A Night Without Stars (59 page)

The next bazooka shot hit the top of the lighthouse full-on. A barrage of stone and dust and smoke slammed down the spiral stairwell, sending them crashing forward.

The submarine surfaced just a few meters off the
Gothora III
's portside. A rope ladder was lowered for Florian, Ry Evine, and the ANAdroids to clamber up. Kysandra and Paula used their force fields, expanding them out like sparkling bubbles to give them neutral buoyancy in the air, so they could float up onto the deck.

Florian heaved himself over the gunwale just as the crew were applauding Kysandra's elegant landing. He scrambled for a hold on the smooth metal as he straddled the top. His balance began to go—then Paula came over and helped him right himself before he lost all dignity.

“Thanks,” he grumbled.

Ry—naturally—came over the gunwale in a nimble gymnast movement. Marek was equally at ease, and he was carrying a huge backpack.

Florian stood beside Paula as he looked around. The decking was still wet from the morning's final squall. Away on the northern horizon, the last dark storm clouds were tumbling away.

Demitri was shaking hands with Captain Jymoar—a lean thirty-five-year-old with his olive skin darkened by years of sun and sea weather. A handsome man, Florian admitted to himself, with curly black hair cropped short and a knowing smile that was all perfect white teeth, like a badge of confidence. Maybe too much confidence. Jymoar steeped forward and kissed Kysandra—a lot more than a welcome touch on both cheeks. Florian stared in surprise, then angry embarrassment, as she twined her arms around his head and returned the kiss with abandon. Most of the crew were grinning.

Kysandra led Jymoar over and introduced him to Ry, then Florian. Florian couldn't meet the man's eye as they shook hands, instead standing with his head bowed like a surly teenager.

“So you came through the storm all right,” Kysandra was saying when Florian began to pay attention again.

“The
Gothora
has been through a lot worse. I was more worried about Port Chana. What happened back there?”

“A nest hijacked the
Sziu,
” Kysandra told him. “They're coming after us.”

“Not through that they're not,” Jymoar said, indicating the storm vanishing aft. “We blocked the radar signals from the Air Force planes while they were still flying. If the government doesn't know where we are, the Fallers certainly don't. Not after sailing inside that beauty's chaos.”

“Then we're probably safe, but I don't want to take any chances. We need to sail straight for Lukarticar. Build some distance.”

“Aye aye, ma'am.” He saluted. “How come they didn't nuke us back in Port Chana? We were still in range when they hit the docks.”

“Because they didn't know if Kysandra and I were on board,” Paula said. “They appeared to have several atomic bombs with them. To detonate one would be to eliminate the others. They have to confirm our presence before using them.”

“You were there?” Jymoar asked.

“Yes. Observing. I like to know exactly what I'm facing.”

“But with your weapons…”

“I could have taken out the nest on the docks, yes,” Paula said. “Which would have confirmed to the Fallers that someone with advanced Commonwealth technology was present. My fieldscan function detected seven atomic bombs brought to the
Sziu.
If there was another outside my detection range, they could have detonated it. At that distance I would probably have survived, but Port Chana certainly wouldn't. Non-intervention was the safest option.”

“Too bad you didn't wholly follow that option,” Kysandra said with a playful grin.

Paula shrugged. “The
Lanara
was a sitting duck as it came in. And Chaing was already shooting the breeder creatures—albeit not very successfully. There was considerable confusion. It would be reasonable for the nest to believe the ones I eliminated were killed either by Chaing or another unknown PSR sniper. I was strategic in my target selection.”

“Chaing!” Kysandra shook her head in bewildered admiration. “That man has more lives than a cat.”

“We'll show you to your cabins,” Jymoar said. His arm closed possessively around Kysandra's waist. “Sadly, there's a lack of space, so you're going to have to bunk up in my cabin.”

She kissed him spryly. “Oh, dear. The hardship.”

“I'll be happy for you to inspect the mattress to see if it's good enough.”

