Forsaken Skies (44 page)

In the repair suite of the tender, Zhang winched her BR.9 into place and engaged the restraint cradle, locking it down. She climbed up over its canopy and opened all the inspection hatches around the engine, once she was certain she wouldn't be venting radioactive gas by doing so. The thrusters were still too hot to touch, even after so many hours of being switched off, so she prodded them with a long wrench.

The cone of her main thruster fell off and clattered to the tender's floor. She looked down and saw a shard of a kinetic impactor still wedged into the cone. So strange to see a piece of an alien artifact like that, just lying on the ground.

She shrugged it off and got back to work. Her secondary thrusters were fried, their reaction chambers clogged with slag like shiny candle wax. She pried them out, not without difficulty, and tossed them in the recycle bin, then replaced them with spares printed by the tender's automated machine shop.

The fusion reactor looked sound. Its struts were loose so it ran the risk of shimmying out of true if she tried firing the main thruster again, but that was an easy enough fix. The main problem was going to be replacing the cones, elegantly designed components that were beyond the tender's capabilities.

Finding spares for those on a place like Niraya would take some doing.

Well, at least they had a spare BR.9 parked out at the spaceport. They'd had two before Maggs ran away. If she couldn't get her own fighter fixed she could just use that one. Pilots held it to be bad luck to change ships in the middle of a campaign, but Zhang had been unlucky before—say, the time she got cut in half. She'd survived that.

The question of whether she could survive a battle with only two other fighters backing her up wasn't worth entertaining.

“She sent me a message!” Thom cried out.

Through the open rear hatch of the tender she could see him over by the door of the ground control station. He beamed like a marine on shore leave, waving his minder in the air.

Ehta sat leaning up against the side of the station, her arms crossed on top of her knees. “Good for you, kid,” the grounded pilot said. She sounded almost sincere. Zhang knew she'd spent some time with Thom and Roan while the other pilots were off having adventures—maybe she'd gotten close to the kids. “What's it say?”

“She says we need to talk,” Thom said, still beaming.

From her perch on top of her fighter, Zhang winced.

“That's…uh, that's great,” Ehta told him.

Zhang clambered down off the fighter and rubbed as much grease as she could off of her gloves and onto a relatively clean towel. “Thom,” she said, walking over to where he held his minder like a prize he'd just won for being a clever boy, “you don't have much experience with women, do you?”

“Hey, come on,” Ehta said, but Zhang just shook her head.

“What do you mean?” Thom asked.

“Just—don't get your hopes up,” she said. She patted him on the shoulder, probably ruining his expensive tunic.

“Don't be mean,” Ehta said.

Zhang smiled down at her. Thom asked her what she meant but she just shook her head. “Ehta,” she said, “why don't you take a look at Maggs's old fighter and see if it can be repaired. I need a break.” She stepped inside the ground control station. Valk was there, watching a minder. Her cybernetic eyes couldn't see what it displayed, but she could guess.

“Things still tense over at the Retreat?” she asked.

“They're starting to get organized,” Valk told her. “From the video I've seen, they're choosing somebody to speak for them. I don't think this crowd is just going to get bored and wander off. Funny—if they want answers about what's going on, you'd figure they'd come up here and ask us. We're the ones who've actually seen the enemy.”

“They don't want answers,” Zhang said. “They want to not be scared. They can't do anything about the enemy so they've turned on their leaders—or the closest thing they've got, the elders. I wouldn't want to be Elder McRae right now. Even if we somehow manage to save this planet, there's going to be a lot of people questioning how she handled the invasion.”

Zhang called up one of her customized displays and ran her hand over its warm surface. In her mind's eye she saw the crowd, surging against the walls of the Retreat. “I don't know why Lanoe is still there,” she said. “We don't have time to waste on politics. I wish I knew what he hoped to achieve.”

“You know him better than anybody,” Valk pointed out.

Zhang favored him with a sad little smile. “I'm afraid that's not saying much. I've known a couple of people nearly as old as him and it's always the same way. After three hundred years you can't help but grow enigmatic. Too many secrets. Too many memories nobody else would understand.”

She studied the Retreat through the display, wishing she could just see him. Know that he was okay. She was receiving live video but the image looked almost still, the Retreat a rock battered by the surging waves of the crowd at its base.

While she watched, something did change, however. On a balcony about three floors up on the side of the Retreat, a door opened. She almost missed it as someone stepped out and looked down at the crowd.

A wave of attention ran through the protestors, as visible as a shock wave in a dust cloud. Ten thousand heads craning back all at once so they could see who had finally come out to address them.

The Retreat had not been built as a center of government. No one had ever thought it would be necessary to address a crowd from its heights. The little balcony had room for one or maybe two people at most, and it was high up enough on the side of the building that any speaker would have to shout to be heard.

It was also high up enough that no one in the crowd would be able to throw rocks at the speaker, though that was just a fringe benefit.

The balcony hung on the side of Elder Kitaj's office, one of the smaller workspaces in the Retreat. The room was crowded to the point of being stifling. Roan didn't really understand why she was there. Maybe Elder McRae wanted her to see how much damage she'd caused.

