Here We Stand, page 5
“Presumably not the Jatta Protectorate.”
“The Jattan opposition might not even be on Dal Mantir. Fred says they’ve got a few colonies on other worlds, or they might have been given refuge by another alien government.”
“Busy galaxy.”
“Damn straight. It’s a heavily-armed soap opera.”
“I did come here for a reason, actually,” Chris said. “I need to see Gan-Pamas’s weapon. I assume it’s still here.”
“Sure. It’s on that test bench.” Searle pointed to the far side of the cavernous hangar. “Don’t you want to see the stealth suit?”
“I saw enough in the slurry pit, thanks. Has anyone examined the weapon?”
“Yeah, Dai took a look. What is it you need? I’ll get him for you.”
“It’s nearly midnight. Don’t drag him out of bed.”
“He’s still up. He’ll want to go over it with you.”
“Okay. I just need to test a theory. Psychological stuff.”
Chris went over to take a look at the weapon while he was waiting for Dai Hiyashi. He wasn’t even sure what to call the thing, but it looked a little like an ancient flintlock pistol, all smooth curves, so he settled on gun for the meantime. Fred would probably know the Jattan term for it. It looked metallic, but as there was no way of knowing what any of the protrusions or depressions in its casing were without actually handling it, Chris decided to leave well alone until Hiyashi arrived.
“Hi Chris. Do you want to try it out?”
Chris turned around. “Have you managed to fire it?”
“Sort of.” Hiyashi had an English accent, a lot posher than Marc’s. Chris had first assumed he was one of the Japanese nationals from the Cabot crew, but he was an ex-Royal Navy weapons officer and as English as they came. “Fred worked it out. He said he hadn’t seen one like this before. It’s not military issue.”
“What is it, then?”
“No idea. Come on, let’s take it outside. We’re not set up for live fire in here yet.”
Chris followed Hiyashi outside to the open ground behind the bot hangar. There was nothing out there that they could damage. But he didn’t want to put the gun through its paces. He just wanted to see the power output. Hiyashi placed it carefully in his hand.
“It’s awkward because it’s a bit small for a man’s hand and you have to curve your fingers around it,” he said. “Jattans seem to have more flexible joints. But you aim just as you would with an iron sight.”
“Is it an energy weapon, or did I miss something?” Chris asked.
“Yes, it is.”
Chris aimed low so that it would hit the grass. “Any spread?”
“About a foot.”
“Weird.” Chris prepared to attempt to fire. The absence of a trigger was confusing. “Am I trying to feel for some pressure point on the handle, or do I just squeeze?”
“Yeah, I know, it feels completely wrong, and I don’t even touch handguns very often. Just squeeze it. It might help to imagine you’re squirting ketchup at someone.”
“Ah, my weapon of choice.” Chris looked around to make sure nobody was going to walk past unannounced and adjusted his aim. “I want to know why it didn’t kill Dan.”
Chris squeezed the curve of the handle. Nothing happened for a moment, but as he tightened his grip, he felt the gun vibrate like he’d grabbed a buzzer while it was going off. Then there was a flash, a loud crack, and a patch of grass ten yards away gave off a wisp of steam or maybe smoke. It probably hurt like hell if it hit you, but it didn’t seem too destructive. On the other hand, it could have been enough to disrupt someone’s heart. But the Jattans couldn’t have known the effect it would have on a human. They’d never met one before.
“Dai, do you know if the power can be adjusted?” Chris asked. “Was it on this setting when you received it?”
“We didn’t change anything,” Hiyashi said. “We were going to do a teardown first. But it does seem to have a control. Fred says you have to turn the bottom of the grip.”
“Which way?”
Hiyashi thought for a moment. “Anticlockwise. Right to left.”
Chris fumbled with the butt of the weapon, wary of accidentally squeezing the wrong part and zapping himself. He turned it as far as it would go and aimed at the grass again.
“I’m just trying to work out if Gan-Pamas was trying to kill Dan or not,” he said.
