The Fifth Civilization: A Novel (6 page)

Another moan from Aaron. “Take it,” Aaron wheezed. “You don’t
need me. This pad has all the information you need to find this planet.”

“What?” Roan threw his friend a look that could only suggest
he was out of his mind. “Come on, just a few more meters. You’ll show me
yourself.”

“Leave me behind. I’m the ones the Kotarans want,” Aaron
pleaded. He grimaced with each step of his good leg. Roan could feel blood from
Aaron’s injured leg on him and felt the arm around his shoulder grow slacker.

***

Kotarans’ large ears give them a keen sense of hearing.
Waiting just outside the grenade-kissed doorframe, listening to the sounds of
the Earthmen, Grinek picked up the words of Vertulfo. The scientist was trying
to pass off something to the other Earthman, suggesting the valued information was
not stored in his mind. Therefore, it did not matter if Vertulfo was brought in
alive.

He was waiting for nothing.

Grinek rounded the corner, plunging himself into the smoke.
He aimed the pistol into the cloud and fired.

***

 
“Get to a ship,”
Aaron continued as they stepped out onto the balcony outside. Roan breathed in
the cool fresh air, tried to focus on the water and not the protests of his
friend. “Find this planet.” Aaron shoved the pad into Roan’s jacket.

Roan was going to say that he’d never leave a friend behind,
but a half dozen green bolts sliced in their direction, two piercing Aaron’s
back and a third grazing Roan’s nose. In shock, Roan let go of Aaron and his
friend fell to the floor, gasping. Roan moved against one side of the door, but
realized taking cover was useless. The Kotaran was running down the length of
the warehouse at them, his speed and shooting making it certain he would kill
them all.

With a pleasant beep, the emergency exit whirred shut. The
Kotaran’s momentum propelled him into it with a dull thud. On the opposite side
of the doorway, David stood at the controls, his simple pressing of the
close
button saving their lives.

“Help me lift Aaron!”
 
Roan said to the Nyden. They each grabbed an arm and hauled Aaron off
the ground, rushing him down the emergency exit staircase connected to the
balcony. Help was not far away, Roan thought. The staircase connected to a
walkway that ran along the side of the mall and eventually to safety. But they
were going to have to be quick. Each step they took sent another waterfall of
blood out of Aaron’s mouth. And at any second the door behind them could open
and the Kotaran could kill them all.

***

Grinek rubbed his snout and cursed. He furiously pressed the
release button on the door but it signaled it was locked from the outside.
Another curse. Grinek looked back at the smoking doorway from which he entered
and heard Earthmen voices and shouts. The security men had arrived. To distract
them, he fired a few shots into the clothing store and imagined a dozen
security men scrambling for cover.

He remembered Talmar’s fiery death. Grinek reached into a
pocket of his uniform and pulled out the grenade that he, too, carried. They were
of low intensity, but could breach a door. Grinek slid a button on the device
and armed it. He threw it toward the emergency exit, turned away from the door,
and squatted behind some pallets. This time he put his claws to his ears for
protection.

***

A deafening blast hurled the exit door over the balcony
railing and into the harbor, knocking Roan, David, and Aaron to the bottom of
the staircase. David immediately got to his feet and tugged Roan’s arm.

“Get the hell off me!” Roan said, brushing away the helping
hand. “Help me get Aaron up!”

“He’s dead, Mr. Roan!”
 
David shouted. “If we don’t leave now, we will be too!”

Roan realized the explosion meant the Kotaran was in hot
pursuit. They had to go. He looked down at the man he’d been carrying, now laying
on his stomach.

Aaron’s eyes were open, but the purple in them lacked any
twinkle of life. Instinctively, Roan bent down and felt Aaron’s neck. No pulse.
The blood had also stopped gushing from his mouth.

“Goddammit! Goddammit, no!”

David tugged on Roan’s arm. “Please, Mr. Roan!”
 
No matter how much he hated being
pushed, especially by a goddamn waddling duck, Roan relented and allowed
himself be led by the alien until they worked up a jog. They ran along the
emergency walkway until the horror was far behind them. It was an automatic and
mindless run, because all Roan was concentrating on were the two shots to the
back that had felled Aaron Vertulfo.

***

After blowing away the outer door, Grinek tossed one more
grenade into the clothing store. For good measure.

Pistol at the ready, he dashed out onto the outdoor walkway,
coughing with the dust and smoke in the air. There was no sign of his three
targets, at least not initially—but, upon closer inspection, at the
bottom of the emergency staircase lay the bloodied, crumpled body of a
dark-skinned Earthman.

Grinek bounded down the steps and knelt by the body. Two
energy bursts in the back, one in the leg. He turned him over. The face was
Vertulfo’s, lifeless and caked in blood. With lightning speed, Grinek patted
down the man’s jacket but found only a com and an ID card. Whatever information
Vertulfo had, he passed it on to the capped Earthman. And that man was nowhere
in sight.

As the saying went,
an
important man cannot stay hidden forever.

Believing Vertulfo’s com might prove useful, Grinek stuffed
the thing in the pocket of his vest. Then he removed his own com and dialed the
operations ship in orbit. One impatient ring later, a deck officer answered.

“Yes, Commander?”

“Send a shuttle. Do you have my coordinates?”

A moment’s pause on the other end. “Yes, Commander. Are you
in a difficult situation?”

“You will need to be wary. The Earth authorities will be
swarming here soon. Just follow my signal and retrieve me without delay.”

