Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  She reached the top near sunset.

  She knew she wasn’t going to get to the tocsin in time to sound the ritual farewell, but wasn’t about to press herself. Dusk was significantly degrading visibility and the footing was still sufficiently treacherous that she couldn’t afford to take stupid risks.

  The view was a wonder to behold. Sky was fire, sea blood, the land substantial enough to endure the assaults of both the other elements. Nicole had always associated the Hal’s natural cinnamon scent with their high mountain origins—probably because it most reminded her of the Colorado ranges that nestled the Air Force Academy—but now she realized it was fundamentally a sea smell. Belonging to the Old Ones.

  She was so startled by the sound of the great tocsin that she almost lost her balance. With desperate inelegance, she plastered herself against the slightly canted cliff wall, praying for stable handholds and willing herself to be wholly unaffected by gravity.

  She heard a man’s voice begin the ritual farewell to the sun—and with it, farewell to the ghosts of friends recently departed, or a remembrance to those of longer passage—and stayed where she was, stifling a shout of raw delight while she gathered wits and balance for the final ascent, as well as allowing him to complete the ceremony undisturbed.

  She was just starting the last few steps when Ben Ciari called out her name, as one of the honored dead.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She wanted to cry out but some blessed instinct inspired her to stealth instead. She’d always believed him alive, because of a sense bordering on certainty that she’d know when he wasn’t, even on Earth. Their Speaker selves had been cast from the same template; they were more than twins, the Hal in them were virtual clones—and Amy’s parting words came back to her from the bluff across the estuary: “We’re a matched set, you and me... ”

  Nicole wondered then if the girl felt as angry as she at this violation. It was only with conscious effort that she could differentiate between one aspect and the other; in the normal course of life, she couldn’t honestly say which were the parts she’d been born with and which had been grafted on, both felt totally natural. Which gave rise to another set of gnawing anxieties—what else within her was a falsehood, and what would be changed next? Worst of all, if past did indeed prove prologue, how would she ever know? There was no master file that was primally, essentially Her, pristine and uncorrupted, allowing her to shave clean all these new prisms and restore herself to the way she began.

  Stop it, she told herself severely, deliberately choosing English and a cadence of attack derived from Judith Canfield. You’ve found a balance, why’re you acting like some ground-hugging pudknocker and trying to upset it? Where’s the sense in bitching about what can’t be changed, Shea, make do with what you’ve got!

  We’re all the products of what we’re made of, she thought, a fraction more rationally, I just have the benefit of a little more hands-on attention.

  It wasn’t meant to be funny, but she barely stifled a burble of laughter that would have surely given her away.

  Something about Ciari’s voice, something about the situation, felt wrong—and that, she knew, was an instinct learned from him. Just as she’d know his fate, so would he be aware of hers. So there had to be a reason for his lie.

  “Very impressive, Marshal,” she heard from a new voice, also in English. “Close my eyes and I’d almost mistake you for a Fuzzy.”

  Do it, Nicole taunted, that’ll be all the opening he needs! Ciari said nothing, did nothing, which told her he wasn’t facing a solo. While she had light enough to see, she scoped her head back and forth, trying to fix the layout of the cliff in her mind, and possibly find a lateral path. At the same time, she strained her ears for any available scrap of information.

  Silent as a ghost, was her watchword, without a shred of irony. She didn’t need a downward glance to remind her how close she was to becoming one. She needed more than simple hand- and footholds; ideally, she had to find somewhere to rest her carryall, so she could get at the knives tucked deep inside.

  “You don’t like the locals so much, cock, how come you’re workin’ with ’em?”

  Nicole bit back a snarl. The words were shaken by the stiffening sunset breeze but still recognizably Amy Cobri.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Ms. Cobri. Oldest dictum in the Book of Tactics.”

  “Puh-lease.” Nicole couldn’t believe the raw contempt the girl applied to those two syllables. “Is that as original as this gets?”

