"It's fine, Mr Sullivan, uh, Sir. Nathan can be trusted."
Nathan Colston gritted his teeth and bit down on his desire to voice his disagreement.
No, Sir, I can't be trusted. Best all round if I fuck off somewhere else while you two have this conversation.
Nathan had served as part of Fred Sullivan’s security forces in the Northumberland base, and had held a position of slight authority and relative anonymity that had suited him perfectly. Near-invisibility was, Nathan believed, crucial to his chances of surviving any longer than the average British summer.
He had headed up a small team that reported ultimately to Simon Ripley, the head of security at the base. Ripley had been one-part dedicated soldier and at least four-parts raving lunatic, and Nathan had avoided him as much as it was possible to avoid a man who was technically your boss and who you were actually trapped in a hole with.
Insanity, Nathan figured, probably came with the job title. Head of Security, as it turned out, was just a polite euphemism for enforcer.
Or executioner.
Nathan didn’t envy Ripley his position at all, and had no ambitions toward getting himself promoted, and so it was unfortunate that Jake McIntosh’s massacre at the base had propelled Nathan so far up the ladder.
As the second highest-ranking officer left alive when McIntosh exited the underground base, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Nathan's resulting close proximity to the position of Head of Security had been inevitable. It wasn't something Nathan had earned—just a matter of his surviving; impossible to avoid, like defective genes or the onset of old age.
Pure, dumb, bad luck.
One more stroke of which could strike at any moment, and Nathan was painfully aware that he was only two promotions away from taking up a permanent position at the Pearly Gates.
Or the other place. After you became Head of Security for Chrysalis Systems, it seemed like the only way left to go was down.
The man who currently held the position that stood between Nathan and an all-too-early death was Richard Skinner. He had probably been a dependable soldier before he became a mercenary, Nathan thought, but he was a piss-poor hired gun.
Skinner still believed in the chain of command and studious deference in the presence of what he called 'my superiors', and he seemed to have a genuine problem when it came to forming his own opinion on anything.
There was a reason all the other men shortened his name to Dick, and it had nothing to do with affection.
And now Dick had shoved Nathan in front of the old bastard that had fucked the whole world up, and told him that this was a man Fred Sullivan could trust. It didn't feel so much like getting thrown under the bus as being tied to the ground in front of its wheels and made to wait.
Nice one.
Dick.
Nathan withered under the old man's gaze, and did his best to make himself look forgettable.
After a moment, Fred shrugged.
"If you say so, Skinner," he growled. "I'll have to take your word for it. That is why I'm here, after all."
Old fucker loves being cryptic, Nathan thought, but he saw through the veneer of bullshit. Fred Sullivan was consulting with Dick Skinner—a blustering cretin that the old man wouldn't have trusted to shine his boots a few short weeks earlier—because he was desperate, plain and simple. Because the mercenaries that Sullivan had bought and paid for were starting to wonder just why the hell they should give a damn about money when all the shops were full of demented eyeless cannibals.
Dick Skinner had been the head of security for all of five bewildering minutes when Fred Sullivan abandoned the base and fled to the fleet. Compared to Ripley’s command, the ship should have been a breeze.
Judging by Skinner's hopeless attempts to corral the men on the ship, it was proving to be anything but.
Tension was rising inexorably aboard the Conqueror, and the limited radio contact with the other ships in the fleet revealed a similar, and in some cases, even more precarious situation. Most of the troops Sullivan had hired to staff the vessels had known only as much as they needed to, which of course was the square root of fuck all. The majority had no idea what Chrysalis Systems had been planning, and that they were only ever meant to be a contingency plan.
A glorified clean-up crew.
Whatever Nathan or anybody else thought about Fred Sullivan, there was no denying that the old bastard was cunning, and seventy-plus years of money and power had only served to hone that intelligence until it was razor-sharp. The old man knew which way the wind was blowing, which was exactly why he had tasked Dick Skinner with tallying up how many men could be counted on for their loyalty if matters on the fleet should come to a head.
Sullivan loved his euphemisms.
