2 km. Right on the edge of bio-radio range. So the Dealbreaker should have received his earlier instructions. But had it executed them? Where was it now?
Svamblizant. Come in.
Nothing. Either the Dealbreaker was now out of range, or it had been destroyed or disabled. A lot of debris must have gone flying when the Homemaker broke in half. Come to think of it, what about all those other asteroid chunks? They were still out there, hazards to any ship trying to thread a path through them.
Come in, Svamblizant. Come in.
The Shiplord got down on her hands and knees. She crawled up to Jack and stared into his suited face. “It’s talking.”
“I told you he was one of us,” Keelraiser said.
“He’s a hairy ape.”
“He’s a shuttle pilot. I consider him Krijistal. He’s earned it, for better or for worse.” Keelraiser got up. He scanned the consoles and found the one he was looking for. “Give him transmitter access.”
“No.”
“Do it!”
A second later: “Enabled.”
“I can’t tell the difference,” Jack said.
“Just talk,” Keelraiser said. “It’ll be broadcast over the ship-to-ship channel. But hurry up. They’re almost through the door.”
The red-hot spot on the door had spread into a circle 20 centimeters across. Jack recalled the way they’d dug out the CELL bunker with a comms laser. Same grindingly slow process. But in this case, there was only a few inches of metal to get through.
Svamblizant. Come in, damn you!
The calm voice of the shuttle’s computer answered, Svamblizant here.
“Yes!” Jack shouted. The readouts in his vision updated, flooding his brain with information. The Dealbreaker had followed his instructions to the letter. It was orbiting at a location which would have been a few hundred meters off the Homemaker’s bows, if the Homemaker had still been there. It was not. Keelraiser’s asteroid chunk had approached from below, against the Homemaker’s direction of travel. The impact had tossed the surviving fragment of the Homemaker higher, but robbed it of velocity, reshaping its orbital path into an ellipse that would steadily diverge from its former orbit. Already the Dealbreaker was several hundred klicks away.
Jack marshaled his thoughts into the shuttle’s format. Report to my location ASAP. Whilst underway, power up that system. The one hidden in the dorsal power busses.
Executing.
“Right, my shuttle’s coming.” He stood up. He ached all over, his throat was parched and sore from the smoke, and there was nothing to drink in a rriksti suit.
The Shiplord said, “What good will a shuttle do us, if we cannot get to the airlock?”
Keelraiser said, “We’ll simply have to get to the airlock. Put your suit on.”
“No, wait,” Jack said.
The Shiplord shrugged out of her robes. At the same time, an EVA suit flowed over her skinny body.
An energy beam stabbed through the door. It passed between Keelraiser and the Shiplord and seared into the wall. A console shorted out, vomiting smoke.
“Fuck that,” the Shiplord gasped. She froze for a second, then dropped low. “I’m venting the atmosphere.”
Loose objects in the drive chancel took flight, tumbling towards the hole in the door, where they caught fire as the energy beam continued to chew the hole wider.
The beam went dark.
“Opening the door.”
Keelraiser grabbed Jack in one hand and his sister in the other as the pressure door flew open.
Bright green emergency strip-lighting made the bridge look like an aquarium. Smoke streamed towards the airlocks. All seven of them gaped wide. The ragged end of the wreck would already have been depressurized. Now the remaining atmosphere was whooshing out of the bridge in a gale. Rriksti tumbled helplessly towards the airlocks.
Jack hooked a knee around the edge of the throne and held on, while the weight of the two rriksti threatened to pull his arms out of their sockets. Svamblizant!
Here.
Already the gale was dying down. The stillness of vacuum settled on the bridge. Too bad. The officers of the Homemaker peeled themselves off the walls. Unfortunately, they were professional enough to have donned their EVA suits as soon as the trouble started.
“My throne contains an emergency refuge,” the Shiplord said. She started to climb towards it.
In through the airlocks poured a solid mass of rriksti, thumping to the floor one after the other as they encountered the bridge’s gravity. It was like watching recycling bugs spill out of irrigation pipes. In fact, their black suits and wriggling bio-antennas made them look insectile. The surviving soldiers and crew of the Homemaker had just witnessed the destruction of their ship. Understandably, they were pissed.
