probably fighting his programming all the while but still managed to slow himself down just enough for me to kill him.' He broke off suddenly and took a deep breath, before he said, almost to himself, ‘We were working as a team and now he's dead – the only person in the entire fucking Universe who was remotely like me… Pardon my French, by the way.'

‘No problem.'

‘I just can't imagine what it must have been like for him. He fought his own hardwiring all the way, even though he knew that it would kill him.' It was as if he had not heard her comment. ‘I can't help wondering whether I would have done the same in his position… Somehow, I'm not convinced I would.'

He paused, staring off at something only he could see, then shook his head, almost angrily. ‘I don't know, maybe he was trying to stay true to the real Vinter. Maybe enough
did
come through into his personality for him to do what he did. Dad was made of pretty good stuff, I suppose…'

‘Dad? Is that how you think of him? The original Vinter, I mean.'

He stared down at his glass. ‘Dad? Or big brother? Genetically, he was both, really.'

‘Does it matter which one he was?' she asked. ‘Either way, I think he'd have been proud of both of you.'

He glanced at her in surprise, then nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, maybe he would at that.'

‘Another toast? To Vinter Prime?'

‘To Vinter Prime,' he agreed, and finished off his drink, picking up the bottle to refill both their glasses.

‘So… now what?' she asked, her voice deliberately brisk. ‘You're effectively the new Commanding Officer of the UN Starship
Terra Nova
and–'

‘And everyone's shit-scared of me.'

‘
I'm
not.'

‘OK, everyone except you. Oh, they're all very grateful, but they'd much rather I went into cryosleep and then I wouldn't be a problem. I can't say I blame them… If I were in their shoes,
I'd
be scared of me.'

‘It's not really surprising, is it? You're stronger, faster and more intelligent than we are, but…' she shrugged. ‘We all need you, sir. Things are going to be hard enough on
Terra Nova
, so we're going to need all the help that's available, especially if there are any more New Dawn or EarthCorp surprises waiting for us in the Pits.'

‘What, so they can call in their tame Robocop to carry out his speciality – mass slaughter?'

‘That wasn't what I meant.'

He sighed. ‘I know it wasn't, Kari, but that'll be what will happen. Or it'll be what they'll expect, after this lot. That's why they're so scared of me – they know that I
can
do it, because I already have. That's what those bastards have turned me into, a fucking killing machine with a body count of a hundred and fifty four and rising.'

‘But–'

‘There's no “but” about it. Chris Vinter – the two of us – is responsible for wiping out almost eight per cent of the human race currently in existence, as far as we know. Proportionately, I've committed the biggest single act of genocide in history. Shit, Hitler and Stalin had nothing on me…'

‘Listen, sir, you had no choice. If–'

‘There's
always
a choice, Kari. Always. It's just that this was the least bad option. I had to take out the leaders on both sides, along with their soldiers, because they were in the way of any kind of negotiation. I –
we
– had to make sure neither EarthCorp or New Dawn would exist any more, so we had to get them all into the Killing Ground and then massacre them all between us, no survivors, because they had to be finished for good. So we – the Vinters – killed more or less all of them before turning on each other. Is that the kind of CO you want, Kari?'

‘If he keeps me – and the UN – alive, then yes. Look, you said it yourself, this was the least bad option, so–'

‘Yes, and what gave me –
us
– that right? We took a decision that affected the future of every living human being without consulting any of them – and we weren't even fucking human, so what right did we have to play God with you all?'

‘Because it had to be done and you were the only ones who could, right? If you hadn't, it's quite possible that none of us would be here at all.'

‘That's the point, though. I don't know for certain how it would have played out if we hadn't intervened. I'll
never
know, that's the problem…'