“And tomorrow…” said Narcissus Joy.
“Tomorrow,” said the Eldest through her Speaker. “But you have fulfilled already many of our hopes. If tomorrow fails, our race still lives.”
“So does ours,” said Frederick. He did not mean the race of pigs or genimals or even genimals who had been given sentience and human form. Rather, his few words embraced all those who looked toward the future for their destiny, all those who loved the new, the unknown, the uncertain. If the Orbitals’ six Q-ships succeeded in their attempt to fill the new living spaces they had built with refugees, if they failed, shot down by Earthly missiles, enough were safe already to ensure the future.
For a moment, he thought that Donna Rose looked at him more kindly.
* * * *
Alvar Hannoken was facing his picture window, staring out at whatever he could see of Q-ships and bubble-sats and more. Segments of the glass seemed to warp and flow as the computer, following his commands, enlarged fragments of the view, shifted far to near, near to far, projected even images of things the window did not face.
“We’re ready,” he said at last. Instead of his usual coverall, he was wearing a short, pale green tunic over grey shorts and his usual black stockings. His hands were clasped behind his back, twining restlessly, and Frederick could see his goat-bent, goat-hairy legs more clearly than ever before. They too were restless.
“And just in time,” he added. “If we wait much longer, there won’t be anyone left to rescue. They’ll all have been ‘cleansed.’” He paused, and his feet brushed against the edge of the pot that had been intended for Donna Rose’s child. “Everything depends,” he said. “On the ships, the pilots.”
“They’ll do fine,” said Frederick. His face showed his impatience. There was no need for talk. There was only waiting, until Renny and Lois and the other pilots could do their jobs and the Engineers could finally be abandoned to whatever they might make of Earth.
He had left his office in the construction shack not long after the Eldest and her retinue had departed. He and Narcissus Joy had been on their way to the quarters they shared, as he had once shared them with Donna Rose, when the communicator had summoned him to the Station Director’s office. He had tried to ignore the call, but Athena’s voice had followed him from com to com down the corridor. At last, he had given in, knowing that he would have no peace, no rest, no time to worry about the morrow or at the hole Donna Rose’s departure had left in his life.
“If they don’t get shot down. That’s what worries me. The com center’s picking up a lot of traffic, and it’s coded. Military. They’re planning something.”
“We could destroy the comsats,” said Narcissus Joy.
“No, we use them too.”
“Then turn them off. We could do that.”
Hannoken turned away from the window, shaking his head. “Then we wouldn’t know what they’re up to.”
“We don’t know anything now,” said Frederick. “If they’re using code.”
“We know they’re keeping secrets. We know they’re up to something.”
“But what?”
The Station’s Director made a sour face. “Probably something nasty. Like a mass launch of every missile they’ve got.”
“Duncan says he can stop even that.”
“I hope he’s right.” Hannoken looked Frederick in the eye, seeming finally to see the man he had summoned to his office. “You’re tired, aren’t you? And tomorrow will be a long day. You’d better get some rest.”
Chapter Twenty Three
The first targets of the rescue missions were the prison camps where barbed wire and armed guards surrounded thousands of bots and gengineers and humans who had been genetically modified or who had demonstrated approval of gengineering or disapproval of the Engineers and their tactics. These were the prisoners who awaited “cleansing” or assignment to research and development squads such as the one Jeremy Duncan had escaped.
Renny and his fellow pilots knew that they would never be able to rescue everyone. They would probably get only one landing apiece in the prison camps. That single rescue attempt might catch the Engineers by surprise, and it might succeed. But then the defenses would be alerted, missiles would be targeted, and any Q-ship that tried a second landing, or even a first landing in another camp, would be all too likely to be destroyed. Unfortunately, there were only six Q-ships.
Those ships that survived the camps would then pick up as many as they could of the bots and humans who had fled the Engineers’ murderous affections. These refugees, like those who had rescued Duncan, had found temporary hiding places around the globe. But none of their gatherings was large. Nowhere was there more than a few hundred refugees. Most groups were no more than two or three dozen strong. The ships would return to orbit nearly empty. With luck they would be able to make enough trips to fill the quarters that had been prepared for the refugees. But they would at best leave behind as many as they saved.
* * * *
Quincy, Quentin, Quimby, Quiggle, Quito, and Quebec. Floating in loose formation not far from Probe Station, the Q-ships were bulb-nosed spears whose shafts were bundled round by tanks full of lunar dust, reaction mass to be vaporized, made into plasma and thrust and velocity. A coin collector might have fancied that they bore some resemblance to bundles of sticks surrounding axes, to the fasces on old U.S. dimes, once a sign of Roman authority, more recently an emblem of fascist tyranny, now far more a sigil of freedom.
The official voice of Probe Station’s communications center spoke: “We’ll let you know if they fire any missiles at you.”
“Thanks,” said Lois McAlois dryly. “We won’t even hear you unless they miss.”
“Duncan has his rocks ready. He says he won’t let ’em get that close.”
Frederick Suida’s voice broke in: “Good luck, Renny.”
