by Webb, Nick
“Installed a new garden,” Schroeder said heartily. “Wife was getting on my case. ‘The garden’s boring, the house is boring, why can’t we refinish everything?’” He laughed. “The garden was less expensive than tearing the whole place apart.”
Nhean smiled. His body went through the motions of talking weather-shielding, heat management, and garden arrangements, but his mind was in overdrive. There would be little to no chance of being overheard here in these halls, but Schroeder was still worried enough not to discuss the reason for Nhean’s visit.
What had he found?
The shuttle flight through the acid-yellow clouds was jarringly familiar. Schroeder kept up a pleasant chatter about the prettiness of plants compared to their CO2 processing capabilities, and Nhean stared out at the clouds and wondered if he had missed this place.
He had not, he decided. The illusion of simplicity in that time—no attacks, no fleets massing—had been undermined by the knowledge that all of the open unpleasantness was coming. It had been inevitable. He could feel only relief that it had begun.
A brief walk from Schroeder’s shuttle bay led them up to a garden that, Nhean had to admit, was exquisite. Curved paths led between explosions of green and clusters of flowers, and a few broad-leafed trees provided surprisingly welcome patches of shade under the glass ceiling.
It was in one of these shady alcoves that Schroeder took a tablet out of his pocket and pulled up a video. He handed the tablet to Nhean without comment.
Nhean watched, his brow furrowed with concentration. “Mercury?”
Schroeder nodded silently.
Nhean watched as the ships descended and swarmed the hangar. Rovers were extracted and loaded, and the ships were gone again within minutes.
He slowed down the feed and watched again. Old style Telestine fighters were accompanying the ships. Feathers. Larsen had made that clear in his reports to Walker and Morgan, but the fleet’s surveillance of the incident—having been in orbit—had been minimal, and the hangar’s own security feeds seemed to have been wiped. This was the first suggestion Nhean had received that there was a tape at all.
He pushed away the thought that he was slipping and looked speculatively at Schroeder. “Where’d you get this?”
Schroeder smiled. “I have many interests on Mercury. I like to make sure they’re doing well when I’m not there.”
Nhean sighed. “You know I have to share this with the fleet.”
“I know,” Schroeder said peaceably. He shrugged when Nhean raised an eyebrow. “End of the world and all that. Can’t afford to be picky about who knows my business.”
“I thought we were keeping the end of the world part under wraps,” Nhean murmured.
“Not for the ones with contacts in multiple stations.” Schroeder shrugged. “Here’s the strange part, though. I have some interests on Vesta as well, and guess where those rovers ended up?”
“…Vesta?”
“I should have said, guess who ended up owning them.”
“Ah.” Nhean frowned. “Now that you mention it, that is a good question.”
“And a strange answer.” Schroeder looked oddly troubled. “It’s the Daughters of Ascension.”
Nhean froze. “You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. I even confirmed serial numbers. On the one hand, you know religious orders—all about greater morals, but not so scrupulous about how their goals get carried out, eh?” Schroeder shook his head. “There’s some like that on the main hub. They keep sending us pamphlets—disturbing stuff.” He shook his head. “Anyway, what makes me wonder is this. Say the Telestine military stole those rovers. Why? Why bother? And why sell them? And why sell them to the Daughters of Ascension, of all people? Why do they need them?”
Nhean sank down onto a nearby bench, rubbing his forehead in a useless attempt to jostle the answer free from his mind.
Nothing was coming to him though.
“What the hell does a religious organization need with mining rovers?”
“I was hoping you would know.” Schroeder joined him on the bench. “Hell, ask the cult here. Maybe they’d know, eh?” He laughed, but sobered quickly. “I hope I haven’t sent you on a wild goose chase.”
“I don’t think so.” Nhean stared at the tablet, and then sighed. “Yes, point me in the direction of that cult.”
“You’re serious?” Schroeder frowned at him.
