“I’ve cleared one of the buoys,” she gasped. “Let me know if it reaches the surface.”
The answer came less than a minute later, just a few seconds after the cable stopped its race. “Buoy’s on the surface, miss!”
“The buoy will be transmitting the distress signal now,” Sula said. “People will know we’re here.” Which was meant to cheer up the refugees in the airlock, but Sula knew perfectly well that the emergency services on Sulawesi were overwhelmed and might be unable to rescue them even if they received the signal. Certainly, no aircraft could venture out into the ash storm.
The voice returned. “Macnamara says he’s ready to come out. Should he bring any tools?”
Sula considered. “If he and Spence can find anything like crowbars, they should bring them.”
“I’ll tell them.”
Sula waited, leg anchored to the beam, as she looked down at the capsule in its sleeve. It would probably pop out of the sleeve all right, but it still needed to clear the tower scaffold before it could rise to the surface.
She was working on solutions to the problem when the planet gave a sudden leap, and she pivoted helplessly around the beam as it spun out from under her . . . and now she was inverted and drifting and surrounded by turbid darkness, and she might be turning slow circles in the murk, but she couldn’t be sure. The shock had thrown up all the ash and mud and surrounded her with an opaque wall. She could barely see the light on her wrist. Her rank-smelling hair had fallen in her face.
“Are you people all right?” she called, her voice bright and sharp in the confined space of her helmet. She thought she sounded panicked and she hoped the others didn’t agree.
The answer came right away. “We are just a little shaken, miss. Your man is in the airlock.”
“Tell him not to come out just yet. The shock kicked the silt loose and he won’t be able to see anything.”
“We’ll tell him, miss.”
The brief dialog had calmed her, and she realized the current was pulling her away from the structure. She didn’t know where in the cloud it was, and feared that if she let the current take her, she might not be able to find it again. Best, she thought, to decrease her buoyancy and sink to the bottom, where she could wait until the turbidity settled.
Numbers flickered greenly on the head-up display. Sula held her left wrist right up to the faceplate and could barely make out the controls—she paged through menus till she found the controls for buoyancy, and increased her weight until she settled face-first on the bottom, gentle as a feather on the black volcanic sand. She spat a strand of hair out of her mouth.
Sula threw up another huge cloud of sludge as she struggled to her feet, and she leaned slightly into the current and waited for the black sleet to settle. In the absolute darkness, she could see a reflection of her own face in the faceplate in front of her, and her heart froze. Caro Sula hung before her eyes in the black, cold water, the water where now she dwelled since her best friend had put her there.
Sula closed her eyes, but that only made it worse. Now she could imagine Caro’s pale gold hair drifting in the darkness, the cold hands reaching for her. She smothered a scream. The impulse to bolt for the surface was overwhelming.
It’s not real, she thought, and opened her eyes. She looked up into a corner of the faceplate, away from the pale face that stared at her from a few fingerbreadths away. Her heart was racing, her breath frantic. She fought the panic, tried to get her breathing under control.
Macnamara, she realized, was waiting in the trunk airlock. If he came out, he might be able to find her and help her. She triggered the underwater speakers.
“Macnamara,” she panted. “Come out!”
She was answered by a burst of sound as chaotic as the ash that swirled around her. She realized she was farther away from the structure than she thought, and for a moment, another surge of panic nearly submerged her. She increased volume and repeated the instructions to Macnamara.
“Hang on to the structure!” she added. “You don’t want to get lost!”
Lost like me, she thought. Lost in Caro Sula’s dead domain.
She waited, alone on the bottom, and watched the ash as it crawled in little streams across the corner of her faceplate. Her legs ached with the effort of maintaining her stance against the current. After some minutes, she realized that her lights were penetrating deeper into the murk.
“Macnamara,” she called. “If you’re out of the airlock, please shine your light left to right.”
There was a buzzing reply. “Yes, my lady.” At least that’s what she decided she’d heard.