“Inspect or test?”

“Both, I think.”

Arm in arm, they went through a hatch and into the superstructure.

“Jymoar has been working with us for two and a half centuries,” Valeri said quietly, so only Florian could hear. “He is one of our most valuable allies. This is just the latest
Gothora
he has captained; all of them have been most useful transporting us and our equipment around Bienvenido.”

Florian stared at the hatchway. “Two and a—? How old is he?”

“He and Kysandra were friends before the Great Transition. He has been receiving regular rejuvenation treatments in our medical capsule.”

“Right. Great. Good to know.”

“You are welcome to share my cabin for the voyage. It won't be too cramped for you; we don't sleep.”

“Yeah. That's good. I'll just wait out here for now.”

“As you wish.”

Florian felt the engines starting up, the deck vibrating beneath his feet. He leaned on the gunwale, staring out to the horizon. It was over a thousand kilometers to Cape Wekell, the closest part of Lukarticar. Kysandra wanted to go farther, down toward Macbride Sound, before releasing the new ge-eagles on their reconnaissance flight.

He peered over the side as a crewman pulled the rope ladder in. The submarine had already dived, its smartcore taking it back to the cave below the farmhouse, so he was committed now. Weeks, possibly the rest of his life, on this ship—with the two of them. Kysandra hadn't even mentioned Jymoar before. Surely that would have been a simple courtesy?

Gothora III
picked up speed, the fresh sea air blowing against his face as if seeking to cleanse him.

“Sorry.”

Florian turned as Paula gripped the gunwale beside him. She'd put on a thick dark-ginger sweater against the cooler temperature; her ebony hair flailed about as she gazed across the waves.

“For what?” he asked.

“Some women don't quite realize the effect they have on men.”

“Oh.”

“She doesn't dislike you, Florian; you haven't been cast aside. It's just that she and Jymoar are very old friends.”

“I get that.”

“In any case, she's in love with someone else. She has been for a very long time. Most of her life, in fact. I'm not sure that's entirely healthy, but it's helped her get through these dark times, so I'm certainly not going to condemn her for that.”

“It's not Jymoar, then? He's not the one?”

“Oh, no. Somebody else, somebody completely unobtainable. So if she'd bothered to give you some serious thought, she'd probably understand how you felt right now, because that's how she feels all the time. And she'd be mortified at what she's done to you. She's not a cruel person, Florian.”

“I know.”

“You were having fun, weren't you?”

He nodded bleakly. “She said that. Just fun. I suppose I didn't really listen.”

“Self-denial makes life easier for all of us at some time or another. Just try not to make a habit of it.”

He kept his gaze on the undulating water. “Do you think we'll find the
Viscount
?”

“If it's on Lukarticar, we'll find it. I reviewed the sensors installed in this batch of ge-eagles. They're good. That's not our real problem.”

“Time is.”

“Yes. If we guessed wrong, if the
Viscount
came down at the north pole, I'm not sure we'll have long enough to reach Valatare. The Fallers are prepared to use nukes against us—against me. Hiding in the shadows is over.”

“After the
Vermillion
came down, their flying machines still worked for a while. Surely they would have found the
Viscount
?”

Paula pursed her lips. “History is always written by the victors. Reading between the lines of the Landing Chronicles, I suspect Captain Cornelius might not have had too much interest in finding a second source of Commonwealth technology. After all, his family quickly established control over the only supply of advanced medicine and machinery on the planet.”

Florian gave her a surprised glance. “That's…awful!”

“My job means I've been exposed to a lot of the underside of human society. I'm afraid that kind of behavior isn't as rare as we'd like to think it is, especially in more primitive cultures. And this colony sank into semi-benign feudalism surprisingly quickly once its shiny gadgets were taken away.”

“You really think the Captain would do
that
?”
My ancestor!

“I'm offering possibilities, that's all.”

