Alexei leaned back in his chair, arms folded.
Jack prayed Alexei wasn’t going to make a scene. He toyed with his eating tongs, but couldn’t bring himself to put another insect in his mouth. The room, having no visible doors, felt crowded and claustrophobic. The salty sea smell was overwhelming. Feeling trapped, Jack lifted his gaze to Keelraiser, who sat directly across from him. Its eyes were very wide. It slid one hand across the table. Jack touched its fingertips.
The waiters—pages, servants, somebody’s kids?—brought bowls of stew. Eskitul explained that this was a pottage of suizh, their staple vegetable, with fish, flavored with ‘twilight spices.’ Whatever twilight spices might be, they tasted like bitter lemon zest mixed with baking soda.
But Jack had been raised to be polite. Politeness meant not turning your nose up at a meal that your hosts had clearly gone to a great deal of trouble to provide. Keelraiser’s evident distress provided extra motivation. Jack picked up the large spoon provided and forced himself to eat the stew. It was just about doable, if he didn’t chew much.
Champagne flute-shaped glasses held a cloudy liquid. Jack took a swallow, to get the bitterness out of his mouth.
Warmth burnt in his stomach.
He took another sip. No mistake.
“Alexei!”
“I cannot believe you’re eating that shit.”
“This—this—try it!”
Alexei snatched his flute and gulped.
He spluttered … and beamed at the rriksti. “My friends, where did you learn to make vodka?!?”
“It is called krak,” Eskitul said.
“Are you serious? Crack! I think I’m addicted already.”
The meal went rather better after that.
“This, this isn’t bad,” Alexei declared.
A gelatinous beige pudding had been served. It tasted like sugar, which was a vast improvement over everything that preceded it. Both men spooned it up hungrily.
But Keelraiser looked more distressed than ever.
Jack waved his spoon. He, too, had indulged in the alien alcoholic beverage. Not having had a drink in two years, it had gone to his head a bit. “Delicious pudding,” he exclaimed. “Compliments to the chef. What’s in it?”
“Suizh,” Keelraiser murmured.
“And?”
Alexei suddenly twisted his mouth. “O Gospodi,” he said.
Oh my God. “What?”
“Lead chloride.”
“What?”
Alexei tossed his spoon down with a clatter. “Lead, fucking, chloride. Tastes like sugar.”
Jack took another, very small mouthful of the pudding.
… Lead chloride?
Whether it was psychological suggestion or what, he suddenly felt sick.
“You’re poisoning us,” Alexei shouted, shoving his chair back.
Jack dragged on his arm to keep him from standing up and, Christ knows what, taking a swing at Keelraiser probably. He didn’t doubt that Alexei was right. The extreme bitterness of rriksti food had a simple explanation. It was all chock-full of metal. Jesus, the rriksti had metal in their bodies, bio-antennas made of metal mixed with keratin. They had to ingest that somehow. Jack had been an idiot.
“I didn’t want to give you our food,” Keelraiser said softly.
“Then why did you do it?” Jack demanded.
“You asked.”
“Are we going to die?” Alexei shouted.
Nene said, “I don’t think one meal will poison you! Most of the mineral content is not bioavailable.”
“To you. But what about to us?”
The rrikstis’ hair danced. Their heads turned to and fro. Alexei’s face reddened. “Oh Jesus,” he said. “I wonder if the krak is OK. Oh, fuck it.” He drained his glass. Jack hoped this would calm him down, but he was only revving up. “So what about the other lies you’ve been telling us? You said you took the advance lander engines for the metals. Bullshit. You have plenty of metal! Your food is full of it!”
Nene said, “There are certain rare elements that we’re short of, desperately short—”
“Then why don’t you scavenge them from the MOAD? You’ve got a shuttle, nyet? What’s stopping you?”
Alexei folded his arms, smiling viciously. He obviously thought he’d caught the aliens out in another lie. In fact this question had occurred to Jack, too. He’d tried to rationalize it away, but now he admitted to himself that it was time to stop making excuses for these people. They had just fed him and Alexei a pudding of lead chloride.
