Marauder (28 page)

Malcolm pulled her in the direction of a row of half a dozen structures close to a gate set into the perimeter wall. They were moving so quickly that Dakota, with legs shorter than
Malcolm’s, almost had to break into a run to keep up with him. As they came abreast of what she now recognized as warehouses, Malcolm drew her towards a vehicle parked in the shadows between
two of them.

It consisted of little more than an open chassis mounted on a set of bulbous wheels. A man in the driver’s seat, his face half hidden by a breather mask, nodded a greeting to Malcolm.

Malcolm pushed her into a bucket seat in the rear before climbing in next to the nameless driver. ‘Strap in,’ he instructed her, ‘in case we have to make a break for
it.’

The car slowly drove out from between the two warehouses, then headed straight for the gate. Two large steel-plate doors slid apart automatically at their approach.

Sirens began to sound through the night air, echoing off the face of the massive cliff. The sliding doors suddenly came to a halt, then began to close again, fast.

‘
Go
,’ yelled Malcolm, grabbing his companion’s shoulder. The vehicle shot forward, accelerating hard. It spun to a halt on the other side of the gate, having only
narrowly avoided being sliced in two.

‘Close,’ said Malcolm’s friend grimly. Malcolm merely nodded, looking shaken.

They got under way once more, rapidly picking up speed. They were soon racing downhill along a nearly deserted access road, with the sound of sirens still wailing behind them. At the bottom of
the hill, a city brilliant with light stretched out before them. Beyond it she could just make out the dark expanse of a mighty river or ocean.

Something buzzed overhead, shining a light down onto the road ahead. Their driver reacted by swerving violently into steep undergrowth, sending the vehicle crashing and bouncing down a
vertiginous slope at such speed that Dakota felt sure it would flip over and crush them beneath its weight. Instead they bounced out onto a switchback road level with the rooftops of what looked
like residential buildings situated near the base of the hill.

The driver swerved again, and suddenly they were passing along a narrow street. Dakota saw businesses and homes on either side, the machine that had buzzed them – probably a drone of some
kind – now lost in a haze of light and noise.

The driver wove through another series of tight turns, before taking them down a steep ramp leading underground. Passing through an atmospheric containment field, they entered a brightly lit
space that was broad and big and busy enough to constitute a whole subterranean city in itself.

Dakota pulled her mask down and breathed in air that tasted of sweat and smoke and a thousand other flavours that made her very, very glad still to be alive. After the freezing temperatures of
the Redstone night, this underground community felt shockingly warm. She even began to sweat under her heavy coat.

Malcolm’s friend had barely slowed down. They careened along a thoroughfare with a bustling open market on either side, huge stone-and-steel pillars supporting the city streets above
ground. Dazzlingly colourful images shifted and morphed above a warren of stalls and businesses.

‘Put your mask back on,’ said Malcolm, looking back over his shoulder. She saw he was still wearing his own breather mask. ‘It’ll reduce the chances of you being
recognized, especially with all these pilgrims around. And besides, we’re not staying down here much longer.’

She pulled the mask back up, just as the car ascended another ramp, passing once more through a pressure field as they emerged on the surface. At that moment, Dakota caught sight of industrial
docks situated just a few blocks away.

They began driving much more slowly, merging with any other traffic. The streets and squares were crowded with an enormous number of people, tens or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of them
jostling together. She decided these must be the pilgrims Malcolm had mentioned.

The two men turned to each other, laughing and grinning. ‘I’ve got a safe house ready for both of you,’ explained Malcolm’s friend. ‘You can hide there for the next
couple of days at least, but after that they’re going to be searching for you through every inch of the city. Fortunately, having all these pilgrims around makes it easier to smuggle both of
you out, once we’ve made arrangements.’

‘Something’s different about you, Esté,’ remarked Malcolm, turning to study her closely. ‘I can’t figure out what it is, unless they hurt you a lot worse
than I feared they might.’

