Her eyes were still hard, but something in her armor was cracking. She nodded. "I heard."
"Starflare, if we don't help Earth, millions of humans will die," Luther said. "I don't want that on my conscience. Neither do you. Oh, I know, you're a businesswoman! I know. And we'll pay for these guns. But I know you only sell guns to good causes. And I promise you, Starflare. This is as noble a cause as I've seen in seventy years in this damn cosmos."
Starflare looked away, fists clenched. "If I sell to you, Xerka might come after me."
"Not if we win," Bay said. "Not if we kill her."
The young starling looked at him, eyes somber. "Can you do this, Ben-Ari? Can you win this war?"
"Yes," Bay said. "I think so. I hope so." He sighed. "It's a long shot. I won't lie to you. But one thing I'm sure of. We humans are mucking tough. We faced the scorpions—and beat 'em. We faced thousands of years of persecution—and we survived. Empires rose and fell. The centipedes, the marauders, the grays, the damn Hydrians … All these empires tried to destroy humanity. We're still here. They're all dead. So yes, I believe in humanity. That's why I still fight. And with your help—we have a real chance."
She slumped back into her seat. "I don't like betting on long shots."
Bay leaned closer. "Starflare, why do you live here? On this cold, forsaken world?"
"Why do you think?" She scoffed. "I'm a starling. A freak. I have no other home."
"And that's why I fight for Earth," Bay said. "Because I'm human. A freak. A pest. For thousands of years, we humans have had no home. Not even a place like Niraya. You want a noble goal? Help the freaks save their home."
Starflare took a long, deep breath. "I'm going to need a third drink."
She drank.
And then she nodded.
And then she sold them weapons.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bombs kept falling aboveground. Booms echoed. The tunnels shook. Rowan stood in the bunker, hands behind her back, ignoring the racket. She faced her team of scientists, engineers, and programmers.
"Welcome to Antikythera Institute!" she said. "Or as I call it—the Nerd Squad. As you can probably tell from my Lord of the Rings brooch, I fit right in." She adjusted the silver leaf. "Our noble warriors fight bravely. We admire them all. They are the salt of the earth and the best of humanity. But they're also outnumbered a hundred to one. Right now, we nerds must save the world."
Another explosion sounded above, and the bunker trembled. The explosions never stopped. It was a week since the Galactic Council had voted, since Emet had declared independence, since the great war had begun. But it felt like a year. Rowan had barely slept all week. She had spent day and night fighting—firing guns from trenches, loading shells into cannons, and once even battling a basilisk who made it into the tunnels.
Xerka probably expected to conquer Earth by now, Rowan thought. She's surprised at how tough we are.
But the Human Defense Force was almost out of bullets and shells. Very soon, they would be fighting with sticks and stones, then tooth and nail. So Rowan had come here. She had assembled the nerds.
"I called you here because you're the brightest brains on Earth," Rowan said. "And we're going to use your big, juicy brains to win."
"Maybe we can challenge Xerka to a game of chess!" said an old, bearded man from the back of the bunker. Several people chuckled.
Rowan smiled thinly. "I'd prefer challenging her to a round of Donkey Kong. I'd actually have a chance of winning that way. But life is rarely that easy. I've outlined four primary projects for Antikythera Institute." She began writing on a wooden board. "Our first project is called the Babel Project. We must improve our communication network. The enemy consistently jams our electromagnetic signals. They've also cut our underground cables. We must have better communication with the Exodus Fleet and the other colonies. This is critical. We possess two ansibles. One here on Earth. One with the Exodus Fleet aboard the HDFS Byzantium. Ansibles are impossible to hack, impossible to jam, and have a range of half a light-year. Problem is, we don't really know how they work. The Babel Project will reverse engineer the ansible we have—and duplicate it. I want ansibles in every Earth colony and on every starship. If we can talk to one another, we can fight better. Who volunteers for this project?"
