Sheydu ran up the stairs. “Get out, get out!”
The skirmishes stopped. People looked at her, and some noticed the white bags on top of the “rock”.
An expression of horror came to Delegate Namion’s face. He lunged for the gun on a nearby guard’s belt.
“Get out, get out!” Sheydu ran over the boards, out of the tent. She jumped over the side into the darkness of the marsh.
I followed her outside and climbed on the railing, hesitating, looking at the dark gaping void where there would be a wet landing in the mud some metre and a half below.
“Jump!” Sheydu called from the darkness below. I couldn’t see her.
“Come on!” Thayu yelled. She jumped.
Splash.
I jumped.
There was a flash behind us. And another one.
I landed in the mud and fell to my knees. Water splashed in my face.
“What the hell was that?” Nicha.
“I think Delegate Namion must have fired at those bags,” I said. I was the only one to have seen this.
Thayu cursed. “Oh, he fucking didn’t—”
An explosion bloomed out from the tent. The sides blew out. The roof blew off. The walkway shattered, sending support poles crashing sideways.
Thayu pushed me down on my belly. In the water, of course. Various pieces rained down around me, some of them quite large. I covered my head with my arms.
“The stupid fucking idiot shot at the explosive!” Sheydu yelled somewhere close by.
Now that the light from the tent was gone, it had become seriously dark. I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t imagine that Thayu and Sheydu saw any more.
People splashed around us. I had no idea who they were. I couldn’t hear them because my ears were ringing. I could barely figure out where Thayu was, and if everyone would just stop yelling I might just be able to hear what any of them said.
Someone pulled me up onto my feet. A deep voice said, “Come.” It was Evi.
He more or less dragged me along, not in the direction of the point behind which we had left the planes.
I protested, “We have to go that way.”
“No, our transport is right here.”
There was a hoverboat in the reeds that I hadn’t seen because it carried no light at all, and both little moons had long since vanished below the horizon.
Evi pushed me in and I sat down on the first bench I encountered. Damn, I was shivering. The driver was small, likely Pengali. The dark, heavy person who sat next to me turned out to be Veyada. I sensed Thayu on the bench behind me. The boat reversed out of the reeds. Where the others were I didn’t know. The night was black and chaotic and hopefully my team would have a better idea of what was going on than I did.
But . . .
“We’re going in the wrong direction.” I could see some pinpricks of light behind us.
“Nah,” Veyada said.
The driver turned the boat in a half-circle, steering it towards . . . one of the pylons that held up the railway tracks. A ladder led from the water to the track bed. There were people up there. There was also a train, with all its lights off. What the hell?
The side of the boat thunked into the concrete of the pylon. A Pengali on the ladder caught the rope that the driver threw at her and tied it to one of the rungs, chatting with the driver. After years in Barresh, the Pengali language, consonant-filled, with harsh and guttural tones, still sounded utterly foreign to me.
Someone called, “Cory!”
Nicha was up there.
I rose and crossed the few wobbly steps to the ladder, stepped from the boat and climbed up. A thick layer of moss and algae covered the rungs of the ladder. It felt disgusting, slippery. I climbed slowly, making sure that my grip or step was secure before hauling myself up. Nicha held out a hand and pulled me up onto the track bed, behind the train. The cabin had a little door at the very back, which stood open. A few pinpricks of light pierced the darkness of the cabin. Something moved, showing up only as a shadow against the light. Too tall to be Pengali.
A Coldi voice said, “Delegate? Get in.”
Holy crap, it was Deyu.
“Since when is hijacking trains our business?”
“Since Deyu used to be a train driver in Athyl,” Thayu said next to me.
“Did she?” Here came the important bits about why Deyu was with us.
More people were climbing onto the tracks behind us. I recognised the solid form of Telaris. Sheydu was there, too.
“Are we missing anyone?”
“All here.” Reida said.
“Even if some of us are a bit bruised,” Sheydu said. She sounded exhausted.
“Did anyone see Delegate Namion?”
No one replied. A chill went through me.
“He shot at the explosives,” Thayu said, her voice dark.
“Stupid.” My mind filled with dark thoughts. What would happen if, by chance, Delegate Namion had not survived that stupidity? “Do you think that the relay is fully destroyed?”
“We’ll have to check in the morning,” Sheydu said. “Not much good hanging around now and getting caught.”
“Yes, we must get out of here soon.”
“We’ll check with my father,” Thayu said. “No need to come back to this mess.”
And it was a mess that we would definitely hear more about. Tamerians had been getting killed all over town without much publicity, because they were only Tamerians and no one knew them or cared about them, except perhaps other Tamerians—not that I’d ever seen evidence of that. But if any of the gamra guards, the council workers of, heaven forbid, Delegate Namion, had been injured, then the proverbial shit would hit the fan at lightspeed. And then I might well need that protection Ezhya offered.
“Get in,” Deyu called from inside the train.
