“They just committed suicide trying to follow us down.” Katerina put her hand on the console, as if trying to reach the dying airship as it fell.
“It’s not suicide to the Swarm.” Timas kept watching the airship fall. “It was like losing a fingertip, maybe. Not people, just pieces.”
An explosion rocked them, this one louder and closer than any other.
“Hull breach!” Achmed ignored the plight of the falling Swarm airship and closed his eyes.
“Is it bad?” Timas felt his stomach flip. This was it. They’d come this far, and the hull had finally given out just as he’d gotten hope back.
“It’s a hull breach, what do you mean ‘is it bad’?” Katerina snapped. The processor began to fall as air fell prey to Chilo’s heavy atmosphere rushing in, weighing the processor down, boiling it, trying to drag it down to its surface.
Timas felt that he’d always known he would die on the surface, he’d imagined it countless times at night in his bed. He’d never counted on falling out of the sky onto the surface to die, however.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Just walking around the docks Pepper counted a hundred airships. A bedraggled armada. Straggling airships from all around Chilo clustered around Yatapek in holding patterns, drifting with the city. Many of the Aeolian Consensus’s finest had fled aboard anything they could as the Swarm fixed its hold throughout the floating cities.
They came to Yatapek with its promise of being Swarm-free. And because Yatapek had prepared itself for the battle.
At least here, many reasoned over ship-to-ship radio, they had knowledge of what approached. And they had time to prepare, as well as a place to catch their breath.
But it also gave the Swarm time to plan, time to consolidate itself in the cities and root out any survivors or resistance, and time to slip a ship of its own into Yatapek’s armada to keep an eye on the resistance.
Pepper stopped thudding around the docks and gripped a railing. He needed to stop pacing.
Heutzin found him there, half an hour later, still gripping the railing and looking down into the loading bays where dockworkers prepped food for transport to airships full of quarantined Aeolians.
“They’re telling me the Aeolians are getting their Consensus going again, right here around us,” Heutzin said. “Zombies are zombies.”
“As long as the quarantine holds who cares what they do.” Pepper looked over at him. “What do you need?”
“The xocoyotzin are back.”
“And?”
He already knew Heutzin’s answer, or Heutzin would not hesitantly be standing there with an apologetic, and somewhat desperate, look on his face. “Nothing.”
Pepper bent the railing. “And has the importance of finding something been really, really impressed upon them?”
“They’re as desperate as any of us.”
“Give them the map, have them fill in where they searched for me.” A formality.
So that was that, then. He’d armed them with billhooks, given them the best warning he could, and figured out why the Swarm was here. And he’d done it with minimal violence.
What more could anyone have asked of him?
It was time to confirm his escape route. He had three hours of continuous power in the suit left. What could he really offer these people here? Not much.
Pepper had Heutzin take him back to the communications room. Operators packed the tiny space, taking messages from airships. A small board hung in the center of the room with airship names, designations, crew numbers, and quarantine status.
Pepper took his seat at the old radio, with a new mic. He found the right frequency using the old-fashioned dial.
The Midas Special still waited up there for him. “Got a lot of people worried for you.”
“How much time you giving me, Jack?”
“Ten hours.”
Pepper signed off. Ten hours before he needed to get into the emergency ball and head for the sky, giving up on all this.
The phone rang. It got handed to Heutzin, who stood. He hung it up and walked over. “Timas and the Aeolian avatar are back.”
Pepper was intrigued. “The pirates returned?” They had Scarlett jailed here, much to his annoyance. But what was the sense in worrying about negotiating with pirates when the Swarm approached? Scarlett was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Maybe the pirates would prove a valuable ally.
“No. They escaped. They returned aboard an Aeolian ore processor.”
Itotia had a very plucky son. With a slight grin Pepper turned to Heutzin. “Take me there. I want to talk to Timas.”
Heutzin raised an eyebrow. “What for?”
“Either you and he saw aliens on the surface, and I’m right, or Yatapek is going to die for no particular reason. I want to talk to him.”
Heutzin nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Pepper walked through the room, which at the word aliens had gone near silent.
Just the idea still spooked them all.
Timas was tired, wired, dehydrated, and elated to be alive, Pepper saw. He sat on a box inside an airlock, alone, waiting for four hours to pass and his quarantine to lift.
He’d arrived in an ore carrier that limped its way to the city, radioing requests for help that many had ignored. It could have been a Swarm ship, another trick. But Timas had demanded to speak to his parents. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize it was really him.
Itotia and Ollin also stood by the airlock, their smiles almost infectious.
“He’s alive!” Itotia grinned.
“I’m impressed.” Pepper stepped back from the door. “Let me in.”
“He’s under quarantine.”
“What can he do against me, even if he is infected?” Pepper walked up to the airlock door. “I want in.”
“What for?” Itotia asked.
“More questions about what he saw on the ground.”
“We aren’t sending more xocoyotzin,” Ollin said.
Pepper remained where he was. “Open it or I force it open myself.”
