Here We Stand, page 31
He searched them anyway. None of them had ID, but that was only to be expected. “Sorry, buddy,” he said to each one as he rolled him over the side and the body hit the water. “It’s just a job. I know Pham made you do it.”
When he got back home, he’d need a drink with Jared. He’d probably need one with Marc, too. He kept thinking of the look on his face when Sol told him about Joni.
“We’re ready for you,” Solomon said. “Buckle up or hang on to something.”
Chris decided it was safer being thrown around below deck than in the wheelhouse. He and Joni laid flat on the deck and waited.
“Have you ever done this before?” Joni asked. “With a vessel, I mean.”
“No, but how hard can it be?”
Chris had hardly finished the sentence when he felt himself lift a few inches off the deck and fall back again, banging the back of his head. Sautu was still moving slowly when she went through the gate, but it was fast enough for her to skid. She stopped with a soft thud. Then she lifted and wobbled a little. Chris could hear creaking and scraping.
“The bots put down a collision barrier,” Solomon said. “You’ve got lots of interesting things growing on the hull, Joni.”
Joni helped Chris up and they went out on deck. Sautu was standing on the plain just outside the perimeter, flanked by a couple of the big construction bots. They were moving blocks into position to support her like a ship in a dry dock.
“Awesome, Sol,” Chris said. He couldn’t muster enough energy to sound upbeat. “And Fred. Come on, Joni, let’s have our die-back scan and then you can see Sera.”
But a crowd was already gathering around the boat. There was no hiding this now. Okay, there wouldn’t have been any way of concealing Tev and his family if they’d arrived under less dramatic circumstances, but this must have looked like a big fuck-you to everyone who’d been told they couldn’t call home.
Fonseca was standing at the front of the crowd, arms folded.
“You can’t park there, Sergeant,” she said. “And why are you covered in blood?”
“We’re fine, thanks for asking.”
Joni now stood on the small foredeck, eyes tight shut, hands cupped over his nose and mouth. He didn’t seem the sort to be paralysed by fear, so Chris assumed he was praying, which was kind of confirmed when he opened his eyes and looked up to the sky for a moment. Chris would have joined him on the off-chance God existed, but he was sure God didn’t want to hear any of his shit today.
And now he had to face a lot of people who’d be pissed at him and Marc for a long, long time.
“Put in a thank you for me as well, Joni,” he said. “And add a plea for mercy.”
07
One, anything that can be done will be done eventually, even if it’s stupid or evil. Two, any technology or law will be exploited for the worst possible use it was never intended for. And three, humans are basically shit-houses. But so are dolphins and chimps, because it seems to go with intelligence, so there’s no point feeling guilty about it. Those are Gallagher’s Rules For Avoiding Disappointment. They’ve never failed me.
Marc Gallagher, former King’s Special Operations Regiment, popularly known by the historical nickname of “The SAS.”
Southern perimeter, Nomad Base: 0840 hours, October 17, OC.
Yes, it was still there. And the grumbling had started.
It wasn’t that Ainatio folk didn’t like Tev or that they objected to APS-registered fishing boats being dumped outside the base. Trinder thought a lot of them were actually pleased to see Tev, because he’d been well-liked when he was at HQ.
But his arrival made them feel some Nomad personnel were more equal than others, with privileges denied to the rank and file, and it wasn’t going down well in Lab Coat Country. It had probably ruffled feathers with some of the Cabot crew, too, but Ingram would slap that down hard. She wasn’t calling home either. She held that moral high ground like Stalingrad. But she turned a blind eye to Marc’s shenanigans, probably because she was kind of sweet on him, and that was what got noticed.
Trinder sat on the rear bumper of the Caracal and kept an eye on the boat for a while. Joni was unloading odds and ends from it. He seemed like a nice lad, and Maro, Fred’s pissy son-in-law, crept up to him nervously to ask about the boat. They were now talking while Joni worked, and it was absolutely riveting to watch.
