Terminal World (61 page)

‘You’re one of us now, Doctor. Consider it your civic duty. It won’t take long, anyway. It’s about as open-and-shut as they come.’

Ricasso was right about that, at least. The tribunal was over in little more than an hour, and much of that had been taken up with formalities. There were no more than twenty people in the sealed, windowless room, including Spatha and his diffident, half-hearted defence counsel, who entered proceedings with the mildly distracted air of a woman who knew nothing she did or said would make the slightest difference to the outcome. The prosecution, such as it was, consisted of Ricasso and five senior captains: they were, Quillon was given to understand, the nearest thing to a standing military court Swarm had to offer. Another ten captains, from a range of ships - including both hard-line Ricasso loyalists and moderate waverers - constituted the jury. Quillon was the only witness called to testify, and his contribution was mercifully brief. He was cross-examined over the matter of his coming to Swarm, then regarding the blue book, and finally about his involvement in the escape of the vorgs. He answered truthfully, since he no longer had a thing to hide. Had he been asked about Nimcha, he would have told them all he knew.

But they weren’t interested in Nimcha, and they weren’t overly interested in him. It was all about Spatha, who stood proudly despite being cuffed and under armed guard. Throughout the tribunal he maintained a look of stoic composure, the unashamed facade of a man who believed he had acted in Swarm’s best interests, or at least wanted his questioners to believe as much.

Quillon certainly did. And when by an act of mental contortion he managed to put himself in Spatha’s place, he could see nothing in the man’s actions that had not been utterly consistent with his stated aims. Swarm was a democracy only insofar as it suited Ricasso. And if one truly did believe that Ricasso’s leadership was bad for Swarm, and that the fight had to be taken to the Skullboys, what else could one do but gather supporters and plot a takeover? In that sense Spatha had acted reasonably, even fairly. The personal animosity that Quillon had felt emanating from the man in no way undermined that thesis. Spatha’s hate, both for him and Nimcha, had been incidental.

The verdict of the jury was not unanimous, but nor was it required to be. All agreed that Spatha was guilty of releasing the vorg and precipitating the deaths that had followed. All agreed that his actions had cost both lives and the loss of precious medicines. Where they differed was on the question of whether those actions constituted mutiny, or merely an overzealous regard for the security of Swarm, in the sense that Spatha had not necessarily been acting in his own self-interest.

It made little difference to the outcome. Seven captains were not only convinced of Spatha’s guilt, but that his crimes merited execution. Two recommended administrative restraint pending further investigation. One abstained on the grounds that it could not be proven beyond all doubt that the incriminating photographs were genuine. The minority voices clearly pained Ricasso, who had been hoping for unanimity.

But seven were sufficient. Under Swarm law, Spatha was deemed guilty of material sabotage, the murder of four citizens, perversion of the course of justice by attempting to shift blame onto both Quillon and Ricasso, and, almost as an afterthought, attempted mutiny. The weight of the other crimes would have been sufficient, but mutiny carried an automatic death penalty.

Sentence was carried out promptly, with surprisingly little ceremony. The court moved to one of
Purple Emperor′
s boarding platforms, where Spatha was strapped into a leather harness of obvious antiquity. The harness in turn was fixed to a line, and the line to a winch. Spatha was swung out over empty sky and then lowered to a distance of about one hundred and fifty spans under the airship. Armed airmen took up station and directed pedestal-mounted machine guns at the barely recognisable form on the end of the line. With his arms and legs trussed, Spatha was incapable of visible movement.

But the gunners didn’t open fire immediately. Instead they waited for the winch line to be swung gently back and forth. What was a relatively small motion at the platform level soon became a wide, pendulous arc at the other end of the line. Spatha’s motion gradually took on the form of an ellipse, moving back and forth as well as sideways. It took Quillon a moment to realise that all this was deliberate, to make the target harder to hit. At a signal, the machine-gunners let their weapons roar, aiming not at the gyring figure but at the point in the sky where the figure was likely to be a fraction of a second later. It turned out to be much more difficult than it looked, and the winch operator only complicated things by adjusting the length of the line and the amplitude of the swing. It was probably only seconds, but it felt to Quillon as if minutes passed before any of the bullets found their mark. Even then, the shots did not look to have been decisive. The gunners seemed to be wilfully prolonging Spatha’s execution, chipping away at him rather than going for the lethal shot.