Heutzin worked the controls, earning a nasty glance from Itotia. The door opened, and Pepper thundered in, almost clipping his head on the top of the metal rim.
The door shut behind him.
Pepper looked down at the young man with the bags under his eyes. “I’m going to have ask you to go back down to the surface, because I can’t, and none of the other xocoyotzin found the aliens. And you have to succeed, because if you don’t, this city dies when the Swarm arrives.”
The words seemed to force Timas farther down onto the box, Pepper thought. Just one last time into the muck, one last time to try and save the city.
It was Yatapek’s last chance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Pepper dominated the airlock in his groundsuit. He’d gotten it powered up, although all the old parts still had stains and rusted bits on them. He creaked, sometimes hissed, but mainly thudded as he moved around. A machine-man, Timas thought. Though, given that Pepper was as much machine inside under his skin, it was nothing new for the strange warrior.
Katerina would have been impressed, even. But she’d remained aboard the Triple-Two. All the Aeolian ships around Yatapek were up to their weird political games, voting on what kind of army and defense to create. She wanted to play a part in the new Consensus, just as he’d wanted to reunite with his family.
He guessed the armada out there, and Achmed, was the closest thing she had to a family for right now.
But instead of a reunification with his family, Pepper was here, and he wanted Timas to bear another great burden. He crouched in front of Timas. “Timas, the future of humanity depends on our ability to move. We know our old enemy, the Satraps, exist out past New Anegada. The creatures your priests called gods, the Teotl—”
“That was a heresy, they were not gods. The real gods were not worshipped, and we suffered.” Timas responded by rote, and automatically. He was tired.
> “Okay, but those aliens, whatever heresies they plied on us, fled the Satraps and passed through here. We even found them a nice cometary belt that suited their needs, far, far away from noise and intrusion.” Pepper sat now, his back against the wall.
“You helped them?” Timas couldn’t believe it. “Ragamuffins helped them after the war?”
“They helped, in the end, fight the Satraps.”
“They were the Great Liars.”
“We didn’t have much in the way of allies.” Pepper folded his giant metal arms. “The Satraps controlled our technology. Even in defeat, they took with them most of their secrets. They suicided and took their minds with them. They destroyed almost all the factories that made antimatter, leaving us limping along from wormhole to wormhole out there. And now we know there are greater dangers out there, waiting for us, ready to prey on us. We are at a disadvantage. We need these technologies, and we need alien allies. The Satraps in the Forty-Eight worlds are all gone. And the other aliens . . .
“The problem is, they’re disappearing, too, hiding, going to ground. Scared we’ll pay them back, and rightly so. And now we’ve found them, but the Swarm is ready to wipe them out, and you in the process.”
Timas thought about Van. “We need them that badly, the aliens? After all they did to us in the past?”
“Without these things they can give us, we are lost in the dark, Timas. And if you can get down there we have allies: the aliens will want to fight to protect themselves, and the Ragamuffins will help us out.”
“That’s a lot to be responsible for,” Timas said. Again, he could feel a weight shoving down on his shoulders. That sensation again.
“It is.” Pepper leaned forward. “But look, think about it like this: Bring me back an alien and you save your city.”
“Haven’t you sent xocoyotzin down already?”
“Two waves, they didn’t find a thing. They also didn’t stay down as long as I had hoped, the weather’s been unpredictable.”
Now Timas frowned. “Where did they look?”
Pepper smiled and stood up. He gave the order for Heutzin to bring back the map the xocoyotzin had updated with their search patterns.
It was back in fifteen minutes, and as Timas looked at the markings, Pepper pulled out a small glass tube.
“What’s that?” Timas twisted the map around.
“Blood.” Pepper gave it to him. “Infected blood. For the aliens to analyze. In case they might be able to find something to fight the Swarm with. They may know more about it than we do.”
Timas pocketed it, and then folded the map up and pocketed that as well. “Okay.” For the city. For Cen. For himself. What other choice did he have? How could he not try to save his own city and people?
“You’re in?”
“Just one question.” Timas patted his pocket. “How am I going to speak to an alien?”
“That’s the least of your worries. They’ll have translators and technology for that. You just worry about finding them. And use this next three hours in quarantine to get some rest.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t hard to agree. He wanted to find the aliens and prove that he was right, even if Pepper had convinced everyone else that he was right.
Timas had noticed on the map that the xocoyotzin had been moving away from the storm, in the direction he’d seen the alien. But why would the aliens hide in the open when there was the storm to hide in? Maybe Timas had seen an alien returning to its hiding place.
He’d head into the storm when he returned.
He also noticed the xocoytozin ventured out only as far as half their breathable air. If he was going to head deep into the storm to find aliens that were hidden, he was going to have to risk using all of it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Itotia had them wait before lowering Timas. “You should give him the power pack in your suit. He’ll have a better chance down there.”
Pepper shook his head. “No.” He needed it. In case Timas didn’t return.
“You’re a selfish creature,” she said.
“Or maybe turning on a suit he never learned how to control would be more dangerous than letting him use it the way he knows how.”
“But either way, he isn’t getting it.”
