Playing God (39 page)

Good enough.
“Whalen, anything on the long-range?”

The sand brown man bent over his own portable and shook his head. “All quiet. Whatever’s going on in there, it’s staying in there.”

“Anything on the computer lines?”

“Not since the cut-and-run order came.” Whalen touched a few keys. “We’re not picking up anything, not even maintenance calls between the AI and the jobbers. Whatever they’re doing, they’re not talking about it anywhere we can listen in.”

Probably using paper, or their hardwired speakers. Primitive, but completely secure from Human spying.

For the moment,
he told himself.
For the moment only.

He felt old. Old and tired and worried. There were Humans in there, and he was responsible for them. Esmo was with them. If the Dedelphi were not willing to talk…Alternatives would be found. He would get the people out.

Movement on the camera display caught his eye. His heart froze. Something white and about the size of a grain of sand drifted away from the
Ur
, heading at a forty-five-degree angle up from its disk. Another flew in almost a straight line from the plane. Another dropped off at a ninety-degree angle.

The bridge crew must have noticed it, too, because the camera suddenly zoomed in on the first of the grains. First, Keale saw it was round. Then, he saw it was clear with a dark center.

Then he saw it was a rescue ball. With an occupant.

He touched the intercom key. “This is Keale. Pull the shot out again.”

“Acknowledged,” came the voice of Holger Redding, the
Graves
’s copilot.

The camera’s view pulled back. More white grains had joined the first, each heading on a separate trajectory from the others, spreading out at every possible angle. Some of them got caught in the ship’s gravity field and bounced hard against the dome, eventually settling into orbit around the big ship like tiny moons.

Keale had an abrupt vision of a cluster of Dedelphi in the number five airlock grasping the Humans in their rescue balls and heaving them out into the vacuum.

Deliberately scattering them to keep us at a rescue for as long as possible.
Keale felt his mouth harden.
And it’s going to work, too.

His attention was still glued to the screen, but his hands flew across his portable’s keys, slaving the
Graves
’s intercom to the rest of the fleet.

“Attention, all personnel. This is now a rescue mission. Top priority. We have to assume there’s going to be the full thousand of them.”
And we
are
going to get them all.

“Anderson?” He hailed the
Graves
’s pilot. “Head us in, top speed. Shuttle group, fan out, make sure we cover all sides of the
Ur. Aubrey, Maturin, Hough,
you take the far side.
Tamulevich, Deku, Brian,
take the downside.
Everson
and
Sampson
will take the near side.
Hale,
hang back and circle us, pick up anybody who slides through.”

Affirmative replies flooded back to him, and he felt marginally better. A lot was going to depend on the pilots. Much of the success of this rescue boiled down to a physics problem: velocity, trajectory, and force.

And speed.

“Suits, people.” Keale planted his magnetic slippers on the deck and undid his couch straps.

All security personnel on the Bioverse rolls were trained in as many kinds of space-based search and rescue as the system guard could think up. They could do this. They would do this.

Down in the hold, Keale shut himself into one of the suit lockers. He stripped out of his clothes and put on a skintight, white singlet that covered him from toe to neck. In a stall that was the size of a small shower, careful waldos covered him with organic insulation and a bright yellow layer of pressure webbing. Over it, he strapped the backpack harness with the helmet collar attached. He pulled a patch cord out of the collar and hooked it up to his temple implant. He locked on the helmet, slid on the gloves, knee and elbow braces, and boots.

Out in the common area, he helped his people on with their batteries and air tanks, and was helped on with his. Nobody spoke beyond the ritual fit-and-function checks. Everyone was too distracted by what they’d seen outside.

The
Ur
’s actual crew members were experienced spacers. They’d be all right. The rest of the personnel, though, a lot of them would just be sim trained. Right now, they would be tumbling around, frightened, confused, and probably a mess, with their own vomit bouncing around the ball with them. Most of them would be completely unable to see that help was on its way.

Keale and his people made their way down into the cargo bay. The shuttle had not been designed as a rescue vehicle. Instead of one huge hatch like ambulance ships, it had three small airlocks on either side of its single, cavernous bay. The
Graves
was empty of cargo, but not for long.