Several hands rose. Rowan pulled up their resumes on her minicom. Before the wars, some had been professors on distant worlds, teaching alien children. A few had even worked on communication networks, providing their services to mercenary fleets, the Peacekeepers, and alien cities. She chose six people for Operation Babel.
All were older than her. Some old enough to be her grandparents. As Rowan assembled the team, she felt very young and inexperienced. She was only twenty, after all.
But I'm still a major, she thought. I still outrank them. I've been fighting with the Heirs of Earth for four years. I led platoons in battle. I commanded starships and fleets. I killed Sin Kra himself, for pity's sake.
She sighed. None of that helped when she had to give orders to white-haired professors.
They think I'm some Mary Sue. Let them think it! So long as they win this war.
"Our next project, no less important, is called Hammer and Anvil," she said. "Bay and Luther have flown out to buy weapons. But we can't rely on others forever. Especially not with this damn embargo. Earth must develop its own weapons industry. We already have a factory that can make bullets. We need to ramp up operations. But most importantly, we need to build more rifles! We only have ten thousand guns on Earth. We need hundreds of thousands—and fast! We need more advanced weaponry too. Tanks. Planes. Starfighters. We need designers, chemists, mechanics, factory workers. And we need them now. Hammer and Anvil will be the branch of Antikythera that designs and builds weapons for the HDF. It will be the difference between a weak army, one dependent on alien aid, and a proud army that stands strong, fierce, and independent. Who volunteers?"
Many hands rose. Rowan chose people with experience in design and manufacturing. Several of them had worked in factories before the war. A few had been mechanics. Here was the true strength of humanity, Rowan knew. They had no scales like basilisks, no claws or fangs or whip-like tails. But they had human capital. Experience. Knowledge. Intelligence. And she was determined to harvest these for the war effort.
"Our third project is perhaps the most important," Rowan said. "I call it Project Talaria. Does anyone know what Talaria means?"
A bearded, shaggy-haired engineer nodded. "Of course. Talaria are the winged sandals from Greek mythology, worn by the god Hermes." He raised his hairy chin. "I happen to be an expert on folklore and mythology. And Monty Python quotes."
Rowan nodded. "We're kindred spirits. And you're right. Talaria Project is our attempt to build our own winged sandals, ones that can carry us to the heavens. The enemy warships are still besieging Earth. We've been able to send ships up and down, but only under heavy artillery cover. Even then, we lost many ships. And now that we're out of artillery rockets, the blockade is airtight. That means the Exodus Fleet can't land with new humans. Bay and Luther can't return with any weapons they buy. Leona and her companions can't come home. We need a technical solution to the blockade!"
"So we build more rockets," said an engineer. "Isn't that what Hammer and Anvil is for?"
"It'll be a while before our factories are up and running," Rowan said. "And even then, it'll take a while to scale up production, to give us enough munitions. I'm hoping we can find a parallel solution. A better solution. A solution involving portals."
"Portals?" said a chemist, frowning.
"When my friend Coral was alive, she could open portals between low orbit and deep space," Rowan said. "We were able to fly past the blockade. But Coral was our only weaver. And she fell. She fell fighting for Earth. I miss her dearly." Rowan took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. "We need to find another solution. In ancient Earth, humans knew how to open little wormholes. They were called Isaac Wormholes, named after Noah Is
aac, husband of Einav Ben-Ari, the professor who invented them. They were only a few atoms wide, used as interstellar communication cables. But they were still essentially portals. They used azoth crystals to bend spacetime. We need to use similar technology to open wormholes from Earth to space."
A professor stood up and smoothed his white mustache. "But one cannot bend spacetime so close to a planet. Not with Earth's gravitational well." He spoke as if explaining to a child. "Did you neglect to read your physics books? That's why starships can't use their warp drives near planets. Isaac Wormholes are only a few atoms wide. You're talking about wormholes a starship can fly through. Impossible in a gravity well!"
Rowan nodded. "That's the problem we must solve, Professor Eberhardt. That is the Talaria Project. The scientists involved will find a technological solution. Who volunteers?"
