by Allen Steele
We didn’t tell Ben about finding Zoltan, nor did I tell him about having seen Greer. Ben had suffered enough already; he was already half-convinced that Zoltan was dead and that the woman he’d once loved had joined him. Why rip open an old wound? At best, the knowledge that they were both still alive would have broken his heart all over again; at worst, it might have prompted him to go charging up the mountain, in the vain hope that he might be able to save her. But if that was indeed Greer, then she was beyond hope of redemption; she’d become the consort of an insane god, and there was nothing that could be done for her.
So we swore Susan to silence and kept this knowledge to ourselves. That evening, though, after everyone had gone to bed, Carlos and I met once more with Fred LaRoux. In the quiet of the main lodge, with a fire in the hearth and drinks in hand, we came clean, telling him everything that we knew, while insisting that the chirreep posed no direct threat to Shady Grove. He was disturbed to learn that Zoltan Shirow was still alive. His first impulse was to send some of his people up the mountain to find him, but Carlos and I managed to make him realize that doing so would probably cause more harm than good. So long as Shady Grove kept the gates locked at night, Zoltan and his chirreep would probably leave them alone so long as they left him alone.
We remained in Shady Grove for a few more days, then we loaded the Scouts and Dauphins aboard the shags and began to make the long journey back to Defiance. This time, though, we didn’t make the trip alone. Nearly two dozen men and women came with us, those willing and able to take up the fight against the Union. They were only the first; through the remaining months of winter, word would spread to other camps and settlements scattered across the Gillis Range, until an army was assembled for a final assault on Liberty, the colony we’d been forced to abandon so long ago.
In the end, Zoltan Shirow—Sareech, the mad god—was right all along. War wasn’t the worst thing, and even Corah wouldn’t have the last word. We’d seen the shape and form of spiritual slavery; only the apocalypse itself would bring salvation.
Part 7
LIBERATION DAY
KAFZIEL, ASMODEL 5, C.Y. 06/0503—WEST CHANNEL, NEW FLORIDA
Darkness lay heavy upon the north shore; sunrise was still a half hour away, and the stars had yet to disappear from the night sky. Bear hung low above the western horizon, its ring-plane rising above the channel. The winter snow had melted a few weeks earlier, and a cool breeze stirred the tall grasses of the marshlands surrounding the inlet of North Creek; the grasshoarders were still asleep in their nests, though, and the boids had yet to begin to hunt. A new day was coming to this part of Coyote as it always had, in peaceful serenity, heretofore untouched by the hand of man.
Now there were new sounds: murmured voices, wooden paddles faintly bumping against canoe gunnels. From time to time, thin beams of light moved across black waters, briefly exploring the shoreline before disappearing once more. Tiny wavelets lapped against the sandy beach, forced ahead by low shapes that glided quietly toward shore.
As the lead canoe approached the inlet, the figure hunched in its bow stroked in reverse, gently slowing his craft. The keel softly crunched against sand, and he briefly thrust the paddle downward to test the depth. Then, carefully balancing himself upon the gunnels, he stood up and stepped over the side, his boots splashing through calf-deep water.
Pulling a light from his jacket pocket, Carlos aimed it toward the channel and flashed three times. A moment passed, then from the darkness there was a rapid succession of flashes in response. Putting the light away, he took a moment to look around. He was almost home. And this time, he was bringing a few friends with him. . . .
“I could use a hand here.” Chris had climbed out and was wading ashore. “Unless you’re too busy admiring the view, of course.”
“Sorry.” Carlos turned to help him haul the canoe ashore. “Never seen this part of the island before.”
“Who has?” Chris bent down to loosen the ropes of the tarp covering their gear. “But you look like you’re posing for a picture. Like Washington crossing the . . . y’know, whatever.”
“Hey, if you’ve got a camera . . .”
“Left it behind, George. Maybe next time.”
