Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

Macmillan’s voice became thick. “There were no external communications at Spookshow Prime, so the first I knew of my daughter’s leukemia was when I walked through the door to surprise my family.” He choked, went on. “Quite a surprise. She’d been a solid little tomboy when I left; less than half a year later, she was a wee ghost of a thing. ‘A highly aggressive and unusual subvariety,’ they said of the leukemia.”

He spat. “It was their way of saying they’d never seen its like before. And I found out soon enough why they hadn’t. First time I took Katie for one of her follow-ups and treatments, some unctuous bastard of a suit sidled up to me in the waiting room. ‘It’s a shame so many of the children here don’t have a chance,’ he says. ‘How fortunate that your daughter does.’ I stared at him, because it was the only alternative to beating him senseless. And that’s when he put the hook in: he had a treatment. Highly effective, he said. Almost miraculously so.”

Macmillan ground his fingers together until they were white on the handle of the combitool. “I knew what I was agreeing to. But I would have done anything for my little Katie. Anything. And by the time I left, she was running around the house like a wild thing, once again.” He smiled and tears ran down his face. “Complete remission, they said. A miracle, they called it.” He looked at Riordan. “These people — whoever or whatever has infiltrated and infected CoDevCo and other megacorporations — are bloody monsters. There’s nothing they won’t do.” He stood, wielded the combitool, stared at Caine for several seconds. “Since the regret of a damned man isn’t worth a pin, I can only offer you one thing you might value.”

“What’s that?”

“I can kill you, make it look like I had no choice. Better that than—”

The ferns on the southern side of the glade whispered apart: Pandora Veriden emerged from between the leaves, frowning. “You bastard. You fucking bastard,” she whispered. Riordan wasn’t sure whether she was cursing at Macmillan’s perfidy, or annoyance at her own inability to sneak up on him silently.

Macmillan stood. “Guilty as charged, Ms. Veriden.” He studied her, saw what Caine had noticed immediately as well: she no longer had her rifle. The flaps of her bandolier were all open; she too, had shot her weapon dry. Without turning back toward Caine, he strode steadily, even grimly in her direction.

And stopped when a water strider crashed into the clearing from the east, evidently having followed Caine’s path. The huge creature surveyed the tableau, snuffled in Caine’s direction, emitted a vaguely distressed grunt.

Riordan knew that Veriden was fast but had never realized just how fast: before Macmillan had recovered from his surprise, she had sprinted to the strider, bumped into its leg. It was startled but did not flinch away as Dora remained in contact with, and seemed to rub herself against, that faintly shaggy leg. Then she darted toward the survival packs.

But Macmillan jumped to interpose himself between that source of combitools and Dora. She shied back, tried circling around to get at them; he shifted with her, slipped the hammer covering off his tool. Now he had an axe.

Dora glanced at it. “You’re crazy if you think they’re going to let you live.”

“Who?”

“Whoever bought you, asshole. You think you can get rid of us and return home as the sole survivor of the legation? That you alone, Ishmael, have lived to tell the tale? Bullshit: you’re a loose end. They’re going to snip you off.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. They may have other uses for me. Hardly matters, though. My Katie is cured. Nothing else—”

Veriden feinted left, lunged right toward the handle of the closest combitool. But Macmillan was quicker than he looked, too; the axe head swept around so fast that it whistled. Veriden had to bend back sharply at the waist to avoid it. She danced away; he sidestepped warily forward.

Veriden studied Macmillan carefully, then glanced at Riordan, who saw that, in a split second of partial distraction, she was computing odds, making a decision. She dodged in toward Macmillan, who swung at her again, but missed more widely. Eyes narrowed, calculating, she studied the big Scotsman closely. Then she glanced over at Caine, nodded briefly, and darted for the tree line on the west side of the glade.

Whatever Macmillan had been expecting, it obviously had not been that. Looking quickly from the leaves shuddering where Veriden had plunged through them, and where Caine lay wheezing and bloody, he grimaced. “Bollocks,” he muttered and turned to sprint after Dora.

Riordan felt as though he might vomit again, pushed that feeling away, looked around. What could he do? He had no weapons and he couldn’t flee anymore. Maybe he could hide—?

He turned toward the northeast edge of the glade. The group had scouted this site quickly — they’d had little chance to do otherwise — but there were two bumbershoots which had fallen, side by side, just inside that tree line, with a sizable depression between them. Riordan frowned: the chance that an enemy would fail to detect him there was next to zero—

He angrily dismissed that thought: there was no other plan. And odds that are slightly better than zero are, well, better than zero.

Gritting his teeth against the pain of dragging his broken left tibia behind him, Riordan began to crawl the ten meters toward the fallen bumbershoots.

Dora Veriden sprinted hard for the far inland clearing where Riordan had sent Nasr Eid to stand watch on that flank. Most likely to keep him out of the way of people who can stand up in a fight. But now, Eid — and what he was overseeing — might just be her salvation.

Well, that and Macmillan’s physical condition. He was a big man, but beefy; a bear, not a tiger. And she could outrun a bear. All day long, if she needed to. But she didn’t have all day.

She stopped, caught her breath, listened. Yes, there was Macmillan, bashing his way through the brush, following the trail she was carefully leaving for him to follow. Keep running, big guy; keep pushing and sweating and gasping. She angled away from Eid’s position: can’t get there too soon. Have to make sure Macmillan is exhausted first. So let’s you and I take the scenic route, you traitorous asshole.

Dora stretched her almost disproportionately long legs into an easy, deerlike stride. As she ran, she chose her path by the terrain: first a patch of rough ground, then a large clearing— yeah, you’ll see that and try to make up the distance between us by sprinting . She stopped again, listened for Macmillan’s approach, heard it faintly. He’s less tired than I thought; probably got a little stamina back when he was talking with Riordan. Well, you’ll be running out of that second wind any time now. And you can’t afford to let me go, can you? Not only would that displease your masters, but knowing your story, I might pop up on Earth someday, surrounded by Slaasriithi diplomats, and ruin you. Or your sacred memory, if the bastards who hired you clean up their loose ends.

Dora swung back toward the clearing where Nasr Eid was waiting. Or rather, where he was supposed to be waiting. Either way, though, that little glade is the ace up my sleeve. From the start, she had been worried that the unknown traitor might become active once the attackers arrived. So she had not gone immediately when Riordan had sent them to their first defensive positions, but had lagged behind, had heard Caine instruct Nasr “to watch a large clearing that is on our other flank — and you’ll have some local help.” Intrigued, she had stayed around long enough to learn about the nature of that local help. And now she was very glad that she had.