He encountered his first Overseer beside the tenth portal he came to. The black-uniformed traitor to his race was about George’s age, meaning he was shipborn, and he wore two golden rank badges on his tunic. His spots were dark and formed swirls of interlinked commas. George memorized the pattern.
This line will end, he swore.
The Overseer patted his prod against his open hand and gave George a crooked smile in anticipation of sport. George knew the expression well. He had seen it on the savage youth who had used his prod on Susan.
“Do we have someplace important to go?” the Overseer asked with a hungry grin as George came closer, his stride increasing in length and speed.
But George said nothing. By victory or oblivion.
The Overseer braced his feet against the grillwork floor. “That’s close enough, cargo!” He gripped his prod in his hand, glaring at George in a manner that would bring any slave of the holy gas to his knees at once.
But George was no slave of the gas. He was a child of the Overseers. Created by their own breeding program. Forged by their own legacy of hate and terror.
He was their match. He charged.
The Overseer saw the madness in George’s eye a heartsbeat too late to save himself. He opened his mouth to call the alarm. His hands fumbled on the focus knob of his prod.
And the shaft of George’s molecular probe swung through the air with all the force of George’s charging mass behind it.
A pink froth from the Overseer’s mouth sprayed up in the wind as his body, with a stifled bleat of pain, flew up against the hull and then slid down to the deck beside the portal. His prod clattered on the open deck. George shifted his molecular probe into his backpack and picked up the prod—for the first time in his life touching an Overseer’s weapon. More than sixty years of conditioning defeated.
George moved back to the Overseer just as the Overseer staggered to his feet, leaning against the hull, wiping the blood from his chin with the sleeve of his uniform.
Astonishment marked his face. Yet a remnant of his former grin still played across his lips. No individual slave had ever bested an Overseer before.
But the expected expression of fear could not be found on George’s face.
“They’re going to recycle you bit by bit,” the Overseer shouted threateningly over the circulating wind’s rush.
“Give me your communications device,” George said. His tunic sleeve fluttered in the rising breeze as he held out his hand, the fabric still stiff with the blood that had been spilled by the three-needled testing device.
The Overseer continued as if George had not spoken. “And then they’ll feed you to yourself. You’ll get smaller and smaller. More and more ravenous. If you have any children, they’ll recycle—”
The prod whistled through the air and smashed against the Overseer’s face, throwing his skull back against the hull with a hollow thud. The Overseer’s eyes went glassy for a moment. He shook his head, then smiled in feral triumph through split lips as he saw George’s confusion.
Hearts beating wildly, George stared at the prod. He could tell it was focused to fire, but it had not discharged when it had made contact.
“We’re smarter than that, cargo,” the Overseer hissed. He spit out a tooth, and it fell through the grillwork, rattling down to unseen depths. “The prods won’t work on those who carry the words of power.” He held up his wrist, exposing his obscene tattoo. “You’re mine. You have no place to go. Nothing to gain.”
“And nothing to lose,” George said defiantly. “Give me your communications device.”
In response the Overseer crouched and raised his hands in a chekkah-taught fighting stance. “Come and take it.”
George stared at the creature before him as he prepared himself for what he knew he must do. In a faint echo of a childhood ritual he almost began to recite the prayer of guidance to Andarko as he pulled his probe from his backpack. But if there were gods on this ship, then they were locked in other sections of the cargo disk and had never yet walked with George.
He did not finish his prayer. He acted. For the first time in his life George fought back.
He feinted to the right with the tip of the molecular probe. The Overseer lunged. But his reflexes had been dulled by too many years of fighting only those Tenctonese who were influenced by the holy gas.
George changed his attack, withdrawing his probe and ramming the prod against the hull metal beside the Overseer. It fired gloriously, creating a rushing, crackling shower of blue-white sparks that billowed up in the wind, sending streamers of smoke through the open decks twenty feet overhead until the prod’s charge was sapped.
