Free Nemesis by Alex Lamb Page B

about roboteers to tell the difference. You scare the shit out of all of them and it’s damaging morale.’
    Jim stared at his shoes – stuffy regulation trainers with FiveClan logos on them.
    ‘I want your skills, Mark, but not at the cost of my team.’
    Mark breathed deep. He couldn’t believe he was at risk of losing another job after all the compromises he’d made.
    ‘I came here because I believed in this project,’ he said. ‘I wanted to understand Earth, and to help save it. That’s what I’ve tried to do all along.’
    ‘Earth’s not just a ball of rock,’ said Jim sadly. ‘Maybe the colonies are like that, but Earth is about people. Lots and lots of tired, anxious people who dream of getting off this planet before it kills them. You – you could go anywhere. You just came here to make a point. They feel that, and it makes them afraid. They wonder if there will be anything out there for them if they ever get off. Or if everyone out there is as different from them as you are.’
    Jim squinted out at the view. ‘So, after we drop Newark, maybe this would be the right time for you to move on. Either that or you find some way to fit in. Join a church. Come to a meeting – you never know, you might like it. Everyone wants to meet you. My wife still hasn’t met you.’
    Jim looked up at him with puppy-dog eyes, begging Mark not to hate him. Mark tried to figure out what to say as he oscillated between anger and despair.
    ‘You don’t have to decide anything now,’ said Jim. ‘Just think about it, okay?’
    Mark wanted to utter some witty comeback. Instead, he just glared out at the dying sky. In the quiet that followed, the room pinged them.
    ‘Incoming message, Alpha Zero priority,’ said the room’s hoarse, hissing voice. Its speakers were as sick as its walls. ‘Recipient-only content for Mark Ruiz. Immediate receipt required.’
    ‘Take the call,’ said Jim, sounding relieved by the excuse to leave. ‘You can’t say no to an Alpha Zero. Use my office.’ He briefly met Mark’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and patted Mark timidly on the shoulder before letting himself out of the room.
    A kind of hot, helpless fury boiled up inside Mark. There was only one person in his life who called him up using IPSO top-security overrides: Will Monet.
    His mind jumbled over a dozen different cruel things he could say as he stormed into Jim’s tiny office and manually slammed the door behind him, scaring the room’s SAP into a string of bleating apologies. A badly balanced stack of crystal cores slid off the closest shelf and clattered onto the floor as the wall wobbled.
    Mark reached mentally into the room’s controls and punched the privacy icon. Then he dropped out of his body and into his home node. He grabbed the link and dived up into the virtual meeting space that had been prepped for the call.
    ‘What?’ he demanded, before noticing that the person across the virtual table wasn’t Will after all. It was Nelson Aquino.
    Nelson was seated in a velvet armchair in a well-appointed study somewhere – an orbital, probably, given the curving view of immaculate forest beyond the window. Dressed in a pinstripe Nehru suit and old-fashioned data shades, the look was classic Nelson: understated and under control. The expression on his regal, hawk-like face was grave.
    ‘Good morning, Mark,’ he said. ‘Did I call at a bad time?’
    Mark folded his arms. He looked down at his virtual self to see that he was still wearing his crumpled FiveClan one-piece. It wasn’t a great look, but who cared? He wasn’t here to impress anyone.
    ‘Let me guess,’ he growled. ‘Message from Will fucking Monet.’
    Nelson nodded. ‘Got it in one.’
    Nelson had been popping up ever more frequently in Mark’s dealings with Will over the last few years. He’d been promoted to Will’s subcaptain – his closest aide and the man responsible for looking after the Ariel Two while Will was doing everything but