Newton's Wake: A Space Opera by Ken MacLeod

Author:Ken MacLeod [MacLeod, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, Life on other planets, General, Space flight
ISBN: 9780765344229
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-02-24T06:17:13+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Nerves of Steel

Carlyle had her Webster out and aimed at Higgins’s faceplate before the woman’s mouth had closed. She felt betrayed, abandoned, fooled like a rube, and enraged.

‘You bastards! You stupid fucking bastards! Tell me what you did that for! I’ll blow your fucking head off right here!’

‘I had nothing to do with it!’

‘You must have been in on it together!’

‘I wish I had been—then I wouldn’t be left down here with you!’ Higgins’s metal face looked distraught and bewildered. Carlyle backed off, keeping the pistol levelled. Her knees felt rubbery.

‘So what’s your explanation?’ she demanded.

‘Never trust a commie,’ said Higgins.

Carlyle glared at her. ‘Never trust a Rapture-fucker, you mean!’

Higgins shrugged. ‘Takes two to make a deal.’

Her offhand attitude and flip answers reignited Carlyle’s fury. ‘Yeah, or three! Or four if it was you and that hick pilot!’

‘Not me!’

‘You knew nothing about this?’

‘No.’

The metal face was etched with anguish. Carlyle believed her. The anger dimmed, leaving a cold dismay. They were going to die more painfully and uncomfortably than she’d intended, but that wasn’t the worst. They were going to die for nothing. She squatted down, lowering the pistol.

‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she moaned. ‘Why the hell would they do that?’

‘Like I said, never trust—’

‘Oh, fuck that,’ Carlyle snarled. ‘That’s just a stupid fucking prejudice. When they do a deal they stick to it—it’s in their interests after all. I can buy an AO pilot selling us out, even to DK. I can’t buy a DK family cheating us.’

Higgins moved over and squatted down too.

‘We don’t know it was the same family as you were dealing with. Or the same group within the family. You should know about that, Carlyle.’

‘Don’t tell me what I should fucking know about,’ Carlyle said. ‘It still doesn’t figure. These DK clans compete all right, but they keep a united front to the rest of the world.’

‘How do we know it was DK at all?’

Carlyle rocked back on her heels. ‘Because it was a DK ship.’ She knew that was a fallacy even as she said it.

‘We don’t even know that,’ Higgins said. ‘It was like the one in the spec, sure. But it was a lot bigger and better.’

Carlyle snorted. ‘So who built it? Aliens?’

‘Whoever built it,’ Higgins said, ‘might have sold it to someone else. Someone who wanted a QTD real bad. Or maybe just wanted another DK ship real bad and knew they could buy one with a QTD. Either way, I think there’s some third party out there.’

‘The Knights?’

Higgins shrugged. ‘They’re in hostility mode. Why not?’

‘Why not indeed,’ Carlyle said bitterly. ‘That makes sense. They bought the first QTD off us and there’s no reason they shouldn’t steal the second. Seeing as we’re fighting them and all. Shit.’

She sat for a moment staring in silence at Higgins, not wanting to divulge the next thought that followed on from that. If the Knights of Enlightenment had an even better model of the latest DK ship than the one she’d gone through

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.