Here was a young guy who hadn’t even known aliens had existed a couple of days ago, and now he was talking to one quite calmly, possibly because a giant crow was easier to relate to than the hypothetical sentient gas blob of Chris’s imagination. The expression on Joni’s face was priceless. Trinder could see the disbelief mixed with joy written all over him. Maybe Maro was thrilled too. It was still hard to tell just by looking at a teerik. But when your own father-in-law thought you were a dick, a stranger’s interest had to be a major boost to your self-esteem.
Some folks wouldn’t see it as the miraculous communion of species, though. You couldn’t maintain a ban on contact with Earth for the hoi polloi while the chosen few could actually visit and bring their buddies back with them. The muttering had started. It wasn’t a mutiny yet, but pointing out the necessity of getting Tev out of APS and the lack of choices open to Marc and Chris in a life-or-death situation wouldn’t be enough to smooth people over.
Trinder was also one of the chosen, though, and he felt guilty about what he was about to do. He tore himself away from the marvellous spectacle of a teerik examining the hull of a catamaran and walked across to Warehouse 10, a slab of a building where most of the frozen food supplies were stored.
It had the air of a place where gangsters disposed of rivals and left them on hooks among the beef carcasses. But the interior was brightly-lit and painfully shiny, not seedy and sordid at all, and he could see Ingram’s inner circle huddled around a steel table in the prep area. Marc and Tev had their backs to the door and looked like they were performing surgery. Ingram, Alex, and Chris watched the process like a bunch of cats summoned by the sound of a can opening.
“Lock the doors, Dan,” Ingram said, not looking up.
Tev turned. “Dan, got any preferences? Take a look in the crates.”
Trinder looked over the contents of the table — a lot of dissected fish — and the plastic crates stacked beside it. This was the catch that was still in the boat’s cold store when Joni had to make a run for it. Trinder didn’t recognise many of the species, but there were some really big fish in there. The biggest was the one now on the table, something that looked like a giant mutant mackerel, nearly six feet long. Even Tev was handling it like it was a struggle to lift.
“Apparently it’s a wahoo,” Alex said. “I was thinking of dressing it up in an Ainatio uniform and walking it out of here.”
“Grill it, pan-fry it, coat it in breadcrumbs.” Tev grabbed a towel to get a better grip on the slippery skin. “Don’t overcook it. There’s six, so there’s enough for all of you to make a few meals, plus a crate of small yellowfin and some odds and ends.”
“Thanks Tev. That’s fantastic.” Trinder was delighted. He could cook Erin a fancy dinner. “You call those small tuna? Damn. The big ones must be the size of a car.”
Marc paused, mucky knife in one hand. “Shit. I forgot to get Howie’s mangoes.”
“We were a bit busy, as I recall,” Chris said.
Trinder was still waiting for the detail of what had gone wrong yesterday. All he knew was that Pham was now minus four men and a helicopter. When Howie worried that Marc was going off to do something dangerous, he was usually right.
“How’s Howie taking it?” Trinder asked.
“Our little escapade? Stiff upper lip.” Marc shook his head and started cutting again. Tev was getting through his fish a lot faster than Marc was. “I think I need to spend a bit more time with him today. And can we remember not to mention the close quarters stuff in front of him?”
“Dai’s painted a helicopter icon on Sol’s bot frame.”
“Where are we going to dump the heads and all the other leftover bits?” Chris asked. “I know we ought to be frugal and make stock out of it, but we need to incinerate the evidence. If anyone sees this haul they’ll think we’re rubbing their noses in it.”
“Just sort the fish out and we’ll worry about the blowback later,” Ingram said. “Although I’m not looking forward to facing Jenny Park.”
“Did Sol find any surviving family?” Alex asked.
“No luck so far. But there’ll be some relatives, however distant.”
