Hunted, page 29
Isn’t that how it would go? We’d all be killed. And it would get written off as an accident of war, a sad, sad tragedy. The new high queen would apologize to the Technocracy, with all the grief in the world: “What a terrible shame. Let’s establish channels of communication so this never happens again.” The Admiralty would say yes, while breathing their own sigh of relief—with Festina and me out of the way, the mess with Willow would be hushed up. Soon, the recruiters on Celestia would start operating again; maybe they’d even start a branch office on Troyen.
In the end, everybody would be happy. Except those of us who were dead.
I told myself there had to be something I didn’t understand. My sister would never draw me into a deliberate massacre. She must have some other scheme I just wasn’t smart enough to figure out.
But I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it wouldn’t go away.
“Do we go down or not?” Dade asked. He was looking at Festina. Everyone on the bridge was watching her—even the regular crew who were supposed to keep their eyes on their monitors.
“We’ll try it,” Festina said at last, “but just a quick in and out. Five minutes, tops…and let’s hope the people we’re looking for are right where their signal came from.”
Tobit had put on a poker face. “The second we send down our Sperm-tail,” he said, “both armies will kick up a god-awful ruckus. They’ll each think the other side is trying something sneaky.”
“I know,” Festina sighed. “Captain”—she turned to Prope—”as soon as we go down, I’d like Jacaranda to broadcast a message on all radio bands, saying we’re a neutral party just retrieving a group of noncombatants. Peaceful and not allied with any faction.”
“They’ll never believe it,” Prope said. “It’s exactly the sort of ruse a group of invaders would try.” (Prope sure seemed to have thought a lot about lies dishonest people might tell.)
“Even so,” Festina told her, “we have to deliver the message. For the sake of sentience.”
She glanced at the vidscreen. It still showed the two pictures side by side, Black Epaulettes and the palace guards, waiting uneasily. “When we go in,” Festina said, “jittery soldiers are going to react from sheer nervous tension. We can hope they have enough discipline not to get carried away, but there’s no guarantee. If we can do anything to avoid triggering an all-out battle, we have to try. I admit the radio message is a weak idea—God knows, all their radios may have been eaten by Fasskister nanites. If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m happy to listen.”
She looked around the room. No one spoke. Finally, Dade cleared his throat. “Uh…does it really matter?”
“What do you mean?” Festina asked.
“These guys,” he said, waving at the soldiers on the vidscreen. “They’ve all been at war, killing each other, right? That makes ’em non-sentient. Even the people who aren’t on the front lines, the cooks and the baggage handlers and all—if they’re helping the armies, they’re knowingly abetting non-sentient activities, which makes them non-sentient too. So from the League’s point of view, why does it matter what happens to anybody in Unshummin? I don’t want those people to die, but if we do set off one bunch of non-sentients fighting another, the great and glorious League shouldn’t give a damn.”
“Jesus, Benny,” Tobit groaned, “it’s the first fucking rale of Exploration, always assume everything is sentient till proven otherwise.”
“But it’s been proven otherwise,” Dade said. “For twenty years, the armies have demonstrated just how non-sentient they are. Aren’t we justified in assuming—”
“That there are no children in the palace?” I asked. “That while Queen Temperance lived there, she didn’t keep laying eggs every twelve weeks? That there aren’t other kids from all the warriors and gentles who’ve been thrown together with each other? That there isn’t a single Mandasar in the palace who just ran there for protection when the Black Army showed up? That there aren’t warriors and gentles and workers on both sides who firmly believe everything they’ve done was purely for the defense of their families, and others who may have been bloodthirsty once but now want peace more devoutly, more sentiently than any of us powder-puffs who’ve never gone through two decades of war? Is that what we’re justified in assuming?”
Dade blushed and lowered his gaze…while I pretty well did the same thing. I’d never spoken like that before; I half thought I was possessed again, and kind of stupidly, I tried to wiggle my fingers just to make sure I was still in control. They wiggled—the words had come from me. Just a part of me I didn’t know I had.