One by one, Renny, Lois, and the other pilots activated their Q-drives. Plasma flames began to glow behind their ships, and they began to move, accelerating at first slowly, then more rapidly, out of lunar orbit and toward Earth. As they neared the planet, they began to separate, three pairs of flames pushing their fasces toward widely separate destinations. Renny and Buran, together, would strike the airport from which the dog had first left Earth; it was now one of the largest prison camps on the continent. Lois and Stacey were bound for what had once been a European army base. The other two pilots would land in China. Each one carried in his or her Q-ship’s computer a list of secondary destinations, their coordinates and courses laid down well in advance. As soon as the armed camps became too alert, too unsafe, for landing, they could divert to other large concentrations of the Engineers’ victims. When all the camps were barred against them, they would scoop up the smaller groups.
Renny grimaced as his Q-drive roared and gees pressed him into his seat. He turned off his radio and screamed. As he had expected, the anesthetic Probe Station’s medics had injected into the root of his spine to block the pain quickly proved inadequate. But even as he voiced his agony, he kept his eyes on his ship’s instruments and his hands on the controls. As soon as he could, he turned on the radio once more. He dared not miss a word that the observers in orbit above might have for him.
The computer could handle the entire landing, but only as long as nothing went wrong. And if something went wrong, he could handle it only if he knew what emergency he had to cope with. If the Engineers fired ground-to-air missiles or anti-aircraft guns, it would be his reflexes, not the computer’s, that would keep him alive to see Lois again. And hers that would keep her alive, though that thought lasted for no more than an instant before he squelched it. He could not afford to let his attention wander. Pain or no pain, worry or no worry, he must stay focused on his ship, his landing, the screen that showed the prisoners scurrying away from the blast of his descending ship, more priso
ners emerging from sun-baked hangars, the Engineer troops turning rifles and machine guns in his direction, more troops unloading long cylinders from a wagon and struggling to erect what could only be a launcher.
The roar of the drive cut off with a suddenness that left his ears ringing. Yet the spang of slugs against the Quincy’s shell was clearly audible, a metal rain that made him hope the metal that surrounded him was thick enough, tough enough, not to yield.
* * * *
It was only seconds before he hit the controls that opened the hatch to the ship’s passenger compartment and deployed the boarding ladder. Another switch activated the loudspeaker, and he said, “The cavalry is here.” He could hear his voice booming over the airport’s turfed runways even through the Quincy’s hull. Through the port to his right he could see Buran’s Quito, its hatch as open as his, the Engineers’ prisoners already beginning to climb its ladder.
“All aboard,” he cried. “We can hold two hundred. Lay back in the nets and hold on.”
External microphones picked up the rattle of rifle fire, the sustained ripping of machine guns. The metal hull rang. All around the edges of the crowds that surrounded the Quincy and the Quito, prisoners fell, both bot and human, young and old. Others tumbled from the ships’ ladders, and from the very edges of their hatches.
When the Quincy was almost full, Renny used the loudspeaker once more to say, “No more on the ladder. No more, please. Back off. I have to launch.”
No one paid attention. Indeed, the prisoners began to club at each other with fists, shoes, whatever they had in hand, struggling for one of the last places to be had. Renny sighed. He had once seen a historical veedo, the evacuation of some southeast Asian city in the face of an invasion of revolutionaries. Helicopters had hovered over a white building, full of refugees with more, panicked, desperate, clinging to the landing gear and to each other. As the helicopters had lifted into the sky, they had fallen, screaming, to their deaths.
The German shepherd sighed again and activated the drive. If he did not, he knew, he would never leave the ground. Quincy’s belly would be too full for the ship to move. Better, he told himself, that he escape with his load of refugees, that some should live, even if he must…
Plasma flame billowed against the ground. The prisoners fell from the ladder, screamed outrage at his betrayal of their hopes, and tried to run. But even as the Quincy’s torch incinerated them from behind, the Engineers’ bullets withered their ranks from in front.
Renny gritted his teeth and activated the controls that stowed the ladder and closed the hatch. Then he fed full power to his drive and boosted straight to space.
The Quito remained visible through the port, boosting in parallel, fleeing the Engineers, carrying its cargo of precious salvage, of no one knew what, bots or humans, scientists or janitors. Renny was trying not to scream when the radio said, “They’ve launched a missile.”
A moment later, he saw the Quito explode.
“That was the only one.” The communication tech’s voice choked, raw with anguish. One ship, one of only six, was gone, together with 200 lives or more. And gone on the very first landing. The numbers they could rescue were cut by a sixth, unless the others dared more landings, took more chances, exposed themselves perhaps too often.
Renny’s only thought was that he hoped Lois made it.
* * * *
Despite the com tech’s words, the ground-to-air missile that destroyed the Quito was not the only one. Others chased the other ships but fell short or were destroyed when they entered the Q-ships’ plasma plumes. Some simply failed to explode or detonated prematurely.
The few spaceplanes the Engineers had not destroyed in the first, violent days of their takeover were fueled and filled with troops. They took off from their airports, climbed toward space, and died as Duncan met them with his Q-driven rocks.
