THE COURT-MARTIAL WAS HELD IN THE BANQUETING SUITE OF THE BARNSdale Hotel, which was barracks to eight of Z-B’s platoons and half of the industrial technology corps. There was a dais at one end of the long room, normally used by a band. Today it had a single table with three chairs for the presiding officers, of which Ebrey Zhang was president of the court. Arranged below them, on the dance floor, were another two tables. One was occupied by the prosecution team, led by the Z-B attorney, who was being supported by the Memu Bay police magistrate, Heather Fernandes, and two more high-powered legal assistants. The defense table had two chairs, where Hal sat with Lieutenant Bralow.
Behind them, fifty plastic chairs had been arranged in rows to seat Z-B personnel, selected members of the public and a few media representatives. The first row was reserved for the mayor and whoever he chose to have with him—a couple of old friends, Margret Reece and Detective Galliani. Ten Skins were standing guard around the room, being pointedly ignored by the civilian audience. For once, the power supply was uninterrupted, allowing the lightcones to shine at full intensity.
When Lawrence arrived, escorting Hal, he was disgusted by the weighting. The kid had taken one look at the layout and virtually cringed.
“It’s a fucking show trial,” Lawrence growled at Bralow while Hal was distracted. The lieutenant answered with a slightly guilty shrug.
Lawrence took a chair from the audience section and brought it up to the defense table. He sat on it and gave Hal a solid, reassuring pat on the knee. The kid responded with a pathetically grateful smile.
Nobody remonstrated with Lawrence. He was wearing his full dress uniform, displaying more decorations than most of the officers in the room. If he wanted to stand by a squaddie under his command, none of the NCOs helping with the court arrangements were going to stop him. Bryant saw where he was and glared before sitting with the other officers.
The sergeant major called for silence. The presiding officers marched in and took their seats on the dais.
Lawrence couldn’t fault the procedure. Prosecution made its case well. The details of the case were explained to the court. Selective sections of various police interviews with Hal were also played. Twenty minutes in, and already it looked bad.
Detective Galliani was called to the stand and told the court about Hal’s alibi, which the kid had stuck to the whole time.
“Did you manage to trace the taxi that the defendant claims he took?” prosecution asked.
“No, sir,” Galliani answered. “The traffic regulator AS has no log of any taxi being used on that street at that time of night. And Mr. Grabowski was most insistent on the time he left the barracks. In fact, we pulled the logs for every taxi in Memu Bay that day. None of them were unaccounted for at either of the times when Mr. Grabowski said he was traveling to and from the alleged brothel.”
“Ah yes,” prosecution said smugly. “The brothel the defendant says he visited. Does it exist, Detective?”
“No, sir. Mr. Grabowski himself identified Minster Avenue as the street where this alleged brothel was situated. We investigated every house. They are all private residences.”
Lawrence had visited Minster Avenue himself two days ago. Not in Skin, he wore civilian clothes, a shirt with a high collar to cover his valves. Before he went, he trawled images of the street from the town hall planning department and showed them to Hal, who’d pointed unhesitatingly to number eighteen.
Standing outside the house Lawrence took his time looking around. There was the neat little front garden with its wrought-iron fence, just as Hal described. It guarded a squat white stone facade, with big windows, the paintwork clean and bright. Like all the others along the street, a home for the upper-middle classes. Lawrence activated his bracelet pearl and called up his Prime. A complex indigo image slid across his optronic membranes as the quasi-sentient program decompressed from its storage block. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed brighter than the bracelet pearl’s standard icons.
He opened a link into Memu Bay’s datapool and told the Prime to trawl the household AS and the local traffic logs. Information began to scroll up almost at once. Whatever software the KillBoy resistance group used to cover their tracks, it was excellent, which strengthened his suspicions that they had compromised e-alpha.
Number eighteen’s household AS told him nothing, because it had been inactive for over a week. The system was still waiting repair. Smaller independent sections of the house’s network were functioning on autonomous backup mode, but they didn’t have memory logs. Strangest of all, the security system was also offline; its sensors weren’t even drawing power.
Minster Avenue’s road traffic logs confirmed there had been very few vehicles driving along the street during the night Hal claimed he’d visited. Certainly no taxi had pulled up outside number eighteen. But the Prime dug deeper into the local transport network. Between 1:48 and 2:10 the network dataflow had increased by a small percentage.
After Hal had left.
There was nothing in the logs to account for the increase.