Colonel Sparkshaft’s voice rose above the din of angry voices in Jack’s head. “Take them alive!”
“They don’t want to damage my chip,” the Shiplord observed. She turned to face the mob. “Is this a rebellion?” she shouted.
Keelraiser hissed impatiently. He dragged Jack onto the dais below the throne, disrupting his concentration.
“You lied to us,” Colonel Sparkshaft shouted. “You promised us victory!”
The Shiplord hopped onto her concave throne. “Sillies,” she said. “The only sure thing in life is death.”
The throne started to tilt upwards.
Closing like a clamshell.
“Gale! Wait!” Keelraiser shouted.
“Take it out on them,” the Shiplord said, nodding at Jack and Keelraiser.
“Gale!”
Jack. System is ready.
The rriksti flooded up the steps of the throne.
Aim at my position, Jack transmitted. And FIRE.
Fifty meters off the Homemaker’s bows, the Dealbreaker initiated the odd little system that drew on the gauge field of the shuttle’s fusion reactor. A transformer hidden in the reactor room inverted the polarity of the field. The electrical output of the reactor projected it up the dorsal power busses and out of a conduit at the shuttle’s nose.
The gauge field—Jack had learned in his years of messing around with Imfi fusion technology—strengthened the strong nuclear force so that it kept muons together long enough to catalyze fusion. That meant it kept protons, neutrons, and so forth together in a much tighter group than normal.
Someone, down on Earth, had figured out how to project the reverse of that field.
And beam it out of an improvised gun, at a target.
The Dealbreaker had once been an unarmed shuttle.
Now it was a deadly one.
Where the gauge field played over the hull of the Homemaker, atomic nuclei blew apart. The beam chewed through the armor in a haze of radiation. Liberated protons hungrily sought electrons. Freed neutrons drilled into everything in their path. Bolts of lightning lit the way as the starboard wall of the bridge simply disintegrated.
All the rriksti in the path of the beam vanished. Dismantled at the atomic level, they turned into clouds of single-proton hydrogen.
Jack stared, open-mouthed, at the typhoon of destruction he had caused.
He caught a glimpse of the Dealbreaker itself, hovering outside. Nothing between them now but space.
The storm front of gas clouds, shot through with lightning, marched steadily towards him, deleting reality in its path.
Keelraiser hurled him off the throne, putting it between him and the Dealbreaker.
In the few seconds before he hit the floor, Jack started to feel a little bit sick, and then very sick indeed, and then like death..
He retained just enough mental integrity to transmit: Svamblizant. Cease fire.
CHAPTER 44
Hannah stood in front of a mirror in the sacristy of the cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, trying to fix her hair so it didn’t look like she’d been dashing around in the rain, making sure all the delegates got here on time, which was what she had been doing. She dropped the fancy Parisia
n barrettes, said “Fuck it,” and scraped her hair into a ponytail. Like anyone would give a shit how she looked, with Mt. Katla hurling ash all over Europe.
At least her black Chanel dress fit the mood. The long tables in the nave were solidly lined with suits and ties and conservative designer dresses. It was poignant, last dance on the Titanic stuff. The lights may have been dimmed to suit rriksti eyes, but it created the impression of a candlelight vigil. From the shadows, the Brussels Philharmonic played an oratorio. The violins brought unexpected tears to Hannah’s eyes. The rriksti were incapable of appreciating music, like so many other things about Earth. They had no idea what they were destroying.
Her valedictory mood took a sharp dive into fury as the delegates all stood up, applauding the entrance of Tshaveg, the Shiplord of the Liberator. Now that was going too far. You don’t have to fucking clap for the alien who’s about to take over your planet.
Tshaveg strode between the tables, flanked by two hands of battle-armored Krijistal. The tawny-skinned, scarlet-haired rriksti nodded to right and left. Her small attentions sowed blissful looks on the faces of famous politicians from all five continents. It was like they had been touched by the Pope. They desperately hoped this alien had brought them salvation.
