by Greg Keyes
There were rumors that some of those who had sided with the aliens in the beginning only did so to be on the inside, to bide their time until the moment was ripe to take action. To Amar, this had always seemed like wishful thinking. Now he was starting to believe it was possible.
But all he really knew was that currency arrived, usually in the form of valuable trade goods.
“Let’s see what you have to trade,” Caspar said.
Sam motioned him behind their truck and threw open the flap.
“Antibiotics,” he said. “Electronics. Whiskey—real whiskey; I have no idea where they got it, but it’s good Scotch. Power rations. Have some hacks, too, for detecting implants, and also some counterfeit implants. You can really only use them once or twice, but you understand the possible benefits.”
The latter were things the Shens were now producing themselves.
“So this is my upfront, then?” Caspar said.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Sam told him. “This is just so you see we’re bargaining in good faith.”
“Well, that’s very interesting,” Caspar said. “But I think we’ll take it up front.”
“Well,” Sam replied, “then I suppose we’ll have to find another bunch of feckless hyenas to do business with. Too bad. This is going to be big, and you could have been part of it.”
“Sure,” Caspar said, lifting his hand and drawing it across his throat.
Then, he looked a little surprised. He repeated the motion.
“Oh,” Amar said. “We took the precaution of disarming the snipers you sent in here yesterday. They’re perfectly fine. And their positions have been filled with our own sharpshooters.”
One of the men reached for his gun and then spat out a groan as a bullet smashed through his shoulder. A few seconds later, they heard the report.
“This is awkward,” Sam said as the man swore and sank to his knees. “We were really hoping to avoid any bloodshed, and now look. Do you think you could help us keep things at this point, Caspar? Help end the violence?”
The man glared at him but nodded grudgingly.
“Here,” Sam said. “Take the list. I have copies. If you’re the first to bring me what I need, you’ll get paid. And if you ever try to screw us again, we’ll put the lot of you in the dirt. Is that good?”
“It’s good,” Caspar grated, after a moment. He and his men climbed back into their trucks and left.
“What if they turn us in?” Amar asked.
“That lot?” Sam said. “ADVENT would shoot them on sight. Caspar might die knowing he got his revenge, but I don’t take him for that sort. For one thing, he hates the aliens. Us, he’s merely put out by. He may even come around one day. We might be buddies.”
“I don’t know about that,” Amar said, “but if he can get us the stuff, I’ll put up with a lot.”
* * *
Back at the ship, a village was growing. But it wasn’t huge, and its inhabitants were a pretty select bunch. Captain Laaksonen—now entirely in charge of the Elpis—was quietly bringing on board scientists, engineers, machinists, and chemists from around the globe, where they were carefully moved by the Valodi’s people along the route Amar and the rest had followed to the crash site.
A number of huts had been constructed, and solar panels provided most of their energy. The population was now thirty, enough to make Amar start to feel edgy. The more people, the more likely they were to be noticed by the ADVENT, especially when people and materials were moving into and out of what was supposed to be a restricted area.
He spent a lot of his time trying to fortify the area as well as he could. Components for a few larger guns found their way to him, which couldn’t hurt—but what he was most interested in was early detection. He established lookouts up to two kilometers away and set up motion-activated cameras along every trail big enough for a bicycle.
A few days after their meeting with Caspar and his men, one of the lookouts broke radio silence, transmitting a short, encoded message:
Inbound transports. Five. Search spread.
Amar had been taking a much-needed rest in his hammock when the message came. He rolled out and picked up his assault rifle.
“Incoming,” he shouted. “You know your positions. Get to them. All non-coms—into the ship.”
They had run this drill a few times, so it went relatively smoothly, despite the panic that overcame a few. Amar’s own gut was tight.
In all of his earlier encounters with the ADVENT, there had been an objective, or they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In either case, after winning the fight, they were free to hightail it out of there.
But here the objective was to resurrect the Avenger, which was what Dr. Shen had begun calling the alien ship. At this point, the Avenger wasn’t something they could carry with them. Whether the transports represented a random patrol—or worse, a targeted one, triggered by, say, Caspar turning them in—they were screwed. Even if they killed every trooper in all five transports, the ADVENT could just keep sending soldiers until they were overwhelmed.
If they were spotted now, it would be over before it had even really begun.
Moments later they heard the purr of alien engines. Amar searched what little he could see of the sky. He thought he saw a metallic flicker. Then it was gone.
He was just starting to breathe again when a shadow fell on him. He looked up through the trees and saw the aircraft moving over. Heart hammering, he checked his rifle for the third time.
The shadow continued on. Half an hour later, the lookouts gave the all-clear. It had been a routine patrol, and to all appearances, they hadn’t been noticed.
It could be months before another such patrol came by. It could be hours. Either way, they were far, far from safe.
