Harker stared straight into the colonel’s eyes. “You don’t believe that for a second, not really. And neither do the people who hired you. They went outside their own people to bring in a team that their computers and researchers decided was the best. You know it, I know it. And if you make your living stealing hairs from the devil’s beard, then sooner or later he’s going to wake up. The pirate’s failure proves nothing.”
N’Gana remained impassive for a few seconds, then suddenly he grinned and broke into good-natured laughter. “Harker, maybe you are the one who should be with us! At least you don’t scare easy!”
And maybe you don’t scare easily enough, the Navy man thought, but returned the big mercenary’s grin.
He went over to Katarina Socolov, who was doing a last-minute inventory of her own supplies. She acknowledged him, but was too busy for conversation. Suddenly she stopped and asked sharply, “Colonel? Where’s my data recorder?”
“Left on the deck, madam, along with several other things of yours which require power and have internal power supplies. We cannot afford giving anything that would register as our signature on their monitoring equipment. Sergeant Mogutu and I have gone through everyone’s equipment and pared it all down. Anything we don’t know they won’t pick up on gets left behind.”
“Then what am I supposed to use for my database and field notes?”
“Try using your head and perhaps writing things down in notebooks the way our ancestors did. You can’t get a doctorate in the social sciences these days without knowing how to write, since you can’t take a lot of our stuff into primitive cultures without corrupting them. Cheer up, Doctor. You are going to miss a lot more than a mere recorder.”
Father Chicanis wore his religious medal and cross around his neck but otherwise dressed as they all had, in the insulated camouflage clothing and thick weatherproof combat boots. His own kit, also inspected by the mercenaries, was quite simple compared to the others. A Bible and a communion set, that was all. He prayed and blessed the little ship and those who would fly on her, then joined the group.
He was a surprisingly muscular man, in excellent condition from the looks of him. The others to varying degrees were all impressed by this; he would not, at least, hold them back on those grounds.
Last in but with the least to bring was the Pooka. Its thick snake of a body and its large, round, hypnotic eyes always bothered Katarina Socolov. She was both fascinated and repelled by the creature, the first one she’d ever been this near. It was not, however, particularly communicative or interested in friendship with others. Like the mercenaries, it was along to do a job, and maybe, just maybe, save its own people, who might have no real reason to love humans but who stood with them against the same threat now.
The colonel seemed satisfied, and now he called them all together.
“All right, when we hear the signal from this ship, each of you will get into an unoccupied slot in the boat and strap in. No argument, no hesitation. We will be on a tight schedule. Once inside and sealed in, it’s going to be a hairy ride. The way we do this is to come in very steeply and with power virtually at minimum. The signature will be that of a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere. Once free and with sensors indicating no scan, it will literally dive for the target island just off the south coast of Eden, and it’ll be a hard and rough landing. Once down, no matter how shook up you are, get out of there. If you can, help pull the equipment packs from the storage compartments. We’ll have only a few minutes to do this and get clear. When it is unloaded, or senses danger, or after a short preset interval that is guaranteed to avoid the planetary sweeps, the boat will go into dormant mode and become just another bit of junk from the old days. The power trickle will be sufficient only to keep its systems from deteriorating and should be below normal detection. There it will stay. When we return, if we return, it will know. Samples of our DNA were fed into it. Any one of us can activate it. The only mission we have is to return those codes! Period!”
“You mean, if we get separated, we shouldn’t wait for any others?” Harker asked.
“Anyone who gets back here with them should not wait to see if others will come, yes. I hope we remain together, but, no matter what, if you get back and have the goods, place your palm on any of the exposed dull metallic plates. A match analysis will determine that you are you, and then you will wait until there is a window between Titan sweeps. At that point this compartment will open, the boat will power up, and you must get in and hold on. It will be going straight up at near maximum speed and it won’t be pleasant, but it should get you where you must be.”
