The surviving Krijistal stood on the end wall of the command module, gripping their blasters, glaring up.
Jack, Keelraiser, and the others from the Cloudeater clung to various bits of sideways furniture, like treed cats, staring down at them.
Yes, down. Sky Station now had gravity, of an unwanted sort. With the lower docking pad gone, and the top pad plus Cloudeater still pulling away in their higher orbit, tidal gravity gripped the station. The interior layout treated the modules as long tunnel-shaped rooms. The ends of the modules pointed towards Earth. In zero-gee, that had been irrelevant. But now, the Earthwards ends of the modules had become floors. Everything that had been lightly velcroed to walls had fallen off and landed on them. It was worse than the bridge of the SoD during a burn. To complete that old-timey SoD ambiance, the zero-gee toilets had malfunctioned. The smell of sewage pervaded the station, tinged with the musky reek of the rriksti now crowding the place.
Jack adjusted his headset and pitched his voice to carry through the module. Everyone might as well know. “I launched the damn missile. I didn’t have time to task it before you lot showed up.”
Keelraiser glared at him, then looked down at Ripstiggr. “I did not approve the launch, and I won’t approve any radio contact with the missile. If you planned to aim it at the Liberator—”
“Of course I did,” Ripstiggr said. “Hit them first, hit them hard.” Jack was dismayed to find himself in agreement with this strategy.
“That’s not a plan,” Keelraiser said. “It’s suicide. You always did think that hitting people would make them like you. It doesn’t work, you know.”
He sat on the side of the radio operator’s seat, staring down at his fellow Krijistal. He clearly intended to defend the radio with his bare hands, if it came to that.
Given the odds, Jack could not understand why Keelraiser was being such a jerk about the ICBM. He guessed that he was watching the murky last stages of a reciprocity cycle decades in the making. He also guessed that Keelraiser was trying to break the cycle. But he did not see how being gratuitously rude and condescending fit in.
“Let me explain,” Keelraiser said.”There’s another ship behind this one. If we take out the Liberator, we’ll then have to contend with an extremely pissed Homemaker. That is unlikely to end well.”
“They’re extremely pissed anyway,” Ripstiggr said.
“That’s my point,” Jack said.
Keelraiser looked at him. “What were you thinking?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack snapped. “We’re about to be slaughtered. Throwing something at them seemed like a better use of time than playing Monopoly.”
“If in doubt, nuke it? That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.”
“No,” Ripstiggr shouted, “we’re in this mess because of you!”
Ripstiggr really was a splendid specimen of a rriksti. His height and hulking build looked even more striking in the flesh than on camera. If he was human, he’d be Arnold Schwarzenegger. He threw himself at the wall and began to climb, swarming up the consoles, pushing off from sideways desks.
Keelraiser unfolded to his feet, balancing on the seat-arm, ready to take the bigger rriksti on.
A small human form fell past Jack and collided with Ripstiggr, knocking him off the wall. Entangled, man and rriksti fell to the end wall. The man was Skyler. His fists flailed, pummelling any bit of Ripstiggr he could reach.
Rriksti laughter crackled on the radio frequencies. Jack dropped off his perch to go to Skyler’s aid, but by the time he got there, the other Krijistal had plucked the young man off their commander. In no great hurry, Ripstiggr got to his feet and held Skyler up by the scruff of his shirt like a kitten. “You need to train your humans better, Iristigut.”
Skyler’s feet pedalled in the air. His face turned red as the collar of his shirt cut into his windpipe.
“You’ve won, now let him go,” Jack said, pushing between the Krijistal. His eyes met Ripstiggr’s. Yes, the commander was amused. He could take a joke. Jack’s reluctant respect for him grew.
Ripstiggr tossed Skyler in Jack’s direction. He sneered up at Keelraiser, “My humans don’t act out like that.”
“I seem to recall your favorite human nearly crashed the Lightbringer,” Keelraiser said.
“That was then. Now she sucks my cock.”
Skyler let out a howl and fought to reach Ripstiggr. Jack held him back, with some difficulty.
Ripstiggr tilted his head. “On weekends, I fuck her until she screams. She begs for it. Says there’s no way she’d ever be satisfied with a microscopic human dick after experiencing my mighty tool.”
