“Yes, but what is it?”
“The lives of one thousand two hundred and three people,” Keelraiser said. “Not quite a guarantee, but of course, we rriksti are known for dishonesty. It’s as good as we’re going to get. Whether it will have been worth the price …” He shrugged. “Up to you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m apologizing, of course.”
“What for?”
“I was always a Krijistal officer.” Keelraiser turned and left the room.
CHAPTER 6
Jack chased Keelraiser, heart sinking. He caught the door on the backswing—and stopped short.
The common room was dark, and packed. The rustle and murmur of a human crowd replaced the Imfi silence. Rriksti sat on the benches. Humans filled the rest of the space, standing room only. The interconnect door to CELL 4 opened as Jack watched, and another dozen humans came in.
Harry Windsor had got his wish, except not. It looked like half of CELL had squeezed in here, and yet no one was attacking the rriksti, or even looked like they were thinking about it. They were just standing there like a crowd at a music festival, facing the big screen on the wall, which still displayed its error message.
The rriksti, meanwhile, were eating from communal bowls of white slop. Jack guessed pure sugar, mixed with water to make it stay on their spoons. Others used screwdrivers and their claw-like fingernails to dismantle tablets and sensors … sorry, food. Someone must have told the CELLies that rriksti could eat the rare metals used in electronic devices.
The rriksti kept their eyes on their meal, indifferent to the humans around them, or pretending to be, as Keelraiser strode to the front of the crowd.
Jack started to follow him. But the crowd, which had parted for Keelraiser, blocked his way. “Who are you?” said a man, looking around at him.
“Acting commander of the—”
“Of a wreck,” the man said triumphantly. He was much younger than Jack and clearly thought he was hot shit for living on the moon. “Your reactor polluted a whole goddamn mountain range.”
Jack had no comeback to that. He turned away. People were sitting on the kitchen counter. Someone leaned down and gave him a hand up. Skyler. “Thanks.” Jack squeezed onto the counter beside him. They sat with their legs dangling. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure. Hriklif said Keelraiser is going to make some kind of announcement.” Skyler was tense.
So whatever Keelraiser was about to do, he’d planned it all along. Then again, the scrap of plastic Jack had found in his mouth, whatever it was, proved that.
Keelraiser reached the screen. Arms folded behind his back, chest puffed out, he faced the crowd. There was a table in front of the screen, covered with a tarp that hid something lumpy. James Coetzee sat behind the table, playing with a pen. Skyler pointed out Hriklif, standing at one end of the screen, fiddling with a laptop.
The screen rebooted. Windows-blue light spilled over the crowd. Jack scanned the sea of faces. Their rapt expectancy chilled him to the core. He spotted Linda and Koichi, over by the ramp. He couldn’t see Harry Windsor.
Suddenly the screen flashed white. The humans jumped. A familiar animation played, together with a burst of music. The BBC news theme! Jack laughed out loud. He was the only one who did.
A long-distance video of the Lightbringer leapt onto the screen. It lay like a giant turd between misty hills covered with jungle so thick it looked like broccoli. Those who had never seen the Lightbringer before, which was almost everyone, gasped and yelped. Jack leant forward, intent on extracting every detail from the footage.
Scars glinted silver in the sunlight—the Lightbringer’s hull had taken a beating during its unpowered landing. A raw gash through the trees traced the path of its final skid. It cast a long morning shadow. Birds circled. A column of ants crawled along the scar in the jungle. No—the birds were airplanes, and the ants were lorries. They put the alien ship in perspective. The thing was one kilometer high and five kilometers long, the size of Ben Nevis. But what horrified Jack was the fact the lorries were there at all. They proved the Lightbringer had established contact with … well, people who had lorries, and stuff to put in them. Stuff to deliver.
He was about to point them out to Skyler when the scene changed. A gloomy industrial interior. Knobbly metal walls bulged in alien curves. At long last, Jack was seeing inside the Lightbringer. The room seemed to be too high and too narrow even for rriksti. The floor sloped. Of course—the ship had landed on its side. Rriksti moved around on undulations like hardened lava, unpacking boxes.