Mutters rose across the room. A few scientists snorted.
"You're asking the impossible!" said the mustached Eberhardt. "You want a solution that would break the laws of physics."
"To bypass them, not break them," Rowan said. "We'll do the impossible. We're humans. That's what we do. Everyone who isn't already part of a project—you will work on Project Talaria. You will build us winged sandals!" She began heading toward the door. "All right, everyone—get to work."
"Rowan, ma'am?" said a boy, only fifteen but already renowned for his genius. "You described three projects. Babel—to build a better communication network. Hammer and Anvil—to develop new weapons. Talaria—to break the siege. But you said there were four projects."
Rowan paused at the doorway, turned around, and nodded. "The fourth project is mine. Mine alone. And it's classified."
And it might be the most important project of all, Rowan thought.
That night, she sat in her cabin, a small bunker she shared with several other officers. The others were out in the trenches tonight, fighting to hold back the aliens. Rowan sat here alone.
She had barely slept since the war had begun. Emet had ordered her to get a night's rest, cautioning that the war could last for months. But no rest found Rowan. Her mind raced. She worried about Bay, who had flown to buy weapons. About Leona, who had never returned from the Council. About Earth. And she worried about the weight of Antikythera on her shoulders.
The constant booms and rattling walls didn't help, either.
Instead of lying down, Rowan pulled a wooden box from under her bed. It was lovingly sanded and polished, its lid engraved with a silver rose. It had belonged to Coral.
Rowan stroked the box, tracing her fingers along the rose.
"I miss you, Coral," she whispered. "Every day."
Her tears fell onto the box. Rowan wiped them away. She imagined that she felt a warm touch, a hand stroking her hair. Perhaps a wisp of Coral's presence still in this world, comforting her.
"Before you died, you promised to teach me," Rowan said. "To mentor me. To help me become a weaver. You're gone now. But you left me a gift."
She opened the box. Inside were seven ancient books. Books made from actual paper, bound in leather. Humans had been reading from monitors for two thousand years now. Here was a relic from the ancient past. Here were the sacred Weaver Writs.
Gadriel the Good had written these books, Rowan knew. Over two thousand years ago. The Weeping Weaver himself, the great sage who had fled the destruction of Earth, who had gained enormous power, and who had avenged Earth by toppling the Hyrian Empire. Gadriel wasn't the first weaver. He had learned from masters who had come before him. But Gadriel was the mightiest, both warrior and sage. The forger of the Godblade. The writer of the Writs.
Coral is gone, Rowan thought, placing her hand on the stack of books. But Gadriel will teach me.
With weaving, Rowan could unlock a treasure trove of weapons. Coral had been able to fire bolts of aether from her silvery dagger, open portals, and heal wounds. All these could help the war effort—dramatically.
But mostly, Rowan thought about Elysium, the planet where Gadriel had built his guildhall. Bay had visited the place, seeking the Godblade. He had told Rowan the tale. A pristine, beautiful world, draped with forests and meadows. A world that would normally be swarming with aliens. A shield of aether had engulfed that world, defending it from the monsters.
"If I can weave such a shield around Earth," Rowan whispered to herself, "we'll be safe."
True, the scorpion fleet had eventually shattered the shield around Elysium. But it had taken a massive bombardment. A shield of aether around Earth wouldn't be completely bulletproof. But it would go a long way. And Rowan could perhaps learn to build an even stronger shield, maybe even several layers of shields.
She could already see it. She would place defensive satellites around the shield, a first line of defense. They would fire on any enemy that arrived. Fleets of warships would orbit behind the shield, ready to fire through narrow passageways like archers through arrowslits. A platoon of weavers—Rowan would train more, of course—would be ready to repair any holes in the aether armor.
If we had such a shield today, Rowan thought, we'd have saved Port Addison. We'd have cast back the enemy. We'd be winning this war. She took a deep breath and nodded. So I must learn how to weave such a shield. I must become as great as Gadriel.