She reached out and took his hand, which was draped over the back of his seat. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ she said, with as much earnestness as she could muster, which wasn’t
hard. ‘I owe you my life, Malcolm, but you shouldn’t have used the girl like that. It was wrong.’

Malcolm’s face clouded. ‘She was nothing,’ he said, his tone suddenly terse. ‘A nobody. Besides, she’s almost certainly dead by now. You should put her out of your
mind.’

What kind of girl were you, Esté, that you fell in love with a man like this?
She could hardly believe that someone who shared identical genes to her could ever fall for such a
callous man. She wondered what Malcolm would do to her once he realized who and what he had rescued.

‘Tell me one thing,’ said Dakota. ‘That girl, what was her name?’

‘For God’s sake, Esté, what does it matter?’

‘Please,’ she said, fighting to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘I really want to know.’

Malcolm looked away and shook his head, his nameless companion grinning with apparent amusement.

‘Jacinth,’ Malcolm finally said. ‘Her name was Megan Jacinth. Satisfied now?’

Megan Jacinth.
She silently shaped the two words in her mouth.

The car was slowing as it came to a crowded crossroads, and Dakota now saw her opportunity. She reached down and unbuckled herself from her seat while Malcolm was looking the other way, then
threw herself sideways out of the vehicle just before it began to accelerate once more.

She rolled to a halt on the roadway, then pushed herself upright, feeling dizzy. She had been lucky not to break her neck, but she didn’t want to stay around Malcolm or his friend any
longer than she had to.

Up ahead, their car had come to a sudden halt.

‘Hey!’ Malcolm shouted back at her, his face turned white with fear and tension. All around them, people were staring, and they had begun attracting all the attention he’d
warned her they had to avoid. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he yelled.

She started to run, pushing through the crowds of curious onlookers. She felt hands grab for her, curious voices shouting in her wake, but she determinedly shook them off, fighting her way in
deeper amongst the crowds, frantic to put as much distance between her and Malcolm as possible.

Finally she emerged into a sidestreet, feeling cold and terrified and exhausted, with no idea of where to go or what to do next. So she simply put one foot in front of the other, and kept going,
until she had got herself thoroughly lost in the depths of a city that she hadn’t even known existed during her previous life.

Thus she wandered for hours, warm air exiting from her breather mask and rising up into the night. Her stomach rumbled from increasing hunger. She constantly kept a wary eye
out for anyone wearing a uniform like Malcolm’s.

Just by following the crowds, and listening to snatches of conversation around her, Dakota learned that the pilgrims would come to Dios in such numbers that the city authorities were obliged to
construct vast temporary accommodations solely to house and feed them. She followed one group of people who looked as if they knew where they were going, heading into an enormous prefab hangar
filled with welcome heat and light. There, she quickly discovered food and drink for the taking. Better still, nobody questioned her, or asked where she came from.

Dakota saw numerous posters featuring a girl in ceremonial robes, and she realized with a shock that these must be images of the Speaker-Elect – of
herself
. The images did not,
however, look anything like she remembered herself, and she guessed Esté’s appearance had been surgically altered at some point in the past.

She continued staring at the poster until she felt dizzy, feeling as if she had woken up into some kind of endless waking nightmare. Despite the humid warmth within the hangar, she kept the
woollen cap on, and the hood of her coat pulled over her head. She also took particular care not to meet anyone’s eyes or let herself become involved in conversation.

After standing in a queue for nearly an hour, sweltering beneath the hood and the heavy overcoat, she was finally handed a plastic tray laden with food. Then she made her way down the long rows
of mass-fabbed bunks and squeezed into one next to a wall. There she ate silently, always keeping an eye out for anyone who looked as if they might be searching for her.

She presently overheard a conversation about an Accord military base located a few hundred kilometres further inland. She had no idea what the Accord was, but it was easy enough to infer from
what she could hear that it offered a real chance for her to get off-planet and as far away from the Demarchy as she could go.

This was a slim enough straw to grasp at, but it seemed to be all she had. So, with a full belly, she drifted off to sleep, trying hard not to think about what the next day might hold.

