“Far enough,” says a voice. A woman’s voice. Brigadier Fry’s.
Khan has only met the brigadier once, on the day of their departure, when she told them in front of a crowd of seventy or eighty thousand that the future of Beacon rode with them. The doctor barely recognises the short, trim figure who steps forward now, in urban camo designed for a bigger frame, in black boots on which hardly any black shows through the accreted dust and mud. The brigadier looks tired. There is a droop to her mouth that reminds Khan of a line from the play Macbeth. I have supped full with horrors.
But who hasn’t, these days?
Fry gestures. Men and women deploy behind them, cutting them off from Rosie. More move in to either side of the brigadier, rifles raised and aimed. Around three dozen, Khan guesses, possibly more. A third of them are in military fatigues and hefting Beacon-issue rifles. The remainder wear anything, carry anything. She can see machetes and handmade bows in among the automatic weapons.
Like oil and water, the soldiers and the junkers aren’t mixing much. The soldiers seem to be holding specific patches of ground between the strutting junker warriors, standing stock still and watching their new allies warily out of the corners of their eyes.
The junkers whoop and catcall, nudge and lean on each other as they hold their rough positions or shift for a better look at what’s going down. One of them throws a stone in Rosie’s direction, along with a few obscene words. The soldiers stand rigid and silent. Nobody is even pretending that this is business as usual.
Fry’s gaze scans the little party, and the corners of her mouth tug down. “There are only five of you,” she says. “Where are the others?”
“Still on board,” Carlisle says. “With the door locked. They’re waiting on my orders, brigadier—whether to surrender Rosie or to scupper her, along with the uniquely valuable specimen we talked about earlier.”
Fry is only a few yards from Carlisle now. The men on either side of her are tense and watchful. The colonel will die if he moves his hand towards his sidearm—probably if he moves at all. Fry seems to find his answer mildly puzzling. “To scupper Rosie?” she repeats. “How would you do that?”
“If we reach an amicable agreement here, you’ll never have to find out.”
Fry smiles. It’s a little bleak, a little washed out, but it’s there. This is another reason why they’re still alive, Khan realises. The brigadier has built this moment up in her mind, has promised herself the luxury of a conversation. She wants her moment and she wants Colonel Carlisle to share it.
“I’ve already given you all the assurances I can, Isaac,” she says. “And really you have no bargaining power here. You mentioned a baby. Yet now I’m expected to believe that you—and the mother—have come up with a plan in which the baby remains behind in Rosie to be blown up or burned to death if we fail to see eye to eye. I know you better than that.”
The colonel lets his gaze sweep across the ragged line of junker warriors. “I imagine we’ve both moved on from the opinions we expressed the last time we talked,” he says.
And on and on, Khan thinks. Go ahead. Keep it up. While their invisible signal flare goes out into the night. They washed off their e-blocker before they stepped out of Rosie, every one of them. Even normal hungries can follow very tiny chemical gradients for miles: the feral children have shown themselves more tenacious again, and much more resourceful.
Come on, kids. We’re right here, so let’s party!
But the kids don’t come and Khan’s mind feels like a febrile flame, drawing up the light and heat from the searing headlights and turning them into something lighter and hotter still. She’s going. She knows she is. Her consciousness will sublime away into the air. The dull-eyed animal that’s left behind will make some purposeless movement that startles the soldiers and kicks off the slaughter.
That’s not how this ends. It can’t be. If they die, Fry will take Rosie. Stephen will spill everything he knows about the cure—he won’t be able to stop himself—and her baby will be picked apart on an autopsy slab while he’s still alive. He will be the first of a great multitude.
“What?” Fry says to the colonel. “You’ve finally realised that there’s a downside to democracy? I find that hard to believe.” She turns to the officer at her side. “Captain Manolis, lead a detail across to the Rosalind Franklin. Six men, including two engineers. Dismantle her treads so she is unable to move.”
The officer salutes and vanishes into the dark.
“I strongly advise you not to do that,” the colonel says. “My men on board will interpret it as a hostile act.”
Fry all but smirks. “Your men on board? I believe you’re talking about the autistic boy, Stephen Greaves. And Dr. Fournier, who answers to me and in any case is too much of a coward to contemplate killing himself.” The brigadier shakes her head. She has seen through all of Colonel Carlisle’s subterfuges and she is expansive in her victory—but not too expansive. “We can still do this without any unnecessary loss of life,” she says. “Tell them to come out. Do it now. Otherwise I’ll have to order the captain to block the air vents. Once they’re all dead we can burn our way in through the airlock doing no damage to the hull at all.”
Carlisle takes a deep breath, and holds it. He tenses, and the soldiers all around them gather themselves visibly, interpreting his involuntary movement as a sign that he is about to attack the brigadier. But he doesn’t. He only looks back across the distance that separates them from Rosie (it seems immense to Khan, an unbridgeable gulf) before settling his gaze on Fry again. “May I remind you of the baby?” he says in a tone that is still very close to calm.
“Certainly, Isaac. May I remind you that I’m giving you the choice?”
There is a moment’s silence. Fry raises her radio, watching Carlisle for a decision. Khan feels another wave of weakness, of fuzzed focus, of absence rush through her. She finds a thought and keeps it in the forefront of her mind. If Fry starts to speak into the radio, she will stop her. Whatever it costs her, that order isn’t going to be spoken.
“Geraldine,” Carlisle says. “You’ve made a terrible mistake.”