Omega

Though her voice didn’t sound quite right, I knew it was Giselle. The raucous reply to her radio message sounded questioning in tone. It appeared mollified when she added the information that Operation Niagara had been successfully executed and that they were going to resume radio silence as ordered.

I pushed my way forward past the two dead crewmen under the watchful eye of Carl Legister. He had his pistol trained on me.

“I didn’t know,” I said redundantly to Giselle.

She continued looking straight ahead.

“I thought you were loyal to him.”

“At the expense of bringing catastrophe to the entire planet? Everything has its limits.”

She spoke in a thick voice. The right side of her face was puffy from brow to cheekbone, already blackening.

“Sir Gruffydd did that?”

Her attempt at a smile was not successful. “He’s very useful with his stick. Quicker than you might imagine. He pushed his old friend in front of me so that he took the shot I had intended for him. And hacked me down.”

I was surprised that she could speak of it without emotion, given their long association. All the while she was scrutinising the instrument panel. The Nimbus was still descending, dropping down and down through the gathering darkness.

“Well, major,” Legister said to me. “What is your decision?”

He’d lowered his pistol. I realised I was still holding the one Rhys had given to me.

“You’re too late,” I said. “The weapon’s already been used.”

“What did you expect us to do?” Rhys interjected. “Nothing?”

“The Americans will already be retaliating.”

“Indeed,” said Legister. “Though whether the conflict escalates may depend on how successful we are here.”

“What do you mean?”

Legister looked impatient that he had to spell it out. “Sir Gruffydd represents the extreme of the warmongers among our chiefs of state. He has concentrated his supporters here in England over recent years. Many of them are aboard this aeroplane.”

“Are your men in control of it?”

“Only this forward section. But it will be sufficient for our purposes if we can hold out.”

“Really?” I said sceptically. “How? Are you going to crash the plane and kill everyone? That won’t stop the war. You heard what my uncle said. Other Omega attacks are being launched from continental sites.”

“Not yet they aren’t. Your uncle rather exaggerated on that score—exaggerated the extent of the enthusiasm on the European mainland for its indiscriminate use. Those in charge there do not share your uncle’s unbridled appetite for all-out war.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Put yourself in their position. The European landmass has suffered far more devastation than our islands. They’ve been in the front line for sixty years, seen their homelands reduced to cinders and rubble. They have every reason to be extremely cautious.”

Was this just another lie? I tried to recall the tenor of the Versailles meeting. There had been no sense that the participants had known anything about Omega. I said as much.

“Knowledge of its existence was severely restricted,” Legister admitted. “As you saw yourself on this very aeroplane. The translocation of the fleet is intended as a demonstration, a bargaining counter. This was the compromise arranged between the opposing factions in the high command. But, like all compromises, it’s neither fish nor fowl and will be unlikely to deter the Americans from wholesale retaliation. Unless we can supply them with stark evidence that there remains a significant tendency opposed to total war.”

Legister had a fondness for the orotund phrase and the circumlocution. He had known all about Omega and my uncle’s intentions when he interrogated me—presumably merely in order to gauge my loyalties or check the extent of my amnesia. It was absurd that we should even be discussing the potential outcome of its use on the flight deck of a hijacked aeroplane, surrounded by corpses and a croaking mass of nerve gas victims.

“Why should I believe any of this?” I said.

“We’re flying back to the main facility at Orford Nss,” Rhys told me. “The plane’s transmitting a homing signal tuned to the frequencies of a B-75 Stargrazer.”

A high-altitude bomber that could be armed, I knew, with nuclear missiles. This one, I was certain, would be carrying DPMs.

“They’ll never let you get near there,” I said. “They’ll shoot you down.”

“I don’t think so,” Rhys replied. “Consider the importance of the passengers on board. The chief of the JGC, no less! And the fact that Colonel Vigoroux can provide all the necessary security codes to ground control. We’ll tell them we need to make an emergency landing. There’s an airstrip close by.”

“And then what? Are we going to parachute out of here before the missile hits? Fly the plane into the building? It’s absurd!”