“They can't do anything,” Vante said. “They're just buzzing around up there in protest, and blocking the traffic lanes to the planet. But it's a show. A put on. They'll capitulate. They always do. This planet depends on Terrus for water, for repairs, for everything. The colony's proud and they'd throw me off the platform for saying it, but we need them far more than they need us.”
“Fascinating, how budgetary priorities change,” Wake said. “You wonder what the thinking is behind the scenes. Have you ever heard of the Sons of the Vanitar?”
Vante was so shocked he almost fell off the platform. “Who?”
Wake snickered. “Yeah, you've heard of that name before, at least. They're a rumored doomsday cult. Their thinking is simple – someday the human race will go extinct, and all of our struggles will have been for nothing. Rather than allow the suffering and misery to play itself out as our species struggles on, they want to bring an end to humanity in a controlled and dignified way. Mercy killing their own species, you might say.”
“Where did you hear about them?” Vante asked.
“I worked for the Solar Arm Constabulary. Lots of grapes on that particular vine. Apparently the founder was Emil Gokla, the same guy who invented Black Shift. Sarkoth Amnon and Raya Yithdras are sometimes speculated as members, too.“
“Sarkoth’s dead.”
“Probably,” Wake said. “But Raya Yithdras isn't, and she was supposedly Emil’s second in command. Nobody knows for sure who's in the group and who isn't – if it even exists at all. But it makes you wonder what they know.”
They relaxed, looking at the man-made stars twinkling overhead.
“If Raya Yithdras is one of the Sons,” Wake said, “then the cult now controls the Solar Arm. The fox is in the henhouse, and it's a fox that doesn't just want to eat chickens. If it did, it would leave enough of them alive so that it could eat tomorrow. This is a fox that philosophically believes chickens shouldn't even exist, for their own good. A worrying time, if you believe all that stuff. Well intentioned leaders manage to kill enough people without even trying. What happens when you get a leader that starts setting their minds to it?”
“So you think this has something to do with budget cuts?” Vante said.
“Imagine you wanted to bring about the end of the human race. You'd ideally want humanity to be as concentrated as possible – for all humans to be on a single world, or a single city, if possible. That way, when you try to purge them, nobody escapes. A bunch of far-flung colonies going about their business means mankind's extinction is impossible, except from something really bad like a passing black hole or a gamma ray burst.
“So, think policy. Gradually you'd defund the outer colonies, prompting people to move further and further in. No more Triton colony, no more Titan colony, no more Venus colony. You could conjure up any number of plausible excuses to hide your true intent. Then, you might defund Mars and Ceres, and encourage everyone to move back to Terrus.
“When that's done, when everyone's packed together on mankind's homeworld – then you'd pull whatever exit switch you have. An antimatter bomb, whatever. Everyone would die, except for a few lone fugitives in space. And they would never survive and repopulate the human race. You'd have achieved destruction of the species, and you would have done it all under the guise of fiscal responsibility.”
“I had heard of the Sons of the Vanitar,” Vante said, thinking of all those endless days in the icy mansion of Emil Gokla, his blood drained away to support a decrepit old man. He'd been so fragile and weak that in the end, he hadn't even had the energy to feel fear. And that had broken the spell, given him the impetus to murder the man holding him there.
He wondered how much Wake knew. Probably a good deal, if he was a cop.
He seems to like secrets. I wonder if I told him, he'd listen and believe me.
“The truth is probably fairly underwhelming,” Wake said. “If they exist, it's probably just some stale old circlejerk of powerless nobodies, making plans that they will never accomplish or fulfill. But if they did exist, you'd expect them to cut funding to the colonies. Just an observation.”
A distant caw came from one of the floating city's support pylons. It travelled across the vast gulf of air, masking the size of the creature that had made it.
“But I've been windjamming long enough,” Wake said. “Why don't you show me the Quetzals?”
