Buried Deep

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Flint hurried down the corridor. He reached the main entrance as the last of the Disty stepped inside.

  Individually, Disty were small and unthreatening. In a group, they usually seemed like overgrown human children. But this group had a level of menace to it; part of that was the clothing and the knives, but most of it was the level of confidence they exuded—the way that they moved, almost as if they were a group mind instead of a group of individuals.

  “Where are our passengers?” the lead Disty asked.

  Flint could never tell the gender of these creatures, and he knew better than to ask for names. He did, however, as for identification.

  They presented him with a small pad. It had the Disty High Command’s seal. When he tapped the seal, he saw dozens of official documents, all of them pertaining to this group of humans. He even saw two documents from DeRicci, swearing that the humans on this ship were survivors of the Sahara Dome massacre.

  “Thank you,” Flint said. “I will have to download a copy of this into my systems.”

  “Please do,” the Disty said, and leaned back, its hands clasped at its waist. Its eyes glittered as it watched Flint.

  He didn’t take the pad to the nearest computer interface. Instead, he pushed a knuckle against the pad’s surface, and downloaded into a chip he wore on his left hand.

  The chip was not attached to any of his systems. It merely recorded the information. He then downloaded into one other chip—also an unattached chip— for backup, and handed the pad back to the Disty.

  “I’ll take you to the survivors,” Flint said.

  Sixty-two

  The news story had stalled. Ki Bowles sat in the broadcast booth and stared at the various wall screens. Disty ships still remained outside the Moon’s perimeter. Moon-based ships, most from Armstrong, but some from the other port cities, lined the perimeter as if they were waiting for a fight.

  But in the hours of the standoff, no fight ever came.

  That alone stunned Bowles. She figured something else was going on. Someone had to know what was happening.

  Someone was making deals.

  The two freelancers in their rogue ship had gotten precious few Disty quotes. The Disty who initially contacted the rogue ship, thinking it was an official human vessel, signed off as soon as they realized it wasn’t.

  The footage was interesting. Some of those Disty ships were so crammed that half a dozen Disty were visible behind the pilot. And some of those Disty looked smaller than usual—children, probably. All of their eyes seemed unusually moist, and their faces a darker gray than normal.

  So the freelancers were able to make the crisis personal, just like they had claimed. But their window to interview the Disty passed within five minutes.

  It was a tribute to the freelancers’ talent that they were able to stretch those short contacts into much longer pieces.

  Part of that was Bowles. She hunted for—and got—death tolls. They were unofficial and human-centered: two hundred human deaths total, most of them in Wells and Sahara Dome, most, it seemed, caused by being trampled.

  The Disty death tolls were tougher to get and kept changing all the time. She spoke to a human liaison with the Disty, someone who worked on Mars, and got an unofficial toll of three thousand, not counting the dead still in trains or those exploded in the ship collisions.

  Bowles couldn’t comprehend the number. She couldn’t even think of ways to make it real for the news viewers, since there wasn’t yet any available footage from Mars.

  Her work was nearly done, and to make matters worse, it had begun to resemble the work of rival reporters from the other media companies. The story had become a universal one, which meant she would have to leave it soon and move on to other things.

  She had one more angle, however, one she had more or less dropped as the crisis had gotten more immediate.

  Noelle DeRicci.

  Bowles would finish her profile of the woman who had left thousands of Disty to die in the space just beyond the Moon.

  And the thing Bowles needed to finish that profile was DeRicci herself.

  Sixty-three

  Flint used his links to silently disabled the locks as he led the Disty into the passenger wing of his ship. It felt like old times—transferring prisoners from one jurisdiction to another—although he doubted the survivors in his game room would consider themselves prisoners.

  When he reached the room, he found the door closed. It startled him; he had expected the door to remain open as it had been throughout the trip.

  He didn’t let that surprise show, however. He didn’t want the Disty to remove those knives from their sheaths.

  Flint knocked once, more as a warning than anything, then pressed his hand on the automatic opener. The door slid back, revealing all six survivors standing in a line in the center of the room.

  Weiss was in the center. When the door had opened all the way, he stepped forward, his meaty hand outstretched.

  “You must be the Disty,” he said, looking past Flint to the group behind him. “We’re the Sahara Dome massacre survivors. I understand you need our help.”

  It was a masterful moment, a great attempt at taking power and control in a situation where these six people didn’t have much control at all. Flint gave them a faint smile, and stepped aside.

  But the Disty who had been the spokesperson all along caught Flint’s arm. “I thought there were twelve.”

  “We found twelve,” Flint said. “Five did not agree to come to Mars.”

  The Disty all whistled softly. The sound made the hairs on the back of Flint’s neck rise.

  “We’re perfectly willing to help,” Weiss said, as if the other conversation hadn’t gone on at all. “You just have to tell us what to do.”

  “You said five.” The Disty was still speaking to Flint. “There should be seven survivors, then. We only count six.”

  “The seventh is in my brig,” Flint said. “He tried to take over the ship and blow it up.”

  The Disty’s eyes grew even wider. “He is a criminal, then?”

  “Yes,” Flint said.