Out on the balcony, Elder Ving—smiling, heavyset Elder Ving, the most affable of the elders—asked for a moment of the crowd's time. Roan could barely hear what she actually said over the roar of the crowd. It didn't much matter. Elder Ving had been chosen to get their attention, and then introduce Elder McRae. That was all.

“You still sure you want to do this?” Commander Lanoe asked. “Somebody down there might have a rifle. It's risky.”

Roan had never seen Elder McRae look so composed. “It's my responsibility,” she told the pilot. “It must be done, sooner or later.”

“If there is a later,” Engineer Derrow said.

They may have had their differences, but Roan had spent years learning at the old woman's knee. She couldn't help but be awed by Elder McRae's poise as she stepped out onto the balcony, allowing Elder Ving to hurry back inside.

“Thank you for your attention,” Elder McRae said. “I'd like to address your grievances and demands, and assure you that we are doing everything in our power to protect you.”

The crowd howled in rage.

“It is true that we kept some information from you concerning the present invasion,” she went on. “This was done in your best interests. We of the Retreat are not elected officials, but we have taken our position as your counselors, your advisors, and, yes, as your leaders quite seriously. I assure you everything we do is aligned toward one purpose, that is, the safety and well-being of Nirayans and Niraya.”

Roan felt like she might explode. “Tell them the truth,” she said, under her breath. “It's what they want. Tell them what we know!”

The other elders crowded into the office turned to look at her with that expression they had sometimes when they addressed an aspirant, that expression that said you were being foolish and difficult but they forgave you, oh, they could forgive anything.

Commander Lanoe looked at her, too, but with a very different expression. She thought he might even have been smiling, a little, though his face was so wrinkled it could be hard to tell.

“You don't give up, do you?” he asked.

“Not when so much is at stake,” she told him.

He was definitely smiling. Without a word, he nodded, just once, his eyes fixed on hers.

She'd seen him do that before. Once.

Out on the balcony, Elder McRae had to almost scream to be heard over the anger of the crowd. “We have tried to lead by good example. Our teachings are not for everyone, but we believe everyone can benefit from rationality and self-examination. I hope that over the years we have provided you with some measure of insight, and it's in that hope that I call on you today to reject violence against your fellow Nirayans.”

“You mean against you!” someone in the crowd shouted, loud enough to drown her out. It sounded like they were right outside, close enough to grab the elder and pull her down off the balcony.

Roan wanted to push forward and peek out through the windows, in the hope of seeing what was going on. She couldn't move, though. Commander Lanoe, in his bulky suit, was pushing his way through the elders and there was no room for her.

“The current situation,” Elder McRae said, “is bleak, that is true—”

She stopped when Commander Lanoe dropped a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him and he squeezed in beside her on the balcony.

“There will be no evacuations,” he said, his voice rolling like thunder. His suit must have had a loudspeaker built into the collar ring.

The crowd fell silent for a moment, then erupted in a sustained cry of confusion and absolute wrath.

“Some of you work for Centrocor and you thought you were going to be evacuated. That isn't going to happen,” Lanoe said. “There's no time for that. The invasion fleet will be here in a couple of days.”

Roan couldn't believe it.

She'd gotten through to him. Had he been impressed by her conviction? Or had he just decided there wasn't enough time left for telling half-truths and lies?

“They're aliens,” he went on. “I know what you're thinking. We've never found aliens before—most of us assumed they don't exist. Well, they're real, and they're coming here.”

Roan was so rapt listening to his words she barely noticed that the crowd noise was dying down.

“Niraya's in trouble,” Lanoe said. “I won't lie to you about that. You've seen the video. Good. You know what will happen. Except it won't be one of those big drones, it'll be hundreds of them.”

Gasps replied, and a few screams of terror. Not too many. The crowd had fallen almost silent. Roan started moving toward the balcony, needing to see what was happening out there.

“I came here to stop that from happening. I brought as many pilots as I could. I wish I had more. It's going to be a damned tough fight, and we may not win it. You need to accept that there will be no miracles. No promises—except one.

“I will fight them with every ounce of strength I have. I'll use every dirty trick I know, and if it costs me my life, I will continue to fight. My people and I are going to lay down our lives for you. I stake my honor on it.

“And as hard as it's going to be, I believe we have a chance.

“The enemy we're fighting—they aren't magic. They're machines,” Lanoe said. “You shoot them hard enough and they go down. I plan to make one decisive strike against the enemy. If my plan works, it will stop this invasion in its tracks.

“I can't do it alone, though.

“I need ground support—everything I can get. I want to build gun emplacements, and that means I need engineers, I need crews to fire the guns. I need volunteers to make that happen. I—”

He stopped. He just stopped speaking.

Roan pushed past Elder Ghent and shoved her way onto the balcony. She looked down and saw the crowd arrayed around her, so many faces, so many Nirayans.

One of them was holding up his hand. A woman standing next to him lifted hers, as well. Then others, all over the crowd.

Lanoe nodded at them, pointing at each one as they volunteered.

Dozens. Hundreds of them. A couple of people shouted angry demands and threats but they were hushed by the people around them. More hands went up.

Roan felt someone moving beside her and she looked and saw Elder McRae, one of her hands lifted high in the air. “I can weld,” the old woman said. “If that's useful.”

Lanoe turned and looked at Engineer Derrow.

“It is,” the engineer said. Then she lifted her own hand, even though only the people in the office could see it.