Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2) (14 page)

We've lost them for the moment, but they'll come after us.
Kaur leaned back in his chair, wishing heartily someone else was in charge.
What the hell do I do now?

Christine Goldfarb hiked through Founders Park, frowning at the fallen branches on the paths and other signs of neglect. She followed the hedge that marked the boundary of the park, then came to a gap and paused for her first glimpse in weeks of Harlequin.

Smoke rose in a grubby smear from somewhere in the heart of the little city, but for the most part Harlequin seemed intact. She'd been hiking for hours, but her weariness dropped away and she smiled to see her home once again in human hands. Harlequin was the heart of the colony. Sure, people worked throughout the crater, tending crops and orchards. Harlequin, though, was where they came to meet, to dance, to plan and to dream. Raucous public meetings took place in Harlequin, and live music, and art projects and impromptu gatherings. Harlequin was where they stopped being a bunch of farmers and became a community.

She didn't think the off-worlders really understood that the people of Ariadne
were
a community. It was different on Earth. They had cities that were a thousand years old. They thought of places like Hawking, built in the interstellar age, as new and young. But there was no one left alive who could remember the construction of Hawking. It was a place you moved to, or you grew up there and then you bought a house.

Harlequin was different. The people who lived in Harlequin were the people who had built Harlequin. They had roots the people of Earth just couldn't understand. You didn't get roots like that from browsing real estate listings and making a down payment.

Lieutenant Nicholson seemed nice, but he spoke of evacuation as if it were a simple, obvious choice. As if the people of Ariadne could simply pack up their belongings and leave.

As if you could take your beating heart out of your chest and just ship it off to Earth where it could be safe.

"Like hell," she muttered, left the park, and entered the city.

The tram wasn't running, so she'd just have to keep walking. She passed one empty house after another, and a few where the residents had moved back in. She saw a man raking twigs and leaves from his lawn while a woman washed the front windows. They had their front door propped open, airing out the house, and she could hear children calling to one another inside.

Her own apartment was on the far side of Harlequin. She would get there eventually, but not right away. She waved to the man with the rake, got a cheery wave in return, and kept walking.

The infrastructure had to be in quite a mess. Still, things weren't as bad as she'd expected. The city's lawns and flowerbeds were brown, but the grass wasn't dead. Rain didn't fall on Ariadne. That meant the sprinkler system had kept on running through much of the occupation. It was off now, though.

How long will it take to get water running again? How far did the woman have to walk with the bucket she's using to clean her windows?
Christine shrugged.
It's a big job, but we'll do it. That's what life in the colonies is all about. You meet one challenge at a time, and you just keep going.

Harlequin would recover – until the aliens returned. She explored the thought as she walked. The Navy had driven them back, but she sensed the Hive would return in force.

They'd win, too. Spacecom's agenda included the destruction of the aliens and the protection of Earth. The defence of Naxos wouldn't be a priority, not when the civilian population could simply be evacuated. If most of them
refused
evacuation, well, that wasn't Spacecom's fault, now was it?

We've got a big fleet protecting us right now, but they won't stay. There are other colonies, after all. And the alien home world, wherever that is. Most of these ships will leave.

And then the aliens will return, and then what?

She thought of the project she'd been working on before and after the invasion.
Maybe – just maybe – I can do something about it.

Harlequin didn't have much of an industrial district. Still, she was relieved when she came to several long stone buildings and found them intact. Rebuilding would be hard enough even with fabricators. Without them? She didn't want to think about it.

The big doors to the main factory building stood open. That was the only name it had. It was the factory. The Naxos economy wasn't built on competing industries. As she approached the open doors Christine heard voices inside, men and women engaged in a good-natured argument. She recognized several voices, people she hadn't seen or heard from since before the invasion, and her heart lightened.
George Thompson is still alive. And Katrina. And is that Luce?

She stepped through the doorway and felt dust tickle her nose. The place hadn't been swept in weeks, after all. Sunlight shone through a series of skylights in the ceiling, making glowing bars in the dusty air. It illuminated bins of raw material, stacks of manufactured components, and a long row of fabricators of various sizes. It also illuminated a dozen or so people clustered in front of the biggest machine.

"We need excavating machinery. We'll build tunnels all over the crater, and we can hide in them when the aliens return." The speaker was a round-faced man who waved his arms excitedly for emphasis. He looked familiar, but Christine couldn't place his name. He was clearly a fool, so she didn't try very hard.

"In most places we've got less than a meter of topsoil sitting on top of solid rock. We won't be building any tunnels." That was George Thompson, a man in his seventies who'd been a community leader for as long as Christine could remember. "Is there anything else we need, anything for immediate short-term survival, before we look at making weapons?"

"We shouldn't be fighting them," said a woman's strident voice. "It just provokes them. It gets people killed."

"Be that as it may," said George, "people are fighting. They won't stop just because we tell them they're foolish. We can't make them quit. But we can arm them."

Christine joined the fringe of the group. Luce Webster gave her a quick hug, and Jory Vaughn reached over to squeeze her arm.

George said, "I take it, then, that we're agreed." The round-faced man opened his mouth, and George silenced him with a stern look. "Weapons. We'll start with hand weapons, and when those are distributed we'll look at whether we can make something bigger."

That set off a storm of discussion, nearly everyone speaking at once. George wisely stepped aside, edging around the group until he reached Christine. He hugged her, then held her at arm's length and said, "Thank God you're safe."

"You too, George."

