path to conquest (11 page)

“I checked them myself. Your magnificent Project Icewind uses a full forty-three point nine percent more power than you originally figured.”

“My science staff made the error, Lydia, not I.”

“Yes, Diana, but you’re in charge. No matter—the result is the same. The field generators are seriously draining the Mother Ship’s engines. If you don’t suspend operations immediately, they’ll be damaged beyond repair. I don’t think the Leader will be happy to find out that you’ve been responsible for turning six more ships of the line into drifting hulks.”

Anger recharged, Diana whirled, took two rapid strides, then halted with her back to Lydia. “Very well, order the Icewind ships to shut down their generators and resume normal patrol posts.” She leaned thoughtfully on the computer panel. “Hmmm—the weather-alteration effects should continue for several days before reverting to standard patterns. That will give me enough time to get the results of the next experiment. ”

Lydia bit her lip, hoping Diana didn’t notice. Just when she thought she’d turned the commander’s own blunder against her and won this one battle at least, Diana had managed to slither away and open a new front Lydia knew nothing about. “What experiment?”

“I’ll let you know—in my own good time,” Diana said, moving toward the exit hatch.

“That’s what you said about Project Icewind,” Lydia volleyed. “Look where your secrecy got you that time.”

“I don’t make the same mistake twice, Lydia, darling.” The door slid shut behind Diana, leaving Lydia to endure the furtive looks of the curious bridge crew.

The maintenance man’s arms flapped like plaid wings sticking out of a plump down vest. He watched from the office building’s freight dock as the oil truck rolled to a stop and a lanky, bearded man jumped down from the passenger side of the cab.

“Hey, am I glad to see you guys!” the maintenance man called. “We’re down to, like, the bottom of the barrel, y’know?”

Ronnie Bortelli flicked the vaguest of glances up at the young custodian, then yanked the pumper’s hose nozzle out of its niche on the truck’s side.

The maintenance man scowled. “Hey, you’re real friendly today, fella,” he said sarcastically. “Whatsamatta, the wife holdin’ out on ya?”

Bortelli stopped and stared at the younger man.

Inside the truck Cassidy rested his head on the steering wheel. His eyes were shut tight, and a tear appeared at the comer of one. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want,” he murmured.

Lowering his head like a bull considering a charge, Bortelli hefted the hose and pulled out a length to reach the building’s filler pipe. He screwed the nozzle into the fitting, then went back to the control box and clicked the electric motors on. He refused to think about what he might be pumping into the storage tanks down in the basement.

The maintenance man spun and hurried back into his building. “Shit, I ain’t freezin’
my
ass off being friendly to that jerk. I
knew
we shoulda switched to gas heat.”

Bortelli heard a distant honking from above. He looked up to see a V-shaped flock of geese, confused by the weather, flying south in early September. As they flapped over the flat suburban landscape, Bortelli recalled the image of the giant Visitor Mother Ship that had once hung over New York during the first invasion. It was gone now. Everyone knew the reinvasion force was smaller and more spread out. But in one of the ships that
had
returned to Earth’s skies, the one over Southern California, Diana had his family. They’d been gone for two weeks now, taken without warning one day while he’d been at work, driving his delivery route with Cassidy.

He had no tears left, just a feeling deep inside, deeper than he’d ever plumbed before. Ronald Bortelli had found the blinding bleakness of hopeless despair, relieved only by something that scared him to death. It was the dim, hellish light of smoldering hate, hate with two subjects in its focus: the Visitors, and himself.

Diana’s intercom chimed in the darkness of her cabin, where she reclined on her bunk. She touched the switch. “I gave orders that I was not to be disturbed.”

Lydia’s face appeared on the small bedside screen. “Our spies report that the two humans have completed phase two, as you commanded. I demand to know what phase two is, Diana.”

“You’re in no position to demand anything,” Diana said, her voice chilly.

“Does this have anything to do with the two human families you had kidnapped two weeks ago?”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?” “The point of origin of this signal. It’s near the spot where the humans came from. Just what are you up to?”

