Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  Anger grabbed hold of Helen, but she’d been ready for it. What she was less prepared for was the sorrow. Kevin and Derek’s parents had been old-fashioned Christians, and she’d been to both their sons’ baptisms. She’d written Kevin the recommendation that got him into M.F.I.T., and she’d been there when Ben told Derek he’d won the competitive exams that turned him into the one-man survey department.

  Beth and Rick Cusmanos had both retired and moved back to Mother Earth. Helen remembered her own mixed feelings at the bon voyage party. But the sons had both stayed. Stayed to do this to Venera.

  Belatedly, she realized Beth and Rick did not yet know what their sons had done, and sorrow struck her again.

  “I have your statements in your files.” Michael lit up one of the table screens, all business. Whatever he felt watching the men who were his friends, he kept hidden. He just shuffled the icons until he had access to their fact files. “Is there anything you want to add at this time?”

  Derek’s eyes slid sideways to look at Kevin. Kevin did not look up. “Can you cut us a deal?” asked Derek, a little belligerently, a little hopefully.

  Michael’s gaze flickered from Derek to Kevin. “I can make sure the court knows you cooperated fully.”

  “But you can’t deal?” pressed Derek.

  Helen felt her jaw clench. How can you talk like this? Don’t you realize what you almost did? If there hadn’t been something real out there, you would have killed Venera!

  Michael shook his head. “I’m not an officer of the courts, no, but I am recognized as a police officer. It gives me some weight.”

  Derek snorted, and Kevin glowered at him. “No,” Derek said. “It’s not enough. The shit’s too deep to be shoveled out with a good report card.”

  “Derek.” Ben leaned forward. “Don’t do this to yourselves. Don’t do this to your friends. You’ve been caught. It’s all over. There’s no one to protect anymore.”

  Derek said nothing.

  Helen swallowed her anger. She stood and walked around the edge of the table. “Kevin?” she said, standing next to him.

  Kevin sat silently. Helen let the silence stretch. Then, she said. “You’re a good man, Kevin Cusmanos. You have done so much good work for us.” She meant it, every word. A thousand memories flashed through her head of Kevin, in and out of the scarabs, his attention to detail, his care and diligence in training his people and caring for his equipment. “You’re just trying to help your brother, I’m sure of that.” More memories—the two of them in the playground, Derek always tearing along behind his older, bulkier brother. Kevin at Derek’s promotion ceremony, his chest puffed all the way out. Derek looked so…lost really when Kevin boarded the ship for Earth and his degrees, and Kevin shaking him by the shoulder and telling him to cheer up.

  Helen laid her hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “I’m telling you, it doesn’t have to be this bad. We might not even have to send you down there if we can show we know all of what happened.”

  Slowly, sadly, Kevin shook his head. “There is no way the yewners are going to let you hang on to us. Too many people are going to look stupid as soon as word gets out. There’s nothing you can do, Helen.”

  Regret deep and profound poured through her. That was it then. She touched his shoulder. “There’s nothing you’ll let me do.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said to the tabletop.

  “Kevin.”

  Kevin finally looked up, right into her eyes. Over his shoulder, she saw Derek’s face go white. He’s going to tell us. Hope leaped up inside her. He’s not going to let us down.

  But the moment passed, and Kevin’s gaze dropped back to the tabletop. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Kevin.” She squeezed his shoulder and turned away. “For both of you.”

  Phil stepped into Angela’s cubicle in the infirmary. She was still unconscious. Her face was mottled red and white. The muffling headphones the doctors had strapped over her damaged ears plastered her short hair against her burned scalp. Tubes and patches covered her pale arms lying on top of the rough monitor blanket.

  “You’re looking good, Ms. Cleary.” He sat in the stiff chair beside her bed. Why was there no hospital in existence that had comfortable visitor’s chairs? She really did look better. When they’d first let him in to see her, every limb was swollen with bruises and blisters. Her face was a single massive, doughy contusion. He’d seen worse but not on his partner.