The rest of the flotilla was approaching the shore: canoes, pirogues, a couple of keelboats, more than three dozen boats in all. The thin light cast by masked lamps illuminated shadowed figures as they climbed overboard to pull their craft onto dry land. They moved quickly, wasting as little time as possible; with sunrise fast approaching, they’d have to hurry to make camp before daybreak.
Over the course of the last nine days, eighty-six men and women, from settlements all across Midland, had navigated the Medsylvania Channel from their departure point at New Boston. They’d traveled under the cover of darkness, sleeping during the day under camouflage nets so as not to be spotted by low-flying aircraft. Two nights ago, Red Company crossed the confluence of the East Channel, where the Medsylvania Channel became the West Channel, until they reached the northeastern tip of New Florida. From there, North Creek flowed south to Sand Creek, which in turn led straight to Liberty. Carlos noticed that they all kept their voices low, as if they were expecting a Union Guard patrol somewhere nearby. Liberty was a long way from there, yet no one was taking any chances.
Hearing someone coming up behind him, he looked around to see his sister walking toward him. “Spotted a small blackwood grove about fifty yards that way,” Marie said quietly. “I think we can make camp there.”
“Very good. Take as much equipment as we need, leave everything else here.” Carlos turned to two men standing nearby. “You and you . . . pull out the nets and start covering the boats. I want everything under wraps before the sun comes up.”
“Got it, Rigil,” one of them said. More than half of Red Company still referred to him as Rigil Kent, the alias he’d chosen for himself long ago, even though they now knew his real name. Just as well, he thought. If this fails, that’ll be probably be the name they carve into my tombstone.
That was an uncomfortable notion, so he sought to avoid it. “You got the satphone?” he asked Chris.
Chris had just unloaded their packs. He glanced at his watch, then gazed up at the night sky. “Little early for that, don’t you think? Alabama isn’t due over for another hour or so. We don’t even know if they . . .”
“You’re right. Just skittish, that’s all.” He hesitated. “Wish I knew where the other guys are.”
Chris bent over one of the packs, loosened its flap, and dug inside until he found the satphone. “Relax,” he said softly as he handed it to Carlos. “You’ve done as much as you can. It’s up to them now.”
Carlos nodded. A hundred and seventy miles southeast of their position, Blue Company would be paddling across the East Channel, making landfall at the Garcia Narrows. A couple of thousand miles away, White Company was hiding somewhere along the eastern coast of Midland, watching the bluffs of Hammerhead across the Midland Channel. And meanwhile, out in space . . .
“If you’re going to pitch this one . . .” Chris began.
Carlos glanced at him, not knowing at first what he was talking about, until he realized that he’d been holding the satphone for a long time. Chris was remembering the day, long ago, when Carlos had unwisely thrown a satphone into Sand Creek. “If I did, would you . . .”
“Hey, what’s that?” Chris pointed past him. “Look over there.”
Carlos turned around. For a moment, he didn’t see what his friend had spotted, then he saw it: an orange-red radiance low upon the eastern horizon, faintly illuminating the undersides of morning clouds. For a moment, he thought they’d miscalculated the time before local sunrise. But dawn wasn’t due for at least another half hour, and, although the glow flickered faintly, it didn’t subside as heat lightning would. Whatever it was, it was coming from Midland.
And suddenly, he realized what he was seeing.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Not now. Please, not now . . .
”
0532—CSS PLYMOUTH
“Range three hundred yards and closing.” Kim Newell barely looked up from her controls; her gaze was locked on the computer screens, her left hand steady upon the yoke as she gently fired a quick burst from the forward RCRs. “On course for rendezvous. Stand by for docking maneuver.”
“Roger that.” Robert Lee instinctively reached up to tap his headset mike before he remembered that there was no reason to activate the ship-to-ship radio. Indeed, there was little for him to do at that point; Kim was in the left seat, and she knew the Plymouth much better than he did. All he was doing was riding shotgun.
