“The ignition keys are safe and secure.” It was Bert, kneeling with his hands on his head like the rest. “You can take them at your leisure. The launch codes are on the computer. But there is a power station outside the city that is open to attack. If it is taken out the city will be crippled. I can take you to it. Simple enough. Just to make sure it is not attacked.”
“I know right where it is,” said another Gaian with dark skin and indeterminate heritage. “I will help take you there.”
Alistair and Odin exchanged glances. The Aldran noticed Bert gave the second speaker a nervous look, caught Alistair’s eye for a moment, and looked at the floor. The rest of the Gaians exchanged furtive glances.
“We’re not concerned about them crippling the city,” Alistair finally said. “Sit there and keep quiet.”
“I only thought you would want to preserve what you have taken,” said Bert without looking up from the floor. “If the station is taken out…”
“We can all help you,” said a third Gaian. “We’ll take you there and show you how to defend it.”
“What the hell is going on here?” demanded Mordecai, and he grabbed his gun and pointed it at the captives. “Why didn’t you tell us about this power station before?”
“I didn’t… it never occurred…” Bert began, but then fell into an awkward silence.
More than one of the Gaians was glancing at the 3D displays. Alistair went over himself to inspect the equipment. The script was in the Gaian tongue, and he could not discern what each computer was for, nor what it was that drew so many furtive glances. He turned back to the Gaians.
“Mordecai asked you what the hell was going on. I want to hear the answer.”
“There’s nothing… going on,” said Bert, but his breathing was rapid and shallow, and the sheen of sweat on his face thickened, producing drops that ran down his face. His usual pallor was more pronounced, and a couple of his companions, their eyes squeezed tight, seemed to be in the midst of silent prayer. Another looked ready to vomit.
Moving forward, he placed the barrel of his rifle against Bert’s forehead, threatening to knock him over backwards.
“If I don’t get a convincing answer the bullet in this chamber is going through your skull.”
As surely as if he had turned a dial, Bert’s heart and breathing rates accelerated, and his lower jaw chattered. Despite this, he forced a reply out of his mouth.
“They’re going to destroy the city.”
Another captive barked something at him in the Gaian tongue.
“Shut up!” yelled Alistair. To Bert he said, “Who is going to destroy the city?”
Bert gave a nervous look at the man who had yelled at him. “The other Gaians.” With a nod to the 3D displays, he continued, “There is a missile on its way for us right now.”
With a curse, Alistair grabbed the back of Bert’s robes and hauled him to his feet.
“Show me.”
Bert pointed at the 3D display and Mordecai and Odin, forgetting the prisoners, bunched in around them. The German Gaian typed a few strokes on the keyboard and some script appeared.
“It will be here in eighteen minutes.”
“How many?” asked Mordecai.
“Just one.”
“Can you call it off?” asked Odin.
Bert shook his head. “Once the signal is given the city is presumed lost. My brothers got here before you. We should already be dead but… this has never happened before. The other cities did not respond quickly.”
“I can take the missile out,” said Mordecai. At Alistair’s inquisitive look he said, “I was a pilot.”
Shaking Bert for emphasis, Alistair said, “Get him the ignition keys!”
Alistair’s thick hand, gripping Bert’s robes, was replaced by Mordecai’s, who hauled him out of his chair and out of the control room. Alistair turned to the captive Gaians.
“I need to be in communication with Mordecai. Someone needs to help me understand these computers.”
There was a pause before one of the Gaians answered, “We are prepared to die.”
There was conviction in his voice to match his statement, but one of the other Gaians spoke up.
“Will you let us go? Afterwards?” she asked.
“I’ll at least let you live.”
The Gaian slowly rose from her kneeling position, her expression uncertain as if she were waiting to receive permission. When Alistair did nothing, she nodded and went to one of the computer stations. She stroked a couple keys and a new display popped up, including a 3D image of the hangar.