Stonal stood on the side of the docks as the rain splattered on his heavy coat and looked down at the body. It needed two of the coroner's usual sheets to cover it completely, which was a big clue. Tipping his trilby back with a forefinger, he said: “Show me.”

Chaing used the end of his crutch to push the black fabric aside.

The breeder Faller really was a monster—although death had given its armored body a strangely withered appearance, with the hard plates collapsing on one another as if the guts of the thing weren't big enough to fill it out completely. Half of its head was missing, exposing tatters of gray-white brain meat. Rain had washed the blue blood from the stone.

“One of your shots?” Stonal asked.

Chaing shrugged. “Could have been. I got one of these, and one of the giants.” He looked around, as if getting his bearings. The cluster of burnt-out trucks were black metal hulks, slick with water, burning only as long as their fuel had lasted. “The marines got the rest.”

Stonal looked over at the slipway where the
Lanara
had shoved itself aground. Its front ramp was down, biting into the concrete. There were several ragged blast holes torn into the hull, and bullet craters smothered the armored superstructure. It was a miracle the marine landing craft had ever made it to the slipway.

Only he didn't believe in miracles.

More than a dozen patrol cars were parked in an effective barricade across the end of the docks, their red and blue lights flashing, sheriffs standing guard in their rain-slicked ponchos, holding shotguns and rifles at the ready. And that was just the inner cordon. No civilians were allowed within half a kilometer of the harbor.

Such security was pointless now. All Port Chana knew what had happened here.
Marines fought breeder Fallers, and won. At least we didn't get nuked.
The news had already reached all the way back to Varlan. If the government denied it, they'd face a serious credibility problem.

Which is hardly a priority right now.

“How many of them reached the
Sziu
?” he asked.

“Maybe a dozen,” Jenifa said. “Captain Fajie maintained a good watch, but it was an Uracus of a fire fight.”

“Enough to operate the
Sziu,
then?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked her up and down—a diminutive figure in a drab brown raincoat, her felt PSR cap soaked. A nasty gash down her cheek from falling masonry in the lighthouse. Immune to the weather, immune to the gore and chaos of the battle, determined to do her duty. “So, to summarize: You think the
Gothora III
had taken on cargo belonging to the Warrior Angel, but neither she nor Paula was on board. Then the Fallers, armed with our atomic bombs, grabbed the
Sziu
and took off in pursuit?”

Jenifa hesitated for an instant. “Yes, sir.”

“So where are they all going?”

“We have no indication of that,” Chaing said. “I got the Air Force to send out two GV15s within forty minutes of the
Gothora
putting to sea, but there was no sign of it.”

“What's the
Gothora
's maximum range?”

“Running until the tanks are empty, probably about three thousand kilometers. Possibly a little farther.”

Stonal stared out across the gray choppy water. “The Warrior Angel can obviously move her equipment around on land without drawing attention, so having a cargo on a ship indicates to me they are heading somewhere away from Lamaran. So what's out there?”

“Klev is probably outside the
Gothora
's range,” Chaing said, “but there are two small islands to the southwest of it they might be able to reach.”

“Their version of Byarn, Captain?”

“No, sir. That's not where she plans to retreat to if the Faller Apocalypse succeeds.”

“And how do you know that, Captain?”

“She contacted me in person just before the red one code was issued. She wanted to talk to you.”

“Indeed?” Stonal tried not to show surprise, but he was impressed with the captain. His gaze slipped over to the lighthouse. The top quarter was missing, leaving the base surrounded by scorched rubble.
I might have made the right choice after all.
“Did she tell you what she wanted to discuss with me?”

“Yes, sir. If it was looking like the Fallers were winning, she wanted access to the wormhole under the palace. She said Paula could open it and evacuate some people to Aqueous.”

“Who?” he asked sharply. “Who would they take?”

“That's what she wanted to negotiate. But she wasn't going to leave without a fight.”

“Whatever is on the
Gothora III
must be part of that fight, then. And the Fallers know that.”

“Yes, sir.”