  They told him she’d been awake briefly, but now what she needed was sleep. She needed to sleep away the pain and the fear and the utter strangeness of what had happened to her. The Veneran doctors were minimalists who did not approve of speed-healing techniques. They repaired the blood vessels and nerves, alleviated the adenoma, and treated the worst of the burns. Other than that, they were leaving her body to take care of itself.

  “Well, you’ve been saying you needed a vacation anyway,” said Phil, looking more at the floor than at Angela. She’d been nearly dead when they brought her back. He’d thought it was all over. He’d thought she was gone. He’d been terrified. They’d worked together since he’d joined the U.N. security team. In some ways he was closer to her than to his own wife.

  But she wasn’t dead. She’d been saved. By strangers. Aliens. It was almost too much. Phil found he didn’t really want to think about it. It was a lot easier to concentrate on what was going on inside Venera’s walls.

  “I haven’t written the report for the boss yet,” he went on. “The Venerans are screening outgoing transmissions. Somehow I don’t think our encrypted stuff is going to get through. I’m going to start looking for holes.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “But I don’t think I’m going to find any. The guy is very good.” He glanced at her. The blanket rose and fell with her rhythmic breathing.

  She’s getting better. She’s going to stay alive. “I wonder how long it’s going to take Stykos and Wray to file free-speech lawsuits.” He sucked on his cheek thoughtfully. “Actually, the Venerans will probably offer them exclusive coverage of the aliens if they keep their mouths shut until the Venerans are ready.”

  He rubbed his palms together, feeling skin against skin, feeling how they were slightly damp. Then his thoughts froze the motion.

  “How’d he filter out the communications so fast?” Phil straightened up.

  You just said he was good. His imagination supplied Angela’s words.

  “Nobody’s that good. He couldn’t just shut down everything; it’d look funny. Someone on Mother Earth would notice.” He touched Angie’s hand. It was warm and dry under the tubes. “A good broad-spectrum communication filter is not something you pluck out of the stream. He must have had them in place.” He turned toward her, eyes shining, despite the fact that nothing had changed with her. “I think Michael Lum’s been less than straight with us about how wired this base is. That means there might be info we could strain out.”

  Might be. Maybe. If he was right. But that also meant the not so still waters of Venera ran deeper than he’d believed.

  If Michael Lum hadn’t told them how much info he had access to, who else hadn’t he told?

  On the other hand, Michael was the one Who’d come to him about the possible fraud involving the Discovery, which made him less likely to be involved in perpetrating that fraud.

  “What a mess,” Phil muttered through his teeth. He turned his eyes to Angela’s blanket and its steady rise and fall. “We’re going to have to do some scenario planning here. It’s pretty clear the original Discovery was a fake. They’ve got the guys who actually built it. But I think Michael’s right. There were other people involved in planning the scam. We need to find them.” He leaned back again, a restless, meaningless movement. “And hope for the moment he’s not one of them, although I don’t know….Fake base and real aliens.” Phil shook his head. “I am not buying the coincidence here. Someone is building up to something, and I can’t see what yet.” He frowned, both at his thought
s and at the realization that it was so much easier to think of aliens if they were part of a conspiracy or a cover-up of some kind. That felt strange and a little sad.

  Angela stirred, a meaningless, restless movement of her own. “Wake up soon, Angie,” he said softly. “I need you on the beach with me when the wave hits.”

  The idiots, thought Su as she surveyed the broken chunks of metal and ceramic tumbling gently through the void. They couldn’t wait. They couldn’t hold back.

  She floated upright in the shuttle’s observation compartment, one hand hanging on to a wall handle to keep herself still and oriented. The port window currently showed the small debris field. Here and there she could see the bright-yellow suits of the Trans-Lunar Patrol workers, gathering the debris, strapping it into bundles to be hauled into the shuttles and out of the shipping lanes. Small drones spread out in sweep patterns, vacuuming up the dust and marble-sized debris that could pinhole anything that flew through it.