“Shutting up shop,” Lawrence muttered to himself. The minute data abnormality wouldn’t convince a court that had Hal’s DNA sample taken off the girl. He wasn’t even sure if it would be admissible in court. But it was good enough for him: an electronic graffiti roughly equivalent to spraying KillBoy was here across the front of the house.
Lawrence walked over the road and rang the brass bell. It took a minute before the black front door swung open. A woman in an apron stood in the hallway, giving him a suspicious stare. “Yes?”
“Elena Melchett?”
“Yes? Who are you?”
“Lawrence Newton. I’m covering the alien rape case.”
Elena Melchett didn’t look as if she wanted to cooperate with the media. “So?”
“Ah, the alien suspect claims he was somewhere in this street when the incident happened. It’s his alibi. I was wondering if you had seen anything?”
“Mr. Newton, that obscene crime took place at one o’clock in the morning. I was in bed asleep. I certainly didn’t see any alien thug hanging around outside.”
“I didn’t think so, thank you. Er …” He fished around in his pockets while Elena Melchett grew increasingly impatient. He found his media card and activated a visual file. “Sorry to be such a pain, but do you recognize this man?” The card’s screen showed a picture of Hal.
Elena Melchett studied it. “No.”
“Really? That’s odd.”
“What do you mean?”
Lawrence told the card to switch to another file. “This is a blueprint of your hall, isn’t it?” He peered past the woman at the big staircase that curved up to the second-floor landing.
This time Elena Melchett barely glanced at the image. “It’s similar.”
“I’d say it’s identical. Even down to the marble tiling.”
“What do you want, Mr. Newton?”
“That alien suspect, he put this image together with an architect program. How would he know what your hallway looked like if he’d never been here? You did say you didn’t recognize him, didn’t you?”
“Get out!” Elena Melchett ordered him in a strident voice. “Out, and don’t come back. If I see you around here again, I’ll call the police.” The glossy door slammed shut.
The prosecution had got Hal up on the witness stand. Lawrence could finally appreciate the saying about someone being his own worst enemy. It wasn’t going well. In fact it was excruciating just being in the same room.
The prosecution wanted to know why he’d jumped curfew.
Hal—good old honest fresh-from-the-farm Hal—said he did it because he was desperate for sex.
The prosecution wanted to know where he’d gone that night to hunt for sex.
Hal told them the brothel on Minster Avenue, doggedly sticking to his version of events. Lawrence presumed it was because his mother had always told him to tell the truth.
The prosecution tore that version of the fateful night to shreds, and there wasn’t any evidence that Lieutenant Bralow could produce to back Hal up. Then they went on to ask about the genetic samples. Hal claimed the girl was a whore, and that the rest of it—the rape allegation, the nonexistent brothel—was all a setup by KillBoy.
It didn’t go down well. Francine Hazeldine’s haunting statement had already been played back to the court. Lawrence had watched the presiding officers as her fragile voice had described what happened that night, detail by agonizing detail.
The more the farce carried on, the more Lawrence admired KillBoy’s strategy and resourcefulness, and the more angry he became. Hal was just too easy. He wanted to stand up in the banqueting suite and face the locals, asking: “Why don’t you try this one with me?” But then, the devastating effect that the trial would have on Z-B’s morale was the final triumph of that elegant strategy.
He was also haunted by the terrible specter of responsibility. There should have been a trial very similar to this last time he was on Thallspring. The fact that it had never happened was in no small part due to him. Justice then had been circumvented rather than served. Now justice was coming back to strike them with a vengeance.
Lawrence spent most of the time wondering if the two could possibly be connected.
Only by a God with a very twisted sense of humor, he decided.
After five hours of testimony and witness examination, the presiding officers recessed the court so they might consider their verdict. They took ninety minutes, which Lawrence thought was a diplomatic enough length of time given that they’d already decided that verdict before the court-martial even began.
Hal stood in front of the dais facing the presiding officers, his shoulders squared, as Ebrey Zhang announced the findings.
On the charge of disobeying a direct order and breaking curfew: guilty.
On the charge of misleading the local police: guilty.
On the charge of assault and rape of a minor: guilty.
“No!” Hal yelled, incensed. “I’m not.”
There was a sigh from the audience, not of jubilation, but a shared sense of justice and victory. Against all the odds, they’d been given the right outcome.
Hal sat down again while Lieutenant Bralow gave what Lawrence had to acknowledge was an eloquent plea for clemency. Then everyone stood for the sentence.