‘Don’t judge us too harshly,’ Ricasso said, straining to make himself heard over the chug of the guns. ‘It would have been far easier just to have shot him at point-blank range. But then we’d be denying him the right to contribute something useful to Swarm.’

‘Wouldn’t a sack of dirt serve much the same purpose?’

‘Dirt’s useful,’ Ricasso said. ‘You never know when you’ll need it for ballast.’

Quillon was glad when it was all over, when at last the hanging form had been deemed to have served its purpose. It was winched back up, the ragged, bloodstained form extracted from the harness - itself peppered with bullet holes, but essentially repairable - and tossed overboard.

‘You don’t approve,’ Ricasso said. ‘I can see that. But then, you don’t really have the option of not dealing with us, do you? We’ve got the medicines.’ He smiled and nodded, as if in his presence Quillon had crossed some threshold of moral complexity, leaving the naive world behind. ‘Welcome to politics, Doctor. We don’t get to pick our allies. The best we can hope for is that we don’t despise them quite as much as our enemies.’

After the execution Quillon and Ricasso returned to
Painted Lady.
Curtana’s ship was provisioned and ready to resume its position at the head of Swarm, equipped and armed for the final approach to Spearpoint. A day after Spatha’s execution, they picked up Radial Nine again and received the first news from the city since before the crossing.

A day later, they could see it.

 

‘From Tulwar, sir,’ the airman said, handing Quillon the thin sheet of transcript paper.

‘You’re already in contact?’

‘Yes, sir. Via the semaphore line so far, although we’re close enough now that we should be able to establish a continuous heliograph exchange, provided the visibility keeps up. Which is good, because no one expects Radial Nine to hold out much longer. The Skulls are chipping away at it station by station.’

Quillon read the transcript. Rather than the general report that had been picked up by the Skullboy airship
Lacerator,
this was a direct communication to Swarm, in response to an earlier announcement sent to Spearpoint along the faltering semaphore network. Swarm had informed the city - taking particular pains not to mention Tulwar by name - that it was responding to the earlier call for help, with the intention of bringing sufficient antizonal supplies - albeit in concentrated form - to treat millions of citizens. Swarm requested guidance for offloading the cargo and ensuring it reached the right hands. It also mentioned that any direct medical queries should be addressed to the physician aboard
Painted Lady,
without mentioning Quillon’s name. The response had come back six hours later, suggesting that lines of communication, both in and out of Spearpoint, remained fragile. This time it appeared to be directly authored by Tulwar. Digesting the transcript, Quillon was left in no doubt that it was the same man they had dealt with before his escape.

Meroka agreed. ‘The place where he’s suggesting we offload isn’t too far from his part of Steamville. Too much of a coincidence, Cutter.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yeah. Looks like our wheezing friend really is running the show now, probably out of the same bathhouse.’ Meroka gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘But if the man can get the job done, ain’t no skin off my nose.’

‘Although you’d rather it was Fray.’ He nodded. ‘I feel the same. But we can’t go asking what happened to him. If we do that, anyone who reads our signal will know we had some prior connection with Fray. And if that’s someone who happens to be looking for me—’

‘You don’t have to say it, Cutter. I know what you mean.’

‘It also means we can’t let Tulwar know that we know who he is either. At least not until we’re face to face, and we know there’s no one listening in. The other thing we can’t mention is Nimcha. Not until we’re sure she’s going to be safe.’

‘Maybe we should cross that bridge after we’ve delivered the drugs, don’t you think? Ain’t gonna be no walk in the park, just getting to Spearpoint. Just so you’re clear on that, Cutter.’

‘Under no illusions,’ he said, forcing a stoic smile.

Meroka fell silent, and for a moment he thought she had said all that she meant to. Then she started speaking again. ‘Gave you a pretty hard time, didn’t I?’

‘No more or less than I deserved.’

‘Because of you being an angel?’

‘There’s no escaping it.’

