Reborn, page 9
He nodded, lips pressed together. Listening.
She could see why Joie had been so attracted to the man. And why it wouldn’t have worked, having heard what kind of person she used to be.
Before being transformed into someone else. The second time. And now a third.
Ernesta had merely grown up and grown old, having two ex-husbands she wasn’t on particularly good terms with, now that she had grandchildren.
Her first transformation had turned her back into a young woman. With everything she’d known as an old one.
Including an appreciation of how little time anybody had.
Mitch waited. Watched her, but didn’t say anything. Patience, in a way most men didn’t understand until they were much older. Old soul in a young body. Where had she heard that before?
“I could be coy,” she said finally. “Offer subtle misdirections and innuendo, but that’s just wasting time I don’t have. None of us have. And I’ve talked to Joie about it previously.”
She watched his eyes. He nodded, still smiling. Patient.
“What I really want is to come here tonight and ask you to make love to me, Mitch,” Ernesta said simply. “Joie has extremely nice things to say about you, but she’s not jealous of you or me. As both of you have said, you’ve moved past being lovers and become friends instead. That sounds lovely, but I have needs. And I would like you to take care of them. Now.”
He stood. Reached out a hand. Drew her to her feet. His hand was cold, but that was her body temperature being so much warmer than it used to be.
Most clothing left her overheated, but walking around in a bikini top and islander wrap might do terrible things to everyone’s concentration, so she was in jeans and a silk blouse.
Mitch pulled her closer, but she stepped into the man. Wrapped her arms around his back and pressed herself against his chest.
She was young again, but still much shorter than Mitch. He leaned down as she tilted her head back, enjoying her first real kiss in…
Wow, that was a long time ago.
She’d been doing something so very wrong. Or had she merely grown old and given up hope of being personally happy? Most men her age were busy chasing after much younger women.
Like she was now.
Except that it was just the flesh. The soul was an ancient crone.
But the crone had needs. Reawakened desires perhaps. Or merely no longer thwarted?
She’d seen much of herself in Joie Daring, during that first meeting in Guadalajara. How Ernesta had been at that age. That vitality.
She broke the kiss with Mitch and leaned back to study his face. His eyes.
Calm. Careful. Patient.
Ernesta let go of her deathgrip about the man’s middle and unbuttoned a cuff. Then the other, leaning back into his arms as he held her up.
Her blouse buttons went next, one at a time surrendering, but it wasn’t a burlesque. It was simply removing it so that they could move on with more interesting business.
Not wasting time that none of them had.
Her blouse slid off her shoulders, leaving her bare. His smile warmed her.
Mitch leaned down and kissed her on the shoulder. Then the neck. Cheek. Lips.
She nodded.
He would take his time, but get the job done, just as she expected from things Joie had mentioned.
She pulled his shirt over his head and kissed him again.
CHAPTER 22
Joie considered the approach from the safety of the ship. Gray walls. Warm temps, but not that warm. Her, Ernesta, and Carter, plus Yormevs standing at his console.
Six thousand meters elevation. Glaciers. Wind. Possible whiteout conditions on short notice, though right now the weather satellites promised a gloriously pure sky.
She missed having a blowtorch in her right hand today. Not enough to bring Freya along, but enough to have asked Yormevs to steal her three specific sets of alpine gear.
They were dressed against the cold. White against the snow. Ernesta had a long-barreled semi-automatic pistol that wouldn’t notice the freezing temperatures. Joie had a carbine and a pistol matching Ernesta’s.
Carter had just finished doing a once-over on a previously new-in-box M37A1 Firelance Squad Anti-tank Rifle, identical to the one he’d used in Hanoi, just over a month ago.
Just a month ago? Wow.
Carter was still getting used to being smaller than he’d been. Only Human, as he’d laughed more than once. At the same time, she wasn’t sure she knew many people as at home with such a weapon as that goofball.
Yormevs had turned the temperature in here way down, so that nobody was sweating as they took their spots on the platform. The man himself was bundled against the cold, but he had a steaming mug of something on a counter nearby.
“Are you ready, Joie?” he asked.
“Everybody put your goggles and scarves on,” she called, doing the same herself and pulling her hood up.
It was going to be bone-chilling where they landed. Yormevs could only get them so close because of the shielding devices that Bandi and his folks had left in place to hide their ship.
“Comm check,” she said aloud.
“Good here,” Carter replied, his voice in her earpiece.
“I hear you,” Ernesta said.
“Base traffic is good,” Kehoe noted.
He’d be in touch, wherever this ship was hiding. Not much the man could do, except that he also had Mitch next to him in their operations room, accessing all the systems that TRC had, with a permission level at least as good as General Bouchard did.
Joie looked right and left. Carter and Ernesta were ready. Joie turned back to Yormevs.
“Do it,” she ordered.
Light.
The universe changed, but that was coming back to the world. They were atop a mountain in Chile. Way beyond roads, where only trained mountaineers might visit. Or desperate people.