He led her away from the arguing crowd. "They'll work out the details among themselves. Leadership will just get in the way."

"Can we even make weapons?" she said. "Aren't templates like that controlled?"

"Well, we can't make lasers." He spread his hands. "They're too complex, and anything portable will have a restricted template, yes." He grinned at her, and for a moment she saw the eyes of a mischievous schoolboy peeking out from his weathered face. "Rail guns, now. Those are dead simple. You can find bootleg templates all over the network. Pistols, rifles, we'll have our pick of designs. The ammunition's easy, too. It's just little steel balls."

"I guess that's good," she said dubiously.

His grin faded. "We can't rely on the Navy to defend us. Sure, they're here right now. Tomorrow, though?" He spread his hands in an I-don't-know gesture.

"I wish I could say I disagreed."

"Well, the ball is rolling now. We'll be armed to the teeth by this time tomorrow."

"What's the water situation?"

He sighed. "It's not ideal, but it's manageable. At the moment you have to walk to the nearest water substation and fill a bucket. We can't really work on fixing it until more people trickle back into town. Everyone who knows how to run the system is out there somewhere." He waved an arm to indicate the entire crater.

"Or dead."

"Or dead," he agreed.

"I'm going to the spaceport," she said. "I want to see what's left."

"I'm pretty sure it got hit. I don't know how bad, though."

"I'll go check it out." She leaned past him to look at the crowd around the fabricator. The argument was dying down, and a few people were looking their way. "I'll let you get back to your cat herding."

He gave her a wry grin. "Thanks so much."

The spaceport wasn't far from the factory, which was a relief, because her knees were beginning to ache. Something at or near the spaceport was contributing to the smudge of smoke above Harlequin, and she felt a rising dread in the pit of her stomach as she walked. When she finally rounded a corner and got her first view of the spaceport, though, she smiled in relief.

The terminal was a mess, the roof torn and blackened. She didn't know what could still be burning after all this time, but smoke trickled through the remains of the roof and rose into the sky. That was okay. She didn't care a fig for the terminal. The colony could get by without customs offices and luggage storage.

She could see one ship, the passenger ferry
Altea
, designed to run fifty or so people at a time back and forth through the Gate to Earth. The
Altea
had been destroyed from above. It was a heap of scrap metal now, sitting in the middle of a blackened crater in the tarmac. Only the ends of the wings were intact, lying just outside the circle of devastation.

Beyond the
Altea
the hangar still seemed to be intact. It was hundreds of meters long and quite high, a much bigger target than the terminal, but the Hive had somehow overlooked it. Was the ship still inside, or had someone used it to flee?

There was only one way to find out.

She started toward the hangar, and a couple of men came around the corner of the building toward her. They wore uniforms, not the dark blue that Lieutenant Nicholson and his people wore, but black uniforms with a similar cut. They had body armor, heavier than she'd seen before, and carried bulky rifles. They moved to intercept her, and she slowed as she approached them.

"Do you have business here, Ma'am?" The man on the left had an offworld accent, a distinct drawl like a Texan in a cowboy movie, and Christine felt herself bristle.

"I live here. What's your business here?"

He blinked, clearly taken aback. The tiniest twitch came from his companion's face, like a hint of a grin quickly suppressed. "We're with the
Achilles
, Ma'am." He jerked his head to indicate something behind him. "We can't allow you around the ship."

She looked past him. There was indeed something large just on the other side of the hangar. A bit of hull showed above the roof. "Are you using the hangar?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Well, see that you don't.
My
ship's inside, and it's off-limits to …" She looked him up and down. "Goons with guns."

The second man's lips twitched again. Christine circled around both of them and stomped off toward the hangar, almost hoping they would try to stop her.
Tell me where I can and can't go on my own damned planet? What a nerve!

No one interfered with her, and she soon reached a small door set in the hangar wall. No lights showed on the palm scanner, and she pressed her hand to it without much hope. The scanner was dead, all right. Sighing, she pressed a shoulder against the door. To her surprise, it swung inward.

Magnetic locks. They don't work when the power's out.
She started to lift a hand to wave the lights to life, then stopped herself with a wry chuckle.
The power's out, dummy.
The bulk of a large spaceship all but filled the hangar, an enormous shape sensed more than seen in the limited light from the doorway. She stood for a moment thinking, then followed the wall, heading for the north end of the building.

By the time she reached the north wall she could see almost nothing. She took cautious steps, wary of obstacles in the dark, until her outstretched fingers touched metal. She followed the wall until she felt the shape of the big hangar doors. Eventually she reached the seam where the two sliding doors met.

She was feeling around for something to grab when she found a couple of handles, one on each door. She hadn't ever noticed them before. After all, who would try to open such an enormous door by hand? She wrapped both hands around one handle, braced her feet, and heaved.

The engineering of the door was truly impressive. Despite its enormous size it moved almost a centimeter, squealing and groaning and letting in a brilliant stripe of sunlight. She let go of the handle and leaned against the door, panting. Her plan was working better than she'd expected. Instead of impossible, the task was merely brutally difficult.

The nose of a battered freighter gleamed above her in the narrow bar of light. She spent a moment trying to persuade herself that it was light enough to work. It wasn't, and she turned around, grabbed the handle, and gave it another heave.

When the gap between the doors was as wide as the palm of her hand, and she was starting to think the effort might cripple her, a shadow appeared on the floor by her feet. She looked through the gap and found the same armored man she'd spoken to earlier gazing solemnly back at her.