“I want six to a lock, two outside to grab, two to run the hatches, and two to get those people out of the rescue balls and make sure they’re all right. Rotate positions every two hours.” Keale rattled off assignments, finishing with, “Ashe, Deale, Chung, Skelly, and Vera, you’re with me at number four.”

Ashe and Vera followed Keale into the number four lock. Skelly shut the inner door. The world hummed and whirred and whooshed as the small chamber depressurized. Each of them instinctively grabbed one of the handholds.

The outer door cycled open and let in all the light-flecked darkness of the universe. Keale felt the brief dizziness that came from having nothing between himself and infinite vacuum.

Purpose and training took over. Ashe pulled a tether out of its rack. She jacked one end into the socket to the right of the airlock and hooked the other end to Keale’s belt. She turned around, and Keale connected her to the left side of the lock. They held on and waited for their chance.

From where Keale was, the rescue balls were as big as medicine balls, and he could make out the doll-sized Humans inside them. There were still more being tossed out the airlock. A few people had worked their hands into the ball’s gloves and had managed to hang on to each other, turning the individual bubbles into strings like model molecules.

The
Graves
’s pilots were done hurrying. The shuttle moved at a steady, leisurely pace. They steered carefully into the nearest group of rescue balls. Some of the bubbles’ occupants spotted the ship and tried to scramble around to get a better view, sending their containers rolling gently over.

“Okay, airlocks,” came Anderson’s voice across Keale’s suit intercom. “It’s up to you.”

“Let’s go,” said Keale to Ashe.

He let go of the handle and gave himself a small shove out into the blackness. His tether played out behind him. He turned his head and focused his attention on the nearest rescue ball.

“Guide to target,” he murmured to his implant. The suit’s jet pack squirted once, veering him off at a sharp angle. He stretched his hands out. The transparent rescue ball filled his view. There was a teak-skinned man inside with an expression of relief on his face so intense it was almost painful.

Keale’s hands collided with the ball and found two of the multiple handles that covered the outside.

“Back,” he ordered. The suit spoke to the tether, which began reeling Keale and the man back toward the shuttle.

Ashe was already back in the airlock with her first rescue. Keale guided his man’s rescue ball inside, and Vera cycled the outer door shut.

There’s two.
Keale looked out at the clusters of floating bubbles.
Hold on out there. We’re on our way.

Four and a half hours and six hundred people later, Keale sat in the shuttle’s main compartment with a tired and grim Esmaraude next to him. She had both hands wrapped around a soft beaker of coffee. He was sucking down water. His shoulders ached, and his arms felt like rubber hoses.

“They got the engineering word, but they didn’t get mine,” said Esmo. “I’ve got no idea about gravity. Has anybody found Rudu King?”

Keale nodded. “He’s in sick bay, but they had to knock him out.” Pain creased Esmo’s face. “He’ll be all right, they said. Just going to need his leg jump-grown.”

“We were too slow.” Esmo scowled at her hands holding the coffee bulb. “Stood around like sheep, going ‘What the heck is that, boyo?’”

“Excuse me,” interrupted a man’s soft voice.

Keale looked up to see Dr. David Zelotes. The man looked haggard, but not shattered like some people they’d pulled in.

“Yes, Doctor?” said Esmo.

Zelotes was looking directly at Keale, and Keale knew what was coming next. “I was wondering if there’d been any word about Lynn Nussbaumer.”

“There wasn’t when I left,” said Keale as kindly as he could. “But I’ll reel a thread out to Base. Something may have come in since.”

“Thank you.” Zelotes tried to straighten himself up. “There’re a lot of contusions and broken bones and shock among the evacuees, Captain, but everyone’s in decent shape.” It was as if he was trying to be useful as an apology for interrupting.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Esmo briskly. “Let us know if there’s anything you need.” She spoke as if she were still aboard her fully stocked ship, not aboard an underequipped shuttle retreating to its base.

“I will.” Zelotes turned around and headed back for the hold.

Esmo shook her head and whispered, “Poor bastard.”

