Hannah sat—collapsed—beside Ripstiggr. She put her arm around him, in a reversal of the way he usually sheltered her. It only went halfway around his broad back. “Oh, Ripstiggr,” she said, tears in her eyes.
“They’re going to take one look at this mess and nuke us from orbit.”
She couldn’t respond to what he had said about love. It would feel too much like admitting defeat, for some reason. She focused on the threat from the Liberator and Homemaker. “We’ve got to stop them.”
Ripstiggr waved at the mountainous bulk of the Lightbringer towering over the airport. “You never saw her when she was undamaged. She was a beauty. Unstoppable, next to invulnerable. And now we’re facing two of them. I think there were also plans to upgrade the point defenses.”
“There has to be a way.”
“We have one ICBM and four unarmed shuttles.”
“We might have something else,” Hannah said. The decision came easily.
“What?”
“I’ve been working on something. You know how I was trying to fix up the other wrecked shuttles?”
“Yeah. You took a whole reactor apart and put it back together, and I had to spend the whole day putting you back together.” Ripstiggr gently tugged on a curl of her hair. “That was fun.”
Hannah nodded. “Well, it was worth it. I figured out how the gauge field works.”
“You could have just read the manual.”
“The manual doesn’t tell you how to reverse the gauge field’s polarity.”
Ripstiggr turned to look at her. His sunglasses hid his eyes. Hannah reached up and tugged them down on his nose.
“It can be used as a weapon,” she said.
“I heard something about that back home. The Lightsiders weaponized reverse gauge fields during World War ten thousand and something. It’s messy, dangerous. Short-range.”
“It’s doable.”
The silence said what they both knew: she had not said anything about this before, because she hadn’t been able to decide who to use it on. She shrugged awkwardly.
“I’ll show you how it works. We can add the capability to the shuttles. Give them a fighting chance.”
*
Keelraiser closed down the comms link to the Lightbringer. He threw his head back in the classic rriksti posture of exasperation.
“Didn’t go well?” Jack had stayed behind after the others left to listen in on Keelraiser’s conversation with the Lightbringer, but since it had almost all been in Rristigul, he might as well not have bothered. He peeled himself off the wall where he had lurked out of camera range.
“They’re panicking,” Keelraiser said. “They’ll waste the next two weeks running around like headless chickens. Is this correct?”
“I wouldn’t wonder.”
“Oh, well. It was my duty to warn them.”
Jack prowled around the room, considering and discarding options. “So, if anything’s going to be done, we’ve got to do it ourselves.”
“Yes.” Keelraiser straightened up and began to type, glancing from one monitor to the other. “We’ve got two weeks. We’ll ramp up the output of the thorium reactor to meet the bunker’s baseload requirements, fill the Cloudeater’s reaction mass tanks, and carry out thorough systems checks. The life-support systems will need a tune-up, and some new components may have to be fabbed and calibrated.”
“You’re giving me the Cloudeater after all?!” Weeks ago, Jack had pressed Keelraiser for a loan of his ship. That was when he thought their worst enemies were space, time, and the nitrogen cycle. Now, they faced two planet-killers. He couldn’t imagine what one unarmed shuttle could do against that. But at least he’d be doing something. That was better than doing nothing.
“No,” Keelraiser said. “I am not giving you the Cloudeater. I’m going to fly it myself.”
Jack screwed up his face. He did not like the idea of being a passenger. But again: better than nothing. “There was this movie,” he began. “Star Wars. You must have seen it …”
“Yes,” Keelraiser said. “How we laughed. The Liberator and the Homemaker are not Death Stars. They were designed by experts, not entertainers.”
“Yeah, but they’d still go boom if you threw a flying fusion bomb at them—”
“There are two of them, and they have excellent point defenses. Anyway, I have a plan. Save your space combat fantasies for a time when I can just get drunk, close my eyes, and listen to you talking about explosions.”
Jack grinned, shrugged. “Lay it on me.”