  She heard the sharp retort of a gun and shoved a clenched fist between her teeth to choke back any outcry. Whatever happened to Amy, there was Ciari to consider, and hopefully Raqella as well.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” the man said, with real satisfaction. From the strength his voice carried, Nicole placed him closer to her than he’d been earlier, probably speaking to Ciari.

  “Knew a guy once,” Amy said, her own voice suddenly thin and reedy with pain, “couldn’t hit the mouth of a two-inch pipe from two inches out. He teach you how to shoot, Rossmore?”

  Shit, from Nicole, Constitution’s Exec!

  “With a mouth like yours, Ms. Cobri,” said the Commander, “you must really want to hurt before you die.”

  “You allow this?” Nicole heard from Raqella in Hal, an undertone of strain telling her he’d been hurt as well.

  “Speak English, furboy,” Rossmore told him.

  “Gee, Commander,” from Amy, “you figure the locals might conspire behind your back?”

  “You have allied yourself with the New Order,” Ch’ghan replied to Raqella, in his thick accent. “You have denied your people, betrayed your heritage. Why should you be granted the honor in death you have so willingly cast aside in life?”

  Nicole had to take a look. She’d goosed herself around the edge of the headland, thankful the cliff was showing the effects of centuries of weather. What appeared dauntingly sheer from afar was a lot more broken up close, textured by the wind to allow good purchase. It was still a brutal climb, though, and she had precious few reserves when she started. Her leg worried her most of all. True, the swelling was gone, although the scar was as distinct and livid in its own way as her tattoos, but the wound was far from fully healed. It wasn’t happy with the effort she was demanding and what had been a dull annoyance most of the afternoon had begun to seriously hurt. There was a growing fragility about her leg, a sense that each step would be the one where it folded, so much so that she couldn’t help favoring it. Which, in turn, threw off her balance, creating an instability she could ill afford, on the ridge and especially in a fight.

  She tried to give the leg a rest, taking most of her weight on her hands and pushing off her left foot, moving smoothly and oh so slowly along the shadows thrown by an outcropping where the cliff looked as though it had been folded back on itself. Unfortunately, the darkness that masked her presence also made the opposition hard to spot. Ciari hadn’t moved from his position by the tocsin, almost at the lip of the headland. There were a couple of huddled shapes across the way that she assumed were Raqella and Amy. Rossmore stood between Ciari and the kids, closer to them than the Marshal—Sensible placement, she thought, allows him to nail them and still have time to drop Ben before he can cover the distance. That left Ch’ghan, and with him she saw a pair of backup bruisers, one from each race. Both carried rifles, and while she couldn’t see details Nicole had no doubt the Hal held a blaster, the same kind of weapon Daniel Morgan had used to hunt her on his asteroid.

  She closed her eyes as she lowered herself below the crest, and saw a corridor lit like a passage out of Hell with the fireflash of the beam. Morgan was at a junction, the halls fanning away from him like the spokes of a wheel. He was scorching each in turn, he didn’t give a damn who was in his sights—friend or foe—so long as he burned her for sure. She couldn’t outrun the beam; she’d ducked into a Primary tunnel that cut a straight line all the way through
the rock, she couldn’t even be guaranteed another intersection for better than a hundred meters.

  She had no choice. She charged him. She killed him.

  Ciari had been Law Officer on that Wanderer mission. He was a Senior U.S. Marshal. Facing violent death—and, on occasion, dealing it—came with the job. It wasn’t why she’d come to the High Frontier; she’d told him that with all the vehemence she could muster; she refused to allow him to remake her in his image. Yet those lessons had saved her life. She hoped they were about to again.

  Suddenly the rock swayed. She tightened her grip reflexively, her initial fear that an earthquake had struck the coast, and the cliff begun to tumble into the sea.

  But it wasn’t the world swinging wild, like a runaway fun fair ride, merely her perceptions of it. She stared, wide-eyed at the granite in front of her face and wailed deep inside as it appeared to dissolve into a view of stars.