Sula turned in a slow circle, kicking up more clouds of silt and seeing nothing. It occurred to her that she was in the absolute worst place to see anything, since the silt and ash was drifting down and the turbidity would be more severe near the bottom. She needed to get away. She needed to give herself permission to fly.
“Keep flashing your light!” Sula said. She took hold of the joystick and jetted off the bottom with her impellers. Her hardsuit still had negative buoyancy and the impellers brought her up slowly, her jets leaving behind yet another cloud of silt. She rose until she could see the beam from her helmet reaching out some distance into the darkness, then turned off all her lights and slowly turned in circles, her eyes straining into the darkness. Her heart lifted as she thought she saw a distant orange glow, a flash and then gone.
She wasn’t alone anymore, alone in Caro’s watery grave.
“Make a big circle with your light,” she called, and the far-off orange light returned, tracking a crescent-shaped path—Sula assumed the rest of the circle was pointed in a different direction. She fired the impellers and arrowed toward the signal, and her mind eased as the beam brightened and turned into a full circle. She found Macnamara clinging to the outside of the trunk airlock, his right arm circling like mad, and Spence’s head just poking out of the airlock door.
Sula draped her arms around Macnamara’s neck and hung on, indescribable relief warm and bright in her mind. “My lady?” Macnamara said.
“Hang on to me,” Sula said. “I’m too heavy.” Macnamara held her while she neutralized her buoyancy, then she turned to the escape pod.
“I’ll hover just above the pod,” she said, “and when it pops up, I’ll kick it away from the airlock. You two anchor yourselves up on the wreckage of the tower and shove it clear when it gets in range.”
The other two tilted back to view the fallen tower, just visible above them in the murk.
“My lady?” Spence said. “The pod just climbs up the cable, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t we just tail onto the cable, pull it away from the wreckage, and keep it clear? The pod should go right up the line.”
Sula considered this. “Well,” she breathed. “I guess all I needed was to ask the engineer.”
Sula told the survivors inside the airlock to get in the escape pod with the deployed buoy—it would be crowded, but they could be reasonably sure of getting away. “Once you’re ready, bang on the pod three times, wait half a minute, then launch.”
“We understand, miss.”
Sula and the others maneuvered to the cable, then positioned themselves in a line along it, roughly at the level of the crumpled tower, after which there was nothing to do but wait. Sula watched the head-up display and felt a distant tugging on the cable as the buoy bobbed overhead. Her suit’s heating unit had come on, warming her socks and soggy uniform trousers, and the suit was filled with a wet-dog smell.
Caro’s presence seemed to have faded now that she was free of the muck. She breathed easier.
Three distinct clunks sounded out, the signal. “Let’s pull, then,” Sula said, wrapped both arms around the cable, and triggered the impellers. Spence’s boots banged on her helmet as the three dragged the cable away in slightly different directions, and Sula snarled, not because she was angry at Spence but because she hated clumsiness.
T
he cable offered no resistance, but she could feel small shocks transmitted up the taut cable that indicated continued volcanic activity. Sula directed her helmet light down the cable to the escape pod and waited.
Long seconds ticked by, and Sula began to wonder if the pod was jammed in its sleeve. Then there was a loud clank as invisible clamps were withdrawn, and the pod bounced like a jack-in-the-box out of its sleeve, then started bobbing along its cable at a more measured pace. The pod’s flashing emergency lights painted the scene red. Sula felt the cable jerk in her arms, and Spence’s boots banged Sula’s helmet again.
The three divers had drawn the cable out at an angle more horizontal than Sula would have liked, but the pod moved along the cable with calm assurance. Macnamara, below Sula, let go of the cable as the pod reached him, and the release of tension bobbed Sula upward and caused a momentary flash of alarm. She had to move her feet out of the way so that she could peer down to see the pod as it rose toward her. She let go of the cable to get out of the pod’s way, and as it rose past her, Sula looked through the pod’s window to see a terrified Anna Spendlove in the dim emergency lights, her eyes staring, face drained of color, hair hanging limp. You look like hell, Sula thought with satisfaction, and tilted her body to watch the pod as it rose.