Festina patted me on the shoulder, then looked at the others. “Anything else?” she asked.
Prope opened her mouth to speak…but even she was careful not to meet anyone else’s eyes. “It’s my duty,” the captain said, “to make official note of your analysis, Admiral. This landing may spark two hostile factions into battling each other; if that happens, the death count is bound to be enormous.” She paused and made sure we were all listening—the normal bridge crew as well as us visitors. “It could be argued this landing constitutes a non-sentient act, since it runs the risk of provoking murder on a massive scale. The Outward Fleet will not force any of you to participate in the mission against your conscience.”
I wondered if Willow’s captain had said the same to his crew. He might have—navy regs require starship commanders to recognize dicey situations and call them accordingly. But at the moment, I figured Prope wasn’t thinking about ethics so much as covering her butt…hoping this speech would get her off the hook with the League of Peoples. Even if the League killed the rest of us the next time we crossed the line, perhaps they’d let Prope pass because she’d spoken the right words. “Oh yes, I warned them it wasn’t smart…”
“Thank you, Captain,” Festina said stiffly. “You’re perfectly correct. Anyone who considers this landing improper is encouraged to stay on the ship.” She glanced at the screen again: the soldiers had flattened themselves in darkening shadows as the sun continued to set. “It’ll be full night down there in thirty minutes,” she said. “We’ll begin suiting up then. If some of you don’t show up at the robing chambers, I won’t send anyone looking for you.”
She nodded to nobody in particular and quietly left the bridge. For a long time, none of the rest of us moved.
34
WAITING IN THE TRANSPORT BAY
We all showed up. In the little anteroom in front of Jacaranda’s four robing chambers, everyone I thought might come, did: Tobit, Dade, Kaisho, Counselor, Zeeleepull, Hib & Nib & Pib.
And me, of course. I can’t say I’d thought long and hard about the morals of what we were doing. Mostly I’d been busy on the bridge. With a bit of persuasion (talk, not pheromones), I’d convinced Prope to let me record the message that would be broadcast when we landed: telling everyone I was the Little Father Without Blame, just coming down to Unshummin to pick up some friends. It wasn’t what you’d call a slick performance, especially not for something that would be heard all over the planet, on every radio band, looping again and again and again; but I didn’t think it was totally awful.
Besides, good or bad wasn’t the point. The point was to persuade Mandasars not to worry about a Sperm-tail coming in…and secretly to tell my sister I’d come back to Troyen. I didn’t know what effect I wanted that to have; maybe just to see what Sam would do.
All kinds of terrible suspicions lurked in the back of my mind. I needed to give Sam the chance to prove me wrong.
Back at the robing chambers, Festina was last to arrive. She tried not to smile too hard when she found the rest of us waiting. “Well,” she said, “an embarrassment of volunteers.” She gestured toward the four robing chambers. “Four seats, four Explorers. Me, Tobit, Dade, and York. The rest of you stay on Jacaranda, and I don’t want any bitching.”
She got bitching anyway. Kaisho and the Mandasars argued and argued and argued why they should go with us…but anybody could see it was crazy to let them tag along. Kaisho was in a wheelchair—a wheelchair that could hover, but one that moved as slow as a constipated snail. If we wanted to get down and back in five minutes, we couldn’t afford her slowing us up.
No way for the Mandasars to come either. The whole city would reek of battle musk, even before our arrival got the troops heated up. One whiff would make Counselor and the workers freeze with terror. As for Zeeleepull, he could handle the musk (even if it put him in the mood for a fight), but he’d cause plenty of trouble if we met any palace guards. With an all-human party, we might convince the guards we were just there to pick up our friends—especially with Plebon and Olympia Mell to vouch for us. But if we had a Mandasar warrior along, one with a strange accent and no knowledge of palace-guard passwords, we’d be ten times more likely to get arrested as spies.
