‘Bravo, Hand.’ Vongsavath clapped a handful of slow, sardonic applause. ‘You should have been a political officer. Just one problem with your muscular humanism there – that second ship wasn’t Martian. Right Mistress Wardani? Totally different config.’
All eyes fixed on the archaeologue, who sat with her head bowed. Finally, she looked up, met my gaze and nodded reluctantly.
‘It did not look like any Martian technology I have ever seen or heard of.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘On the evidence I saw. It would appear the Martians were at war with someone else.’
The unease rose from the floor again, winding among us like cold smoke, chilling the conversation to a halt. A tiny premonition of the wake-up call humanity was about to get.
We do not belong out here.
A few centuries we’ve been let out to play on these three dozen worlds the Martians left us but the playground has been empty of adults all that time, and with no supervision there’s just no telling who’s going to come creeping over the fence or what they’ll do to us. Light is fading from the afternoon sky, retreating across distant rooftops, and in the empty streets below it’s suddenly a cold and shadowy neighbourhood.
‘This is nonsense,’ said Hand. ‘The Martian domain went down in a colonial revolt, everyone agrees on that. Mistress Wardani, the Guild teaches that.’
‘Yeah, Hand.’ The scorn in Wardani’s voice was withering. ‘And why do you think they teach that? Who allocates Guild funding, you blinkered fuckwit? Who decides what our children will grow up believing?’
‘There is evidence—’
‘Don’t fucking talk to me about evidence.’ The archaeologue’s wasted face lit with fury. For a moment I thought she was going to physically assault the executive. ‘You ignorant motherfucker. What do you know about the Guild? I do this for a living, Hand. Do you want me to tell you how much evidence has been suppressed because it didn’t suit the Protectorate worldview? How many researchers were branded antihuman and ruined, how many projects butchered, all because they wouldn’t ratify the official line? How much shit the appointed Guild Chancellors spurt every time the Protectorate sees fit to give them a funding handjob?’
Hand seemed taken aback by the sudden eruption of rage from this haggard, dying woman. He fumbled. ‘Statistically, the chances of two starfaring civilisations evolving so close to—’
But it was like walking into the teeth of a gale. Wardani had her own emotional ’meth shot now. Her voice was a lash.
‘Are you mentally defective? Or weren’t you paying attention when we opened the gate? That’s instant matter transmission across interplanetary distance, technology that they left lying around. You think a civilisation like that is going to be limited to a few hundred cubic light years of space? The weaponry we saw in action out there was faster than light. Those ships could both have come from the other side of the fucking galaxy. How would we know?’
The quality of light shifted as someone opened the bubblefab flap. Glancing away from Wardani’s face for a moment, I saw Tony Loemanako stood in the entrance to the bubblefab, wearing noncom-flashed chameleochrome and trying not to grin.
I raised a hand. ‘Hello, Tony. Welcome to the hallowed chambers of academic debate. Feel free to ask if you don’t follow any of the technical terms.’
Loemanako gave up trying to hide the grin. ‘I got a kid back on Latimer wants to be an archaeologue. Says he doesn’t want a profession of violence like his old man.’
‘That’s just a stage, Tony. He’ll get over it.’
‘Hope so.’ Loemanako shifted stiffly, and I saw that under the chameleochrome coveralls, he wore a mobility suit. ‘Commander wants to see you right away.’
‘Just me?’
‘No, he said bring anyone who’s awake. I think it’s important.’
Outside the bubblefab, evening had closed the sky down to a luminous grey in the west and thickening darkness in the east. Under it all, Carrera’s camp was a model of ordered activity in the glow of tripod-mounted Angier lamps.
Envoy habit mapped it for me, cold detail floating over and above a tingling warm sense of hearthfire and company against the encroaching night.
Up by the gate, the sentries sat astride their bugs, leaning back and forth and gesturing. The wind carried down shreds of laughter I recognised as Kwok’s, but distance rendered the rest inaudible. Their faceplates were hinged up, but otherwise they were swim-prepped and still armed to the teeth. The other soldiers Loemanako had detailed to back them up stood around a mobile ultravibe cannon in similar casual alertness. Further down the beach, another knot of Wedge uniforms busied themselves with what looked like the components for a blast shield generator. Others moved back and forth from the Angin Chandra’s Virtue to the polalloy cabin and the other bubblefabs, carrying crates that could have been anything. Behind and above the scene, lights gleamed from the bridge of the ’Chandra and at the loading level, where onboard cranes swung more equipment out of the battlewagon’s belly and down onto the lamplit sand.
‘So how come the mob suit?’ I asked Loemanako, as he led us down towards the unloading area.
He shrugged. ‘Cable batteries at Rayong. Our tinsel systems went down at a bad time. Got my left leg, hipbone, ribs. Some of the left arm.’
‘Shit. You have all the luck, Tony.’
‘Ah, it’s not so bad. Just taking a fuck of a long time to heal right. Doc says the cables were coated with some kind of carcinogenic, and it’s fucking up the rapid regrowth.’ He grimaced. ‘Been like this for three weeks now. Real drag.’
‘Well, thanks for coming out to us. Especially in that state.’
‘No worries. Easier getting about in vac than here anyway. Once you’re wearing the mob suit, polalloy’s just another layer.’
‘I guess.’
Carrera was waiting below the ’Chandra’s loading hatch, dressed in the same field coveralls he’d worn earlier and talking to a small, similarly-attired group of ranking officers. A couple of noncoms were busy with mounted equipment up on the edge of the hatch. About halfway between the ’Chandra and the blast shield detail, a ragged-looking individual in a stained uniform perched on a powered-down loadlifter, staring at us out of bleary eyes. When I stared back, he laughed and shook his head convulsively. One hand lifted to rub viciously at the back of his neck and his mouth gaped open as if someone had just drenched him with a bucket of cold water. His face twitched in tiny spasms that I recognised. Wirehead tremors.
Maybe he saw the grimace pass across my face.
‘Oh, yeah, look that way,’ he snarled. ‘You’re not so smart, not so fucking smart. Got you for antihumanism, got you all filed away, heard you all and your counter-Cartel sentiments, how do you like—’
‘Shut up, Lamont.’ There wasn’t much volume in Loemanako’s voice, but the wirehead jerked as if he’d just been jacked in. His eyes slipped around in their sockets alarmingly, and he cowered. At my side, Loemanako sneered.
‘Political officer,’ he said, and toed some sand in the shivering wreck of a human’s direction. ‘All the fucking same. All mouth.’