Harker wasn’t sure he liked that. “What if they do nab it on the way back? How will anybody know? And what if it’s not there when we get there?”
“Then you will proceed to one of the old defense stations I can show you,” Father Chicanis put in. “Like the Dutchman’s agent. Send the codes. If you do, then you might still have a chance since they’ll act as soon as they get them. No matter what, one or more of us will do that anyway, just to make sure. If, God willing, the rest of you make it, then I will do it.”
Harker looked at him. “You don’t intend to come back?”
“No. I was born down there and I will die down there. I come as an instrument of God, and whatever else happens is in His hands.”
Several of the others glanced at him, all of them, it seemed, wishing that they had a little bit of his faith.
“There is—” Katarina Socolov began, but then the lights went from bright white to dim red and a buzzer sounded three short times.
“Talk on Helena!” N’Gana snapped. “Let’s move!”
The colonel got in the first one, then Chicanis, then Katarina Socolov, and then the Pooka. Harker felt Mogutu push him lightly. Instinctively he went into the fifth compartment even as Mogutu climbed into the sixth. The last two were stuffed with cargo.
As soon as Mogutu’s feet cleared the inner hatch, the ship closed, almost lenslike, and there was a hissing noise and the sounds of seals popping into place. Harker found the webbing and straps and managed to get himself at least reasonably supported, and there was a sudden bang and then the feeling of sharp acceleration. They were away before any of them could really think about it, which was just how N’Gana had planned it.
On the way down, though, there wasn’t much to do but think. The little boat itself was featureless, with only a very soft glow from a dim strip of light along the top to allow any sight. And there was nothing to see: just sterile walls that seemed extremely claustrophobic even to those who went out in environmental suits. They were going very fast, that was for sure, and there was almost no noise, not even a sound from any of the other compartments. It was eerie to have this free fall feeling cutting in and out now and not be able to hear anything but your own breathing—and, Harker admitted to himself, his suddenly quite rapid heartbeat.
Every nightmare suddenly flashed into his mind. What if the timing was off? What if the Titans detected the boat and followed it down? Or came to investigate it?
No, that wouldn’t be as much of a worry. They’d just throw that energy sucker they had and it would go very dark in here just before this thing crashed into the planet’s surface, killing all of them.
Just then the light did flicker, even go out for a second or two, giving him, and probably the rest of them, a near heart attack.
Now there was a distant roaring sound, and the feeling of being bumped all over. Everything moved, everything moaned and groaned and shook for what seemed like forever. I’ll never curse a landing craft descent again, he told himself. Not after this.
As suddenly as the rough ride had started, it now stopped, but now he felt himself being pulled to the front of the compartment. As this pull grew and grew, many more bumps and bangs sounded inside, making it nearly impossible not to get some bruising against the bulkhead.
The landing was one big terrific bang! So loud and so rough was it that for a moment he was sure they had crash
ed. It took all his training to tell himself that if in fact they had crashed he wouldn’t have had the time to think it.
There was suddenly full gravity and the sound of air depressurizing and in moments the opening was clear once more. He didn’t need any encouragement; he struggled to free himself of the webbing and straps and then pushed out of the craft as quickly as possible, dropping a meter or so into sandy soil. It was quite dark, but there was enough light to see, barely, what was going on near you.
He felt like he’d been in a wreck of some kind. He was dizzy, disoriented, and fighting stronger gravity than he’d had to face in a while. He struggled to stand as he saw Mogutu and N’Gana both already on their feet—the former literally pulling Socolov and Chicanis from their compartments by their feet, the latter pulling duffel bags full of equipment from the two cargo points. He made it to N’Gana and was soon pulling things out as well. He couldn’t guess what some of it was—primitive weapons that could be used here, no doubt.
Everything on the sand, N’Gana and Mogutu looked around. “Everybody out? Where’s Hamille?”
“Here!” the Pooka responded in that forced air whisper. “Barely.”
