“Cookie here—that’s what I call him—makes me some pretty good chili and pizza. He has stock he uses just for people like me.”
“I’m surprised they’re open,” Conn said. “I thought everyone was supposed to stay home.”
“This is home, for Cookie, and you’re not going to keep people from socializing on a day like today. I’m surprised it’s not busier. I should warn you—”
Another patron interrupted him. “You’re not human, are you?”
Conn looked at Persisting and winked. “We’re only five years old each,” she said. “I’m older by six days.”
“You look human.”
“I’ll pass your compliment on to our mother,” Conn said.
The patron seemed satisfied. Conn said to Persisting, in a low voice, “do they know about the portal, too?”
“No,” Persisting said. “Half the patrons in here probably believe it’s the humans bombing us. We’ve managed to stay one step ahead of the Aphelials for so long, some can’t or won’t believe it’s them.”
Cookie came out with another table’s food, then hurried over to Conn and Persisting’s table. Conn got the impression Cookie didn’t have any help.
“Uh—pizza? Split a pizza?” Persisting asked Conn. She nodded. “A pizza?” he said to Cookie.
“It’ll be a while. No help today. I’ve got chili frozen back there.”
“Two chilis,” Persisting said. Cookie hurried back into the kitchen.
As they waited and then as they ate bland, watery, meat-free chili, Conn told Persisting about her adventure on Mars. He had heard versions of it from her and the others on the trip from Mars to the moon, but he seemed to enjoy hearing Conn talk about it. Before long, he was asking her about her exploits on the moon and in Saturn orbit.
“I just like hearing you tell your stories,” Persisting admitted. “We actually shared in some of your adventures.”
Conn scrunched her face at him. “I don’t remember—”
“Buzz Aldrin,” Persisting said. Conn’s first contact with a Pelorian had been an avatar of Persisting dressed as Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
“Wait. That was you?”
“You thought I looked like Buzz Aldrin underneath the space suit, didn’t you?”
Conn’s jaw dropped, then she grinned. “I guess I did,” she said. “So it looks like I owe you my life twice, then.” Persisting waved the thought away.
Conn asked Persisting if he—in his current avatar form—had lived on Earth. He had. “So you had to pass yourself off as human?” she asked.
“By then my mother knew a great deal about humans and about Earth,” Persisting said. “It wasn’t difficult.”
“Did that ever bother you?”
“What, that I was deceiving the humans around me?” Conn nodded. “It’s why I was built. No, I didn’t really have any qualms about it.” By the slight edge in his voice, Conn got the impression he might not have been telling the whole truth. It seemed like pretending to be someone he wasn’t would bother him.
Since the revelation that avatars lived on Earth among humans in the years leading up to and even after first contact, Conn, in kind with most humans, had wondered who in her life had been “real” and who not. But her life had changed so drastically after going to the moon that she wouldn’t have noticed who was missing from her former life.
They finished eating, and Persisting sought out Cookie to thank him. Conn didn’t notice Persisting paying for the meals. The taxi driver hadn’t wanted to be paid, either. Conn wondered idly how the Pelorian economy worked.
They left the diner. “To the shipyard?” Persisting said.
“To the shipyard,” Conn said, linking their arms.
They attracted some more attention on their walk to the shipyard, but no one accosted them about the portal. Or anything else.
Before the airlock that would take them out to the shipyard, Persisting put on a breathing bubble and a T-field he had picked up on a short detour. Conn donned her bubble.
Outside, the shipyard was much busier than the last time Conn had been there. The Pelorians all had breathers over one of their slits. Conn was surprised at the level of activity.
“What’s everybody doing here?”
“Same as us,” Persisting said. “Waiting for the force field to go down.”
“We’re waiting?”
“It’s the prudent thing to do. If the force field fails, the shipyard will be overrun by those with and without spacecraft. My spacecraft is liable to be stolen, or at least overrun and damaged. So, we wait, and get ready to move when the field goes down.”
“What if it holds?”
“It won’t,” Persisting said.
The spacecraft was a four-seater, sleek and wedge-shaped, half the size of the “rocketship.” They waited inside it, breathing bubbles on their laps. “How much air does this thing have?” Conn asked.
“About forty hours, with four occupants,” Persisting said. “We’ll be fine. The force field won’t last long enough for us to be concerned.”
Every eight minutes, a bomb silently shook the ground underneath the spacecraft. Conn counted 135 of them while they waited. Number 103 brought an influx of new Pelorians outside into the shipyard. What had been a steady trickle became a flood.
“Something must have collapsed,” Persisting said. Conn frowned. She could tell many of the Pelorians on the ground didn’t own any of the spacecraft, they were just trying to escape by any means.
“Can we fit anyone in the back?” Conn asked, looking and knowing the answer.
“No. We literally can’t fit a Pelorian in the back.”
“What about avatars?”
“I would be surprised if many of them were to flee. Their mothers won’t want to give a seat on a spacecraft to an avatar over their neighbors, or family.” Conn felt a chill. She was learning the answer to the question whether Pelorians regarded avatars as precious lives.
“Would you be leaving? If it weren’t for me.”
