“. . . typical Arvani selfishness. They only care about their own safety. They don’t care about what it’s like for us to be deployed within sight of that evil stain.”
I focused, and the translation grew clearer. Another struthiform spoke angrily. “Leave it. We report her and her rifle missing, that’s all.”
“But what if it’s discovered and used by a human?”
I peeked out and glanced at them. Lang put a warning hand on my shoulder, but I was already back under cover. The struthiform who was speaking was trying to disable an energy rifle—not her own, which was riding securely on a sling at her back.
“What if! Sixteen of our soldiers have been reported missing since the curfew was announced, and I think there will be more. The stress is too great. We should have sent for more carapoid troops—”
“The Arvani are saving those to guard their own gates,” came another sour comment from the first grumbler. “We are more ‘dexterous’ and ‘land-adapted.’ They’ll keep shipping us in until every human on this planet has its own personal guard.”
“I won’t be here to see that,” the angry voice declared.
There was a collective hum of shock and slightly admiring awe. “Mutiny!” said the grumbler, sounding far more cheerful.
“Not today.”
That final voice was a commanding voice, and it returned the other struthiforms to military order and silence.
“It’s done,” said the struthiform who was tampering with the energy rifle.
They moved away quickly, not at a sprint, which would have encouraged me to do the same, but with enough urgency to make me signal to the others to brace themselves. We lay in agonizing anticipation for several seconds and then we heard:
paff
And that was it. I looked around the dumpster again and saw the abandoned rifle on the ground, smoking and glowing slightly around the trigger area, not ruined but definitely not usable.
I did a quick scan of the surroundings, swooped down, and grabbed the weapon. “Let’s take it,” I said, holding it and waving it cautiously to cool it down. “It looks like enough of a threat in the dark.”
“Time to get back underground again,” Lang muttered.
It wasn’t until we were once more in a passageway, splashing through brackish water and construction debris, that Hideo spoke up and said, “Aren’t you going to share what you heard back there?”
“I don’t speak any struthiform languages,” I said truthfully.
“Bullshit. I know what it looks like when someone is listening and thinking. JP’s friend got you some alien dictionaries?”
I hesitated. “Maybe,” I said at last, and briefly told them what the struthiforms had been arguing about.
“Interesting,” said Hideo, and he sounded like he meant it.
“We’re here,” said Lang. She stopped at a locked metal door. “We have to wait a while. I have to send a message to our Ship contact inside, and she’ll let us in as soon as she can.”
“No need,” I said. The access codes were already surfacing thanks to Russo’s index, and I didn’t want to waste any time.
17
* * *
At least one of Russo’s clones had been in the CPF, and for all I knew, there might be others. It made sense that the index was full of all the military codes and schematics I’d ever known in addition to many I’d coveted and never managed to find. It certainly made my job easier, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a deep professional jealousy.
Two other things helped. First, the Empire State barracks had a larger-than-usual number of civilians in the corridors, people stranded by the attacks and then the curfew. They were literally in the corridors, sitting and lying on standard-issue bedrolls and clutching their small children, pets, briefcases, or bottled water. Second, whenever I was recognized, it was with a blink or a nod, but otherwise silence. Respect for my part in Ken and Devlin’s fame? Ship infiltrators in the CPF giving me space to work? Whatever the reason, I appreciated it.
A quick comms check confirmed that Ken and Devlin were still in their meeting. I decided to be bold. I got a full set of uniform and kit from the quartermaster and even requested and got a few accessories to complement Lang’s sober denim, the uniform and camouflage of the urban Ship. For Hideo, nothing but zip ties for his ankles and wrists. He gave me a considering look.
“You’re in no position to argue,” I told him. “Be glad it’s not worse.”
“It’s not that. It’s your choice of uniform. Interesting.”