So he gazed up through the canopy and watched as the Alabama steadily moved closer. It didn’t look the same as the last time he’d seen her—over four and a quarter years ago by the LeMarean calendar, he reminded himself, or nearly thirteen years by Gregorian reckoning. Five hundred feet in length, the starship filled the cockpit windows; five of the seven crew modules that had once formed a ring around its forward section were missing—they’d been jettisoned shortly after Alabama had arrived—and the shuttle cradles along its central boom were empty. The aft navigation beacon had burned out, leaving the engine section in the dark, and long-term exposure to solar radiation and micrometeorites had warped and pitted some of the hull plates. The ship had survived a 230- year voyage from Earth, yet it was meant to travel between the stars, not linger in high orbit. After so many years of being subjected to the effects of space weather, the giant vessel was slowly falling apart, like a sailing ship left to rot at the wharf.
All the same, though, it was good to see the old lady again. As Kim coaxed the Plymouth closer, Lee felt his throat grow tight. It had been a long while since he’d considered himself to be a starship captain. Now, at least for a brief time, he would be the commanding officer of the URSS Alabama once more.
He felt a hand upon his shoulder. “A little worse for wear,” Dana Monroe murmured, floating next to him in the narrow cockpit, “but she’s still there.” She gazed up at the ship. “Glad you made the trip?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Lee took his mate’s hand, gave it a squeeze. “Ready to play chief engineer again?”
She gave him a hard look. “Play chief engineer? Sir, that is an insult.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to question your professional—”
“Oh, cut it out.” She leaned forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. “But if it’s play you’ve got in mind,” she whispered in his ear, “if we get a chance maybe we can see if there’s still a bunk where we can—”
“Range fifty feet and closing.” Kim nudged the thruster bar again. “Six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . .” There was a sudden jar as Plymouth’s dorsal hatch mated with Alabama’s docking collar. “Rendezvous complete, Captain.”
The maneuver caused Dana to bump the back of her head against the canopy. She muttered an obscenity beneath her breath, but Kim didn’t notice; she let out her breath, then reached forward to shut down the engines. Lee gazed at her with admiration. Kim claimed that flying a shuttle was like riding a bicycle, but they both knew that operating a spacecraft was far more complex than that; considering how long it had been since she’d last piloted Plymouth, her performance had been outstanding. True, she had been rehearsing this mission for the past two months, borrowing time from her farm chores to perform flight simulations in the cockpit, yet the fact remained that Plymouth hadn’t moved an inch since it had been covered with camouflage nets. In that time, Kim had been more concerned with raising a little boy with her husband. And now that Tom Shapiro was gone . . . but it wasn’t the time to mourn for lost friends.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Ever since they’d lifted off from Defiance six hours before, they had subconsciously reverted to their former United Republic Service ranks. Old habits die hard, even after so many years. “How’s the airlock pressure?”
Kim looked up to check a gauge. “Equalized. We’re okay to pop the hatch.”
Lee unbuckled his harness and pushed himself out of his seat. Kim followed him. Dana had already left the cockpit, floating back to the passenger compartment to undo the ceiling hatch. She pulled it open, then moved aside, allowing him captain’s privilege of being the first person aboard.
Lee squirmed up the narrow manhole and found the zebra-stripped panel that covered the controls for the inner hatch. Flipping it open, he pushed a couple of buttons. The airlock hissed slightly as it irised open, revealing darkness beyond. Deck H5 was pitch-black save for a couple of small red diodes on a wall panel on the opposite side of the ready room. The air was cold, with a faintly musty odor. With the heat turned down, the ship was colder than he’d expected; he was glad he was wearing a catskin jacket and trousers rather than his old URS jumpsuit.
He unclipped a penlight from his belt, then glided over to the wall panel. Recessed lights within the low ceiling flickered to life, revealing the narrow compartment. Everything looked much the same as he’d left it, down to the empty hardsuits stowed in their apertures and the fungal growth they’d discovered on the consoles shortly after they’d awoken from biostasis.