“I would,” Persisting said. “But I don’t have a mother to tell me otherwise.”
“How—how many avatars are there here? Do you think,” Conn asked.
“After they were discovered by you, they weren’t very useful to most. Many are . . . gone already. The court seized most of my mother’s assets when he was convicted, but they left this spacecraft, because what was anyone supposed to do with a spacecraft only human avatars could fit in?” Conn noticed he hadn’t answered her question, but didn’t press.
Persisting seemed to read the concern on Conn’s face. “Tell you what. If one or two human avatars ask us for a ride, we’ll give it to them.” Conn saw the occasional human figure outside, but not many. She felt sick to her stomach. Most of however many were left were being forced to stay behind and be overrun by the Aphelials. Who didn’t like avatars. The one Conn met in Saturn orbit made that clear.
“What are the Aphelials going to do with all these spacecraft? They’re all going to make a run for it when the force field collapses.”
“Probably pick them off quickly,” Persisting said.
Conn gulped. “Do we have some kind of, I don’t know, advantage?”
“Just that we know what the Aphelials are going to do,” Persisting said.
They waited a total of eighteen hours for the sky to fall. Conn was restless the whole time.
Finally, there was a new commotion. Spacecraft began to spring off the ground and hover, ready to bolt. Many Pelorians scurried out of their spacecraft, realizing for the first time that they were outside and exposed as the force field was failing.
A human avatar rapped on the outside of the spacecraft. Persisting looked at Conn, who nodded. The two donned their T-fields and bubbles, and Persisting depressurized the spacecraft. Then he opened the aft hatch.
The avatar didn’t step inside. She was waving her arms frantically, trying to get their attention. Persisting motioned for her to hurry up and get in the hatch. Finally
, she entered.
When the door was closed, Persisting repressurized the interior. The avatar came forward.
It wasn’t an avatar at all.
“Conn!” Izzy De Maria said.
THIRTY-THREE
Flight
December 17, 2039
She looked too exhausted to stand up straight as she pulled herself through the narrow passageway from the hatch to the seats.
“Izzy—what in the world?”
“I have this,” Izzy said, to Persisting. “Stealth module. You plug it in—”
“I know where stealth modules go,” Persisting said, in English, agitated. “They don’t work against Aphelial detection technology.”
“This one will,” Izzy said. “It’s from Mars. From the Sidereals.”
Conn and Persisting looked at one another. Persisting grinned and took the module from Izzy.
“You went to Mars?” Conn asked. Izzy nodded.
Around them, more spacecraft had sprung to life and looked ready to go.
“Of course, the connectors don’t match up,” Persisting said, almost to himself. “I’ll have to improvise . . .”
“Jeffrey said you might have to do that,” Izzy said.
“Jeffrey gave you that?” Conn said.
“Yeah, and I had to make him a deal. I’ll tell you about it later. I think your force field is failing,”
“We gathered,” Conn said. “You got here right before we were going to fire up.”
“We reoriented a satellite and got visuals back,” Izzy said. “Over time and a bunch of blurry pictures in a row you can make out a lot of activity here in your shipyard. I figured you’d be here. And that you’d be in trouble once the force field fell.”
“But how did you find the shipyard? How did you find me out here?” Conn asked.
Izzy grinned. “Your Wear,” she said. “Thank you for not shutting it off.”
Persisting announced success, and asked everybody to sit down and strap in. The spacecraft came to life. It leapt off the ground and hovered, waiting like the rest.
Above, tendrils of electricity snaked over the surface of the force field. “It’s not supposed to do that,” Persisting said. They watched through the cockpit and seating area’s 180-degree window, waiting for the next bomb to get through to the surface. They didn’t have to wait long. It looked surreal in the silence of the moon: a bomb exploded about a football field away, taking out a number of grounded and hovering spacecraft and kicking up a wave of rocks and dirt. The ground shook far more violently than the last 135 times—though they hovered over it, they could see the ripples.
“That’s it,” Persisting said. Conn’s stomach dropped as the spacecraft sprung up. It didn’t go far in that direction before Persisting pointed it at the mountain and blasted off toward it.
Conn and Izzy looked behind them. Smaller, fighter-size Aphelials were inundating the shipyard, blasting spacecraft and Pelorians on the ground. Conn’s hand covered her mouth. Some of the fighters got on the tails of fleeing spacecraft and blasted them out of the lunar sky at their leisure.
“We’re in stealth mode, or whatever, right?” Izzy said.
“We’re—yes, that’s the best way to understand it,” Persisting said. He counterintuitively stayed close to the ground. He began what looked like a lazy circle around the mountain. “But they can still see us. As in, visually.”
As if to punctuate the point, a small spacecraft seemed to be approaching them from behind, fast. Conn couldn’t tell if it was a fighter or a Pelorian vehicle, but she could guess. It grew in the window.
“Do you see him?” Conn asked Persisting.
“Yes. He’s closing.” Persisting toggled a switch and tapped a small screen. “This is as fast as we go.” The fighter grew and grew. “Hang on.”