“We’ve all done everything we can,” said Keale softly. “What we’ve got to decide is what to do next. Assume the Dedelphi have two command words, what can they do?”

Esmo swallowed a little more coffee. “Not a whole lot that’s immediately useful. The AI’s gone. I shut down the engines, sealed up everything I could think of from my station. They’ll need the captain’s word to get that undone.”

Keale drummed his fingers on his thigh. “So they can’t even move the thing until they decrypt the command codes.”

Captain Esmaraude lowered her coffee beaker. “You don’t think…”

“They are at least going to give it a good try, Captain. Whether they can or not…They’ve tapped our communications, they’ve stolen one of our ships. I’m not going to be the one who says they can’t solve one of our codes.” He let out a sigh. “Until then, however, they’ve stolen an island.” He scowled at the city-ship sitting serenely in the middle of his portable screen. “We need to find a way to spy on their conversations, but we’re working on that. By tomorrow we’ll have a sat-net thrown up to keep an eye on them.” He paused. “Maybe we can get one of the engineering ships down from the asteroid belt and take the place apart around them. There might be some ways the nanotech teams could make it too uncomfortable to live in there…” He let the sentence trail off. There were possibilities. Plenty of them. He had to believe that right now, or he was no good to anybody.

“Well”—Esmo swigged some more coffee—“if it’s any consolation, you were right.”

Keale snorted. “I was wrong, Esmo. I was preparing for a spontaneous attack, a mob action. I completely failed to consider an organized, carefully planned takeover by a group of people who had studied us for a long time.” He laughed once. “Never, ever trust the stats, Esmo. They lie.”

“What do you think they’re going to do now?”

Keale shook his head. “I’ve got no idea. Try to attack the t’Therian city-ship, maybe. Take all those virus samples we’ve got in there and dump them over the t’Aori peninsula. Find a big rock to drop, maybe. They’ve done that before.”

Esmo studied her coffee. “So what are we going to do now?” she asked calmly.

“First”—Keale looked at the tiny, glowing city-ship on his screen—“we’re calling the home system and getting reinforcements.” His eyes narrowed as he looked down at the city-ship again. “Then, we’re going to show our guests just what kind of trouble they’re in.”

T
HE CARRIER CREPT FORWARD
another few feet. Arron shifted his weight from one buttock to the other. They’d been riding in the carrier’s canvas-roofed cargo bin for the better part of an hour. Balt and Entsh had been able to take them most of the way using the security tunnels. They’d made good time, although being surrounded by the reek of gasoline and smog and the constant echo of traffic noise had not made for a comfortable trip.

They’d had to emerge onto the main streets when they reached the town of Mrant Chavat. Too many checkpoints, down below, Balt had told them. This close to the port fortifications, the cargo bin would have to be inspected.

Arron ran his hand across the stubble on his chin and his scalp. He itched. He also stank, but Lynn assured him it was all right; she did, too. Lynn sat on the opposite side of the bin from him. Res huddled under the canvas openings at the rear, where the air circulation was best. Her skin was still twitching way too much, he noticed.

None of them had spoken since they climbed into the carrier. Lynn leaned against one of the support struts for the canvas and pretended to be asleep. He suspected her infection was taking more out of her than she wanted to admit. The skin around the bandage was swollen and cherry red, with dark streaks running through it. The liquid seeping out from under the ragged cloth had a greenish tinge that could not be good.

He’d called her his sister yesterday. It was the only Getesaph word for a close relationship. “Friend” didn’t really exist. Ally was a transitory term. Those who were closest to you could only be sisters, mothers, or daughters. There were no words in Getesaph for how he had felt when he had seen her again after all these years.

God, he’d missed her. Not just for the sex. He’d had that, as needed. The Human population on the Getesaph’s Earth was not that small, and it circulated fairly regularly. He’d missed her laugh, her voracious intelligence, her sharp opinions, her ways of speaking.

There had never been anybody like her, before or since. He’d wanted to rescue her. To show her this had all been a mistake. To explain why she was going about her project all wrong in a way she’d understand.

Then, when she’d heard about the
Ur
, she’d said, “David,” and he’d felt something inside him snap in two.