Zeeleepull and the others weren’t keen on listening to such logic. I’d warned them they might not be allowed to land but they still got all huffy, asking why I’d spent so much time teaching them how to act on Troyen when they’d never get to set foot on the planet. Eventually, Festina had to pull rank on them. She told them they could consider themselves reserves, in case the landing party called for help…but they simply weren’t going down in the first shot with us real Explorers.
Yes. Festina called me a real Explorer. After thirty-five years wearing the black uniform, I was finally going to earn it.
Tobit tried to usher me into a robing chamber, but I said, “Sorry. I’d better not.”
“For Christ’s sake, York,” Tobit snapped, ‘Troyen might have been a nice cozy planet when you lived there, but it’s been at war for twenty years. Nobody has a clue what kinds of gas and germs and shit they’ve been tossing at each other. Sure, they lost most of their tech base right at the beginning…but they still managed to preserve those Balrog spores they used on the Fasskisters, didn’t they? Who knows what other nasty crap they managed to collect while they were the top dogs of medical research? The only way to protect yourself is wearing a tightsuit.”
“But, um…um…”
“He must not be sealed up,” Counselor said. “It’s important for the palace guards to know he is Teelu. They must be able to see him. And smell him.”
She turned and looked directly at Festina…as if they’d talked about me recently and decided some things between themselves. I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising; if Festina had begun to suspect stuff about me and pheromones, she’d go straight to someone who could smell the scents I put out. Now Festina put her hand on Tobit’s shoulder, and said, “Let it go, Phylar. Edward can do more for us if he’s not closed off in an airtight cocoon.”
“I can do more without the tightsuit too,” Dade said. “They’re really hard to move in and you can’t—”
“In your dreams, junior,” Tobit interrupted. “If you don’t shut up, we’ll make you wear two.”
Fifteen minutes later, we stood in the transport bay—Tobit, Dade, and Festina in fully sealed tightsuits, me in a light “impact suit”…which was basically an Explorer uniform with elbow pads.
My face and hands felt itchy from getting doused with camouflage nano: smart little color-changing bugs, programmed to match general background shades and to break up my silhouette so I’d be hard to recognize as human when standing in shadows. My uniform was covered with the same stuff; so were the tightsuits. Even in the brightly lit transport bay, the other three Explorers were easy to overlook. At one point, I was listening to Festina run over last-minute details with Tobit, and suddenly realized Dade was standing right beside me, listening too. When he wasn’t moving, my eye seemed to slip straight past him without noticing he was there. Down on the ground where darkness had fallen, we’d be nine-tenths invisible.
Too bad invisible didn’t mean undetectable. My nose was picking up a nostril-gouging chemical smell from all the suits; Mandasars would know something strange was close by, even if we were completely lost in shadows. Then again, if they couldn’t see to aim their crossbows, maybe the camo wasn’t a total loss.
Festina turned to the rear of the transport bay and called up to the control console, “Do you have the message to broadcast?”
“All recorded and stored in the ship-soul,” Prope answered.
“And is the anchor in place on the ground?”
“Naturally,” Lieutenant Harque said.
He and Prope were running the console themselves, rather than letting the usual crew do anything. I told myself the captain was showing how cooperative she could be, by giving us her personal attention. Still, I had to wonder if Harque was really the best technician on the ship. While the others had been suiting up, I’d watched him fumble with the control dials, trying to maneuver a Sperm anchor down to the surface. I don’t know if he made any real mistakes, but he cursed a lot under his breath.
This particular anchor was the usual box with gold horseshoes, but it also had a tiny flight engine attached and a whole bunch of stealth bafflers to prevent people from noticing anything on radar. Not that we expected any radar dishes had survived the Fasskister Swarm, but Explorers hate taking chances. We needed the anchor on the ground, right where we wanted to land, like a pin to tack down the bottom end of the Sperm-tail. Without the little machine, the tail would flap about as wild as a firehose and might throw us out anywhere within a thousand-klick radius.