* * *
“We were wrong to assume the power was completely out,” the elder Dr. Shen said, at the next day’s briefing. Amar was invited to these meetings, although he often didn’t understand much of what they were talking about. “There are certain key areas where there is a small amount of energy still manifesting itself, a kind of low-level maintenance, or perhaps even a long-term healing process.”
“Are you saying the ship is alive?” Sam asked.
“Not in any biological sense,” Lily picked up. “But the aliens’ technology has a very complex set of feedback loops at every level, so you might compare it with, say, the human body. If a cell in your body is damaged, it either repairs itself or is replaced by neighboring cells. This happens without reference to the higher systems of the body, which govern health and healing at larger scales. If, for instance, you receive a bigger insult—a cut or gash—blood must clot, leucocytes must arrive to combat infection. Heart rate and blood pressure may adjust, and your cognitive system will modify behavior. On an entirely different level, intelligent beings will employ first aid—washing or disinfecting the wound, closing it up in some manner, and so forth. This ship is currently functioning, so to speak, mostly at a cellular level. The higher systems seem to be detached or at least in deep hibernation. For the most part, this is probably a good thing for us. Like their transports and other equipment, this ship was probably originally equipped with any number of safeguards against being taken over by anyone other than its creators. These are all shut down at the moment. We need to identify these systems and make sure that they remain dysfunctional when we turn the power back on.”
The elder Dr. Shen tapped up a display of the ship they had mapped it thus far.
“Parts of the ship remain inaccessible to us,” he added. “We don’t even have a guess as to what they do. Some we have been able to open up using our own power sources. But this large section near the nose of the ship is a true enigma. It may be that only the computer can open this area, and there are a couple of problems there. The first is that we need power, and a lot of it. That is the next really crucial step in this project. It became clear to us in the early days of the war that the aliens had a power source far superior t
o anything we possessed. Other than a few confusing readings and a bit of research on fragments of their technology, we were never even certain what it was. Our research came to an untimely end.
“Of course the New Cities and everything the ADVENT Administration has built runs on this power source of theirs. In the twenty years since the conquest, Dr. Vahlen gathered a great deal of data concerning this matter, and as a result I can say that we now have a fairly firm grasp on it. The key is an element that does not seem to be naturally present on Earth—Elerium. When this ship crashed, it lost much of its Elerium. Indeed, it might have ejected it or neutralized it in some way. Of what remains, I have prioritized repurposing some of it for a more immediate use, since we don’t have enough of it to bring the ship into a more responsive state.”
“So we need more of this Elerium,” Sam said.
“That is correct,” Dr. Shen said.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Sam said. “It must be everywhere. All I need to do is alert our black market assets. Just give me the specs—how they can recognize it, how to handle it, all of that.”
“Speaking of assets,” Dr. Shen said, “There is another matter, one I do not believe we should involve the black market in—or, in fact, anyone outside the core of this group.”
* * *
After so much time in open country, Amar had forgotten how confining the Elpis could be, especially for two people doing their best to avoid one another. And although he thought about approaching her every day, it was Lena who very typically broke their mutual silence first. He was in the Rathskeller at lunchtime, picking at his calamari when she walked in and saw that the seat across from him was the only empty one. She paused and turned as if to leave, but then, with her usual determination, proceeded to his table.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“No, please,” he replied.
Once she was seated, he nodded at her plate. “The cod?” he asked. “Really?”
“It’s growing on me,” she said. “We all have to adapt, right?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“Good,” she replied. She began eating. He tried to think of something to say, something to begin with, but he couldn’t imagine where to start. So instead he just picked at his food.
“I saw Nishimura,” Lena said. “Looks like she’s doing well.”
“Yeah,” Amar said. “I ran her through her paces the other day. She’ll be going along on this.”
“Great,” Lena replied. Then she returned her attention to the food. When she was done, she picked up her plate and looked as though she were about to leave. Instead, she turned back.
“It’s a little crowded here,” she said. “Could you meet me above when you’re done?”
“Sure,” he said.
* * *
Amar remembered talking to Lena by starlight and later—on the voyage from Gough Island to India—slow-dancing across the gently rolling deck, holding her in his arms. They were in those same seas now, but headed south.
Twenty years ago, they would have sailed east across the Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and thence to the Mediterranean. But the aliens had trashed the canal, and so they had to go the long way, the way the Portuguese had in the fifteenth century, around the Cape of Good Hope.
The same seas, but a very different season, he thought.
She was waiting for him, arms crossed. He waited for her to say something.
“So,” she began. “You and I, we’re stuck together for a while. Not just on this ship, not just on this mission, but maybe for the rest of our lives, however long or short that may be. So let’s adapt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I hurt you …”
“You don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “To say I was hurt doesn’t begin to cover it. Don’t tell me you understand, because you don’t. And that’s not the point of this conversation.”
“Is this where you say we should just be friends?” he asked.