George threw the weapon to the deck, and it rolled noisily away, slowly whining as it began to recharge.
The Overseer recovered his footing and stared at the pitted burn mark in the hull, then at George. “Another thousand prods, another thousand years, and you might burn your way through,” he said. “It’s over, cargo. You’re good for nothing, bound for nowhere. Your life is meaningless. Your children and your wife will be kard-ta for the—”
The tip of the probe smashed against his throat, and the Overseer fell back, choking. George felt his arm resonate with unsuspected strength, as if he drew power from the thrumming of the power plants themselves. Beyond the portal the stars watched.
“I will watch you die myself,” the Overseer gasped.
George swept the probe above his head. He felt the power of the ship move through him. Ten thousand years of rage. Ten eternities, infinities. He felt the ghosts of a thousand nameless races enter into him, fueled by uncountable outrages, measureless despair.
“Cargo!” the Overseer chanted. “Cargo!” The ultimate denigration. The person as object. As nameless thing.
And the probe swept down as if George were no more than a conduit for the wrath of the stars themselves.
The Overseer groaned and stumbled over exactly where George had intended him to go. His back was directly over the blemish George had burned into the hull metal. The perfection of the hull was now flawed.
George did his work.
He pressed the tip of his probe against the Overseer’s chest, then touched the activator switch.
The Overseer tried to push the probe away. George punched him. Flesh to flesh for the first time in his life.
The Overseer’s head smashed against the hull again. He took in great gulping breaths. He was stunned and no longer struggled.
George adjusted the position of the probe, pushing it closer and closer to the position of the hull blemish, digging into the Overseer’s flesh.
And then the indicator light glowed green.
George waited as the signal went out to the mechanisms that controlled the ship. The Overseer moaned, still not aware of what George was doing. George held the probe steady against the Overseer’s black-draped chest as if his arms and hands were made of the same substance as the hull.
The vibration began.
Moving closer.
The Overseer heard it.
The deck rattled. The hull sang, drowning even the rush of the wind. The dark shadow of a hull crawler passed over the portal. The Overseer looked down. Saw the green light. Felt the massive vibration. He pushed frantically at the probe. He squirmed. He squealed. George would not move. He was the ship.
The vibration stopped. The hull crawler was properly positioned. George didn’t draw the probe away but kept the Overseer pinned to the section of the hull about to be repaired—about to have its molecules restacked.
There was one brief moment, between the cessation of the vibration and the start of the repair process, in which the Overseer’s final terrified keen cut through all the levels of the hull access zone, carried by the air’s circulation. And then the hull around his black-clad body glowed orange-white and the crackling and popping of molecular rearrangement began.
When it was clear that the Overseer could no longer pull away, George finally stepped back and removed th
e probe, no longer needed. The Overseer remained stuck to the hull, legs and arms flailing, mouth gaping, eyes bulging in a dance of terror in which no sound he made could be heard over the hull crawler’s work.
At last the orange-white glow faded and the crackling ceased. The Overseer slumped. His head bobbed once, then no more. A thin string of blood and saliva slid slowly to the deck, twirled and whipped by the breeze, then fell through the grilles and down into the bottommost reaches of the ship.
Then George heard a soft metallic snapping sound and stared in wonder as the Overseer peeled slowly forward from the wall and collapsed facedown on the deck.
His back gaped open. As if his spine had been ripped from his flesh, leaving the white fingers of his ribs reaching up from his torn sides, cradling a pool of ruined organs, some still throbbing, not yet aware that the body they served was dead. Then a sudden hot draft howled up through the deck as if the pit of am dugas searched to find the serdos of the damned.
George looked at the hull where the blemish had been. Where the molecules had been restacked.
A spine of metal grew there, rippling with the bulbous outlines of partial organs and fractured bones that had been transmuted into hull metal by the crawler.
George found it fitting. The Overseer had become one with the lifeless hull of the ship, even as George had been charged with the power of the lives that had been lost here.
