She stalked back to her throne, hair thrashing. The colonel yanked Jack back into the mass of onlookers flanking the throne.
Her words reverberated in Jack’s mind. Vivisection? Oh, no. Please, no. I’ll take that energy pulse in the head, after all.
The colonel—Sparkshaft—dragged him towards the airlocks. Then stopped short.
The crowd had pulled back, leaving an empty space around the airlocks. Everyone seemed tense and expectant. Jack glanced at the Shiplord, that skinny knot of black bio-antennas and pure evil. She sat on her throne with one foot tucked under her, the other foot ticking to and fro like the tail of an angry cat. She, too, stared at the airlocks.
The smallest one opened.
A band of uniformed Krijistal marched onto the bridge, hauling Keelraiser.
Jack’s heart plummetted.
Keelraiser’s feet dragged along the floor. Blood smeared his face. He seemed barely conscious.
That’s it, then.
Keelraiser had been caught. Red-handed, by the looks of things.
He had failed.
Coetzee had died for nothing.
No hope remained.
Despair swamped Jack. He barely heard the mutters around him, the repetitions of Keelraiser’s name: “Iristigut.”
The Shiplord leaned down from her throne. Her voice dripped malice. “You’re famous, big brother.”
CHAPTER 41
The Beauty of Destruction touched down at Brussels Airport at the end of a journey that had meandered over the entire globe. The last planned leg of Shiplord Tshaveg’s scientific tour, to Scandinavia, had had to be cancelled when another meteor struck a volcano in Iceland, filling the skies over the northern Atlantic with ash. Tshaveg was furious. She left her seat while the shuttle was still taxiing and stalked forward to the cockpit. Skyler just sat there, gazing out at the blackened hulks of passenger planes stranded on the tarmac. He felt like those burnt-out jets looked. Beyond grief, beyond plotting and scheming, almost beyond despair. Que sera sera. Requesciat in pace, Earth.
The cargo hold of the Beauty and the other shuttles that accompanied it brimmed with dead animals, plants, and human beings, all deep-frozen to be examined later. Skyler had had the ‘honor’ of watching, in the Amazonian jungle, on the Russian steppe, on the Tanzanian savannah, and in an Australian nature preserve, as the Liberator’s crew bagged and tagged everything they could get hold of. They had not visited North America.
Ripstiggr clouted him on the leg. “Move it, Taft.” Skyler had been given his headset back, to facilitate his role as guide, so Ripstiggr could speak normally instead of struggling to form words with his mouth. Of course, that meant circumspection. “Shiplord wants us to find her a nice hotel in the city center.” Ripstiggr had added another human skill to his repertoire: a spasm of one eye that suggested a wink.
Nice hotels in Brussels in 2024 were few and far between. Some months back Ripstiggr had obliged his North African and Russian allies with a massive air strike on the European institutions. Nothing but rubble remained of the imposing official buildings Skyler remembered from his last visit to the city. A slight rise in the ground had spared the city center from the blast, but broken windows and looted shops abounded. NAA soldiers drove around, plundering what remained.
Giles took over. Thanks to his former association with the European Space Agency, he knew Brussels well. They ended up at the Hotel Amigo off Grand Place, where the North African Alliance was hosting many of the delegates to the global peace summit. The hotel occupied the same block as a police station. The Liberator’s crew turned their noses up at the hotel, occupied the police station, and began moving hotel furniture into the drunk cells. Meanwhile, the ‘advance team,’ including Skyler and Ripstiggr, headed for the cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. The summit was being held there, owing to the vaporization of the European parliament.
Two entire blocks had been cordoned off. Skyler pulled up his hood and skulked into the cathedral.
Free-standing lights ran off a noisy generator. Long tables had replaced the pews in the nave. A huge drop-sheet covered the pulpit, emblazoned with the words ONE GALAXY in English and Rristigul.
The summit had been running for two days already, although the Homemaker’s orbital bombardment made the proceedings about as significant as a game of checkers during the apocalypse. Aides scuttled around, collecting water bottles and papers. The day’s sessions had ended. Skyler had missed his chance of bumping into Hannah.