A very troubled-looking Ebrey Zhang said: “Halford Grabowski, given the grave nature of this abominable crime, we find we have no alternative but to impose the most severe sentence it is within this court’s power to issue. You are hereby sentenced to death.”
Hal Grabowski went berserk. He screamed obscenities at the presiding officers and started to run for the door. Anyone who got in his way was felled with powerful punches from his hulking frame. The audience scrambled for safety, also screaming.
It took two Skins to hold on to the enraged squaddie and administer a sedative. His unconscious body was dragged out of the banqueting suite.
Ebrey Zhang straightened his uniform and cleared his throat. “Sentence to be carried out at dawn the day after tomorrow. Leave to appeal is denied. Lieutenant Bralow, please inform your client of the outcome. This court is now concluded.”
The presiding officers filed out. Lawrence didn’t move. Bralow turned to him and said: “I really am sorry. He didn’t deserve this.” As he didn’t get an answer, he nodded nervously and hurried out. The audience was lining up at the doors at the rear to get out and back to their town and their lives. It wasn’t long before everyone else had left.
Amersy and the remaining members of 435NK9 lined up in front of the defense counsel table. Lawrence looked at them one by one. “If anybody wants to stick with Zantiu-Braun, you’d better leave now.”
A couple of them snorted in derision; the rest simply waited expectantly for their sarge to tell them what to do next.
“Okay,” Lawrence said. “Time for us to start playing unfair.”
This time Josep drove a car out to the spaceport. He arrived in the middle of the afternoon and passed through the main gate with the identity of Andyl Pyne, a junior manager with the catering company that had the franchise for the administration block. The spaceport’s general management AS assigned his car a slot in park 7. Because of Andyl Pyne’s somewhat lowly status, he had a long walk back to the block itself.
He carried a slim briefcase with him, de rigueur for management of any level. Sunglasses were also obligatory, so he wore a cheap plastic pair. His light green one-piece coverall wasn’t quite regular, but it had the catering company logo on its breast pocket. He had boots rather than shoes. All in all, his appearance was well inside the permissible norm.
Ahead of him, the afternoon sun shone on a five-sided structure with slightly convex walls of darkened glass. From where he was, the administration block resembled a closed-up tulip flower with a blunt tip. It stood by itself to one end of the terminal building, away from the much taller control tower. Although the building was only five stories high, the architect’s plans that his Prime had trawled out of the datapool showed a service level and another five floors belowground.
When he reached the main entrance he had to repeat the whole security identification procedure, allowing the AS to check his palm and facial pattern. Security in general was a lot tighter in the administration block than the main terminal, thanks to all the Z-B staff that worked there now.
Inside, he ignored the reception desk and the two Skins standing beside it, walking directly to the bank of elevators in the central lobby. No one who came in on a regular basis would be intimidated or even concerned by them anymore. He took an elevator down to the first sublevel, where building maintenance had its offices, along with the canteen. So far everything matched the floor plan and security camera images they’d trawled.
Josep went into the toilets and claimed an empty cubicle. The AS logged him through a security camera. Coverage inside the administration block was almost universal, with only places like the toilet cubicles free of cameras. Not that their absence mattered: the AS followed everyone’s position constantly, you couldn’t trade places or switch with anybody else. It was Andyl Pyne who went into the cubicle; if anyone else came out the AS would sound the alarm.
It wasn’t the AS that Josep was trying to avoid, he simply needed time to make a few alterations. At this stage, sharp-eyed humans were his greatest worry. His Prime went into the administration block’s network and began editing the monitor logs. The AS soon registered that it was Sket Magersan who was in the cubicle. Once the switch of electronic records was complete, Josep stood still and concentrated. The d-written organelles deep inside his cells quickened and began to modify his flesh. Facial skin pigmentation darkened slightly. Features started to morph. The tip of his nose broadened out, while the nostrils widened. Lips fattened up. His cheeks sagged slightly, then stiffened, giving the impression of a flatter jawbone. Irises became a light hazel.
There was a small vanity mirror in his briefcase. Josep took it out and examined his rearranged face.
They’d spent a long time observing Sket Magersan as the Z-B space-plane pilot drank in Durrell’s bars and ate in its restaurants. He’d been chosen because he was similar in height, weight, age and general profile, so Josep’s d-written systems would be able to imitate his physical appearance without too much trouble. His voice was deeper than Josep’s, and his accent was pure Capetown, but a direct link with a neurotronic pearl running a vocal synthesizer program took care of that. Josep even had the man’s walk down pat; his shoulders had a lavish swing when he hurried.