Persisting arced the spacecraft up, then plunged down and left, in the direction of the mountain. Conn inhaled through clenched teeth. Persisting buzzed the mountain, barely avoiding boulders and outcroppings. The fighter chasing them disappeared behind the mountain. Persisting leveled off, still skirting the surface.
“I see him,” Izzy said after a time. “Your seven o’clock.”
“I don’t know what that means, Izzy.”
“Behind and to the left.”
There it was. It didn’t seem to have seen them yet. “We blend in pretty well with the mountain,” Persisting said. “He’s got to be beside himself that he can’t track us any way other than vis—”
An explosion on the mountain no more than ten meters away pelted the spacecraft with rocks. Persisting waggled; the next shot from the fighter missed right.
“Is the stealth not working?” Izzy said.
“No way to tell,” Persisting said. “I think it is. That’s why he’s still so far away—he’s looking for us. Or he was.” Another explosion, ahead of them. The spacecraft pushed through a shower of rocks and soil. “Hang on.”
He banked up and to the right, this time, then swung around to go the opposite way. Still just meters above the mountain. The fighter got larger and larger, much faster. Shots blasted at them; Persisting waggled and dipped. Then they were past it.
Persisting stayed away from the shipyard—it was still a killing field. And bombs were going off much more often than every eight minutes above the settlement. Conn couldn’t even fathom the destruction and the loss of life. She realized a part of her had hoped that when the Aphelials got through the force field, they would just occupy the settlement. Instead, they were exterminating it.
Persisting continued to head in the direction opposite of the one they’d started out on. “You’re going for the crater,” Conn said. Persisting smirked.
They were being followed. No way to tell if it was the same fighter, or a different one. Persisting sped toward the great crater Hertzsprung, then dipped below its rim. He banked left and they followed the shape of the crater, which was big enough that it didn’t seem to be a circle at all from their point of view, just a long, lazily curving ridge.
Two fighters cleared the rim of the crater going perpendicular to their direction. Conn instinctively ducked. Their spacecraft wasn’t seen.
“At the opposite end of the crater, we’ll head for open space,” Persisting said. “Then we need a fifth-dimensional route to Earth that takes a day or less. I’m already calculating—”
The crater wall to their left blew apart, one blast, then two, then a third. A fighter had spotted them and was inbound from the direction of the center of the crater. It let up and slowly arced until it was behind them. It was close enough that Conn could see detail.
“Here goes nothing,” Persisting said. He banked up and to the left, going upside down. Under the influence of lunar gravity, they all strained against their straps. Conn felt nauseous. Persisting pinwheeled them right side up. As the women watched, the rock exploded along the rim of the crater. Conn thought at first they were being fired on again. But the fighter that had been pursuing them erupted through the explosion in the next instant, banking left and down and crashing into the ground.
“No explosion,” Izzy said.
“Nothing combustible. Is that all I get? No explosion?”
Conn leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
# # #
They were on an eighteen-hour trip to Earth along fifth-dimensional space. Izzy fell asleep before Conn could get out of her what had happened.
Some hours later, she woke up. “I got an hour’s sleep on the flight from San Jose to John Wayne,” Izzy said. “That was it, the last twenty-four hours.”
“Tell me what happened,” Conn said.
“Well. You didn’t come back through the portal. That was it, as far as Marcus Stoll was concerned. To his credit, he did activate it when he said he would. But he was fine with you being stuck on the moon. He would have been fine if I were stuck on the moon, since I know about his portal, too. That’s why I didn’t make him let me through right away—I wouldn’t have gotten back, eithe
r.
“I had Dyna-Tech fly me to the San Jose Airport. Ryan picked me up, and we went through the portal in Sunnyvale to the space station. How Ryan managed to get us access to the portal is another story.” She smiled weakly.
“Ryan went with you?”
“I knew you weren’t going to be happy about that, but I needed somebody who spoke Basalese. And I knew he’d be eager to help. Sorry.”
“Don’t be! Why Mars?”
Izzy rubbed her temples. “Persisting had said the Sidereals had portable stealth technology, and he said it in such a way that it didn’t seem like the Pelorians did. If I was going to get you off the moon, it was going to be in a spacecraft, so we went to Mars to get the tech.”
“And it made the difference,” Persisting said. “There’s no way we would have shaken off fighters that didn’t have to see us out the cockpit window.”
Conn said, “So you hopped to Mars. Where you met Jeffrey how?”
“Two Sidereals were outside near the airlock door, just by chance. We managed to convey to them that we needed to get inside and that we weren’t a threat. They let us in. We looked for Jeffrey where we usually found him, and there he was.”
“You made some kind of deal.”
“Yes,” Izzy said. “And I’m really sorry about this one. I promised him you would be back to talk to him about sticking around for a while. I just said you’d talk about it. He seemed excited.”
“The bastards that killed Daniels, and tried to kill the rest of us,” Conn said. “I don’t know what we have to talk about.”
“If it means anything, Jeffrey was mortified to hear about Daniels,” Izzy said. “The sitting government controls the weapons, not Jeffrey’s people.”
“I’m OK with your having made the deal. Whatever worked, I guess,” Conn said.
Girl on Mars (Girl on the Moon Book 2) Page 18