At first I didn’t know what he meant, but then I glanced down at myself and realized that I had put on the grays of the CPF but kept the black denim jacket borrowed from Lang. A standard-issue sidearm was on my belt, but the unorthodox Bugkiller was in her usual position at my back. Lang wasn’t much better, with her Ship outfit under CPF webbing, civilian-issue sidearm, and the burnt-out Accordance energy rifle slung over one shoulder.
“Whatever works, Hideo,” I said dismissively.
“Precisely. Now, if I may I ask, where are we going?”
“A place where you’ll be perfectly safe,” I replied.
Perhaps I was showing off a bit, but I had the schematics and I had the codes, so I broke the three of us into the office that had been assigned to Anais and sat down on the old wooden desk to wait. Lang stood nervously by the window and looked out occasionally at the deserted streets, and Hideo sat quietly next to her with wrists bound and ankles zip-tied to the chair legs.
I jumped to my feet. The camera at the office door showed Anais, Devlin, and Ken approaching. They wore dress uniform, not grays, which said something about the kind of meeting they’d attended.
Anais was talking angrily, and I smiled as he came into range of the door’s mic with a sharp demand: “Singh. Where is she?”
“Sir? I don’t—”
Anais interrupted Ken. “Don’t lie to me! You didn’t want to name names in front of the general, fine—but I know she’s involved. Call her, bring her in, and tell her she has one job—to watch that slimy accountant and make sure he’s not on his second double-cross.”
“But, Colonel—”
“Hart, from the very first day we met, our relationship has been all about me trying my damnedest to keep you alive. Why must you make it so hard? I want Singh here! She’s the real brains of your little trio.”
I almost snorted out loud at Devlin’s wounded look.
“You can count on us to carry out your orders to the best of our ability, Colonel Anais,” Ken said smoothly.
Anais glared at him and flung the door open.
“And voilà,” Ken continued, unable to resist.
“Colonel,” I said neutrally, standing respectfully though not quite at attention.
Anais rolled his eyes at the audacity of the universe, went to his chair, and sat down. “I’m dying to hear your solutions to the problem you’ve brought to our door, Sergeant Singh.”
He was communicating on many different levels: ignoring both Lang and Hideo, calling me Sergeant, sitting slumped and relaxed as if our “problem” wasn’t really that serious. I was confused and I looked back at Ken and Devlin for clarification.
Devlin explained. “We couldn’t tell the Arvani anything. Gerrard barely managed to talk them down from internment camps to screening and microchipping.”
“Which makes this an internal CPF matter,” Anais confirmed. “Of course, the CPF is meant to be a subordinate part of the Accordance, which makes it a little difficult to sneak around and quash a battle before it’s even begun.” He leaned forward and said with intensity, “You got an army, Singh? Let me be specific—do you have a space-ready, equipped force that can help us clean up this mistake?”
I held my breath for a moment. Lang and I exchanged a glance. The Ships were not ready. They were an indigenous resistance movement, tied to the planet and the people, and Hideo’s dream of expanding into the stars was nascent and unformed.
Anais watched us look
ing at each other, and when he sat back again, his slump seemed more like defeat than relaxation. “I thought so. Well, that narrows my options, but hey, at least I have options. All of you, get out of here. Get some sleep. Singh, you’re in charge of the accountant. Can your deputy be trusted to stand guard over him?”
I questioned Lang with a silent look. She nodded, but the way she bit her lip and the split second before the nod told me that she knew I was asking her about more than nursemaiding Hideo. “Yes,” I answered Anais with confidence.
“Good. Because in a short while I’m going to call you three for a meeting, and I’ll want the accountant safely watched elsewhere.”
“It’s almost midnight,” said Devlin. He clearly wasn’t complaining about the hour. He was voicing what we all wanted to know—what was Anais going to try to cook up while we were napping?
“Yes, and by morning, one way or another, Gerrard and I will send a force to Jupiter. If we do it right, it won’t be shot out of the sky by the Accordance. If we don’t . . .” He shrugged tiredly. “Go—no, wait. . . .” He held out a hand to Lang. “I think it’s high time I confiscated that energy rifle. And now you can go.”