As Keelraiser explained what he had in mind, Jack’s tenuous optimism soured into dread.
There was no way this was ever going to work.
CHAPTER 33
Kuldeep bent over the screens in the monitoring room at Arecibo, watching Alien Spaceship No. 2 blaze towards Earth. Jill Crawley, the NASA data analyst who worked with Burke, had constructed a model based on the JSWT data. In a touch of dark humor, she’d chosen a skull-and-crossbones icon to represent the spaceship. Its fiery tail blazed across the screen, closing the distance to Earth.
Kuldeep glanced at Burke. The former NASA director looked about a thousand years old today. Everyone in the room was silent. The whole world seemed to be silent until gunfire popped down the hill.
Reacting with scalded-cat speed, Kuldeep pushed Savannah towards her mother. “Get into the generator room. Lock the door.” He ran out into the hall, reaching for his radio.
“Contact,” was all he heard. Then more shots. Loud over the radio, faint in his other ear.
He leapt down the stairs. Most likely, thugs from San Juan in search of loot.
Burke hurried down the stairs behind him.
“Sir, let me handle this!”
Kuldeep rounded the landing. Below, daylight poured into the visitor center. Interactive displays and exhibits stood in front of big windows overlooking the telescope’s dish.
Clack. Clack. Clack. A squid stalked across the floor, turning its helmet from side to side.
Kuldeep gripped his .38 but he did not draw it. He had never actually seen a squid before. Eight feet tall, it wore battle armor. Curved, reflective surfaces. A helmet the size of a beach ball, shaped like a blunt pyramid. Many-clawed hands held a scarily minimalist rifle. The future had come to Arecibo.
It saw him—or smelled him, or sensed him—and aimed its rifle in his direction.
His .38 clattered on the landing.
More footsteps echoed below. A human woman scuffled into the visitor center, wearing sunglasses, a flak jacket, and designer jeans.
“Rich!” she screamed, and hurtled up the stairs.
Burke brushed past Kuldeep. He and the woman hugged, laughed, cried.
Kuldeep recognized the one and only Hannah Ginsburg. Relief tinged his wariness.
“Where are my guys?” he said gruffly.
Armored squids surrounded them, rifles aimed at the men’s midsections.
Hannah said, “Your guys would be the wiseasses who shot at us back there? One of them got hurt. He’ll be OK. They shouldn’t have started shit.”
“Can you blame them?” Kuldeep said, looking up at his own reflection in the mirrored helmets.
Hannah’s lips crimped. “You know what, I’m not into this conversation. We’re in a hurry.” She and Burke started upstairs, still doing their Oh my God it’s so good to see you thing. Burke was clearly over the moon to be reunited with his protégé. He always had been a big softie.
Upstairs in the monitoring room, the analysts peeked out from underneath desks. Hannah waved at them. “Hi, guys.” She turned to her alien escorts. “OK, we need all the computers. Take everything. And disable the internet connection.” She faced Burke. “Rich, I’m really sorry. But you have to come with us, too.”
Kuldeep found his voice. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes, you are,” Hannah said, mildly.
Kuldeep shut up. He couldn’t see Savannah or Candy. They ought to be hiding in the
generator room. Dared he try to sneak away?
Hannah gravitated to the computer where the model of Alien Spaceship No. 2’s trajectory was still looping on the screen. “This is it, huh?”
Burke nodded. “This model incorporates new data from a JWST wide-angle experiment. Just one of the observations the telescope has been running automatically for the last two years. As soon as the ship started burning, it showed up like a firework display.”
“Where are you getting this data?”
“We have a guy in the UK. He’s been downloading the JWST’s data dumps.”
“The UK, huh. Ouch. Can he process the data? Does he know what he’s seeing?”
“No. Only we have those tools.”
“I knew it had to be you leaking the data,” Hannah said, to Kuldeep and the analysts as much as Burke. “Well, I knew it had to be someone in the US, because of the NASA connection. And this is the only working telescope in US territory.”
“How’d you get here?” Kuldeep said.
