by Jim C. Hines
The Prodryan drew himself up. “I most certainly am not. I am a certified legal advocate, licensed to serve in both prosecutorial and defense—”
“Right,” said Gleason. “Janitors and their lawyer.”
“I am also a spy,” Cate added proudly.
“Cate provided the second piece of surveillance, the one that led us here,” Mops said quickly. She brushed a layer of blue-and-yellow dust from her sleeve. “For what it’s worth, I’m not asking you to trust him.”
“That’s wise,” agreed Cate.
“You said you were hunting a human.” Gleason pointed toward Melvil. “I assume you meant to bring him back with you?”
“That was the plan.”
“What is your plan now?”
“Hell if I know. Our original plan sank the moment Sage’s fighters shot down our shuttle.”
“We saw the explosion,” said Gleason. “But you continued your search.”
“We did.” Mops’ jaw tightened.
“What is it?”
“A question.” A question Mops was afraid to ask, afraid to hear the answer. Afraid to lose the possibility and hope that came from uncertainty. “I have to know. Do you have a cure for humanity? A real cure?”
The pity on Gleason’s face gave Mops her answer. “I’m sorry.” She waved an arm at the other librarians. “We weren’t cured. We’re just genetic flukes. A very small percentage of humans were immune to the Krakau plague. We’re their descendants.”
Cold disappointment washed away Mops’ half-formed hopes. She closed her eyes and curled her fingers into fists, fighting tears. No cure for the half a billion ferals on Earth. No cure for the ten thousand reborn humans serving in the EMC.
“She could be lying,” said Cate. “Humans are known to do that.”
“I wish I was,” Gleason said gently.
Mops started to say more when Monroe spoke up over the comm.
Gleason tensed. “What’s that? Who are you talking to?” The other librarians closed in.
Mops held up a hand, focusing on Monroe’s words. When she spoke again, her words were utterly calm, despite the tempest swirling inside her. “You have to get your people out of here. There are Alliance ships incoming.”
“What?” Gleason barked an order to her people, one of whom ran for the entrance. “How do you know that?”
“I have a man positioned in the trees outside.” Mops stood. “He spotted incoming fighters, six of them. They should be close enough for your people to see within minutes.”
Gleason didn’t move. “Quite a coincidence, the Krakau showing up so soon after you stumbled onto our location.”
“It’s not a coincidence.” Fury roiled in her chest, threatening to escape. She hammered a fist against the wall. “I thought we’d evaded Stepping Stone. I was wrong. They must have been following our movements this whole time, waiting to see where we’d lead them.”
“Aw, fuck,” said Wolf.
“How did they track us?” asked Rubin.
Mops turned toward Cate. The Prodryan shrank back. “I had nothing to do with this, on my honor as a lawyer!”
He was probably telling the truth. Prodryans were terrible liars, and he had nothing to gain from selling them out to Sage. The Alliance would kill him just as fast as they would Mops and her team. She turned to speak into the comm, adjusting the volume so Gleason would hear both sides of the conversation. “Monroe, any chance the Alliance has been tapping our communications?”
“Unlikely. Everything’s short-range, and EMC equipment is designed to make it as difficult as possible for an enemy to target us from orbit. More likely they projected our shuttle’s course, then used drones and satellites to make visual contact.”
“All right.” Squaring her shoulders, she stepped toward Gleason. “This is our fault. My fault. I can’t make it right, but if you give us our weapons, we’ll cover your escape.”
“Or they’ll gun us down and drag our corpses out for the Alliance,” snapped the one called Bev.
It was like an emotional circuit breaker blew inside of her. One moment Mops was drowning in anger and guilt and fear and hopelessness. The next, she felt only calm. Whatever mistakes she’d made, whatever happened next, only one thing mattered now. “Then kill us now so you can get the hell out of here. Aim for the base of the skull. You should destroy our visors and monocles as well. That will prevent the Alliance from getting our data.”
