Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  The video ended. Rada replayed it twice, then checked it for hidden messages embedded in the code. She was almost certain the Swimmers did want to help them—the fact they'd replied was proof of that—but were still behind prohibited by the obscure interstellar political prohibitions against getting involved. Which obviously hadn't stopped the Lurkers, who were presumably about to face some very stiff sanctions from the alien Council of Nations and Stations.

  Then again, the Swimmers would gain nothing from getting involved except for making themselves feel somewhat better. The Lurkers would destroy a nearby upstart and claim another solar system for themselves. Easy to see how they'd be tempted into breaking the rules.

  Finding no encoded secondary messages, Rada forwarded the message to Winters and Toman. If nothing else, it seemed significant that there were still Swimmers out there in the Black Curtain, and that they were watching. After a bit of thought, she sent it along to Mat-Nalin, too.

  He messaged her three minutes later. "Real nice of the bug-eyed bastards to take time out of their busy schedule to let us know they can't lend us a claw."

  "It was a long shot in the first place. I don't think they have more than a handful of ships out there. That's not enough to even leave a dent in the Lurkers. Meanwhile, if they intervene in our conflict, they could risk having war declared on them."

  "What are you, the Swimmers' press secretary? Once upon a time, they nearly killed us all. And now they won't help us when we need it most."

  "Yeah. You would think that a species as smart as they are would see that the only chance we have is for everyone to stand and fight as one."

  Mat-Nalin nodded, then snapped his eyes to hers. "Hold on a minute. We already gave it our all. And I burned up every ounce of clout I have to make that happen. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't talk my people into flying out to Earth." The anger dimmed from his glare. He pursed his lips and shook his head. "Anyway, you want to shame someone for not pulling together, you should start with Earth. I hear the whole damn planet's about to go to war with itself. You ask me, and that world is a lost cause."

  The conversation ended. Across the Belt, the local defense fleet was breaking up, ships returning to their home stations. A few others were out patrolling with drones to try to catch any potential sneak attacks. The evacuations of the asteroids had stopped altogether. Maybe they'd come to the conclusion that there was nowhere to evacuate to.

  And were they wrong? In battle after battle, the Lurkers had decimated them. It had taken all of their ingenuity just to avoid being slaughtered to the last ship. Humanity's alliance had been shattered. The arrival of Toman and their rendezvous with Admiral Vance at Earth represented their last honest hope. If they lost that fight—and they had no reason to think they wouldn't, aside from the fact that all violence involved chaos and hence at least some possibility, however minuscule, of an upset—then the war would be effectively over.

  Maybe it already was.

  A new message announced itself on her device. She transferred it to the big screen.

  "Commander Pence." Admiral Vance sounded as stony as his face looked. "I have flown my fleet directly into a Lurker ambush. The battle will begin in less than two minutes. I am sending this message, as well as the footage that will follow, not as a request for aid, but in the hope that it might provide some insight for you and Admiral Benez."

  Vance didn't move, didn't even glance away, but something seemed to ripple over him. "Go down fighting, Rada. That is all that matters. May we see each other in the fields where all warriors finally find their peace."

  The video switched from Vance to feeds from multiple Earth ships. The Lurkers were practically right on top of them.

  Vance turned to fly directly toward the enemy. His ships deployed their drones. Lasers flashed from the Lurkers' heavy fighters, but even without their superior weapons, the outcome of the battle was never in doubt. The enemy outnumbered Vance's ships nearly ten times over.

  Rada watched as Earth's last warships were destroyed one by one.

  14

  "What the?" Webber gawked down into the darkness beneath the craft. "We must be a hundred feet over the ocean!"

  "We need a new plan."

  "Water's water, isn't it? We should jump now before we gain any more altitude."

  "We can't jump from this high, you crazy idiot. We'll break our necks. Even if we don't, I'll break your neck for having such a stupid idea."

  "What's your big idea? Wait for the ship to deliver us to the Lurkers on a platter?"

