Vrel was couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. “You really think you can rely on Terrans that you’re supposed to be fighting?” he said. “Is it wise to trust in them that much?”
“What other choice do we have?” Hudro answered. After a second or two more he added, “Anyway, I trust in their god.”
Having established that much, they got Ramona to call Luodine’s intermediary and pass on instructions for her and Nyarl to fly to Uyali the next morning, setting the regular air terminal as their destination. When they were on final approach but not before, they were to change the landing point to a pad area in the Terran sector, which Ramona said would be busy and crowded all day. Vrel would meet them and take care of things from there. With that, Hudro left for the terminal to find a ride back to Brazil. Vrel stayed the night in Ramona’s “office.”
The next morning, after preparing them a breakfast, Ramona took Vrel to the part of the Terran sector that she had told them about, which turned out to be a nonstop commotion of people, activity, and vehicles coming and going as she’d promised. Vrel used his phone to summon the flyer that he and Hudro had left at the construction site to the north. It arrived ten minutes later. A little under an hour after that, Luodine and Nyarl’s blue-and-yellow craft appeared overhead, descending steeply. Vrel greeted them as they emerged and indicated his own waiting flyer. While Ramona and Luodine embraced and laughed like long-lost sisters, Vrel helped Nyarl transfer recording and other equipment across. In order not to be lose touch with other events that might develop, Nyarl set a link in the blue-and-yellow flyer’s communications system to forward any incoming messages to a code that he set up in Vrel’s flyer. Even if it were seized and the link code found, it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. Finally, Vrel thanked Ramona and conceded a hug.
And then they were airborne, heading north to get clear of the area before anyone following the movements of Luodine and Nyarl’s flyer would have time to react to what had happened. To add further confusion, Nyarl had set it instructions to take off again, empty, and head off in a different direction as a decoy. After a hundred miles or so it would land near a village picked at random off the map, and anyone monitoring it could make of it what they would.
They continued northward to be nearer to where anything involving Cade and Marie was expected to happen, and put down around midday in a remote spot past Lake Titicaca. They waited there through the middle part of the day, eking out the fruit juices and snacks that were all the flyer had to offer, talking over the events of the past days, trying to guess possible outcomes, and speculating about future plans. Vrel talked vaguely about making for Asia or Australia, maybe trying to join Krossig. Luodine wasn’t sure she wanted to leave just yet. She was an investigative journalist, after all, and the things that seemed to matter were happening here.
Hudro called around the middle of the afternoon and informed them that the operation would take place tomorrow. He gave no details apart from the map reference of the place where he and the Terran guerrillas would meet them afterward, which was farther north, inside Brazil. Vrel and the others were to head there tonight and were expected. The name of the place was Segora.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
At last, Luodine could breathe easily again, not feeling that their every movement was probably being tracked by surveillance computers.
From maps retrieved via the flyer’s communications system, Nyarl had determined that Segora was in a low-lying forested and swampy area around one of the southern headwater tributaries of the Amazon. Luodine had expected it to be something like a village, in the sense of dwellings clustered in some kind of clearing, but it turned out to be more a general name for an extended area of huts, houses, and other constructions loosely strung together beneath the forest canopy with little attempt at forming any identifiable center. It could be an unconventional type of living arrangement that put seclusion before neighborliness, she supposed as the flyer descended out of gray overcast; equally well, it could have been contrived for harboring an illicit militia in a way that afforded anonymity, concealment, and dispersal.
The flyer landed in a slot cut between high trees, at the bottom of which nothing more could be seen than a strip of bare earth and a couple of tin-roofed shacks. On touching down, they found that the strip was just the edge of a larger, undercut space concealing an assortment of trucks, cars, and other vehicles that had been invisible from above. A group of figures in shirts and jungle smocks, some with weapons slung on their shoulders, watched the flyer roll in. Two of them directed it to park by several helicopters standing to one side. A reception committee came forward as the occupants emerged. Vrel was not conversant with the local languages and left the talking to Luodine. Her experience was more with Spanish whereas the prevalent speech here was Portuguese, but with help from her veebee and a smattering that Nyarl had picked up, they were able to manage.
