Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “Try this,” Theo said, characteristically rubbing his face in thought. “It might even make sense of the coincidence part. The Fuller Institute is working on . . . something to do with technology exchange for one of its clients. Corporate, political, foreign, it don’t matter. Part of that technology involves a new aircraft or spacecraft . . . hell, it might even be something to do with optics—you know, what they put on spy satellites and planes.” Theo nodded to himself as he saw the others listening carefully. “So the ex-Commander Stewart has some photographs that he wants analyzed. Maybe they’re secret. So who can he trust?”

  “His family,” Angie said. “Amy Stewart.”

  “You got it,” Theo said. “She’s an astronomer. She knows about photographs. She can take a look at them, say whether they’re real or whatever. But then—”

  “Dr. Petty gets hold of them,” Sikes said.

  Theo shrugged grandly, palms up. His story was done.

  “And they have to take the old guy out to get the photographs back,” Angie said. “Which means that the killer could have been someone hired either by the institute’s client or by the institute itself.”

  Sikes felt relieved. “And Amy could just have been caught in the middle.”

  “Remember what I said about your pants, rook,” Angie warned.

  Sikes felt his cheeks flush as his ex-partner and his new partner exchanged knowing glances. Grazer just looked puzzled.

  “So what do we do?” Grazer asked, looking at Angie.

  “We sound out the institute,” she said. “And thanks to you, we’ve got a real good reason to. We phone up Commander Stewart and tell him Amy is missing and ask if he can use any of his contacts or resources to help us find her. Yeah, that should get us started. Should be pretty easy to tell if he’s up to anything.” She left the credenza and went over to Grazer’s desk, fanning out all his files, to his immediate displeasure. “How’d you come up with all this stuff so fast?”

  Grazer compulsively straightened each folder as Angie finished with it. “Simple, really. I got Stewart’s service record through a military personnel data base.”

  “You’ve got a friend in the Pentagon, right?” Sikes asked.

  Grazer let his face go blank. “I have a friend’s password that let me access the system through my own computer,” he said stiffly. “But that’s all I’m going to say.”

  “That I doubt,” Angie said.

  Grazer sniffed loudly and pretended to ignore the insult. “Then, once I had the service record, it was easy to cross-correlate for news clippings and the material we have in the research library.”

  Sikes was surprised. “We have a library? Where?”

  “In the basement,” Grazer said.

  “So when do we sound them out?” Sikes asked, looking at the other two detectives standing next to Grazer’s desk.

  “The sooner the better,” Angie said. “We should go together.”

  “Hey! How about me?” Grazer asked indignantly.

  “Three of us might be a bit too much police presence,” Angie said. “How about if you go back to your computer and your network of friends and see what you can get for us on who the institute’s clients are?”

  Grazer dug through his files and pulled out a sheet of computer paper. “Here’s the list of them. What else?”

  Theo Miles took the sheet and began to scan it.

  “Well,” Angie said, “then I guess you can come with us and, uh, cover the back door or something. Just in case we make any of the people at the institute nervous.”

  Grazer’s eyes brightened. “I can certainly do that.”

  Then Theo passed the client list over to Angie. “Who’s going to be making who nervous?” he asked. “Check this out. Near the middle.”

  Angie looked at the sheet for a few moments, then passed it over to Sikes.

  Sikes groaned. There was no escape from his worst fear. The three middle entries on the Fuller Institute’s list of clients were the United States Air Force, the Navy, and the State Department.

  “What did I tell you?” Theo said. “What you want to bet it’s spy versus spy?”

  Angie didn’t answer. Her sharp eyes studied Theo, assessing his condition. Sikes didn’t want to know what she was thinking. “Sikes tells me you’ve been on cases where the government might have been involved in a sanctioned homicide,” she said.

  “That’s why I crawled out of my warm bed to be here this afternoon,” Theo said.

  “What would you recommend we do?”

  “I’d recommend you do nothing. You do not want to become involved in any kinda shit like this, no way. You want my opinion, you get yourselves over to the captain’s office, and you just sit there like your legs are useless, and you stay there until he’s called the FBI.”

  “Why the FBI?” Angie asked.

  “Every time FBI guys get involved in something they shouldn’t get involved in, they know it inside of an hour. Washington keeps ’em on a real short leash. All the government-involved cases I stumbled into got transferred over to the FBI and then got conveniently lost. And that’s what you want to do right now. Be real sure you haven’t got anything at all to do with this one.”

  “Why not?” Grazer asked. “We are the police, you know.”

  Theo leaned over Grazer’s desk. “Because, junior, if you start messin’ around with government hit men, the next thing you know they’re going to come sniffin’ around for you. Even if you are the goddamned police.”

  Everyone turned to look at Angie. She picked up Grazer’s phone. “I’ll call the captain,” she said as she punched in an extension number. “We’ll set up a meeting.”

