Forsaken Skies (32 page)

That was when Derrow screamed.

Valk didn't blame her. He'd seen the video, same as she had. A dozen landers—all legs and claws—hung from the ceiling, motionless but instantly recognizable as the machines that had killed all those Nirayan farmers.

One of them had a leg that had been flayed open, the skin parted and the bundle of wires inside exposed. That was why the hanging wire had looked so familiar—he'd seen it before when she'd examined the claw back at the Retreat.

When they'd all had a chance to calm down—when the landers failed to come to life and kill the three of them were they stood—Maggs asked, “Is this a repair shop? Were they trying to rebuild the ones Lanoe killed?”

Derrow took a step backward. Her hands were out in front of her, as if she could ward off the killer drones. “I don't think so,” she said. “I think…oh, damnation.”

“Tell me,” Valk said.

“I don't think this crater was just a strip mine,” she said. “I think this is a factory. I think this is where they make those things.”

After he'd addressed the Gnostic Christians, after he'd revealed the existence of the invasion fleet, Thom became a minor celebrity on Niraya. Roan—who had been assigned to help him however she could—arranged chances for him to speak with the Gospel of the Fallen Star and the Church of the Ancient Word. The Centrocor mining concern asked if he would present them with a formal statement on behalf of the Navy and he said he would give it his best shot. Local media got interested as well, sending a reporter out to interview him. They chose to do it at the ground control station, the closest thing the Navy had to an official base on Niraya.

Roan went along, because Elder McRae wanted her to be present whenever he spoke. The elder, of course, refused to show any anger or displeasure at his revelation of her secret, but it was clear she was deeply concerned with how the news would affect the people of Niraya. Perhaps she thought that Roan would keep him from making things any worse.

Roan tried to focus on her responsibilities to the faith, but instead found herself more worried about how Thom was handling the demands the people put on him. The day the reporter came he was very nervous before he spoke. He didn't ask her to hold his hand, this time. Maybe he was just getting better at public speaking. Roan went and sat with Ensign Ehta, who, having nothing else to do, had decided to watch from a corner of the room.

The reporter was a woman of maybe thirty, well dressed for a Nirayan. She had a camera drone that floated around behind her left shoulder, capturing everything for the record. “Thanks for agreeing to this,” she told Thom, as she made a big show of setting up—unrolling a minder on the table between them, adjusting the center's lighting to get the best shot. “Before we begin, I want to ask you—just for my personal information—how much danger you think we're in. Is the Navy up to stopping this fleet?”

Roan could see what was happening—the reporter was hoping to catch him saying something meaningful while he thought they were off the record. Roan wanted to wave her hands in the air and warn Thom to hold his tongue, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

Thom just gave the reporter a warm smile and nodded at the camera drone. “You're already recording,” he said.

“Hmm?” the reporter asked. “This thing? Oh, it's always on, to catch any good B-roll for when I edit this piece.”

Thom nodded. “Well, to answer your question—I have every faith in the Navy, and especially in the commander of the local force, Aleister Lanoe. If anyone can keep the enemy at bay, it's him.”

“What can you tell me about the enemy we're fighting? There's a lot of contradictory information out there. Some people claim it's a fleet of ships sent by one of the polys, probably DaoLink. Some say it's a swarm of angels descending to purify Niraya.”

Thom's smile turned up a little at one corner, just enough to indicate he didn't take the idea of divine intervention seriously. “I can't say much about who sent the fleet, because honestly, we just don't know yet.”

“You don't even know who you're fighting?”

“We do know a few things. The fleet didn't come through the local wormhole, and so far we've seen that they rely heavily on drones to fight for them rather than engaging us personally. I know there are a lot of people on Niraya who choose to live nonviolent lives, and I want to assure them that so far there's been no blood spilled. We hope to keep it that way.”

“Hold on,” the reporter said. “Drones?”

“That's correct,” Thom said. Did he look a little put out? Roan could guess what he was thinking—that if the Retreat would release the video of the first attack, he wouldn't have to explain this.