They flew underneath the city, navigating an industrial maze of moss-covered pipes, and rusted bearings. This was the part of the city nobody ever saw, unless they had wings. It was the ugly part of Zephyr City, and the part you charged big money to see.
Rarity is value by another name.
The shrieking and bellowing of the reborn dinosaurs was almost deafening.
They were hungry. Wake asked if he could feed them, and Vante said yes.
They sat on the perches, connected by a few dozen yards of rope, flying behemoths nearly the size of buses. They chattered and croaked seditiously, excited by the sight of Vante. The alpha female, Cuahtemoc, was lording over the others. She was the only one with her beak raised, the others had theirs lowered in a show of deference.
“Are they tame?” Wake said.
“Of course,” Vante said. “They've been hand-reared since they were chicks. They're completely safe.”
Wake flew close, and the dinosaurs immediately made him a liar.
They went insane. They reacted around him the way they'd reacted to the genehacked sheep carcasses. An unearthly shriek ripped from twelve throats as they rounded on the intruder.
Then they lunged at him.
“Aaron! Back!” Vante yelled, seeing but not believing.
They were trying to kill Wake.
Only the fact that they were so massive saved Wake's life. They took so long to get off their perches and into the air that he saw what they were doing, and pulled back.
The Quetzals rushed towards him. Cuahtemoc made it to the end of her rope first. Her fierce forward momentum was abruptly terminated, the rope stretching taut across her breast.
Then she hung in place, her wings almost smashing the air, huge beak opening and closing like a slamming gate made of bone. Wake was just a few meters beyond her reach.
The other Quetzals reached their respective limits. All of them were trying to get to Wake. All of them were held in check by the ropes that dug furrows into their feathers. They cawed and screeched their outrage.
“Damn,” Wake said, shaking his head. “I just make new friends, wherever I go.”
“I'm sorry,” Vante babbled, thinking of Krepsen’s incoming legal obliteration. That hadn’t been a game. That had been a serious attack. “I'm so sorry. They've never done anything like this, I swear. They've always been completely fine around humans.”
“That's okay,” Wake said. “I don't really think I'm a human being, so why should they?”
He artfully swooped forward on the Vyres, brought himself up short within a few yards of Cuahtemoc's opening and closing beak, and slapped it with the palm of his hand.
“Get back!” Vante yelled as the Quetzal squalled. “They think you're food. They're in a feeding frenzy right now.”
“Why would they do that, I wonder?” Wake said. “This is absolutely the first time they've reacted like this to a person, is it?”
“Yeah, yeah, I swear.”
“You don't have to swear. Your boss wouldn't have a business if these things made a habit of eating the customers. I just think it's strange. Why me?”
The dozen Quetzals had exhausted themselves and had peeled away, cruising through the air in massive semicircles back to their perches. Only Cuahtemoc was still in the air, still fighting to reach Wake. Her rope tenses and untensed, stretched nearly to breaking point.
Then she looked down, noticed the rope harness securing her as if for the first time...and started biting through it.
Vante’s mouth fell open.
No.
The Quetzals were frightening, but they weren’t smart.<
br />
They had been secured from freedom by these ropes since adolescence. It had been a part of their lives for so long that they no longer even realized they were tied, they just accepted it as an inescapable part of life.
At any moment they could have bitten through their own ropes. But there was a time when they hadn't been big enough to do that, and this moment had stayed with them for a lifetime.
In that moment, for whatever reason, Cuahtemoc tore those old lies to shreds.
Vante watched in disbelieving horror. She was biting through her own rope. And there was nothing he could do.
The giant beak gnashed and slashed. The rope almost immediately failed. It was so ridiculously easy. One moment, Cuahtemoc was tied to a wall. The next, she was as free as a bird.
Free, and ready to attack.
Wake saw her coming for him, and dived straight down. He almost wasn't fast enough, and the slashing beat passed within a fraction of his boots. Cuahtemoc screeched in frustration, her call rending the air apart, and she whirled and went after him again.
They looked twice as massive and frightening when they weren’t secured by rope.
