“It’s time you talked to me,” said Roberto softly, looking at Celia enquiringly.
“Don’t want to,” she said tersely.
“Andre says you have to,” said Roberto, beginning to smile.
“Oh yeah, I forgot, he runs the research team now,” said Celia in exasperation, then snorted a short laugh, seeing Roberto’s smile.
“I deserve a reason why you’re pushing me away,” said Roberto gently.
“It’s private business!” snapped Celia, and began to walk faster. She reached the main entrance to the labs ahead of him, and he had to stop the door to go through at the same time as her.
“Are you interested in someone else?” said Roberto quietly.
“No!” said Celia. “Not interested in you, not anyone else. Not now. Not ever. Got it?”
“No, I don’t ‘got it’, don’t understand it, don’t want to leave it alone,” said Roberto doggedly.
Celia wheeled into her office, and Roberto followed.
They stood eyeing each other. She was fiercely determined he would leave with his questions unanswered. He was stubbornly determined he wouldn’t leave without knowing why she was pushing him away.
There was an electric tension lasting more than a minute.
Roberto knew the other labs were empty, and that everyone had gone to their quarters for the artificial Prometheus ‘night’. This was his only chance. He had to push her for an answer now, or face the prospect it may never be forthcoming.
Celia’s willpower collapsed first. She sat down in her chair, wiping her hand across her face. Roberto pulled a chair over and sat beside her. He took her hand, and held it firmly when she tried to pull it away.
“How long have we shared everything, every confidence?” he asked, and she flicked her head away, refusing to look at him.
“From the beginning,” he said, “from the time the European Science Commission formed the research team, and then through the biggest change, when you took over from Creedo Shard.”
“Those were the days,” said Celia with a hesitant smile. “No responsibility, just pitting our minds against the greatest problems ancient cultures left for us to unravel.”
“Damn right,” said Roberto, “best times ever.”
“Then the promotion to Prometheus. Remember how Cordez rigged it, got us stood down because we were ‘no longer needed’ at the Science Commission, and spirited us away for his own purposes.”
Celia had to laugh. “He sees things we don’t see, all right,” she agreed, “and he must have seen something special in us.”
“He did,” said Roberto, “he certainly did. The same way I see something special in you now.”
CHAPTER 18
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Roberto had Celia alone in her office, and it was the only chance he would get to find out why she was pushing him away. He had to go for it.
She tensed as he told her how special he thought she was, but he continued quietly on.
“I only want to know what’s wrong, Celia, as a matter of trust. There have been many things that have stayed in confidence between us, and this is just one more.” He paused, then continued.
“Our friendship is too valuable to me to break that trust, you know that. Dammit, relationships come and go these days – too easily it seems – but a good friendship remains.”
They might come and go easily for you, thought Celia defensively, I’ve not even thought about a relationship since those disastrous early years, and it’s even harder for me now.
“It’s not that, Roberto,” she said. “It’s just that it’s something too painful to talk about.”
“I’ve got all night,” said Roberto with a reassuring smile. “We can send out for something from the cafe later.
“I know!” he said. “You can write it all down for me while I catch up on some zzzs,” and he wriggled down in the chair until his lanky frame spilled over at both ends. In fact he was feeling tired. Too much work lately, and the excitement of the Valkrethi this afternoon.
Celia smiled. She was almost convinced, until a wave of shame washed over her. Roberto saw her stiffen and took her other hand as well.
“Come on, my girl, spit it out. No time like the now, eh?”
He sounded just like her father, who had always been so understanding. Not that she had ever told him about this, this would be too much to share with anybody.
And so, haltingly, she began.
“When I was in college, I worked hard, and I loved the idea of knowledge – and I still do. But eventually I found out about boys.” She paused, not sure how to tell her story.
"It was wonderful. Maybe I was different in some way, but having a boyfriend, having a lover, was just euphoric for me. Perhaps there’s something wrong in my brain,” she said, looking up guiltily.
Roberto squeezed her hands, and shook his head that there was nothing wrong with her.
“Maybe I was a bit naive too. I know now I was too trusting. I’d been busy studying all my life, you know how it is.” She looked down at the floor. Roberto guessed that what she was about to say had left deep scars in her.
“Next thing I knew I had a string of ex-boyfriends, and a reputation for being ‘easy’. Then my academic friends turned their backs on me.
“The whole college seemed to take pleasure in running me down,” She said, and paused. “Now I realize it was a case of envy, or jealousy; cutting down the tall poppy. I had ‘straight A student turns slut’ appear on an assignment we had to do in communications class. No one would own up to it.”
She squeezed Roberto’s hands. He thought it best to say nothing.
“I switched colleges, made up some story for my parents. There was nothing else I could do. I was on medication for months.”
“Okay, now I understand,” said Roberto gently. “If that was what being in a relationship did to you, you don’t ever want to find yourself in one again.”
She nodded miserably.
“And my kissing you at the barn dance brought it all back,” he concluded.
“Not at first. At first I just wanted to kiss you back, put my arms around your neck, feel you against me,” she said, blushing furiously. “But that’s when I realized it was starting all over again, that I hadn’t changed a bit. I remembered that relationships had to be avoided at all costs.”