It would be really bad to get dumped into an ocean. Or in front of a big hostile army. Or thirty thousand meters above the ground.
“So the anchor’s in place?” Festina asked. “Did anyone down there notice it landing?”
“Negative, Admiral,” Harque answered, as smooth as if he’d never had a flick of trouble putting the box in place. “Perfect insertion, in an alley within twenty meters of the Explorers’ signal source. The anchor’s been there for ten whole minutes and no one has come to investigate.”
“So,” Tobit muttered, “either the folks on the ground didn’t see the anchor go in, or they know exactly what’s happening, and are waiting in ambush.”
“Ever die optimist,” Festina told him. Her voice had a metallic ring to it, because she was speaking through her tightsuit transmitter. Since I didn’t have a tightsuit myself, I had a teeny receiver fastened into my ear—glued good and tight so it wouldn’t fall out. I didn’t have a transmitter, but I wouldn’t need one: the others could hear my normal voice just fine, as long as I was within normal talking range…and we had absolutely no intention of ever splitting up.
“Are we ready?” Dade asked, far too brightly. This was his first trip planet-down, and he was getting off lucky. Troyen might be at war, but it was a lot friendlier than most places Explorers went. Mandasar warriors might actually listen if you pleaded for your life.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Festina said, without sounding too happy about it. “Start the sequence, Harque.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral. Pressurizing now.”
A weight pushed on my ears as Harque increased the air pressure around us. Regulations said we had to have a higher pressure on our end than the atmosphere we were heading for—otherwise, the end of our Sperm-tail might suck up stuff off the planet. The extra pressure would also give us a real strong push into the Sperm-tail.
“Fully pressurized,” Harque announced. “Anchor activated. Preparing to plant tail.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Festina. “Get ready, Edward,” she whispered softly. “Harque is just the sort of asshole to eject us without warning.”
She nudged me to face the Aft Entry Mouth—the big irising door that would snap open any second now. When stuff started happening, it’d go really fast: no countdown to ejection, just zoom, the instant our Sperm-tail was planted. The tail would be glaringly obvious to anyone on the ground…a glittery ribbon of colored sparkles, stretching into the sky. Ideally, it would only stay put a few seconds, just long enough for us to hit the ground and switch off the anchor. Then the tail would slither away wherever it liked, flicking in all directions and confusing observers about where it actually touched down. If we were lucky, we could slink away from the landing site before anyone came for us.
“Almost locked in,” Harque muttered.
I glanced over at Festina beside me. Through the visor of her helmet, I could see she’d closed her eyes. Maybe she was praying. I thought about the last time I’d ridden a Sperm-tail: the way I’d been bludgeoned with ugly memories I hadn’t wanted to relive. Did that happen to Festina too? Did that happen to every Explorer who shot through a Sperm-tail universe?
And yet we stood shoulder to shoulder as if we were brave people.
“Contact,” Harque said.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Prope spoke in a gloating voice. “Good-bye, Festina.”
The Mouth snapped open and swallowed us up.
35
WORKING INTO POSITION
Scooped off my feet by a gust of wind—puffed out the Mouth and into the Sperm-tail. I felt myself turn boneless, like water poured into a long long funnel that would spill me onto the dark soil of Troyen. The palace grounds and Diplomats Row. My home.
I’d never felt wanted on my father’s estate; as for the moonbase, it was just a barren nowhere. My only true home was the place I was going—where I lived with Verity and Sam till they both died.
Except that Sam wasn’t dead, was she? Did that mean Verity wasn’t dead either?
No, no, no! a voice screamed in my head. Another presence was trying to pierce through to me as I gushed down the Sperm-tail. Just like the last time: an unknown spirit reaching in, dredging up my own memories and forcing me to confront them. I tried to resist, but couldn’t shut out the images.
