“He's reckless, but he's probably right,” Lohengrin explains as we help each other into our suits. “If we're in any danger, we'll be safer in these. We can move about, escape if we need to. Without them, we're trapped in a tent a few millimetres thick.” He hands the remaining firearms to the two girls. Once again, he and I go unarmed. “Everyone stay close. No sudden moves.” With that he unmagnoes the outer door and slips through. We follow one at a time.
It's dark out, but there's a cool afterglow dispersing across the horizon to the east, something like a late dusk on Mars. It easily gives enough light for us to make out our visitors—the first line of them, at least.
After the initial prick of fear, something flares in my blood. That dread I felt in the canyon and on the island of rings, that mix of helplessness and hate, fizzes at the back of my throat. I count about twenty of the bastards, a little over a stone's throw away, hunching in formation. There appear to be more behind, maybe several ranks. Each Finagler carries a kind of bronze crossbow weapon braced across the front of its comb-like span. No knives this time. No half-measures. This must be the deep space elite we've heard stories about, able to conquer whole worlds in days with just a handful of battalions. It's believed they operate as a hive unit at first, to coordinate their raids, but once on the ground they have the ability to fight individually as well. The best of both worlds. They're also smart, fearless, and have no honour code when it comes to dealing with other life-forms. Strategically, they're almost impossible to outmanoeuvre because they're learning all the time. They adapt. You figure out a way to beat them, you'd best beat them all at once because they won't let you do it the same way twice.
The seven of us are so outmatched it's ridiculous.
“How did they get here?” asks Lyssa.
“Why aren't they attacking?” adds Lohengrin.
“Why can't the five of you ever do as you're told?” The O'see rakes an angry glare across us, and growls. “First-years. Goddamn first-years.”
“Nobody move,” says Thorpe-Campbell. “We need to find out what they want, but we can't give them an excuse to fire. Whatever happens, stay absolutely still.”
One of the Finaglers near the middle of the front rank tilts its crossbow down. If it were any other race, we might take that as a gesture of peace, or at least a sign that they want to negotiate. Not these bastards. They traded with our border colonies for years, slyly buying our latest military tech on the black market, always paying on time, never offering a threatening word. All the while they studied our designs, adopted them, improved on them, until they were certain they could beat us. Then they struck.
With a double-jointed arm the Finagler reaches back over his wing spine, pulls forward a rigid harness. It's some kind of comm rig, not unlike an omnipod but much bigger. The Finagler's brain and vitals are well protected inside its armour-clad torso. Its mouths, too, are located either side of the torso, just below the mid point. The armour there is ventilated, allowing it to breathe. They're extraordinarily robust and adaptive monsters. Some scientists think they've had this basic biological form for millions of years, and the only changes they've undergone since have been deliberate, to suit the atmospheres and conditions of whichever planets they wish to colonize. A bit like our own genetically modified plants and animals. Are these Finaglers actually breathing this air? Or are they using artificial breathers like us, hidden from sight?
A black rod flips up from the sea of shells to our right, just a metre outside the Binder's ellipse. We all flinch. Those with weapons whip them toward the rod. It's not very tall. Maybe knee height. But it emits a coil of white light that snakes up and down it like a helter-skelter.
Another pops up to our left. Then two more. And more, in pairs, until the entire perimeter of the ellipse is surrounded by these coiling white ankle-biter rods. About sixteen in total. If they weren't Finagler tech I'd be tempted to stomp them back down for being so irritating.
But if they've been here right under our noses since we got here, they were probably buried a long time ago...
“It's an alarm system. We must have tripped it when we arrived,” I say out loud over the open comm channel, instantly wishing I hadn't.
Thorpe-Campbell shushes me. And he's right. What if they're using them to listen in?
“What do you want?” he shouts out to them, using his suit's external speaker.
I nearly leap out of my suit when the ankle-biters reply together in deafening neutral English: “What do you want here?”
There's that artificial lilt between syllables that reminds of the old, cheap text-to-speech programs we used to use. But it's spooky as hell hearing it from an alien race a gajillion miles from home.