The image in the mirror was that of Sket. Nodding in satisfaction, Josep stripped off his green one-piece and reversed it. This way round it was a standard dark-gray Z-B pilot’s flight suit, complete with insignia, baggy leg pockets and elastic waist.
Josep stepped out of the cubicle and took his time washing his hands, making sure the toilet’s security camera could see him clearly. The Prime monitored the security AS, but there was no caution alert issued. He went back to the elevators, and descended to sublevel five.
Simon Roderick had decided on the simplest system possible to monitor the key vault. Keep electronics to an absolute minimum and rely on human observers. That distrust of electronics extended to not informing the spaceport security AS that a covert operation was being mounted. They didn’t even tell the local security staff.
According to the administration block records, the office on sublevel four was assigned to Quan and Raines, who were Third Fleet quartermaster staff. They were the ones in charge of spare parts being shipped down from the starships to keep the Xiantis flying, working with their own AS to keep expenditure to the lowest level possible. Even the data that flowed into the office from local networks supported their assignment, although it did contain a large amount of information not directly applicable, such as staff schedules and flight profiles. Typical bloatware overload.
Simon occupied the office next to theirs. The AS had him listed as a spaceplane avionics systems manager, a title that could be confirmed by the number of boxes and small packages that kept getting taken inside, all of them labeled with electronics department bar codes.
The only thing missing from the two offices was a security camera. Simon wasn’t going to risk the opposition being able to spy on his own spies.
They’d set up the first office as an observation center. One wall was now covered in sheet screens, relaying various scenes from the administration block. Each one was connected to a single fixed-position lens via fiberoptic cable. Picture quality was well down on standard sensors, but this way there was no electrical cabling. A power flow, however small, could always be detected. The screens even had their own independent power supply, a bank of cells in one corner. That way there was no drain on the administration block circuits, which could be tracked through the datapool.
Adul Quan watched the elevator doors open on sublevel five. A man in a Z-B flight uniform walked out.
“Who’ve we got here?” Adul grunted. Procedure was to confirm everybody who arrived on sublevel five. The screen feed was linked to a desktop pearl that had no connection to the local network: instead, it was loaded with personnel files. Whoever the new arrival was, he walked right underneath the lens covering the elevators.
“Sket Magersan,” Braddock read off the card’s display. “One minute.” He was frowning as he riffled through a stack of hard copy. Both he and Adul had privately bitched about Simon Roderick insisting on keeping printed records. But their chief was convinced that e-alpha had been compromised, leaving their data memories wide open to manipulation. So every morning, the spaceport’s personnel schedules were printed out. This way they could check who was supposed to be in the administration block and who was suspect.
Braddock glanced down Magersan’s sheet, stopped and read it carefully. “Shit, he’s supposed to be on leave today. Spent the last five days flying.”
Adul straightened up and peered at the other screens covering sublevel five. “So what’s he doing here, and down at that level?”
“Good question.” Braddock went to stand beside his colleague. They watched Magersan walk along a corridor, nodding affably to people.
“Heading toward the vault,” Adul said in a low, excited tone.
“That’s not certain.”
“Bullshit.” Adul was on the edge of his seat.
Magersan had arrived at the communications department. He gave the security sensor a codeword and put his hand over the scanner. His voice-print and blood vessel pattern must have matched. The door slid open.
“Sir!” Braddock was heading for their office’s connecting door. He opened it hurriedly. “Sir, I think we have something.”
There were three offices making up the communications department, linked by a short corridor. Security cameras confirmed that as usual there were only two people inside, one in the first office, one in the third. When the outer door opened, Josep slipped in and waited for it to shut. Prime edited him out of the security cameras’ vision. Neither of the two Z-B officers inside the department had heard the door. He paused for a second, then ordered his Prime to call the man in the first office. It was a query from the maintenance division about a glitch in a spaceplane satellite tracking unit, with the quasi-sentient program generating the supervisor’s image and voice.
When the communications officer started to answer, Josep walked quickly past the office and went into the second. His Prime disabled three alarm sensors that were triggered by his entry. He shut the door and locked it with a manual bolt, then drew a quiet breath as he waited to see if either of the officers had reacted. Images from the security cameras hung behind his eyes, showing both of them at work behind their desks.