  Initial orientation was ridiculously easy. There were a half-dozen main sequence benchmarks in immediate view, not even counting the Hal sun, off to the left and a little below. Her perspective was above the plane of the ecliptic and a quick glance ahead gave her the position of the third of the system along her line of flight. At the same time, she was equally aware of all the other worlds—with an equally clear picture of them—to the sides and behind, above and below. Her focus was forward, her vision was all-encompassing.

  She couldn’t help but be impressed, and said so, profanely.

  “Nice mouth,” Hana told her.

  “If you could see with my eyes, lady, you’d speak my dialogue. How can I be here, I’m holding on to a rock.”

  “Don’t worry about the details. You want to bring us down?”

  “Very much so.”

  She had the world now, and for a few moments could only behold the wonder of it. She’d thought the Constitution’s overhead Bridge Master Display was magnificent, but there was no comparison. As she watched, the globe expanded to fill her whole field of vision. At the same time, her gaze encompassed an expanse and variety of perceptions that part of her accepted as perfectly normal while the rest simply stared goggle-eyed, struck too dumb to even comment.

  “I can’t stay here,” she said. “Hana, if there’s a way, cut me loose, before I fall off that frigging cliff.”

  It was like a story from the Arabian Nights, she was Mistress and Genie all in one, her every wish her own command.

  She found the night very dark and very still, the twilight breeze slackened, the stars overhead unchallenged by the reflected glow off any of the planet’s three moons. Her nails were cracked, fingertips torn enough to draw blood, and she saw faint gouges in the rock where she’d clawed for an anchorage. She flexed her hands, one at a time, noting the stiffness brought on by extreme tension—no worse in her extremities than any other part of her, she was the living embodiment of soreness—but otherwise she was okay. Except for the leg. When she tried to lift it, it was as though strands of barbed wire had been stretched beneath her skin, sending a surge of pain throughout her body that made her want to be sick.

  She wondered how long she’d been out—trying not to think at all about where she’d been—cocked ear and eye to try to once more place everybody.

  Something slapped her backside, like the lash of a whip, a sting more than an actual hurt, the surprise was what made her yip.

  Perceptions splintered. She found herself staring at the world along parallel tracks of vision, the same dual perspective she’d have in a cockpit, with one eye on reality and the other following all the data on her heads-up display. She catalogued the sensation as a scanning field, with more to come—sensations akin to finding herself in a swarm of hungry gnats—as her position was triangulated and locked. The probes originated from sentry remotes, mostly because she was crossing an automated defense perimeter, and were satisfied by the clearance she offered in return. Thus far, she was alone in the sky; she knew that was about to change.

  She heard a shuffling step, cautious as it approached the edge, wished for dark clothes as a flashlight was switched on.

  “Mir’t’zach?” called Ch’ghan.

  “I heard something.”

  The Hal translated for Rossmore.

  “What are we waiting for, Ch’ghan?” he demanded.

  “Dr. Murai, actually,” was the reply. “A great deal of my life’s work is bound up with the Swiftstar.”

  Your name for it, you faithless slug, Nicole snarled. She’s Sundowner now and always will be!

  “I would like to salvage it,” he finished, “if I can. Dr. Murai is not a combat pilot. She will do the sensible thing—especially with the lives of her friends at stake—and surrender.”

  Nicole thought nothing. Her smile said it all.

  The beam swept over her and she hoped at first missed—but it had caught the corner of her carryall and that brought it back. She was already moving by then, swinging the bag off her shoulder, catching the strap on her hand; when the Hal sentry hove into view above her, she let fly.

  She had no illusions about the throw doing any harm. The bag held clothes, she’d do more damage in a pillow fight; her goal was a halfways decent distraction.

  He flinched, expecting something heavier, his hands automatically batting it aside. But turning them on the bag meant releasing his hold on his gun, which was all the opening she was going to get.