We went.
+ + + +
We slept for about two hours before the call came. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a summons to Anais’s office but to a windowless interrogation room. When we got there, Anais was not alone. He was pacing up and down before a small table, which had the defective energy rifle laid out on it like a trophy. Two chairs faced the door and one chair was set on the opposite side. One of the door-facing chairs was occupied by a CPF major whose face was so unfamiliar that I had to scan the global records to find out that she was from a European division. She looked far more awake than all of us put together, but she only nodded in greeting and let Anais do the talking.
“Hart, Awojobi, Singh, you stand here behind us. Don’t say anything unless I tell you to. This is a delicate situation and I have no idea which way things will shift.”
“Perhaps you could give us a little more information, sir?” Ken said. As usual, his courtesy to Anais was heavily laced with sarcasm.
Anais stopped pacing. “We’re about to meet with someone who does have a space-ready force. The struthiforms aren’t happy about working this close to the bio-bomb blast area, and there have been a significant number of actual and threatened desertions. I want to turn that to my advantage.”
“And what is our purpose? Decoration?” Devlin asked, matching Ken’s sarcasm.
“Precisely. The three heroes of the Accordance, obediently lined up behind me. It’s an easy task; try not to blow it.”
We shuffled into position. Anais continued to pace. Then everyone jumped as the door opened again. A struthiform commander entered and slowly looked us over, considering. Her gaze came to rest on the energy rifle, and I think we all held our breath. At last, having thoroughly considered, she closed the door behind her and sat at the single chair.
Anais sat down and rested his hands on the table. “I’m grateful that you agreed to meet with me, but I must know—how much of this discussion will get back to the Arvani?”
“The Arvani are hiding in their underwater strongholds, issuing their orders from a distance.” The bland tones of the translation collar didn’t convey bitterness well, but the commander’s body language made up for the lack. “We can talk without their interference. State your case. Who are you to negotiate with us?”
Anais leaned back in his chair. He had the dangerously calm look of someone who has finally been pushed past all caring. “Well, this the Cowardly Lion, and this is the Scarecrow . . .” he said, waving at Ken and me in turn. “And you’ve all heard of the Tin Man here. And then there’s me, a country boy whose only desire is to get back home to Kansas some day.”
“I do not understand,” the struthiform commander said coldly.
“Don’t you? You haven’t spoken your name and rank once in this place. You’re not gonna get mine on record.”
“She can have my name,” said the major. “Will that be enough to start with?”
The struthiform commander looked the major up and down. I might scoff at Colonel Anais and his PR in public, but I have to admit privately that he is a warped genius of human and alien psychology. He had not chosen a random colleague. The major was almost a head taller than Anais, and her graying hair was cut short in a feathered style. Female struthiforms tend to be larger than males, and most of them took on combat and command roles while the males filled support positions in IT and medicine. I had a feeling that the commander was meeting her first human female officer over two meters tall, and she was pleased with what she saw.
The commander dipped her head. “I am Eeshak, Fourth Mother of the Seventy-ninth Red Rain Clutch, and Commander of Accordance Landed Force 417.”
The major inclined her head in reply. “And I am Major Buchanan of the CPF. Also Margaret Buchanan, Chief of the Name and Arms of Buchanan, Countess of Stormont . . . not that any of that matters anymore, but when you introduced yourself, I admit I felt a little naked. How do you do.”
No translator could convey all that, but again, the body language filled in. Authority, respect, and an interest in getting the job done. Eeshak mirrored Buchanan’s slight forward lean. Anais, still sitting back as if purposely removing himself from the interaction, observed with a very small, slightly hopeful smile.
“Major,” said the commander. “I think we can understand each other. Let us discuss tactics.”