  Twelve hours ago, all that debris had been a shipyard engaged in labor negotiations with a union that had outspoken separatist sentiments. The yard was a space station, and the properly of a wholly owned Terran corporation, which got it around the “no ship building” rules that applied to the colonies.

  It also meant that the colonists cared a lot less about keeping the place in good shape.

  The bombs had scattered the yards and the ships across kilometers of heavily traveled space. The Trans-Lunars and the insurance people were still calculating the damage. At least five ships had been hit by debris. The majority of traffic between Earth and Luna was grounded until they could get the wreckage cleared up. It would take days and cost millions.

  They just couldn’t wait.

  “The Union has made a strong statement condemning the bombing,” said Glenn Kucera, the U.N.’s Lunar representative, and the person Su kept thinking of as her “host” for this little trip. “They’re saying it’s radical elements within the organization and that the union is committed to peaceful reform.”

  “Yes, I heard that,” said Su. She couldn’t look away. The world outside was all sharp edges against the blackness. Everything was too clean, too clear. It all fell, fell endlessly, silver, white, and black. “How many people died in there?”

  “Fourteen,” said Kucera. “It went off between shifts.”

  “And is anyone is custody?” Her mouth moved and questions came out, but Su felt as though someone else were asking them. She was just watching the tumbling debris and cursing the ones who couldn’t wait just a few days, maybe a few weeks longer.

  “Not yet. We’re still following some leads, and of course Mr. Hourani is here to help.” Kucera licked his lips. “Su, we’ve got to diffuse this. Waicek—”

  Su nodded. Edmund was down in U.N. City now, having himself a little field day, pointing out what unrest, what independent thought in the colonies led to.

  “And he’s got backup.” Su ground her teeth against the curses that wanted to spill out of her. They’d worked so hard to keep things calm, to keep everything going through the transition period. She’d done absolutely everything she could do. Why did it feel like she had never worked hard enough?

  Why couldn’t you just wait?

  Well, while she was up here, she would take some of the wind out of Edmund Waicek’s sails. That was all ready to set in motion. She just needed to get through this first.

  It took all of Su’s strength to turn away from the window and face her host. Even then, out of the corner of her eye, she could still see bits of black and silver tumbling in the darkness.

  “I’ll meet with the Union reps,” she said. “Find somebody to arrest, Glenn. Get this under wraps quickly.” Actually, with Sadiq Hourani himself looking into the situation, Su did not give the perpetrators of this violent idiocy long odds.

  “I want it under wraps too, believe me.” Although Glenn had been born on Earth, he looked like the classic Lunar—tall, spindly, hair cropped short under his cap. He’d gone pretty native up here, but he hid it so he could keep his post. It was a balancing act that Su understood well and did not envy.

  Su touched his arm. “We’ll pull it out, Glenn. We always have.”

  He smiled crookedly. “One damn crisis after another, isn’t it?” He gazed out the window. “I just wish they weren’t coming closer together.”

  “So do I, Glenn.”

  They shared a tired, tight smile with each other. Glenn let go of his strap and pushed easily off the wall with just enough force to take him to the threshold of the passenger bay. “So, can I drop you somewhere?”

  “Back to Selene, thank you,” said Su, primly. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  “Will do.” Glenn paused. “Thanks for coming up for this one, Su. I know you’ve got enough going on with Venera.”

  “I’m not abandoning anybody, Glenn. We’re all in this together.” Almost involuntarily her gaze shifted back to the spinning debris. At least, we should be.

  The landing back in the Selene port was perfectly routine. Su emerged with her retinue and Glenn and then sent them all about their business. She really did have an appointment, but this was not a meeting that needed an audience.

  Assisted by the weighted undersuit she wore, Su walked to Selene’s public caverns. Su visited Lima frequently, but she’d never gotten the hang of light gravity, so she dressed like a tourist to keep from hurting herself or from damaging property by inadvertently flinging things across the room.