Well, Hannah was a Jew, and her God was unabashedly partisan, when He wasn’t just a theoretical concept. Lately, that concept had been feeling less theoretical. It gave her strength when she had none of her own. She stood in the gap between the heads of the two tables, and did not flinch a millimeter as Tshaveg approached.
The two Shiplords gazed at each other—human to rriksti, conquered to conqueror, woman to woman.
Hannah thought: I’ve never met you, but I know you. You’re just an ordinary female with a chip in your head.
She imagined that Tshaveg was thinking: What’s with the ponytail?
When the moment had stretched to breaking point, Hannah spoke in Rristigul. Simultaneous English translation, provided by a Lightbringer rriksti, bounced around the cathedral. “Welcome to Brussels. Shame about the weather, huh?”
Tshaveg’s lips parted slightly. She was not letting on that she understood the Darkside language, let alone English. She uttered a string of gurgles.
A man’s voice, French-accented, said in English over the PA system, “I am sure the weather will improve when we have completed our agreement.”
Hannah nodded, satisfied. Tshaveg had acknowledged their quid pro quo. In exchange for Earth’s formal submission to her, she would have the bombardment stopped.
That was assuming she could have the bombardment stopped. Hannah just had to hope that Tshaveg really did have the power she claimed to stop the Homemaker.
They sat down. Tshaveg occupied a special high table. On her right and left, at the tops of the long tables, Hannah and Ripstiggr faced the Grand Marshal of the EU, the current supremo of the NAA, and the President Emeritus of Russia. Human and rriksti cameramen flocked around the tables to record the end of Earth’s independence. The speeches began.
Hannah got more and more interested in the Zhigga-English interpreter. He was standing somewhere outside the media swarm, so she couldn’t see him, but she was sure she knew that voice. She scribbled on her agenda, nudged it towards Ripstiggr.
Ripstiggr wrote in crabbed block capitals. It’s Giles Boisselot.
Giles?!? SPIRIT OF DESTINY Giles? Hannah sat up straighter and craned around.
Yes, Ripstiggr wrote. He came back from Europa with Iristigut.
Thanks for telling me. Strangely, it was not Ripstiggr’s lie of omission that bothered her. She was used to that kind of thing from him. It was the idea that Giles, her old crewmate, who had known her when she was just the SoD’s propulsion engineer, was observing her now, and judging her for selling out.
She scrawled, Now I’m suspicious. Who ELSE are you hiding over there at the Hotel Amigo?
Ripstiggr stared straight ahead. After a second he wrote: A woman called Linda.
Don’t know her.
And your friend Skyler.
Hannah’s cheeks heated.
If being seen by Giles would be bad, being seen by Skyler would be a thousand times worse.
As much as she believed she was doing the right thing—the only thing—to save Earth, in her heart she knew that she was betraying humanity’s core values. And for some reason, Skyler represented those values for her.
During the next few speeches, she rebuilt her inner poise to match her external poise. The stakes here were too high for her to be agonizing about her old crewmates. Tshaveg’s increasingly curt responses worried her. Was the Liberator’s Shiplord displeased with these lengthy human formalities? She passed another note to Ripstiggr. Think we should cut this short?
It’ll all be over in another few minutes.
Huh? No it won’t. We still have to hear from the American president. President Flaherty had the coveted position of last speaker, a recognition of the USA’s bygone prominence. He slouched on the Russian president emeritus’s left. From time to time he chuckled at nuances of irony no one else dared to laugh at.
Tshaveg’s hair twisted around her shoulders. She spoke in Zhigga to one of her aides. Hannah nudged Ripstiggr with her elbow and wrote, What’s going ON?
Ripstiggr just sat forward tensely, trying to follow the Lightsiders’ exchange. Clearly he didn’t know what this was about, either.
Amid the distraction of the Lightsiders, the last few speakers rushed through their remarks. Each politician began with the same form of address—“Shiplord of the Liberator, Supreme Unifier of Earth”—and concluded with the formula of submission that Tshaveg had required.