The following morning she made her way alone along a canal bank, as dawn crept up behind the Magi ship, stranded on its hill. She had seen armoured patrols racing along main
roads, and uniformed soldiers setting up roadblocks, but it was clear that the soldiers out in search of her were overwhelmed by the sheer flood of pilgrims.

Unlike the streets, the canal appeared to be unguarded. She encountered boats racing by occasionally, but they were easy to hide from.

She followed the canal, away from the river, until she reached the city limits. The inland continent spread out before her, a far-off range of mountains visible beyond a vast river plain. As it
got dark again, she made her way back to the main road, rejoining the masses of pilgrims now making their way out of the city on foot, and heading towards another of the municipal shelters nearby.
That night, she fell asleep on coarse matting, her coat thrown over her head and shoulders, and surrounded on all sides by thousands of warm bodies.

When the old woman sleeping next to her asked what her name was, she said it was Megan, though still carefully keeping her face hidden.

Out of sheer desperation and the urge to put as much distance as possible between herself and the city, she managed to talk her way on board one of a flotilla of vehicles provided to carry
several hundred pilgrims at a time to the settlements further inland. It proved surprisingly easy. Whatever security checks were in place, it was clear they were struggling just to cope with the
sheer number of people on the move.

The flotilla she chose was accompanied by an armed escort of peacekeepers, who were affiliated to the Accord. She had asked careful questions, teasing significant details out of the few other
passengers she risked talking to. It soon became clear that the Accord served more or less the same function as had the Consortium, back in the days when she had last been alive. The peacekeepers
were from the military base she had heard of earlier, and were apparently on the lookout for Freehold insurgents trying to make their way over the mountains to the north-east.

It thus slowly dawned on Dakota that the Freehold was no longer the dominant military force on Redstone. It seemed it had lost its long struggle with the Uchidanists, and the vast majority of
Freeholders had since decamped to new colonies, while only a fanatical few remained behind to fight for what they still saw as their rightful homeland.

She kept the knitted cap pulled down tightly over her ears as the convoy trundled across the broad inland plains, crossing bridges and parallel series of canals, the mountains growing closer and
taller as they drove on through the night.

It was a few hours before dawn when Freehold guerrillas opened fire, from the shelter of a ditch, on the flotilla of peacekeepers escorting them.

The sound of gunfire filled the air, while energy weapons seared her eyes with after-images that took long minutes to fade. Then she heard the dull thud of a detonation, and saw the windows of
her transport implode, allowing Redstone’s poisonous atmosphere to come rushing in.

The lights went out. Dakota struggled through the dark as people all around her fought to find their masks, or escape through the shattered windows of the transport, or both. Fortunately, the
mask given to her by Malcolm still hung around her neck by its cord.

She could hear those people who hadn’t yet been able to find their breather masks struggling for breath as Redstone’s native atmosphere flooded in. She managed to pull her own mask
over her mouth and nose, then clambered through a window, tumbling out and onto the verge.

It came to her with a horrible shock that most of the people she had been riding with were going to die. The transport’s heating systems had been faulty, and even while she had slept, she
still wore the heavy coat Malcolm had given her. If it hadn’t been for that, she would probably have frozen to death within minutes.

She felt a desperate urge to stay and help the pilgrims, but she could see little in the darkness, and with a battle under way all around them, she knew the most she could hope for was to save
herself.

The ground shuddered beneath her feet, as a great cloud of ash and fire rose up into the sky from further along the road, revealing the silhouettes of other transports. The sound of the
explosion followed a moment later.

Leaving the highway behind her, she ran out onto the night-darkened plain. Before long her ears were filled with an eerie, ghost-like silence.

She was far from alone, however. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could just about make out dozens of men and women, some of them carrying young children, their eyes tired and
frightened above hastily retrieved breather masks. They were all similarly trying to put some serious distance between themselves and the convoy before any more shells struck. Any who hadn’t
managed to retrieve their masks were most likely dead by now.