“Bastard!” Skyler sagged in Jack’s restraining grip, obviously on the verge of tears.
Jack felt a surge of anger at Ripstiggr’s cruelty. “Do you know who you’re talking to? This isn’t just some out-of-luck astronaut like the rest of us. He’s a very highly ranked NXC agent. If he was on Earth, he’d be one of the most powerful people on Earth.”
“Don’t work for them anymore,” Skyler grunted. Jack gave him a shake: I’m trying to save your life here.
Ripstiggr looked interested. “Really? Want to give Hannah some tips? She’s meeting with the American leadership tomorrow. I can get her on the maser.”
Skyler’s eyes lit up. It was as if the prospect of speaking with Hannah threw a switch in his brain, shutting down any sense of dignity he possessed. Jack despaired of him.
“Are you completely delusional?” Keelraiser said, perched above them, a knot of knees and elbows and glittering eyes. “You’re parleying with guerrillas, while extinction threatens the entire human species?”
“Not to mention us,” muttered Hriklif.
“If I can get them to surrender unconditionally, the brass might accept that as a result,” Ripstiggr snarled.
“Hey, that might actually work,” Skyler said.
“Unlikely,” Keelraiser said, crushingly. “And if you nuke the Liberator? Out of the question. Unless you were planning to hang that around my neck.”
“Busted,” Ripstiggr said, hair dancing.
“They wouldn’t believe you,” Keelraiser said. “They think we are all in this together. And we are, aren’t we?” He didn’t give Ripstiggr time to respond. “It was my rebellion to begin with. Now it’s yours.” He vaulted into the next seat up the wall, which was the station radar operator’s. He tapped commands into the keyboard and viewed the resulting radar plot. “Fortunately, the missile’s now drifted around the curve of Earth. It’s out of radio contact. No one will be tasking it.”
Jack groaned. They had wasted more time than he’d realized. “And where’s the Liberator?”
“Hold on,” Keelraiser said.
The entire station fell silent, except for the whirr of fans and the gurgle of toilets peacefully overflowing in the hab modules. The Krijistal fingered their guns. The humans twitched at every staccato tap of a rriksti fingernail on a keyboard.
“It’s here,” Keelraiser said. “It’s orbiting at 160 kilometers. It must have arrived while we were trying to kill one another.”
Jack’s mind whirled. He had thought that star looked bright. What he had actually seen was the Liberator’s final burn into orbit.
“I thought we had hours!” Linda shouted, from high up on the wall.
“We were going on a projection based on data from human instruments,” Keelraiser said. “Any minuscule error could have thrown the model off. Anyway, they are here.”
There was a rush by the rriksti from the Lightbringer to view the radar. Keelraiser retreated to a higher perch.
“What’s this?” Ripstiggr shouted, stabbing the screen.
“It looks to me like a shuttle,” Keelraiser said. “Draw your own conclusions.”
Jack fought through the mob of Krijistal to get a look. Sure enough, a Cloudeater-size object was bending towards Sky Station. His fingers itched for a targeting laser.
“Make your choice, Ripstiggr,” Keelra
iser said. “Flee to Earth, and await the end … or wait here.”
*
One hour later, Sky Station’s top airlock sighed open. Masked faces peered in. Jack pictured what they beheld, and imagined their astonishment at the sight: twenty rriksti and a handful of humans clinging to the walls of the command module, staring back at them in silence.
No one had opted to flee to Earth. Jack respected Ripstiggr for sticking it out to the bitter end. Not that Ripstiggr approved of Keelraiser’s plan, any more than Jack had. The idea of deliberately getting captured seemed like madness.
Then again, the alternative was simply getting killed.
From his perch halfway up the module, Jack stared at the newcomers, waiting for them to open fire, and trying to convince himself that he’d be OK with it ending here. It didn’t work. He wanted to live.
The paralysis of mutual shock lasted for a microsecond. Newcomers piled in from both airlocks, shouting and flourishing blasters. They fired pulses at random, beams dialed down to burn and scar, rather than kill. After all, you can’t interrogate corpses.