Chris was examining a tuna as if he hadn’t seen one outside a can before. He probably hadn’t. “Pham knows we’ve got some snazzy FTL capability,” he said. “He can’t have missed what happened, and it looks like he’s still doing it all off the books. So he won’t want anything going public any more than we do. If Jenny can contact relatives, bad things will happen to keep them quiet.”
“Yes, I know. You kept saying that at the debrief.” Ingram squatted to check out the other fish. “We could stick these in the morgue, of course. The medics are absolute vultures, so you’ll lose some, but it’s a price worth paying for their silence. Ooh, what’s that?”
“Estuary cod,” Tev said.
“And the big greenish thing with the strange forehead?”
“Mahi-mahi.”
Marc and Tev carried on cutting, chatting while they worked like a bunch of cannery workers. Trinder felt vaguely guilty for not sharing the bounty but this modest haul wouldn’t feed seventeen hundred mouths anyway. He took a few pictures for posterity, including a team shot of everyone holding a wahoo like they’d just caught it.
“I was going to put aside a tuna to bribe Lianne,” Tev said. “I brought some kava cuttings I want her to propagate. Am I going to be causing trouble?”
“Probably not if it’s you,” Alex said. “After all, it’s your son’s fishing boat. One tuna doesn’t mean we’ve secretly divvied up a big haul of luxury fish.”
“You make us sound really seedy,” Marc said. “I suppose we are.”
Chris must have been in a hurry to get somewhere. He started pacing, arms folded, and then he looked at his watch and picked up the tuna he’d been allocated.
“Does anyone mind if I go?” he asked, wrapping it in film like a mummy. “I’m running late. I’m going to do battle with this guy at home.” He put it into a paper potato sack and tucked it under his arm. “I’m saving it to curry favour with a woman. See you later, Tev. Thanks, buddy.”
Ingram waited for him to go. “Fonseca?”
“Don’t think so,” Marc said. “Must be a new one. I’ll make enquiries.”
“Is he okay?”
“Are you asking if he’s traumatised by slicing up someone yesterday, and that pile of fish guts has brought it all back?”
“Possibly.”
“He’s more upset that it wasn’t Pham. But Pham’s not finished with us, not now. He’ll get his chance.”
Ingram sighed and shook her head. Tev and Marc now had the prep work down pat and the fillets were piling up in separate stacks. Trinder decided everyone needed to be able to do this, and there was no time like the present.
“You can leave mine,” Trinder said. “I’d like to do it myself.”
“Fine by me,” Marc said. “I’m going to dump the waste and scrub myself down, or I’ll have every dog on the base following me.”
Now they had to disperse discreetly with their stash. Ingram, Marc, and Tev left with a few plain bags, and Alex stayed. Trinder locked the doors again. All he had was his army knife. Then he realised the belly was intact, and that meant guts. He really didn’t like guts.
“Okay, nurse, I’m ready to operate,” he said to Alex.
“So you’ve done this before.”
“Nope.” Trinder tried to remember how Marc and Tev had done it. “What do I do with it?”
Alex shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I think fish are usually square and white with no faces. And they live in little plastic bags and they’re freezing cold and rock-hard.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr Survival Expert.”
“I’m strictly a grocery store pioneer.” Alex tapped away at his screen. “Hey, here’s a how-to vid. This is like remote surgery. I can talk you through it. Ready, doctor?”
Trinder held up his knife. “Scalpel.”
“Cut diagonally there behind the gills.“
“Eww.”
“That’s it. Now mark out the cutting lines on both sides with the tip of the knife. Then you come back and cut the flesh away.”
“Do I cut the guts out first?”
Alex studied the screen, frowning. “Nope, looks like you don’t have to touch the innards at all. Which is just as well, because this says they’ve usually got wormy things. Just slice the meat off. Go on, run the knife down the back... yeah, all the way to the tail.”
“Worms?”
“Forget the worms. Cut across the tail, not through it.”
“Uh-huh. Got it.”
“Then stick your knife in and cut along this line all the way back to where you started. Then turn it over and repeat on the other side.”