The colonel nodded. “Socolov?”
“Here!”
“Father Chicanis?”
“Here!”
He sighed. “Well, all right then. Stand away from the boat. If I know it’s empty, then knows it’s empty!”
As if on cue, the lens closed up, there was a hiss of a seal, probably to preserve it, and then the thing, which was only a dark hulk in the dim moonlight, seemed to virtually disappear. There was still a shape there, but it was dead, inert, even to look at in the dark. The effect was eerie—and lonely.
The colonel looked at his watch. It was a wind-up mechanical type that was still silent, with no telltale ticks. They all had one just like it, synchronized from the start. The dial was luminous, and they’d all charged theirs just to have use of it once down, although the lighting would fade quite quickly now. All the watches were adjusted to the Helenan day, which ran twenty-five hours fifty-one minutes twelve seconds standard. Since all planetary times were adjusted to a twenty-four-hour clock locally, that meant each hour was going to be roughly sixty-four minutes long, give or take. That wouldn’t disorient any of them.
“There’s some palms and brush for cover over there,” N’Gana told them. “Everybody carry something and let’s get away from this site just in case somebody comes looking.”
“I feel like I was in a building collapse,” Katarina Socolov complained.
“We all got bounced around, but it will pass,” the colonel responded. “Being face-to-face with Titans is more permanent.”
They got everything away, then broke off some large leaves and used them to wipe out the tracks from the now dormant little boat to the brush.
“Probably not good enough, but it’ll have to do,” Harker told them.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mogutu replied. “High tide comes almost up to this first line of brush. You can see the driftwood stacked up along here. In a few hours there’ll be no sign anybody was ever here, and in a few days even the boat will be hard to spot, just another piece of junk.”
“I want to get everything unpacked and sorted and repacked,” the colonel told them. “We’ll rest here until sunup.”
“Aren’t you afraid crossing over in daylight will make us sitting ducks?” the cultural anthropologist asked him, worried.
“It won’t make any difference to them when we cross, anymore than it would to us,” the colonel assured her. “We don’t have night limitations beyond a certain technological level that Mogutu and I have long since passed. They don’t use orbital satellites, since they already own the place and don’t seem to give a damn what might be left over crawling around on it. For us, making a crossing in two collapsible rafts is going to be a challenge no matter how much we’ve practiced. This is real ocean. Let’s at least see the immediate danger instead of worrying about theoretical ones.”
It was sound advice and hard to argue with.
“Once we sort our stuff and get our packs done, I’d suggest most of us get what sleep we can,” the colonel continued. “It’s going to be a very long and physically demanding day tomorrow.”
Some of their packs did contain weapons, but weapons, it seemed, from another age. Only N’Gana and Mogutu had rifles—sleek, mean-looking devices suited to a historical epic, along with crossed belts of clips of ammunition that seemed barbaric. Copper-tipped projectiles shot into people or things by using essentially the same principle used to make rockets. Ugly, messy, and not very sure, but using absolutely no electrical power of any sort or source.
Katarina Socolov and Gene Harker got equally wicked crossbows. “Not much at long range,” Mogutu admitted, “but at short range they’re very effective. There’s a small cylinder of compressed gas in each stock that accelerates the arrow, or bolt as it’s called, and gives it added range to maybe, oh, fifty to a hundred meters depending on the target. Even when you run out of gas cylinders, so long as you’ve got bolts, you’ll still have a weapon that can handle twenty, thirty meters sure. Ask the doc for sighting—it’s her weapon, basically. It’s pretty easy, though.”
Harker sat down next to the woman, who was checking her own crossbow out. “You actually good with this?”
She nodded. “Sure. Against targets. Used to be a hobby of mine—ancient and medieval weaponry that didn’t require a lot of upper body strength. If they’d invented these gas cylinders back then, women wouldn’t have had such a tough time getting equality.”
“Doc—Katarina?”