“The Lightbringer,” Keelraiser said quietly. “Our ship’s actually called the Lightbringer.”
“Lovely name,” Jack said. “And you aren’t able to scavenge materials from it, because?”
“Because the Krijistal would kill us,” Keelraiser said.
Eskitul poured itself another glass of alien booze. “The Krijistal are perhaps like your special forces,” it said. “The SEALS, the SAS, Chuck Norris. Is this correct?”
“Well, except for that last one,” Jack said. He was too upset to smile at the misunderstanding. “And your special forces are where, doing what, exactly?”
“On the Lightbringer, eating corpses, trying to get around the drive key encryption with hand-coded cracking tools.” Eskitul burped. “We know they’re still alive because they call us on the radio, making horrible threats. They say they’ll drop chunks of debris on us if I don’t give myself up. But I will not give myself up! And they daren’t attack us, for fear of killing me! It is a stand-off. Is this correct?” Eskitul made a laughter-like noise. The rriksti around the table nudged each other and nodded. Jack was getting the impression that, contrary to his previous assumption that Eskitul was just some kind of resident eccentric, it was actually a very important person here.
Alexei said, “I knew it! I knew it! You’ve been lying to us all along! That field generator didn’t fail on its own, eh? What really happened? I want the truth, now, the truth!”
Keelraiser spoke. Eskitul might be the leader of the rriksti but it was Keelraiser everyone listened to. Jack listened, too, despite the horrible visions taking shape in his head. “We had a disagreement,” Keelraiser said. “Our original flight plan called for us to—to orbit Europa and observe Earth—and make contact with you—your people …”
And you’re lying your alien arse off, Jack thought. Maybe you weren’t before, but you are now.
It was not the halting speech that gave Keelraiser away, but the contraction of the small muscles around its eyes, and the way it stared fixedly at its plate.
On the other hand, Alexei seemed to be buying this. Maybe Jack was being overly paranoid.
“However—” Keelraiser looked at Alexei— “some of us, the ones gathered here, changed our minds. It was a long journey.”
“Sixty years, you said.”
“Yes. A lot can change in that time. A lot has certainly changed, both on Earth, and at home, and … in our hearts. We got here, and we … we no longer wanted to be here. We decided to drop the whole thing.”
Jack interrupted, “Why? You’d come all this way, why change your minds at the last minute?”
“News from home,” Keelraiser said. “There was another war.”
“Cripes. Was there anything left to fight over?”
“Ruins,” Keelraiser said. “But even ruins are worth fighting for. One of the other refugee ships only went as far as Alpha Centauri Bb, the water world we’d hoped to colonize. They occupied the advance facilities there, regrouped, built new ships.”
“You said you were the only survivors!”
“We may be, at this point,” Keelraiser snapped. “Twenty years ago, the group from Alpha Centauri Bb mounted a counter-attack on Imf.”
“They begged us for help,” Nene said.
“So our new plan was to refuel at Europa, and then turn around and go home.”
Alexei let out a long breath. “And these Krijistal didn’t like the change of plan.”
�
�They disliked it so much that they blew up the magfield generator to stop us from going through with it,” Keelraiser said flatly.
Eskitul waved its glass, slopping booze on the table. “They turned a muon cannon on the Lightbringer’s primary water reservoirs, transforming them into fusion bombs! Can you believe the sheer, animalistic idiocy of it? They had no idea of the explosive power they would unleash! It almost sheared the ship in half! We were lucky to escape with our lives. In fact, none of us would have escaped if not for Keelraiser.” Eskitul slumped against Keelraiser, wrapped an arm around its neck, and rubbed its cheek against the other rriksti’s. It was the first time Jack had seen the rriksti touch each other affectionately.
Alexei smiled, his eyes half-closed. “Muon cannon, eh?”
“No longer operational,” Keelraiser said.
“But the Krijistal are still alive?” Jack said.
“Maybe forty of them. Fifty at most.”