Wake came out of his dive and righted himself, facing the giant flying dinosoid. He saw the beak descending on him again, blotting out the sky with its shadow.
He sidestepped, but not far enough. He missed the beak, but one of those six-meter long wings buffeted him with enough air pressure to send him into an uncontrolled spin. It was like being inside a tornado. Vante saw him tumble around and around, struggling in vain to regain control, and then Cuahtemoc whirled again.
Vante screamed, and started to dive. Wake was about to die.
The dinosaur bore down on him, and he had no chance to take evasive action. By sheer luck, the beak missed his body.
Instead, it closed upon his Vyres, rending them from his body.
shraaakkkkkk
Sparks flew as the biokinetic wings were savagely ripped from Wake's spinal column. As the Quetzal swooped clear, Wake was spinning in its slipstream with no method of flight at all.
And he started to fall.
Vante arrowed downwards, using his speed and narrow profile to close the distance. He collided with the spinning man, and wrapped his arms around his waist. Then he started flapping as hard as he could.
It was hopeless.
Wake was too heavy, and they both started to fall.
Air rushing up against his face, Vante suddenly remembered the skyhook. The safety measure.
Had they already gone too far? It had an operational range of a few kilometers or so.
He unhooked one arm from around Wake's large torso, and started activating a series of controls built into his nanomesh suit. It was suspended from a satellite, and could accurately track the metallic elements on Wake's clothes. He activated the skyhook, hoping and praying that it was not too late.
He flapped furiously, losing altitude steadily with his 100 kilogram cargo. He beat his wings with only one goal, to slow the descent as much as possible, to keep themselves inside the skyhook's operational range.
He closed his eyes, unable even to look at the sulfurous atmosphere rushing up at them, and a thin, whining buzz filled the air.
They were saved.
A long flexible stretch of metal, capped with a magnetic hook, hissed through the air, slamming into Wake's body. Skyhook rescue was rough. Sometimes it broke ribs. Dislocated shoulders.
It was still better than falling out of the bubble into Venus's atmosphere.
Their descent was arrested with a wrenching jolt that Vante felt right through Wake's body. Now instead of falling they were hanging in the air, precariously suspended by a two kilometer's length of woven fibrous metal.
“Jesus,” muttered Wake. “What happened?”
“You're safe.” Vante said, hoping he wasn’t lying. He looked down, and saw how dangerously close to the edge of the bubble they'd fallen. Even another two hundred meters would have put them inside the mephitic grip of Venus. They would have never escaped.
“Where's the Quetzal?”
“The… uh...?”
An approaching caw reminded him.
The Quetzal filled his world in a split second. It crashed into the skyhook, its beak striking sparks from the chain. Instantly they were swinging, penduluming far off to the side, and Vante was flung clear away.
He filled his wings with air and righted himself, scanning the four quadrants to figure out where Wake had gone. He now a tiny finger, almost invisible with distance, swinging on the end of the magnetic skyhook. He had no wings. He had no method of escape.
Cuahtemoc was circling, and the next dive would finish him.
Why are you trying to kill him? Vante thought in despair. The question was absurd, and simultaneously the only thing he could think to ask.
He zoomed closer, knowing that there would be nothing he could do.
Cuahtemoc opened her mouth in a final triumphant caw. In less than two seconds, Wake would be torn to pieces by the crashing halves of that beak.
Wake wasn't moving, or struggling. He had the Quetzal locked in a fierce glare. Vante saw that the man was had climbed a couple of feet on the skyhook's chain, with the extra length dangling below him.
What's he doing...?
At the last possible second, Wake reached to his hip.
Vante saw a glitter in his hand. He realised it was a small calibre pistol at exactly the same time as Wake aimed and fired it at the onrushing bird.
Ka-POW!
The gunshot scorched the skies as Wake let go of the length of chain. His body instantly dropped a meter, and the slashing bone beak that otherwise would have killed him went high.
Wake jolted to a stop as Cuahtemoc passed overhead, the beating wings jangling him.