We walked over the track, careful not to slip. Evi, at the front of the group, reached the door first. He climbed up the little ladder and disappeared into the cabin. Then Thayu. Then it was my turn. I put my hand on the ladder—
“Shit,” Nicha said behind me. “Look over there.”
We looked.
A faint glow emanated from the water where the excavation had been, a bright spot under the water that lit the sad remains of the tent and the walkways with a ghostly blue-green light.
“Does your explosives cause that?” Telaris asked Sheydu next to him.
“No. They shouldn’t.” Her voice sounded uncertain.
The water moved. It bubbled and churned as if it was boiling. In fact, it was boiling because steam billowed from the water in the same way it did at the volcanic vents. The light became brighter and brighter. That thing that looked like a rock had detached itself from the muddy bottom and was rising. Sharp beams lanced from cracks in the encrusted casing, making the steam glow.
As the thing broke the surface, big chunks of the casing fell away.
The object underneath was so bright that I couldn’t even make out the shape of it. It emanated a low pulsing hum, that was painfully familiar. This was the sound that had disturbed the Exchange operation at times. The sound that had destroyed the back wall of the house at the edge of the island.
Telaris raised his gun and aimed. He squeezed the release. A bright beam crossed the night sky, hit the light source—
The beam glanced off.
“The bombs didn’t work.” Sheydu stared, her face lit with a ghostly green glow. “What the fuck . . . Those two babies were big enough to destroy a military cruiser. Each.” She was covered in mud. The sleeve in her suit had ripped and blood had soaked into the fabric.
We probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the explosives weren’t strong enough to destroy an object that had lain dormant but operational in the mud for fifty thousand years. Or maybe Delegate Namion’s actions had prevented the explosives from working properly.
Nicha said, “Listen.”
He held up his comm and turned up the sound: the same pulsing deep tone that
we’d heard several times before.
Whatever the reason, the explosion had awakened the relay. It was live. It was calling the ship to come home.
Despite both Sheydu and Telaris firing at it, the thing rose and rose in the air, quickly fading to no more than a bright speck of light. We stared after it, standing on the train tracks, a sense of despair coming over us.
Shit. I was far too tired to go after it and save the universe. I didn’t even know how. I’d go home and hide in bed when Asha and Ezhya learned of our failure.
Then Thayu said in a low voice, “My father says that the Aghyrian ship has turned on all its outside lights.”
No, this wasn’t the summit of our failure. It was the beginning.
Chapter 24
* * *
WE CLIMBED INTO the single carriage and sat, wet, dirty and dejected, on the floor between the benches. Few words were said.
The floor of the carriage had started humming, and outside lights came on. I felt terrible for leaving like this. I should stay and make sure that the injured were taken care of and that no one died because they’d fallen unconscious in the water and there was no one to pull them out.
But my decisions were not my own. Ezhya had placed absolute trust in me. He had asked for me to complete this task. He would not be impressed that we’d failed and he would probably issue further orders. I could do nothing but wait for them and his inevitable disappointment in me.
I could hear myself making excuses to him. Look, most of the time I did hare-brained things they ended up going my way.
It didn’t matter. The one time it was important, I failed.
The door to the control room was open, and Deyu stood inside, with the schematics of the railway tracks on front of her.
“I can take us straight to the island,” she called.
That was good. I felt mortally tired. I stank. I was hungry. That probably applied to all of us. All we could do now was go back and prepare for war. Hopefully most of it would be fought in space. Hopefully it would consist mainly of bluff and a bit of fireworks as satellites were destroyed so that the ship could not jump. Hopefully both Asha and Ezhya would survive.
Evi and Telaris sat sideways in the aisle, leaning against the seats. Evi leaned the back of his head on an armrest and Telaris leaned forward on his pulled-up knees. Thayu had crashed face down on the floor and was already asleep, but Nicha was doing something on his reader that appeared to be holding his interest.
After a while, he got up and went to the cabin. He spoke to Deyu. She pointed at the tracks on the screen. Something about turning sideways. She nodded.
Nicha came back into the cabin. “Change of plan. We’ve got to go after that thing and destroy it with heavier firepower. My father has sent us a ship and crew. He and Ezhya are tied up sweeping up as many relays as they can around Asto. A shuttle will be on its way down to pick us up.”
Shit. Go into war? Like this?
“And something else. Ezhya tells us to bring the hostages.”
“All of them? Even Lilona?”
“Yes, he says all of them. He wants to use them as bargaining chips.”
“He’s expecting the ship to jump?”
“He wants to be prepared for all eventualities.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I didn’t want to do this. I believed I could fully crack Lilona given more time. She was deeply unhappy, missed her family and was beginning to see that there was life outside the ship and away from her all-knowing captain.
But I’d sworn loyalty to Ezhya. There were times that I could stubbornly argue about his way of doing things. This was not one of those times.
We turned onto the train line that went from the gamra island to the main island, and Deyu had to go slowly over the switch to the southwestern track. The squeaking and clanging of brakes and couplings under the floor of the carriage woke Thayu. She pushed herself up, wincing, looking unimpressed and annoyed. “What’s happening?”