  Her leg made her want to scream and so she did, but what emerged was a cry of war not pain as she lunged up over the crest to hook ahold of the blaster rifle. It was a heavy gun—way too big for shooting people, was her instant assessment, until she remembered the approaching space-plane—and he’d looped his bandoleer over his shoulders so they’d bear the bulk of the strain. When she tugged, her intent to disarm him and possibly gain the weapon for herself, he came with it. The ground canted steeply as it approached the edge and Nicole gave the sentry too much momentum to be stopped with a single step. He took one, another, the third would do the trick, and he was already twisting his body to bring the barrel to bear when his foot planted itself on empty air.

  Nicole was already diving the other direction, so she didn’t see the Hal’s face in the split second before he began to fall, when he realized what she’d done. He scrambled for balance, in an explosion of movements more appropriate to a cartoon character, but there was nothing in reach to grab hold of and nothing for him to offer but a scream.

  For some reason, he pulled the trigger. The gun was at its highest setting, because it was intended to punch holes in a spacecraft and at a pretty fair distance. The beam gouged a monster slice out of the rock—had Nicole not scrambled when she did, it probably would have claimed her, too—then shot skyward. Her other eyes spotted the signature, as it topped out at better than fifty kay, and was thankful she didn’t have that to deal with, while at the same time wondering if there were any more.

  He tumbled as he fell, the blaster carving afterimages on the retinas of those who watched, as it cut a swath seaward through the air, leaving the stench of ozone in its wake the way fireworks do the smell of cordite. It cut into the water with only slightly less force. The beam was tremendously focused, its cohesion only marginally affected by the heavier medium, and Nicole realized with horror that it would cut all the way to the bottom. And through anything in its path.

  “No,” she cried, holding herself responsible, “no no no no no no no!”

  The sentry completed his first tumble—with more than enough distance ahead to allow another full revolution—and the beam struck the cliff once more, with force enough to shake it bottom to top. The fire struck a seam, where the apparently solid frontage had buckled ever so slightly under the ocean’s unrelenting assault. The solar heat ignited the pocket of air, causing the equivalent of a small mountain to burst outward, as though all the skyscrapers in Manhattan had been piled atop one another and then pushed over.

  The blaster was obliterated with the Hal who held it, in a heartbeat, while the reverberations of the
avalanche seemed to go on endlessly.

  They were nothing compared to the awful cry that came from beyond the horizon. From this height, Nicole figured the distance at a hundred kay, minimum, better than fifty miles, a sound of such transcendent grief and rage that she was hammered to her knees.

  It was too dark still to properly see closer inshore, but again there was no missing the rush of water as something huge broached the surface, and more of the great creatures took up the lament.

  Rossmore’s bully-boy made the mistake of going for Nicole. He was Navy, she assumed SEAL—their Sea, Air and Land commandos—and a burst from his autofire would cut her in half. Not as fancy a death as from the blaster but just as final. She was God’s Gift as a target, even without his laser and infrared and enhanced optical NightVision sights. He didn’t even bother aiming, he simply brought the gun up to fire from the hip.

  Amy hit him with a rock. Right between the shoulder blades, with as hard a throw as she could manage. Which, given her physical template and the effort she’d made over the years to hone it to near perfection, was very hard indeed. The man couldn’t help but react, and from the way he favored his left arm, Nicole hoped enthusiastically that the girl had broken some bones. The second his eyes were off her, she hurled herself at him in a low post tackle that turned him horizontal in midair.

  Hurt as he was, the man was a pro. He caught her with a roundhouse kick right as he hit the ground, that bowled her over onto her back. His rifle got lost in the confusion. The noise was rapidly becoming unbearable, a cacophony of atonal foghorns, creating the same effect as a multitude of Nosferatus scraping their ancient, clawed fingernails across an infinite number of blackboards. The sound was pitched across the entire length of the audio spectrum, above and below perceptible human—or Hal—frequencies. It made Nicole want to shriek in sympathetic pain at the same time as it threatened to shake her to bits on a molecular level.

  My God, she cried in her mind, because that was the only level left on which she could make herself heard, knowing as she did that the deity she called to lived as much in the deep water as the heart of the sky, how many did that blaster kill? Who did it kill?