“That,” Jack said tightly, “is enough, if they’re as dangerous as you claim.”
He jumped up from the table. Dizziness rocked him. Too much alien booze. Too much lead chloride, maybe. He rode it out.
“They’re two hundred meters from the SoD!” He dragged Alexei to his feet. “They’re up there with Kate and Hannah!”
“Fuck,” Alexei said. A second later he added: “And Giles.”
“And Giles, of course. We have to warn them! Now!”
CHAPTER 30
Jack opened the rear entry hatch of his spacesuit. It seemed like a year since he’d last worn it. The smell wafting up from the inside of the Z-2 struck him as vile, after the salty sea-smell of the rriksti shelter. Before putting it on, he checked the contents of the thigh pockets. His personal dosimeter registered a frighteningly high number. Of course, that was whatever the spacesuit had been soaking up, in this donning chamber at the end of a tunnel leading from the manufacturing floor. He himself should have absorbed much less radiation in the lower regions of the shelter, shielded by thick ice.
There was nothing else in the pockets.
“Hey.” Not that it really mattered, but— “Where’s my rosary?”
Keelraiser just blinked at him.
“Alexei, the fuckers have taken my rosary. It was in my pocket.”
“Maybe you dropped it,” Alexei said. “Put your damn suit on.”
The men planned to use the Dragon’s transmitter to contact the SoD. There was no time to spare.
The rriksti who would be accompanying them—Keelraiser and four others—took slim, white backpacks from a pile in the corner. They put their arms through the straps and fastened more straps across their chests and waists. They put on insect-eye goggles. They pulled breathing tubes out of the backpacks and fitted these into their mouths. Then the backpacks began to spread, as if the rriksti were being doused with white paint. The stuff coated each finger, each bio-antenna. They lifted up their feet to let it get around their heels and toes.
“I want a suit like that,” Jack said.
“Smart materials,” Keelraiser said, on his suit radio.
“Yeah, I know, you’re way ahead of us in materials science.”
“When we first met, we inadvertently hurt your ears. I’m now talking on a frequency that is not a harmonic of your suit radios. We’ll be careful how we tune our voices, but do let us know if you get any painful interference.”
“Roger,” Jack said.
They tramped to the end of the tunnel. A wall melted, admitting them to an airlock chamber. Moments later they stumbled out onto the ice of Europa. Jack breathed heavily. The featureless wasteland, and the vast black sky overhead, gave him a jolt of agoraphobia. He longed to return to the warmth and safety of the underground shelter.
The radio mast speared over the brow of the hill. They’d left the Dragon near there.
Jack started around the hill at a bounding run, with Alexei on his heels. He had already opened a channel to the SoD. “Kate? Come in. This is Jack. Kate, do you read me?”
The rriksti outpaced them. Their form-fitting spacesuits gave them better mobility, and their gait was naturally suited to lower gravity. White on white, they blended into the ice, but each of them carried a bright red gun.
“They’re armed,” Jack panted. The weapons looked like AR-15s with cylindrical tanks instead of magazines.
“What’s out here to shoot?” Alexei said. “Oh, I get it. They have tricked us. They’re going to murder us out here, where the kids can’t see.” Alexei laughed. Having got the truth out of the aliens, as he believed, he was now much more relaxed. He was making fun of his own paranoia at this point.
But at the same time, Jack was getting more and more paranoid. It often worked like this for the two of them. They balanced each other out, like children riding a seesaw.
“SoD? SoD, do you read me?”
No answer. Fear bloomed in his chest, and he ran faster, swinging his arms for momentum.
They rounded the hill.
The radio mast stood alone.
The Dragon was nowhere to be seen.
No wonder Kate hadn’t answered. Jack hadn’t been broadcasting to the SoD at all.
He skidded to a halt.
Alexei crashed into him.
“It’s gone,” Jack said.
“Those fucking cunts,” Alexei said, spacing the words out.
They walked towards the radio mast. Jack kept thinking maybe his eyes were deceiving him, but they weren’t.
