But she had a real sister. In America. And she was going to get the hell out of this war zone and find her.
She turned away before she could change her mind, tiptoed along to Maintenance Hatch 16, and climbed down the ladder, through the 3-meter thickness of the asteroid-steel hull, to an airlock that would never be closed again. Two more ladders led down to the ground, a five-storey drop. The ‘up’ ladder bowed under the weight of rriksti infantry and Congolese porters carrying stuff into the Lightbringer. The rriksti risked their lives by taking one hand off the ladder to salute Hannah as she climbed past in the other direction. She was their Shiplord. They didn’t imagine she would ever desert them.
The headlights of trucks lit the darkness. The rriksti, of course, could see in the dark, and preferred to work at night, despite the bombing raids. Their initial contacts with the locals had blossomed at unbelievable speed into a portfolio of procurement agreements that spanned the country and were quickly extending across porous African borders. Drums of copper cable, fertilizers, rice, AK-47s, pigs and chickens, gasoline, lumber, generators, sewing machines, screws and nails, sunglasses, computer parts, rope, plastic explosive, ammunition, chainsaws, rubber boots, industrial chemicals, cement, and more arrived at the Lightbringer daily, transported on cattle trucks, flatbed Toyotas, and even donkeys.
Walking back along the length of the Lightbringer, Hannah got the impression that half the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had relocated to this remote corner of Katanga province, just south of Upemba National Park. People sat around cookfires, laughing and chatting in French and a dozen local languages. Rriksti infantry mingled with the locals, their flat pale faces a stark contrast with shiny-dark Congolese skin. TVs and stereos ran off car batteries. The smell of spicy stew and roasting chicken blended queasily with the smell of toilets … actually, the smell of no toilets, and all that that implied. It wouldn’t be long before people started getting sick. Hannah wished she could tell them all to go home. That’s where she was going.
She pulled a Snickers bar out of her raincoat pocket and ate it as she walked. The taste of chocolate brought back sweet memories, redoubling her homesickness.
The noise in the sky got louder. The Congolese glanced up, shrugged. They had lived through a brutal civil war. Some of them were long-term refugees from Rwanda, survivors of genocide. They’d seen worse than this. Hannah admired their insouciance, and at the same time it drove her nuts. Just because the bombs had fallen wide of the tent city last night, and the night before, did not mean this wouldn’t be the night they all died.
She walked faster, the soggy ground sucking at her boots. She felt about five times heavier than she really was. After so long in the half-gravity of the Lightbringer’s living quarters, she got tired quickly in Earth’s gravity. The rriksti were coping better. They literally had metal in their bones, and their cryosleep tanks had stimulated their muscles to keep them in shape.
At last she reached the tail of the Lightbringer. The lip of one magnetoplasmadynamic thruster lay buried in the waterlogged ground. The other five thrusters were angled skyward, each one wide enough to swallow a whole fleet of airliners. The convexity of the bottom thruster made a roof for the ship’s temporary power plant: the Hairsplitter, one of the four shuttles they had restored to working condition. The shuttle looked like a delta-winged Hercules with a gigantic sea urchin stuck to its ass. The puddles around it steamed, the fog lit red from within by the light streaming from the open cargo hold. Rriksti stood in the mist, warming their hands. The Hairsplitter’s reactor was now powering much of the tent city, as well as the ship’s computer and essential functions.
Speaking of which.
Notifications scrolled over Hannah’s left eye, projected on her optic nerve by the Shiplord chip implanted in her forehead. Hannah, Hannah. Although her Rristigul wasn’t fluent, she knew the chip was telling her about all the systems that needed repair, and begging her to fix them. Hannah, Hannah, your baby’s hurt. Help, Hannah, help! That wasn’t what the chip said in so many words, but that’s what it felt like. It agonized her, because what could she do that 10,620 infantry and 72 elite Krijstal could not? They were all working flat out, repairing the ship’s core systems as fast as possible. But the chip wouldn’t be happy until Hannah put her personal imprimatur on every hack and every fix. That’s what being Shiplord was about. Tending your ship, looking after your crew, who all trusted you to be their guide to this strange planet—
“I can’t,” she muttered aloud. “I’m sorry. I just can’t anymore.”