“Why not? I’m here.” Nhean shrugged. “And maybe they just want to make sure they can get to their bunkers when the apocalypse hits?”
Schroeder laughed and pulled him up. “Come on, then. Let’s get you some lunch and I’ll get you over to the main hub. Want me to snag you a place on one of my transports, back toward the fleet?”
“We’ll see.” Nhean followed his friend through the winding paths and toward the main house. “And thank you for this.”
“You think it’s worth something, then?” Schroeder looked heartened. “That’s good.”
“I do.” Nhean thought back to Ka'sagra's almost supernatural calm, her total self assurance. Almost like Oliver Pemba’s smug confidence that he knew Worthlin would change his vote. “Information is always leverage, don’t you think?”
Schroeder paused near the house to pick several fresh strawberries hanging out from a gilded pot on the deck.
“Yes, especially when one knows how to use it, no?”
Nhean didn’t reply. He didn’t know how to use this information. Schroeder shrugged, and went inside.
But he would know how, soon. Somehow, I will see the pattern in their plans. He was so close. He had to find the connective thread, not just for his own interests, but for survival of the human race. Nhean clenched his fists, then stretched his fingers out in anticipation of the data he would soon be sifting during his flight back to the fleet.
If he failed, he might as well stay and enjoy the strawberries before the literal end of all worlds.
Chapter Forty-Four
Earth, Low Orbit
Aggy II Shuttle
They weren’t going to make it. That was Pike’s only thought as the shuttle screamed up into the atmosphere, the comm units buzzing as Rychenkov tersely told James to get the ship up and out if they weren’t back within a certain time frame and then ignoring their questions—are you leaving us here?!—as he cut the transmission. He was hardly focusing on anything but the screens. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the trajectory Nhean had sent, tracking now against their own. They weren’t going to make it.
They weren’t going to make it, but not a single one of them suggested the possibility of turning back. Rychenkov’s hands were steady on the controls as he guided the shuttle up, sky blue fading ever deeper and at last, showing black above the shining light of the Earth below them.
They skipped along the atmosphere, each rise sending objects floating gently in the cabin, to fall partway down again with the descent and the skip. The girl’s hair was a lion’s mane of gold around her pale face, her eyes as black as the night outside. The tears were dried now, and it was hard to tell if she even remembered what she had seen in the laboratories. Her eyes were intent on the screen, one hand clenched over the back of the chair.
They weren’t going to make it.
The comm units crackled. “Santa Maria to the Aggy II, Nhean has advised us that there are three detachments of feathers inbound on the drone vessel’s trajectory.” A pause, and Pike could almost see Walker giving orders. “Admiral Walker orders you to break off your attack if, at any time, you believe that completing it will bring you into the blast radius or otherwise endanger your lives.”
“Orders received and acknowledged.” It was Rychenkov who responded. “Please advise on the expected size of the blast radius.”
In the pause, they could do nothing more than imagine the waves racing outward, fizzing past the sun and its interference.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Pike drummed his fingers on his leg. His stomach heaved as they made one l
ast bounce. The drone ship was only fifty kilometers from Tokyo, they didn’t have time to wait for this.
“Aggy II, you are advised to remain twelve kilometers at least from the city.”
“Twelve kilometers?” Pike reached for the comm unit.
“Sit,” Rychenkov snapped. He pushed Pike away. “Sit, and buckle yourself in. Lapushka, you take the copilot’s chair. Start working your magic.” He turned to give Pike a look over his shoulder. “We’ll do what we can, but there’s no use running ourselves into a nuke, or whatever that blasted thing is.”
They descended hard enough that Pike saw stars and the girl gave a little cry of pain. She gasped for breath as she dragged the piece of Telestine technology from the lab onto her lap, wrapped her hands around it, and closed her eyes.
She missed their view of the Pacific, glinting with early morning sun and scattered with clouds. A curved chain of islands were briefly visible to the south before Rychenkov banked toward Japan. The clouds were coming up fast, and there was no way to see anything with their bare eyes at this distance.