The spokesman was small and wiry with a beard, wore a soft-peaked forage cap, flak jacket, and string vest, and carried a basic Terran automatic firearm. He didn’t give a name but described the three Hyadean arrivals to the others as “the alien news team who are here to tell our story”—which, discounting Vrel, was close enough. The others seemed suspicious all the same, and regarded the Hyadeans warily.
They boarded an open-topped Terran military truck, along with the guide in the peaked cap, another, and the driver, while the rest of the party piled into a second vehicle behind. Whether they were guards or an escort, Luodine wasn’t sure. As the vehicles moved away, she saw sandbagged positions under the trees commanding the landing strip and its approaches, with bunkers and entrenchments concealed among the vegetation behind. Farther on, they passed cabins and houses, what looked like a storage dump, some kind of a water landing, and a workshop for vehicles. The road became a leafy tunnel, in places crossing stretches of swamp on wooden causeways. There were tent cities mingled with the undergrowth; squads training with weapons; at one point, a pit with earth protecting walls under camouflage nets, that looked like a missile emplacement.
“This might go on for miles,” Luodine said to Nyarl. “They could have the equivalent of a whole town hidden down here.”
“Or an army,” he replied.
Luodine became more certain in her own mind, and more excited. “This is the story we should be working on!” she told him. “Right here, not in Asia. I want to see for myself those things that Hudro showed us. What do you think? Would you stay if we could?”
“Yes, I’d stay,” Nyarl said.
A spur off the roadway brought them to several low wooden buildings standing together beneath the trees. The vehicles pulled up in front of one, and everyone dismounted. While the guards or escorts—whichever—dispersed themselves around the outside, the leader in the forage cap and his second conducted the three Hyadeans in and through to a large room, bare except for several closets, a central table with chairs, and kitchen facilities at one end. An adjoining room contained six double-tier bunks arranged around the walls, and there were several more rooms with stacks of boxes, items of kit, and further oddments of furniture. Evidently these were to be their quarters for the night. In the meantime, apparently, they were to wait.
A window looked out toward the way they had come in off the road. As dusk was closing in, two trucks appeared, embarked armed figures from one of the other nearby buildings, and drove away again. The roadway itself seemed to be busy with an irregular but continuing flow of vehicles and porters on foot carrying loads. “Something’s going on. There’s a buzz in the air. Don’t you feel it?” Luodine said to the other two. She asked the squad leader in the forage cap. He seemed uneasy but would divulge nothing.
After about half an hour, headlights appeared, and a Terran open-topped military car sped up and screeched to a stop outside. Two figures jumped out and marched up to the door, while two more began lifting out cartons and boxes, helped by a couple of the guards who had been posted outside. The man in the forage cap went out, and there
was an exchange in lowered voices outside the door. Then two of the arrivals came in. The first was tall, swarthy skinned with a thick mustache, and wore a belt with sidearm over a bush jacket, jungle camouflage pants, canvas boots, and a black beret. He identified Luodine as the spokesperson and introduced himself as Rocco. The man with him, black, shorter, stockily built, wearing an olive shirt and bandolier of cartridges slung across his body from one shoulder, was called Dan.
As the Hyadeans had already inferred, they would be staying here until tomorrow. In the morning, Rocco would leave with a guerrilla force to meet up with Hudro and Hudro’s unnamed companion, and attempt to rescue Cade and Marie. Where and how this was to happen Rocco didn’t disclose, but from the things that had been said before, Luodine presumed it would be while the two captives were in transit somewhere. Afterward, assuming the operation was successful, they would all return to Segora. What the plan was after that, Rocco didn’t say. Dan would remain to take care of the Hyadeans and deal with any needs or problems if he could.