She kept walking, and no one stopped her, because she was Shiplord, and they all assumed she was busy, on her way to do something important, at 3:30 in the morning.
Well, she was.
She trudged along the edge of the scar in the jungle, past the second shuttle snuggled under the Lightbringer’s rear. The Knucklebiter sat dark and quiet, Water tankers nuzzled alongside it, refilling its reaction mass tanks. The other two shuttles, the Bridgeburner and the Dealbreaker, were nowhere to be seen. They were somewhere else in the world, carrying out covert bombing missions, and Hannah couldn’t do anything about that, either.
The kilometer-wide scar served as a runway for the shuttles, and also an access road, although road was stretching it. Hannah used her flashlight to avoid debris, stones, pulverized branches. The overhanging trees dripped on her head. It had rained earlier and would rain again later. April was the hottest and wettest time of year here, with temperatures rising into the 90s Fahrenheit in the middle of the day. But at night it got chilly. She hunched her shoulders as cold drops ran down the neck of her cheap vinyl raincoat.
A mechanical shriek cut through the night. Then came the explosions, whump whump whump. The whole forest seemed to shiver as the pressure wave raced through the trees. Hannah stood with her hands over her ears and her mouth open. The noise had been so huge, like a machine physically shredding the air, that she couldn’t even tell which direction it had come from. Had they hit the Lightbringer this time? She urgently queried the chip.
No response.
Either she’d walked out of wireless signal range … or the Lightbringer was gone.
She fought an urge to sprint back the way she’d come.
Headlights blinded her. The sound of an engine filtered into her ears. “Hannah! Hannah! Over here!”
She broke into a clumsy run. The BBC reporter met her halfway. “You made it. Good stuff. Hop in.”
They had a Toyota 4x4. The seat stuck to the backs of her legs. She sat limply as the reporter threw the truck into gear. One of the private security guys sat beside her in back, another in the passenger seat up front. They peeled out from under the trees. They had been waiting for her. She’d told them she needed to get out of here, and they’d offered to help her escape.
“Did you hear that?” she said. Her ears were still ringing.
“Sure did,” said the security guy in front. “Sounded like B-52s. They fly at 35,000 feet. You never see ‘em.”
“Do you know if they missed?”
“They missed us.” All three men laughed, too loudly.
The 4X4 jolted over the torn-up ground. Hannah twisted around to look out the rear windshield. “Where’s the microwave truck?”
“Sent it on ahead,” the reporter said. “As you said, it’s very important to get your message out.”
A laugh bounced out of Hannah. “Our message is two hundred proof bullshit,” she said. “All that stuff about coming in peace? Interstellar handshakes? It’s a good image, isn’t it? I pulled that out of my ass. The rriksti don’t do handshakes. They do foot-kissing, or else they hit you. That’s their way of saying hello.” She rubbed the L-shaped scar on her forehead. It had faded now. You could only see it in the brightest of light. This was the only real interstellar handshake that had ever happened, or ever would: the bond between the Imfi chip and Hannah’s human brain.
“Nuclear fusion? A cure for cancer? Limb regeneration? High-
density batteries? Are those bullshit?” the reporter said.
“No.”
“There you go, then. Want a beer?”
She had been praying they’d offer. “Thanks.”
The private security guy in front popped the top off a Primus from the cooler at his feet. It wasn’t cold. It tasted like nectar. “They brew decent beer here, don’t they?”
She’d sworn to God that if they survived the crash-landing, she would give up drinking. Yeah, that hadn’t lasted.
The reporter chuckled. “I’ll buy you a proper drink when we get to Lubumbashi.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“Closest airport.”
In a few hours she’d be on a plane. In less than a day she could be home. “I wonder where I can get a connecting flight. I need to get to L.A.” She knew Los Angeles had changed. California was an independent country now. She’d captured images of her sister Bethany’s Pacific Heights neighborhood during their descent. Many of the houses had looked un-lived in. But where else could she start searching for her family?