“Drones, like this one?” the reporter asked, gesturing at the machine that hovered behind her. “I've never heard of an armed drone. Drones don't kill people.”

Thom smiled through gritted teeth. “It's actually illegal for anyone to put a weapon system on a drone. The penalties are considerable. But I assure you, whoever this enemy is, they've done it. The machines they're sending against Niraya—”

“And again, you don't know who ‘they' are,” the reporter pointed out.

“Yes. I mean, no, we don't know.”

“It seems you don't have much in the way of actual information to give my viewers.”

Thom started to shrug, then seemed to catch himself. His smile was plastered on at that point—Roan could see his lips starting to twitch. “There's a great deal that's unknown. We do know that Niraya is in serious danger.”

“From killer drones,” the reporter said, again.

“The people of this planet need to know that,” Thom told her. “They need to understand what's going on. It's my job to tell them what we do know. And to reassure them that we're fighting on their behalf, giving it everything we've got.”

“How is the Navy doing that? What can you tell us about the fighting? Have Commander Lanoe and his pilots attacked this enemy directly, yet?”

“I—I can't comment on actual engagements—”

“Yet another thing you can't tell us. Or won't.”

Thom looked away from her, away from the camera. Even to Roan he looked shifty and defensive. This wasn't going well.

“I'll share any information I can,” he promised. “I'll answer any questions.”

The reporter nodded and made some notes on her minder. “You recently addressed the Christian Gnostics,” she said.

“That's correct.”

“Was there any reason why you went to them first? You aren't a religious man yourself. I mean, not as far as I could turn up in my research.”

Thom's eyes went wide, shining under the lights. Roan winced to see how scared he looked. “You did a background check on me?” he asked.

“Of course. That's part of my job. I wanted to make sure I knew what questions to ask. It wasn't easy, though. For one thing, you're not listed anywhere in any Navy database.”

“No—I…no,” Thom admitted.

“You aren't in the Navy at all, are you? Unless”—and the reporter laughed at the idea—“you're some kind of secret intelligence officer or something.”

“No, no,” Thom said, “I'm not in the Navy. But Commander Lanoe asked me personally to be his liaison to the people of Niraya.”

“An interesting choice, since—and honestly, I'm embarrassed by this. I mean, I think of myself as being good at my job. But I couldn't find any records about you at all. Nothing. I've never seen anything like it. You and your Naval associates came here from the Centrocor Hexus, but their records don't show you being there, ever.”

“I met up with the pilots near the Hexus, but I never actually set foot on it,” Thom said. “Listen, forgive me, but I don't see why talking about me is relevant. I'm here to discuss the invasion.”

“Of course you are,” the reporter said. Then she rolled up her minder and sat back in her chair. “Except you have no actual information to pass on. What do you want to talk about? Not yourself. Not the Navy's plans. Do you want to discuss Commander Lanoe? Do you want to tell me why, if we're actually under attack, the Navy sent a man who's been retired for seventeen years?”

“This interview is over,” Thom said.

“If you like,” the reporter said, as if it meant nothing to her. She packed up her things and left without another question.

When she was gone Ensign Ehta came over and thumped Thom on the back. “Good job, kid,” she said.

“What?” Thom asked, wheeling on the grounded pilot.

“You kept your mouth shut.” Ehta nodded happily. “Never saw the point of public relations myself. Don't know why people have so many damned questions. I mean, they should just let the Navy do its job, right? Stay out of our way.”

Thom shook his head. “That's pretty much the opposite of what I'm trying to do here. I want the people of Niraya to support you, not pretend like you don't exist.”

Ehta shrugged expansively. “In that case—damn. I guess you messed up.”

Thom stormed out of the ground control station and down the stairs toward the crater floor. Roan chased after him, having no idea what to say. When she finally caught up to him at the bottom of the stairs he turned and stared at her with wild eyes. Then he grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug.

She tensed up, unsure of what was happening. He was very warm, and she could feel how skinny he was under his stylish clothes. Roan couldn't remember the last time someone had hugged her. What were you even supposed to do? Eventually she put her arms around him and patted him, gently, on the back. He released her, then, to her immediate relief.