  “So you are leaving us with six only. It is not enough.”

  Flint shrugged. “This is what we could do.”

  Weiss walked up to the group, forcing himself into the conversation. “We’ve agreed to remain on Mars as long as you need us. If it takes twice as long because there are only six of us, so be it.”

  The Disty slowly turned its head until it faced Weiss. “You know nothing of our customs.”

  Weiss’s skin grew a little paler, but to his credit, he did not back away. Instead, he nodded. “We are willing to learn.”

  “It will be taxing,” the Disty said.

  “We were told that the rituals were not life-threatening for survivors. If that’s the case, you have our full cooperation.”

  Flint looked past Weiss. The other survivors had their hands clasped in front so that they looked nonthreatening. Vajra was nodding as Weiss spoke. The others watched, looking nervous.

  Flint had no doubt which two were behind this ploy.

  “You have heard correctly,” the Disty said. “The survivor ritual causes no harm to the participant. It does, however, take many hours to complete. And you will, given the number of times you must go through it, find yourselves quite exhausted before the months are through.”

  “Months?” Marcos asked, her beautiful face twisted with alarm.

  “We have hundreds of thousands of Disty who must face you and receive the cleansing that can only come from survivors. Even if you were to do a purely human thing and shake hands, this would take days. We must do much more than that.”

  The Disty looked pointedly at Weiss’s hands then. The Disty had noticed Weiss’s attempt to be friendly, understood it, and pointedly ignored it.

  “Months?” Weiss looked at Flint. “You said nothing about months.”

  “I didn’t know,” Flint said. “I told you I am not familiar with the ritual. Howev
er, my invitation still stands.”

  “Invitation?” The Disty asked.

  “I told them that if they changed their minds, I would take them back to the Moon.”

  The Disty shifted all around him. Flint could feel their agitation as if it were a real, living thing.

  Flint’s skin crawled. He tried not to look at the knives.

  “You do not have the authority,” the lead Disty said.

  “Yes, I do,” Flint said. “They volunteered. They’re here because they want to be, not because they’re being forced. They have the right to change their minds.”

  All of the Disty faced the six survivors. Weiss looked over his shoulder at the others. Vajra shrugged. Marcos looked down, but the others did not move.

  Finally, the lead Disty reached out with its long fingers and took Weiss’s hand, shaking it awkwardly. “We appreciate your gesture. We are not used to kindness. We shall not take advantage of it, and we shall compensate you for your time.”

  “We’ll be away from our families,” the blue-haired woman, McEvoy, sounded frightened.

  “We are aware of that,” the Disty said. “Perhaps we can find a solution that will satisfy us all. If you will come with me, we can negotiate your terms. But we may not do so in front of your pilot, since he will not be part of the rituals.”

  “We won’t leave this ship until we’ve made a decision.” Weiss hadn’t let go of the Disty’s hand.

  “Agreed. Perhaps we can speak in private here?” The Disty looked at Flint.

  “Sure,” he said. “But before I go, what about Norton? He’s the seventh.”

  “He is a criminal. We have no use for him.”

  “You might,” Flint said. “I think he’s the one who placed the skeleton on top of the massacre site.”

  “The killer?” Another Disty asked that.

  “Of the single human woman, yes,” Flint said. “He had nothing to do with the massacre.”

  “Then that is different,” the lead Disty said. “We have a use for him after all.”

  “I should bring him for the negotiation, then,” Flint said.

  “Whatever we decide, we’ll hold him to it,” Weiss said.

  “We do not need to negotiate with criminals,” the Disty said. “Our use for him will be different.”

  “How different?” Flint asked. “He’s injured. I’m not sure he’s up for something strenuous.”

  “We shall discuss this after we have finished here. Have him ready,” the Disty said.

  Weiss frowned at Flint ever so slightly. Flint shrugged. Then he backed out of the room, and headed toward the main cabin. He used his internal links to monitor the conversation, although he did not listen closely.

  He didn’t want to know the rituals. He wanted to remain as uninvolved as possible.

  But he did want to hear if anything went wrong.

  Sixty-four

  “You have to be kidding,” DeRicci said. “In no way am I sitting down with that bloodsucking reporter. She makes up lies.”

  The governor-general folded her hands together. She sat at DeRicci’s desk as if it were her own. DeRicci was getting tired of having the woman around. Couldn’t she co-opt someone else’s office?

  “I think you should consider it,” the governor-general said. “The damage to your reputation has been severe. You could mitigate it, while the public thinks the crisis is still going on.”

  DeRicci glanced at the wall screens. All the public saw were the Disty ships outside the perimeter. Already, representatives for Armstrong’s Disty community had contacted Mayor Soseki, worried about DeRicci. Soseki reassured them that DeRicci had nothing to do with the crisis, and that everything was under control.

  Still, DeRicci didn’t like how this was heading.

  “So, I sit down with that woman, and she then asks under what authority I closed all the ports on the Moon. How do I answer?”

  The governor-general frowned. “That could be an issue.”

  “No kidding.” DeRicci refused to sit in one of the clear chairs scattered around the room. That was her desk, her chair, and this was her office. She didn’t have to act like someone subordinate.

