by Cam Daly
“Because I retasked the Observatory to save you. I believed what you said, that there was more to this than we knew. But now I’m only allowed to process data and make requests. Once the situation is resolved, a new Shadow will be assigned.”
“But - don’t they realize how much more important it was for us to get the collider data? And figure out that it was the Molu and Craven working together?”
“I’m sure they are glad to have the information, but the face remains that I violated orders. We lost the Observatory and now the orbital Factory, leaving us with you and Stopgap as our only assets on or near Earth.”
“So far, Horseplay seems like a very capable asset. Even without its full complement of winglets. I seem to have wiped out the known threats in this area by destroying the collider, but by doing that I turned down Ormlan’s offer to get Mezerello back. We need to figure out a plan.”
“We have everything from Connor’s phone. Ruut and some others are reviewing it now. I can’t believe that he carried your head into the enemy base like that!”
Kery was keenly aware that everything she and Shadow said could be heard by at least hundreds of others in the War Room. Experts in every field would be studying and second guessing their actions and decisions. “You haven’t seen all the video, then. I told him to.”
“What? Why? You didn’t know about the Craven armada. I would have expected you to find someplace to hide and wait for Horseplay.”
That’s what she had wanted to do. But Connor convinced her otherwise. “His world was in jeopardy. He couldn’t have succeeded without my help.”
“But-“
“And it led to us finding the collider, and the human who created the decoherence field. Sousa.”
“Right. Who won’t help us until we save Park from Tumorish conversion. Which we are working on, but might not be able to do with the human technology available to you.”
Kery sighed in exasperation. “So I might end up having to go to Alcatraz and do some unknown favor for Ormlan after all, to get the biolab in the Interloper. Which basically means walking into a trap.”
“Ormlan definitely doesn’t want you to have access to Sousa. If DeVries is at the hospital, it can’t be long before more Molu or allied human forces arrive there. You should stay there and prepare for them.”
“The other alternative would be to figure out where the Tumorish are coming from. Broaalg would have needed to test a lot of subjects before unleashing them, which means a lab with exotech capabilities. I could use that to save Park. Can you run facial recognition and vehicle registration from the collider facility Tumorish?”
“That might be a…hold on. That’s weird.”
“What is?”
“Ruut already started working on finding the Craven lab. Damn, he’s good! Too bad he was never Activated.” She made a few quick gestures on her console. “He won’t mind me swiping his data.”
Shadow threw up charts from the A&O tech’s workstation. The two women were running ten times faster than him, which made it easier for them to just start with what he was working on and go at their own pace. “What do you see?”
Kery studied the map. “That’s interesting. Las Vegas was the main source of converts. The Tumorish named Mason was a bouncer at a club there - see?”
“I do, but according to Ruut’s initial analysis, the distribution of where they lived and worked is effectively random. There isn’t any real commonality in their backgrounds. You’ll never find a lab that way. And Broaalg himself will be in the last place you expect.”
Keryapt cursed. Shadow was right. There was no way the haphazard scattering of locations would help them. The Tumorish at the collider had come from just about every major casino or club in the city.
#
“You stay in that chair, your phone stays in the fridge, and I ask the questions.” Connor was getting annoyed by DeVries’ tendency to pace while talking. The ER prep room they were in was not big enough for the two of them.
“Fine. Then you tell Sousa to get back in here so we can keep an eye on him. He’s the one they will be after.”
The scientist had refused to leave Park’s side as the nurses administered the coma medication. Connor could see them through the mostly closed curtains, but didn’t see Meade anywhere. The doctor had gone off to help after the antimatter blast rocked the building and broke windows.
“Kery said she would make sure there aren’t any functional vehicles at your plant near here. And even if any Tumorish survived that explosion, they shouldn’t know where we are.”
“So what happens next? We just wait here for Keryapt to figure out a cure then you two fly off into the sunset with Sousa?”
“Something like that. Maybe Park comes with us too.”
“You haven’t thought this through all the way, have you? Assuming Park stays human, she and Sousa are going to ask a lot more questions. They might not like what they hear from you. Assuming you even have answers, that is. How much do you really know about Keryapt’s people?”
“She saved my life. Twice. And that’s before we came to Texas.”
“That was sweet of her, to save you after putting your life in jeopardy.”
Connor drew a breath to protest, but DeVries continued quickly. “But let me tell you what I learned while Ormlan was questioning Mezerello. Amongst the Actives of her Fleet, Keryapt is exceptional. And…unusual. Did she ever mention why she was the one who was sent here?”
Connor held his tongue, annoyed but increasingly curious.
“When an Active finishes an assignment and doesn’t want another, they are given a few choices. The Fleet doesn’t allow them to come back and pick up their lives again - they are too powerful. And their accelerated mental speed makes it harder for them to adjust.”
Connor thought back to some of her reactions and comments from the past couple of days, realizing that DeVries was right. It was disconcerting whenever he realized that she was focused on something else.