“Kat. It’s easy and it’s kind of an identity thing, like a meow-type cat or maybe a lion.”
“Okay—Kat. I’m Gene. No use for rank here, except maybe with the colonel. So, how do you sight this?”
She showed him, as well as some of the other finer points. Actually getting decent enough to hit the broad side of a mountain with one of those bolts, though, would be a different story.
Other weapons included a Bowie-style knife with a serrated blade made of a substance that looked and felt like steel but could cut into softer rocks without problems, and a kind of formalized blackjack, a baton, which he knew from the military police. Weighted, it could knock people cold and crack heads, but it wasn’t considered a deadly weapon. In a close fight against too many of the enemy, it might just be an equalizer.
Beyond this there were a couple of weeks of concentrated rations, a bottle each of desalinization and sterilization pills, and a small medical kit. That was about it.
The colonel supplemented his rifle with a rather fancy saber which he wore in a scabbard, hanging from his pants belt, and he, too, had a baton but on the other side in its own carrier.
Each had all his or her spares in backpacks and they then buried the duffels in the sandy soil just in back of the driftwood, so tidal erosion wouldn’t uncover them. Only the Pooka, which the colonel had called Hamille, revealing a name for the first time, had no pack or apparent weapons. There was no telling what it ate or drank, but it was damned sure it had no shoulders to carry a pack, and it seemed quite happy to just be itself. Harker decided not to ask right then, but wondered whether the creature’s civilization was so industrialized and automated that they no longer had the means to produce these things that didn’t require power. Or perhaps the Pooka was in its own way as alien and inscrutable as the Titans.
Finally, they settled down in the bushes to wait until morning.
Nobody really slept, but nobody really wanted to talk and risk disturbing the others, either. The sudden heavy gravity, the bumpy ride down, the tensions and stresses and the anticipation of the unknown all combined to make each one feel older than the old diva who’d brought them all together, yet too young to die.
• • •
Harker could barely suppress his satisfaction at seeing the great Colonel N’Gana, legend and mercenary, seasick as a rookie in weightlessnes
s training as they paddled their boats in toward shore. The colonel’s dark brown complexion seemed to have lost its luster. In its drab new exterior it had gained a little green and gray.
Of course, Katarina Socolov wasn’t doing much better. Clearly sailing wasn’t in her background, either. It was difficult to tell about the Pooka, who couldn’t row anyway, but it had withdrawn into a coil with its head near the bottom of the boat.
Fortunately, Mogutu seemed to either be experienced at it or at least have it in his blood; with the colonel and the Pooka in his boat, he was really the only one doing any real work at rowing them in toward shore. At least it wasn’t all that rough, not for open ocean, anyway. Harker suspected that there was a definite continental shelf not far below and that it probably had either a great deal of sand built up or some sort of reefs, perhaps coral-like, that broke up the waves.
He also had an extra pair of hands rowing, although they dared not get too far from Mogutu’s struggling boat. The supplies, among other things, were in that boat, and it was by no means certain that, if it tipped, either N’Gana or the Quadulan could swim. Father Chicanis seemed to be having a grand old time, not in the least bothered.
“You’ve sailed before on small watercraft,” Harker said to the priest.
“This very region, in fact, was where I learned to swim and to sail. We used to have regattas that went from Ephesus to Circe’s Island—well beyond Saint John’s, which is what we landed on. This was truly something of a paradise, Mister Harker. Warm climate, balmy breeezes, controlled moisture and well-managed lands, lots of natural organic farming of fruits and vegetables—not like the crap most folks in The Confederacy eat and think of as decent food. The greatest conflicts were boat races, and football of course, and chess, and arguing with the Copts over whose was truly the oldest tradition. Gentle stuff for a gentle world, Mister Harker. Gentle, yet swept so callously away...”
His eyes grew distant and his voice trailed off, and Harker knew that he was seeing things as they were out here in the bright sunshine.
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