The viewscreen zoomed in, picture shaking wildly as the shuttle shuddered on re-entry. The drone ship swam into view. It was coming up on a small spur of land. One side of a bay. On the other side gleamed New Tokyo—Telestine Tokyo. A Telestine mega-city. If it hadn’t been for the ocean, and for the massive size of the city itself, it might have looked like Denver all over again: a half destroyed city, picked apart by drones and machines, lying in the shadow of a gleaming technological masterpiece floating above.
The engines on the drone ship blazed suddenly. It was in full burn, even in the atmosphere.
“Jesus Christ, is he doing interplanetary acceleration?” Pike’s fingers clenched around the straps that held him to his chair.
“Yes,” Rychenkov said grimly. “He is.”
And then the drone ship dipped sharply, turning nose down toward the water. The girl made a tiny sound. She grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut with the effort. She gasped in pain and frustration as the nose of the vessel came up again, and her eyes opened to focus on the viewscreen.
“You were trying to make him crash,” Pike said softly. “Weren’t you?”
“Better him than all of us,” Rychenkov snapped.
“Yes, but if we could recover the bomb—”
The girl only shook her head.
The first shots from the feathers hit it as they closed in. Zooming out, they could see that the first of the feather wings had come close enough to fire—and they were, all out.
“Committing to the bit,” Rychenkov said softly. He shook his head.
“Huh?” Pike looked over at him, momentarily distracted.
“Tel’rabim.” Rychenkov nodded at the feathers. “Sending in the defenders. He has them shooting, but notice how they’re not doing much damage? Or maybe they will take it down—but I bet you the bomb will still go if they do. He has it all planned out. He’s good, that one. A sociopath, mind you—but good.” He looked over at the girl. “What do you say, Lapushka? Another try, or get the hell out of here?”
The girl didn’t hesitate. She stabbed a finger forward at the screen.
“Another try it is.” Rychenkov kept them diving, coming down hard toward the plane of battle as gravity threw them against their harnesses. The girl’s face was twisted in anguish. She gripped the shard of the computer so hard that the plastic was cutting into her palms, but she did not seem to notice. Whether she was making any headway at all, Pike could not say, and he felt oddly panicked at the thought of the drone, flying calmly to its death with the girl’s orders battering at its mind. Did it fear its fate? Did it fear her?
“Bring us closer,” he said urgently, but the girl opened her eyes and gripped his hand. She shook her head fiercely.
“She’s right,” Rychenkov said quietly. “And so’s your Admiral. They planned it well—no use killing ourselves to try to stop it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, the feathers are making quick work of it.”
The ship was barely flying now, dropping altitude fast. It wasn’t going to make it to the edge of that shining city, but the feathers kept firing all the same, bullets tearing into the hull to send the drone ship careening sideways, struggling to right itself.
Dropping, dropping, and still they fired. The feathers circled, a cone of death, reminding Pike of nothing so much as a pack of wild dogs around a kill. He had time to wonder if the desire for revenge ran as strongly in Telestine’s as humans, and if they would spit on the pilot’s body when it was recovered.
Rychenkov had time to ask, quietly, “Did they make it in time?”
They both had time, just barely, to see the girl shake her head.
And then the city, the shining, hovering citadel over the ruins of Human Tokyo, disappeared in a blaze of white. Rychenkov yelled, Pike flinched away from the blast, and all too quickly, the shock wave caught them. It rippled through the air to tumble them over, and the sides of the shuttle creaked. They tumbled end over end, and Pike gripped the straps of his chair for dear life and watched the girl’s hair rise over her shoulders and drop down again as Rychenkov piloted the craft out of the spin and turned away to climb once more into the atmosphere.
In the silence, still cursing as the pain in his eyes faded, Rychenkov brought up the feed from rear-facing cameras on the viewscreen.
