"He was wearing artificial skin. Underneath, he was one of them. Shrank down its limbs and body somehow. Maybe that's something they can do."
The restraint on Webber's right wrist gave out. He lifted his hand, shaking it out. "Okay, but why would he dress up like a human? Can't get a date with one of his own?"
"So they can infiltrate us. The goal will be to take the form of specific people. Most likely national leaders. And then drive their countries to war against each other. For all we know, they're already doing it."
He got Webber's left hand free, then his legs. Webber stood stiffly, leg braces making a soft plastic scraping sound, and rubbed his hip. "Don't suppose you've got anything I can shoot or stab people with?"
"Nothing that ain't bolted down." MacAdams swung his head toward the wall panels. "Not that that should stop us."
He popped open one of the panels. The interior was empty. He grabbed the top corner and dropped his weight, wrenching it free of the wall with an ear-piercing shriek. He braced it against the floor and stomped on it. The plastic cracked neatly in half. He set one of the halves against a leg of the chair and slammed his heel down again, snapping the plastic a second time.
MacAdams tested the points, then handed one to Webber. "There, we have swords."
"Then let's get this mutiny started. Dibs on the—"
Something thumped out in the hall. Right outside the door. MacAdams pointed to either side of the door and the two of them pressed their backs to the wall, flanking it just as it slid open.
"What the?"
MacAdams rolled around the corner. A man in a black suit frowned at the empty chair. MacAdams grabbed his shirt and yanked him inside, driving the point of his plastic sword four inches below the base of the man's throat. Rather than punching through malleable alien skin, it clacked against bone. MacAdams tipped back the man's head and rammed the makeshift blade into his neck.
The man died fast and bloody. He was human and he was carrying a pain-stick. MacAdams took it. His device, too. The hall was quiet again. They found Rohan in the next room. He was seated in his chair with his head tipped back. His left ear was gone and his eyes were closed but the slackness of his left lid told that they'd taken his eye, too. All five fingers on his left hand had been cut down to the palm and allowed to bleed out. His skin had gone gray and his face looked as slack and empty as the fake one MacAdams had ripped off of Enspach.
Webber swore. "Did they kill him?"
MacAdams took a step forward.
Rohan's head swung down. His right eye fell open; his left seemed glued shut. "I won't speak. Wear the faces of my rescuers, and I still won't speak. Wear the face of my mother herself and I still will not answer a single one of your questions."
"You better," MacAdams said. "That was our deal, wasn't it? We get you out, and you tell us what you know."
Rohan blinked his good eye. "It's really you? Not one of them inside your skin?"
"If you still don't believe me after I cut you loose, I'll be happy to show you that bastard's dead alien body."
MacAdams got down and started sawing at the restraint with his bloody plastic knife. Webber went to work on the other side.
"Why didn't they just drug you?" MacAdams said.
"He told me he would in time," Rohan said. "But that even if I wouldn't speak, I had to be hurt first."
They got his bonds off him. A little color had come back to his face and when they tried to help him to his feet he slapped their hands away, jaw going tight. He mustered himself and stood.
"Can you take the stairs?" MacAdams said.
"I can try." Rohan smiled, the right side of his mouth responding better than the left. "And if I can't, you can carry me."
The hallway was still empty. MacAdams moved to the closer end, meaning to try the door and work his way forward. The door didn't move. MacAdams activated the dead man's device and held it up to the keypad, hoping it would be that easy. It was: the pad beeped in three tones at once and the door rolled open.
Sunlight poured inside, reflecting from the wind-tossed waves of a wide open blue sea.
Webber shielded his eyes from the glare. "We're on a boat? On the ocean?"
Rohan edged out onto a deck and craned forward, examining the water flopping around fifteen feet below them. "Technically, we appear to be above it."
"Well where the hell are we going?"
"If I were pressed into guessing? A place where more Lurkers would very much like to speak to us."