He ran through the few seconds leading up to the incident. Gan-Pamas had been found in the slurry pit, Chris had called Fred on the radio to get him to translate the conversation into Jattan so Gan-Pamas could hear it, and then the alien started getting agitated as if he was arguing with Fred. Trinder had his rifle trained on him. Did Trinder twitch or do something that made him look like he was going to fire? Whatever happened, the Jattan had shot him.
“Stand by,” Chris said.
He squeezed. This time the gun almost kicked. The flash was bigger and the crack was louder. When he walked up to look at the damage, the grass was blackened like someone had cooked a barbecue on it.
The weapon wasn’t set at full power when Gan-Pamas fired, then. He might have thought it was enough to kill a human, but Chris suspected that wasn’t what happened. It was impossible to think like an alien he didn’t know anything about, but his gut said anyone faced with a previously unknown and much bigger enemy would probably err on the side of overkill.
Gan-Pamas hadn’t. It looked like he’d tried to make it less lethal, even though he probably believed he was going to be killed. Chris felt bad about that. This didn’t sound like the kind of trigger-happy, reckless Jattan behaviour Fred had described. He’d have to raise this as a concern in the morning.
“I think I might have gotten this all wrong,” he said, staring at the vaporised grass.
His subconscious hadn’t been trying to warn him about non-lethal weapons. There was no way he could have seen that, and it wouldn’t have solved the problem of Gan-Pamas giving away their position, for a start. But it had given Chris a hint.
It had told him to be careful about taking Fred’s word as gospel. Only time would tell, but Nomad might have made an unnecessary enemy, just as Bissey had predicted.
* * *
Unit D74, road currently unnamed, Nomad Base: 0725, September 22, OC.
Marc washed the breakfast dishes and stood at the sink, staring out of the window at the threadbare beginnings of a back garden. It was painful, a flashback to a similarly ordinary day twenty years ago when he was on leave and it was his turn to take the boys to school.
History was repeating, but it wasn’t ordinary now. Howie was getting ready for his third day at the new Kill Line school, wrapping his sandwiches and being very organised. Betsy the pit bull waited patiently by the door to do escort duty, having turned up from somewhere else — probably Dieter’s place — with uncanny punctuality. But John and Greg were long gone, Sandra wasn’t on the early shift at the supermarket, and this wasn’t their house in Warminster.
“Got your homework for marking?” Marc asked.
Howie nodded and patted his bag. “Yeah.”
“Still enjoying school?” Howie was almost too good-natured and kids could be nasty little bastards with newcomers, no matter how well brought-up they were. Now they were being taught in separate age groups, Howie was the only transit camp kid in a class of Kill Liners. “You make sure you tell me if you don’t.”
“It’s okay, I like it,” Howie said. “Chuck’s teaching us history and biology again. And Dr Mangel’s going to tell us how stars form. It’s not like I don’t know anybody.”
“Dr Mangel’s a clever bloke,” Marc said. “You’ll learn lots from him.”
“He likes you. He said you gave him the best surprise of his life when you drove him through the Caisin gate.”
Marc wondered if he’d developed a gravitational field that pulled in other broken souls. Poor old Todd Mangel had never told anyone he’d lost his wife or that he’d even been married at all. With the exception of the Kill Liners, though, almost everybody in Nomad Base was broken in some way, from the Cabot crew who’d left everyone and everything they knew for a one-way mission, to the refugees from Chris’s transit camp and the Ainatio staff who’d lost contact with their families and friends as the world beyond their secure site collapsed and vanished. This wasn’t a normal, balanced population to breed from, whatever lofty standards people had met in Solomon’s estimation. But it would have to do.
“That’s what’s cool about being here,” Marc said. “Everyone’s got a special talent and we’re all doing something important. Kids as well. We’re all making history, Howie, because somebody’s got to.”
Marc wasn’t sure what that meant to him. It was Solomon who said stuff like destiny and pivotal point in human history.
