I hesitated. I knew he was right and the stakes were too high, but I knew that those colonels and generals would react with executions before investigations. If that let the Conglomeration off free, nothing would be solved in the long term. “We do both. Report it to the CPF as soon as we can, but find out where these bombs are going and why. I want to question them, Devlin. I want them to look me in the eye and say they really intended to wipe out all life on the only planet we have.”
Devlin thought for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed. Now get that patch back on. You’ve got twenty hours of sleep left.”
+ + + +
They woke me at dawn.
“Sorry, Amira,” Devlin said. “We got a message from Orlando to rendezvous here.”
I squinted at Ken. “You said we were out of range.”
“Ionospheric bounce happened. Just around Richmond,” he said shortly. “We’re a couple of hours out of Washington, DC, but we’ve been told to stay out and wait here.”
That was fine by me. Washington’s streets were crawling with carapoids and power-armored Arvani, and I still wasn’t sure whether I was a sergeant or a deserter.
Moving slowly, I got out of the jeep. We’d stopped in a huge, empty parking lot in front of the decaying remains of an ancient mall. “We’re kinda exposed out here. Are you sure it’s safe?”
“No,” Ken replied. He was clearly in a mood.
A familiar noise made us all look up. “Here he comes,” said Devlin.
Of course. Well before the hopper grounded, I knew who would be stepping out to greet us. Devlin and Ken came to attention reflexively. I stayed slumped against the side of the jeep.
“Gentlemen,” said Anais with a nod. He looked at me. “And you. Still recovering from the torture?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.” I waved weakly toward the single pilot in the hopper. “You’re travelling light.”
He braced his shoulders, shrugging away tension, and I could see that his facade of weary cynicism was stretched to the snapping point. “I’m expected in New York very soon and this is an unscheduled diversion, so I’ll keep this short.”
He held out a small screen at eye level. “Watch.”
The tiny figure on screen had exchanged his cheerful galaxy-print T-shirt for a neutral gray tunic, but the long black coat was the same as ever.
“I am the accountant for Earth First,” said Hideo, “and today is a day of reckoning.”
14
* * *
We viewed the full message twice in silence. “Nice of them to warn us officially,” Ken said, “but do they know they’re dealing with bio-bombs?”
Anais gave him a sharp and slightly worried look. “Ah. So you figured that out. No, that’s not clear from the message.”
“Any demands? Prisoner releases, mutual cease-fire, anything?” Devlin queried.
“Nothing,” Anais said. He looked strangely satisfied at the question.
I stood upright and steady. “No, not this time. It never worked before, so this time they’re going to strike first and make demands after. There’s bound to be an escalation. That’s why it’s symbolic. It’s just the beginning.”
Anais turned to me. “You’ve got a good grasp of tactics. Pity about your loyalties—”
“What do you expect us to do?” Ken interrupted. He sounded completely fed up, way past disillusionment and out the other side.
Anais looked at me. “She won’t listen to me, but she’ll do what she can for you, and I think she’s got the insider’s edge. I want her to use it, no questions asked. I’m unleashing everything in my arsenal to shut this down. I don’t have a choice.”
Devlin cleared his throat. “Uh, sir, although Sergeant Singh is indeed a remarkable asset, we have no armor, no weapons, nothing.”
Anais slapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course. How could I forget.” He jogged back to the hopper and returned with two holstered pistols and a couple of comm buttons, which he handed to Ken and Devlin. “There you go. Can’t say I never do anything for you.” He glanced at me. “None for you. I can cover my ass where these two are concerned. You’re a little too high-risk.”
He turned back to Devlin. “Succeed and prove you’re more than a PR captain. Fail and we all die. See you in New York.”
He vaulted back into the hopper, signed a thumbs-up to the pilot, and they took off in flurry of dust and leaves.
“Not if I see you first,” Ken said with deadly calm as he buckled on the gun and settled it over his hip.
Devlin exchanged a glance with me. “Okay. Ken, let’s hit the road. Amira, anything new for us? I’d like to jump ahead instead of trailing behind for a change.”