The key vault had a big steel door reinforced by boron longchain fiber. Before Z-B arrived, it had stored the gold and platinum used in the micro-gee manufacture of electronic components. Now the metal had been shipped up to the starships, leaving a lot of empty space for Z-B to store its keys.
There were two locks that worked on deep-scanned hand patterns. They had to be activated simultaneously by two different people. Josep took a pair of slim dragon-extruded modules from his trouser leg pockets and applied the first one over the top lock. Its surface undulated slowly as it melded itself to the scanner. The second module went over the bottom lock. He activated them together, and the magnetic bolts snapped out with a clunk loud enough to make Josep flinch.
He pulled at the heavy door, swinging it back. The vault was a cube, measuring eight meters along each side. Bright lights came on in the ceiling as he walked in. The walls were lined by metal grid shelves; a single metal table stood in the center. There were fifteen black plastic cases stacked up on the shelving—seventy-five centimeters long, fifteen centimeters high. Z-B’s silver emblem was embossed on the top of each one.
Josep took the first one off the shelf and put it on the table. He ran a sensor over it, which drew a complete blank. There was no detectable power source inside. If it was alarmed, they’d done it in a way he couldn’t beat. He flipped the catch and opened the lid. His Prime reported that the data-pool remained silent. No alarm.
The case contained three trays stacked on top of each other, each with a hundred memory chips. He scanned them quickly, looking for the number they wanted. The Xianti flights for the next five days had already been scheduled, and their communication code assigned to them. He and Ray had chosen one in four days’ time, which would give everyone else involved in the operation plenty of time to prepare and fly over from Memu Bay.
He found the designated key in the third case he opened. The little memory chip fit into the interface slot on his bracelet pearl, and the code transferred without a hitch.
Josep smiled broadly. That was it. The last major obstacle eliminated. Not that the rest of it was easy, but the odds of a successful completion had just risen considerably. So much was waiting behind this moment, so many awesome possibilities.
He put the case back on the shelf exactly as he’d found it and left the vault.
Simon Roderick waited patiently outside the elevators on sublevel five. His DNI provided him with a simple audio channel to Adul, who was watching the screen in his office on the floor above.
“He’s closing the vault,” Adul said. “Gadgets coming off the locks. Putting them back in his pocket.”
Simon shifted his sensorium focus. The blue-gray corridor around him melted into hazier shadows. It was sliced by long, thin threads of brilliant emerald light, lurking just below every fuzzy surface. Some of them glowed with an intensity that rivaled the sun, while others were more delicate, flickering at frequencies almost too fast to notice. He was even aware of the little jade ember alight inside his own skull.
The standard human senses of taste, touch, sight, smell and hearing provide a phenomenal range of input for the brain to cope with. In most cases it does so by subtly concentrating on one sense at a time, sliding the others into a peripheral mode. By using this inherent neural programming ability, geneticists reasoned that the sensorium could be expanded to cope with new inputs. The batches of Rodericks provided them with a perfect opportunity to experiment, by adapting and modifying each fresh generation.
The idea behind it, developing an ability to “see” electrical patterns, was an old one. Psychics, shamans and con artists had been claiming they could find north for centuries, along with other mystical perceptual traits. The discovery of magnetite in human brain cells back in the late twentieth century had bolstered their claims with the kind of pseudoscience backing such people thrived on. Given the minuscule quantities of magnetite actually involved, it was extremely unlikely that any of them could act as a human compass. In any case, there was no specific interface between the particles and the brain’s neural tissue. That had to wait for genetic engineering to manipulate cells, incorporating magnetite particles into a ferrovesicle cell model. The actions of a magnetic field on the particles suspended in serous fluid were found to generate discernible neural impulses.
After that, the alignment of the ferro-vesicles to provide a valid image had to be determined, along with its size and how the impulses were best introduced into the brain. By the time the SK2s were gestated, the design was essentially complete. Their electric sense organ took the form of a membranous crown with a nerve path direct into the medulla oblongata. It allowed them to see wires carrying current, or dataflow. But most important, and the reason the Rodericks wanted the ability in the first place, it allowed them to sense the impulses of another human brain. They were never going to be able to read thoughts directly, but by observing a brain in action, they could determine the emotional composition, see how much creativity was going into the thought processes, how much memory. As a lie detector, the ferro-vesicle organ was almost infallible. In negotiations with the senior management of other companies they had a profound advantage.
“He’s coming out,” Adul said.