"Don't see any land," MacAdams said. "Wherever we are, it's a lot warmer than it was in Khent."
"Great," Webber muttered. "At least we won't freeze to death before we can drown."
"We're not swimming, dummy. We're calling DS to get us out of here."
"With our devices that we have no idea where they are?"
MacAdams pulled a face. "First thing we do is make sure we're alone. Then we'll search for our devices."
Plastic blades in hand, they started with the door at the other end of the hall. This opened to the bridge, like MacAdams suspected it might. It looked empty, but MacAdams wasn't satisfied until he'd stabbed every piece of furniture and piping that might have been a Lurker in hiding.
"This ship isn't human," Rohan said.
"What gave it away?" Webber motioned to the displays and controls. "The fact everything in here looks like it was stolen from a robot's dream?"
Rohan considered the instruments with his remaining eye. "Some of the screens are plain video. Others appear to be scanners. If we could figure these out, we could redirect the ship to wherever we like."
"Take your best shot," MacAdams said. "We'll clear the rest of the ship."
Rohan nodded vaguely, approaching one of the control stations. MacAdams and Webber went from cabin to cabin. There wasn't much to find. A second pain-stick, which MacAdams gave to Webber. A set of surgical blades, which MacAdams took three from. Some human-applicable medical supplies, presumably for use in case the questioning got too vigorous, which Rohan was relieved to apply to his many wounds on their return to the bridge.
"Well?" Webber said. "Can you read alien yet?"
Rohan sighed, planting his palms on the desk. "The interface is completely unintelligible. I've tried those controls over there—they look like manual steering, don't they?—but that accomplished nothing. I am afraid we are stuck on our present course."
"Which is?"
"Possibly in no particular direction, although I find that unlikely. More likely is that we are on autopilot and will eventually be delivered to other Lurkers. Were you able to recover your devices?"
"No such luck," MacAdams said. "The ones we picked up from Enspach and the other fellow don't seem to have a connection to anywhere, either. Don't think we can count on reaching Dark Solutions."
"Then we will be delivered to the enemy."
"This ship will be delivered to the enemy. We don't have to be on it."
"What is the alternative? Once it approaches land, dive into the ocean and swim for shore?"
"That's one way to do it."
"Between now and then, I say we clean ship," Webber said. "Throw the bodies overboard. The less they know about what happened, the less likely they'll be to come search for us."
"Don't have much better to do."
"But we should save their suits. And Enspach's face."
MacAdams cranked his head around. "No. Don't even think it."
"What happens if we can't bail out of the boat?"
"Then we'll land wherever this thing is taking us."
"Which is enemy hands. People who were friends with Enspach."
"God damn it," MacAdams muttered. "Okay, we'll keep his face."
They undressed the bodies. The three of them picked up the mangled Lurker and lugged it down the hallway. Its body felt strangely pliable, like trying to hold on to a water balloon. They got it out the back door and heaved it over the rail into the ocean below. It landed with a splash, sinking quickly.
&
nbsp; They gave the same treatment to the dead human. No one bothered to say any words for him. Unlike the Lurker, his corpse floated, vanishing into the distance. MacAdams spent a minute thinking about how a man could so thoroughly betray everything he knew. He didn't come up with any answers.
They went back to the room where Webber had been kept and started mopping the blood from the floor with bandages from the medical supplies. MacAdams tried to set up communications through the looted devices, but once it became obvious that was a non-starter, he got down to scrub blood with the others.
He glanced up from beneath his eyebrows at Rohan. "It's possible not all of us will make it out of whatever comes next."
"I reached the conclusion that some or all of us would die the moment they captured us."
"Then you must also know it's time to talk."
Rohan sucked his lips against his teeth, then nodded. "Very well. The most important thing to know is this: the war between New Mongolia and Sveylan is not what it seems."
"We know. The Sveylani jets are using Lurker weapons."
"It goes much beyond that. You see, the Sveylani jets aren't really Sveylani."