She actually laughed at that. “We are not and have never been friends,” she said. “I’ve been your captive; I’ve been the tagalong you were trying to get rid of; I’ve been your makeout buddy; and I’ve been the girl you’ve been avoiding like poison. But I have never been your friend.”
“Wait,” he said. “Back up one second. You were avoiding me, too.”
“Yes,” she said, “because you were a jackass. You owed me the apology you started in the Rathskeller immediately, not a month later. And you owed it to me to tell me how you felt. But that would the hard thing for you, wouldn’t it? You’re very good at what you do, Amar. Good at being a soldier. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever known when it comes to that sort of thing. But you’re one of the most cowardly people I’ve ever known when it comes to your personal relationships. You have all of these justifications for what you do and don’t do, but what it all boils down to is that the easier thing for you to do is back away from anything like real investment. What you don’t have can’t be taken from you, right? For you, quitting is always easier than trying.”
She stopped and took a step back.
“Wow,” she said. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to rant like that.”
“Pretty good rant,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s occurred to you, KB, but I’ve been having a pretty awful time these past few months. My sister died, and I’m faced with the fact that pretty much everything I’ve ever believed was a lie. I’m not used to death and shooting and explosions or being lost in the ocean. Not really my thing, except that now it is, inevitably, unavoidably. This has all been very hard on me. Maybe I used you as a crutch, I don’t know. So maybe I bear some of the responsibility for this state of whatever-it-is. That doesn’t really matter now. We are going to adapt. We have to work together, so we have to be able to communicate, especially when we get to the site. Maybe we can be friends. Maybe we can’t. But we can work together.”
Amar felt like saying a number of things. Like how hard it had been to lose Rider and Thomas and Toby. How hard it would be to lose Lena. That she was probably right about him, and that he would like to learn to be braver.
Instead, he just nodded and said okay.
“You know I’m going this time, right?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied. Not as if he had a say in the matter this time. This whole project was Lily’s. He was just in charge of the muscle.
CHAPTER 17
THEY BYPASSED GOUGH Island for fear that it was being watched because of the incident with the gunboat.
They refueled instead at St. Helena, another speck in the Atlantic that had once been the final prison of Napoleon Bonaparte. Unlike chilly Gough, St. Helena was mildly tropical, but it was every bit as rocky and isolated.
They stayed for a day, and then proceeded north, stopping once more at Madeira Island before going on to their final destination.
The Elpis surfaced along a barren strip of beach on the coast of Brittany. The sky was gray with a few blue lenses here and there, and the wind tousled the treetops almost playfully.
Chitto stood watch on top of the ship as Amar went with Nishimura and Dux to secure the beach, after which Lily and Lena came down, followed by Chitto.
Lily had two bags, one of which felt as if it were full of lead. They took turns carrying it.
That night they saw the lights of New Nantes in the distance and the next morning a settlement. They avoided both and moved deep into a contagion zone.
It was chilly but not quite cold, and the leaves on the trees were gold and crimson and brown, something Amar had heard of but never seen before. He found it really quite beautiful and slightly depressing. He remembered Toby’s meditation on sunrise and sunset people, and wondered if one could make a similar speculation about people who were conditioned by temperate, northern, or tropical climates. In France, one was faced with a yearlong cycle of death and rebirth, of graduated change. Around the equator
, death and rebirth happened, too, of course, but not written on the landscape and installed on the calendar in the same fashion. Trees did not shed, appear to die, and then return to bloom. When something died in Malaysia, it was usually actually dead.
You could even say there were two seasons, wet and dry—but the psychological impact might be different.
He soon wearied of this. Toby had been overthinking things, and now so was he.
Sometimes they were able to follow a road, but more often it was easier to go cross-country. They passed overgrown petrol stations, an ancient abbey of crumbling gray stone, and a cemetery with hundreds of headstones. They cut their way through hedges and waded across creeks and slept beneath the stars—but more frequently under clouds.
One clear morning, under a rare cerulean sky, Amar called a halt because he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. Across a field, something was moving at the forest’s edge.
“What is it, Chitto?” he asked.
She raised her rifle to look, but after long moment, she didn’t say anything. Instead she handed the weapon to him.
Peering through the scope, he saw what appeared to be a wild boar—no, three. One was closer and more obvious, but now he could make out the others a little deeper in. They looked as if they were confronting something; their legs were set and splayed, heads down, swaying from side to side in unison. The nearest looked very thin, almost emaciated, and most of its fur was gone, replaced by something that glinted in the sunlight, like glass or crystals.
“What am I seeing?” he wondered aloud.
“It’s like they’re guarding something,” Nishimura said. “Or watching out for something.”
“I’d like to have a closer look,” Lily said.
“Not until I do,” Amar said. “The rest of you stay here.”
“Chief,” Nishimura said. “You don’t always need to be the one stirring up the hornets. Let me have a look.”
He knew she was probably right, and certainly she was better suited for the job. But it was hard, putting someone else in harm’s way. Easier on his conscience to go himself …