The other two who had arrived with Rocco and Dan were women. While Rocco was talking, they brought in the cartons that had been unloaded, put them on the counter at the kitchen end of the room, and began taking out bread, vegetables, cans, and other provisions. Rocco left shortly afterward, explaining that he had preparations to attend to. If all went well, he would see them again tomorrow.
When the meal was ready, the two cooks took portions out for the guard detail around the building. Dan and the man in the forage cap, now revealed to be “Zak,” joined the Hyadeans at the table in the large room. Dan told them they were the first Hyadeans he had seen brought here as guests, although it appeared he had met Hudro previously somewhere. The rest of the men had seen the aliens only from a distance, and then on the other side. They were not clear what was going on, which made them understandably wary.
“Could they learn to accept us, do you think?” Luodine asked him.
Dan seemed puzzled. “Why should they have to? What do you mean?”
She indicated herself and Nyarl. “We are journalists from Chryse who are a little different. We’ve been reporting what is, not what’s supposed to be—even if it has been causing us problems. We think our work is here. Suppose we wanted to stay. Could something like that be arranged, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. . . . You’d need to talk to Rocco and Hudro tomorrow, when they get back.”
Luodine noted the same edginess in Dan’s manner that she had detected in Zak earlier. “Something is making everyone nervous tonight, isn’t it?” she said. “I saw it in Rocco too. What’s happening?”
Dan glanced uneasily at Zak, as if acknowledging that he wasn’t sure this was the right way to be talking. “There’s a lot of Glob activity everywhere. Air strikes, troop drops. This area has to be targeted. Rocco’s got bad feelings about staging this mission tomorrow, but it seems like it can’t be any other time. I’m not sure why.”
“I think we already know,” Luodine said.
Dan shrugged in a way that said he didn’t need to hear. “My job is just to make sure you’re all here, ready and waiting, when they get back.”
It had been an eventful and arduous day, and the three Hyadeans turned in early. Just as she was drifting off into sleep that promised to engulf her in seconds, Luodine was brought back to reality by the sound of what could have been distant thunder coming in through the screen of the open widow, but with a sharper, more percussive bark. “What was that?” she asked into the darkness.
“It could be artillery fire. Or maybe an air attack somewhere,” Vrel’s voice replied.
The sound continued for maybe fifteen minutes, sometimes seemingly a little closer, then farther away. In the next room, Dan and Zak were engaged on a radiotelephone with others elsewhere. They sounded tense and agitated. Dan poked his head in around the door a few minutes later. “Sleep in your clothes and keep your boots near at hand,” he told the Hyadeans. “We may have to move out in a hurry.”
It was daylight when sounds of loud explosions accompanied by a shrieking roar tore Luodine out of a deep sleep. She sat up, struggling to integrate the impressions into some kind of coherence. Aircraft, passing low overhead. Bombs! Vrel and Nyarl were already tumbling out of nearby bunks, finding shoes and grabbing coats. The door was thrown open, and Dan entered. “We’re under attack!” he shouted. “Glob forces moving in on the area. We’re taking you back to the strip now.”
They tumbled through into the large room where the table was. One of the two women was waving her hands at Zak and wailing something. The other was nowhere in sight. A guard stuck his head in from outside. “The truck’s coming now,” he called. Dan ushered the Hyadeans across to the door and outside. Smoke clouds were billowing skywards from somewhere not far away, where flames could be seen among the trees. A truck was turning off the approach lane from the road. As several of the guards moved out from the building to meet it, the sounds of approaching aircraft came again, followed by staccato chattering of gunfire. The guards threw themselves down into the undergrowth or beside the wall of the building, a couple under the truck.
“Down!” Dan yelled. Luodine stood outside the doorway, confused. “Get down!” She came to her senses, ran a few paces, and hunched herself awkwardly by Nyarl against the base of a tree. The roars grew to a screaming din overhead. Luodine covered her head with her arms. A series of jarring concussions came, numbing the ears, and then a sharper crack, followed by what sounded like a tremendous blast of hail slicing through the trees, shredding leaves and cutting branches. Fragments of metal pinged off the truck and embedded themselves in the wall of the building. Somebody screamed.