A puddle of fresh ice remained where the Dragon had stood. Smooth as glass, it mirrored the black sky.
Jack skated on one foot across the puddle.
“They launched the Dragon,” Alexei said. “Maybe took it into orbit, to hook up with the Krijistal.”
“I can hear something,” Jack said.
“Hey, shitheads!” Alexei yelled. “Feel like telling us what you did with our landing craft?”
The rriksti had raced away across the plain, leaving a trail of widely spaced footprints. Jack followed the trail with his gaze. The rrikstis’ white suits camouflaged them, but he could see their shadows bobbing up and down in the distance.
“Where are they going?” Alexei said in frustration.
“Listen!” Jack said. “Can you hear that?”
Faint. Fading in and out.
“Alas … Hannah … you do … me wrong … to never … let me … squeeze … your tits …”
“Did I just hear what I think I heard?”
“For I … have loved … you so long … in fact … I want to kiss … your …”
Static drowned the weak signal.
Alexei whooped and punched one fist into his other glove.
Jack bawled, “Hot mic, Skyler! Hot mic!” He jumped up and down, laughing so hard that tears obscured his vision.
*
“Oh … Hannah … your sexy ass … is like … a pot … of ho-o-ney … ”
Skyler was no longer singing. He was croaking.
He was no longer walking. He was crawling.
He’d repositioned his umbrella-hat on his back, taping it around his chest, so he crawled like a little turtle across Europa’s ice, carrying his improvised shell.
Black vomit sloshed in his faceplate.
Every now and then he sat back on his heels to let it run down inside his suit, so he didn’t breathe it in.
The stuff dribbling from his lips now was red.
He couldn’t think about what was happening to his body.
All he could do was crawl.
And croak ditties to Hannah.
Making rhymes kept his mind off reality, kept him going.
As goes America, so goes Skyler.
Rhyme or die.
Shadows flickered across the snow.
He puked again, and crashed down face first.
Vomit went up his nose.
Dying like Jimi, like John Bonham, like Jim Morrison … on Europa.
Always wanted to be a rock star.
*
T
he rriksti raced back across the snow, carrying Skyler between them. Each Z-2 suit had an individual pattern of colored piping. This one had yellow bands around the legs, so it really was him.
“Hey, Skyler!” Jack yodeled. “That was a classic performance! You ought to join the Walkers!”
“He is not conscious,” said Keelraiser over the radio. The rriksti shuffled past, moving as fast as their burden permitted.
“He was conscious …”
“How far did he walk?” Alexei said, as it dawned on both men that Skyler was very sick indeed.
“How would I know?” Keelraiser said. “Anyway, he was not walking. He was crawling.”
Jack fell back, his mind legitimately blown. Skyler must have walked all the way from the Shenzhou Plus’s crash site.
And when he could no longer walk, he had crawled.
“I didn’t think he had it in him,” Jack muttered. He got a lump in his throat. It seemed horribly unfair that Skyler should have embarked on a prodigious walk across Europa’s surface, and made it to safety, only to wind up with acute radiation sickness. “How bad is he?”
“Hell with him,” Alexei said. “Where’s our Dragon?”
Ahead of them, Keelraiser said, “My friends went to refuel it with LH2 and LOX from your advance landers. They ought to be back soon.”
The simplest possible explanation. Jack and Alexei had completely overlooked it in their eagerness to accuse the rriksti of theft.
“We need to contact the SoD!” Jack said.
“We tried,” Keelraiser said. “Your ship is over the horizon at present. So is the Lightbringer, naturally.”
“They’ll orbit back soon. Maybe we can use the radio mast to contact them! Come on.” Jack pulled on Alexei’s sleeve. They chased after the rriksti, back towards the shelter.
Skyler’s spacesuit, stretched out like an X, bobbled between the bearers. One of the rriksti was holding Skyler’s head and shoulders up.
Acute radiation sickness was fatal, no way around it. They could give Skyler an IV of morphine, if the rriksti had morphine, and wait for the end. There was nothing else to be done for him.
Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2) Page 21