The security guy next to her gave her a look she couldn’t read. She was actually having trouble reading humans, period. It had been so long since she saw any. They even smelled wrong—meaty, musky, an unpleasant contrast to the clean salty smell of the rriksti. “Ma’am, there are no flights to L.A.”
“Why not?”
“There are no flights to America.”
“What?”
“Ma’am … it’s bad. The USA ain’t there anymore. It’s like China: fifty governments instead of one, half of them at war with the other half. And that was before y’all bombed the power plants, dams, interstates …”
And Ripstiggr had told her they were only targeting military facilities. The liar.
“So where are these bombers coming from?” B-52s could fly thousands of miles. Hannah had assumed they were coming from the continental US.
“Abu Suweir.” At her blank look, the security guy explained, “USAF base in Egypt. Jointly operated with the Egyptians and the Russians.”
“Oh. So America is basically … fucked?”
“I would say folks are hanging on. But they got no electricity, no water in a lot of places. It’s bad.”
“I know a guy flying food aid into Chicago from Montreal,” the other security guy said. They argued about various intricate routes into the country that Hannah used to call home, while she sat there, trying to come to terms with these shocking facts.
I need another beer, was the only conclusion she reached.
But she said, “Then how can I find my sister? She lives in Los Angeles. At least, she used to.”
The reporter said, “I’m sure the authorities will help you find her.”
“Authorities,” the back-seat security guy echoed. “What authorities?”
“Shut up. Both of you, just shut up. Ms. Ginsburg, you may not be aware of your reputation here on Earth. You’re the most famous person on the planet. Whatever you need, the authorities will be happy to help you.”
“I don’t have any money,” Hannah said with a broken laugh. It was years since she’d even thought about money.
“I’m sure that won’t be an issue.”
The truck drove on for another mile or so. Butterflies waltzed in Hannah’s stomach. She burst out, “We’ve got to be near the security perimeter. They’ll stop the car.” She had been going to hide in the microwave truck. “Should I get down on the floor or something?”
Tense laughter from the men. “The plan is actually not to stop,” the reporter said. “We’re just going to drive straight through.” The security guys fished guns out of the footwells. Tattooed hands checked magazines. “Perhaps you should get down on the floor, actually, Ms. Ginsburg.”
Hannah knelt in muddy water on the floor-mat, cradling her second beer. Suddenly she heard a shout in Rristigul. She did not hear it with her ears, but with her brain. The Shiplord chip picked up bio-radio signals, but its range was very limited. That meant the shout had come from somewhere close. She struggled back up onto the seat, just as the 4x4 braked, throwing her against the back of the driver’s seat. Her beer spilled. The security guy in the front seat jumped out, his gun pointed loosely at the ground.
The headlights shone on tumbled red soil. Beyond that, darkness.
A bomb crater, where the security checkpoint used to be.
“So this is where they hit,” the reporter said. “Fucking great. Thanks a lot, chaps.”
A soft thwut pierced the night. The security guy took half a step backwards and crumpled across the Toyota’s hood. His arms jerked. Blood trickled from the hole where his right eye used to be.
Hannah threw her door open and rolled out. She crawled away from the 4x4, staying low, splashing on hands and knees through the puddles. If she could make it to the treeline, she might be able to work her way around the crater, to freedom.
More Rristigul shouts.
A volley of gunfire.
Hannah kept crawling, until she crawled straight into a pair of bare, seven-toed feet. She looked up from the feet, to camouflage fatigues cinched over pale rriksti shins, and a down coat sewn out of two coats, and a mane of silver bio-anntennas.
She was caught.
CHAPTER 8
Ripstiggr picked Hannah up by the armpits and gave her a shake. “How far did you think you’d get?”
“I was going to look for my sister.”
