A Night Without Stars (18 page)

“Sit,” the director said, her public good humor fading. “Are you okay? I wasn't expecting you in today.”

“It's just a plaster cast. Nothing too bad.”

She grunted and sat behind her desk. Chaing waited in the silence that followed, slightly unnerved. It was her fault she hadn't been available last night.
Is she going to try to blame me?
Then Yaki produced a small mirthless smile and turned over her right lapel. She wore a section seven pin on the underside, identical to his own.

“Ah,” Chaing said, and clicked the lock on his briefcase. He took out the pin.

“I thought so,” Yaki said. “It would take something like a breeder to bring Stonal down here.”

“So…?”

“Yeah.” She pointed to her scar. “Brute had claws the size of fingers. It was as big as a crudding horse, too. I was lucky, emptied my entire magazine into the bastard before it died.”

“There were two creatures there last night. One was like a panther, and the other was human, but huge. I was going to be eaten, then the Warrior Angel arrived.”

Yaki's eyebrows rose. “You seriously want to keep that part quiet. Even from me. Read your section seven briefing.”

“Understood.”

“Sorry I wasn't there. Lapse of protocol. My fault; I was traveling between functions and stopped off with some councilors for a drink. I didn't phone in a contact number, because nothing ever happens in Opole. And you got lumbered with Stonal because of it.”

“I've just been out to the manor. There's nothing left.”

“That'll be the marines. They're pretty thorough.”

“There could have been more members in that nest. But the marines have destroyed any evidence. I've got nothing to go on.”

“Yes, so you're going to have to work the case from another angle. If there are any survivors, they'll sneak into another nest. You had other active cases, didn't you?”

Chaing shrugged. “A few leads.”

“Then go get them. I won't be stopping you.”

“There was one thing. Corilla mentioned the Fallers were communicating like Eliters, but the signals were encrypted.”

“I haven't heard that one before.”

“I'd like to bring in some technicians from the Eliter division. They have receivers that monitor the Eliter frequencies. If they do pick up weird signals, we could triangulate on them.”

“You haven't ever heard Eliter signals before, have you? I have. If you play them through a speaker, they're like a long whistle. It's ‘digital,' apparently; they turn sound into binary code, which itself is coded. We don't have the electronics to unravel it all; not even the big computators at Cape Ingmar are good enough. As far as the rest of us are concerned, all the Eliter transmissions are encrypted. So what your Eliter friend was saying is that
they
can't understand them. Which means the Fallers probably have eggsumed Eliters, and duplicated their macrocellular clusters.”

“Crud.”

“So asking PSR Eliter division techs to monitor transmissions is a dead end.”

But not Eliters,
he thought.
They could scan for them. Except Stonal sent Corilla away. Stupid move.
“All right. I'll need a new team to hunt for nests. I'd like Corporal Jenifa assigned as my partner to replace Lurvri.”

“Are you sure about that? It's generally not a good idea to have someone you're screwing working under you. Emotional attachment can lead to hesitation, among other problems.”

Crud, how does she know that?
“I wasn't emotionally attached to Lurvri, and that didn't help him.”

“All right,” she said. “You can have Jenifa. Your call.”

“Thank you.”

Early-morning light was just starting to shine around the red-and-blue curtains when Chaing woke up. It revealed Jenifa lying beside him. She was under the bedclothes this time, and naked—like him. He looked at her for a while, enjoying the memory of last night. His wrist still ached from that, so he moved his arm trying to ease it.

She woke at the motion. Disoriented at first as she glanced around his bedroom; then she saw him watching her and grinned. “Morning.”

He kissed her, using it to huddle up closer. “Morning to you.”

“You're very eager…” A curious frown, and her hand was snaking down his stomach to find how stiff he was. She giggled. “Men in the morning. It's like a crudding alarm clock.”

He nibbled her ear and moved down to her throat, which made her squeak.