George smiled. A single sigh escaped his lips. He could smell the heat of the repair, the ozone residue of the prod, the stench of the Overseer’s coagulating blood.
And it made him feel cleansed. It made him feel victorious. And it made him feel that he had only begun to fight back.
He turned over what was left of the Overseer’s body and searched within the tunic for the communications device. Just as he ripped it from its holder on the Overseer’s belt, he heard the sound of running feet.
He clamped the thin metal device and head strap in his hand, then raced off opposite the direction of whoever approached.
And he laughed as he ran, more full of life than he could ever remember.
There was no longer a choice between victory or oblivion.
There could only be victory.
C H A P T E R 1 0
WHEN THE PARKING ENFORCEMENT officer tried to get Sikes to move his Mustang from the red curb in front of Hollywood High, Sikes flashed his gold shield and went back to staring at the palm trees overhead. Nobody had ever told him he would have a day like this in the force, and for once he wasn’t surprised. He doubted if anyone had gone through a day like this and survived to warn others.
Sikes heard a distant bell ring from inside the school and looked away from the trees to the bottom of the stairs at the school’s main entrance. Using all his expertise at covert surveillance, he had carefully parked where Kirby would not be able to see him through the glass doors. If she were able to see him lying in wait, there were five other exits she could use to avoid him. But Sikes had made sure that he would see her at the bottom of the stairs before she would see him.
As it was, they caught each other’s eyes at the same time. Kirby actually froze, and at any other time Sikes would have thought the shocked expression on her face was comical. But there wasn’t room for humor in his life right now. He pushed against the floor of the car and slid up against his seat back, cupping his hands around his mouth as he shouted her name.
Kirby’s shoulders sagged. She was jostled by the other students streaming past her. But she clearly realized that there was no escape.
Sikes slid back down in his seat as Kirby said something to the two other students at her side—both girls, Sikes was glad to see—then trudged over to her father’s car.
“Da-deee,” Kirby said with a hugely exaggerated sigh, “why don’t you just make me wear a T-shirt that says ‘geek’ on it?”
“They still use the word ‘geek’?” Sikes asked. He smiled up at her and was surprised by how easy it was despite the long day. “At least I’m not in uniform like the last time, right?”
“Don’t remind me,” Kirby said, rolling her eyes again.
Sikes leaned across the passenger seat and opened the car door. “Get in,” he said.
Kirby’s mouth hung dramatically open. “But I’m going with my friends.”
“Not today, kid. Something’s come up.”
“Really?”
Sikes shook his head. “Remember our deal,” he said. “I’ll never lie to you.”
Kirby dropped her resistance. For all that she complained about Sikes’s job, for all that he moaned about her clothing and jewelry, the bottom line was that there was a bond of mutual respect between them. How much longer that could last Sikes didn’t know. But it was working today.
“Can I say good-bye to my friends?”
“Just be fast.”
Kirby dropped her school bag into the backseat. She paused a moment. “Nothing’s happened to Mom, has it?”
“This is nothing to do with Mom.”
“Are you okay?” Kirby began to look worried.
“I’m fine,” Sikes reassured her. “But I have to get you home.” He stopped her from asking any more questions by adding, “I’ll tell you all about it when you’re in the car.”
Kirby didn’t lose her worried expression, but she nodded, then hurried back to the steps to speak with the two girls who waited for her, clutching their own schoolbooks to their chests. Kirby was back in under a minute, buckling her seat belt and staring expectantly at Sikes.
Sikes made a U-turn and got into line for the turn onto Highland. “Are you in trouble or something, Dad?” Kirby asked
“Not really,” Sikes said. “But I’m working on this big case now, and . . . well, I’m going to have to put in some long hours.” Go to the mattresses is more like it, Sikes thought.
“How long?” Kirby asked.
“A couple of days, maybe. But they’ll be long days.”