Smarting from third-degree burns, clutching blinded eyes, heads ringing (Jack, Skyler, and Giles) or fainting from the onslaught of harmonics (Linda and Coetzee), the prisoners were herded into one of the hab modules. They all landed in a heap on the end wall, which was now slick with sewage that had trickled down from the toilets.
The newcomers took up positions above them, balancing on the edges of bunks, shelves, and ventilation units, blasters aimed at the prisoners.
They wore rriksti suits, patterned in an unfamiliar style: exaggerated lips and staring eyes printed on their faces made them resemble war-painted African warriors, or maybe Japanese actors in masks.
In the door from the command module, halfway up one wall, an imposing figure appeared. It wore one of those toga-type VIP robes over its suit.
The Shiplord of the Liberator had come in person to find out why three rriksti shuttles were parked at a human space station.
In the dead silence, the Shiplord doffed its suit to the neck, revealing a face more ochre than the rriksti norm, and reddish-orange bio-antennas. Jack had absorbed enough of a rriksti perspective on beauty to understand that by their standards, the Shiplord was a knockout.
Keelraiser said very quietly, “This isn’t right.”
“You’re telling me,” Jack muttered.
“I know the Shiplord of the Liberator. That’s not him.”
“Oh.”
“Clever plan: dead on contact.” Keelraiser nudged Ripstiggr. “How good are you at improvising?”
“Better than you are,” Ripstiggr said, and broke off as the Shiplord pointed at the prisoners and gurgled in a deep pleasant voice.
Giles translated in a whisper: “We meet again, Hriklif.”
Hriklif?
The atomic engineer pulled himself out from under a pile of wounded Krijistal. “Khashaz,” he gulped, staring up.
The Shiplord laughed. “No longer Khashaz,” it said, and Giles muttered in English. “Now I am Eskitul.”
Of course, that was not a name, but a title.
Shiplord.
“It is a pleasure to meet a fellow Lightsider here,” the Shiplord gurgled. “Although it is not sufficient to offset my absolute disgust at the mess you have made of this mission.”
“It doesn’t sound like it’s speaking Rristigul,” Jack whispered.
“She, Khashaz is a female title. She is not,” Giles whispered back. “This is the Lightsider language. It’s actually a lot easier.”
The Shiplord scanned the prisoners with piercing gold eyes. “What are all these animals doing here?”
“Never mind that,” one of the wounded Krijistal shouted. “What’s a Lightsider doing in command of the Liberator?”
The Shiplord gestured. Her guards—themselves Krijistal, of course—picked out the rriksti who had spoken and shot him. The body fell near Jack. He bent, straightened out the limbs, and closed the eyes, honoring the rriksti who had had the courage to speak up.
Keelraiser spoke—in English. “Shiplord.” Jack looked away, bracing for the inevitable shot. “You find us on the verge of a historic victory over these animals.”
No shot came. Sewage trickled out of the open door of a toilet booth halfway up the wall: drip, drip, drip, the tiny noise loud in the silence.
Keelraiser went on, “At this very moment, our representatives are preparing to receive their unconditional surrender, in a city in the part of this planet known as Europe. We came here to await your arrival, and beg you to accept this triumph on behalf of the Temple.”
Although Jack knew, none better, how well Keelraiser could play this part, it was still hard to hear. Doubts crept in, worrying at his mind like insects he couldn’t swat away.
“That sounds fishy to me,” the Shiplord said, suddenly switching into the crisp TV English spoken, more or less, by all the rriksti Jack knew. “Why are there any of them left alive to surrender? Never mind. I know why. The Lightbringer failed abominably in its mission, that’s why. However, a full inquiry must await the arrival of our colleagues on the Homemaker. In the meantime …”
“Now she’s speaking English!” Jack whispered.
Giles whispered, “They don’t understand each other’s languages. Or they don’t want to admit that they do. Zhigga, the Lightsider language, was banned on Imf. I had to get Hriklif and that other Lightsider, the electrician with green hair, to teach it to me.”