“In thought, word, and deed, in life and in death, Algeria submits to you.”
“Peru submits to you.”
“Indonesia submits to you.”
“The Glorious Republic of Central Hubei submits to you.”
“And last but not least,” the MC announced, “the President of the United States of America!”
Tom Flaherty stood up. Resting the knuckles of his right hand on the table, he cleared his throat, turned to glare at Tshaveg. A hush fell.
“The United States of America,” Flaherty said clearly and slowly, “does not submit to a damn thing. Not to you, not to them, not to anybody. We will never exchange our freedom for alien chains. And your so-called conquest will never be secure until you have hunted down and murdered every last American on the motherfucking planet. Think you can do that? Try it. For every one of us you kill, ten of you will die. That’s the deal we’re offering; take it or leave it.”
Flaherty sat down in a deafening silence.
“Been waiting years to say that to their faces,” he mumbled. Hot-mic moment of the century.
Disappointment and fury flooded Hannah. After all her hard work, the president of her own country had ruined the ceremony! She held her breath, waiting for Tshaveg’s reaction.
Bizarrely, the Shiplord of the Liberator hardly seemed to have noticed Flaherty’s defiance. Urgent gurgles of Zhigga washed through Hanah’s head.
“Oh, shit,” Ripstiggr whispered.
“What? What?”
Giles Boisselot, hidden in the Imfi gloom, took it on himself to clear up the confusion for everyone.
“Attention! This is a tsunami warning,” he boomed. “The Shiplord has received notice from the Liberator that a tsunami is sweeping north from … from … Mon Dieu. I think they are talking about Cumbre Vieja, in the Azores. The impact in Iceland caused the existing fault to widen. There has been a landslide. Half of the island has fallen into the sea.” Giles’s voice broke. “We cannot call this a tsunami. It is 300 meters high. Three hundred meters. Spain will be scoured to the bedrock.”
Yells of shock broke out. The passengers on the Titanic forgot their manners. They jumped to their feet. The threat of a mega-tsunami triggered visceral terror that overcame their fear of the rriksti. Politicians, aides, and media hacks surged towards the doors.
&nbs
p; Giles shouted, “Don’t panic, you fucking cretins! The wave will hit Britain and the Low Countries in … I think it is five hours! There is time to evacuate the city in an orderly fashion!”
The exodus heading for the doors checked. People sprinted back towards the altar. Tables and chairs toppled.
Hannah thought for a second that Giles’s words had caused a mass outbreak of rational behavior. She stood frozen in her place, as if by staying outwardly calm herself, she could will order to prevail.
Then gunshots echoed off the gothic arches overhead.
And President Flaherty, seated at an otherwise empty table, chuckled.
Tshaveg’s armored guards formed a wedge around their Shiplord. They fired into the crowd to clear a path towards the doors.
Hannah rolled under the table. She crouched, paralyzed by the racket of gunfire, ricochets, and acoustic and radio-frequency screams.
Armored legs marched past her hiding place.
Stopped.
The big, beautiful face of Tshaveg peered out from between her guards’ legs. The Shiplord of the Liberator was down on her hands and knees, too.
“You will come with me.” A long arm whipped out and seized Hannah by the ponytail.
CHAPTER 45
Jack awoke in the dark, den-like warmth of a spaceship inhabited for too long by humans and rriksti.
Déjà vu.
Sort of.
This time, he was weightless.
The throb of turbines and the whooshing of fans reassured his astronaut’s hindbrain.
When he moved, a taut coverlet kept him from floating away.
Jack. The Dealbreaker spray-painted the darkness with readouts.
He yawned, mustered a bare modicum of concentration, about as much as you need to look at the time on your alarm clock. All systems operational. Reaction mass reserves low, but he already knew that. The Dealbreaker was orbiting alone, in the Homemaker’s old orbit. Both of the dead, cold halves of the Homemaker had drifted away. Good enough. Wake me if anything hits the radar.
He dismissed the interface, yawned again. He knew where he was now: in the crew area of the Dealbreaker, in one of the sleeping cocoons that could be anchored to the walls.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 31