A leathery reporter walked into the picture. “Hello. I’m here on the Lightbringer, where we have the honor of being the first humans to be invited aboard. The first thing you notice is the distinctive scent of another planet. It’s hard to describe, but it’s rather like the sea. It’s … pleasant. The second thing is the courtesy and grace of the rriksti, as they call themselves. They’re not at all the monsters that some led us to expect. And that brings me to the one and only Hannah Ginsburg, who has granted us her first interview since returning to Earth.”
Skyler clutched Jack’s arm.
Hannah walked on screen.
She wore cutoffs and a t-shirt tied under her breasts. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She rolled a bottle of Primus beer over her forehead. “Damn, it’s hot. Before we start, can I get one thing clear? You can distribute this worldwide? Without satellite coverage?”
The reporter said something about a microwave truck and undersea cables.
“OK. It’s just really important for us to get our message out.” Hannah clicked on a camera-ready smile. “Hi, everyone! I cannot tell you how good it feels to be back on Earth.”
“And it’s an honor to meet you in person, Hannah.”
“Uh huh,” Hannah said.
“OK. The arrival of the Lightbringer has been devastating for some parts of the world,” the reporter said. “There’ve been claims of bombardment, in contradiction to your previous statements that the rriksti come in peace. In fact, the Lightbringer’s fighters are still operational, aren’t they? Can you tell me about the missions they are carrying out?”
“Fighters?” Jack said.
“Shuttles, not fighters,” Hannah said, as if answering him.
“Fuck,” Jack said. “They must have mended some of them along the way.” If the shuttles were the same make as the Cloudeater, they were unarmed, but that did not mean they couldn’t carry bombs. “Why doesn’t someone just fucking nuke them?”
“Quiet,” hissed the people around him.
Hannah was still speaking. “I can’t reveal the exact nature of those missions, but you should know that the United States and Russia targeted us without provocation. So it would be understandable if we acted in self-defense. But I can assure you that if there’s been any bombardment, it is limited to selected military targets. Look, is anyone really unhappy about eliminating weapons of mass destruction?”
“Ha ha; good point,” the reporter said.
“That’s what I’m saying. We come in peace.”
Hannah continued to explain how the rriksti really just wanted to be friends. Jack glanced at Skyler. After this, surely even he would have to accept that Hannah was not on their side anymore.
The reporter deftly interrupted Hannah’s spiel about interstellar friendship. “So picking up on what you’ve said, there has been a lot of speculation about the advanced technologies the Lightbringer possesses. Nuclear fusion, is that correct?”
“Yes. Proton-lithium 6. Muon-catalyzed.”
“Amazing. I’m sure you understand how transformative that could be for Earth. And can I ask about the other technologies we’ve heard about? Batteries with thousands of times the storage capacity of our own? Smart materials? Advanced medical treatments …”
“Oh God, yeah.” Hannah swigged from her bottle of beer.
A rriksti stalked into the picture. It had silver bio-antennas. It wore a uniform ident
ical to Keelraiser’s. Jack had never before seen a rriksti built like a brick shithouse. He had now. Hannah’s head only came up to its sternum. It—all right, probably he—wrapped a possessive arm around her waist, six fingers resting on her bare midriff. Skyler moaned quietly.
“This is the ground commander of the rriksti crew,” the reporter said, looking like he wanted to run away. So he didn’t totally lack a self-preservation instinct.
“Greetings, Earthlings,” the rriksti said, his lips opening and shutting in a grotesque mimicry of human speech. “I am Ripstiggr. In English, my name would be Godsgift.” He opened his mouth wider in a facsimile of a smile. “I didn’t pick it.”
The reporter chuckled nervously.
“We’ve come to make your lives better than you ever imagined. We’re not a warlike people! If you attack us, we will defend ourselves. But our hand is outstretched in friendship. To put it in human terms, we seek an interstellar handshake between Imf and Earth.”