“At least you proved that for me,” she added bitterly. “You proved that my feelings can’t be trusted.”
Roberto let out a very long breath. It was funny how the Human brain learned things. When it was working correctly it made connections with other information stored nearby, and that gave it a chance to put new experiences into context.
Celia, though, had ‘learned’ that she was a hopeless case from that one experience, and then decided nothing would ever change for her. The connections that might have moderated her opinion had not been made in her brain.
“I think those feelings are normal,” he said gently. “You’re supposed to feel good like that. But it’s all got mixed up with other things in your mind.
“That’s okay. Maybe we can look at some of that later, if you want. The main thing is I can live with it, now I know what it is, and we can go back to being a damn good research team!”
Celia smiled gratefully. Roberto put his hands on her shoulders and hugged her momentarily. She hugged him back, then drew away awkwardly.
Roberto could see it was going to be a long, slow journey to bring her back to a more balanced sense of herself. But he knew what the problem was now.
He smiled. He was a patient man. But he didn’t get the chance to do anything about Celia before they were called up for the attack on the Invardii base at Aqua Regis.
The first part of the plan to destroy the mining base at the Barrens turned out to be a very low-key affair. The modified Javelins with their Valkrethi cargoes cleared Prometheus and slipped into the grainy, gray nothingness of star drive. The journey would take them close to two days.
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p; In the meantime a dooplehuel left the Shellport docks as dawn tinged the far horizon. It rounded the sea forest at the mouth of the mighty Kapuas river, and headed due South on a freshening breeze. By day’s end it would be at the far end of Spitzbergen, not far from where Hudnee’s team gathered gravel for the new houses at Shellport. Then the crew of the dooplehuel would set up markers for the Valkrethi.
“You believe any of this?” said Metris amiably to Menon, as he pulled the rib and hide sail in to trim the double-hulled craft. His shoulder still hurt where it had been burnt at the Barrens, but he had most of the use of it back. Habna had assured him it was just scar tissue stretching, and it would come right if he kept exercising it.
“Giants for all souls’ sake,” he said. “Giants made out of metal harder than our best fighting blades.
“There’s not enough metal in Shellport to make a copy of one man. There can’t be enough metal in the whole of Hud to make a giant, let alone dozens of them!”
Menon smiled. It was preposterous, of course it was. But then everything about the pale strangers from another planet was preposterous.
“Maybe not so unbelievable,” he said, finally. “Hudnee’s shown us how to make houses out of what we find in the ground – shells, white clay and gravel. We’ve always used the world of the living, of trees, crops, and animals, but maybe there’s more out there than we’ve yet discovered. Who knows what’s buried in the ground?”
Metris grunted. It was all a bit much for him. Still, the strangers’ medicine man had done something magical to Menon’s crippled arm, and it was now good as new. There were miracles.
“As long as we get to wipe out those damn monsters at the Barrens,” he said with feeling. He recalled huge, many-legged things coming out of the sea and climbing up the hill toward his squad. There had been flashing lights under the water offshore, and a giant cannon that shot great pellets into the night sky. It wasn’t natural!
“I’m with you on that one,” said Menon, sighting down the navigation rod fixed to the prow in front of him. After a moment’s thought he adjusted their heading with a sharp rap on the left side of the hull followed by two taps. Metris measured off the horizon into quarters, then again into arax, and steered the dooplehuel two arax to the left.
They opened woven grass parcels of food when the sun was overhead, and made a midday meal. As they got closer to their destination Menon ran out a line behind the dooplehuel, and soon pulled in a long, sleek prophet o’ the sea for their evening meal.
Spitzbergen slid past on their left, and then the line of cliffs ended and the noxious swamps of the eastern wasteland began. Menon steered in toward land, and Metris dropped the sail as they ran up on the shore.
They soon had the dooplehuel beached and the sail stowed away.
“This is it, then?” said Metris, indicating the jagged slash in the rock of the cliff.
Menon nodded. There was little in Hud he didn’t know about after his years of wandering, and when Hudnee had asked him if there were any caves close to the Barrens, this one had come to mind.
The two of them unloaded torches, and trudged toward the entrance. The grass and resin torches would mark the presence of the cave for the giants, the ‘Vaalgrathi’ as the people of Hud called them. When the men had marked out landing lights there should be some left over for inside the cave.
Maybe the giants didn’t need light, thought Menon, maybe they could see in the dark, but the pilots would be glad of it. There was so much the Shellport villagers didn’t know about the giant figures.
The entrance of the cave opened up into a sizable cavern, with a floor of sand and gravel built up by the sea. It could have housed most of the Shellport population for a meeting, and Menon hoped the two dozen giants would fit into it as easily.
“We mark the entrance, make camp, get an early night, and light the torches at the start of the third watch?” said Metris, running through what they had to do in his mind.
“You’ve got it,” said Menon, unloading torches by the entrance and dancing back as he disturbed a sea whip which had been resting under a log. He pinned it with his boot and cut off its head.