“To rescue our friend.”
“Where is your friend?” they ask.
“We're trying to find her,” Thorpe-Campbell lies, perhaps sniffing out an advantage here. What if the Finaglers don't know about the nanobugs? Can we use that somehow?
“If you assist us, we will help you rescue your friend,” comes the least appealing offer since the spider invited the fly to stick around for a drink.
But Lyssa's dad has been in situations like this before. “How can we assist you?”
“One of you can take something up into the Great Transit for us.”
Thorpe-Campbell hesitates, looks to Hendron for advice. She only shifts her weight, shrugs in response.
“What do you want us to take up?” he asks.
“A message.”
“To whom?”
“That is our concern.”
“What form does the message take?”
“It is encoded on a small device I will hand to you. Will you assist us?”
Thorpe-Campbell takes a confident step forward, still inside the ellipse. “Why don't you take the device up yourselves?”
Strange. He already knows the answer to that question. The Binder's security won't let the Finaglers, or anything else it perceives as hostile, inside. Those skeletons I glimpsed on the first two worlds I visited with Jiminy might be proof of that. Not to mention what happened on the island of rings. These things are desperate to gain access, maybe to control the entire Binder system. Whole galaxies are up for grabs. But for whatever reason, they haven't been able to trick its security. They must think this new device of theirs can get around it somehow, perhaps disable it.
“Because we want you to take it up for us, as a gesture of your goodwill. Then we will help you rescue your friend.”
“Can we all take it up together?” asks Thorpe-Campbell.
“No. Only one of you. When he returns, we will fulfil our end of the bargain.”
Otherwise known as checkmate.
Our teacher widens his stance. “And if we don't want to take the device up for you?”
Several of the left hand troopers turn to the south-west. In perfect unison they fire off blasts of crackling energy from the tips of their much larger crossbows. It takes less than a second for the blasts to reach my mum's old pod. There's a blinding pinprick of yellow light. Then the explosion swells like a fat oily twister swinging its belly as it spins out of control. The shock wave staggers us. It brings a rumble of thunder, leaves a ringing in my ears. Our suit functions briefly shut down. So do the lights on the ankle-biter rods. But they're all up and running again in no time.
“Those are your options,” comes the staticky translation. “None of you will leave here alive until one of you delivers the device into the Binder.”
“You filthy sons of—”
“Enough talk,” the voice interrupts Thorpe-Campbell. “What is your answer?”
From the way his helmet jerks, it looks as though he's spitting at the ground in disgust. If so, he's going to be gazing through his own saliva for a while. He switches off his external speaker, opens a comm channel to the six of us. “Okay, anyone got any bright ideas?”
I think hard, press my tired brain to do its lightning-in-a-bottle thing. It barely sparks. Any way I look at it
, we're trapped here. We're out of moves.
“Anyone?”
No reply.
“Go crazy. Whatever you've got. No idea is too dumb, I promise.”
After a long silence, Sergei pipes up: “I could go out to collect the device from him. Once I've got it, I throw my oxygen tank at them and hit the deck. The O'see or Rachel can then shoot the tank and blow half of them to hell.”
A short pause later, Thorpe-Campbell says, “Okay, no other idea is too dumb, I promise.”
A few nervous snickers overlap. Hendron gives Sergei's shoulder a proud squeeze. At least he's thinking outside the box, even if it is in Sergei-ese.
“Anyone?”
Nothing.
Thorpe-Campbell switches back to external speaker. “We agree to your terms,” he says out loud. Everyone looks to him, expecting a pithy punch-line. But there isn't one. The realisation slugs me in the gut. We really are out of moves.
Yeah, no kidding. The Finaglers have just gone nuclear on us!
“Which of you will deliver the device?” the voice asks us.
“We need time to decide that,” replies Thorpe-Campbell. “The Binder is very dangerous, as you know. We must decide which of us has the best chance of surviving. It's a difficult problem. It might take some time.”
