Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

Karam handed the raft down to Sleeman. “He’s coming.” Puller had settled on the bottom just after the water had risen up over the top of the bridge windows. Lymbery was standing on the hull, just beyond the reach of the lapping wavelets.

Tina Melah frowned. “He should be here by now. What’s he doing?”

“I asked him to secure the electronics,” Karam lied. “If we’re going to have any chance of raising this craft and flying her again, I can’t have a systemwide shortout. We’ll inflate a second raft, leave it behind for him.”

Tina nodded as Sleeman and Lymbery avoided her eyes and inflated the second raft. As they clambered into their own slightly larger one, she glanced behind at the dorsal hatch.

Karam and Sleeman began paddling toward a small chip of rock that was almost an island. It actually had a single, wind-bent cone-tree on it. “I make that land about four hundred meters off,” Karam commented conversationally, hoping to distract Tina.

But her eyes never left the stricken Puller . “Something’s wrong,” she murmured. “We should go ba—”

She was interrupted by a sudden plume of steam hissing up from Puller ’s stern, like the spout of a gigantic, superheated whale. Except that this spout did not relent; it grew in volume and intensity as the water around the back of the ship growled and hissed.

Tina’s eyes widened. She rounded on Karam. “You bastard. You left him behind to cool the plant — and die. You lying bastard.”

Karam looked away. “Phil is a top hand at his job. If anyone can get himself out in time, it’s him.”

“Fuck you, you lying bastard. You made him—”

“Tina. He called me. He asked. He didn’t want you to be in there. He—” Karam stopped: if she didn’t already know that Friel was as quietly smitten with her as she was almost comically smitten with him, there was no point bringing it up now.

But Tina had turned from Karam to glare at the steam-spewing wreck of the Puller . “Well, Phil’s a lying bastard, too.” A single tear ran the length of her gracefully curved cheek. “A damned lying bastard.”

* * *

Caine Riordan stumbled into the small glade he’d designated as Point Bug Out: the place where the survivors had stored their gear before dispersing to their various defensive positions. There was water here, and he’d need it if he was going to…to…

Suddenly, the sun was glinting directly down through the trees. Riordan discovered he was on his back, gasping. Couldn’t breathe, despite the filter mask. He’d obviously lost consciousness and fallen, but couldn’t remember it. And still couldn’t breathe: his lungs worked, but his mask wasn’t allowing in any air—

He pulled off the mask, drew in a breath: ragged, tight, insufficient, but he could feel his ability to reason returning. The smell of the environment rushed in at him as he sat up, turned the mask over to inspect the filter warning indicator: had the filters failed, clogged?

The indicator’s small panel was still green. But whatever else was happening, it wasn’t allowing air into his lungs. Protocol was to never crack the hermetic seal on the filter compartment, but the resulting contamination wasn’t going to kill him any faster than outright suffocation and he had to get moving. No time for a better plan: he popped open the filter compartment.

The first thing he noticed was that the wires leading from the filter sensor to the indicator had been cut and reattached so that the sensor had no power and the indicator would always read green. In the next moment, he saw that the filters were resting low in the compartment, almost as if—

He pulled out the filters: they had been shaved to half thickness, and the back side of them, the part that was in contact with the native air, was caked with green mold. Riordan shuddered, tossed the mask away, felt nauseous: there are a lot of ways to die, but betrayal by a friend, a teammate, may be the worst.

So: the traitor had gotten hold of his filter mask at some point, sabotaged it. But when, and who? Caine tried to think back along the events of the past two weeks—

But couldn’t. Possibly because he was still bleary from the pain and near-asphyxiation, but also because he was unable to still the contest between his most primitive impulse —screw this; you’ve got to run now! — and his rational impulse —take a few seconds, because if you run into the traitor, you’d better know it .

He closed his eyes, tried to push his mind past the fog that kept him from disciplining it.

But nothing. And even when he abandoned trying to figure out who had done this to him, he was too tired to think of any course of action, any plan, other than running as far and as fast as he could. The mind that had always been ready with options and alternatives was now just a froth of disorganized facts and memories. He kept trying to pull up a stratagem, a new approach to the current crisis, but it was like trying to draw water from a well that you could see was dry: no matter how many times you lowered the bucket, that repetitive act just didn’t bring up any water. He tried to rise, discovered that his limbs were all at once heavy but somewhat insensate, wondered how long he’d been sitting, dazed.

The southern edge of the glade rustled. He turned in that direction, tried rising again, fell on his side, wheezing — as Keith Macmillan came bounding out of the bush, florid, shiny with sweat. He saw Caine, froze, then rushed over. “What the hell—? Where’s your mask, Riordan? Are yuh daft? You’ll—”

“It was killing me.” Caine gestured toward where it lay in the low fronds. Macmillan stared, frowned; his teeth gritted. “Right. We’ve got to get you out of here, Caine.”

“No. You can still run. Better if. We split. Up.”

“Nonsense.” Macmillan rushed over to the packs. “I’m traveling pretty light, now. Fired the rifle dry. Tossed it. Only weapons we have left are these bloody combitools.” He grabbed one, snagged some rations as well. “Now let’s get you moving.”

Riordan knew he should reject the offer, order Keith to go on his own, but whatever part of his mind elevated rationality and duty by suppressing primal self-interest, failed. He tried to rise, did, then staggered and fell flat on his ass. How dignified.

Keith strode over quickly. “Here, I can help.” He reached out a hand — but before Riordan could clasp it, Macmillan’s thick paw grabbed his duty suit. His other arm slammed the combitool down into Caine’s left tibia.

Pain shot up and outward from the shattered bone. Riordan vomited as he fell backward, the treetops spinning around his narrowed field of vision.

“Wh-why?” he asked the sky, since he could not see Macmillan and was sure that if he moved his head, he would vomit again.

Macmillan sounded like he might cry. “Because they might want you alive, damn it.”

Caine seemed to dip down into and then rise up out of a heavy, hot fog; he wondered if he had blacked out momentarily. “No — why, why betray us? Betray Earth? You’re — you’re IRIS.”

“I’m a father before I’m anything else, Caine. And I wish it was me lying there. I surely, bitterly do.” His voice was choked, may have stifled a sob.

Riordan rolled his head around, fought through the pain to frame a question. “What do you mean, a father?”

Macmillan rose, listened for something in the bush, then crouched back down. “This time last year, I was just a highly trained grunt from Dundee with a wife and a daughter in Aberdeen. I’d been sent to Australia during the war. I was security for where the Dornaani were being stashed; we called it Spookshow Prime. That was where I met Downing and Rinehart, heard about you, was recruited into IRIS to be backup security to Sigma Draconis. But I was granted leave, first.”