+ + + +
At the end of the meeting we had an agreement and a plan. Commander Eeshak would lend us the use of her courier ships to get to the Jupiter front as quickly as possible. The slower troop transports assigned to take bomb-fatigued struthiforms away from Earth would also include a detachment of CPF soldiers if we needed to call for reinforcements. Jumpships would be available to take CPF troops to any of Jupiter’s moons, but the struthiforms would stay in orbit and well away from any bomb threat.
Commander Eeshak had also insisted that one of the transports be outfitted as a hospital ship capable of screening large numbers of humans, CPF and civilians, for signs of alien tech. In addition, she assured us that a confidential message would be sent out to all struthiform medics at the front, expanding their official Accordance directive from simply looking out for Ghosts to examining all humans for any trace of Ghost DNA.
I went cold at the reminder. I had to get myself properly checked out.
I couldn’t understand why the Commander appeared to be so pleased. She was providing us with everything we needed at great risk to her reputation and the lives of her soldiers. But then my fears faded when she admitted:
“This will restore the honor of those hatchlings who felt they had no choice but to desert. We no longer have a place to run to, but we can at least help you save your nests.”
I like to think that Commander Eeshak knew enough about humans to understand why the tiny room suddenly grew noisy with sniffing and throat-clearing.
She left to start the plan rolling, and we returned to the relative comfort of Anais’s office for more debriefing. For this meeting, Anais called in Hideo and Lang so that Hideo could tell Major Buchanan firsthand about his part in the bio-bomb conspiracy. In turn, we learned that Major Buchanan was a Conglomerate alien specialist, probably one of those who’d written the lengthy, detailed, boring texts that Sigurthardottir assigned to our poor recruits. That accounted for her ease with Commander Eeshak, and it also explained why she was in New York. She had been present at the autopsies of the Ghosts who died fighting us over the bio-bomb.
“Four bodies of human appearance were recovered,” she said. “Two were shot with CPF weapons. One had a crushed larynx. The fourth . . . well, it’s hard to tell precisely what killed the fourth. I’d credit the crushed skull from a high fall, but there were several other broken bones that helped it along.”
“The shots were Ken and Devlin,” Lang said helpfully. “Amira got one in the thro
at.”
Major Buchanan raised a thin blond eyebrow with interest. “And the fourth?”
I described how the fourth Ghost had obtained its injuries.
She stared at me for a while, her expression unreadable. Then she turned to Anais. “I’ll take on your consultant and her two attachés.”
“Actually, I think I’m still a sergeant . . .” I began.
She gave me a look. “Sergeants get to follow my orders. Consultants get listened to.”
“Consultant it is,” I agreed.
“Oh, good,” Anais said dryly. “I’ve been trying to find a way to kick Singh out of the CPF since her first AWOL jaunt.”
Buchanan laughed. “Come now, Colonel. Where I come from, we always reward successful and innovative breaking of the rules.”
“The key word in there is ‘successful,’ ” Anais pointed out. “It’s great getting rewarded for being successful . . . until suddenly one day you’re not and the body count is more than anyone can overlook.”
Everyone avoided looking at Hideo, but he was the black hole in the room, effortlessly absorbing our silent judgement. I felt a little nudge, not Russo’s index this time but my own intuition. Failure could be managed. By seeking me out and linking himself to me, Hideo had bought himself a ticket to his best chance for absolution via suicide mission. Would he care if he took out half the CPF for his grand final act? Would it matter to him if Ken, Devlin, and I were collateral damage along the way, or had he factored that willingly into his overall risk assessment?
He sat meekly, head down, ever compliant, but for a moment he looked up, caught my eye, and smiled in a way that I could not interpret.
PART
THREE
* * *
18
* * *
“Let us see what we have here. Oooh, that is nasty.” The struthiform medic on our courier ship was bossy and slightly contemptuous of humans, and it showed with every word and gesture.
Jupiter Rising Page 16