The video froze on a still of the hulking, silver-haired rriksti gripping the reporter’s hand in what looked more like the beginning of a judo throw.
The sheer hypocrisy of these claims of friendship made Jack want to puke.
Everyone watching in the hab chattered excitedly.
The babble stopped when Keelraiser stepped in front of the screen. He hitched one lean buttock on the edge of the table and spoke through the PA system.
“I apologize for insulting your intelligence.”
Dead silence.
“My colleagues on Earth are employing a time-honored strategy known as blatant lying. It’s understandable. They have a population of eight billion morons to pacify.”
Titters.
“You are exceptional, highly intelligent human beings. So I’ll tell you the truth. This is an invasion.”
The silence was unbearable.
“We didn’t travel four and a half light years to shake hands. We came to invade and conquer your planet. Needless to say, this moon also falls within our sphere of conquest. Thus—please understand, I’m being completely honest, because I believe you can handle the truth—you have two options. First, you can resist, and die.”
Hriklif tugged the tarp off the table. On it lay the corpses of the two men who had been killed earlier, one by the rriksti, one by Alexei. They still wore their spacesuits. Blood had leaked onto the pristine white surface of the table.
People gasped, cowered. A woman in the crowd started to scream like a tea kettle.
“Shut up and listen,” Keelraiser said. The people around the woman silenced her. “That’s one option. There is a second option. You can work for us. With us, I might say if I were as dishonest as my friends. I am not. With us, yes, but always for us.”
James Coetzee, seated at the end of the table with the corpses on it, nodded earnestly. Jack’s blood boiled. He felt dizzy, and realized it had been a while since he breathed.
“If you choose to work for us, you’ll have access to our technology.”
Coetzee stood up and touched his right earlobe. “I’ve already received a rriksti implant,” he said with smug nonchalance. “It’s a communications device. It enables me to talk to the rriksti and hear their voices without intermediation. No side effects—” He shrugged. “It’s great.”
“That’s a very small example of what we have to offer,” Keelraiser said. “But it’s a necessary first step. Think of it as an employee ID.”
Cleanmay, the rriksti doctor, stepped forward with one of the rriksti who had served as a nurse on the Cloudeater.
“Form two queues,” Keelraiser said. “For us.”
He gestured at Cleanmay.
“Against us.”
With a stop-motion flickering rriksti movement, he drew the longer of the two knives he’d taken from the scullery. Then he resumed his place, sitting on the edge of the table, in front of the corpses, holding the knife casually on his knee. It was crystal clear what against meant.
The crowd wobbled like a blob of jelly. Hriklif, Tiggresit, and some of the other rriksti shaped the group flinch into a queue.
A single queue.
No one lined up in front of Keelraiser.
As the humans queued, the seated rriksti carried on eating their sugar gruel and semiconductors. They were either embarrassed by the whole performance … or they had expected it.
Jack and Skyler joined the queue now snaking through the common room. Hriklif grabbed Skyler’s arm. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh?” Skyler said. “We special or something?”
“Yes, of course you’re special. You’re our friends.”
“Well, whoop-de-doo,” Skyler said. “How long has Keelraiser been planning to pull a fast one on us?”
“The plan was to rain death and destruction on Earth. That’s off the table, obviously, so, um, I think they’re making it up as he goes along.”
“They?” Jack said.
Hriklif looked miserable. “Keelraiser and Ripstiggr. They spent ages talking while we were on the Cloudeater.”
“Got it,” Jack said. “Good to know.”
Skyler fell out of line. Jack heard him firing questions about Hannah at Hriklilf. Jack shuffled along with the others. It seemed to take him a year to reach the front of the room.
As he got closer, he made out what Cleanmay was doing. The rriksti doctor had a large-gauge syringe. He was injecting each person’s earlobe. The nurse held a canister of refills for the syringe. Each operation took approximately 20 seconds. A human medic passed out Bandaids. People weaved away, smiling confusedly.