He leaned against a statue in the shadowy north transept and felt in his pocket for cigarettes.
One good thing about being back on Earth: Marlboros.
Skyler had never smoked habitually, only when he wanted to piss people off. Now he was pissed off at the whole galaxy. Lighting up in a cathedral seemed like an an appropriate gesture.
His legs were giving out. He would have to call for the damn wheelchair to get back to the car. Cigarette clamped in his lips, he slid down to sit on the stone floor, and realized he didn’t have his lighter.
“Oh, fuck everything,” he muttered.
“Need a light?”
A parka-clad man about his own age stood in front of him, holding out a Bic. Looked Indian, but his accent was pure Joisey.
“Thanks.” Skyler lit up and exhaled smoke.
“Are you Skyler Taft?”
“How’d you know?”
“I worked with Lance Garner before you did. I’m Kuldeep Srivastava.”
“Oh, shit.” Lance. A tsunami of bad memories rolled through Skyler’s mind. “Yeah, he mentioned you. So what are you doing these days?”
“Was in the gaming industry for a while, now I’m back working for the government. Same job, higher stakes.”
“And what brings you to the once-fair city of Brussels?”
“Sightseeing.”
A Lance-type answer. Skyler cracked a smile. “For a minute there I thought you were serious.”
“What about you?”
Skyler was surprised Kuldeep had to ask. “I’m here to take all the brown M&Ms out of the bowls, double-check that the tables are high enough, and make sure there are no snipers in the belfry. You know the kind of thing.”
“You don’t look very busy.”
“Yeah, well. Meteors falling. Atmosphere rapidly filling up with CO2. I’m having a hard time getting motivated.”
Kuldeep sat down next to him. “Whose side are you on?” he said quietly.
“Earth’s side, of course.”
“There were question marks around you after the Victory episode.”
“Listen,” Skyler said. “It is possible to be on Earth’s side and also to think that some of the rriksti are cool. As far as the Victory goes, I happen to believe massacres are a bad thing. What about you?”
“Yeah,” Kuldeep said. “OK.”
“Are you here with Flaherty?” It was still difficult for Skyler to utter his ex-boss’s name. Rancor lingered.
“He’s here. But I came via Puerto Rico, with Hannah Ginsburg.”
Skyler stiffened. He stubbed out his cigarette and tried to stand up.
Kuldeep helped him to his feet. “You haven’t got your Earth legs yet, have you?”
Skyler gritted his teeth as he limped down the transept, leaning on Kuldeep. When they got back to the nave, Kuldeep pointed towards the doors.
There stood Hannah, silhouetted against the waning day. Skyler lurched forward, nearly losing his balance. “Hannah!”
She turned towards him … and a tall rriksti strode up to her and held out his arms. She went into his embrace. She had not been looking at Skyler. She had not even seen him. She had been looking at Ripstiggr, and now she pressed her forehead against his chest, as if his arms were home.
Skyler retreated behind a pillar. When he could speak, he said, “Can you do me a favor? Call for my wheelchair. Oh, and maybe a loaded revolver and a bottle of sleeping pills.”
“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” Kuldeep sai
d. He pressed a scrap of paper into Skyler’s hand, and padded away beneath the stone saints.
*
Shiplord Tshaveg arrived at Hotel Amigo as night was falling. She ignored the crowds that had waited for hours to greet her, and went to ground in the police station, in a visibly foul mood.
“The Homemaker isn’t taking her calls,” Ripstiggr said.
Skyler was not inclined to take Ripstiggr’s calls, so to speak, after what he’d witnessed this afternoon. He sat at the piano in the hotel bar, playing Greensleeves with two fingers. Rain slapped the remaining windows and blew in past the trash bags that covered broken ones. Volcanic ash skinned the glass of wine Skyler had parked on top of the piano.
“It’s going to take years to wreck the climate like this,” Ripstiggr said, running the pads of his middle fingers along the dusty bar top. “A volcanic eruption here and there; that’s nothing. Planets are big.”
“Global warming denier,” Giles said with a hollow laugh. He was lying on a sofa, flicking through back issues of French gay magazines—the equivalent of Skyler’s Marlboros: an old pleasure that had lost its savor.