‘No, I guess there isn’t. But I was wrong all the same. Not wrong to hate them for what they did, but wrong to take all that out on you. So you lied. I guess you did it with Fray’s blessing, though.’

‘I lied to almost everyone I ever met in Neon Heights. Fray was the only one who got anywhere near the truth. And there were still things I didn’t even tell Fray.’

‘Guess we all have our little secrets.’

‘All of us,’ he affirmed. ‘Doesn’t make it right or wrong, of course - it’s just the way we are. For what it’s worth, I’m glad Fray put us together. I know it meant dragging you out of Spearpoint, I know it meant you getting shot ... but, as selfish as it sounds, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.’

‘Can’t say I was sorry not to be back in Spearpoint when it all turned to shit.’

‘You’d have done well, I suspect.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes it’s just how the dice fall. Look at Fray. Look at Tulwar.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘I’m glad I met Curtana. Glad I met the kid, as well. Gotta say, mother still creeps me out a bit. But the kid’s all right.’

‘Thank you for reading to her. I think she liked the stories.’

‘The stories?’ Meroka laughed. ‘I hate those fucking airship stories. But she seems to like me reading them, so I guess we’re stuck with each other.’

‘All of us,’ Quillon said.

Less than twenty leagues separated Swarm from its destination. The fleet had been on a survival footing as it crossed the Bane. Now it was at war-readiness, and with impeccable justification. Long-range observers had peered through leagues of trembling, smoke-wreathed air, mapping Skullboy positions all the way to the dusty margins of Horsetown, where Spearpoint commenced its soaring climb from the plains. Swarm had no option but to cross that occupied terrain.

‘There are no airships in the air or on the ground,’ Agraffe said, looking from face to face as he delivered his news, ‘but that doesn’t mean the Skullboys haven’t been busy, or that we’re not going to encounter moderate resistance on the way in. We’re too far out to detect artillery or gun emplacements, although you can be sure they’re there. At our usual cruising altitude, they won’t pose us any great difficulties, and in any case we should be able to take out most of them with our long-range guns before we’re anywhere near them. But our observers have seen balloons. They’re tethered to the ground, laid out in concentric lines all the way back to Spearpoint, most of them already inflated - big, obvious targets.’

‘We’ll cut them to ribbons,’ Curtana said.

‘Perhaps.’

‘You’re not convinced?’ Ricasso asked, glancing up with heavy-lidded eyes from the heliograph report that had been handed to him a few minutes earlier.

‘Skullboys may be insane, but they’re certainly not stupid. They know our capabilities, what they can and can’t get away with. If they want to stop us, why aren’t they putting airships in the air?’

‘Maybe they’re all out of airships,’ Meroka said.

‘Skullboys are a self-organising rabble,’ Agraffe said patiently. ‘We may have shredded one part of the organism, but that doesn’t preclude it from growing another limb. Weaker, perhaps - but still capable of hurting or slowing us. Perhaps they just couldn’t get any other ships here in time - that’s a possibility, I admit.’

‘But not one you’re inclined to go with,’ Ricasso said.

‘They have the means to organise those balloon lines, but not to get a single ship into the air? I don’t buy it.’

‘Nor do I.’ Ricasso put the heliograph report down on the chart table, setting it under a skull-shaped paperweight, some captured, shrivel-headed trophy from an earlier glory. ‘I don’t have to, either. We’ve just heard from Tulwar again. He was brief and to the point, as needs must. It isn’t good news.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Quillon asked. ‘We’ve come this far; Spearpoint’s practically within spitting distance. We know Tulwar’s still in some kind of control, or he wouldn’t have flashed you. All we need to know is where exactly to land and who to give the medicines to.’

‘Tulwar isn’t the problem,’ Ricasso said. ‘It’s the zones around Spearpoint.’

Curtana groaned. ‘What’s the matter now?’

‘It used to be possible, at least in theory, for us to fly Swarm right up to one of those ledges. In the old days there were even docking towers. It was probably still possible before the zone storm, although I suspect the towers were long gone. But now there isn’t a navigable path through the air: not one we can use, anyway. The Skullboys know that, of course. That’s why they haven’t put any ships into the air. They wouldn’t work.’