“Damn things are a menace!” he said in disgust. The Sea People lost one or two of their own each year to the poisonous sea snakes, usually children who didn’t know the warning signs. Once roused, the sea whips were very fast indeed.
The prophet o’ the sea was one of the best eating fishes to be had around Shellport, and the two men waited with anticipation as it bubbled in its own fat in the embers of the fire. When it cooled they split it open on a large rock. Their evening meal did not disappoint them.
When dusk fell they turned in. They didn’t set a watch. Menon set his internal clock to wake him at the end of the second watch.
CHAPTER 19
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The long, modified Javelins came out of star drive well out in the Aqua Regis system. They were on the opposite side of the planet to the enemy mining base. From there they coasted on silent running to the edge of the atmosphere. The Invardii hadn’t put up satellites, or erected a long-range monitoring system. They clearly didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.
That suits us fine, thought Cagill, as his Valkrethi ran through its warm up routine in the cargo bay. From here they would use the homing system to descend through the atmosphere, and head south for the rendezvous site on the Hud mainland. The descent through the atmosphere would heat the Valkrethi to several thousand degrees, but the technicians at Prometheus had assured him the hardy giants would take it.
A short time later a number of giant metal and composite shapes left the Javelins and fell toward the endless seas of Aqua Regis. Bright sunshine played off the waters below them, and then the heat haze of atmospheric buffeting began to form a fireball around each one.
“Arms up, people,” said Cagill over the open system, “stabilize in the starfish pattern.”
Roberto was enjoying this. He could feel the wind on his Valkrethi ‘skin’, and the experience must be as good as skydiving. He’d seen that done back on Earth. Normally he would think it far too risky for someone normally desk-bound like him, but this was exhilarating.
The heat haze of their descent built up until it obscured the magnificent view of endless ocean beneath them, and then Cagill was telling them to aim for coordinates on the land mass to the south. The Valkrethi changed direction, and began a shallow glide that would take them to their destination. They passed through a narrow band of twilight, and entered the night of this world.
Roberto looked around him at the others. He was in the middle of a cluster of bright, multi-colored stars coursing through the darkness. They had all assumed a streamlined hands-outstretched position, and were angling through the air like a shoal of fish, moving as needed to keep the shoal together.
“Watch for my mark,” said Cagill, and a blinking light appeared in the Valkrethi optics, overlaying the coast of Hud ahead.
“Converting excess speed on my mark . . . now,” he continued, and the Valkrethi used the dipole system to store energy as they slowed. Composite skins dulled as heat drained away from them, and then the Valkrethi were almost there, coming in low over the water.
Roberto switched the optics to infrared, and saw the warm sands of the coastline coming up rapidly. Flares of green showed where the infrared was picking up Menon’s resin torches.
The Valkrethi slowed to a halt at the spot Cagill had targeted. The dipole technology released them, and 24 giant creations dropped onto the beach, flexing their legs to take the impact. Two tiny bronze figures with green face markings came to meet them.
Cagill sent a short acknowledgment to the modified Javelins overhead, who would retrace their steps and leave the system. They would join the main Alliance force by the following morning, ready for the attack on the mining site.
Seeing Menon and Metris, Cagill took a step forward, and a giant foot kicked up driftwood and raked the two figures with sand. They darted
back toward the cave mouth behind them.
Realizing his mistake, Cagill dismounted from his Valkrethi. Menon and Metris looked at each other in wonder as a tall, pale stranger climbed down the ladder that appeared at the back of his giant mount. The figure walked toward them. They could see him more clearly as he came into the flickering torch light.
Cagill patted his right ear, to ask them if they had linguist earpieces. Menon understood, and tapped his ear in return. Feedic and Salaan had left several of them with Habna.
Cagill introduced himself.
“Feedic says the Shellport militia have done him proud,” he said, once Menon and Metris had returned the greeting. “He has been following the situation across Hud as Menona relays it every day. Congratulations to both of you for training them so well!”
Menon and Metris smiled hesitantly. The shock of seeing the giant figures was beginning to wear off now they were motionless, and they had seen Cagill climb out of one. It would take still take some time until they saw all this as normal.
“We’ll introduce you to everybody later, but first I’d like to get the Valkrethi under cover. If you would lead the way?”
Menon nodded, and Metris hurried ahead to light the torches in the cavern. The torches weren’t needed – the Valkrethi could see in any conditions – but they created a cheerful atmosphere for the visitors and their guides. It wasn’t long before the mounts had been stored at the back of the cavern.
“You, ah, have enough food?” questioned Metris, caught between the demands of hospitality and the clear inability of himself and Menon to feed so many.
“It’s not a problem,” said Cagill with a smile. “We’ve just come out of our sleep cycle, and had a good breakfast. The attack on the Invardii mining base – the place you call the Barrens – will start at midday tomorrow. For now we just want to rest up and pass the time. Preferably by not thinking about the attack!”
Menon smiled. It was an old soldiers’ dilemma. The day before a battle the soldiers should be sleeping, but that was impossible. So they passed the time with any distraction they could find – as long as they didn’t have to stop and think about the next day!
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 30