“Tickles,” she protested. Then she shoved the bedclothes away and slung a leg over his hips, rising up to straddle him. Instead of impaling herself, she began to toy with him. He groaned in frustration. The wan beams of light stippled her skin, bestowing her robust figure with a rich gold hue. Anticipation became unbearable.

“Please,” he moaned.

Smirking, she leaned forward so her mouth was a centimeter from his ear, a hot whisper telling him the wicked things he'd have to do before she'd let him inside her.

The phone on the bedside cabinet started ringing.

“No crudding way!” Chaing cried.

Jenifa nearly fell off the bed she was laughing so hard.

He glared at the phone, but of course it was no good. He wouldn't be getting a phone call at home and at this hour unless it was extremely important. “Yes?” he snapped into the handset.

“Am I interrupting something?” Stonal's voice asked.

Once again Chaing wondered if his flat was being bugged. “No, sir.”

“We have a problem. You'll be helping me control a regiment operation.”

“Er…Yes, of course. What regiment operation?”

“I'm conducting a search of the countryside not far from Opole. A car will pick you up in ten minutes. There'll be a helicopter for you at the Air Defense Force aerodrome.”

“I'll be ready, sir.”

They reversed Ry's furtive arrival—a procedure he would have laughed at if it hadn't been so ridiculous. The same escort took him back out of the anonymous PSR office block and into the car, which retraced its route to the hangar with the seaplane. He got in, and one of the aircraft crew handed him the crumpled flight suit he'd worn during the mission. Nobody said anything as he changed back into it, making sure his mission badge was prominent on his chest. Then they all sat and waited.

Sure enough, base personnel started to appear in the hangar soon after—colleagues from the astronaut corps, flight controllers, Cape workers, a regiment band, reporters, and the newsreel camera crews. Finally the radio operator looked up and said: “They're ready for you, sir.”

The band was playing when he stuck his head out the seaplane door. A grand cheer went up; flashbulbs went off. Ry raised an arm to wave. At the foot of the airstairs, General Delores saluted. He walked down and saluted her back. A ten-year-old girl in a pretty red-and-green dress gave him a bunch of flowers and smiled up shyly. He looked around the hangar at the enthusiastic faces, returning their smiles. Then stopped. Anala was standing two rows back from the front, giving him a mocking slow handclap, an icily contemptuous expression on her face.

Ry didn't get back to his private quarters until after midnight. There had been the official press interviews, carefully monitored and guided by the astronaut corps political officers; then the formal splashdown banquet in the mess hall. Followed by a less formal, but still traditional, session in the astronaut corps bar, drinking the same shots of dirantio comrade Demitri had downed after the first successful Silver Arrow launch—during which no one,
absolutely no one,
had mentioned anything about any part of the mission having difficulties. Nothing about the delay after he arrived, and the welcome-home ceremony in the hangar. A whole evening of talk that said nothing. It was quite remarkable, really.

He took off his dress uniform, got into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt—another change of clothes; he'd lost track of how many there'd been today—and gave the bed a longing look. Yet he knew he wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon.

And there it was: a discreet knock on the door. Just before he opened it, he wondered if he'd gotten this wrong and it would be another armed escort, and the last anyone would know or see of Pilot Major Ry Evine would be the newsreel films of his splashdown banquet. But it was Anala, looking rather sexy in her tailored dress uniform with the top three buttons on her white blouse undone.

Ry gestured her in with an exaggerated motion, realizing he'd had quite a lot of dirantio shots. Then he put his finger to his lips, and gave his quarters an embellished glance around.

She responded with an exasperated scowl, but nodded in understanding. “Good to see you.”

“And you.” He started to kiss her, then discovered it wasn't being returned. “Oh,” he grunted.

“Come on,” she said, more sympathetically. “I think you need a proper sleep. You can tell me all about it in the morning.”

“You're probably right.” Ry looked around for the bed—

He woke up with the uncomfortable fading ache that told him he'd slept through a hangover. Anala was moving around in the little galley kitchen that all the astronaut quarters had. All she wore was the white blouse, which barely came down over her hips. It was a fantastic sight to wake up to.