A mushroom cloud rose over Tokyo, with a ring of smoke already dissipating as it spread away. Below it all in the early morning light hung what was left of the city. Huge chunks of it had been torn away to smash the human city below, and white-capped waves showed where pieces had been flung miles out to sea. Metal was fading from white to a dull red, and what remained hung awkwardly, a floating fragment of a city with its windows blown away and its metal twisted. Extinguished. Broken.
“He took an entire mega-city,” Pike whispered. “He killed that many—just for the excuse to take us down. And if he did that to them, what in the name of God is he planning to do to us?”
Chapter Forty-Five
Mars
Carina Station
Koh Rong
Nhean slipped into the silent halls of the Koh Rong with a sigh of relief. He savored the quiet as he walked. No one watching him, no one to take note of where he was, no one he had to smile at. He’d told himself that he hated his estates on Venus, and that he was glad to leave behind the political posturing of the rich and powerful there and head back join up with the fleet at Mars. But being among the fleet made him long for the quiet. The problems plaguing humanity had seemed simpler when he hadn’t had to meet any of them. He didn’t like remembering faces, knowing that some would be lost and others saved.
The door to his state room was open and he frowned. It was too late to hide the fact that he was in the ship, as his footfalls would have been impossible to miss, but he still moved cautiously as he pushed the door open. Mars cast a reddish glow through the room from the side window, and there was a smudge in the darkness, a shape in one shadow. The figure shifted as he opened the door, and he had the sense of an animal seeking its burrow. The movement was so unfamiliar that it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing.
“Parees?”
His first though was that this was impossible. Parees had been at Bollard Station. With the Ringers. He’d sent photographs, but nothing else. Nhean had thought he was still there, still learning.
He hadn’t sent word that he was coming back.
But he was here.
Parees moved again, though he did not step into the light. He hunched his thin shoulders. Bruises speckled arms that had grown pale in the closeted darkness of the cargo ships.
“Are you….” Nhean found his throat tight with fear. “What did they do to you?”
Parees started laughing at that, a high, wild sound. “Nothing. Nothing that matters.”
“Parees, what happened?” His voice urgent, Nhean drew the other man to the bed and pressed him down to sit. “Stay there. Do you need food? Water? … Pi
lls?” He could hear the fear in his own voice.
“No.” Parees looked around himself.
“You have to tell me who did this.” Nhean crouched down. “I told them on the ship that they weren’t to touch you—I said you were part of the Karenov clan.” One of the first cargo families, the Karenovs had spread until they had contacts in almost every station. They were always looking for more advantage, and had eagerly accepted Nhean’s payment to carry messages, offer protection for his informants, and pass along any information of note. No one in their right minds would hurt one of their operatives.
“It doesn’t matter. I got back.”
“Parees.” Nhean crouched, searching the other man’s gaze. Something was not right there. The man wasn’t all there any longer. “Start at the beginning. How was the trip out to Bollard Station?”
“Fine.” A breath of a word.
The questions needed to be more specific, Nhean reminded himself. Parees had clearly endured some trauma on the journey. Broad questions would invite panic.
“Did any of the crew hurt you on the journey out?” He kept his voice light, impersonal.
“No.”
“Did any of the crew hurt you on the journey back?” He hadn’t even known that Parees was on his way back yet. Nhean swallowed. Had he missed a message? What was going on?
Parees hesitated.
“Parees, nothing’s going to happen if you tell me. I just want to know. Did anyone hurt you on the way back?”
“No.”
“So these bruises happened on the station, then.”
“I can’t talk about it!”
Cold certainty settled in the pit of Nhean’s stomach. Parees had been younger than he said he was when he escaped Pluto’s Zetian Station, and he’d refused to discuss why he left.
“Parees, did someone you know do this to you?”
Parees shook his head wildly. He scrambled away over the covers.
“Parees. Parees. You don’t have to answer. You’re all right. You’re here. You’re safe.” Nhean stretched his hands out, fingers splayed. “You’re safe here,” he repeated. “You don’t have to tell me what happened.”