“Sorry. I just needed that,” he told her. “I needed to hold somebody who doesn't hate me. I hope it's okay. I mean—it's not against your beliefs, or anything, to hug someone.”

“I don't think there's anything about hugging in the Four Eternals,” she told him. She surprised herself by laughing a little. Maybe just a release of nervous energy. “I guess I just wasn't expecting it.”

He nodded and pulled away from her.

“I can't do any more interviews,” he told her. “Not if they're going to ask about my past. And when I talk to the churches, I just make them think their gods hate them or something. What am I even doing here, Roan?”

“Your best,” she said.

“It's not enough! After this—after this mess, they're going to think they're being attacked by cute little
robots
. I'm just making things worse. If they could see that video, maybe—but your elders won't let that happen. It's like they're happier with the people on this planet being misinformed and ignorant. It's as if they prefer it that way.”

“They're just trying not to scare anyone,” Roan said, but she wasn't sure if she believed that anymore herself. “Look, Thom—”

“I can't do anything right, can I?”

“Thom, it's okay,” she tried, desperately wanting to soothe him. Because clearly it wasn't okay at all. Yet she couldn't think of what else to say. “It's going to be okay.”

He dropped into a chair and chewed on his thumbnail. “I know what we have to do,” he told her.

“You do?”

“I need to talk to the elder. I need to ask her for something.”

T
hom paced back and forth in impatience while Elder McRae studied a minder at her desk. She flipped through several pages of reports without so much as a sigh or a raised eyebrow. When she finally looked up at him her face was a dispassionate mask.

“It appears,” she said, “that you've had an effect, at least.”

Thom stared down at his boots. “If anything I've made things worse.”

Just after his video interview went live, news had come in that a pair of Christian Gnostics had been attacked by a much larger group of Centrocor miners. Apparently the Gnostics had been preaching at the entrance to the mining concern—imploring the miners to repent and convert before God destroyed Niraya. The Gnostics must have been pretty strident in their appeals, but that hardly justified the savagery of the attack—both of the preachers were in the hospital now, one with broken ribs. “I got some people hurt, frankly,” Thom said.

“An isolated incident,” the elder said. “The Centrocor administrators acted quickly to arrest the attackers. They assure me there will be no further violence.”

Thom rubbed at his eyes with the balls of his thumbs. “Before, the people of this planet were confused about what was happening. Now they're fighting about it.”

The elder nodded. “Perhaps not what Commander Lanoe was hoping you'd achieve.”

“You didn't want this, either,” Thom said. “I'm sorry—I know you didn't want news of the invasion getting out. I know I went against your wishes.”

“We all choose our own path.”

Whatever he thought of the elders and the Retreat—and his estimation of them had sunk pretty low—they weren't cruel. No, they weren't despots. They didn't run Niraya with an iron fist. Instead they seemed to treat anyone who wasn't a member of their faith like a child who needed to be carefully and kindly supervised.

Even now, even after he'd defied her, he knew that Elder McRae wouldn't chastise him. She wouldn't punish him. He thought maybe he'd prefer it if she did. At least then someone would be giving him guidance, instead of just forcing him to live with his own doubts. He'd tried to contact Lanoe, to at least see if the old pilot approved of what he'd done, but Lanoe was too busy to talk.

Thom had never felt so alone. He shook his head, mostly because he couldn't believe what he'd gotten himself into. “I think I made the right decision,” he said. “I wish I could know for sure.”

“It's impossible to say. In the faith, we try not to think about hypotheticals,” the elder told him. “Instead we focus on realities. Tell me, what do you want to achieve?”

“I'm hoping I can turn things around,” he told her. “I'm hoping I can at least dispel some of the weirder conspiracy theories. If the people knew they were being attacked by drones—machines, not supernatural creatures—then at least some of the anger would be allayed.”