“It’s true,” Ripstiggr said. “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the main source of it on Earth was your filthy hydrocarbon-burning industrial base. Thanks to us, Earth’s industries basically shut down years ago. It’ll take a whole lot of meteors to equal the lost annual CO2 output from China, let alone from the world. So Tshaveg is really just pissed about the risk that one of the Homemaker’s rocks might hit us.”
“I’m a bit concerned about that, too,” said Hriklif, curled up on a sofa with a bottle of vodka.
“Oh, grow wings and fly, Lightsider,” Ripstiggr said. “She’s going to have her triumph, and then she’s going to return to the Liberator with her specimens and spend the next half a century hanging out in orbit while they try to alter the climate with a nail gun. Will you be going with her, or staying here with us?”
“I don’t know,” Hriklif said miserably.
Skyler spun his wheelchair away from the piano. He knew that his friend had been sickened by their global bagging and tagging tour. It turned out that Hriklif had actually grown up in the twilight zone of Imf, on the estate owned by Keelraiser’s extended family. He was as much of a Lightsider as Kuldeep Srivastava was an Indian. Skyler wheeled over to him and clasped his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” Hriklif snapped.
Linda, lying at the other end of the sofa, said, “He’s worried about Keelraiser and Jack.”
“No, I’m not,” Hriklif said.
“Well, I am,” Linda said. “They didn’t get left behind for no reason. Ms. T—” this was her insulting nickname for Tshaveg— “is going to use them as weapons, or bait, or some damn thing.”
“Good guess,” Ripstiggr said. “I heard the Shiplord talking to her people on the shutle. It sounds as if she’s put Iristigut into play as a deniable agent. If he can take out the Homemaker, Tshaveg is left in sole possession of the theater. If he fails … well, it’s no skin off her face. She just blames it on those filthy rebels off the Lightbringer.”
“And we lose either way,” Giles said, “Fantastique.”
That was how Skyler felt. But he said, “Or, maybe we don’t lose. Come on, Hriklif. Linda, change into your nice jeans. We’re going to a party.”
The scrap of paper given him by Kuldeep had two words on it: Le Cerceuil. Giles instantly nodded in recognition. It was only a few minutes’ walk from their hotel. Of course, in post-conquest Brussels, you could get killed several times in that distance. They walked and rolled across the Grand Place, crunching broken glass, avoiding heaps of rubbish. Nigerian irregulars paced alongside them, carrying machine-guns. With the power off everywhere, the urban jungle had reverted to primordial blackness; the hotel behind them blazed like a beacon in a wasteland.
“Well, this is it,” Giles said, regarding a smashed plate glass window.
Sentries materialized out of the shadows and challenged them in French. Kuldeep came out of a doorway. “Who are these guys?” he said, squinting at the Nigerians.
“They’re from Lagos. They’re on our side now,” Skyler said. “That’s the price of saving Earth, Srivastava. Roll with it.”
“The president is going to love this,” Kuldeep said grumpily. “And—fuck!” He had caught sight of Hriklif’s tall form and floating hair.
“This is Hriklif. He’s a friend,” Skyler said.
“If you’re playing me, Taft, you’re dead.”
“Hey there. You must be the NXC guy,” Linda spoke up from her wheelchair. “You assholes welshed on our deal to send my family to the moon, so don’t even start, OK? It’s too late for this dick-measuring shit.”
They left the wheelchairs at street level and filed into a basement filled with cigarette smoke and candlelight. The intonations of American English filled the room. All eyes went to the newcomers. Silence fell.
Skyler’s throat grew dry. It was like falling back through time. The basement was full of Lances. Oh, not that they all looked like Lance. Some were black, some white, some brown. But they were all American, and they all had the eyes of killers.
“Welcome to United States Army Europe,” Kuldeep said. “I kid, I kid. But we still had a lot of troops over here when the NAA rolled in. These are some of them.”
“What’s that squid doin’ here?” a southern voice yelled.
Hriklif switched on his field radio, and held up four bottles. His hands were so large he could hold them all at once, by the necks, like a bouquet. “I brought the vodka,” he said.