It didn’t leap for the surface as had the buoy, so Sula assumed there was a mechanism that kept it rising at a more measured pace. Because there was nothing else to do, Sula followed the pod upward, one armored hand grazing the cable to keep herself oriented.
The climb to the surface took only a few minutes, rising into the face of the black snow raining down from the surface. Outside the range of her lights and the red flashers, the darkness was total. To her surprise, on the final few seconds of the journey, the pod vanished into blackness, as if swallowed by a magician’s cloak, and then she rose into the darkness herself and felt objects bumping and clattering against her helmet. It wasn’t until she broke the surface and saw the emergency flashers and her helmet light on the surface of the water that she realized she was floating in a sea of pumice deep enough to reach her waist. The larger pumice stones were light enough to float, but they were raining down alongside smaller, denser ash that sank to the bottom. The weight of the pumice had calmed the sea, which was almost flat, rising only to low, broad waves that barely lifted her, only to settle her gently down again.
Pumice clattered on her helmet, pouring down in a steady stone shower. For the most part, the stones were small and light, but in her helmet flood she saw some larger than her fist floating nearby, and she didn’t relish the thought of one of those cracking down out of the sky and landing on her faceplate.
Tropical heat pulsed through her helmet. Sula felt sweat dotting her forehead and hoped her suit’s cooling units would kick in soon.
Macnamara and Spence came to the surface together a short distance away. The planes of their faces were turned bloodred by the scarlet flashers. Spence winced as clinkers bounced off her helmet, raised a hand protectively above her head.
The escape capsule bobbed above them, the buoy atop it leaning like a cocked dunce cap. There didn’t seem to be a way to communicate with the survivors inside, and from the surface Sula couldn’t look into the window to communicate with the occupants. They were stuck in the pod till help arrived.
The world was completely dark. Not a single star shone, and no light glowed on the horizon to indicate the presence of Tinombala on the shore. Sula panned her helmet light left and right, and saw a shadow on the water, one of the microwave receivers for the rectenna field, its great petals shadowing the water. The yellow hazard light that should have marked it, and all the other receivers, had either been shattered by falling stone or buried in rubble.
“Let’s get under cover!” Sula told the others, and reinforced the suggestion with a gesture. She triggered the impellers and soon was plowing slowly through the sea of stones like a bluff-bowed ship. The rattling of stones on her helmet ceased, and she turned over to see one of the receiver dish’s enormous petals cantilevered over her.
Macnamara and Spence surged up alongside her, pushing little bow waves. Even through the suit helmets, Sula could hear the clacking and clanging of the stones raining down on the receiver dish.
“I’m not sure I like this,” Spence said. The distorted words grated from her underwater speakers, and Sula could feel a vibration in her hardsuit as the sound waves pulsed against it. “Those rocks are adding a lot of weight to the receiver dish. The whole thing could tip over without warning.”
“We’ll stay near the edge,” Sula said. She was already paging through the menus on her control panel, found the communication menu, and turned on her radio antenna. To her surprise, she saw that she was receiving a strong signal.
She called Lieutenant-Captain Parku, her executive officer in the dockyard.
“My lady? Where are you?” His well-controlled Torminel tones betrayed neither surprise nor anxiety.
“Floating in the sea, in Tomini Bay off Sulawesi, with three Fleet personnel and a group of civilian survivors. There should be an emergency beacon marking our location. I’d be obliged if you could send a boat to pick us up.”
This time Parku couldn’t disguise his surprise. “You’re in the ocean?” he blared.
“I’m in an armored diving suit and in no immediate danger, but I’d still like you to get a boat here. The civilians are probably in some distress. A couple hours ago, I saw a rescue boat patrolling offshore; perhaps you can contact it.”
“I’ll call Lieutenant-Captain Koridun. She’s in charge of the whole rescue effort, she should know who to notify.”