Silos opened around the globe, and larger missiles erupted from the ground, bound for the stations in orbit. Some exploded on ignition. Others detonated their warheads while still in the atmosphere. Many reached space and were hammered into uselessness. A few bent their courses back into air and descended on the prison camps, obliterating those prisoners who had survived the plasma blasts and gunfire, the guards who had slaughtered so many first, and surrounding countryside, cities, structures, sending vast clouds of radioactive debris into the air.
“Now,” said Duncan, secure in the shell of his Orbital Defense Command post, and at his command Thor sent rocks falling toward Earth’s cities, military bases, troop concentrations, empty silos.
“No!” cried Donna Rose. “They’re helpless. Stop the missiles, but…”
“Yes!” And craters bloomed. More clouds rose to choke the air, to shade the Earth, to bring on untimely chill.
The remaining Q-ships descended on other prison camps, filled up again with the Engineers’ prisoners, weathered the battering of slugs and mortar rounds, and escaped once more. But then the camps and their prisoners were no more, targeted by missiles launched too nearby, flying too briefly to be stopped by Duncan’s rocks, destroyed by Engineers who refused to let anyone else have what they themselves despised.
The rescue ships turned then toward the smaller groups of refugees in jungles, forests, mountains, collected what they could, and delivered new cargos to orbit.
One of Duncan’s rocks missed its intended target. The lucky warhead struck Nexus Station, exploded, and sent a blizzard of shattered metal storming through space. Many shards struck the bubblesats waiting to fill with human cargo, but the shards were small, so were the holes, and there were plenty of patches. The bubblesats, and most of those within them, survived.
* * * *
Renny was on the ground in northern Canada when the com burst into life. “The fuel depots are nearly empty,” said the tech. “Last trip.”
The dog cursed the pain in his tail. He had swallowed far too many painkillers on top of his injections, and his brain felt fuzzy. But he remained able to function. He looked at his screens. This group of refugees was small, less than forty, mainly bots with a sprinkling of greenskins and other gengineered humans. They had not panicked, not even when a mushroom cloud had erupted to the south, a missile that had been targeted on his landing but had fallen short or been hit by one of Duncan’s rocks. They stood in line, singing enthusiastically, joyously, unafraid, “Swing low, sweet chariot.” They climbed the ladder without struggling among each other, passing bot children, safely embedded in boxes and buckets full of dirt, from hand to hand. He wished he could land a second time—there were other refugees on his computer’s list, many of them—but he could not afford the fuel. This would be a small load.
“How many have we got so far?” he asked the com.
“Not enough,” was the answer. “They’ve wrecked the camps. And we get only one stop at each refugee group. Their radars pick us up, and the missiles hit as soon as we’re gone. Duncan can’t get them all.”
He bent his head. The control board before him had, among its variety of sensors, a radiation detector. At the moment, it registered only a little above Earthly background. But he knew that if he were on Earth to see, then soon, in mere days, its readings would rise to dangerous levels. The Engineers were mad dogs that fouled their manger. Billions had died already. Millions more would join them. Surely, surely, millions would survive. Warheads had exploded, yes. But most of the murk in the air was mere dust, not radioactive. Its worst effects would be the lack of heat and sunlight, the death of crops, and later famine.
The Orbitals, the refugees they had saved, they would be above the poisoned world, safe. Before too long, the Gypsy would be ready, and they would leave. The Engineers and their heirs would be left alone to make what they would of their world, of what was left of what had once been Eden.
The last of the refugees, a human with no visible signs of
genetic modification, was on the ladder. Renny waited until the woman entered the hatch and then withdrew the ladder and sealed the ship. Once more, he activated the Q-drive. Once more, he rode the plasma thrust toward orbit.
But he did not make it safely.
He rode his ship, grimacing with pain, his tail screaming inside him, straining to watch his screens and indicators, to listen to the voice of the com tech crying warnings. He knew when a missile rose out of the distance toward him. And he knew he responded too slowly as he pushed his thrust to dangerous levels, screamed with increased pain, and thanked whatever gods there were that this time his load was light, that he had some hope, even as doped as he was, of accelerating beyond the missile’s reach.
When the warhead went off, he was still too close. His screens blacked out. The Quincy bucked, rolled, spun, and twisted as the shockwave hit. He screamed again, and then he lost consciousness.
The ship’s computer struggled to maintain course. It knew nothing of Renny’s damaged body, nor of the fleshy wreckage in the passenger compartment, though its microphones registered moans and screams and the fluid sounds of broken bodies. But it did have a program, a course to fly, and its structure was enough stronger than those of flesh that it remained capable. It attained orbit, and when it neared those bubblesats that still waited for their liberated cargos near where Nexus Station once had been, it took position precisely as it should.
Lois McAlois was already there in the Quentin. When Renny did not position his ship for unloading, she tried to call him. His com remained silent, and the tech at Probe Station said, “He took a close one.”
She began to weep.
“Can you see him through the ports?”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 95