Webber tossed a red-sodden bandage into one of the buckets they'd found with the medical supplies and squinted. "Is that some kind of Eastern thing?"
"You don't understand. The jets that are currently attacking New Mongolia are in fact under the control of New Mongolia."
"New Mongolia is attacking itself?"
"Yes."
"Okay, that's an interesting proposal, but have you ever stopped to think that it makes no fucking sense?"
Rohan looked at Webber as if he was peering over the rim of a pair of glasses. "It would only make no sense if my country was aiding Sveylan's effort to conquer us. But New Mongolia isn't being conquered at all."
"What are you talking about? Did the nuke they dropped on Khent scramble your brains?"
"That was likely done to kill me. Although I could be overestimating my own importance, and killing me was merely a welcome side benefit of making Sveylan look as monstrous as possible."
"New Mongolia is part of the UDL," MacAdams said. "The group that tried to surrender Earth to the Lurkers. Only that didn't work. And they lost too much power and influence to try to hand the planet over a second time."
"You're almost there."
"Instead of direct surrender, the UDL is trying to make Earth weaken itself and make it easier for the Lurkers to take over. That's why New Mongolia is posing as Sveylan and attacking itself. To kick off a war between Sveylan and the coalition that's going to come after it for aggression. Every country that gets involved will deplete their own defenses."
"And there you are," Rohan said with a flourish of his hand. "That is why I risked my life to defect to you. The Lurker bombardment has put Earth on the brink of ruin. If the war spreads, what little is left will be destroyed as well."
Webber slopped some water on the floor and leaned into his rag. "I'll admit the level of scheming involved sounds right Lurkerly. But what about Sveylan? If they're not actually attacking New Mongolia, why would they let themselves get blamed for it like this?"
"After New Mongolia made the initial strikes against itself, it then retaliated against Sveylan, which naturally required Sveylan to act in its self-defense. The fighting that resulted from this is quite real. For another thing, many of the typical lines of broadcast and communication were struck down by the bombardment. New Mongolia's communications infrastructure suffered less damage, leaving them better equipped to spread their version of the story."
"Well, what a coincidence."
MacAdams grunted. "Between that and the footage of the fighting, if Sveylan tried to deny that they started it, it would only make them look guiltier."
"That is also correct," Rohan said. "The Lurkers have put them into quite the bind. It is all made worse by the chaos of the aftermath of the invasion. That chaos is where the aliens seem to thrive."
"We have to see if we can get one of these devices to make a transmission. DS needs to hear about this."
"Indeed. Based on some of the communications I have seen, I believe that if the Lurkers conclude they can't immediately take the planet, they will work to provoke a global nuclear war. The fallout of this will reduce Earth's population to almost nothing.
"Initially, I was skeptical that they would be able to induce our leaders into committing obvious suicide. But that was before I had seen what we have witnessed on this ship. They already quite adept at imitating humans. The next step—if they have not already taken it—will be to begin imitating specific people."
"Like presidents," MacAdams said.
"And prime ministers. And generals. And anyone else with the authority to declare war on their neighbor."
"Got any idea what kind of time scale we're looking at here?"
"I expect the nuking of Khent will have already drawn several other nations into the war. Such a conflict could spread across the continent in a matter of days. If that conflict does not manage to catch fire like they'd hope, that's when they will turn to infiltration. But this won't take as long as you might think. They will only need to replace two or three of the right people, and only then for a matter of hours, to guarantee widespread nuclear exchange."
Webber wrung out his bandage-mop into a bucket. "So what you're saying is that Earth is totally screwed even if the Lurker fleet doesn't come back."
"Well, yes. Unless your organization puts a stop to this."
"No pressure, then."
MacAdams went to the sink to wash his hands. "We don't have any proper connection to the net. But DS told us what channel to broadcast on if we ran into a situation like this. Let's hope they're listening."
