Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘And that’s the cause of all this?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Donohue. His skin had by now taken on a pale and waxen appearance.

‘And Galileo?’

‘We figured you needed an added incentive to find that shipment.’

Saul fought the urge to place the gun between Donohue’s eyes and pull the trigger. ‘And Hsiu-Chuan? Where does he come into it?’

‘No.’ Donohue shook his head, and looked back at Saul with wide, frightened eyes.

Saul pushed the gun barrel against Donohue’s uninjured leg. ‘Five seconds.’

Panicked, Donohue put out a hand. ‘Wait! Okay, all right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Hsiu-Chuan was just one link in a very long chain of Sphere politicos that wanted the shipment hijacked.’

‘Why did they want it so badly? Because of whatever triggered the growths?’

‘No, we didn’t have any idea what the artefacts were or what they could do. The Sphere couldn’t have known either.’

‘But there has to be some reason they wanted that particular shipment. They wouldn’t have planned things that carefully just for the hell of it.’

‘They got wind of the fact that we had discovered wormhole generators the size of your fist.’ Donohue coughed. ‘They were right, but they didn’t realize it was an alien technology. Maybe they suspected it . . . all I know is, they wound up grabbing the wrong shipment.’ Donohue groaned, clutching at his injured leg. ‘For Christ’s sake, let me go. I need to see a doctor.’

Saul shook his head in astonishment. ‘I can’t believe this. Billions of people are going to die, all because you people fucked up. Did you ever think it might have been better just to let the Sphere have their own damn wormholes?’

Donohue grunted, baring his teeth from the onslaught of the pain. ‘You really think technology like that would have been better in the hands of men like Hsiu-Chuan? Then you’re a fucking idiot.’

‘Tell me what you know about Hanover. Where does he come into it?’

‘We found out that he was taking bribes from organized smuggling gangs on Kepler. We kept him in business on the understanding that he could stay out of jail as long as he funnelled information back to us, but it backfired.’

‘Backfired? How?’

‘Hsiu-Chuan’s people found out he was playing both sides, and threatned to kill his entire family in front of him if he didn’t give them what they wanted. That meant access codes, times and places, delivery dates and security hacks. Everything they needed to send a team into Florida, and walk right back out with the shipment.’

‘Jesus.’ Saul had a mental picture of Donohue running up and down a leaking dam, trying to plug up hundreds of ever-widening cracks. ‘You really made a mess of this, didn’t you?’

‘Listen to me,’ rasped Donohue, his voice growing weaker. ‘About Mitchell Stone.’

‘He’s still alive, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he is, and whatever you do with me, you need to help us find him. And stop him.’

‘Why? What’s he got to do with this?’

‘We interrogated him. Put him under, and asked him questions. The things he told us, he’s . . . he’s not even goddamn human any more.’

‘What?’

‘That shipment we sent you to look for?’ Donohue coughed. ‘There’s no reason why the Sphere drone carrying it should have gone out of control the way it did. Those things are near as damn fail-proof. Then we found out that the Sphere lost contact with it at exactly the same instant Stone—’

The shot came from nowhere, blowing out the car’s front windscreen. Saul ducked instinctively, slamming the accelerator down, without pause for thought. The car surged forward.

More shots followed, and Saul grabbed hold of the steering wheel as it emerged from the dashboard. Donohue scrabbled at him with claw-like fingers, attempting to wrest the wheel from his grasp.

Somewhere amid the din and fury, Saul realized the terrible mistake he had made in not forcing Donohue to remove his contacts. The whole time they’d been talking, rescue had already been on the way.

Troopers scattered as the car hurtled towards them, their outlines shimmering. Donohue wrenched at the wheel and the car side-swiped a Black Dog, ripping the passenger-side door away. Donohue screamed and held on tight, as Saul managed to accelerate away again. Saul let go of the wheel just long enough to raise one leg and boot Donohue hard enough to send him tumbling out of the car.

He then grabbed hold of the wheel again, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see Donohue rolling to a halt behind him. Saul nailed the accelerator to the floor, gunning the vehicle for a ramp down which daylight filtered from above. He twisted the wheel wildly, skirting another Black Dog making its way down the same ramp, and cursing as troopers darted out of his way with only centimetres to spare.

Suddenly, miraculously, he was outside, the early morning sun pale and wan behind clouds. A cordon of tanks and Dogs surrounded the Array directly ahead of him. He kept his fot on the accelerator, swerving past several vehicles heading towards the ramp from the direction of a hopper, then past the armoured cordon and on into the no man’s land separating it from the crowds. The car ploughed through a dense tangle of barbed wire before jarring to a sudden halt.

He stumbled out of the vehicle and saw that spiked steel balls, scattered all around, had blown the tires. The crowds of refugees were just metres away, hidden behind a cordon of cars that had been pushed over on to their sides, mirroring the ASI’s own defences.

Shots came from there, aimed at the cordon of tanks. Hunching over, Saul ran forward, hoping to lose himself in the mass of people surrounding the Array. The sonar tanks let out an ear-splitting blast and he dropped to his knees, hands clasped to his ears.

Somehow he managed to get up again and keep running, half blinded with pain and unable to hear a damn thing. He squeezed between two torched cars, and seconds later was caught up in a great mob of people desperate to get away from the tanks.

Another sonar blast rolled over him, and he collapsed on to churned black mud and vomited noisily. Barely avoiding getting trampled, he balled himself up, his breath emerging in shuddering gasps as people thronged past him.

It had started to rain, a gentle pattering of it cool against his skin and washing away the blood and sweat. Saul stood up and staggered away, the world so silent in his deafness that it felt as if he were in a dream, yet pushing and stumbling past an endless mass of humanity. Passing a burned-out shopping mall, its windows shattered and its shelves stripped bare, he kept moving until the muted sound of fighting faded with distance.

The rain became torrential, thunder booming out across the Array and its surroundings, so he sought shelter under the corner of a vast tarpaulin that roofed an impromptu chapel, where several hundred worshippers kneeled on the grass to listen to a preacher deliver a sermon from the rear of a flat-bed truck. As he slumped down to the ground, the air was filled with hosannahs, at which point he realized he could hear again.

He waited until he’d recovered his breath, then put in a call to Olivia.

TWENTY-FOUR

Florida Array, 8 February 2235

‘Saul? What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?’

‘I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean,’ Saul replied over the link. He had to clamp his hands over his ears to be able to hear Olivia’s voice. ‘Can’t say it wasn’t a close call a couple of times.’

‘Jesus, Saul, I really thought . . .’

The preacher’s voice grew to a roar, full of the promise of damnation. Saul ducked back outside from under the tarpaulin, deciding he’d rather take his chances with the rain, after all.