Hannah turned her gaze on him. Her eyes were brown. Human-shaped, human-sized. Yet that profound, penetrating stare—that was not human. He grew even more afraid.
“Shuttle’s parked on Route 129,” she said. “We borrowed a couple of trucks to get up here.”
“Oh.”
“We have to take you with us,” she told the analysts. “Sorry, but we just can’t have this shit getting out. We’d have a global panic on our hands.”
Burke said, “Is the Global Peace Summit really going forward?”
“You bet. It’s more important than ever to make a show of confidence. I’m going to be there.”
“With that on the way?”
“What am I supposed to do, run around wailing that the sky is falling?”
Burke nodded. “I never doubted you, Hannah. I knew you’d end up doing the right thing.”
Pink tinged Hannah’s tanned cheeks. She examined the model again, clicked around for the underlying figures. “Only one ship?”
“The latest data indicates that eight days of travel time separates them. This is Ship Number 2. As you see, NASA naming conventions are as imaginative as ever. It’ll arrive on Valentine’s Day. Ship Number 3 will arrive on the 22nd, assuming an identical deceleration burn.”
“This is good stuff, Rich. You can set up your lab again when we get there. Keep observing the ships as long as your guy in the UK remains un-beheaded.” Kuldeep grimaced at the reference to the invasion of the UK. Internet rumor said that the front-line NAA troops were committing atrocities in London. “Hell, we can set you up with a radio telescope so you can download the JWST data yourself.”
Burke said, “Hannah, where are we going?”
“To hell in a handbasket, I expect. But, you know. One thing I’ve learned from the rriksti?” She gestured at the armored squids who were carrying the computers out of the room. “Never, ever, ever give up.”
A door opened on the far side of the room. Candy peeked through.
“It’s OK, honey,” Burke said. “It’s just Hannah.”
Kuldeep ran to Savannah and hugged her, pressing her frightened face into his chest.
“All right, everyone,” Hannah said. “Time to go. We can pick up your stuff from the chalet on the way.”
In the back of a stolen delivery truck that smelled of chickens, bumping down the mountain road, Savannah threw up. Hannah, who was riding in the back with them, offered a water bottle and a clean towel from her own rucksack.
Savannah leaned against Kuldeep, staring over the truck’s tailgate, groaning.
“Carsick, huh?” Hannah said sympathetically.
“I’m not carsick,” Savannah said. “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh.” A shadow crossed Hannah’s face.
“I’ve been stuck in fucking Puerto Rico, eating plantains, and now you’re dragging us off to Africa. And all I want is to go to McDonalds.”
After a moment, Hannah reached into her rucksack. “Well, it isn’t McDonalds, but …” She lifted out a can of Pringles. A bag of Doritos. A packet of cheese-flavored rice cakes. “I have a total weakness for this stuff myself. It’s really bad, but I got the guys to fly to South Africa and load a whole junk food aisle into the plane.”
“Oh. My. God. Gimme.”
Kuldeep wished he could have been the one to give Savannah the chips she’d been craving. As she crunched blissfully, he took a Dorito and let it melt on his tongue. The flavor brought back a lost world.
Hannah moved to sit next to him. “You’re the NXC guy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“President’s liaison to NASA?”
“NASA. Ha. Yeah.”
“We’re going to the DRC first. Drop everyone off. But then I have to head to Brussels for the summit. I’d like you to come with me.”
Kuldeep’s arm tightened around Savannah. “What if I say no?”
“Jeez. I put it nicely. I didn’t have to. To be clear, you’re coming. We have five days to conquer the world, and I need your help.”
CHAPTER 34
Alexei found Jack in the CELL dorm where he’d been hot-bunking since the destruction of the rotating hab. Jack was lying on his bunk, drinking krak and flicking through photos on an iPad.
“What’re you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m having a fit of crippling existential doubt.”
“Oh. I thought you were getting drunk.”
“No, that’s the part where I’m trying to motivate myself. Time to go, huh?”