“Or—and this is just a suggestion—you could hand me over to the nice librarians and I could live a long, peaceful life as a cataloging database or something.”
“Three minutes,” said Monroe.
“You don’t have the luxury of time,” Mops pressed. “We may not be soldiers, but we can buy you time to get to safety. Either way, you have to decide now.”
Gleason rubbed a hand over her face. “I must be getting soft-skulled in my old age, but I’ve gone this long without killing another human being. Damned if I’m gonna break that streak today. Grab your things and follow me.”
Kumar looked up from navigation, studying the tactical display Grom had sent to the main screen. Six ships flew along the eastern edge of a major land mass. Five were tagged as small fighters. The sixth was currently unknown.
“Repeat that, Grom?” asked Kumar. It wasn’t the ships’ identification he was concerned with, but their origin and course.
“Six ships,” Grom said. “That last looks to be some sort of troop transport. All launched from the surface.”
“Not from Stepping Stone.” Kumar compared the ships’ projected course to that of the Pufferfish. “They’re not coming for us. Their destination appears to be the same as the captain’s.” Relief filled his chest. “This is great news.”
Both Grom and Azure turned to stare at him. Azure asked, “In what way is this great?”
“They wouldn’t send this many troops for a single runaway human,” said Kumar. “Five fighters and a troop carrier? The shuttle team must have survived!”
“And now the Alliance has sent an overwhelming force to capture or kill them,” Azure pointed out.
Kumar’s elation faded. “All right, so there’s bad news to go with the good.”
Grom wrapped their limbs around the gaming sphere connected to the tactical station. Targeting information appeared over the Alliance ships. “We could attack them from here.”
“Not without giving away our position,” said Azure.
“For now, just keep a lock on those fighters.” Kumar checked his notes and began plotting a course change. “I’m going to shave a few hundred kilometers off our altitude. It might help with our scans. We know they’re alive. The next step is to find them.”
Azure clicked for attention. “No offense intended, but it appears you’ve misprogrammed our delta-vee.” She’d taken the captain’s station, allowing her to monitor what the others were doing.
Kumar double-checked his numbers. “Everything looks right.”
“You’ve increased speed,” said Azure. “I thought we were moving closer to the planet surface.”
“Yes.” Kumar blinked. Were they dealing with a translator glitch?
Azure spoke slowly, like she was addressing a child. “Going faster will take us farther from the planet. We want to get closer.”
“Lower orbit requires more speed.” Kumar pulled up the navigation tutorial menu and sent lesson 11-D to the viewscreen. Puffy appeared, holding a human toy called a yo-yo—essentially a wooden disk on a string. “Watch when he spins the yo-yo in a circle. The shorter the string, the faster the yo-yo goes.”
On screen, the yo-yo smacked into Puffy’s forehead. Cartoon stars circled his head. “That’s what happens if your descent angle is too steep,” Puffy said.
“The Pufferfish is not a yolo,” snapped Azure.
“It works the same way,�
� said Kumar. “The disk is the ship, and the string is gravity.” Puffy moved on to another trick, shooting the yo-yo forward in an elliptical pattern to demonstrate another orbital principle. The yo-yo seemed like an effective teaching tool. Kumar made a note to fabricate one when he had a chance.
Grom skittered up from their station and crossed the bridge to peer over Kumar’s shoulder. “We could try to verify Kumar’s course, just to be safe. What if we plug it into the flight simulator engine for Moon Invasion III?”
Azure flung out her tentacles. “You would entrust our lives to a video game?”
“Not just a game. Moon Invasion III! The simulator is based on real Alliance navigation software. The game earned a 142-egg rating from Blue Glacier Reviews!”
While they argued, Kumar quietly finished his safety checks and engaged the course correction. Whatever Captain Adamopoulos and the others were doing down there, he hoped they returned soon.
* * *
“MONROE, GET OVER HERE,” Mops shouted. “We’re leaving.”