“We’re going home to get the Aghyrians and then to the airport.” I told her what Nicha had said.
“Oh, fuck.” She rubbed her face with her hands. There was a large red blotch on her cheek where it had been pressed against the hard floor of the cabin. She leaned against the side of a bench and rested her forehead on her knees.
No one said much while the train rushed low over the water. This was now the second night without much sleep, and all of us would need to rest soon. I could schedule rests for everyone in turn, maybe. Before the shuttle turned up. After we’d secured the captain and Tayron in my apartment. I’d probably have to keep Lilona separate. They might consider her a traitor.
My mind was jumping all over the place.
I hoped I wasn’t forgetting vital things. I hoped Veyada and Thayu and Nicha were in a state to pick up my mistakes.
At the gamra station, we were met on the platform by a puzzled railway worker. She had, evidently, turned up to work early so that she could do some maintenance before the first commuter trains arrived.
She watched all of us, dirty and bedraggled, stepping out of the carriage.
“This is not a scheduled service?”
“Nope,” Deyu said, handing her the engine’s master control comm.
“Where did you get this? It’s an offence to steal train controls.”
I decided to step in. “The carriage is undamaged. None of us sat on the seats and we didn’t make anything dirty or wet. There’s going to be some major shocking items hitting the news today. I don’t think a harmless joyride in a train is going to register high on the list.”
Her eyes widened. “Delegate?” I didn’t think she had recognised me up until then. I guessed looking in the mirror was going to be a shock to me.
“We might need the carriage later to take us to the airport. It’s a very important mission. Is there a chance that it can stay here until that time?”
“Well that . . . depends on where you got it. Most of our vehicles are in use in the morning commute.”
“If we need it before then?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I might be able to move it further into the tunnel so that it doesn’t disrupt the early services.”
I thanked her and we continued up the stairs.
“It never ceases to amaze me how you talk your way out of trouble,” Thayu said. “She was all about calling the guards on Deyu before you started speaking. How do you even do that?”
“That’s because I have a reputation of doing silly things and people are curious so they give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“No,” Veyada said. “That’s because you don’t make melodramatic claims that later turn out to be nothing but hot air. When you say that something is serious, it actually is. That’s called judgement. Up here.” He tapped his head. “That’s why all of us are here with you.”
I met his eyes and damn it, near lost it. I was pathetically bad at accepting compliments. I only ever expected to get blowback because that’s the only thing I usually got.
But damn. Damn it, Veyada.
It’s true.
But I just failed the entire team.
No, technology failed us. Delegate Namion was an idiot. Many things went wrong. It was not your fault. Maybe the relay could never be destroyed that way in the first place.
He was probably right about all those things.
We emerged from the stairs onto the wide boulevard that crossed the island.
I sent Telaris, Veyada, Reida and Deyu to collect the captain and Tayron, while allowing the others to go home for a change of clothes and a snatch of sleep.
Everything was quiet in the apartment, and even all of us coming in at the same time did not bring Eirani upstairs. It would probably be at least an hour before she started stirring, and complaining about the dirt we’d traipsed into the hall.
“Go get cleaned up and to bed quickly, before the staff wakes up.”
Nicha made a beeline for his room and his son, and Thayu declared that she
would have a bath first. Her voice carried an edge that betrayed her utter fatigue.
Reida agreed to leave Eirani a note that we possibly wanted an early breakfast.
I hesitated in the hall, seeing the blinking lights in the hub, knowing that there would be messages for me, even ones that had not been filtered through Delegate Namion’s office. Possibly important messages.
But a voice in my head that sounded like Thayu’s said, Go to bed.
I guessed that if it was urgent, like really urgent, they would know how to reach me.
I looked at the door to the guest bedroom in despair. I’d notify Lilona immediately before we’d leave. No need to do that now. She might freak out. Hell, in her situation, I would freak out.
I walked into the bathroom to find Thayu in front of the mirror, digging with a pair of tweezers in a wound in her side. Her face was white, her lips set and her hand trembled.
Damn. I hadn’t even known that she was injured.
I ran to her side. “Wait. Let me do that.”
She made a weak protest. I guided her to the bench, easing her down on her side with the wound facing up. Whatever it was had gone straight through her suit.
“It went between the front and back plates of the armour. Bad luck, I guess. It’s not deep. It hurts like fuck.”
“We need to glue this. You might have to stay here.”
“No way. We live together, we die together.”
“Thay’ please.” I extracted the first aid kit out of the cupboard along the back. I was feeling sick, too tired to deal with this.
Evi came in and similarly recoiled at the door. “Oh, fuck. What happened?”
Thayu said, “I don’t know. I fell on something. A branch I think.”
Evi nodded. “Megon tree wood. The splinters give off a sap that hurts like blazes. This will probably get infected.”
“Never mind that. I’ll go to the hospital when we’re done with this emergency. Just stick a bandage over it.”
Ambassador 4: Coming Home Page 24