“So they can decide to join the Guards, which are the police of the Fleet.” DeVries held up a thumb. “They can become Shadows, the liaisons for Actives in the Labworld program.” A finger joined the thumb - two options. “Some of them elect to be go completely Inactive and be stored until some future point.” Three. “Or they can try to become Captains of starships. Their economy is really complicated, with something like four different currencies. One is earned automatically, one can only be given, one is based on public service and the other is…something else, I can’t remember. Anyway, becoming a Captain takes a lot of resources. But Mezerello said that Keryapt could have done it.” Option four. “And supposedly, Actives with spotless records can be invited to join the Admiralty, their central governing body.” That was the fifth option. DeVries looked at his spread hand.
“But?” Connor asked. There was always a ‘but’.
“But the story goes that she disappeared. Information in the Fleet about Labworld operations in general isn’t secret, so stories get out. And Keryapt was a celebrity. But she went off on an assignment and didn’t come back for a lot longer than most assignments last. And when she did show up again, she was different. Changed. Declared herself to be an Outsider - an exile from Fleet, never allowed back within their midst. She spent the last few years wandering from system to system, risking her life in increasingly dangerous ways. Her people were afraid for her and entertained by her, but never understood her. If she ever somehow returned to the Fleet she would be wealthy by some of their standards, but it didn’t seem likely that she would survive that long. Until, by total coincidence, she was asked to come here and investigate what happened to Mezerello.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me. Even if it's true.” It did fit with things that she had said, though. But if she was so different from the rest of her people, it meant that he had no idea what to expect from them.
His phone rang. Kery.
She had obviously been listening. “Everything DeVries said is true.
I’m not allowed to tell anyone the details of my final assignment. Even my…Shadow doesn’t know.” Connor heard the instant of hesitation between ‘my’ and ‘Shadow’. “I wish that I could.”
“DeVries says that you are exceptional. Different from all your own people. Would I be able to trust them like I trust you?”
“You humans have an expression. Sometimes it’s the exception that proves…the..rule.” She paused. “Hmm. I wonder…”
“Huh? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
She didn’t reply. He glanced at DeVries.
“Kery?”
Nothing.
#
“I just thought of something. Where did the Tumorish in Vegas not come from?”
Shadow looked up from a chart of the Sol system. “Huh?”
“Where did…what are you looking at?” The chart was marked with a handful of large and small ship icons, all moving back and forth.
“Craven versus Molu in the Asteroid Belt. They are probably both using decoherence fields, but our ObSats are outside their effective range so we can still do gravitic tracking. Looks like Molu are winning.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised. But focus on this for a minute. Sometimes the exception proves the rule.”
“I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. Your use of human expressions-”
“Ugh. Forget that. Compare the known home or work locations of Tumorish conversion subjects to a list of all possible locations. Are there any residential areas or businesses which are exceptions?”
“I’ll run that query. Anything else?”
Anything else? Only everything. So many things that Shadow didn’t know or understand. Kery would have done anything in that moment to have the entire situation be over, done with, just so that she could have the time to tell her daughter everything that had happened over the past twenty years.
But she couldn’t. The situation was very real, the threat to Fleet Four was unprecedented, the Admiralty was already upset with Shadow about losing the Observatory. Only by going forward would Kery be able to tell her everything. Right now, she basically knew nothing.
Her daughter shifted the battle chart to one side and started pulling up the Las Vegas data again. After a second without a response, Shadow turned and realized Kery was staring at her.
There might not be another chance to tell her anything. The decoherence field could be generated another way, or one of them might be killed. Kery had to tell her at least something.
“Sienaly, I’m not the Keryapt Zess you thought you knew. I’m different. I don’t remember anything about your childhood. About raising you. It’s a complete blank.”
“I-. That’s-.” The young woman took a single uneven breath, then looked away.
For a moment Kery hated that they were both represented by their human bodies here, that she couldn’t tell instantly what her daughter’s reaction meant.
Shadow looked back, her body indicating “confusion” and “strong emotion”. The impact of the words was unclear.
“Mom, I can’t…”
Shadow looked around at the charts and maps, power level indicators and weapon loadouts. Turned back to her console. “How quickly do you need the query results?”
Kery wanted desperately to apologize for the outburst. To explain that she felt that she had to tell the truth now, while they had a moment. Just in case. But she didn’t.
“As soon as possible.”
#
“Connor, are you still there?” Kery’s voice echoed in the small room.
“Yes! Is everything okay? When you didn’t answer I let DeVries call Ormlan, to see if something had happened to you. He’s connecting now.”
The tall man looked at Connor and nodded at the mention of his name, phone still to his ear.
“You should know that a Craven armada is approaching my home fleet. If they are as powerful as we think they might be, we can’t beat them. A billion lives are at stake. If I ask you to force Sousa to tell us everything he knows about the decoherence field, can you do that?”
Connor had been trying to keep Kery’s side of the conversation private, but failed at the last question. “You want me to torture him or something?”