Simon started walking forward. There were a few other people in the corridor. He certainly couldn’t risk clearing the building; that would have alerted Sket Magersan. Simon was already quite worried about the man’s capabilities; the last thing he wanted was for this operation to degenerate into violence.
He passed one man whose aura was bright and dense, barely distorted by his clothes. It corresponded to the contentment running through his brain. Another man was considerably dimmer, with areas resembling sunspots amid his emanations. Simon was experienced enough to spot a hangover without even having to ask any calibrating questions.
Sket Magersan stepped out of the communications division. In the electromagnetic spectrum he was a human nova. Simon almost stopped, he was so surprised at how bright the man’s aura was. For a moment he thought he might even be some kind of android. But no, the body’s bioelectric patterns were all recognizably human, simply more intense by an order of magnitude. He also carried several electronic modules in his pockets. Tight flux lines pulsed around them, indicating high-level power cells.
Simon didn’t recognize any of them. It was hard to resolve anything through the vibrant electromagnetic glare, but the secondary patterns induced by the internal systems were fabulously complex and pervasive. He couldn’t spot the usual signature of neurotronic pearls.
When the two of them passed in the corridor, Sket Magersan’s thoughts registered a small degree of nervousness, but nothing to indicate suspicion. Simon wondered what his own brain activity must reveal. If he’d known this was what he was up against he would never have allowed himself to be in the same building as the … refined man and his alien gadgetry. This discovery could well have a value greater than every asset realized on Thallspring. Where the hell did he come from? And what was causing that aura? One thing was for sure, this wasn’t Sket Magersan, the pilot who was in Z-B’s files.
“Sir?” Adul queried.
“He might have weapons, but I’m not sure. Proceed as planned.”
Josep pressed for an elevator. It took a few seconds to arrive. He resisted the impulse to shout at the slow old mechanism to hurry. I did it! Walked into Z-B’s most secure facility and stole their crown jewels. Their last remaining problem would be to get the dragon through spaceplane cargo security. He and Raymond had already developed ideas about that.
The elevator doors opened. A man came out, giving Josep a distracted nod. Josep stood to one side, then walked in. He pressed for the first sub-level. The doors closed and the elevator began to rise.
A quick change of identity back to Andyl Pyne in the toilets. Maybe thirty minutes after that he’d be back in the car and away from the space-port.
His d-written neural cells lost all contact with the administration block network. How could that happen? He frowned, but the lights were still on and the elevator still moving. Maybe the elevator was somehow isolating him from the node. But it hadn’t happened on the way down.
Josep blinked as he swayed against the wall. The control panel with its buttons and illuminated floor display wavered as if he were looking at it through water.
What the fuck is this?
He jabbed the emergency stop button. Nothing happened. The elevator was still moving. His legs sagged, taking him down to his knees. Blotches danced across his vision. There was no air. He drew down a deep breath, but it made no difference. His strength was fading fast.
Air, he had to have air. He called up what strength he could and punched at the door, where the two halves sealed in the middle. The metal buckled under his fist. It was smeared with blood. He punched it again, and the dent deepened. There was no gap between. Another punch. This one had no effect. He didn’t even hear the bang of the impact. His forehead was resting against the door. It wasn’t cold. He couldn’t feel anything. His last conscious thought was directed at the Prime stored in his bracelet pearl: help.
That evening they asked Hal if he wanted a priest in the morning. He told them to go and fuck themselves with a Skin dick. They asked what he wanted for his last meal. He said a boiled egg. After that, they left him alone.
Dawn was at five-twenty-two.
At four-thirty, Lawrence and Dennis came to visit. Hal was being kept in one of the cellars under the Barnsdale Hotel. Two Skins were on permanent guard outside the tough wooden door, and the master-at-arms had fitted Hal with a remote restraint bracelet—just in case. Nobody was really expecting any trouble. The Skins got a call alerting them to Lawrence’s arrival a minute before he turned up. He and Dennis were pushing a small hotel kitchen trolley along in front of them.
“But he didn’t want a meal,” one of the Skins said.
“I know,” Lawrence said. “But we brought it anyway. It’s a fillet steak, his favorite.” He took the silver top off a plate so the Skin could see.
“Okay then, you’d better go in.”
Hal was lying on the small cot in the corner of the room, hands behind his head. He looked around when Lawrence and Dennis rattled the trolley across the floor. “I told them I didn’t want any of that crap.”