“Yes. You’ll like this one. I think I know where they’re taking the Central Park bomb.”
+ + + +
I didn’t risk putting on the patch again. I needed another sixteen hours of sleep, but I couldn’t afford even half of that. Five hours later, I woke to the noise and smell of the Turnpike Tunnel. “Already?” I grumbled as I stretched as thoroughly as possible in the confined space of the backseat.
“Be grateful,” Ken said soberly as he navigated the traffic. “What if the Turnpike’s a target?”
I didn’t answer. The broad glass stripe that showed the Newark Spaceport on the Tunnel’s west side had just come into view. I watched it go past silently. “Lots of possibilities, Ken. For now, let’s focus on the Central Park destination.”
“Okay,” Devlin said, “but let’s be clear on something. This is your mission. You’re in charge, you take us in, you try to reason with whoever’s there or take them down or whatever. But if at any point you can no longer command, then Ken is in charge of finding and disabling the bombs and I’m in charge of getting us the hell out of there.”
Ken nodded firmly; they’d probably been discussing it while I was sleeping. I felt a bit strange. Proud, I guess, because Devlin had really earned my respect as a soldier and a captain, and Ken’s too, when neither of us gave respect lightly. And weirdly happy, because this time, I was traveling with backup, and for a stupid moment I thought I almost wouldn’t mind dying if I could go down fighting with them.
“Okay,” I said.
Manhattan was a strange combination of Accordance luxury and human slum. Anais had warned us, long before we returned to Earth, that security concerns had led to the creation of separate areas for Accordance citizens. It didn’t surprise me—my grandfather considered such things inevitable—but it was still striking. We were going deep into a new slum, through what used to be the Upper West Side. The spires of the Hudson River were not as high as those rooted in what had once been Central Park, but their skybridges vaulted over the crumbling Upper West Side to connect to the greater structures at the center of Manhattan. They looked like flying buttresses of a magnificent cathedral, and the human buildings below like the forgotten detritus of another age.
I guided Ken along streets with cracked tarmac flooded with a noisome mix of brackish water and sewage. We came at last to the back of a high-rise building with the lower levels boarded up and well graffitied.
“This is it. Used for a short while as a holding facility. Then the Arvani started their sea reclamation project and Riverside South became unsafe, so it was abandoned. And look.”
I pointed. There was another jeep, identical to ours, parked nearby in three inches of water. Ken, unprompted, parked right behind it. We got out and stood on the dry sidewalk—three CPF officers who once strode in power armor reduced to civvies, a couple of pistols, and an EPC-1.
Devlin drew his gun. I rested my hand on it and pushed it back under his jacket. “Don’t be nervous. I’m linked up to the street cameras, and we’re clear. Let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”
Ken stopped in front of a metal door with a dark square of glass set at handle height, but with no handle nor any visible lock. “But can we get in without drawing attention to ourselves?”
“Thanks to Mister Russo, it
seems I’ve got some access codes,” I said cheerfully, waving my wrist over the glass screen. The door swung outward and spilled forth dank and unwelcoming air. I stepped in fearlessly, feeling like I knew this building. “Lights,” I said, and like magic the lights came up. “Air,” I continued. Beside me, Devlin began to gag. “Okay, no air,” I said quickly, cringing from the smell of rot that infested the ventilation system. “Let’s try . . . windows. Hmmm. Okay, override safety for floors two and above.”
“Better,” Devlin said cautiously, drawing his gun at last.
Ken did the same, moving to my other side. I walked forward, looking through the cameras ahead, checking the schematics in my head, going through the maze, becoming the maze. I hesitated at the elevator, comparing camera views to schematics floor by floor so I could figure out where to go.
“Floors twelve through fourteen,” I mused aloud. “No cells, all admin areas and offices—yes!”
“What is it? Do you see them?” Devlin whispered anxiously.