“I don’t know yet which craft he will use,” said the woman with excellent English. There was a faint trace of a Latin accent.
“But we’ll have communications with him when he’s in the craft?”
“Yes we will.”
Behind them, the same voice spoke once more in the Gaian tongue, rumbling low and steady. One did not need to understand it to feel the remonstration. With a growl of impatience, Alistair turned to the group, whom Odin was now watching over, and aimed his rifle at them.
“There will be no more talking unless we ask you a question.” Turning back to the Hispanic Gaian, he commanded her, “Tell me what he said to you.”
Ashamed, the Gaian tucked her chin into her chest and, blushing, replied, “He asked me if I was going to help you rape the planet next.”
Alistair could not suppress a chuckle. “A strict Gaian would accuse this entire community of raping the planet.”
“We’ve saved this planet from pillaging. To do that we are forced to use technologies—”
Alistair let out a short but loud guffaw and exclaimed, “That’s always the excuse! Every Gaian who ever ate meat found some way to justify it!”
“I don’t eat meat.”
Alistair laughed. “It’s an expression. On Earth ‘eating meat’ meant doing something prohibited. Like driving autos, using modern medicine, buying a computer… you know, the sort of thing 99% of all Gaians do. A true Gaian, if he could be found, would call you a carnivore. Of course, no religion has ever been faithfully followed by more than a small handful of adherents. Gaianism is no different.”
The woman shook in her seat, and her knuckles went livid from gripping the edge of the desk. The keyboard even rattled on its holder, but she did not reply, finally mastering her emotion. A moment later, one of the aircraft floating in the 3D display before them blinked red. The Gaian touched it with her finger and the display changed, giving them a view of the cockpit where Mordecai and Bert were sitting. Bert’s hands were bound to his sides.
“Can you hear me, Mordecai?”
“Roger.”
“Take off on your go.”
A wobble of Mordecai’s head was the only indication the craft was put in motion.
“How long do we have?”
“Eleven minutes.”
“They got to the hangar pretty fast.”
She shrugged. “If you know the way, it doesn’t take very long.”
“Let me see a map of the area. I need to see where the missile is and where Mordecai is.”
She complied with a few keystrokes.
“The missile’s coming in from west northwest, Mordecai.”
“Copy. I’ve got it on my display. This is an old model. Handles funny.”
The sound of concussion fire broke out, several shots startling Alistair enough that he lost his grip on the rifle and only the strap over his shoulder kept it from falling. A shower of sparks from a nearby computer station erupted, and the overhead lights flickered for a moment before coming back.
He spun around as the sparks rained down. Two Gaians lay twitching on the floor, the concussive force of Odin’s gun, set to a fine point, having torn into their flesh just like a bullet. One of the Gaians had charged Odin while another charged at Alistair. Odin downed them both, though one of his shots missed and took out a computer station which buzzed, popped and hissed with tiny flashes of light. Alistair viewed t
he carnage without comment. The damaged computer crackled one more time and fell silent.
“Take them into the hall,” said Alistair. “And have them lay down on their faces. Five feet of separation between each one.”
“What the hell happened in there?” demanded Mordecai.
Odin marched the Gaians outside and Alistair returned his attention to the 3D display.
“Minor uprising. Nothing to worry about.” To the Gaian he said, “What’s the missile’s ETA?”
“ETA?”
“Estimated Time of Arrival.”
“Eight minutes.”
“Time to intercept?”
“Three and a half minutes.”
“I confirm. Three and a half minutes.”
Alistair grabbed a nearby chair and collapsed into it. “How many hours do you have in the air?”
“None. I did space flight.”
“Well that explains why you thought it handled funny!”
“Stop your worrying. It’s not much different than space flight. Just a little drag from the atmosphere.”
“How many hours in space did you have?”
“Stop worrying.”