He condensed what they'd seen and what Rohan had told them, input the frequency of DS' emergency transmission line, and hit send. The device confirmed the message had been relayed, but gave no indication whether it had been received. Dark Solutions didn't reply, either. MacAdams erased the message from the device and set up a command to overwrite it over and over until no part of it could be unearthed from the device's memory.
Once that was done, there was nothing left to do but keep cleaning up the mess they'd made and wait for land to appear on the horizon.
~
The sun sank toward the ocean as gently as if a force even greater than itself were laying it down to bed, shading the clouds with pastel pinks and oranges and painting a fiery line across the water.
"Now isn't that pretty," Webber said. "Except for the part where in another few minutes we're not going to be able to see where we're going and won't have any idea when to jump out."
"Two of us will watch from the bridge," MacAdams said. "The third can grab a nap. Rohan, you've got first sleep."
While Rohan tried to find somewhere comfortable enough to sleep in, MacAdams and Webber watched the southeast horizon ahead. Twilight ended and everything got very, very dark. Starlight outlined the waves. MacAdams wasn't sure that it would be enough to outline a coast.
Three hours went by with no sign of land. They switched shifts, with MacAdams taking over the foldout bunk Rohan had found in one of the cabins. It felt like he'd barely fallen asleep when a hand shook his shoulder.
"Wake up, man," Webber said. "I think I see a light ahead!"
MacAdams swung out of the bunk and jogged toward the bridge, slapping himself to help clear the fog from his head. On the bridge, which was barely lit enough to stop you from banging into things, Rohan had his hands planted on a dash and was leaning close to the window.
"There's land ahead." He pointed. "We're just a few minutes away now."
"To the stern," MacAdams said. "We'll jump as soon as we see the surf breaking beneath us."
Hurriedly, they gathered up their weapons and headed for the other end of the craft. At the back door, MacAdams held up the captured device, keying open the door. It was windier than before. Didn't smell as salty. MacAdams leaned over the rail, then lurched
back.
The water was no longer ten feet beneath them. Instead, it was at least a hundred, the starlight glinting from the caps of the waves far, far below.
13
She sent messages to Toman. To the Locker, to be forwarded to Kansas. And into the deep darkness, to the Swimmers.
Then she slept.
She dreamed of Nereid. The cave she'd been trapped inside after the slide of ice and rocks. She chipped her way out, the ice falling away like vapor. By the time she broke free, her air was almost gone. She ran out onto the icy field, but her feet got stuck in midair—and then she was floating away from the surface, the craggy, cratered little moon shrinking beneath her.
Her air dwindled to nothing. Her helmet stank like sweat and her own breath. She felt that she had to escape it: and to know space for what it truly was. She screwed off her helmet and threw it aside.
Somehow, it wasn't cold. Her lungs felt fine. She tried to take a breath and found she didn't need to. Joy swept through her: she would live.
But she was drifting outward, away from the sun and from Neptune. She had no radio. No one would ever find her. She would only drift, drift and drift forever, falling away into the coldness of the stars.
Her device pinged. She ignored it. It pinged again, louder, then louder still. Once it got loud enough that the only thing left for it to do was sprout little metallic legs and walk over to slap her awake, Rada rolled over and picked it up.
Toman appeared on the cabin's screen. Where before he'd looked boyish, almost elfin, today he looked leaner, and somehow obscured, as if he was standing inside his own shadow.
"So you fought them and you lived," he said. "After the way they've kicked us across the Solar System, that should qualify you for a pantheon somewhere."
He started to pace around his cabin, the camera tracking his movements. "But destroying the carriers didn't work. That hurts. It was a good theory. Good enough to make me leave Titan. It hurts, of course, because we have no backup plan. Nothing better than 'throw everything we've got at them and hope that this is the time that we win, even though we never have before, and have every single reason to believe we'll lose this time as well.' None of us know what to do at this point. I only know one thing is true: if we go after them right now, we die."
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