by Patty Jansen
But when the attendant spotted us, he ushered us straight through. Amarru was waiting, he informed me.
The team were going to get the craft ready, and I went straight from the entrance to Amarru’s office.
I found Amarru standing in the corridor outside her office talking to someone.
As soon as she saw me, she ended the conversation and came towards me. It had only been a short time—about two weeks—since I’d last seen her, but she looked old.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” was the first thing she said. The worried look in her eyes disturbed me.
“Well, it was interesting.”
I was trying to sound light-hearted, but a worn out feeling hit me like a freight train. This was the safest I had felt since leaving this same place two weeks ago, when we were yet unaware of what would happen.
“I thought we lost you, when you slipped our guards in Los Angeles.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that.”
“I have to admit, I wasn’t impressed. I sent my people on a wild chase after you. You could have told me about your plans and I might have saved the resources that I could have used to retrieve other people in difficult positions.”
“I said I’m sorry, and truly am, but we got important data, and I think the trip was worth it, even if it didn’t achieve any of what I had hoped it would. Have you had any communication with Nations of Earth?”
Amarru snorted. “I wish I understood this man better. I’ve had a very short talk with him, over a video link, and that is it.”
“Before or after the attacks?”
“Before. It was a diplomatic call. I was going to propose a long string of measures that should be taken cooperatively to get our joint systems going, but he just keeps stalling on all of it.”
“What is the bet that he voted against joining? “
“Oh, there is no doubt about that.”
“He seems to be a vindictive and petty little man. I had some trouble with him a number of years ago, when we got rid of Romi Tanaqan. That almost cost me my citizenship.”
“Yeah I remember that. It was very effective but very risky.”
“I can’t believe that he is still sore over that. It solved the problem.”
“Well, at the time, he was responsible for the joint Armed Forces at Nations of Earth, and they all missed the presence of Asto ships in orbit and had no idea that they were within striking distance.”
Yes, I could imagine that that would be a sore point to his ego.
“But why let it derail his relationship with us for so long? Tanaqan was a rogue and was always going to create a problem. None of us wanted him. Not him, not Asto, not gamra, not the Zhori mafia really either. He was building up a base of supporters.”
“You tell me. You don’t have to convince me.”
I looked over her shoulder out the window.
“And your systems have also been affected by the attack?”
“They tried. Fortunately our alarm warning system is better than that. When these drones came within a certain distance, we had all alarms going off in this building, and some technology was dispatched.”
“I am guessing I better not ask too much about that technology?”
“That would be a good idea.”
“Does that also mean there could be pieces of debris that came down in the area surrounding Athens that are going to be found and analysed?”
“In theory, yes, although you will probably find them a lot more damaged than the sample you saw.”
“I’m going to leave a copy of all that data with you. I’ve already sent it to Dekker, for all the good that will do.”
“Save yourself and give it to Ezhya.”
I detected a kind of finality behind her words, and that disturbed me.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re closing up shop for the time being. We are evacuating.”
I stayed at her. “What?”
“I want to show you something.”
She got up from her desk and accompanied me the short distance down the corridor to the Exchange’s central hub.
Even though it serviced an entire planet, the level of technology was only about the same as the one in Barresh. This would have to change massively once all the systems were integrated and people from Earth could formally travel.
The hub’s operator seemed to have been waiting for her.
Of course, they had known that we were on our way.
She showed me the visual representation of the attack as it had been captured by the Exchange. Deyu and Reida had shown me something like this, but there was a bit more detail to these images. You could see the drones approaching Earth and vaporising in the atmosphere after delivering their payload. You could even see how the Atlantia Air Force had intercepted one of them, which went down before it could deliver its payload. She played the sequence over a few times and enlarged certain areas.
Amarru continued, “We can prove that the attack drones came from the approaching rogue ship. It is still some distance away, but these drones appeared in lower orbit. How did they get here so quickly?”
“The Asto military can’t be the only one with a one-way Exchange sling.”
“Yeah. And look at this.”
She flicked to another frequency where the ship split off in five different strands. “This is from yesterday. These haven’t reached us yet.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Yup. Now when you consider that distant ship, we tried to communicate with it, but I don’t think it has that capability. In fact, you can see here the moment the drones split off. The lines that come from it are the same strength as the ship itself. Brightness equates size, so it basically duplicates itself several times here,” she pointed back at the original picture.
“So what did the ship do at that point?”
“ Well that’s an excellent question, isn’t it? We have no idea.”
“Is the original ship still approaching?”
“Yes. So are several of its duplicates.”
“Shit. This is really no time for Dekker’s antics. Did you show him this?”
“We tried.”
“And?”
“I have no idea. He didn’t reply.”