Pepper looked down into the clouds and wondered just how hellish it really was.
He looked over at Timas, waiting patiently in the open cage.
“We’re losing time. Lower him.”
Itotia stood by Pepper as the cage began its descent toward the ground. Timas stood stiffly inside in his great, buglike suit, next to a second xocoyotzin, Momotzli, also in full groundsuit. Timas waved on his way down.
The giant spool spun and whirred as the cage grew smaller, and then finally dipped into the muck of the cloud layer underneath the city.
“Once again, you’ve sent my son away from me.” Itotia stepped back, holding an air mask to her mouth. Her eyes watered. Crying, or from the acid-tinged air?
Pepper wasn’t sure which.
He also didn’t reply. The universe was tough on humans. Young and old. And unfair. But why burden Itotia with that. It was better to let her keep her anger directed at him. Anger was useful, Pepper thought, and always appropriate.
“So when will you be leaving us?” Itotia asked.
Startled, Pepper stepped back. “What do you mean?”
“I remember something you said, back aboard the airship when you gave Timas to be beaten by Luc over and over again.”
“And that was?”
“Don’t die for a cause when you can come back later and inflict more damage. You know you’ll be able to do more with the Ragamuffins than here, with us. You won’t be sacrificing yourself for this cause; you have an out, don’t you?”
“The mongoose-men, I formed them, centuries ago.” She was right. “They’re damn effective. I’d like to bring them back.”
“We’re in the DMZ, you said they won’t come without the aliens. What if Timas comes back by himself, like all the other xocoyotzin?”
“We cross that bridge when we come to it,” Pepper said.
“I thought you hated politicians, now you give me their excuses.”
Her words hit sharp and hard. Calculatingly effective. “I bet a lot of people underestimate you.” Pepper thudded toward her. “I wonder if Ollin’s jockeying for power is really you behind him?”
Itotia stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “I love my son. So does Ollin. I see Timas in the middle of the night crying, and when he doesn’t tell us why, we’re not stupid. We know the weight on his shoulders. A whole city? Look at how tired he looks, how old that boy’s eyes are. We love our son, both of us. We do everything in our power to make sure that when he no longer fits in that suit and serves, that he will be taken care of. Wouldn’t you do the same?”
Would he? Pepper thought about it. He’d been relieved to see Timas alive. But was that because he had a chance to find the aliens again, or was it because he’d been impressed, and glad to see the kid return?
“I don’t know.”
She backed off and deflated slightly, the tension gone. “How long before you leave?”
“Six hours.”
“And he has five hours of air.” Itotia brushed her bangs aside. “Can you take him with you when he returns?”
“The bubble can carry me in my armor. If there is time for me to shuck it and get in with him, yes. If there isn’t, I can’t.”
Itotia swallowed. “I guess that’s as fair as I can hope for.”
“Fairer than most will get on this city.”
“Just do one thing?” she asked.
“What is that?”
“Make sure you have the time to get him aboard.” She tapped the metal collar with her hand, then turned and left Pepper by the hatch.
PART SIX
CHAPTER FOUTY
At the surface the elevator’s screws dug in and the cage’s lip bit into the ground. Timas opened the lift door and stepped off.
He looked around at the heat-rippled landscape, gaining his bearings. Momotzli stumbled after him.
Timas turned around. He’d never buddied with Mo before. When Heutzin had asked who the second xocoyotzin on the ground would be, Mo’s intense father had pushed Mo forward.
One didn’t go alone to the surface.
Timas got the impression, though he couldn’t say for sure, that Mo was not excited about being volunteered. He hadn’t spoken at all, just accepted his father’s orders and walked to the nearest groundsuit like a prisoner receiving his sentence.
Now the two of them stood in the murk.
Timas tapped Mo’s faceplate and took the lead. He could see the dim form of the cuatetl, and steered them step by heavy step toward it. The wind kicked wickedly today. It scoured up the muck and struck hard enough with the occasional gust that Timas worried about falling over.
Mo stayed behind him. Using him as a windbreak, and also close enough behind to try and catch him if he fell.
The sound of wind against the suit filled his ears as Timas moved on. Sweat dripped down his forehead. During the long drop to the surface, he’d gotten used to the body odor of the suit again.
At the cuatetl Timas took his bearings again, remembering the incident. The thing he’d seen had been thirty degrees off from where the cuatetl pointed, as he’d told Pepper. That was the direction to strike out in. It seemed.
But that was not in the direction of the storm.
Timas checked to make sure Mo followed, and then started the hike.
A small windup timer hanging around his neck inside the suit ticked. It would sound two alarms. The first, at the halfway point, warned him to turn around and get back to the city.
The second told him when to expect his air to run out.
Rock rubble crunched under his feet, and he had to stop several times to let the suit catch up to his heavy breathing and dehumidify the interior. Water droplets and condensation covered his visor, making it next to impossible to see out.
Behind him, Mo struggled. Timas occasionally paused to let Mo catch his breath for a few minutes before starting up again. When he glanced back during these breaks, Mo looked frightened and tired through his faceplate.
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