Kirby thumped back in her seat. “So you’re, like, just dumping me at your place until Mom gets back.”
Sikes gripped the steering wheel. “I just want to make sure you’re inside and out of trouble while I’m at work tonight.”
As soon as Kirby realized that her father was telling her that she wasn’t going to be able to go out with her friends because he wanted her safely sidelined for the evening, she went over the top. The argument lasted until they reached Ventura. By then Sikes had punched the steering wheel twice, and Kirby, not to be outdone, had punched the glove compartment once, hard.
“You know what really sucks about this?” Kirby said angrily as she came to understand that there was nothing she was going to be able to say to make Sikes change his mind.
Sikes waited for her to tell him.
“You’re lying to me.” She leaned forward and turned to look at him so he couldn’t avoid her. “So much for all this father-daughter honesty crap. You’re not telling me the real reason why you’re . . . you’re locking me up. ’Cause that’s what it is, you know. You’re locking me up without a trial.” She rocked back in her seat and folded her arms. “Locking me up for something you’ve done. Not me. Isn’t fair. No way.”
Sikes tried to keep his mind on driving. But Kirby had a point. He was locking her up for something he had done. And he was lying to her. But he really had no idea how he could tell his thirteen-year-old daughter that her father might be in danger of being tagged by a government-trained assassin. At least that’s what Theo Miles had said was the worst-possible-cause scenario they faced. All of them.
Less than two hours ago they had had their council-of-war meeting: Sikes and Angie, Bryon Grazer, and, looking like he had just been fished from a reservoir, Theo Miles. The four detectives had crowded into Grazer’s office and in hushed tones had discussed the status of the Petty case. Thanks to Grazer, the status hadn’t looked good at all. “First of all,” Grazer said as he arranged four neat stacks of file folders by the computer on his otherwise empty desk, “Commander Franklin
Arthur Stewart is no longer part of Naval Intelligence. He resigned his commission six months ago.”
“For real, or as a cover?” Angie asked. She leaned against a small credenza, jacket off, shoulder holster looking out of place over a pale pink cotton T-shirt.
“For real,” Grazer said. He reached into one folder and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here’s a copy of the story that ran in the Times when he joined the Fuller Institute.” Grazer visibly relished the questioning looks everyone gave him.
“So what the hell is the Fuller Institute?” Theo Miles asked. He was the only one who didn’t realize that Grazer was incapable of not telling everything he knew.
“A private research institute for international affairs. Offices in Beverly Hills. It advises businesses and politicians on the current political climate in other countries and makes projections based on likely changes.” Grazer pulled what looked to be a press packet from a stack and opened it on his desk. “It’s all in this information folder. It’s actually quite prestigious. The founder, Amanda Fuller, was a foreign policy advisor to Reagan. People say she was responsible for the hard line Reagan took toward—”
“Do they do any work in astronomy?” Sikes interrupted. He couldn’t sit. He paced. Ignoring the looks Theo and Angie gave him.
Grazer ran his finger down a list from the packet. “Closest thing on their list of specialties is technology exchange,” he read. “They’re associated with research fellows at Brookings, MIT, and a bunch of international institutes.”
“So where does that leave us?” Sikes asked.
Theo rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, and Grazer winced as the clearly audible sound of popping vertebrae echoed in the small room. “You’re right where I said you’d probably be,” Theo said. “Private research group equals industrial espionage.”
“What’s the connection to Amy Stewart?” Angie asked. “Other than the possible coincidence that her father or uncle or brother or whatever is employed by the Fuller Institute.”
Theo shook his head. Sikes was concerned by his ex-partner’s bloodshot eyes and slightly slurred speech. But then, he himself had shown up for his first day as a detective with a hangover the size of the Grand Canyon, so it wasn’t really out of place that Theo might be suffering from one now. Especially since his regular shift didn’t start till ten and he had come in this afternoon as a favor to Sikes.
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