War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

owl told her. ‘Artemis grows from the Grey Goo, as you say. Data-raids Earth’s net and finds the inconsistencies in the planetary survey that was made before the war with Them—’

‘The plant life that’s too evolved, the strange heat transfer between Eridani B and Ephesus …’ Then something occurred to Miska as she thought back to the artefact on Barney Prime. Raff had told her that it was just one of a number of incredibly rare artefacts that were as old as the universe itself, and seemed to make a mockery of the laws of physics when they turned up. ‘Wait a minute. Is there a Cheat here, is that what Mars is after?’

The owl spent a suspiciously long time considering the answer.

‘We think so,’ the owl finally said, ‘but we don’t think it’s what New Sun is after.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we believe it is somewhere deep within Epsilon Eridani B, beyond even the crush limit of Martian technology. We would also appreciate it if you would keep this information to yourself.’

Miska shrugged. She didn’t really care one way or another.

‘All right, so Artemis comes out here to form the ultimate horticultural society, do the god thing and create her own life, the tree ladies.’

‘We believe that Artemis’s dryads are little more than what you would consider drones,’ the owl told her. ‘But there was one other step that Artemis took. She found reference to a Project Crom, a biotech programme that utilised Themtech …’

‘Naturally occurring bio-nanites,’ Miska said, thinking back to her conversation on the boat with Hemi. ‘She used this Project Crom to stimulate the plant life here even further on its evolutionary path. So what, her own vegetable queendom?’

‘We don’t think so. We think it’s part research project, part hiding from her abusive family.’

‘She only started killing when the war started. She was happy to live in peace with the Maasai colonists, wasn’t she?’ Miska asked. She had just been trying to defend herself. Admittedly, in the Bastards’ case, perhaps a little too proactively.

‘Just so.’

‘Let me guess. New Sun want to weaponise her work?’ Miska asked.

‘They think they can turn the planet into one huge military biotech manufacturing facility. They could quite literally grow their weapons of war. The possibilities are boundless.’

And terrifying, Miska decided. She tried to avoid big picture thinking for the most part but the idea caused cold dread to creep through her very being. It was a very unusual feeling and she didn’t like it. The pollen alone, the ability to turn off your enemies’ most sophisticated weapon systems, was a game-changer. At best it would lead to warring swarms of nanites, itself an end-of-civilisation scenario.

‘The UN would never grant them a colonial charter,’ Miska said but she didn’t believe it herself as she said it. She suspected that Martian intelligence had enough money and enough dirt on the UN Colonial Committee to push something like this through. The owl just looked at her. The flames of the data fires around them reflected in its round eyes. Miska had long known that short-sighted greed and fear tended to win out over long-termism and enlightened self-interest every time.

‘So they need to kill Artemis and push the colonists off-world?’ Miska asked. The small-scale proxy war made sense as well, just another colonial brushfire war, not big enough to draw any real attention. Until the infamous Bastard Legion turns up, Miska thought. It explained the all-out smear campaign.

‘I expect they would rather take Artemis alive,’ the owl told her. ‘But yes, they certainly need to neutralise her.’

‘So where is Artemis?’ Miska asked.

The owl spread her wings.

‘We don’t know,’ the owl told her. ‘At a guess, watching.’

‘Waiting for the mortals to amuse her?’ Miska asked. The owl didn’t say anything. It just flew away. Miska watched it go and then tranced out.

She opened her eyes. She was lying on the wet earth. She was somehow managing to feel cold, clammy and sweaty from the rising humidity at the same time. She was in darkness. The pilot light on the flamer had gone out and she couldn’t get it to light again.

‘Shit,’ she muttered.

She had almost found herself feeling sorry for Artemis. But somehow the Small Gods always find ways to behave like assholes, Miska thought as she sat up.

‘Miska! Come out and face me!’ Torricone screamed from outside the ship.

Chapter 20

Without the flamer’s pilot light Miska couldn’t see a thing. Fortunately she was able to follow the sound of Torricone’s voice as she felt her way along the long-range strike craft’s overgrown bulkheads. Whoever was controlling Torricone had overplayed their hand. The kind of horrible things that Torricone was shouting at her were so unlike him as to be absurd. The content of his graphic threats and insults were easy to ignore. She did, however, wonder at the control mechanism as she groped her way through the ship back towards the open airlock. The sequestered couldn’t have been controlled remotely because of the pollen. That meant they must have been receiving orders verbally before they went into battle. Verbal orders could only be so sophisticated. You couldn’t plan for every contingency in advance, after all. That was the problem when you tried to turn people into machines.

She could see the grey light from the open airlock now. See the corridor that led to the outside. See the figure that was crossing back and forth in front of the airlock, casting his shadow down the corridor as he ranted about all the improbable things he would do to her when he caught her. Miska knelt down by the corner and aimed up the corridor, the pad of her finger on the AK-47’s trigger. It would be so easy. One shot to put him down while she couldn’t see his face. While his shouted words made him a stranger. Problem over. Except she knew she’d have to close and make sure that he was dead. That would be no fun at all.

She knew this