  "That's the plan. So you'd better go put on your mask."

  They took the dead men's suits from the hooks where they'd hung them out to dry after cleaning them of blood. MacAdams flung off the weird peasant garb their captors had put him in and tugged on the still-wet pants and jacket.

  He frowned down at himself. "This thing is so tight it feels like it's gonna explode if I flex wrong."

  "Then you'll have to wait to impress the ladies until we're done running from aliens." Webber had his suit on and was now holding the face of Enspach, the artificial skin dangling from his hands like a thick hood. "If this thing eats my face off, you're paying for my plastic surgery."

  He lowered the mask over his head. Initially, it was slack, but as soon as Webber started to press its edges against his neck, it tightened to his face with a slurping sound. Webber's eyes bulged.

  MacAdams reached for him. "Can you breathe?"

  "Yeah. Don't ask me how, but it seems fine."

  "How's it feel?"

  "Like I'm smiling really, really hard." He blinked at MacAdams. "Well? How do I look?"

  "Exactly like Enspach."

  "Great. I just hope this thing comes off of me as easily as it did him."

  They found some restraints and clapped Rohan in them to make him look properly imprisoned. The restraints could be opened by a pulse from a small black device which they put in his pocket in case they ran into trouble. The black bulge of land grew by the moment, but from what MacAdams could make out in the darkness, it didn't look more than ten miles across, an island or peninsula of some kind. He soon saw why they'd gained elevation: cliffs lined the shore, two hundred feet tall.

  And they were currently flying straight toward them.

  "Oh shit," he murmured.

  The craft slowed on its own, but it was still coming in fast enough that if it hit the cliffs, the result would be a lot of scorched stone and a jumble of broken metal. MacAdams moved to the controls, but he couldn't say for sure which things the controls even were.

  "Are we about to crash?" Webber said.

  "Don't know," MacAdams said.

  "Is there still time to jump?"

  "No. But if you hurry, you might still be able to beg something for forgiveness."

  The cliffs swung above them. The craft raced forward, ready to plow into the solid rock—and slipped into a crevice gouged through the curtains of stone. A ceiling of some kind hung overhead, as though they'd entered a cavern. Except that every now and then, a star winked through a gap in the roof.

  Webber began to laugh. "Oh, son of a bitch. We're back on Tandana!"

  The vessel slowed further. Having cleared the cliffs, it descended, gliding over rows of dark jets parked on the runway, and neared the structures at the furthest end of the hidden airfield.

  The craft touched down so gently that if they hadn't been expecting it they wouldn't have noticed it. Silence, then a little more silence, and then a far-off whirr: the airfield was rising around them. No, that made no sense: they were sinking.

  A square shaft swallowed them up. MacAdams watched a scuff on the wall, timing how long it took to disappear from the top of his vision, then counted how long it took until the platform came to a stop. Judging by his crude measure, they were a little over a hundred feet down.

  They were now inside a hangar—or something more like a shipyard, given the jets in various phases of construction across the factory floor. Robotic machinery with crane
-like appendages wheeled around the planes, bolting and welding them together with showers of sparks. An automated cart drove toward their ship, attached itself to something under the nose, and towed them out from the shaft.

  The cart came to a stop. Behind them, a heavy latch made a chunking sound. A square hold had opened in the floor. A staircase led down to the ground. MacAdams motioned to Webber, who descended first. Rohan went in the middle. MacAdams kept a hand on his shoulder, making sure the fetters didn't make the man trip.

  A bit of residual heat wafted from the bottom of the craft, along with the smell of warm metal. A slim man—or something that wanted others to think it was a man—met them next to the craft.

  "Mr. Enspach," he said to Webber. "Welcome back." He noted Rohan with a smug smile, which drooped as he considered MacAdams, who was posing as a goonish guard. He motioned to the vessel. "Should I send people to bring out the others?"

  "There are no others," Webber said, doing a passable job of imitating Enspach's voice and a bang-on job matching his fussy speech rhythm.