  The captain was going to be back, at the station house by five. Theo said he was going back home to bed, and he’d appreciate it mightily if no one put his name on any of the reports. Grazer, looking even paler than usual, took his rolled-up shoulder holster and gun from a desk drawer and said he was going down to the target range. Sikes looked at his watch. There was no way of knowing what would happen after they met with the captain. “I’m going to get my daughter at school,” he said. “Think I should bring her back here?”

  Theo patted Sikes on the back. “Why, that’s almost paranoid of you, kid. But Kirby’ll be okay.” He smiled sardonically. “Tell her the G-men will only be gunnin’ for her dad this time.”

  Theo was laughing as he left Grazer’s office.

  No one else was.

  “I know it’s not fair,” Sikes told Kirby as he inched along Ventura toward Studio City. “But you’ve got to cut me some slack on this one.” Kirby sat in glacial silence. “I’ve got to go back to work. If I hadn’t picked you up now, then I wouldn’t have been there when you got home. Hell, I wouldn’t even know when you got home.”

  “Daaad, I can look after myself.”

  Sikes tried to think of everything his own parents might have said to him in a similar situation so he could be sure not to say the same things to his daughter. But it wasn’t working.

  “I worry about you, Kirby. I want to make sure you’re going to be safe.”

  He felt Kirby’s eyes digging into him. “Dad? Axe you sure you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, not at all,” Sikes said.

  “No lying, remember?”

  Sikes gritted his teeth. “Okay. A little bit of trouble. I’m in a little bit of trouble.” He made the turn off Ventura, heading toward his apartment building.

  “Dangerous trouble?”

  Sikes hated this conversation. Kirby was just a kid. She shouldn’t be worried about anything like this. “Aw, look,” he said, “I’ve got my new partner in on this, Theo’s helping out, we’re all going to meet with the captain—”

  “The Captain?” Kirby said, her voice rising. “Did you shoot somebody?”

  “No, I didn’t shoot somebody,” Sikes said as he made the turn into his building’s driveway and hit the remote for the garage door. “I just got involved with a complicated case and .
. . it looks like we’re going to need some help, that’s all.”

  “From who?”

  “The FBI,” Sikes said. He drove down into the parking garage.

  “Cool,” Kirby said, impressed.

  That’s better, Sikes thought. Trust a cop’s daughter to trust in authority.

  “Dad? Like, no one’s trying to kill you or anything, are they?”

  So much for no lying. “God, no, honey. Nothing like that.” He turned in his seat to back into his parking spot, glad to be able to avoid her eyes. He’d get Kirby settled with some pizza money and her homework and be back on his way in ten minutes max.

  “You’re sure?”

  Sikes pulled on the parking brake and killed the ignition. Then he undid his seat belt and gave Kirby a hug. “At least you know what it’s like to worry about someone. But no, no one’s out to get your old dad. I just might have to spend a lot of time at the station house tonight, that’s all. There’s nothing for me to worry about, and there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about either. Okay?”

  Sikes sat back. Kirby’s expression was wide-eyed shock, as if she hadn’t believed a single word he said.

  “Come on, Kirby. Don’t make this—”

  He heard the unmistakable click of a .45 automatic an instant before he felt the cold ring of its muzzle kiss his neck, just under his skull.

  “Detective Matthew Sikes?” a muffled voice asked.

  “Don’t hurt my daughter,” Sikes warned.

  “Well, that’s going to be up to you now, isn’t it?”

  Sikes started to turn to face his attacker. But a stunning shock of pain burst against his head as a field of stars exploded across his vision. And just before everything went dark, he thought he saw something move against those stars.

  Coming closer.

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  IN THE OPEN CORRIDORS George walked as a slave. His gait was slow. His head hung listlessly. He had abandoned his molecular probe, yet he moved as if its backpack still weighed him down. Thus disguised he made his way to a water hub.

  The routine of the ship had not yet returned to normal following the previous crayg’s unprecedented torrential release of holy gas. As always, the main corridors were filled with Tenctonese moving from one work station to another or to and from their dormitories according to their shifts. But everyone moved sluggishly, still recovering from the gas overdose. And many were moaning. The sound of their combined voices was like a dirge.

  But George knew it would not last long.

  Under his tunic he carried the dead Overseer’s communication device. It was the same as that which his brother Ruhtra had worn when he had saved Susan and George by leading them into the hidden service tunnels. The Overseers used the small devices to talk to each other from one corridor to another, and to the protected section of the ship where their own quarters were. George had often seen the devices in use as the Overseers gathered data—the location of certain facilities, the actual work schedule for a worker stopped at random in the corridors. It was for exactly that type of information that George had taken the device.

  He came to the water hub that linked nine levels near the section of the ship that housed the power plants. The constant background thrumming of the enormous machines was louder here. Vacuum energy extractors, the Elders called them, as if energy could be extracted from nothing. George didn’t think it could, but George didn’t really care about what the Elders knew. He had come here not to be closer to the power plants but to have many possible avenues of escape open to him in case his plan didn’t work.

  He trudged down one open metal stairway until he was on the catwalk that ringed the water hub’s eighth level. He continued moving along it until he came to a corridor entrance that no one had recently entered. He stepped into it quickly, letting his eyes adjust to the low level of light inside. He peered down into its misty depths. The length of the corridor was deserted.