“In the meantime,” Ripstiggr blurted, “we have one week to plunder the fuck out of this planet! Shiplord, we’ve been down on the surface for the last year. Because of circumstances. For which I take responsibility. Although it’s really his fault.” He pointed at Keelraiser. “Anyway, we’ve discovered untold mineral and biological wealth—”
“Imf requires nothing of Earth except its immediate and total surrender,” the Shiplord shot back.
“Which is just what we have obtained, by the grace of Ystyggr,” Keelraiser said. “Our triumph only requires your seal of approval …”
Hriklif interrupted, speaking in the Lightsider dialect. Giles translated, haltingly. “Shiplord, we Lightsiders are an inquiring people. We’re not like these brutish Darksiders. We value knowledge, not power. At least that’s what I was always taught. I and many others joined the Lightbringer because we were told it was a scientific mission. Now, with your long-awaited arrival, we have a chance to make that lie the truth.”
Giles paused, obviously moved. He resumed translating.
“At the very least, we could carry out some basic zoological and geological surveys, which I’m positive these Darksiders haven’t even thought about. They’ve been too busy blowing things up …”
The Shiplord said, “Knowledge is power.”
“Yes!” Hriklif cried piteously.
“Hmm,” the Shiplord said. She sat down on the side of the door, swinging her legs. She stared at the human prisoners. “Can these animals actually talk? They don’t look like the ones on the television. I thought that stuff was mostly propaganda.”
Hriklif pulled Skyler to his feet. “Say something.”
“Um, nice to meet you?” Skyler said in a thin but brave voice. “It would be nicer if you weren’t pointing guns at us. But anyway, I’m a scientist, too. I really wanted to spend my life studying proto-stars. I ended up here. I guess maybe we’re in the same situation …” He trailed off, nervously clutching his peace symbol.
The Shiplord’s hair danced. She spoke to her entourage, and Giles translated. “Go back to the ship and get my sampling equipment and analysis tools. Refuel my shuttle for a deorbit burn. Task another two hands of shuttles to accompany us. We are going to have a look at this planet before the Darksiders wreck it for everyone.”
*
The airlocks of Sky Station worked like a bellows, letting out group after group of people. The last to leave was Ripstiggr, closely guarded by Krijistal from the Liberator. Jack imagined it must sting to
be considered a traitor to his own people.
But maybe he was wrong. As the airlock closed, Ripstiggr stared at Keelraiser. He raised one hand, fingers parted in two groups of three. A rriksti salute.
Keelraiser returned the salute.
The airlock closed.
The silence returned.
Jack, Keelraiser, and Coetzee were left alone with half a dozen Lightsiders fresh from cryosleep, twitchily fondling their weapons.
CHAPTER 37
The Shiplord’s shuttle, the Beauty of Destruction, deorbited, streaming fire from its thermal shields. Skyler had a window seat. He was tied into it, actually. That didn’t stop him from looking.
In the distance, more fiery daggers plunged into Earth’s atmosphere. The Shiplord was taking no risks. This would be the most heavily armed scientific foray ever.
Skyler had often envisioned his own return to Earth, but he’d never imagined a catastrophe like this.
Ripstiggr sat next to him, similarly tied hand and foot to his seat. “‘Ey. Oo. Skyl’.”
What? Whose voice was that? It had been an actual voice, not a radio-frequency transmission digitally converted into the acoustic frequencies. Skyler knew that for a fact, because they’d taken his headset. He couldn’t hear anything the Lightsiders were saying to each other. Giles and Linda were somewhere at the back of the shuttle.
“Skyl’.”
He tried to turn his head. Gee-force crushed him into his seat. He was in quite a lot of pain, actually. His seat was shaped wrong for a human body, and on top of that he was in shit condition, having spent the last year in lunar gravity. He should’ve spent more time in the rotating hab while it still existed, lifting weights like Jack. He wouldn’t be able to walk ten paces when they landed, let alone go in search of Hannah.
Not that she’d want to see him, anyway, if what Ripstiggr had said was even half true.
She sucks my cock…
Tears leaked from his eyes as the shuttle plunged into the stratosphere.
Something touched his chin, the side of his face. Velvety, hot, strong.
Ripstiggr’s bio-antennas curled around Skyler’s head and turned it on the seatback, tipping his chin up at the same time, so he was staring into Ripstiggr’s huge flat face.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 25