  She found the cafe where the meeting was to take place in the vine-hung public cavern that served as a small park. She took a seat at one of its gilt-wire tables but did not order anything. Outwardly she was calm, but inside, her stomach churned from the memory of the devastation. Her mind kept running through all the areas where damage control would be needed, and the list was expanding alarmingly.

  It was ten minutes later when Frezia Cheney finally emerged from the northeast tunnel. Living on the Moon gave one grace, Su decided, as she watched the feeder walk toward her. Especially in those who were born here, there was an unhurried elegance in their small movements. Maybe it was because things around them fell so slowly that there was no imperative to rush when you reached for something. You could grab hold of whatever you wanted and not even gravity would snatch it away from you.

  Su stood up politely as the feeder reached her table. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Ms. Cheney.”

  “I should be thanking you, Ms. Yan.” She beamed the smile of those comfortable with cameras and publicity. “Normally there’s a three-month waiting list to get to speak to anyone in the U.N.”

  “Yes,” agreed Su as they both sat down. “We are kept on short leashes.”

  “They’ve let yours out far enough to reach Luna.”

  Su smiled deprecatingly. “Ah, that took a little doing. I was officially here doing some labor negotiations…” She broke off. “But then, you would know that already.”

  “I would.” Ms. Cheney nodded once. “In fact, I’ve written about it.”

  “Of course.” Su frequently scanned the stream for her own name. It was partly vanity, but mostly it was to keep an eye on how she was perceived. The bad opinion of her colleagues was one thing, but public opinion turned against her could be the end of her.

  Su set that thought aside. “And how was my son when you spoke to him?”

  Ms. Cheney’s smile was both curious and sly. “He told you about me?”

  “Was it supposed to be confidential?” returned Su.

  “Oh, no.” She waved her hand, dismissing any such suggestion. “But I wasn’t aware that you two spoke much.”

  Now it was Su’s turn to smile slyly. “We keep that quiet. It’s not good for either of our reputations.”

  “I suppose not. To answer your question, I’m happy to tell you he was quite well.” She paused and her eyes slid up and sideways. Su had the distinct feeling some implant had just been activated. Probably a recorder. “Now, may I ask what you wanted to see
me about?” asked Ms. Cheney.

  Su folded her hands on the table and smoothed her thoughts out. Time to get to work. “Actually, I also came to Luna about a stream piece.”

  The feeder tipped her head in polite curiosity. “One I’ve written, or one you’d like me to write?”

  I see, Ms. Cheney, that you’ve had experience with politicians. “One I’d like you to write. If you’re willing to accommodate me, I am in a position to offer you access to the blast site and some of the U.N. personnel involved in the investigation.” And aren’t I going to have the time convincing Sadiq to go along with it.

  Ms. Cheney’s eyes gleamed for a moment, but experience and suspicion doused the light. “A great deal would depend on what you want me to write.”

  “Naturally.” Su inclined her head. “You know Edmund Waicek?”

  Ms. Cheney’s eyes slid sideways again. Su was certain the feeder was looking Edmund up, fetching the pertinent details from some internally stored database to be displayed on a contact lens or spoken softly into her ear. “Not personally, but I know his political opinions better than I’d care to.”

  “You know that his parents died in the Bradbury Rebellion?” Su asked, positive Ms. Cheney had the information available.

  One more slide of Ms. Cheney’s eyes. Look that up. Don’t make any statement of fact unless you’re sure. “That’s been gone over several times. He’s made speeches about it.”

  I have lost more than can ever be recovered, and I am only one of many. Su remembered the speech very well. He’d done it with tears in his eyes. They might even have been real.

  “But did you know that they were Fullerists?” asked Su.

  “What?” Ms. Cheney jerked out of her internal communion with her data implants. It was just as well. She would not find this little fact in the shallows of the stream. Edmund had made sure of that.