“Breathe deeply. You’ll just feel a little pinch …”
Cleanmay’s consoling murmurs came through Jack’s headset. There was no sound from Keelraiser, who brooded a few feet away, waiting for takers for Option One. Chin on his chest, he toyed with his knife like some sort of interstellar gangster.
Submit to the Imfi conquest … What are you saying? I’m apologizing, of course. I was always a Krijistal officer.
“I see you’ve got pierced ears.”
If I can fool you, I can fool anyone.
“It’s just like that …”
Well, exactly. You were fooling me all along, weren’t you, Keelraiser? You’ve been lying to me ever since we met.
“It won’t hurt much, I promise …”
Jack could still taste that last kiss. He rubbed his mouth on his sleeve, trying to get rid of it.
Then there were just a few people left ahead of him.
“Jack!”
The whisper came through his headset.
“Jack!”
Alexei stood at the corner of the screen, beckoning. Giles at his side. Giles the showpiece, stood up there for people to stare at. Behold the gifts of Imf. But worst of all, Nene stood there too, hand in hand with Alexei, staring straight ahead. Even she was in on this. Did that mean Alexei, too, had known what was coming? Jack decided he probably had.
“You don’t have to do this,” Alexei hissed.
But yes, yes he did.
And now he stood in front of Cleanmay.
The rriksti doctor opened his mouth in a pained grimace.
“What’s that really?” Jack said, gesturing at the syringe in Cleanmay’s hand.
“We found this injector in the clinic. The humans all have medical information chips implanted subdermally in their hands. It’s not a new technology, even for your people.”
“What’s in the injector now? What are you putting in them?”
“Communications devices. As Keelraiser said.”
“What was wrong with the headsets?”
“It’s a new iteration of the same technology. More convenient. Do you want one? If not, please step aside. There are seven hundred people waiting.”
“No thanks.” Jack stepped aside.
And stood in front of Keelraiser.
Keelraiser raised his head, a glassy look in his eyes.
“I hope you’re fucking well ashamed of yourself,�
� Jack said. Emotion choked his throat. He could hardly get the words out.
“Submit to the Imfi conquest,” Keelraiser said, mechanically.
“I’ll submit to fucking nothing!” Jack yelled. Fury and the pain of betrayal drove him forward, fists swinging.
Keelraiser slid wearily to his feet and stabbed at Jack overhand. Slow. Sloppy. Jack grabbed Keelraiser’s wrist, twisted the knife aside, and punched him in the face—a weak, glancing blow. They grappled, knocking the table back against the screen. People rushed towards them. James Coetzee picked up the chair he’d been sitting in and whirled it.
Pain thudded into the back of Jack’s head. An explosion of white static swallowed his vision. He crumpled.
His last thought was that Keelraiser wasn’t wearing the rosary Jack had given him on the SoD. He should have noticed that before.
After all, Keelraiser had already told him there was no word for love in Rristigul.
CHAPTER 7
The bombers came back a couple of hours after the BBC crew left.
Hannah heard their approach and decided this was her chance. She sat up and laced her new hiking boots, careful not to wake Gurlp, who’d crashed in Hannah’s bivouac on Sleeper Deck B. They had spread sleeping bags on the wall that was now the floor. Above them, a corridor stretched up for half a kilometer like a mine shaft. Everything was sideways. The crew had spent most of the week since they landed salvaging the hydroponics.
The rest of the time they’d spent ducking and covering.
Not a day went by without reconnaissance planes circling in the sky. And not a night went by without bombs falling around the Lightbringer, showering the ship with geysers of dirt.
The Lightbringer was still intact, but Hannah figured it was just a matter of time. After all, how often could the bombers miss?
She stepped over Gurlp. Then she bent and gently stroked the sleeping rriksti’s bio-antennas back from her face. Gurlp had been the first to stick up for Hannah when Ripstiggr accused her of deliberately crashing the Lightbringer. There was a cool chick inside the hardbitten Krijistal shell. Hannah had practically come to think of Gurlp as her rriksti sister.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 5