One of the librarians—Bev—didn’t look happy about Gleason’s decision to bring Mops and the others along. Bev started to argue, but Gleason silenced her with a look.
“What about Cate?” asked Wolf. “We found the library, and the mission’s changed. We don’t really need him anymore, right?”
Cate spread his wings to expose the blades and advanced on Wolf. “She is correct. Given what you’ve uncovered, your best course of action is to kill me. I will, of course, endeavor to take as many of you with me as possible.”
“Oh, for drought’s sake.” Mops picked up her combat baton as Wolf and Cate circled one another, waited until Cate’s back was to her, and smacked the Prodryan in the back of the head. Cate dropped to the floor. “Tie him up. Use something his wings can’t cut through, and be careful with his arms. They’re greasy.”
Monroe joined them as Rubin and Wolf were wrapping Cate in the same blanket Wolf had been tied up in minutes before. The trap had used old electrical cable for the snare, which Wolf used to bind the blanket in place. By the time they finished, only Cate’s head and feet were exposed.
Wolf hoisted the Prodryan over her shoulder. “We’d be safer killing him.”
“We’d be safer if we’d stuck with cleaning water filtration systems for the Krakau,” Mops responded. She retrieved her pistol, watching the librarians to see if anyone objected. If they did, they kept it to themselves. By now, Mops could hear the fighters’ engines growling in the distance.
Gleason led them through the large circular reading room toward the back of the building. There, she switched on a handheld lamp. The beam illuminated dusty shelves full of old knickknacks. “Gift shop.” She waved a hand. “Anyone wants a souvenir, they’d better be quick about it.”
Mops snagged a tarnished metal pin of a book over crossed torches, bordered by a wreath of leaves, and stuffed it into a pocket.
On the far side of the gift shop, a partially-collapsed wall led to a descending stairwell. Gleason stood to one side, motioning her people through. “Keep to the left. The steps are sturdier on that side. Avoid the third and seventh unless you want a broken ankle.”
Mops went in next, wanting to get ahead of Wolf and Monroe in case either of them stumbled. Despite Wolf’s burden and Monroe’s glitching balance, both made it down without a problem. Rubin followed, walking backward with her rifle pointed up the stairs.
A doorway at the bottom led into a dank, dark corridor with broken brick walls and a floor of cracked tile. Water dripped from old pipes overhead. Mops wiped her visor. “What is all this?”
“Late twenty-first century city planning,” said Gleason. “Lots of tunnels for mass transportation and pedestrian traffic.”
“What’s to stop the Krakau troops from following us?” asked Monroe.
“The water should wash away our tracks.” Gleason followed the other librarians into a small room to one side. A waist-high counter jutted from the wall to the right. Bev and another librarian moved to a broken-down vending machine, full of shelves and metal coils. They hauled it away from the wall to reveal a narrow passageway.
“We’ve built some additions over the years,” Gleason continued.
Rocks and broken cinder blocks were pressed into place for walls. Wooden beams provided additional support, holding up a crude plywood ceiling. The ground was rough gravel and puddles of stagnant water.
Rubin helped Bev haul the vending machine back into place behind them. If the Krakau did follow them down, it would be a while before they discovered this passage. They’d likely continue up the main tunnel first.
Doc overlaid a map of the surface on Mops’ visor, showing them to be moving roughly north from the library. After two hundred meters, Gleason called a halt and pulled what looked like a strip of coiled black metal from a pouch at her belt. She unrolled it into a flat band about twenty centimeters long. When she pressed it to her wrist, the ends curled around to cinch her sleeve. A series of green dots lit up along the front edge.
She opened her hand and bent her wrist inward. The band projected a keyboard onto the skin of her palm. Gleason began typing with her other hand.
The ceiling shook, shivering dirt and pebbles down on their heads. “That would be the ships touching down,” said Monroe. “They’ll keep at least one in the air to continue recon and provide cover fire if needed.”