This was her fourth project. The Elysium Project. The others would not understand. But Rowan knew the Earth depended on her success.
She lay down on her bed. It felt very cold and empty without Bay at her side. Emet had ordered her to sleep, but Rowan could not. She hugged a pillow, grabbed the first weaver book, and began to read.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mairead limped onward through the pain.
It was an all-consuming pain, draped in weakness. Her head pounded. Her wounds ached. Invisible chains seemed to be dragging her down. She was suffering from blood loss, shock, maybe dehydration. Definitely shell shock. Her body screamed at her to lie down, to drown under these waves of misery, to crumple up into a bundle of suffering.
But Mairead forced herself onward.
She was a soldier.
Pain was irrelevant. She would fight through it. So long as she drew breath, she would fight. And pain be damned.
She trudged through the dark ruins of New York. She could barely see, partly because of the darkness, partly because her head still spun, and her eyes could not focus.
Fight.
She took another step.
Make your way home.
She thought of poker games with Ramses and the boys. She thought of Leona and Rowan, who had become like sisters. Of Emet, who had become like a father.
Keep going for them. You must live. You must see them again.
She lurched down an alleyway. A statue loomed to her side, leaning over, leering. It was shaped like a monstrous hybrid, half-human, half-serpent, its tongue obscenely extended and black with mold. To her left, a pile of snake eggs quivered inside the burnt shell of a building. The translucent shells revealed the spawn inside—monsters the size of cats, their jaws working silently, trying to tear free. Mairead limped onward before the alien nurse, a white basilisk with red eyes, could see her.
Engines rumbled. Firelight flared ahead. A few hundred meters away, a Copperhead roared upward, leaving a trail of fire.
Mairead pressed herself against the alley wall, watching it rise. The tubular vessel was even smaller than a Firebird. A single basilisk was flying it, stretched out inside the narrow fuselage. The machine was barely a starfighter at all, little more than a suit of armor mounted with engines and cannons.
But Mairead knew that she could fly one.
Two years ago, Leona Ben-Ari had commandeered the Snakepit, a massive basilisk armaments ship. The human crew, Mairead among it, had captured several Copperheads inside, had flown them to Earth. Those Copperheads had been destroyed in the war. But not before Mairead had studied them, had learned to fly them. She had clocked quite a few hours inside these cramped machines, lying on her belly, gripping the alien contr
ols, streaming over fields and oceans and breaching the atmosphere.
They're a bitch to fly, she thought. Not nearly as nice as a Firebird. But a Copperhead can still get me home.
Yesterday, she had planned to use a hijacked Copperhead to attack Xerka.
But then Mairead had seen the deformed bats. Had battled Naja in the pits. Had been wounded, bloodied, burnt.
For the first time in her life—the fight was knocked out of her. And she was afraid. Mairead no longer dreamed of a grand assault, of taking on the alien empress with a single ship. She just wanted to go home. To return with reinforcements, yes. To still fight this war, certainly. But not now. Not alone.
Mairead was too hurt. Too haunted. Too broken. And those bats still flew in her mind. She knew they would never leave her.
She walked down the alleyway, determined to survive. The spaceport was just a few blocks away. Mairead had no bullets left, but she still had explosives. She could create a distraction, steal a Copperhead, and fly back to Port Addison.
Her eyes dampened.
I can see you again, Ramses. I can see all of you. I don't have to die alone.
She had taken several more steps when she heard the hissing behind her.
She spun around.
A creature was wriggling toward her across the filthy alley. At first Mairead thought it a young basilisk. It was barely larger than her. She could hardly see anything in this darkness. But as it moved closer, the creature entered the light shining through the nursery window.
Mairead cursed. She took a step back, nausea rising inside her.
It was some sort of hybrid. The face was human—the face of a man, bearded, oily. But the arms had been removed, the legs morphed together, the body covered with scales. Whether the creature was genetically engineered or surgically created, Mairead could not tell.
But one thing she knew. There was hunger in those bloodshot eyes.
The Song of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 5) Page 13
