Remembrance Day (3 page)

‘And why would you do that?’

‘If they really did what you think they deserve all they get.’

He took a step forward into the room, unsure what to do. The mech stayed close behind him. Transparent bulkheads showed the distant Strip against the greeny-brown disc of Mars. There weren’t as many controls as on a military vehicle, he thought. The ship probably did all the work for you.

‘What’s to stop you planting your own images into the mech?’

‘Because you’ll do all the communication,’ said Tia. ‘We’ll give you the commands you need to send it. Really they’re just some decryption keys we’ve recently acquired. Keys that five people died getting hold of. But there won’t be enough data to contain video.’

He didn’t know what to do. He tried to think what the original Magnus would have done. The true Magnus.

‘This is as far as I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ll do this because it’s you asking and then that’s it. Understood?’

‘Thank you.’

The ship relayed the code to him on his public tPath channel. He examined it carefully. It was as she said: a small amount of data, commands and keys. Opening his private channel to the mech he relayed the instructions.

The mech stood in the centre of the room. It did nothing for a moment after he communicated with it. Then it began to shake and teeter. It dropped to its knees and slumped to the floor. Tia had to dodge out of its way as it collapsed. The floor shook with its fall. Magnus stood in amazement. Nothing had ever even touched the mech before, through all the battles. Was it all just a trick? Had they persuaded him to neutralize the mech so they could finally get to him? Had he just fallen into their trap after all?

He raised his blaster again. He pointed it first at the Basilisk then at Tia, unsure which he should shoot first. Even a stat field couldn’t protect someone from a point-blank shot.

Wait … wait …

It was the mech, talking to him over the tPath link.

What is it?
He replied.
What’s happening?

Wait … wait …

He watched as the mech began to twitch and flex once more. It found its knees, its feet and stood back up, swaying slightly.

‘Ask it,’ said the Basilisk. ‘Hurry. Ask it for its memories of that day. Relay them to the ship for us all to see.’

‘Please, Magnus,’ said Tia.

He felt suddenly sick at the thought of what he might see. But he had to know. He sent the instructions to the mech.

The images filled one of the transparent bulkheads. There was the familiar scene Magnus recalled so well. The three generals of the High Command: Chang, Jackson and Umwe. Opposite them at the table, the three Basilisks whose names he never learned. Behind each a guard, green skin polished to iridescence, armed and watchful. Three human guards and their mechs, himself included, in the foreground. The angle of the mech’s perspectives was unusual but the scene was completely familiar.

He watched as the leaders of the two races reached across the table to shake hands. Everything was as he recalled. But
there
, suddenly, he could see the join. Events on the screen began to diverge from his memories, changing as if they were happening in front of him.

It was subtle at first, a different hand movement, different words spoken. Then blaster streaks strobed out from somewhere he couldn’t see. One of the Terran High Command. The six Basilisks were struck simultaneously. The died before any of them could react. The human commanders stood and turned. Magnus had a clear impression of a well-rehearsed plan. Each general carried a hand blaster. Magnus watched as Jackson raised his weapon to the chin of the Magnus on the screen and fired. The back and top of his head exploded, the blaster shot emerging undimmed from the top of his skull. He collapsed from view. He heard one of the others, Chang, speak.

‘Shall we finish them off?’

‘No. We need at least one witness. We’ll bring this one back to tell the world.’

He kicked at Magnus’ body, somewhere on the floor near his feet.

When the pictures stopped, Magnus watched them again. His mind was a blank, trying to take it in. He watched over and over. Each time he picked out new detail. The choreographed explosions of green blood from the Basilisks. The look on Jackson’s face as he fired: business-like, inexpressive. The mechs twitching, caught between protecting their bonded human and obeying a superior office.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, standing near him. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry it’s all been for nothing. Not just you, but everyone that’s died or been injured. You weren’t out there defending us at all. I’m sorry you had to see what really happened. It might have been kinder to let you believe what they wanted.’

‘They’re still alive,’ he said. ‘The martyrs of the armistice. Jackson and Chang and Umwe. They weren’t killed after all.’

‘We’ve had one recent report of a sighting of Umwe. We’ve no idea where the other two are.’

He watched the scene yet again. He thought about how he always went out of his way to recount his story to any customer who’d listen. Was that all part of his programming?

‘The Solar System cruisers are leaving the station,’ he heard the Basilisk say. ‘Three of them. I think they might be on to us.’

‘The pictures,’ replied Tia. ‘They’re all that matter now. Put them on the wires.’

There was a moment’s pause.

‘They’re sent,’ the alien said.

‘Then we’ve done all we can.’

‘We could fight,’ said the alien.

‘In this ship? Not worth it,’ said Tia. ‘We can outrun them for a time but they’ll catch us now.’

‘No,’ Magnus heard himself say to them. ‘No, we
can
fight. I have a ship. The flipship I used to get home from Basilion. With the mech. We can at least get outsystem in it.’

‘Magnus, you’ve done enough,’ she replied. ‘Take a shuttle. Go back to your life on the Strip.’

‘Go back? I can’t go back, Tia. Not after this.’

‘Ordnance-range in thirty seconds,’ said the Basilisk.

‘Magnus, you’ve had your revenge,’ she said. ‘The pictures are enough. You don’t need to do this.’

‘I do. Don’t you see, Tia? What you said about me in the bar. I don’t know who I am anymore. They just made me up. Filled my head with this worn out spacewreck. But that isn’t me. I don’t know what
is
me any more.’

‘The war changed you,’ she said. ‘It was inevitable. You’re still you.’

‘No! There’s more of me in the mech, the image of my brain implanted into it. And there’s more of me in you, too, Tia. In all the memories you have of what I was. Everything we shared. That’s why we’re coming with you. Between you and me and the mech perhaps I more or less make up a complete person again.’

He looked at the lights outside. The specks that were stars and those that were ships jostling around Möbius Strip. The base looked so small. He could also see, clearly, the phalanx of three Solar System cruisers heading towards them.

‘You’re sure about this, Mag?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘What about the bar?

‘Donal will look after it until I return. If I don’t he’s welcome to it.’

‘Five seconds,’ said the Basilisk.

Magnus sent the co-ordinates of his ship. They lurched into motion, the star-field swirling outside as they headed away from the sun. The disc of Mars and the loop of Möbius Strip flashed across the screen and out of sight.

‘Where are we heading?’ asked Tia.

‘The flipship is under a veil on a rock in the asteroid belt.’

‘We’ll arrive in eighteen days,’ said the Basilisk. ‘Just ahead of the SS. We won’t have long to power the ship up. Are you sure it’s functional, human?’

‘It’s functional, Basilion.’

Tia stood with him in front of the transparent bulkhead. He looked at the blaster he still carried, then let it clatter to the floor.

It came to him, then, what it was he had said to her all those years ago. The day he left for the war. He had promised to return to her, no matter what.

In the end, she’d had to come and find him. Well. It was, he thought, good enough.

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