Melvil shifted nervously. “All this racket is going to spook the pack. If they panic—”
Gleason didn’t look up from her keyboard. “If you think I’m going to let you run off alone again after all this, you’re out of your damned mind.”
His face turned bright red. “I’d stay out of sight.”
“What kind of animals?” asked Rubin.
Melvil whirled. “They’re not animals.”
“That’s a matter of ongoing debate. The Board still isn’t sold on this project.” Gleason paused in her typing. “Melvil specializes in anthropology and animal husbandry. For the past three years, he’s been tending to the local pack of feral humans.”
Bev snorted. “This fool thinks he can civilize the—”
“Don’t.” Melvil puffed out his chest like a lovesick Krakau. “If you use the Z-word, I’ll—”
“Bev, don’t provoke him.” The fourth librarian stepped smoothly between them. “Melvil, don’t take her bait.” He waited a beat until they both backed down, then turned his attention to Mops. “Mohammad Khatami. I specialize in religious studies.”
He bowed his upper body forty-five degrees, then straightened and thrust his hand in Mops’ direction. When Mops didn’t move, he smiled and said, “The bow and the handshake were two of the more common human greetings. Traditionally, you could either return the bow or grasp my hand.”
Mops opted for the bow, and his smile widened, revealing several missing lower teeth. Like the other librarians, Khatami wore bulky white-and-gray clothing and a belt weighed down by a large knife and other tools. A leather thong with an array of metal charms or amulets hung round his neck. Each charm was different. Mops spotted several different stars, a flower, a cross, a moon, and many more.
His black hair was a short, tousled mess, and a thin black scruff of beard circled his mouth. Bright blue eyes contrasted sharply with his tanned face.
It was the first time things had calmed enough for Mops to really study the other librarians. Melvil appeared to be the youngest. Freckles and pimples dotted his smooth face, and hair the color of flame peeked out from the edges of his helmet. He wore metal-framed glasses with large round lenses that made his eyes appear smaller. He was slightly taller than Bev, but thinner.
Bev looked most like the humans Mops was used to—a fighter with the scars to prove it. In addition to whatever damage the eye patch hid, she sported a pale gash along the side of her neck, and what appeared to be an old animal bite on her left ha
nd. She had the squat, beefy build of a brawler.
Gleason switched off her keyboard but left her bracelet in place. “We need to put more distance between us and the library.”
“You have somewhere safe to hide?” asked Monroe.
Gleason hesitated.
“She does,” Mops guessed. “But she doesn’t trust us enough to take us there.”
“Got it in one,” said Gleason. “There are other places we can wait out the Alliance. Half this city was underground.”
“What about the pack?” asked Melvil. “You know what happens if they get worked up.”
Mops turned to Melvil. “These ferals you’ve been taking care of. Any chance you gave them shoes and clothing?” Taking his wide-eyed stare as confirmation, she added, “We found one wandering around in a deerskin robe northwest of here.”
“You found Bobby?” Melvil pressed closer. “Was he all right? Can you take me to where you saw him?”
“Sure,” Wolf snorted. “I’m sure all those Alliance troops up there will be happy to look the other way while we chase your runaway feral.”
“That’s what you were doing when you were spotted,” Mops realized. “You’d gone out searching for . . . for Bobby.”
His lips tightened. His eyes darted sideways toward Gleason.
“Despite orders to wait for a proper hunting party,” Gleason said.
“That trap in the library,” said Mops. “The one Wolf fell into, with the raw meat. That was for him, too?”
A quick nod. “I’m not sure how he got out this time. He’s the escape artist. The rest are content to stay in one place, unless they get scared. The sound of those ships, the voices of strange troops moving around on the surface . . .”
“The ferals will want to hunt or run away,” finished Rubin.
“Good riddance, if you ask me,” said Bev.
“We didn’t,” Gleason snapped. “All right, so far the only thing the Alliance has is a clip of Melvil.”
“Unless they spotted you moving in on the library,” said Monroe.