Rriksti faces had limited mobility, but Hannah didn’t have to read Ripstiggr’s expression to know he was murderously mad at her. No wonder, really. He dragged her back to the 4x4. Rriksti sentries surrounded it. The door was still open, the interior roof light on. The reporter and the other security guy slumped dead in their seatbelts. The rriksti infantry were crack shots, especially in the dark, and their rifles shot finned projectiles that could bend around trees. She’d tried to warn them. The infantry yanked the corpses out of the vehicle, dragged them to the lip of the bomb crater, and threw them over.
“A good night’s work!” they said, in Rristigul, as far as Hannah could catch it. “More glory for our Shiplord!”
Ripstiggr said in English—which the infantry didn’t speak, apart from a few phrases— “Those schleerps were spotters for the American pilots. You personally undertook the risky task of guiding them into our ambush. Got it?”
“Got it.” Hannah wanted to weep as she watched the last corpse tumble into the crater. But no tears came. “You’re covering my ass.”
“No, I’m not. I’m protecting the troops.” Ripstiggr’s arms tightened around her. He was literally shaking with rage. “Did you even think about what it would do to them if you deserted the cause?”
She had. And she hadn’t. She sagged as the sentries saluted her and melted into the darkness—still believing in her. Believing that their Shiplord had put her own life on the line for the glory of Imf.
Ripstiggr pushed her into the 4x4 and folded himself into the driver’s seat. Even with the seat shoved all the way back, his knees poked up on either side of the steering wheel. He hunched his head like an adult driving a child’s toy car. He drove parallel to the crater. There was another crater beyond it. And another one beyond that. The row of craters stretched all the way across the scar.
“They’re trying a new tactic,” Ripstiggr said. “This is meant to cut us off from the N-1.” This was the only drivable road in the southern DRC. The scar intersected it about ten miles south of here. All their deliveries came that way.
“You mean they aren’t aiming at the ship?” Hannah’s numb, exhausted mind connected the dots as she spoke. Of course, the bombers never had been aiming at the Lightbringer. They didn’t want to destroy the fusion reactors, the high-density batteries, et-fucking-cetera.
“I keep telling you. This isn’t war. It’s diplomacy.”
Diplomacy that had killed three men tonight. Three good men whose only crime had been trying to help Hannah.
But her lying, deceitful m
essage about interstellar friendship had got out. It would be flashing along the undersea cables right now.
Ripstiggr parked at the treeline. Somewhere in the dark, a forest giant crashed into the undergrowth. Chainsaws snarled.
“There’ll be a causeway in place by dawn,” Ripstiggr said. “We needed to improve this road, anyway.”
His bike waited under the trees. Hannah called it a bike, but it was fully enclosed. Its skirt of blast-deflection armor hid three fat wheels that could go over anything. She flopped in the pillion seat, taking a childish pleasure in getting mud all over the violently patterned Imfi upholstery. Ripstiggr gunned the bike into the forest. It smashed through the undergrowth in low gear. It could drive itself, more or less, but of course Ripstiggr was the kind of person who liked driving his own bike. The canopy was transparent from within. Branches whipped at Hannah’s face and rebounded from the invisible armor, streaking it with water. Soon they reached one of the narrow paths the locals used. Ripstiggr switched on the jury-rigged single headlight—a courtesy to any villagers who might be about at this hour. A key part of his strategy was getting and keeping the Congolese on their side.
At least that’s what Hannah thought until she glimpsed a pair of feet swaying in mid-air. She whipped around in her seat. A Congolese man hung by the neck from a tree branch above the path.
“Did we do that?”
“He was a spotter for the Americans,” Ripstiggr said.
“I bet he wasn’t.”
“His brother-in-law swore he saw him out at night with a laser pointer. Of course, there may have been some pre-existing quarrel over a cassava field. But we wouldn’t know anything about that.” Ripstiggr’s hair danced. “We’re just here to help.”
Hannah’s heart hurt. Her knees hurt. She felt nauseated. She was vaguely aware that the bike was climbing a steep, winding track. As soon as it stopped, she yanked the door open and vomited. The Snickers bar came back up, tasting the same as it did on the way down. She should have known better. After two years of an enforced spartan diet, her stomach couldn’t handle fatty, sugary foods.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 6