Now it's the Finaglers' turn to squirm a little before they answer. “Very well. You have until the beacons go dark, then one of you must collect the device from me.”
At once the lights on all sixteen ankle-biters stop their snaking. The snakes become vertical strips from top to bottom. After a few seconds I can see the tops of the light strips begin to fade. It's a countdown!
The O'see gathers us all together, herds us back to the tent. We don't go inside, though.
“What are we doing here?” asks Lys.
“Buying some time,” her dad answers. “I'm guessing twenty-five, thirty minutes until those things lose their juice.
“More like twenty,” Lohengrin corrects him.
“Good lad. So that's twenty minutes for the five of you to hash out a solution to this problem. Just like before. Remember, you're a PriPod unit now. You all wanted this assignment, so here it is. This is as real as it gets.” He shares a quick aside with the O'see, then says to us, “Beth and I will be just over there,” pointing somewhere near the rover. “We won't be listening in this time, so you can speak freely. In fifteen minutes' time we'll all share what we've got. Okay? Have at it.”
Our two teachers trudge away—only ten metres, but it feels like forever—leaving us buggos to face down an alien firing squad. Added to which my legs and back are really starting to ache in this high-g. I suggest we all sit in a circle, facing each other, kind of like a team huddle. Lys says that's a great idea.
“Yeah, best keep 'em coming,” says Sergei, spying the countdown lights around the perimeter.
I keep a close eye on them too. They're already a quarter dark.
CHAPTER 26
Out of Time
Attack. Run. Keep stalling for time. While we think up plenty of variations on them, those are our only options. All will result in our deaths. The only other choice is to do what the Finaglers want, and that we can't do. We've probably already lost Earth and the colonies to them. Now the fate of the galaxy and many others rests with us. Whatever happens, they can't be allowed into the Binder.
It's the shortest fifteen minutes of my life, and it's almost up. Our team has failed. For the first time we've been unable to solve a problem put to us. That makes me feel awful, after all the praise Thorpe-Campbell and the O'see showered on us. We've let them down. I've let them down. This is the end of our adventures together. The prince, the triathlete, the daughter of a legend, the legend himself, the spy-catcher: this is as far as they go. And then there's Sergei, my brother in crime and all things. He wouldn't be here if it weren't for me and my big goddamn dreams. He'll never get to ride his sand bike again. We'll never get to see each other with beards and beer-bellies and the scars of a lifetime of adventures.
It all ends here.
And I won't get to see Mum after all. Her cry for help across the cosmos somehow found its way to me, the only family she has left, and I've let her down too. She'll go on dreaming, but in vain. I can't reach her. Not now. After countless light-years of travel, this rescue mission has failed with a just few miles left between us.
So close, so far. The bitter answer to my life's equation. In the end, a Trillion plus one equals nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“So we just sit here and wait for them to destroy us?” Sergei's grip tightens on the stock of his shock-gun. “That's what we came all this way for?” he fumes. “Jim? Tell me you don't want to take as many of those bastards with us as you can.”
My big sigh empties the last of my hope. “This isn't war, Sergei. We're not soldiers. This was never about fighting.”
“Are you kidding? It's always been about fighting. What do you think we did all those years in the oases? Skimming like that. Breaking every rule they had. We've been fighting for our lives all our lives. No way we're rolling over now. No way.”
“What do you suggest, Sergei?” asks Rachel, who's been the quietest during the countdown.
“We create a big explosion right here,” says The Minsk Machine. “One that's going to produce plenty of smoke. Then two of us run out either side, guns blazing, and draw the bastards' fire. In the meantime, the others try to fly up using the thruster rigs. The smoke will give them cover.”
“They'll never make it,” Lohengrin points out. “You saw what happened to the other pod. They'd vaporize us all as soon as they saw the explosion. They've anticipated every move, believe me.”
“So you won't even try? You've all given up?”
“Sergei, sometimes there is no way to win,” says Rachel. “That's one of the first things they teach you in Phi combat.”