She wasn’t a mountaineer by any stretch of the imagination, extensive arctic training notwithstanding.
The breeze was solid, but not hard. Seattle on a nice day, rather than Chicago in a storm or the Santa Ana winds down at Pendleton. Early morning visibility was measured in kilometers, with a hazy sky.
Nobody flying above them currently, but that was just a matter of time. According to Mitch, Bouchard had landed Santiago, transferred to a helicopter, and was headed this way as fast as it could go.
They had minutes, but she couldn’t have done this any earlier.
Not safely. Top of a glacier in the dark was barely possible for her and maybe Carter, but not Ernesta. Risky even now.
“We’ve arrived,” she announced, mostly for Kehoe. “Spotting my surroundings. Nobody else present.”
Bandi had marked the place on the map. If they’d thought that Bouchard couldn’t find it, she might have let him wander about, but the Danorak had used their own matter transmitters to hollow out a chunk of mountain big enough for a ship to enter.
The need to possibly flee later meant that they couldn’t just bury the garage door again, so they’d made something that looked like natural rock. At least well enough from orbit.
Nobody came up here without a lot of warning, most of the time. Nothing to see, and there were easier ways to summit the peak behind her if you were that kind of person.
That left the bowl they had landed in.
“Moving now,” Joie said.
She had a small backpack, along with the carbine. The pistol was on her hip. Her gloves weren’t thick enough to prevent her from getting to it and using the weapon, but she really needed to find an outcome that didn’t involve a firefight on the top of this mountain.
If nothing else, Bouchard would have told someone where he was going. Others would come later. Possibly more like Bouchard and Vanlaere. The Chilean Army, if nothing else.
It was now or never.
Joie moved.
Carter had appointed himself overwatch. She’d read his reports of shooting down that police helicopter in Hanoi. At the time, she’d thought he’d gotten unlucky with a shot to kill the tail rotor.
Since then, listening to him, she’d come to understand that he’d done that on purpose. Specifically not killing anyone he didn’t have to.
Or wasn’t being paid for.
A helicopter out here today would draw fire. Hopefully, Bouchard hadn’t brought a gunship.
Better, maybe they could get inside before all hell broke loose. If she was in control of Bandi’s ship, that would make it better for everyone.
Everyone.
Scree under her feet. Loose shale broken off the face of the mountain by glaciers and time as well as stuff liberated by alien energies.
At least she knew exactly where to head.
A glance back and both Ernesta and Carter were trailing closely.
No predatory animals at this altitude.
No others, anyway.
The sun was exactly high enough in the eastern sky that they could see what they were doing. Cold as fuck, but she was dressed for it and had everything covered for now, plus small backpacks with extra gear against emergencies.
“Moving upslope,” she announced, just so Kehoe could keep track.
The bleedingist-edge satellites these days could pick out movement as small as a human, but none of those were pointed this direction. Hardly any had the range to look south of the equator without a lot of prep time.
Bouchard hadn’t given them any, though that might change.
She moved as quickly through the scree as she dared, paying attention to the softness underfoot that might cause it to slide away under her. The only saving grace was that they were in the bowl here, so she didn’t have to worry about any cliffs that would tumble her unlucky ass down the mountain.
Just make her look silly and amateur.
And let Bouchard catch her.
She hiked.
“Mitch, any luck hacking a satellite or radar system?” she asked idly.
Again.
“Negative,” he said. “I mean, I could, if we wanted everyone in DC asking why and looking over our shoulders. Didn’t think it was worth it at the present time.”
“Agreed,” Joie said. “Wishes and fishes.”
That got laughs from the others. Nobody had set out on a life’s course that involved hiking in the bowl of an extinct Chilean volcano looking for an alien starship.
At least nobody sane.
Not that she wanted to contemplate those thoughts either.
Still, they made rapid progress. Most of the scree was in larger lumps that had held avalanches in place, or had already tumbled, so she quickly got to solid rock and could move. No trail, but that wasn’t a surprise.
According to Bandi, nobody had come up here in more than a decade, and then only to check the maintenance systems.
She made it to the spot he’d marked on maps. A cleft in the stone that looked natural and was not. Hollowed out by Danorak systems that might be weapons and might be something else.
Joie stepped to it. Into it.
From here, the door was obvious. Only from here. You had to be standing in the notch looking.
Metal door, except that it was painted to look like the striated stone around it. Rectangular in the opening. Not to Human dimensions. Not to Heecha, either. Too short for what she expected. And too wide. Like big dwarves from some fantasy epic.
Apparently, every species did it their own way, if they weren’t expecting to accommodate strangers.
Like, say, an illegal base on a proscribed planet?
It would have been nice to have Bandi on the line, but Yormevs didn’t trust him. Not with things that could be activated by a word. Or sounds that had once been capable of disabling a man like Carter.
“We’re here,” Joie told Kehoe. “Looking for the keypad. Got it.”
She found it quickly enough, covered over with a painted plate.
American systems used a standard pad with four rows of three buttons across. Went back to the first push-buttons phones. Heecha used something similar.