“You’re dangerously close to insubordination, Lydia. I’d be very careful what I said next if I were you.”

The blond officer’s lips tightened as she clearly swallowed what she wanted to say. “What are your orders, Commander?” Diana smiled. “Contact the covert agents on Staten Island. Tell them to pick up the humans Cassidy and Bortelli.” “Are they to be brought to the Mother Ship?”

“No need to waste fuel and risk a shuttle landing in human-held territory. Tell our agents to kill Bortelli and Cassidy and dispose of their bodies any way they choose. Their families are already dead. . . .”

Denise Daltrey braced herself against the dashboard as Randy Carter, her driver, careened their mobile broadcast van into the office building parking lot. Police barricades had already been set up at least a hundred yards away from the four-story structure, and Carter skidded to a stop.

Zipping her ski jacket, Denise vaulted out while her two-man crew of Carter on sound and Suzy Myama on camera swung open the van’s back and side doors and grabbed their equipment.

She wouldn’t have much time to pull the story together, so Denise took a deep breath of damp, frigid air and surveyed the scene. At least a dozen different police, fire, and emergency vehicles were parked inside the barriers, their rooftop lights strobing in chaotic, out-of-synch rhythm. Stretchers were strewn everywhere on the snow, with victims in a variety of conditions ranging from quiet and conscious to writhing in agony to dead. Medical people worked over bodies with respirator equipment where available, or basic mouth-to-mouth techniques and CPR where it wasn’t.

Denise glanced up at the building itself, noticing that plate-glass windows were smashed. When her gaze descended, she saw why.

Three corpses lay in grotesque positions on the grassy apron around the building. They had obviously broken the windows and jumped. But what were they trying to escape from?

Randy Carter came up beside Denise and handed her a double clip-on microphone. She held it in the palm of her glove. Randy pulled a woolen cap over his shaved scalp and slipped headphones on top of the hat.

“No smoke,” Denise mumbled.

Carter lifted the headset off one ear and stooped slightly. “Come again, Denise?”

“No smoke.”

“Why? Did they say this was a fire?”

She shook her head, then pointed to the crumpled forms of the three jumpers. “But something made them leap out those windows up there.” Her finger pointed up to the smashed glass.

“Oh, God,” said Suzy Myama, joining the other two. The camera operator and the soundman made quite an international Mutt-and-Jeff team. Randy was a tall, rail-thin black man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt, and Suzy was a tiny Japanese woman. He had no hair. Hers was waist length and shimmering black, bound in a braid to keep it out of her camera lens.

“Chemical fumes,” Carter suggested.

“But this is an office building, not a petrochemical plant,” said Denise. “By the look of the treatment being given, something definitely happened to the air in there.”

.“What do you want to do?” Suzy asked.

Years before the Visitors, Denise had covered disasters like this for local TV news. She’d always hated that aspect of the job, having to rush headlong into other people’s tragedies, picking through the carnage for faces and words that would tell the story close up and in less than a minute. Those situations just didn’t come up when you covered the State Department or conducted deliberate interviews within the safe confines of the network morning news set.

But these days she had to be ready for anything. Even being a vulture again. She squared her shoulders. “Come on.”

The trio of news people walked briskly to the wooden sawhorses marked NYPD as Denise scanned the confusion for good pictures and for someone not involved in saving a life who might be able to give her solid information. Then she saw a familiar head of curly blond hair. Peter Forsythe was sitting in the doorway of a police van, slumped forward, sipping from a steaming Styrofoam cup. Denise twisted between two barricades and jogged over to Forsythe. Her crew followed as best they could. Portable video gear was still heavier than no gear at all.

“Pete!”

He slowly looked up. His down parka had blood smears on it, and his face was raw and cracked from the cold.

“What happened here?” she asked.

It took a moment for him to reply. When he did, his voice was dull. “Don’t know yet. Something spread through the building and people started gagging and choking.”

Denise shifted back to professional behavior and took a small notebook and pen out of her coat pocket. She pulled her right glove off and started scribbling. “Fatalities?”

Pete shook his head. “Not from the fumes.”