“We don't have to win, but we don't have to go out like a bunch of suck-baits either,” he snarls. When no one answers, he shuffles away from us a little and hugs his knees, sulking. “I should've stayed on Mars. At least they'll go down fighting. They won't be waiting for the clock to run down.”
“And we might not have to,” interrupts Thorpe-Campbell, crouching between Sergei and me. “Check out the beacons,” he whispers.
We do as he says. There isn't much light left on them, maybe five minutes. But there's something else—something you wouldn't notice at a glance.
The lights aren't shrinking. We're not losing any more time. For some reason, the countdown has frozen.
“What's going on?” Lys dares to glance across to the Finaglers. They don't seem to have noticed anything's wrong. “Are they giving us more time?”
“No,” her dad replies. “Look.” He points up over our heads. There, to my astonishment, hovers the dragonfly, just out of arm's reach. It isn't glowing, which is probably why I missed it. But it's here. Jiminy's here! He came back.
How long has he been here?
I struggle onto my sore knees, looking up into the eyes of my mother's tiny messenger, and I can't believe it. We're not alone. He didn't abandon us after all.
“Glad you could make it,” I whisper. “I missed you.”
Jiminy begins to glow. A cool silver-blue with a hint of rose. I smile as I try to figure out what that hue means when, all of a sudden, dozens more lights prick the darkness behind him. No, hundreds. All coloured that same silver blue, but without the rose. Gasps fill the comm channel as dragonflies fill the air.
Jiminy has brought some friends.
The O'see hands Thorpe-Campbell her portable digitab. He draws my attention to it. There's a message on the screen:
JAMES TRILLION AND FRIENDS GET READY TO LEAVE — YOU MUST FOLLOW ME TO INGOL
“What about them?” I jab a nervous thumb in the direction of the Finaglers, who still haven't moved from their original positions. “Why can't they see you?”
WE HAVE CONTROL OF THEIR BEACONS AND HAVE ERECTED AN INVISIBLE SHI
ELD TO TRICK THEM — IF YOU HURRY AND ARE QUIET THEY WILL NOT KNOW OF YOUR ESCAPE FOR SOME TIME
“Jiminy, you're a genius!” I turn to the others, a cocktail of relief and excitement spilling out of me. “Right, what do we need?”
Lohengrin's the first to react. “Weapons, thruster rigs, spare O2. That's all we've got time for.”
The O'see pats him on the shoulder, dashes off to retrieve one of the thruster rigs. Thorpe-Campbell gets the other one. Meanwhile, Lohengrin and I, the only two without weapons, fetch a spare oxygen canister each. Sergei grabs another two because, well, he's Sergei.
Fully laden, Thorpe-Campbell hands me the digitab so that I can communicate with Jiminy as we go. “Okay, we're ready,” I whisper. “Show us the way.”
Jiminy sets off into the night on an easterly heading, giving the Finaglers a wide berth. So wide, in fact, that I wonder if he's made a mistake. I hold my breath as we pass between the ankle-biter rods. Bizarre, how they've frozen like that. What can the Finaglers see? Jiminy's nanobug friends have formed a kind of two-way mirror, and presumably a looped image of the seven of us still debating our dilemma. From the Finaglers' point of view, we're still right where they want us, and their beacons are still losing light like sand from an hourglass. Only a little more slowly than they'd reckoned. They'll continue to watch the illusion until they notice the disparity in time. When will that be? We have a long way to walk, but we don't have long to escape.
Being quiet on the sea of shells is impossible. Every step crunches. But the Finaglers don't seem to hear any of it. I keep glancing behind me, but I can't see the other dragonflies. Then I remember they're really nanobugs. They can take whatever form they choose, do anything their intelligent programming lets them. To hide our escape like this—both sight and sound—they must also be creating a mobile, soundproof screen to shield us as we move.
It's the ultimate cover. We can't see it, but it sees us across a mile or so of alien terrain before another fear starts to nag at me. This time it isn't what's behind us; it's what lies ahead.
Star Binder Page 32