Coming to a head, in this instance, was a vague way of accepting that violent bloodshed was brewing on the Conqueror—and almost certainly on every other ship in the fleet—and that Fred Sullivan wasn't prepared to let anyone else get the jump on him when it came to killing.
Skinner, after a typical period of dithering, had sought out Nathan's help. Together they had drawn up a list of around five hundred names that Sullivan would be able to count on when civil war broke out on the North Sea.
Just five hundred, most of whom had been present at the Northumberland base.
The Conqueror alone held close to four thousand troops. If it came down to a straight fight, those loyal to Sullivan's cause would be heavily outnumbered and outgunned.
The ship that had felt secure, detached from the violent chaos spreading across the UK, suddenly felt very dangerous indeed, and every bit as claustrophobic as the underground base had been.
Nathan's combat experience was limited, but not so much that he didn't recognise a deadly situation when it knocked at his door and waved a weapon in his face.
Like most of the people serving as a private army for Chrysalis, Nathan had been former military, before the world collapsed and everything became ‘former’ in one way or another. He had served a couple of tours in the Middle East, mostly as a peacekeeper in already-secured provinces rather than being involved in any actual front-line combat.
Some of the men and women headhunted by Sullivan were disgraced, discharged from the military under a cloud. By contrast Nathan hadn’t ever put a foot wrong during his time in the desert and his tour ended only when doctors discovered a congenital heart defect during a routine medical checkup.
He felt—still felt—as strong as an ox, but according to various charts and diagrams that Nathan couldn’t decipher, his heart was liable to stop pumping at any given minute. It was, for the army, too much of a risk to take.
He received a medical discharge and a full pension, but at the age of thirty-six, retirement seemed painfully ludicrous, and the thought of finding menial work in an office somewhere, tapping his life away at a keyboard, seemed far worse than the prospect of his heart giving out.
When Sullivan’s people had found him, Nathan had jumped at the chance to see action again.
No one ever told him just what sort of ‘action’ it would be. Not until he was holed up underground while civilization collapsed above him. Even then he only got the full story when a damned monster tore through the base, massacring scores of people.
He hadn’t felt sick at all before. But now, after it was done and there was no way back, Nathan Colston could detect the sickness in his chest; could feel it every time he drew in a breath.
This sickness didn’t feel congenital, though. It felt like Sullivan’s doing: as if the old man’s gnarled fingers had penetrated Nathan’s chest and were curling around his heart and beginning to squeeze…
"We believe we can count on around five hundred, Sir," Skinner said, and had the good sense to look mortified at the number as it spilled from his lips.
Sullivan's eyebrows lowered, almost obscuring eyes that flashed dangerously.
"Five hundred," he repeated flatly.
"Uh, it's difficult for us to ascertain a definite number, Sir. It's not as if we can just ask the men if they will help, and..."
Skinner trailed off, apparently aware that the tone he had employed might lead to him shortly having his forehead decorated with a bullet.
Nathan was mildly impressed.
At least Skinner hadn't bullshitted a number to make the old man happy. Surely now, Nathan thought, Sullivan would see the folly in trying to rid the Conqueror of dissidents through violence. Hell, maybe he would even finally give the order for the fleet to move. No one understood why they were holding position a few miles off shore while the apocalypse tore the UK apart. Some believed Sullivan was going to stage a land invasion and take the country back. Others whispered about a plan to flee to Australia, and according to the rumours, the virus hadn’t reached the land down under.
Most of the increasing hostility on the Conqueror would have been assuaged by the simple knowledge that they were doing something. If that something happened to be fleeing to safety and endless golden beaches under a sizzling sun, so much the better.
What nobody seemed to understand was just why the hell they were sitting there doing nothing.
"Then we'll have to act fast," Fred said through gritted teeth.
"Uh...Sir?" Skinner mumbled.
"Speak to everybody you know to be loyal. Tell them to be armed and ready. By tonight I want every person on this ship to be either loyal to this enterprise, or dead."
Nathan snorted.
Couldn't help himself.
If the old man thought five hundred men could take the Conqueror by force, he really was as insane as the whispered voices in the corridors of the ship suggested.
"You," Fred said, pointing a bony finger like a gun barrel at Nathan.
"Come with me."