Dana followed him, but Kim hovered within the airlock. “Look, you guys don’t need me,” she said. “Maybe I ought to stay back, keep the boat warm.”
She was clearly unsettled by the silence, nor could Lee blame her. It felt strange to be back here again. “Suit yourself. See you in a few.”
‘Thanks, Captain. And . . . the docking cradle?”
“I’ll take care of it topside.” Plymouth was mated to Alabama only by its docking collar; until they entered the bridge and reactivated the AI, Kim would be unable to remote-operate the cradle that secured the shuttle to the ship. A minor safety precaution, but best not to leave anything to chance. “We’ll be back soon. Don’t go away.”
“Not without you. Good luck.” Kim retreated to the shuttle, careful to close the inner hatch behind her. Lee watched her go, then he and Dana pushed themselves over to the central access shaft leading up through the ship’s core.
The darkened shaft echoed softly as they floated upward, its tunnel walls reverberating with the sound of their hands grasping the ladder rungs. Lee was tempted to make a brief tour of his ship, yet there was no reason to do so; with most of the crew modules missing, there was little to be seen, save the hibernation modules and the engineering and life-support compartments farther up the hub. He briefly considered climbing up to the ring corridor on Deck H1, where Leslie Gillis—poor Les, condemned to a solitary existence for thirty-five years—had painted a vast mural across its walls. Sometime in the future, he’d have to visit the ship again, perhaps even dismantle the bulkheads and have them shipped home so that Gillis’s artwork could be preserved for future generations. But now wasn’t the time.
Lee stopped at Deck H4, undogged the hatch, and pushed it open. The command compartment was cold and dark, with only a few muted lights gleaming from beneath brittle, fungus-covered plastic covers that shrouded the consoles and instrument panels. The rectangular portholes remained shuttered; the chill air held a faint scent of dust and mildew. Something on the far side of the compartment moved; when he aimed his penlight at it, he spotted a maintenance ’bot scuttling away upon spidery legs.
“Like a haunted house,” Dana said softly. “Only we’re the ghosts.”
She’d felt it, too. “Let’s make this a little less spooky.” Lee turned to a wall panel next to the hatch, found the switch that illuminated the compartment. “All right, we’re in. Let’s go to work.”
Dana went straight for the com station. She pulled aside the cover and shoved it beneath the console, then tapped a few instructions into the keyboard. “Just as I figured,” she murmured, studying the screen. “Main antenna’s been disabled. Won’t track incoming signals.”
Of course. The Union had figured out that the resistance movement was using satphones to keep in touch with one another. Once the Union knocked out Alabama’s ground-to-space relay system, then the gue
rrillas were unable to communicate across long distances, even though Rigil Kent had already stopped using satphones for fear of revealing their whereabouts. “Can you fix it?”
“No sweat. I’ll reboot the AI, then I’ll have you enter your code prefix. Once that’s done, I can realign the antenna. With any luck, we’ll have the satphone back in thirty minutes, tops.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Take a break. I’ll call when I need you.”
“Thank you, Chief.” Lee pushed himself over to his chair. It had been many years since the last time he’d sat there; the soft leather was cracked and worn, and creaked softly as he settled into it. He had to search for the belt straps that held him in place, and another minute passed before he remembered how to open the lapboard. How strange. He could skin a creek cat, milk a goat, chop down a faux birch, make a fire with damp wood . . . yet now his hands wavered above the keypad, uncertain of what to do next.
He sighed, shook his head. Come on, Lee, get on with it. There are people down there depending on you.
He took a moment to lock down the Plymouth. And then, almost as if of its own accord, his right hand sought out the controls that operated the window shutters. Dana was still at the com station keyboard, awakening the ship’s computer from its long slumber; he had a couple of minutes to kill, and it had been many years since he’d enjoyed the pleasure of looking down upon a world from space. As the shutters slowly rose, he unfastened his belt again, then guided himself hand over hand along the ceiling rails until he reached the nearest porthole.