Alistair ceased his pestering, leaving him nothing to do but sit and leave sweat stains. As time passed, the dots on the map, one representing Mordecai’s craft and the other the missile, drew closer and closer. Every so often the Gaian would update the time to intercept, and Mordecai would confirm it.
Many dozens of miles away, Mordecai stopped the acceleration driving him and his passenger deep into their seats. Even from the height of a mile over the ground, the land moved past in a blur of different shades of green. Then the blur became a deep blue, and Mordecai, checking his windshield which doubled as a computer display, confirmed he was now flying over the ocean. He passed through a cloud, to him nothing more than an ephemeral blink of white.
When a green light flashed on his windshield, he confirmed for the command center that he was nearing striking distance. Then the light turned red. Mordecai prepped the laser and the computer had it aimed and ready to fire. His thumb hovered over the button, and for a moment he felt he would let the missile slip by, let it continue to the city while he flew away. He pictured Alistair’s burning, mutilated corpse; he pictured his entire private security system burning with it. But there were other Gaian cities, other Gaians who would come for him. He knew this, knew he needed everything they could take from Floralel. He even recognized he needed Alistair, at least for now.
Grimacing, almost snarling, Mordecai pressed hard on the button. The red light instantly stopped flashing and there was a small explosion in the sky ahead. A dark cloud billowed, expanding from the center of the explosion. It grew larger in his windshield until his craft passed through, resulting in a dark gray blink almost too fleeting to notice.
Over the communication system, he heard Alistair demanding confirmation the missile was down, but he did not reply. Instead, he dropped a lazy finger over the switch to the com system and turned it off. Eventually, he turned the craft around and headed back to Floralel.
Chapter 74
In the end, many more missiles were launched at Floralel. The attacks were not well coordinated, but Mordecai was kept busy for some time, picking off one attack after another. It was an act of trickery that stopped the assault. Bert took Alistair to the main power station and Mordecai allowed one last missile to approach the city. Just when it crossed the border of attack range, Alistair killed the power at the same moment Mordecai downed the missile. To the other Gaian cities, it appeared Floralel was obliterated. While frost claimed all surfaces and snow fell in the long night of the eclipse, they raided the Gaian stores and equipment. Mordecai and Ryan, who, at Alistair’s insistence, received some training from Mordecai, made many trips to transport their new materials.
What took them days to traverse now took them minutes. What was a journey of sweat and saddle soreness with nights spent on hard ground was now a brief flight in a cushioned seat, little more inconvenient than a man’s trip from his living room to his pantry. It was the difference between the Bronze Age and the Space Age. Alistair, Giselle, Taribo and the five Singulatarians, after hours of ransacking and finally detonating a bomb to destroy Floralel, rode in the back of a craft piloted by Ryan, bursting with pride such that Alistair wondered how he had gotten the restraining straps to fit over his chest.
Ryan flew no more than half a mile above the ground. Following Alistair’s instructions, he accelerated for the first half of the trip, driving them back into their seats to the limits of their ease and comfort, and then decelerated for the second half, at which point the seats of all but the pilot swiveled around and they were again driven into their seats. It was practical flying with no flourishes. There were control and guidance systems that made it a relatively easy matter to fly, so Ryan learned the basics in a short time. Their accompanying craft, piloted by the more experienced Mordecai, swept into a wide arc over the north beach of their island home, then, at the end of the arc, descended almost to the surface of the sea and skimmed over it, tearing at the smooth water and throwing up spray before finally coming to an abrupt stop in a field south of the beach. The gathered crowd was delighted by the display and a great cheer arose.
As Alistair looked out the window, seeing two rows of aircraft neatly lined up in the large clearing, he felt fingers scratch the back of his head and he turned to smile at Giselle. Having availed himself of the Gaian facilities, he was freshly shaved and his hair was buzzed short once more. Giselle had only just developed the habit of twirling his hair; now she turned to scratching it instead.