“The chef’s a local,” Lawrence said. “And the guilt’s starting to sink in. If we go back and tell him he left it under the grill too long he’ll probably need therapy for the rest of his life. You know what a pain these liberals are.”
Hal grinned and went over to the trolley. The guard shut the door.
“Sarge,” Hal said quietly. “I know what you said, but I’ve been thinking. I want to take the injection. It doesn’t hurt none, and it’ll be just like going to sleep. I figure that’s for the best, you know.”
“Hal, I need you to face the firing squad. I’m sorry, I know it’s going to be tough, the toughest it could ever get for anyone. But that’s the only way.”
“Only way for what?”
Dennis bent down and pulled the trolley’s white linen cloth aside. There was a field-aid case on the lower shelf.
“What’s that for?” Hal asked.
“A simple way out of this mess,” Lawrence said. “Which is the only thing that worries me. Someone else might figure this out. Sit down, Hal.”
Hal did as he was told.
Dennis put the case down beside him and opened it up. He unwound two coils of clear thin tubing and plugged them into Hal’s neck valves.
“Now listen,” Lawrence said, and started to explain.
It was uncharacteristically cold for Memu Bay as the first traces of wan predawn light skimmed eagerly over the horizon. Myles Hazeldine had put on a warm woolen coat to accompany Ebrey Zhang out into the orchard garden at the back of the Barnsdale Hotel. The orchard had been selected because it was enclosed by a tall stone wall.
Myles assumed Z-B wanted to keep the execution private from the morbidly curious local citizens. But Zhang had told him the wall would also help stop the bullets. It had taken a moment for Myles to understand what he meant. “A firing squad?” the horrified mayor had asked. He couldn’t believe that even Z-B was this barbaric. Like the rest of Memu Bay, he’d assumed they’d simply administer an overdose of some sedative. That Grabowski would quietly slip from sleep into death and that would be the end of it.
He should have known better. This whole terrible event was never going to finish with quiet dignity. Now he was going to have to stand and watch as bullets tore into a man with an explosion of blood. It was an outrage against civilized decency. He couldn’t even feel glad that Grabowski was going to die like this. He’d wanted justice, certainly. But this was more like medieval vengeance.
“The condemned man does have this right,” Zhang had explained awkwardly. “There are three methods of execution, and he can select one. If he doesn’t, the court will decide for him. It is unusual to ask for firing squad.” There was a thin line of perspiration on Zhang’s forehead, despite the early morning chill.
Myles didn’t ask what the third method was. He followed Zhang to a place at the rear of the orchard garden. His eyes never left the single post that had been set into the ground in front of the far wall. The earth was fresh around its base. Sandbags were stacked up behind it.
This was everything his ancestors had left Earth for. The ultimate act of callous inhumanity. Myles jammed his shaking hands into his pockets and looked at the grass. Think of Francine, he ordered himself sternly, the terror she went through.
Someone was barking out orders. Myles forced his head up.
The sergeant major marched the eight-strong firing squad out of the door and halted them behind the line painted on the grass seven meters away from the post. The unlucky squaddies had been chosen by the old short-straw draw. He’d spoken with each of them beforehand, telling them that Grabowski would want someone who could shoot straight and clean, and they were not to let him down no matter their feelings, assuring them that this duty would never go on their record.
When they’d left the briefing, sullen and subdued, he’d quietly thanked Allah that he wouldn’t actually be pulling a trigger himself. Then Lawrence Newton slipped in and had a quiet word. The sergeant major had listened to his old comrade’s request and nodded agreement. Anything else, he didn’t want to know about.
Edmond Orlov and Corporal Amersy led the condemned man out into the orchard. Hal showed no emotion as they stopped him by the post. Edmond tied his wrists together behind the post and whispered something to his friend. A smile played over Hal’s lips. Amersy offered him a blindfold, which he accepted.
The two men from Platoon 435NK9 saluted their comrade and marched away.
The sergeant major looked to Ebrey Zhang, who gave a slight nod.
“Squad, raise your weapons.”
The sound of palms slapping precisely against weapons carried across the orchard.
“Take aim.”
“Hey, Zhang,” Hal called out. “You are one miserable fuckup of a commander, man.”
“Fire.”