She brought a mug of coffee over to the bed. “I thought you might need this.”

“Thanks. I'm not too bad actually.”

“Lucky you. Astronauts and parties! No wonder none of us ever worry about making it to old age; alcohol poisoning is going to get us long before a faulty capsule.”

“Right.” He was looking at the bed with its rumpled sheets, wondering if she'd spent the night beside him.
Perhaps she'd like to spend the morning on the mattress as well?
Then he remembered the welcome in the hangar, and decided not to push his luck. Besides…

“Drink your coffee,” she told him, “and we'll walk to the canteen for breakfast.”

Something in her voice—“Okay.”

All of Cape Ingmar's accommodation blocks were on the north side, well away from the engineering hangars and rocket assembly facilities. Concrete paths among the military-style buildings were lined with shrubs that struggled to produce any flowers in the sandy soil. When they stepped out of the astronaut quarters, a warm wind was blowing in off the sea. Humidity hadn't yet reached its usual hostile peak. Ry took some deep breaths, finally starting to feel the tension slacken off as he inhaled the fresh air.

“So are we safe to talk out here?” Anala asked.

“If we're not, we might as well pack for the Pidrui Mines right now and save them the trouble of a show trial.”

“I'm not sure you'd even get that,” she said. “All of Cape Ingmar was in lockdown while the political officers talked to you.”

“Officer, not officers. Just one. He didn't give me his name, but he had to be from section seven.”

“Figures. So what the crud happened up there?”

“There was
something.
I saw it. Some kind of craft. I think it was hiding behind Tree thirty-seven-eighty-eight-D.”

“Really? Not debris from the Tree?”

“It was a spacecraft.” He closed his eyes, his perfect memory bringing back the image of the bomb's plasma shell, the slim contrail spiking out from it, the tip curving around. “I saw it maneuver. But there wasn't any rocket exhaust. It was alien, Anala, and it was heading down to Bienvenido. And those bastards from section seven don't give a crud. All they're worried about is suppressing the knowledge.”

“They won't. Not at the highest levels. They can't ignore this.”

“They've got the photos I took. There's no evidence. If I say anything, they'll tell everyone I tried to sabotage the missile.”

“Yeah, and how
did
that happen?”

“It must have been the alien. Anything with that level of technology could interfere with our communications.”

“The only alien I know that can fly without a reaction drive is a Skylord. Do you think they're coming back? The Church of the Return would love that.”

“No, the Skylords were as big as mountains. This thing was small, probably about the same size as the Liberty capsule.”

“Not an egg. Not a Skylord. Not a Prime. What then?”

“The only species other than the Skylords that don't need rockets to fly through space is us: humans.”

Anala gave him a shocked look. “The Commonwealth?”

“That's the only possibility left.”

“It can't be them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they'd…show themselves?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ry's hand went automatically to his mission badge, fingertips stroking its small hard curves. “What I swore to do when I joined this regiment: protect Bienvenido from aliens. All aliens. Not just the Fallers.”

“Same as everyone else on this planet, then.”

“I have to know, Anala. I have to find out what I saw up there.”

She stood still and brushed at the hair the wind was blowing across her face, revealing a troubled expression on her sharp features. “I know you. That's trouble coming.”

“Whatever it takes. I don't care. They don't frighten me. They can stop me if they catch me, but they can't intimidate me into silence.”

“Fine words. Slvasta would be proud.”

Ry saw the old political officer's face, emotionless and calculating in the interview room, waiting for the
correct
answers. “I doubt it.”

She grinned cheerfully. “So what have you got in mind?”

“I need ten minutes with the flight center's computator. When are you due an orbital mechanics training session?”

Teaching room three-B was one of several identical rooms in the astro navigation department. A small window provided a view out over the shallow dunes along the neck of Cape Ingmar's plateau. Ry had spent weeks of his life in this very room, sitting at one of the three wooden tables, trying to keep interested as the instructor droned on behind the lectern. The big blackboard was covered in curving vectors, like giant arrows stabbing out from a small chalk representation of Bienvenido, each with a series of equations running alongside.