The surveillance system was showing three men standing by an open window, arguing over the unexpected opening of said window. One of them turned away in exasperation, pulled out a gun, and started to march toward the elevator. I inhaled sharply.
“Quick, lower your guns,” I said. “I’m going to use the intercom, and I don’t want them to see a threat.”
After a quick glance between them, Ken and Devlin lowered their weapons. I took a deep breath and opened the public channel.
“Michael Slate, it’s Amira Singh. I’m here, I’m unarmed, and I want to talk to you.”
+ + + +
“Did JP send you?” he demanded.
We were on the thirteenth floor, standing outside the elevator, facing a large, empty room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Slate paced up and down in front of us. His face was sweating and gray with fear, and his grip on his sidearm was a little too tight. Behind him and near the open windows were two figures in black denim, one tall and lanky, the other shorter and stocky. They were unknown to me, but I noted the familiar stamp of Ship 1 tattooed on the back of their right hands. They had set up a small cannon, and the bomb lay beside it, still unloaded, a smooth, matte-black capsule about half a meter long and thirty centimeters wide.
“No. JP doesn’t know I’m here.” I wondered if they’d fallen out, but I didn’t have time to find out. “Slate, the bombs you have, you don’t want to use them. You don’t want them anywhere near Earth, trust me.”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because they’ll kill everything within an eight-kilometer radius, that’s why,” Ken said sarcastically. “The Accordance may take a small hit, but you’ll have a lot of human blood on your hands.”
Slate shook his head. “It’s a trick.”
The shorter member of the Ship 1 crew had been eyeing us quietly, but at that she spoke up. “Can you prove it?”
Devlin answered. “We were there when they were used to wipe out all life on Saturn and its moons. We’ve seen what they can do.”
“Wait,” I said, noticing something on the woman’s wrist. “You’ve got nano-ink?” I thought quickly, made some connections. “You’re Emilia Lang, right? Nate Russo. . . . You know Russo. He can vouch for what I’m saying. Contact him now. Ask him about the thirty-eight CPF staff on Tranquility who were executed a while ago. This is why. Someone stole those bombs, smuggled them in from the Moon, and brought them here. I don’t think their aim was to kill only aliens.”
“Yeah,” Lang agreed, shooting a nasty look at Slate. “Because that would be stupid, right?”
Slate’s pale face flushed with sudden anger. “You believe her, just like that?”
Emilia laughed. “Apart from the fact that this is Amira Singh, who needs believing when you can just check the facts?” She turned to her crewmate. “We’ve been played.”
I kept pushing. “You’ve got leaders. Let them decide. Call JP. ” Something in Slate’s eyes made me add, “But I’m guessing she wasn’t in agreement with this in the first place. Where’s Hideo? Let him run the numbers, with the full info this time.”
The intercom suddenly sizzled, which made me jump because I had nothing to do with it. Ken and Devlin reacted to my surprise and went alert, but the other three showed a different kind of tension.
“It’s starting,” Slate said with deep relief.
A voice sounded through the intercom. I realized two things very quickly: first, that the cause was a citywide override of public channels; and second, that the voice belonged to Rai.
“I am Mawusi Rai, and I speak for Earth First. My message is to humanity. This is the hour of reckoning. At noon, bombs that target alien biology will detonate in cities around the globe. Stay calm and seek safety until the hour is past and the invaders are eradicated. This is the revolution.”
“Thirty minutes till noon,” Ken noted dispassionately.
I turned to Emilia Lang. “Make it stop. Call whoever’s in charge and get them to send out the order.”
She smiled. “The Ships of Manhattan have already decided to stand down. We’ll have to see how many others agree with us.”
“Newark Spaceport is dead to our comm network,” Slate said. “Too much interference. If you want me to stop them, I have to leave now.”
I tried to read his expression, but he gazed back steadily with nothing more than a trace of resignation. “Go, then,” I said.
He took off to the elevators. Lang barely glanced at him as he went. She was distracted by the view outside the window.
“So much for ‘stay calm,’ ” she remarked.