The guidance system on the aircraft cushioned the landing so that their return to earth was like settling into a pile of pillows. The soft whir of the engine, which Alistair had ceased to notice, briefly elicited his attention by going quiet and was replaced by the more insistent buzz of the walk ramp being lowered. The eight passengers – Singulatarians included – and one pilot unclasped their restraining straps and moved down the carpeted aisles to the exit. When the door was lifted, the sounds of the crowd hit them, and they walked down the ramp to a renewed gust of applause and cheers.
Santiago, rifle strapped to his right shoulder, was at the bottom, unable to contain an approving smile. Seized by a surge of affection, he and Alistair embraced with a few rough slaps on the back, and they allowed themselves a coarse and hearty laugh.
“For three hundred years this moon was a prison planet,” said the Argentinean. “Never has there been a victory over the Gaians in all that time.”
“It’s just the beginning,” Alistair promised.
Giselle elbowed in to receive a welcome hug and kiss on the cheek, and Miklos met Taribo and gripped his friend’s shoulders before delivering a slap to both. Amid the mirth, Alistair glanced at the other craft, which landed a couple hundred feet away, and saw Mordecai and the rest descending from their walk ramp. Time for another struggle, he thought, steeling himself.
To Santiago he said, “Is Darion here?”
“I told him you were arriving this morning. He said he would be here.”
“And Gregory?”
“Busy.”
Taking the information with a nod, Alistair signaled to Giselle and his men to follow him and headed towards Mordecai’s craft. As he went, like a satellite tugging at the water of the planet it orbits, he drew the crowd with him so that a sort of high tide of bodies gathered near him and Mordecai. Mordecai turned from greeting his men to face Alistair, and Duke, Odin and Wei Bai, who were similarly engaged, turned as well. Alistair addressed them without preamble, in a voice loud enough for his targets to hear but without regard to others listening in.
“We can divide up the goods now and go our separate ways.”
“This instant?” asked Duke.
“No time like the present. Giselle and Shukri compiled a list of what we have and what crate it was stored in. The equipment and the aircraft… we can get this over with quickly.”
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The crowd stirred as they strained to hear what was going on.
“You want to start now?” Mordecai asked in disbelief.
“We can meet tonight to divide it. Right now you can survey the lists and plan what you would like to take. I propose each team get credits and we’ll bid for the different items with them.”
“I have no objection,” said Duke, “but I should like to talk with some of the scientists first.”
“The Singulatarians work for me. They’ll be busy working with Mr. Chesterton in preparation for the bidding.”
This pronouncement was met with angry glares.
“It is bad form to snatch everything up for yourself, Alistair,” said Wei Bai. “You take everything: the hovercraft that brought the dreadbots, the weapons it carried… now you claim the Singulatarians—”
“The Singulatarians have consented to work for me. I am paying them. No one owes you their advice, their knowledge, or anything else. If you lack something and wish to get what Nature has not freely provided for you, then you must come to terms with someone who can help you. Nothing is owed to you that you do not earn. You have earned a right to a share of the spoils… but if your knowledge of the equipment is wanting you must clear that up on your own. Neither I nor anyone who works for me owes you this service free of charge.”
“It seems to me,” said Mordecai, “that your talk of freedom and anarchy is not backed by any substance. You want to grab power for yourself.”
“That is more absurd than I care to respond to,” Alistair replied, and indicated the conversation was finished by turning away.
During the gathering, Darion Chesterton appeared with a jaunty step, sporting an ornately carved cane that, as far as anyone could tell, served little practical purpose. As he lightly bounced along the ground he twirled it, or carried it on his shoulder like a rifle. Occasionally he would press the end of it into the ground but he leaned little weight on it. His spry and energetic legs did not require support. A manservant followed close by, carrying a torch. As he strolled through the crowd with a cheerful smile, he nodded at bemused onlookers when he was not gazing about with a self satisfied air. Upon seeing Alistair and the rest he bowed elegantly and came over to meet him.
Withûr We Page 74