  The slim man arched an eyebrow. "You said there would be three prisoners."

  "There were. The other two did not survive their questioning."

  "Ah. What about their bodies?"

  "Their bodies disgusted me. I had them flung into the ocean. It wasn't any loss. This one, this Rohan, knows everything we need to know."

  The man examined Rohan, taking in his missing eye and ear with a weak smirk. "It looks like he took some convincing."

  He motioned to a second man in coveralls, who jogged over with device in hand. The worker aimed a device at the belly of the craft. A panel opened on its underside and lowered to the ground. A transparent box held their confiscated clothes, devices, weapons, and bafflers.

  "If you would like to rest from your journey," the first man said, "I will be happy to lead the prisoner to the Seeing One."

  "Ah," Webber said. "Unfortunately, there is no time to waste. I must speak to the Seeing One myself. Right now, in fact. And I will need the captives' equipment brought with us. Sir?"

  He turned on MacAdams, tilting his face forward and bugging his eyes just enough for MacAdams to get the hint. MacAdams bowed his head and picked up the box holding their gear.

  The slim man was busy consulting his device. He looked up, holstering it. "The Seeing One is presently involved in a conference. But that will conclude shortly. There is no doubt he will wish to see you." He looked up toward the ceiling, which was so high as to be indistinct. "This way, if you please."

  He set off across the hangar floor. Sparks crackled from the red machines at work assembling the war planes, engines purring as they drove themselves around the incomplete chassis, making just enough racket that the other man needed to raise his voice to be heard. The air smelled like ozone and hot dust.

  The slim man veered between two partial craft. Despite the sudden proximity of the humans, the factory machines went on with their business without slowing down, the tread of their tires gripping the smooth floor with a sucking sound, metal frames creaking each time they rocked to a stop. Their tires rose past MacAdams' waist. The machines were thirty feet tall, including their crane arms, and weighed multiple tons. Enough to crush them all without so much as feeling a bump.

  "If I may ask, how are things proceeding on the front?" the slim man said over his shoulder. "We are all very eager to know."

  "Things proceed as we have planned." Webber had to push his voice up to be heard over the machines and his imitation of Enspach went in and out. "The display at Khent was a great shock to many."

  The other man chuckled. "I should say so. What I wouldn't give to have seen the Sveylani faces when the declarations came in!"

  "Of war?"

  "Haven't you been keeping up? This is the fruit of your own work!"

  "I have been more than a little busy extracting answers from those who would undo that work," Webber huffed.

  "Excuse me," the slim man said, glancing away with obvious fear—MacAdams was now about 95% sure he was human. The man bobbed his head. "In response to the dropping of the bomb, Velbank declared immediate war, with pledges of assistance from its allies. Their subsequent crossing of the Sveylani border forced Talbisi to drop its pretense of neutrality and throw in with Sveylan. In short, we have provoked a major regional conflict between nuclear powers. If a single one of them feels their existence is threatened, we will see a nuclear exchange followed by continental if not worldwide war."

  "As much as we could have hoped." Webber lifted his hand palm-up and made a circular gesture. "How do things proceed here?"

  "Just as well. Our production has run a few percent ahead of schedule. Work has already begun on the excavation of another cavern."

  Webber nodded in satisfaction. They were nearing the end of the massive room. On the left side of the rear wall, two bay doors large enough to tow a jet through were currently closed, as was the pair of human-sized doors next to them. The slim man brought them to a single reinforced door on the right side of the wall. He lifted the back of his left hand to the security pad. A status light switched from orange to blue. He stepped aside.

  Webber moved toward the door. The man lifted his eyebrows. "Sir, your chip."

  "Indeed." A stillness stole over Webber, the sort of thing you wouldn't notice unless you'd spent a lot of time with him in the cramped quarters of a ship. He lifted his left hand to the pad. When nothing happened, he cocked his head, lowered his hand, then put it back in front of the sensor. "What is wrong with your security pad?"