“We can’t afford to have this type of behaviour.”
“Nope. But he seems adamant that we have something to do with it.”
“What else do you know?”
“Not much. We’re dealing with an unknown technology that they have developed independently, even if they also used some of our parts. We don’t know who this is, and we don’t know what they can do. There could be an entire army of these things on its way to us. Each of these five vehicles might give rise to additional attacks. We don’t know. We don’t know what they want. We have not been able to communicate with them. Nations of Earth also isn’t communicating with us. We remember what happened when we were all trapped here because we acted too late. We will not let that happen again. This is why I have given the evacuation order for everyone who wants to be evacuated. We are ready.”
I very much wanted to say that this was a very radical measure, and surely things wouldn’t be that bad, but I remembered that time very well. I remembered just being able to get out in time. I remember thinking about all those people who did not. I remember seeing that mother whose young child was left behind. I didn’t want to see anything like that ever again.
“Are all gamra people taking up this offer?”
“Not all of them. Many of them have lived here long enough, they’ve got nowhere else to go, but quite a lot of them have. About half have given me their intention to leave. We will get them to come here in orderly fashion without overwhelming any of the local systems.”
“You really have thought about this for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Only about eleven years. Letting people
become trapped here was a failure that I’ve never allowed myself to forget.”
“So, where do we fit in?”
“I’d go home if I were you.”
“I presume my craft is still here?”
My pilot Leisha had been attending some talks about future changes and things all pilots would need to know when the Athens exchange officially opened for all.
“I’ve told everyone with private craft to evacuate first. I wanted the hall to be as empty as possible, so that I had the space to put all the odd sundry of craft that are going to arrive.”
“But how am I going to get back?”
“Don’t worry. We have all that sorted. I’ve reserved spots on a shuttle that’s leaving soon.”
She was right.
We barely had time to get something to eat.
While we were eating in the large upstairs canteen where I used to sit with Nicha, I briefed the team on what I had heard from Amarru.
Like me, they were shell-shocked. Every time I spoke to someone else, the situation became more serious than we had assumed.
The children all listened quietly.
I know I still couldn’t get over how well-behaved they all were, and how much I needed to prepare some really smooth talking to Nalya’s father, because I was sure that I would be blamed for taking his son into a war zone, never mind that problems had only started breaking out when we were already here, and that they were not my fault, anyway.
I expected a writ to be on my desk when I came back. Make that two writs, once Larrana’s family heard about our adventures.
Sigh.
We collected all our things. It was amazing how, with so many kids, stuff ended up in strange places. For example, why was there a game triangle under the table next to ours?
We walked through the corridors of the building, so familiar to me. I wondered when I would be back again.
If Asto couldn’t help stave off an invasion because Nations of Earth was being stupid, what would it mean for all the people on Earth? Would SCAC be joining up with the anti-gamra cause and taking over Nations of Earth?
Those were all horrible questions that I didn’t want to think about.
The shuttle was quite large and was full to overflowing with people who clearly normally lived on Earth. Many of them hadn’t even bothered to change back into Coldi clothing. I wondered where they were going. I thought of the people I had left behind, Clay, Marisol and Vanessa and their community. I thought of the Zhori community in South Africa, and in Ethiopia, of the Coldi in London, who could get out because they belonged to the Palayi elite, and of the many, many Coldi in Athens, many of whom would probably not get out because they had no money and nowhere to go.
I thought of my father. I’d tried to send him a message that we weren’t in a position to see him, but there had been no reply. Likely, he and Erith were feeding the llamas, sailing in the bay or chatting to the neighbours.
After a while, the crew announced that we were due to arrive at the “way station”.
A vast dark shape loomed in the projection on the wall screen, against the glare of the planet and the back-lit crescent of the Moon. It was too big to fit onto the screen. I thought I spotted a few pinpricks of light in the darkness.
Well, crap, a giant Asto military ship was hidden away on the far side of the Moon at the LaGrange point.
The blue marble slid from view, and not much later, the shuttle docked. The crew informed us that they had a short window in which they had to return to the Exchange, so Please leave the craft in timely fashion and ask for assistance if you have difficulty.
When the doors opened and we were allowed out, we emerged in a hall where the walls bore the attachment points for the fighters that would hang here in the ship’s normal operation, but had clearly been moved elsewhere, probably outside the hull.
There was a clear path marked over the smooth curved floor and passengers streamed out towards an entrance that led to a light-filled room. There were a lot of people here, and the smell of food hung in the air. The room gave a view over Earth, a blue marble over the top of the dark shape of the Moon. My heart ached.
Someone came towards us.
A man’s voice said, “Oh. There you are, finally.”
