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.”
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 welclass="underline" 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—?