Trinder followed Alex’s instructions and felt ridiculously pleased with himself. Somehow he’d removed two long slabs of lovely pearly meat. What was left of the wahoo now lay intact on the table like the remains of a fish dinner in a cartoon, a head and tail connected by a bridge of spine and ribs.
“You sure it’s safe, Al? I mean, worms.”
“It’s okay, they’re really big worms. Look.” Alex thrust the screen in his face. “You’d be able to see those, right?”
The image was gross. Trinder felt a little queasy. “Aw, come on, did you have to show me that?”
“I try to educate where I can.”
The room looked like a crime scene and it took ages to clean up. Trinder was in two minds about what to do with the head, which looked pretty meaty and edible too, but Chris was right. It had to go to the incinerator. He cut the long fillets into portions and bagged them.
“Thanks for being a great theatre nurse, Al.”
“I didn’t even mop your brow.”
“But I feel bad about keeping these to myself.”
“Oversharing is a sin, my son. But listen to Ingram. We’ve got nothing to apologise for. Tev was left behind, his life was at risk, he’s got irreplaceable skills, and if there’s two guys you can trust to use the gate for good, it’s Tev and Marc.”
“Are you rehearsing your excuses for when your boffins demand to know why they can’t go home too?”
“Yes. Did I sound plausible? I’ve been losing my glib touch lately. I can’t bullshit like I used to.”
“Well, you convinced me. I’m going to dump the evidence now.”
The trick to being discreet was to stride up to the waste processing compound in broad daylight and drop the bag of waste in the chute. Once that was done and nobody had accosted him about the contents of his other bag, he set off for Kill Line feeling like a proper man bringing home a kill for the tribe.
Erin examined the fillets on the kitchen table and beamed at him. “It’s really kind of Tev,” she said. “And you taught yourself to clean and prep a fish, did you? Not bad for a city boy.”
“Alex helped. It was gross, though. It had worms.”
“Protein’s protein.” Erin opened the freezer and stacked the fish but kept two portions back. “We’ll have some of this later. So where have they put Tev’s family while the house is being built?”
“In the old accommodation block. The top floor. It’ll only be a couple of days at most until the house is furnished ready for them to move in. Sera’s still in the infirmary. Mendoza’s monitoring her.”
“She’s okay, though, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but you can understand everyone being nervous.”
“This is the point where we really become a community. The first baby born on Opis.”
“Is that a hint?” Trinder asked.
“No.”
“It’s a hint from me, then. We need to fix the date for the wedding.”
“Before the end of the year?”
“Let’s wait until we start the new calendar, or you’ll never remember our anniversary.”
Trinder realised he hadn’t actually said the words. Erin knew what he meant, and maybe it wasn’t a big deal for her, but he needed to hear himself say it.
“I want a family,” he said. “I want kids. I want grandchildren. I want us to be like the Kill Line folks, with a stake in the future. There, I said it.”
“I thought you had.”
“No, I tiptoe around things. You know why. Hey, shall we have a barbecue tonight? Wahoo’s good for grilling, Tev says.”
“I’m on duty at nineteen-hundred. Let’s make it tomorrow. I can marinate the fillets overnight. But we can have a quick meal if you’re home in time.”
“Okay, let’s do that. I’d better shower so nobody smells my contraband wahoo. I expect to be putting down mutinies by lunchtime.”
Erin pulled her dubious face. “They’re all talk. Give them a slap. They know why we need Tev here.”
Trinder wasn’t so sure about that. But folks liked to complain even when they didn’t need to. Griping was some kind of bonding process. He’d caught himself doing it occasionally, but he was ready for any smartass comments or outright accusations. He was so ready, in fact, that he was disappointed not to be challenged by anybody. When he walked into the canteen to check out the mood and see who was where, he got some sullen looks, but no actual comments. Unless Ingram had any troublemakers in her crew other than the civilians, it was only the scientists and specialists who had a beef about access to Earth.