  George walked rapidly down the corridor to a structure support that angled out from the wall and flattened himself against it. If anyone looked down into the corridor from the catwalk, he would be invisible in the gloom. If anyone looked up the tunnel from the end of the corridor, he would be lost in the glare from the brighter light of the hub beyond. He slipped the communications headband over his head and adjusted it so the device covered his right ear valley. His cupped his hand to it as the Overseers did. Then he spoke gruffly: “Location request.”

  A voice responded so quickly that George almost began to run in fear. It was harsh, almost the type of voice he would expect a machine to have if a machine could talk. “Proceed,” it said.

  George spoke again, as loudly as he dared. “Cargo designation: Ruhtra, Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh, Family: Third Star’s Ocean.”

  The harsh voice took longer to reply this time. George wondered if whoever it was had to consult some master list. If the delay was too long, though, George was prepared to throw the device away and flee.

  But the voice replied before panic set in. “Dormitory ninety-one, segment four hundred, berth eighty-seven, platform three.”

  George stifled the automatic impulse to say “Thank you.” He had never heard an Overseer acknowledge a communication in that way, and he stopped himself just in time. He leaned forward from the structure support and checked the corridor again. Still clear. For a moment he considered using the device to find the location of his son, Finiksa. But two such requests for members of the same lineage might seem suspicious to whoever had spoken to him. There would be time to find Finiksa after joining the rebellion. And it was fitting that it would be Ruhtra through whom he would join.

  George dropped the communications device to the deck and stepped on it, grinding it into rubbish for the scavengers. If he came to a point where he needed another such device, then he would simply kill another Overseer. He found the very fact that he could have a thought like that a sign of his impending freedom. As he ran back to the water hub, he was already planning his route to dormitory ninety-one.

  It took George almost an hour of deliberately slow walking to reach Ruhtra’s dormitory. He successfully passed three Overseer checkpoints along the way. None of the Overseers was interested in him, and after George had passed through the second pair unchallenged he felt invincible. As he approached the third pair, just outside the main corridor leading to dormitory ninety-one, he even walked up to the Overseers as if he had seen them wave him over. But they simply waved him on, continuing to watch the other gray-clad slaves that moved in an unending chain behind him.

  Dormitory ninety-one was almost indistinguishable from George’s own dorm, and he easily found corridor segment four hundred. Most of the Tenctonese who lived in this part of the ship were on their rest shift, and the corridor was crowded. Groups of children ran as best as they were able past the tired adults who gathered in small groups. Podlings cried. The air was thick with the smell of old meatgrowth. And for the first time George saw a dormitory as he imagined the Elders must see them, against memories of the open fields of Tencton, a sky of sweet air higher than the ship was thick, a place with room for all the planet’s tribes to have vast tracts of land and clear water all for themselves.

  For the first time George understood why their religions stressed acceptance. It was either that or madness.

  The closer George moved to berth eighty-seven, the more he was stared at by the others who lived in that segment. He did not belong with them, and they knew it.

  He came to Ruhtra’s berth. The second and third platforms were empty. Gently George shook the shoulder of the frail female who slept on platform one. Her spots were faded by too much sleep.

  “Pardon me, I am trying to find the person who sleeps here on platform three. Do you know him?”

  The old female didn’t respond. George tugged her over. Her face was lined and haggard. “His name is Ruhtra. Can you help me?”

  The old female’s hand shot out and grabbed George by his neck. Startled, he felt th
e cold ridges of a crate-moving claw press against his skin. Then two other pairs of hands grabbed his arms and pulled him away from the sleeping platform. George tensed with fear, yet he was ready to fight to the death with the Overseers who had captured him.

  But they were not Overseers. They were other Tenctonese, dressed just as he was.

  Both of the Tenctonese who had grabbed him were binnaum-ta, and they threw George against the corridor wall and kept him there. One leaned against George, pushing his forearm against George’s throat. Behind the binnaum-ta, the old female rose from her platform. She held her cargo-handler’s claw up so George could take a good look at the metal spikes that helped cargo workers keep their grips on heavy crates. He had no idea how she had managed to smuggle the tool from a work station. Perhaps he was not the only one to rob an Overseer.

  “Why are you here?” the old female croaked, keeping the claw in view.

  George had no quarrel with her or her companions. “I am trying to find Ruhtra,” he said, as calmly as he could.

  “Why?” she asked. A crowd was gathering in the closed-in corridor.

  “Look at my spots,” George said. “That’s why.” His spots and Ruhtra’s clearly showed they were related.

  The binnaum that dug his arm into George reached up with his other hand and picked at George’s spots. George tried to twist away.

  The old female stepped closer. “Overseers look for Ruhtra. You look for Ruhtra. Maybe you’re Overseer.” She spat the final frictive click in the word as if it were something to gag on. “Show your wrists.”

  George held up both his hands and felt his sleeves tugged down. Sharp fingernails scratched roughly at the skin of his wrists in an attempt to peel off any covering he might have there.