Howie slung his bag over his shoulder and paused to stow the clean cups away in the cupboard. “Yeah, and it’s really nice to live in a house again,” he said. “With a proper address.”
“You had a house in the transit camp.”
“It was a cabin. It’s not a house until it’s got people in it.”
Howie had plenty of people in Chris’s camp willing to take him in, but he didn’t seem to want that. Marc decided not to ask questions. After Howie told him how he’d tried to take care of his dying mum and sister, completely alone in an abandoned suburb, Marc let him fill in the gaps at his own pace. He knew he was dealing with a traumatised kid who had his own way of coping, and Howie’s was being Little Mister Perfect, running errands, checking the old people were okay, and generally making a job of being cheerful. Marc hoped he wasn’t testing himself to see if he could have done more for his family or trying to do some kind of penance. He was seven or eight when it happened and he shouldn’t have felt he had to be a grown man. But he hadn’t turned into an aggressive little animal, which Marc would have expected, and that probably meant he’d had a secure, loving family who’d buffered him against the world collapsing around him until they died.
Howie was still grieving. It wasn’t that complicated. But Marc now found himself instinctively trying to protect Howie from real life, and he’d have to find a compromise if he was going to let him grow up and come to terms with his past.
Sod it. This was exactly what Marc had tried to avoid. Howie didn’t need a surrogate parent who was dealing with his own troubles.
“Yeah, people,” Marc said, slinging his carbine over his shoulder. “You need someone to share the housework roster. And watch movies with.”
“And tell them how your day was.”
Yeah, Marc had missed that. “Let’s go, then.”
They walked down the road to the centre of the base, avoiding puddles from the overnight rain. Their routes parted at the next junction past the Kill Line turning. Howie peeled off left with Betsy trotting alongside and Marc watched them go for a moment, touched by how the dog kept looking left and right like she was scanning for possible attackers. He was sure she’d have a go at anyone who looked like a threat to Howie. She’d see him to the door of the school like she had yesterday and then go about her day, which she seemed to organise better than most humans. Then she’d show up when she felt Marc needed looking after. For a drug dealer’s dog, she was big on responsible behaviour.
Marc carried on to the main building and made his way up the single flight of stairs to Meeting Room 2B, exchanging nods and grunts with Cabot people he passed. He’d catalogued them all mentally now, not for any reason beyond the security habit of knowing who was who and if they were where they were supposed to be or not.
It was the same with the Ainatio boffins. Most of them passed through this building at some point during the day as well, because even though the emergency accommodation had been converted back to offices, it was still one of the entrances to the staff canteen and some of the labs. So he made a point of clocking the scientists and technical staff too.
One of them was heading towards him, coming down the stairs with a file tucked under his arm. Marc had searched the man’s home yesterday, all very proper and cordial, but as Marc met his eyes and nodded in acknowledgement, the scientist just looked uncomfortable and hurried on. Maybe the bloke had an embarrassing hobby and thought Marc had found it while rummaging. He hadn’t. So there was a chilly distance between them that hadn’t been there before Marc had become the face of the accuser. Well, if life had been a popularity contest, Marc’s end users wouldn’t have awarded him any stars. Dead scumbags didn’t leave feedback.
He shrugged it off and carried on. When he opened the door to the meeting room, he realised he was the last to arrive. Trinder, Chris, Searle, and Ingram stared at him like he had a nerve walking in there.
“I’m not late,” he said, nodding pointedly at the clock.
Alex slid a cup of coffee down the table at him. “It’s okay, Britzilla. We just got here early to gossip about you. We’re done now.”
Ingram flourished her pocket screen. “I’ve sent the talking points to your screens, gentlemen, so let’s have a look, and add anything else as we go. One, the revised Opis calendar and options. Two, wash-up from the security sweep. Would you like to get the calendar out of the way first?”