“Come! Now! We have to go!” Dan’s voice shouted.
Luodine straightened up, dazed, her ears still ringing. Somebody grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the truck. Figures were already clambering aboard. Vrel was there. Nyarl appeared from behind her. Someone was reeling drunkenly, gushing blood from a partly severed shoulder. It was the second cook. Hands pulled Luodine up over the tailboard. The truck began moving.
The attack had hit on the far side of the roadway. Smoke was pouring from the remains of several demolished buildings among the trees, which nearer the center of the blast area had been stripped practically bare. A vehicle was hanging upended in the branches; another lay on its side, surrounded by bodies, some moving. As the truck turned right onto the road and headed back in the direction of the landing strip, Luodine made out more figures crawling and staggering amid the smoke. The sound of the attacking planes faded, and the steadier, deeper drone of higher-flying aircraft became noticeable behind the engine noise and rattles of the truck, and the voice of Dan shouting into a hand radio. A series of muffled crumps sounded somewhere off to the left. “ATG,” Zak said tightly. Luodine looked questioningly at Nyarl as they clutched the sides of the wildly bouncing vehicle.
“Air-to-ground,” he supplied. “Missiles. Incoming.”
“Troops are landing to the south and east,” Dan announced. “They’ve already taken the main river crossing. Gonna sweep the whole area.”
“Will Rocco’s group have to call off the mission?” Vrel called from the other side of the truck.
“Too late for that. They left hours ago.”
They drove past armed guerrillas hastily forming up, squads with packs running at the double along the roadside; vehicles being loaded, others racing in both directions. The background of explosions and gunfire was now continuous. At one point they had to drive off the road on a bypass flattened through the undergrowth around a truck and a car that had collided. Just past them was a blackened area, still smoking, everything flattened, where Luodine was sure she had seen a mobile missile launcher the day before. Exactly as she had wanted, she was right there in the middle of everything, and far sooner then she had ever expected. Yet she and Nyarl could capture none of it. They had left all their equipment in the flyer.
They arrived back to find the landing
area in pandemonium. One entire side—fortunately, not where Vrel’s flyer was parked—was a mass of blazing vehicles and storage sheds, while across the remainder of the area figures ran frantically to load what could be salvaged onto departing trucks and carry over the wounded. Two helicopters were wrecked, but another out on the open strip took off as the truck bringing the Hyadeans pulled up. Dan waved toward the flyer and shouted at Vrel, “Make it ready, whatever you have to do.”
Vrel spread his hands. “What about Cade and the others? We were supposed to wait for them.”
“I’m going to try and find out what I can now,” Dan threw back, already running toward a frond-covered bunker protected by sandbags and logs, partly dug into the ground nearby. Vrel turned toward the flyer. Luodine followed after Dan, Nyarl close behind her. Inside the bunker was a map table and cabinets of electronics, weapons and kit slung along one wall, and a half dozen or so people, two talking into phones, two more following something on screens, one marking a map, a girl in a camouflage smock watching the scene outside through a firing embrasure in the bunker wall. Dan was talking tensely with a man in a peaked cap who seemed to be in charge. He waved for Luodine and Nyarl to wait a moment as they entered. One of the operators was calling into a microphone. “Emergency! Repeat, emergency! Divert! Do you read me, Yellow Fish? You must divert. The LZ is under attack.”
“It’s them,” Dan told Luodine and Nyarl. “They’re on their way here now. They’ve got Cade and the woman. But they can’t land in this.”
“Where will they go?” Luodine asked, daze at trying to take it all in.
“I don’t know. They’ll . . .” Dan’s voice trailed off as the operator became alarmed.
“Hello? . . . Hello, Yellow Fish. . . . Yellow Fish, come in. . . .” He waited, looked across, and shook his head. “We have lost contact. They were taking fire.”
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