  "Try again, sir?" The slim man said. Webber did so and got nothing. The man pursed his lips. "We will have to go to medical to sort this out."

  "Medical. Yes." Webber stiffened. "No. There isn't time. I must speak to the Seeing One at once."

  "But no one can pass through this door without a functioning chip. I'm sure it will be a quick fix."

  "And I am sure that it was simply damaged by the detonation of the nuclear device at Khent. It can wait, sir." Webber cut himself off abruptly. Like he hadn't meant to end there.

  It was the thin man's turn to go slim. He regarded Webber with newly solemn eyes. "What is my name, sir?"

  "Your name? What are you talking about?"

  "My name, Mr. Enspach. I would like to hear it, please."

  Webber rolled his eyes. "When the Seeing One hears about your foolishness, he'll have your hide stripped off."

  The slim man backed up a step, lifting his device to his mouth. "Attention—"

  MacAdams jabbed him in the neck with the pain-stick. The man's arm spasmed, flinging his device aside like a discus. MacAdams got behind him, grabbed him by the chin and the back of his head, and twisted.

  A grinding crunch. The man became dead weight in his arms. MacAdams lowered him to sit against the wall, scanning the factory floor. The robots labored on undisturbed. All the way across the cavern, someone was messing around with the craft that had delivered them to Tandana, but he didn't see anyone else.

  MacAdams drew one of the surgical knives from his waistband, pocketed the bandage he'd wrapped the blade in, and sliced into the dead man's left wrist.

  Rohan's face grayed. "Are you doing what I think you're doing?"

  "Yeah." MacAdams slipped the nimble blade through ligaments, probing for the gap in the bones between the end of the arm and the start of the hand. "Fortunately, this ain't the first time I've had to cut off a guy's hand."

  Rohan made a sharp pivot on his heel.

  "Do we have a way out?" Webber said.

  MacAdams nipped the scalpel through the mess of veins on the inner wrist. "There's a doorway next to the platform we rode down. Almost sure to be an elevator or stairwell to the surface."

  "Great." Webber motioned to the massive bay doors further left along the wall. "But let's take a detour through there first."

  "Why? To give the Lurkers another chance to cut us into salad toppings?"

  "Has it occurred to you to wonder where th
is mystery factory came from?"

  MacAdams got the hand loose. He wrapped the bandage tight around the bloody end, got his pistol out of the see-through box, and walked along the wall toward the slightly oversized door next to the bay doors. He held the hand up to the security pad. The orange dot switched blue. A lock disengaged with a metallic shink.

  He stepped through, the other two behind him. They stood in another cavern roughly two-thirds the size of the first one. At dozens of different work stations, green-colored machines rolled around on knee-high wheels. Cranes and manipulator arms stood fifteen feet high.

  At least a third of them were pouring, molding, and cutting the component parts that were being assembled in the other room. The remainder were piecing together machines much like themselves. Except these ones were much bigger. And painted red.

  Webber nodded toward the back of the room. There, two more bay doors stood closed. They were smaller than the ones connecting them to the first cavern, but still large enough to drive a truck through.

  "What do you want to bet if we went through those, we'd find another set of machines building the ones in this room?"

  "After recent events, I don't believe my savings is worth the electrons it's recorded in," Rohan said. "But even if it were worth a fortune, I would bet it all that you are correct."

  "We've seen enough," MacAdams said. "Time to get this info to DS."

  He went back through to the first cavern. The slim man was still sitting where they'd left him. Nobody was around. MacAdams gave Webber a nod. Webber started across the wide open factory floor. At first he looked deadly serious, then he put on a smirk that was an exact match for Enspach's. Still fettered, Rohan did his best to shuffle fast enough to keep up.

  Three men in coveralls were tending to the craft they'd flown in on, which was shaped like a river rock and was currently the same color as the cement around it, implying it was using active camouflage. As they neared the ship, one of the men straightened, absently wiping his hands on a rag. MacAdams put his hand in his pocket, closing his fingers around the grip of his pistol.