Her crewmate spoke for the first time—a long string of swear words. We watched as the skies filled with public and private transport: metro transit shuttles filled to capacity and skipping their designated stops, corporate hoppers going off route and running wild like spooked smugglers. A blare of sirens below suggested that the streets were no better.
“Slate’s going to get caught in that,” I mused.
Devlin came to my side and spoke quietly. “Don’t worry. I called it in and Anais says they’re on it. We should get out of here while we can.”
“What about this?” Ken said, pointing at the inert bomb.
“We don’t want it,” Lang exclaimed, backing away with her hands up.
“Take it to Empire State,” I told Devlin. “They can secure it and then it’s their problem.”
Suddenly, I was in a combat crouch with Bugkiller at the ready and no memory of what had set me off. Then I felt it, ominously increasing in volume like a distant stampede thundering closer and closer.
“Ghost sign!” I yelled.
“Where?” Ken yelled back, pointing his gun at the closed doors of the elevator.
“I don’t know!” I cried out in frustration, scanning the floors below and above as quickly as I could. Empty, all of them.
The enterprising Lang quickly packed up the bomb in a large backpack, settled and buckled it on securely, and leapt behind Devlin for cover. Her crewmate was still trying to disassemble the launcher, his back to the window. Twelve black lines came tumbling down, slicing the view into segments; twelve figures zipped down and stopped abruptly, spiderlike on the end of each line. The tall young man of Ship 1 turned at last, but too late. The first Ghost into the building plucked him up contemptuously with one hand and tossed him through the window into thin air. That was all it could manage; a second later Devlin’s shot snapped its head back, and it tumbled to the ground.
“Stairs! Stairs!” I shouted. “Get her out of here!”
Lang was temporarily frozen by the sudden mayhem, but she found her legs fast, sprinting off ahead of Ken. I found time to jam Bugkiller into the throat of another Ghost, and threw its body at a cluster of them. Ken got off a couple of shots too, but I didn’t stop to see where they landed. I was the last to burst through the stairwell door. I reflexively shut it, sealed it, and brought down a second security door in a trio of satisfying clangs.
&
nbsp; “Yes, ma’am!” Lang exclaimed in admiration. I stared at her in surprise. She appeared to be the type of person who knew how to work on adrenaline, even when clearly scared shitless. “Here,” she said, pulling a Glock out of her jacket and offering it to me. “You’ll get more out of this than I will. I’ll concentrate on running.”
“Good idea. We can’t stay here. I’ve jammed the elevators and shut down the other stairwell, but they can still break through the windows.”
Something thumped loudly against the door and we all jumped, but it held as designed. “Down or up?” Ken asked.
“Lang,” I said urgently. “Your tats. Standard ink, or something extra?”
“Standard,” she answered promptly after a single bewildered blink.
“Right. You, Ken, and Devlin, down. I’ll watch and keep the doors open for you. Get to Empire State. I’ll meet you there when I can. Me, up. I’m the blip on their radar. I’m the decoy.”
“Shit, Amira, no,” Ken began.
“Devlin put me in charge,” I said, looking at Devlin. “One last lone wolf, right?”
Devlin’s eyes had that hurt look, but he set his jaw and nodded. “See you on the other side, Amira. C’mon guys, let’s go!”
My head felt like a split screen with a quiet game of chess on one side and a raucous melee on the other. I’d guessed right. More sobering, Hideo was right. I could sense Ghosts because they could sense me. Devlin, Ken, and Lang all but tiptoed from the building unassailed as I quietly opened and closed doors for them. Meanwhile, I sprinted up two flights of stairs, grimly conscious that the elevator doors had already been forced open. I couldn’t stay in the stairwell forever. I exited on the fifteenth floor and dashed out into the open. Here was a true panopticon: three open floors of glass-walled cells and an interior observation tower. The view over the river was gorgeous, like a pleasant retreat for white-collar crime. I headed for that west-wall view. There were no cells there, only an open space that had been meant for a dining hall.
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