“Are you so sure?” Elder McRae asked. “You might be surprised at how the religious mind works. The Christians have a saying—that their God works in a mysterious fashion, something like that. They might very well see the drones as the instruments of their deity's judgment.” She smiled at him. “I should know what faith can do when married to a little imagination. I've made similar leaps in my own thinking.”

“You need to make an official announcement. Tell people everything you know. When I tell them all I do is start rumors and urban legends. They'll believe it, coming from you. They have a right to know.”

The elder didn't even look up. “It's been discussed. A decision has already been made,” she said.

In other words the Retreat wasn't going to do anything. Thom couldn't believe it. All those people on Niraya, thinking they were safe—he stepped forward and leaned on the desk. “At least give them some idea of what's going on! You have the video. The video of the lander attacking the canyon farm. If you released that video, let people see what's coming for them, it might—”

“Out of the question,” the elder said, before he could even finish.

“But why?” Thom asked. “What are you afraid will happen if people see it?”

The elder folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes for a moment before answering. “Panic. Rioting, perhaps. Further violence. I'd think that's the last thing you'd want.”

“You don't think these people have a right to see it?” Thom demanded.

“I try to take a longer view, in my decisions,” the elder told him. “Consider the possibilities. There are two, yes?”

“Only two?”

“Indeed,” Elder McRae said. “One. Commander Lanoe and his pilots will repulse the invasion. At which point that video will become a matter of historical curiosity. Two. They will fail. Everyone on Niraya—including you and me—will die, and quite soon. In what way do you think it will improve the last few days of this planet for the people to be terrified by that ghastly video?”

Thom stared into her eyes. They were completely unreadable—this was a woman who'd spent half a lifetime learning how to control her emotions. To keep herself calm no matter what.

No matter what.

“You don't think they can do it,” he said, very softly.

“I don't like to make predictions.”

He shook his head. “No. You've thought it through. You think Lanoe will fail.”

“I've said all I will on this matter. Now. If you have any other business…?”

He might have said more, except just then there was a clatter of noise outside the door, and then a curt knock. Roan had been waiting outside—now she stepped into the office and nodded at the two of them. “Ensign Ehta is here, Elder,” she said. “She'd like to speak to you.”

“Of course,” the elder said.

Ehta came in puffing for breath and red in the face. Clearly she'd come from the ground control station in a hurry. At first she couldn't even speak.

“Roan, get her a glass of water, please,” the elder said.

When Ehta had recovered a little, she dropped into a chair, heavily enough to make it creak. “New imagery,” she said. “The enemy fleet…It's…maneuvering.” She tapped at a virtual keyboard on her wrist and a holographic display appeared in front of her, showing the same gray blobs they'd all seen before. They had come into better resolution now, so that their actual shapes could be made out, though without much in the way of detail.

The biggest ship, the one they called the carrier, was still mostly a big ovoid blur though now spiky projections were visible on its forward end, long spires that looked like the frill around a lizard's neck or, if one were feeling gloomy, perhaps like teeth.

The smaller line ships—what Lanoe had suggested were destroyers—had taken on shape as well. They looked like twisted horns or jagged triangles.

Around them the smallest ships moved like a cloud of gnats, still just flecks of gray with no visible shape.

“They're decelerating,” Ehta pointed out. “But not as quickly as they were…I know the, the”—she waved a hand in the air—“the mechanics of it are kind of hard to grasp, but that means, basically—they're coming on faster than before.”

The elder got up from her desk and came over to study the projection from various angles. “What about their trajectory? Has that changed?”

Ehta shook her head. “No. They're still on a course directly for Niraya. Well—most of them are.”

Thom frowned. “Most?”

“There were eight of those…destroyer things,” Ehta said. “In the first image. I counted them. There's only seven there. I went looking for the other one. It's moving toward the ice giant, toward that moon where Lanoe went. I'm guessing it's been sent to take them out.”

“There's only four of them there, four ships against that thing,” Roan said, her eyes very wide.

Ehta shrugged.

Thom glanced over at the elder. “Lanoe can handle it.”