  “I suppose,” the governor-general said, “you tell Ms. Bowles that someone had to act to save lives, and you did so.”

  “‘At the expense of so many Disty lives?’” DeRicci mimicked Bowles. “I think this is a terrible idea.”

  “Yes, you already said that. But you’ll have to get used to the media. Dealing with it is part of your job.”

  DeRicci paced toward the windows. The streets were filling up with Disty, many of whom had come to file complaints against her.

  “You told me when you asked me to take this job that I could control how I talked to the media,” DeRicci said. “Press releases, controlled press conferences, short meetings. You didn’t say a thing about one-on-ones.”

  “I didn’t expect a crisis so soon,” the governor-general said. “I also didn’t expect such bad publicity about you. Is it true that you tried to thwart the Disty when you were a police officer?”

  DeRicci didn’t turn. She just clenched her fists, made herself take several deep breaths, and then said, as calmly as she could, “Every police officer has a moment of disillusionment when dealing with alien laws. The cops have to do awful things—like giving up little boys, knowing that they’re going to get their tongues cut out, and they’re going to be denied healing treatment for the rest of their lives. Yeah, I had trouble with that. Find me someone who wouldn’t.”

  The governor-general sighed. “So that story’s true.”

  “It’s an ugly fact of law enforcement. So what?” DeRicci did turn this time.

  The governor-general was studying her hands. “Did you deny the Disty entry because you hate them?”

  “You already asked me that, and I said no. I meant no. I denied them entry because we were about to get overrun. You heard the rituals, you saw what happened to Wells, you knew the risks. How can you ask me that again?”

  “Because.” The governor-general raised her head. “This issue will dog you for the rest of your political career.”

  “I made the best decision for the Moon,” DeRicci said. “I saved the port cities. You know that.”

  “I know it,” the governor-general said. “But unfortunately, with your history, it won’t sound that way when the media gets through with it.”

  “My history?” DeRicci raised her voice. “I saved Armstrong from a killing virus. I’ve worked hard for this city and this place. I was a good cop, a better detective, and I make great decisions on the fly. You would have been afraid to close down the ports. I just did it.”

  She probably shouldn’t have said that last bit. Her cheeks warmed, but she didn’t take the words back.

  The governor-general’s gaze met hers. The governor-general’s dark eyes seemed empty, almost as if she had coated them to hide any emotion.

  “You’re right, Noelle. I would have made the wrong choice. And we would have had a crisis. You stopped the crisis, and for that, we’re all grateful.” She swept a hand toward the screens. “I’m already getting reports of ships turning back. Mars is accepting the contaminated Disty, so long as they land near Lowell. We’re not going to have any more trouble here.”

  DeRicci was breathing shallowly. The governor-general didn’t sound approving.

  “But,” the governor-general said, “you made that hasty decision—that correct decision—without political thought. You didn’t ease the transition, nor did you make any kind of statement about it. You simply ordered it.”

  “I didn’t have time for anything else,” DeRicci said.

  “There’s always time,” the governor-general said.

  DeRicci shook her head.

  The governor-general stood. She pushed DeRicci’s chair under the desk, then tidied up the desk’s surface. “And, we took citizens from their homes without their permission.”

  “Not all of them. They had a choice. Five
decided not to go. Besides, that was local police.”

  “Under someone’s orders.” The governor-general moved one of the plants to the edge the desk.

  “You’re going to blame all the problems with this on me, aren’t you?” DeRicci asked.

  “If you can think of a clean way to tell all of this to Ki Bowles, maybe you’ll come out of this just fine. People like you. And I think they like how decisive you are.”

  The heat in DeRicci’s cheeks grew worse. “You want me to talk to Ki Bowles because you know how bad I am with the media. You want me to look like a damn fool, so that you can really blame all of this on me.”

  The governor-general gave her a sideways look. DeRicci guessed that the look was meant to be soothing, but it wasn’t. “You can handle yourself just fine, Noelle.”

  “You bet I can, Celia,” DeRicci said, mimicking the governor-general’s patronizing tone. “Especially considering the fact that you’ve been in my office all afternoon, helping me make every single one of the decisions, and telling me that you would handle the media when the time was right.”

  The governor-general stepped around the desk and stopped in front of DeRicci. DeRicci had several inches on her, but for the first time, was not intimidated in her presence.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” the governor-general said.

  “I’m not getting fired for doing something right,” DeRicci said. “And if I have to go down, I’ll take everyone with me—you, the chicken councilors who wouldn’t make a decision, and Armstrong’s wimpy little mayor, as well as the heads of the police forces in all the Domed cities where the Sahara Dome survivors were. I may not be politic, but I do know how to speak my mind, and I can make anything sound bad if I have to.”

  The governor-general was silent. Then she stepped away from DeRicci and leaned on the desktop she’d straightened a moment before.

  “It would be easier if you just resigned,” she said calmly. “Then we could let the scandal float by, and this office would get the strength it needs. I think this situation proves that we need a Moon-wide security chief. I’m just not sure you’re the person for the job.”