Myles Hazeldine threw up. The sound of eight rifles firing at once had stunned him. It suspended time in silence. Then he casually turned his head and saw Grabowski’s body shudder as it was thrown back against the post. Blood burst out of his chest with frightening speed. And the big young man was falling, slumping forward onto his knees, with only his bound hands holding his ruined torso up. Sound returned to Myles’s universe, a roaring in his ears. A human being had been slaughtered in front of him. Because of him, the deal he’d cut. He knelt forward and vomited helplessly onto the orchard’s dew-moistened grass.
Traditionally they were called the burial detail, though on Thallspring there would never be any grave dug for a member of Zantiu-Braun. Company policy governing death away from Earth was for a cremation and scattering of the ashes.
Hal Grabowski’s own platoon had demanded the right to perform that last duty, and Captain Bryant certainly wasn’t going to try to say no—he really didn’t need any open rebellion among his own men right now. So while the firing squad was marched quickly away they walked out of the hotel with a stretcher and a bodybag. They untied Hal’s hands as Ebrey Zhang was supporting the retching mayor and laid their dead friend out on the blood-soaked grass. He was lifted gently into the bodybag, which was zipped up, then transferred onto the stretcher.
They carried him away as the mayor and the senior officers went back into the hotel. The cleanup detail emerged after that, to take down the post and remove the sandbags. There was the blood to be washed away, too. By midmorning, there would be no trace left of the execution.
The burial detail carried the stretcher through the rear corridors of the hotel and out into the small courtyard used by delivery trucks. A van was waiting there to take the body to the crematorium. Its doors were opened quickly, and the stretcher pushed inside. Had anyone managed to see the interior, they would have been surprised to see how much medical equipment was inside. It could almost have been mistaken for an ambulance.
“Go!” Lawrence yelled at Lewis.
The van sped out of the courtyard.
Dennis was already ripping the bodybag open. “Oh hell,” the medic grunted when he saw the mess of gore that was Hal’s chest. “How many bullets?”
“Only three,” Lawrence said. He caught sight of the body. “Sweet mother of Fate! Can you do it?”
Dennis was already activating Hal’s Skin suit, which lay crumpled in the corner of the van. He brought the extension tubes out and began plugging them into the kid’s valves. “Cut the shirt off.”
Blood began to squirt out of the jagged wounds, pouring onto the floor of the van. Lawrence took a scalpel and sliced the shirt fabric, pulling the saturated cloth aside, leaving room for Dennis to work. When he brought his hands away, they were dripping blood.
For the first time he began to have doubts—something he hadn’t acknowledged before. He refused to let doubt be part of the equation as he focused himself on accomplishing just one thing: not letting the bastards murder Hal. He wanted a victory over KillBoy as subtle and devious as KillBoy’s relentless assault against the platoons on the streets of Memu Bay. But now he could actually see the terrible damage that the bullets had caused. …
Dennis was trying to clamp off the torn arteries in the chest cavity. “His heart’s so much raw meat. We’ll have to drain and reinflate the lungs.”
“The brain?” Lawrence demanded. “What about the brain?”
“I don’t know.” Dennis gave him an anguished look. “It was seven minutes.” His optronic membranes were scrolling medical data almost too quickly for him to follow; Hal’s Skin was using up its drug capsules at a dangerous rate as it tried to minimize cellular trauma.
“But we superoxygenated his blood,” Lawrence said. “You said that would last him.”
“It should, it should.” Dennis finished clamping one artery and went for the next. “Odel, anything?”
Odel was attaching a sensor to Hal’s scalp. He looked at a palmtop display. “Not yet. Still flatlined.”
“Come on,” Dennis screamed at the kid. His face was streaked with Hal’s blood, which he’d smeared there with the back of his hand.
“Lewis, how long till we get there?” Lawrence shouted.
“Three minutes, Sarge.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know,” Dennis barked.
“Three minutes, Dennis, that’s all. The crash team’s waiting.”
“Crash team?” Dennis’s voice was veering toward hysteria. “Crash team? One struck-off doctor and a couple of field medics, and you expect them to perform a fucking heart transplant?”
“It’s a biomech heart, Dennis, you just plug it in and switch it on.”
Dennis laughed. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Dennis! What about Hal?”
“I’m trying, god damn you.” There were tears in the corners of his eyes. “I’m trying.”
“Hey,” Odel cried. “Hey, I’ve got brainwaves showing here.”
Hal’s mouth dropped open. His tongue flopped about weakly as he gurgled through the scarlet blood that was foaming out of his throat.
“Hal!” Lawrence shouted. “Hal, you hear me? You hear me, Hal? You hang on for us, kid. We’ve got you. We won’t let you go.”