“But I saw people who looked dead lying on the grass.” “They were the ones who jumped from the top floors before the fire trucks could get ladders up to ’em.”

“How many?” Denise fought the impulse to feel sorrow and forced herself to remain businesslike.

“Dead? Five or six. I—I’m not sure. At the risk of sounding callous, this looks worse than it is,” he said, waving a hand about the parking lot.

Denise was startled. “It
looks
like a war zone, or a terrorist bombing without the bomb.”

“Most people got out of the building under their own power once they realized what was going on. Whatever got into the ventilation system affected people at different rates.”

“Is that usual?”

“Medically? Sure. In a fire not everybody keels over from smoke inhalation at the same instant. If they’d make these damned buildings with windows that open, the workers inside could’ve gotten some fresh air in to dissipate the fumes. We think the people who
were
overcome will be okay. They’ll be held in hospitals at least overnight for observation.”

Denise finished writing and clasped her hands in front of her face. “I didn’t know what to think when we drove up.” “Neither did I. I got here before the fire engines. I tried to get into the place, but people were pouring out every door. I took four steps inside and felt like vomiting. I got out fast. When my eyes stopped tearing, the first thing I saw was a guy on the fourth floor smashing a window out with a chair. He just kind of hung there on the ledge, clinging to the window frame. I yelled to him to hold on—the fire trucks were on their way. ” Pete paused and shook his head sadly. “I’ll see him in my mind till the day I die. But I’ll never be sure if he just slipped or if he meant to jump. You know, when you see somebody falling like that, you get the craziest urge to run over and try to catch him, like catching a pop-up in a ball game.”

Denise touched his shoulder. “Oh, Peter. ...”

“I’m okay. I mean, I did my time in the ER. But I’ve never done anything like this, until this war. I feel like I stepped into a never-ending episode of
M*A*S*H*.
And they were right. You never get used to it.”

The same thing happened at a shopping mall later that day, leading Mayor Alison Stein to call together a crisis committee for a dinner evaluation session in her City Hall conference room. As both a doctor and resistance stalwart, Pete was one of the first summoned. Joining him were Lauren Stewart; Fire Chief Bud Brinkerhoff, who’d been at both disaster sites that day; resistance member and city cop Sam Yeager, who’d also helped at the day’s toxic emergencies; and Denise Daltrey, who’d covered both.

The mayor sent out for sandwiches and drinks and cut right to the heart of the matter. “Is it possible these two incidents were coincidental?”

The fire chief, a beefy man with red hair and jug ears, rubbed his stubbly chin. He’d had no time for amenities like shaving on this day. “Possible, or likely, Mayor Stein, ma’am?”

Stein managed a brief smile. “Stop adding to my title. First-name basis here, okay? And
you
tell
me.”

“Possible, sure—likely, no,” Brinkerhoff said.

Yeager looked at the fireman, then turned his stolid, hawk-nosed profile toward Stein. “I’d go along with Bud.” Swallowing a bite of turkey on pumpernickel, Stein nodded.

“I take it everyone agrees with me that the Visitors may have had something to do with this?”

After murmurs of concurrence, Denise looked troubled. “But what and how?”

“There you go talking like a reporter again,” Pete joshed. Everyone smiled at the kidding, but Mayor Stein turned immediately serious again. “That’s why 1 wanted you here, Denise. You know how to organize an investigation, how to string seemingly unrelated facts together to form a workable premise. Would you do that for me?”

“Well, sure, Alison, but why not make it a government or police investigation?”

Stein leaned forward, her tone dropping confidentially. “I want this to be secret for now, just between the people in this room. If the Visitors did cause this, they had to have cooperation from human collaborators, I would think. We’re inside the red-dust protection zone. They can’t send their own troops and agents in, so they get humans to do their dirty work for them. That’s pretty well known. I’m afraid they may have spies inside city government agencies, even the police and fire departments. That’s why I want this investigation conducted by someone like you, Denise, a person whose
job
is to ask questions. No one will think anything’s out of the ordinary. Still want to do it?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Good. I thought I could count on you. You’ll report directly to me, and only in person.”