That was why Alexei had come looking for him, but he sat down on the bunk near Jack’s chest. “Who’s that?” The pictures on the iPad all featured the same serious-faced little boy.
“Linda’s kid.”
“Jack.”
“Don’t worry. I have a lot of reasons to get drunk but she’s not one of them.”
“Good to know.” Alexei adjusted the cross-over of his robe. He had Zhenya tucked in there, asleep. He shouldn’t be drinking when he was babysitting, but he reached for the bottle of krak anyway. “I have a hundred reasons to get drunk, too.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re leaving me here with Coetzee. That’s ninety-nine reasons right there.”
“So come with us.”
“I can’t.”
“Probably wise.” Jack tossed the iPad aside, laced his hands on his chest, and stared up at the underside of the bunk above. “This feels all wrong.”
“When you’re feeling in the dumps …” Alexei sang softly.
“Don’t be silly chumps,” Jack picked it up, and then broke off. “But we are being silly chumps. We’re going to put ourselves out there as bait for the Liberator, get ourselves captured, and sabotage the ship from the inside? It’ll never work.”
“But you’ve got a different plan, haven’t you?” Alexei said. “You’re going to nuke them. Where there’s an ICBM there’s a way.”
Jack laughed. “How did you guess?”
“It’s these implants,” Alexei said, indicating his eyes. Cleanmay had developed filters that enabled humans to see in the rriksti-visible spectrum. He’d had them implanted when he went under the knife to have his bones done. “They give me the ability to read your mind.” He cackled at Jack’s expression.
“What do they actually do?”
“I can see in the dark, see more gradations of darker colors.” Alexei lifted the crossover of his smock to let Jack peek at the snoozing Zhenya. “I can tell them apart now.”
“Hello, little guy,” Jack crooned. He reached out a forefinger and touched the sleeping baby’s foot. Jokily, he said, “You know, he doesn’t look much like you.”
Alexei cringed. He’d known Jack would ask about this sooner or later. “They aren’t mine, idiot. I am sure all my sperm have two heads at this point.”
“Right. Mine probably glow in the dark.”
“They’re Keelraiser’s.” Alexei hated the way that sounded. “Nene had to choose a father. She chose him. It was a spe
rm donor type of arrangement.”
Jack’s face was unreadable, but he said loyally, “They’re obviously not his in any meaningful sense. They’re yours.”
They walked through the operations section towards the airlock. CELLies sat in miserable huddles, getting no work done. They all knew about the Liberator and the Homemaker. That was bad enough. They didn’t know about the other issues that Keelraiser had filled Alexei in on: the nitrogen and carbon shortages that were going to kill them all in a few months, anyway. When Alexei thought about that, he felt a surge of resentment so intense that he wanted to tell Jack he’d changed his mind. I’m coming with you …
Jack stopped outside a closed door with a biometric reader next to it. “I was just thinking. If you’re not coming, there’s room on the shuttle …”
“And?”
“I’d like to take Linda.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“I think she’d do anything to save Earth. That makes her an asset.”
“What will Keelraiser say?”
“I don’t actually care.”
Alexei pressed his palm to the biometric reader. The door unlocked. He pushed it open. Linda sat on the floor in the converted office that had become CELL’s jail. There was nowhere else to sit.
She spat at him.
“Be nice,” Alexei said. “We’re letting you out of here. You are going back to Earth.”
“My way of saying sorry,” Jack said. “Offering you another chance to die horribly. Are you up for it?”
“Hell, yeah!” Linda’s face lit up. She hugged first Alexei, then Jack. “Thank you. You guys rock.”
“At least I won’t have to deal with you anymore,” Alexei said.
They hurried to the airlock. In the changing room, Jack and Linda donned rriksti EVA suits.
Coetzee strolled around the banks of lockers. Alexei zeroed in on this tempting target for his resentment. He went up to Coetzee, deliberately invading his personal space. “Going to see them off?” Coetzee wore a rriksti suit, doffed to his shoulders.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 23