DeVries held his phone out in the palm of his hand. Ormlan’s voice sounded from it, unchanged in timbre but somehow different. Less like that of a politician.
“That won’t be necessary, Fleet, if you come to San Francisco. We will give you everything that Sousa knows. You have our word on it.”
“What would we be facing to get there?”
“We believe that we have neutralized the Craven beam weapons in orbit, just as they have neutralized ours, but they probably still have observational capability. Here at Alcatraz they have four air defense units masquerading as human helicopters and forty-plus Tumorish with a variety of heavy weapons.”
“We spotted the flyers on human media feeds and suspected their true purpose. We designated them as Photuris. The heavier unit we destroyed here was a Louse.”
“We find your names amusing. You have more of a sense of humor than most of your people. For commonality of nomenclature, we use the name “human field” instead of “decoherence field.”
“I’m sure the humans will find it comforting that the name of their race will survive, even if they don’t.”
Connor didn’t know the details of the impending Craven attack, but it had changed her demeanor substantially. And how did she balance one billion Fleet lives against eight billion humans? He didn’t want to ask the question with others listening.
“Our only other asset in the area is Mezerello. She must accompany you. She can meet you at any point within San Francisco.”
“If you call her ‘your’ asset again, I will have Connor punch DeVries very hard.” Connor glanced up from the phone towards the taller man, who simply frowned back. “After all this is done, she is coming with me.”
“Very well. But you-”
Connor and DeVries both flinched at a sudden booming crack from outside.
“We see that you are heading west, towards us. We will expect you to be here in approximately 30 minutes at your current speed.”
“I’m considering your proposal, but right now I’m not going to San Francisco.”
Both men leaned closer to the phone.
“Where are you going, Fleet? We need you here.”
DeVries’ frown deepened at Ormlan’s clear displeasure.
“Connor, I’ve got some bad news. It seems that your city of Las Vegas has got itself a bad case of Lice. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can, but things are going to start happening very quickly.”
“Do not go there, Zess. You will gain nothing.”
She disconnected. A moment later, Ormlan did as well.
Connor glanced around the small prep room, wondering if one of the hospital monitors could be switched to show cable news. She had definitely used the plural ‘Lice’. Something very publicly visible was about to happen.
#
“Well, Keryapt, it looks like you were right about Las Vegas. There are two Lice heading straight for you on gravitic drives, and another cluster powering up downtown. Could be as many as six there. Hard for us to tell.” The ObSats providing the data to Shadow were much farther away than the Observatory had been.
“Eight Lice total? Then Broaalg is definitely there. I’ll stay low and use planetary curvature to block line of sight for as long as possible. They will probably have longer range weapons than the one at the collider.”
Both women had their sensory systems connected to the Planning Stage, but Keryapt’s actual body was hurtling west across New Mexico at five meters above the ground. Her winglets danced in a choreographed pattern ahead of and around her, ripping enough dirt and dust into the air to provide visual cover of her exact location.
“The two Lice on intercept are ascending. They will have line of sight on you in four minutes, when you are a hundred kilometers away. Y
ou might be able to buy an extra 20 seconds if you approach through the Grand Canyon and Colorado River basin.”
“Too serpentine. I want to keep my speed up.” Kery looked at the status display for her Horseplay body. With her arms outstretched in front and her head flattened to an aerodynamic wedge, she looked more like a missile than any sort of living being. Her cannon was attached along the centerline of her back, a meter long rod extending from shoulders to thighs. “If Broaalg thinks escape is an option, he will make a run for it. The faster I go, the less time he has to panic and the more likely it will be for him to rely on his defenses there.”
“I still can’t believe he’s hiding in that. We always say the Craven will be in the last place you look, but this…”
“Yeah, building a skyscraper casino around your base and also making it a human conversion factory is pretty crazy. But it’s brilliant. He’s adjacent to an international airport that sees rich and powerful visitors year-round. A local populace that is known for discretion and used to odd behavior. And amazing defensive visibility all around the city.”
Shadow brought up a promotional image of the target building. The Eternal Night Hotel and Casino would be the tallest building in Las Vegas when it was finished in a few months. 250 meters tall, containing thousands of guest suites. But not a single window anywhere. Gigantic video screens in every room would show night time views from locations all over the world. “Of course, when they do go home they would be Tumorish, ready to extend Broaalg’s control. He could run the entire planet from that one building.”
“Have we ever seen anything like it?”
Shadow looked startled for a moment at Keryapt’s question but regained her composure. “No. On other worlds we’ve seen polar bases, undersea complexes, repurposed mine shafts extended almost to the planetary mantle. Nothing this brazen.”
“He’s a gambler. This city is perfect for him. Too bad he freaked out when I headed straight for it and launched the Lice. Now I just have to get through them, enter his tower and find where he is hidden inside.”
“You make it sound easy.” Shadow was distracted for a few seconds. “War Room control recommends you divert slightly farther south. It will delay arrival by fifteen seconds, but will let you approach the Lice with the rising sun directly behind you.”