Danorak put them in a circle with a larger button in the middle.
And she didn’t know their numbers to be able to read it. It was like the first time she’d had to read Chinese, slow and deliberate.
Joie ended up counting.
“Activating the door now,” Joie said, wishing she was more certain.
Bandi had told her the combination. A combination. Maybe it opened the hatch. Maybe it initiated a self-destruct sequence like all the bad science fiction movies did when the bad guys were about to capture a vessel.
Something.
So she counted. Pressed. Counted again.
“Here goes.”
Captain Daring, that badass chika warrior, held her breath and pushed the big button in the middle.
Nothing.
Then the door retracted about a centimeter with a ripping sound before it silently slid sideways the rest of the way into the wall.
Joie remembered to breathe and was extra thankful that she’d taken a potty break just before the jump, else she might have peed her pants at that sound.
“It’s open,” she said, awestruck.
Up until now, she hadn’t really believed.
“Carter, what’s in the sky?” Ernesta asked, at least paying attention to the perimeter.
Joie was a little too locked in presently.
“We’re currently clear,” he replied. “No idea how long.”
“Let’s get inside,” Joie ordered, stepping across the threshold.
Bandi had described it, but only in vague terms.
Garage. That was the term. Low and wide like the door. Not all that well-lit. Maybe a hundred meters long, a third of that wide. Twenty tall. Flat floor with a polished surface and a slight tilt down to her left.
Bandi had said that it was to keep the space drained. Worked, as the floor was dry.
It was the ship in the middle that caused her to gasp. Ernesta, too, a moment later, when she entered.
Long tube on short landing pylons rather than wheels. Thick wings emerged from the bottom of the cylinder, about midway, flaring out into a delta configuration, with the passenger compartment also widening some. Vertical stabilizer like a shark fin at the rear.
They had entered near the needle-tipped prow. Joie moved to her left to get a better view.
Cockpit forward with space for two pilots, lit just enough to see seats inside. Ovalish windows down the side for passengers to see, but the aft compartment was dim enough to be all shadows.
Joie glanced back.
“Carter, close the main hatch,” she said. “Maybe they won’t find it and this was all a false alarm.”
“You really believe that, Daring?” he asked.
Joie shrugged. Wishes and fishes.
Bandi had told her that every death was a subtraction of possibility from the universe, in one of those quiet, private moments when he’d been trying to make amends for centuries of evil. Killing Bouchard and the others wouldn’t really do any good.
There were others who knew. Without stopping all of them, they would be back here again soon enough, facing this same problem.
Joie needed to solve it today.
Somehow.
Still, she pulled her goggles down and untied her scarf enough for Carter to see her scowl. He nodded and pushed the button next to the door.
Everything slammed shut with a solid thump.
Joie turned her attention back to the alien starship.
And all that it represented.
CHAPTER 23
Valmy was aft in the helicopter with his two agents, plus a representative of the Chilean Army who had made it clear with his body language that he thought all of Valmy’s stories were a load of horse shit.
And they were, but the fewer people who even suspected the truth, the better.
Everyone wore helmets with comm gear, but Valmy hadn’t said anything since takeoff and the others had matched him.
The pilot had been quietly bitching about flying directly into the morning sun, but that couldn’t be helped. They’d already delayed long enough that the sun was up for him to see.
Even Valmy wasn’t crazy enough to try something like this in the dark.
Or maybe desperate was a better term.
In a month, he could drop an entire battalion of specialist troops up here to hold the bowl of that old volcano, but he didn’t have a month.
Maybe not even the week it would take to get more of his Project Carpenter troops into place.
Not with somebody out there hitting so effectively that people simply vanished.
First Pham. Then nothing. Had they been lulling him back to sleep?
Daring and most of her team in Hanoi, but only most. All four of the people inside the laboratory in La Plata, plus one of his surveillance people, but not the other one.
Were they toying with him? Leaving people behind to up the horror quotient of the disappearances?
One survivor who didn’t know anything often just muddied the waters.
“General, we’re about to arrive,” the pilot said over the intercom, bringing everyone to a higher state of alert. “Swinging around for the left side to see.”
Valmy’s side. He turned to look out. Vanlaere was across from him, with Konicek across from the Chilean major who still didn’t know anything.
Bowl. Titled, but the caldera of an extinct stratovolcano. Cone broken off and collapsed inward. Glaciers around them, but not everywhere.
A century ago, it might have all been glacier. Or not. Didn’t matter today.
He looked at the spot where before and after photographs had suggested an excavation. Instant and impossible, but somehow done, with tons of stone rubble suddenly apparent where it hadn’t been before, and none of the ridges above changed.
Like a giant mole had burrowed out a den, then closed it behind them, leaving only the dirt.
“Your orders, sir?” the pilot asked.
“Find a spot where you can set down,” Valmy replied. “If you can, shut down for a bit while my team looks around. Otherwise, you’ll need to return to Santiago, refuel, and standby to extract us later.”