He ignored that and walked over to the chunky teleprinter standing beside the lectern. The machine resembled an oversized typewriter, with a near-inexhaustible supply of paper that kept spooling out of the top. Its printer head was a small electrically powered globe that bobbed about like some badly neurotic creature.

Anala pulled the blind down over the glass pane in the door. “You're going to have to hurry.”

“I know.” It was six in the evening, and the trainee astronauts were taking a break, which meant the department was almost deserted. Still, it was a risk.

Ry bent down to switch the teleprinter on. The button was on the side of the metal pedestal. He flicked it across. Nothing happened. “There's a lock,” he said in surprise. In all the years he'd been using teleprinters at the Cape, he'd never had to actually switch one on. The machines were always up and running when the teachers began their training sessions.

“What do you mean a lock?” Anala asked.

“It's locked. You need a key to switch it on. Crudding Uracus!”

She hurried over to check for herself. “Damn. Okay, let's go.”

“Go?”

“Get out of here.”

“But—”

“Ry, think! You're only going to have one chance. We can't afford time to try to hotwire this. Now let's go. We'll work out how to get a key for you—after we're out.”

“Right,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

The door opened and General Delores walked in.

Shock and guilt froze Ry's legs.
This is it: crash and burn.
“General,” he began. “This is my idea, not Anala's.”

“You're an idiot,” the general snapped. “One day after Stonal interviewed you, and you're breaking into restricted facilities.”

“Stonal?” Ry blurted inanely.

“The section seven director with a very long sharp stick up his arse. The man who controls every PSR officer and informant in the Cape. And that's a lot of informants.”

“Oh.”

The general narrowed her eyes. “What do you want with a teleprinter?”

“I'm going to use the computator to work out a course vector.”

“The intruder's?”

She knows! She knows it's real!
“Yes.”

“Here.” General Delores held up a fat cylindrical key. “Be quick. Even I can be held to account by the PSR.”

Ry's throat was contracting from the burst of relief and gratitude. Just knowing he wasn't alone against the PSR was—

“Get on with it!”

He took the key and switched on the teleprinter. There were a number of programs available on the computator. He typed in the activation sequence for the navigation vector plot and waited until the manic jerky ball printed
READY.

Two columns: one with the fixed coordinate, the second with the sextant reading. Ry started typing out the fifteen digit coordinates for both. He'd managed seven readings before the intruder had disappeared from sight, and each time he'd meticulously checked the Liberty capsule's own location on the console display.

Anala blinked and peered forward to read the printout paper when she realized what he was doing. “You remember all those coordinates?”

Ry nodded silently. They would know what that meant, what he was. His
other
heritage.
As if that matters now.

He finished typing the numbers and entered
COMPUTE.

The ball hopped up and down for a few seconds, then started to whir noisily again as it printed out numbers for latitude and longitude. Ry tore the paper off the teleprinter. It wouldn't be exact, he knew that; there were too many variables. But he had the rough area where it would have landed—which was all he needed.

“Now what?” General Delores asked as she shut down the teleprinter and retrieved her key.

“This is where it was heading,” Ry said, holding up the paper. “So it's where I go.”

“I can't cover for you,” she warned him.

“I know. Thank you, General.”

“I'm coming with you,” Anala said.

“No, you're not. I won't be coming back. This has finished my career here. But the Liberty program needs good astronauts. That's you, Anala. You've earned your flight. Don't throw that away. I don't know what this thing is, but we still have to kill the Trees.”

“Ry…”

“I'll get word back to you. I'll tell you what I find. Somehow. I promise.”

An hour later, Ry was on the train out of Cape Ingmar, a nonstop journey that took a day to curve north around the edge of the Desert of Bone before heading south to terminate at Portlynn. At the big station there, he bought a single ticket for the express to Opole.