“Transferred how?” Carlisle says. “We see junker battle-trucks and junker cadres on the ground. I’m not convinced you can guarantee our safety.”
“I can guarantee your safety if you come out immediately. Not if you continue to waste my time.” The brigadier sounds just a little testy now, as though she’s trying hard to avoid unpleasantness but is reluctantly acknowledging that it may become necessary after all. “We’ll drive back together, right now. Your orders stand, Isaac. Please come out.”
At the brink of direct insubordination, Carlisle feels the familiar reluctance to press forward. Instead, he marches in place. “Geraldine, you’re making common cause with murderers and rapists who oppose everything we believe in. I refuse to endorse that decision. Let me take Rosie back to Beacon and we’ll perform the handover there in due course.”
“That’s not possible,” Fry says bluntly. “Isaac, let me explain the situation to you. There is no room here for argument, or negotiation. The alliances I’ve made are absolutely necessary to ensure Beacon’s survival. I’m not offering you any kind of an explanation, or any apology. I’m your senior officer and you will obey me. I am requisitioning your vehicle for the Beacon Muster. Right here. Right now. If you fail to surrender it, you—along with all your crew—will be guilty of mutiny and treason and you will be treated accordingly. As enemies of the Muster and the polity.”
“She’s bluffing,” McQueen says from behind him. “She wants Rosie intact, not in pieces.”
“Is that Lieutenant McQueen?” Fry asks. “If so, please tell him to be quiet and observe the chain of command. And if you share his optimism, Isaac, bear in mind that having Rosie in pieces is preferable to having her—and you—take the field against us.”
“Geraldine,” Carlisle says, making one last appeal to reason. “I haven’t lied to you. We have encountered a new type of hungry and we have obtained a specimen. It’s vitally important that we deliver it to Beacon intact.”
“So you told me,” Fry snaps. “I have to say that it seems unlikely after seven months of zero findings. I’m inclined to think that you saw this moment coming and finessed accordingly. But if you’re telling the truth, that’s all the more reason for you to give up without a fight and let Beacon have the benefit of your success.”
Carlisle grimaces. For a second he presses the radio against his chest while he formulates a response. “Yes,” he admits at last. “I can follow the logic of that argument. I’m prepared to hand over the specimen if we can agree a way to do it. But I can’t surrender Rosie. I need to think about the safety of my crew. And in that regard, you should know that we also have a baby in here. Samrina Khan gave birth two days ago.”
There is the smallest perceptible pause. “Really?” Fry says. “That’s wonderful. Against mission regs, of course, but these things happen. I look forward to wetting the baby’s head. No more arguments, Isaac. You, your people, Rosie, the specimen. You will entrust them all to me, and you will do it right now. You have five minutes. Use them wisely. I’ll be training a scope on your mid-section door. The timer doesn’t stop until the door opens and I see you step out.”
“Brigadier—” But she has broken contact.
“Sir.” Foss, on the walkie-talkie, her voice quick and urgent. “The odds just got worse. Two more vehicles are rolling in behind us with their lights out. Definitely junker ordnance—barbed-wire trim, welded-on bits of shit all over them. There are some more ground troops too, moving in on our three o’clock and our nine.”
So they can’t retreat, and they can’t advance. If there is an unexcluded middle he’s not seeing it. They’re out of options and almost out of time.
“Foss,” he says, “stay where you are and prime the field pounder. But don’t rotate the turret. That may prompt them to start firing.” He turns to Sixsmith. “Bring the remaining members of the science team to the crew quarters, Private,” he tells her.
Sixsmith rips off a salute and goes astern to the lab. Carlisle goes to the crew quarters himself to await their arrival. He glances towards the bunks, with a poignant ache of nostalgia. He is wearied to death, and it seems unlikely he will sleep again on this side of the grave.
Sixsmith brings Dr. Khan and Stephen Greaves. McQueen follows them in. Khan is very much the worse for wear, leaning against Sixsmith until she is able to sink down into a chair.
“What about Dr. Fournier?” Carlisle demands.
“Sir, he was unconscious.”
“He was …?”
“I smacked him in the head with a clamp stand,” Dr. Khan explains. “He was assaulting Stephen and I acted without thinking. Sorry.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Sixsmith says. “Seriously.”
Carlisle has no time to tease out the story, and very little interest. He sums up what’s happening in as few words as he can manage, and explains his own decision.
“Brigadier Fry has offered to take all of you back to Beacon,” he tells them, “as long as I hand Rosie over to her within the next few minutes. If I believed that offer was sincere, I would already have surrendered. But I don’t. I think she intends to kill all of us. Given that her troops seem to consist mainly of junkers, I can’t even guarantee that death will be a quick one.”
“Fucking traitor,” Sixsmith says. “Filthy fucking traitor.” Nobody else says anything at all.
“That being the case,” Carlisle goes on, “the choice seems to me to be a clear one. I don’t want to hand Rosie over to be used as the closing argument in a coup d’état. But the only alternative I can see is to make a run for it. The junker battle-trucks are civilian vehicles, much lighter than Rosie. It would be possible to ram one of them out of the way and push on past. But we’re heavily outnumbered, even just on the basis of the vehicles we can actually see. There could easily be more positioned behind the bunkers, and it’s almost certain that the footsoldiers who have moved in on our flanks are carrying RPGs.”
“Affirmative, sir,” Foss says, via the squawk-box. “I’ve seen two already. Bazookas or grenade-launchers, heavy duty.”
“So each of you has to decide,” Carlisle concludes, “whether you want to stay on board and make that attempt, or get out of here. I’m sorry I have no better options to offer you. If any of you want to leave, I’ll mount the airlock and open the mid-section door. My belief is that you’ll be giving yourself up to torturers and murderers that the brigadier will be unable to rein in even if she wishes to, but it’s possible that I’m wrong.”
The slightly stunned silence persists. The soldiers know all this already, of course. It’s only Dr. Khan and Greaves who are hearing it for the first time.
“I told them about your baby, Samrina,” he adds. “That may work in your favour, if you should decide—”