Cuahtemov pulled out of the swoop, and and began to turn. A wide circle, ready to begin another run on Wake.
The turn was never completed.
The Quetzal's wings stopped flapping, and the bird started to fall.
Vante followed its descent. There was no death cry. No struggle.
It curved straight downwards, aimed at the fog, and then just plunged straight through the bottom of the oxygen bubble.
The massive dinosoid was soon a vague shape that disappeared in seconds inside the pea-soup atmosphere. It was gone. Within moments, bathed in corrosive acid and the high ambient sulfur, there wouldn't even be bones to find.
“Hey!” called Wake. “Can I get a bit of help here?”
Vante was jolted back to the moment.
On his suit, he activated the winch, and it gently began to raise Wake to the platform far above.
He flew in close. “Goddamn. Are you okay?”
“More or less,” Wake winced. “Jesus, getting Vyres torn out of your back hurts.”
Vante didn't even know what to say. This was disastrous. The worst flight he’d ever overseen at the depot. It was a miracle that nobody had been killed.
Wait, somebody was killed, he thought, remembering the descending feathered-covered hulk. Poor Cuahtemoc didn't quite make it.
He knew that Wake was now in an actionable position to sue the company for every last ducat they possessed, and send them all to prison on Ceres. This went beyond danger. What had just happened in the open air was insanity.
But he also sensed that Wake wouldn't do that.
Sensed that Wake didn't want to have any kind of contact with the authorities.
“Pretty good shot,” he said, making useless conversation.
“Straight into the brain,” Wake said. “It didn't even have a chance to figure out it was dead.”
“They have small brains.”
“It was a Hail Mary shot,” Wake said. “All I saw was its open mouth. I aimed into it, at the spot which I guessed was a straight line into its skull. I had no other chance at disabling it, not with a small calibre weapon. A body shot would have been blocked by the feathers. And a wound would have just pissed it off. It was a h
eadshot or nothing.”
By now, the edge of the platform was in sight. Vante had suddenly decided that running a Vyre rental wasn’t for him. He'd be perfectly happy to hand in his resignation papers and find a job inside Zephyr city. He didn’t like jobs where you had to watch people die.
Hand in my resignation papers, huh? He thought. I should be so lucky. I’m gone. And Krepsen now has no reason to protect me.
They stepped off onto the platform, Vante disrupting the magnetic current anchoring Wake to the skyhook.
“So... I guess you'll have some explaining to do to your boss.”
Vante lowered his head. “Why bother? I'm sacked, after this. What a screw-up. I just don't understand how this happened. They have never behaved like that around a person, believe me.”
Wake nodded. “I believe you. Why don't we say that this incident never occurred?”
Vante gaped.
“Here's my angle on this,” Wake said. “It was an unfortunate accident that couldn't have been anticipated, and nobody needs to be punished for it. And if it does get reported, I'll come into contact with law enforcement. My visas and passports...well, they aren't the best. I'd really rather avoid explaining the circumstances that led me here. So what do you say, boy? Just sweep this under the rug?”
Vante nodded, feeling like he was the one who'd been thrown a sudden lifeline. “Yeah, I can make it look like you were never here. I'll just tell my boss that you came yesterday but never showed up today to claim the rest of your flight. But how will we explain the missing Quetzal?”
“Does your boss ever fly beneath the platform and check on the Quetzals?” Wake asked.
“No. She's pretty old. Hasn't flown in a lot of years. Honestly, she’s hardly around at all.”
“Then the solution is obvious, you don't tell her. Let her believe that there's still twelve instead of eleven. How will she know otherwise?”
Vante nodded. It all added up, all made sense. He was actually going to walk out of this with his job intact.
The nagging sense of unease persisted around Wake. There was something very not right about him. Cuahtemoc wasn't the only one who thought so.
Just who are you, Wake? He wanted to ask. And what made them all decide to kill you?
Foreverlight (The Consilience War Book 4) Page 8