“We can hope so,” Elder McRae said. “How long before the main fleet arrives here, at Niraya?”

“Less than a week,” Ehta said.

All of them were too stunned to speak after that. Thom had known this was coming—known the fleet was on its way. But that had always been an abstract sort of idea before, something that would happen in some nebulous future.

Now it was real. Now it was breathing down their necks. Less than a week before everyone on Niraya died. The elder, Ehta, himself. Roan. He looked over at her face but couldn't see anything there except that she looked scared.
Well,
he thought,
she should be.

He shook his head and headed for the office door, intending on—actually, he had no real idea what he intended to do next. He just wanted to get away from the specter of apocalypse in the office.

When he was out on the landing he heard the door open again behind him. He turned, hoping to see Roan there.

Instead he saw Elder McRae.

Her mask had slipped, just a little. He could see something similar to fear in her eyes. Concern, maybe.

“Thom,” she said. “I'd like to ask for a favor.”

He stopped where he was and just waited for her to go on. Clearly she had no desire to rely on him. She didn't trust him. But she needed something.

“I'd prefer if this news wasn't shared outside of my office,” she said.

“You want me to help you keep your people ignorant,” he said.

If she was offended by being spoken to like that, she didn't show it. “The last thing this planet needs is fear-mongering,” she told him.

He smiled. How he would have liked to tell her to go to hell, just then.

Too bad she was going to get what she wanted. “Information on enemy movements is one of those things Lanoe doesn't want broadcast,” he said. “You're not the only one who believes in secrets.”

Maggs crawled into one of the bunks in the tender's wardroom. He'd been walking for hours and needed a bit of a lie-down. The other pilots clustered around a large display while Derrow—Proserpina, he corrected himself—went over what she'd found.

“This place has been operational for a while,” she said. “Just going on how elaborate it was, how much they built and how much they dug, I'd say they were here on Aruna long before they sent that lander to Niraya.”

“Maybe this place was what they wanted all along,” Valk pointed out. “Killing all those Nirayans was just like posting a ‘no trespassing' sign.”

“Sure, maybe,” Lanoe said. He turned to face all of his attention on M. Derrow. “Did you find any indication of who built it?”

“We found no trace of any living, organic creature anywhere we looked,” she said. “We explored about sixty structures in total and I'm confident in saying there were no living things in this facility, even before you blew it up.”

That got a few laughs. Well, Proserpina was a midlevel Centrocor manager, a job where you needed to know how to give a presentation.

“The whole place was automated. If I'm correct, it was built by machines, too, with no human supervision. That's against every protocol I know. If there's even one bad line of code in its instructions, a drone will mess up a project every single time. You need at least one person to supervise them, to debug them when it's necessary.” She threw up her hands. “But that's what we found here. Unsupervised machines.”

“Which fits with everything else we've seen,” Valk piped in. “That interceptor I fought didn't have a pilot. The landers are autonomous, too.”

“Forgive me,” Lanoe said, “I know you're a miner. But I don't imagine it takes a lot of code to teach drones how to dig up rocks.”

If Proserpina was offended she didn't show it. “Sure, I guess. But there was a lot more going on here than just grubbing for ore. I know a strip mine when I see it. But I know a factory, too. There are assembly sheds like the one we found all over the crater. Some of the other structures are machine shops and forges…The mine is just there to provide the raw materials. Everything in this crater is here for one purpose, to make more of those landers.”

“Why weren't there more of them when we arrived, then?” Zhang asked. Zhang did most of Lanoe's thinking for him, as far as Maggs could tell.

“Because of these things,” Proserpina said, and changed the display. From his vantage Maggs could just see it showed video of the spongelike structure they'd investigated. “You thought these were barracks. And yes, they house the landers when they're not in use. When I went inside this one, though, I saw the interior was really robust for such a lightweight structure. That got me thinking. You see these ribs on the inside? You don't need those if you're just building a house, especially not on a moon with so little gravity. It's just overdesigned for that purpose. But then I realized where I'd seen a design like that before. This isn't a barracks, it's a cargo module.”