A while later, with rap playing from someone’s battery-powered portable, and Linda wheelchair-dancing with a Marine captain, Kuldeep got to the point.
“We’ve got the kinetic end covered. But I need your help with something else.”
Skyler moved his skull-shaped beer mug in circles. The table was a coffin with a skeleton inside. Pictures of graveyards covered the walls. Le Cercueil meant The Coffin. It seemed appropriate. “How can I help you?”
“We need a diversion.”
“Find me a guitar and I’ll sing Greensleeves.”
“Funny,” Kuldeep said. “If I hook you up with internet access, can you get in touch with your brother?”
CHAPTER 42
The Shiplord leaned down from her throne. “You’re famous, big brother,” she said to Keelraiser. “But you’re not the most famous one in the family anymore.”
Big brother. Jack’s jaw dropped.
Well, Keelraiser had once mentioned that he came from a prominent military family.
How prominent? The Shiplord of the Homemaker was his sister.
That’s why he had been so confident he could roam freely around the ship.
But it hadn’t worked out that way, had it? When the guards let him go, he had crumpled to the floor. Now he was struggling to stand up, drooling blood on the mosaics. Jack’s fists clenched. His own body felt like one big injury, aching with vicarious pain.
“Daddy was very disappointed in you, Iristigut.”
“What’s that to me?” Keelraiser said. He managed to stand. He was still wearing the bottom half of his spacesuit. He looked as under-dressed in this crowd as if he’d turned up to Ascot in a swimsuit. He touched his mouth, looked at the blood on his fingers.
Jack edged behind Colonel Sparkshaft. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Keelraiser to see him. Rather, he didn’t want Keelraiser to know that Jack was seeing him like this.
“Oh, I know you care nothing about how others feel,” the Shiplord said. “But you’ll be pleased to know Daddy didn’t let your betrayal get him down. He spent the first 2,150 years after your departure in cryosleep on Alpha Centauri Bb.” Rriksti years were like funny money. This only came out to about 60 Earth years. “Then he had himself awakened. The first news he received was of your rebellion. Shame and disgust spurred him into action. He led his fleet back home and carried out a successful conquest.”
It’s nothing but
conquest with these people, Jack thought. Like spiraling a black hole in smaller and smaller circles.
“I did not know that,” Keelraiser said.
“Of course you didn’t. The first thing you blew up was the Lightbringer’s comms.”
“Is he … are they all … still alive?”
“Better than alive, they are famous,” the Shiplord said. “Daddy conquered both the Darkside and the Lightside. He unified them. Elevating the Lightside nobility to the Temple may have been a mistake, in my opinion. That was what inspired Tshaveg to mount her sordid little coup on board the Liberator. ‘If we are now partners in government back home, we should have an equal say in this invasion …’ Well, at least she didn’t blow a hole in the fucking ship.”
Keelraiser said, “So the wars really are over.”
“They’re calling Daddy the Great Unifier.” The Shiplord kicked her feet on her throne like a little girl.
“That’s it, then,” Keelraiser said quietly. “All unified under the Temple, forever and ever.”
“Daddy has only one unfulfilled wish,” the Shiplord said. “To see Earth brought under the rule of the Temple, too. That is my job. I’m glad you came to watch. You might get a kick out of this, considering how much you like blowing things up.”
The panoramic view of stars overhead spun. Earth came into view, filling half the ceiling. All the rriksti craned their heads back. Jack did, too, although this was not as comfortable a posture for him as for the rriksti. After a few moments he got a crick in his neck. Nothing was happening. Earth turned sedately on its axis.
“What’s the delay?” the Shiplord said.
A faint voice crackled, “Apologies, Shiplord. The missiles do have to be retargeted, which requires writing a new navigation program and downloading it to the onboard computers. We have not yet …”
“Oh, in the name of Ystyggr, how long can it take?” Without waiting for an answer, the Shiplord said, “All right, while we wait, here’s a replay.”
The ceiling displayed a long-distance shot of a meteor crashing into the North Atlantic. Oh cripes, Jack thought, that’ll be Iceland. Clouds spread east on the wind from a smouldering spider of magma.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 29