“Koridun has enough to do,” Sula said firmly. “You can manage it from there, I’m sure.”
Parku succeeded in suppressing any surprise or annoyance. “Of course, my lady. Stand by.”
Sula waited for a few moments, rising and falling in the easy waves, and listened to the hiss and plash of the pumice raining down. Parku’s melodious voice returned.
“My lady, I’ve contacted the rescue patrol. They’re receiving your signal and are heading for your location.”
“Thank you, Lord Koz. Can you give me a report?”
“It’s the largest volcanic explosion in thousands of years, my lady. They heard the explosion as far as Sydney.”
“Any problems at the skyhook terminal?”
“We have robots going up and down the cables, and so far, there’s no report of any damage.”
“Any estimate of casualties?”
“It’s a little early for that,” said Parku. “Tsunamis aren’t a good sign, though.”
“No, they’re not.
“Thank you, Parku. If I need you again, I’ll call.”
“Yes, my lady. Thank you.”
Grinding and rattling sounded from overhead as a shoal of ash shifted again. Spence gave Sula an imploring look. “My lady? Maybe we should move?”
“Agreed.” Impellers drew them away from shelter, a blunt arrow plowing through the stony sea, and falling pumice rattled on their helmets again. Sula approached the bobbing escape pod, but the red flashing lights blinded her, and though she tried to make reassuring gestures in the direction of the window, she had no idea whether anyone saw or understood her.
“My lady!” Macnamara’s hand touched her shoulder, spun her around. “Look!”
Coming toward them, white-hulled, brilliantly lit, searchlights probing the water ahead, was the rescue cutter.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Sula was out of the armored suit and sat in the cabin of the rescue boat as she breathed pure oxygen through a mask and watched a crane hoist the escape pod onto the after deck. Clinkers rattled continually down, banging on the overhead and clanging off the windows, and half the Naxid crew was assigned to broom duty, sweeping the stuff overboard before it overbalanced the boat.
There was a clang as the escape pod opened, and its occupants spilled out over the deck like falling sacks of sand. Some were
stained by vomit, so it appeared that even the gentle motion of the bay was too much for at least one passenger.
Anna Spendlove came out stained and wild-eyed, vomit dripping from her lap, her hair in limp strands over her face. Her wrists were still handcuffed, and one of the Naxid crew had to steady her to keep her from falling on her face.
Sula smiled to herself. She thought that perhaps Spendlove was in just about the right frame of mind for an extended interrogation.
But first, she thought, she herself could use a wash. She asked the Naxid captain if there were a shower available, and the captain had one of the petty officers take her belowdecks and show her the facilities. The shower was meant for Naxids, and so Sula had to squat to avoid hitting her head. There was no shampoo, and the soap was meant to keep beaded scales glossy, but at least she was able to wash off the dust and grime. She brushed her uniform blouse and trousers, and returned to the deck feeling more like an officer than a refugee.
Spendlove, trussed and vomit-stained, was in no condition to resist. She said that she’d been recruited for the impersonation on Zanshaa by a young Torminel who’d called himself “Colti,” though he frankly admitted the name was an alias. He was well dressed, with an aristocratic air and High City accent, and Spendlove—who had devoted her life to studying and impersonating people she wasn’t—thought the posh manner genuine.
He’s simply offered too much money to resist. “And besides,” Spendlove added, “he said you were a murderer.”
True enough, Sula thought, as far as that goes.
“Did he mention who I’m supposed to have killed?” she asked.
“No,” Spendlove said. “And I didn’t want to know.”
“Do you have any idea who Colti might actually be?”
Spendlove shook her head. “I don’t know every Peer on Zanshaa. And for that matter, I don’t know whether or not he was a Peer, or whether he just had a Peer’s access to money.”
“Was he working on behalf of someone else, or was this his own project?”
“He didn’t mention anyone else. He seemed very committed, so if he wasn’t actually in charge, he was a very enthusiastic participant.”
Impersonations Page 14