Marc took a seat and studied the documents that had just landed in his inbox. There were now four options for a new calendar to fit the number of days in the Opis year, and his first reaction was that they had better things to do with their time when the base was up to its arse in potential threats. But perhaps that was the point. Being seen to carry on with long-term admin stuff like a calendar — especially a calendar — told everyone in Nomad that life was going on as normal and they’d still be around to cross off dates for the foreseeable future. It was a statement. Marc knew Ingram well enough now to realise that was exactly what she’d use it for.
On the other hand, it was also typical Alex. He knew how to handle people, and consultation on that small detail gave them some sense of control over their lives.
“Have we deleted your birthday, Marc?” Alex asked. “You look pissed about something.”
Marc studied the options. “Didn’t Nostra-Bednarz-Damus sort this in advance when he was gazing at his crystal ball?”
“Yes, he did, there was a new calendar based on local seasons,” Solomon said. Sol was in every meeting, listening somewhere in the system or monitoring even when his core had gone walkabout in his quadrubot, and he was always ready to defend his dead creator. “But it’s clear that people aren’t ready to erase two thousand years of shared culture. So we’ve come up with some choices to be put to a vote. The Opis orbital period is just under a week longer than Earth’s if we count hours, but with the twenty-six hour days it’s actually forty-nine seven-day weeks.”
“So folks can choose from the Bednarz calendar, with new names for months to be worked out later, because otherwise that’s death by minutiae,” Alex said. “Or a numerical system based on elapsed mission days, the full Gregorian calendar with the gradual drift away from the seasons, or the slimline Gregorian calendar with some months reduced to fit forty-nine weeks.”
“Which months, and why?” Marc asked.
“I aimed for the minimum disruption to the majority of people’s birthdays,” Solomon said.
“Very scientific, Sol.” Marc checked the modified calendar for the dates that meant most to him. John’s and Greg’s anniversaries were still intact at the end of November, but they wouldn’t mark an exact year the next time they came around. Howie’s birthday was in November as well. “We can keep a separate Earth calendar going in parallel if people vote for one of the fancy options. But it still won’t tie up with Earth’s, will it?”
“No, Earth’s running further ahead of us date-wise by one day for every twelve days here,” Alex said. He nodded with the assurance of a man who’d rehearsed all his responses to objections, but then he started counting on his fingers. “I think that adds up to a month a year. Well, more or less. Don’t ask me about leap years and leap seconds and sorting out the exact length of the Opis day. That’s Sol’s job. But there’s nothing we can do to keep the calendar in sync with Earth. As you say, other cultures and religions keep their own calendar running alongside the international one, so my guess is people will think broadly in Earth time for a while because they can see it on the news feeds. But they’ll stop when the Earth date diverges too much and it does their heads in because they’re watching news from months in the future.”
“You haven’t touched December, Sol,” Trinder said.
Solomon always had his reasons. “Humans need a midwinter festival and a line drawn under the old year.”
“That’s March, temperature-wise.”
“Well, the Aussies here can help us through the culture shock of badly-aligned Christmases,” Marc said. “So when do we switch over?”
“New Year’s Day,” Solomon said. “And to avoid problems about qualification for age-related services and responsibilities in the future, I suggest everyone retains the date of birth and length of year of the planet where they were born.”
“Man’s first extrasolar bureaucracy. Makes me proud. Still, when we’re all dead, that problem solves itself.”
Chris didn’t look up from his screen. “The Gregorian calendar took a couple of centuries to catch on. And even then it wasn’t universal.”
“As long as we all use the same calendar for administration, that’s all I care about.” Ingram had obviously had enough. She wasn’t a committee kind of woman. “Everybody happy? Can we move on to the security sweep now, please?”
”No die-back’s been detected,” Solomon said. “A few suspicious containers opened, but no positives. Recreational narcotics and fragile family mementoes sealed for safekeeping.”
Trinder shook his head as if he was disappointed. “And no obvious Mother Death supporters among the staff so far. It’s been useful having a couple of real cops on the team for interviews. I think they’re better equipped to spot wrong ‘uns in that environment than I am, to be honest.”