Ayshada called out. “Grandpa!”
Thayu, who carried Emi on her arm, whirled around.
I witnessed a very rare emotional encounter between Asha, Thayu, Nicha and both the children. Then Asha faced me. He was in full uniform, the desert pink flight suit, rank designation and everything. I rarely saw him like this.
“You knew we would be back?” I said flippantly.
“You’re indestructible, so yes, but I didn’t like it. When first news came out of what had happened, we were ordered to go here immediately.”
And that order could only have come from Ezhya because he was the only person who could order Asha.
“Where is Ezhya?”
I was beginning to have a very bad feeling about this.
Asha glanced over my shoulder. I turned.
Sure enough, the man himself was walking through the room.
Only two guards walked in front of him, a sign of how much things had changed since I had brought the Omi clan into line. Before that, surrounded by all these people from the rival clans, he would be in the company of a lot more guards.
But he was not alone.
Two other people followed him.
But that was...
“Dad, Erith.”
I rushed to them and closed them in my arms.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” my father said.
“What are you two doing here?”
“We received a strong suggestion from someone to take up the offer to come here.”
“Why? Is New Zealand that unsafe?”
“It’s likely to become less safe, but also, we wanted to see you, because after this visit, it may be a long time before you can come back, if the Exchange is closing.”
“But certainly that is a temporary situation?” I glanced at Ezhya, who was talking to Sheydu.
“It’s only a short visit, but I wanted to make sure we took advantage of it. Now, where is this young lady I’ve heard so much about?”
Thayu had joined the group with Sheydu and Ezhya. Rather than take her attention off what looked to be an important discussion, I took Emi from her. She was wide awake, looking around with big eyes.
My father had not seen his granddaughter before. She was happy being held by him and Erith. He told me he was happy that I’d named her after my mother. It was so good to see him again.
But my attention kept going to the group next to us, where Ezhya lingered an uncharacteristically long time talking with Sheydu, and even Deyu.
I picked up snatches of the conversation.
He was here with a sizeable contingent of the Asto military.
A full-scale operation. The Asto military had certainly learned from its previous mistakes.
“So that’s it?” I said to Ezhya when he came to stand next to me. His presence was familiar and comforting. Coldi never truly spoke of friends, but if one had to translate, those people in a well-functioning association would be called friends.
“I’ve tried to approach them,” Ezhya said. Them being Nations of Earth. “I offered help.”
“And not getting anywhere?”
“Oh, they’re talking, but no one is making any commitments, and the president seems to change the subject every time I talk about joint military operations.”
“He actually wants to talk to you?”
“I suspect not. That’s the problem.”
“He was in charge of the Nations of Earth guard and peacekeeping forces when I asked Asha to do a little job for me. He didn’t like it.”
Ezhya told me that failing a request from Dekker for assistance, there was nothing he was w
illing to do.
We all knew that there had been a time of double standards within gamra: that Asto got away with a lot more than the other entities. No more. Chief Delegate Marin Federza made damn sure of that.
This ship was going to start taking passengers to Asto once the available room on board was filled up. That would take a while, because the ship could carry thousands, the shuttles only had room for a hundred or fewer passengers, in case of the smaller private craft.
Because Amarru had shut down the core of the Athens Exchange, we needed to use the military sling, but that required us to travel a bit because that very secretive military ship did not make a habit of coming close to planets.
Ezhya assured me that there would be a way for us to go back to our ship, which was stored on another military vessel. We decided to stay until my father and Erith would have to go back home. We spent as much time as possible with them. In my mind, I made plans to bring them to Barresh for an extended visit. Fred the dog was fifteen years old and wouldn’t be with them much longer, but once he had passed on peacefully, my father and Erith would be free to spend some time with us.
While the loading of passengers was expected to continue at least overnight, we were allocated a military-style cabin to clean up and have a rest.
We shared a very basic meal in the—bare and military—canteen with my father and Erith. Afterwards, I found most of the children already asleep in the hammocks, and we joined them soon, all jammed together.
I was so tired that I didn’t even mind that I had to share the hammock with Thayu. The passage outside was a noisy place, with people talking, meeting up and yelling at each other. Heavy things were being dragged through the corridors. The door didn’t shut.
I woke up briefly when the gravity dropped and the ship stopped its rotating habitat to engage the engines.
I thought I’d have a brief rest. Some people could sleep in noisy environments. I wasn’t one of those people.
But when I woke up, it was several hours later, and most of my team had already left the room.
Some gravity had returned, but the soft hum of the walls and floor indicated that the ship was moving. The ship had to be a personnel carrier, because most military ships wouldn’t have a rotating habitat, or if they did, they wouldn’t operate it in flight.