“Yes, Commander.”
 

Grinek hung up and put the communicator in his pocket. A
buoy blinked and bobbed in the harbor, and though he despised water like he
despised Earthmen, Grinek knew the buoy was his only refuge from the Earth
police.

Mentally, he steeled himself for the wetness and cold and
climbed out onto the walkway railing. He holstered his pistol and looked down
at waves lapping against the wall. With a nimble dive, Grinek splashed into
Tokyo Bay, his exit from the mall far less obtrusive than his entrance.

Roan had met Aaron sometime in July 2490, on a run out to the
Centauri colony. One of its continents had just endured another rebellion and
Roan—fresh out of the military and a crewman on the
Philoria
—was shipping a bunch of Company-approved electric
generators to the local government. During some evening downtime, Roan walked
into a bar and found Centauri whiskey tasted like someone had ground up a corn
husk, just as people said. He stumbled outside for a quick breather and found
Aaron sitting on the back steps. Two empty bottles were at his side and he was
swigging another, but Aaron was as sober as a teetotaler. He pointed to the sky
at a faint comet directly ahead. The colonists believed it was a good omen
signaling God approved of the end of the war.

Did you know there are
more galaxies in the universe than stars in the Milky Way
, Aaron had asked.

Roan didn’t say anything.

I think about it a lot
when I’m somewhere dark
, Aaron had continued.
Far away from all the light pollution. You can’t find those places on
Earth anymore. When I look at the night sky, I feel like I’m looking at God.

So you believe God
exists
? Roan had asked him, the bad whiskey tumbling through his veins.
Aaron replied that a scientist had to remain neutral in terms of politics and
religion. He only dealt in the truth.

Roan pushed.
But do
you have an opinion? Scientists can have those.

Aaron took a long swig his beer. He was meditating on the
question, searching for the appropriate answer.

The facts spoke for
themselves
, Aaron said.

Goddamn it all, Roan thought, now a decade later and
screaming across Tokyo in a hovercar. Why was
that
the first memory that came to his mind, not their trip to
Comet Tsali, or that drunken batball match on Omega II? He didn’t want to
remember his friend with a question that was never answered, with a belief or
non-belief that was never clarified. Whatever his true feelings were, though,
Aaron knew the answer about God now. Roan pounded the side of the skimmer.

The man didn’t even get a last word. Everyone deserves a
last word.

“Are you feeling well, Mr. Roan?” David asked, eyes on the
road.

“Yeah, yeah.” Roan shunned tears, but this time he was
coming damn close to a rainstorm. He bottled it up. Didn’t want to be caught
crying in front of a Nyden. Roan focused on the traffic flying by out the
window, not caring about the car’s speed or the sharpness of its turns.

They’d managed to get in their skimmer and tear out of Yuko
Mall just as the city police showed up. Sirens screamed by as they escaped. By
now, the authorities must have found Aaron’s body and knew the names and faces
of both Roan and David. They weren’t going to be happy with the people who
caused this very public firefight. Not that it mattered, because Roan had no
intention of talking to them. While the Japanese police were known to be on the
congenial end of Earth’s finest, there were few things Roan wanted less than to
sit down for a police interview.

Nor did he want to sit down for a Kotaran interview, which
would no doubt end in the extraction of one of his molars. He shuddered at the
stories he’d heard.

“We’re almost to the spaceport,” David reported. “You might
want to look into a ship we can take.”

Roan banged his fist against the hull. “How can you be so
nonchalant at a time like this? Aaron was just killed in front of you! What is
that, a minor inconvenience?” He was breathing heavily now, seething at the
alien at the controls.

“I’m grieving too, Mr. Roan,” David said. Roan noticed
David’s bulbous head shined red. An indicator of sadness, perhaps? Roan almost
regretted his outburst. “This is a very hard day for me,” David continued.
“I’ve seen Aaron nearly every week of these past five years. He was—he
is—a family member to me. But this is not a time for pausing. Reflection
can come later. We need to reach a ship with alacrity.”

“OK, David.” Roan thought about Aaron for a moment. He
struggled to get out the next few words. “Aaron didn’t have a family. No blood
relatives on Earth, I mean. Did he have anyone who he might want to contact in case…in
case he died?”

“There is only me,” David said, and turned the car down a
major thoroughfare. Roan wondered what kind of a life it was to be close to
only one person, but then remembered that he could count his close friends on
one hand.

Roan glanced at the rear camera on the dashboard monitor,
and didn’t see any familiar hovercars. This was good news. It meant that the
Kotarans who attacked them were no longer in hot pursuit, and had probably been
scared off by the police as well. But it was too much of a risk to stay on
Earth any longer. Though the Kotarans were renowned hunters and brutal killers,
Roan had much more faith in the human police tracking him down and bringing him
in for questioning. This was their territory, after all. He was just sure the
Kotarans were monitoring the police channels, and would try and grab him if he arrived
at any police station. Then he’d be in trouble, because he did not doubt the
Kotaran’s ability to kidnap a
stationary
being.

Roan pulled his com from his jacket, his hand brushing past
the hexagonal pad given by Aaron. With his index finger he scrolled through his
directory, looking for someone to call, someone to get him out of this
situation. Jonas was in São Paulo, he knew. Rigo was all the way in Yokohama,
and his ship was always staffed by a bunch of cutthroats anyway. Reiko…no. She
was definitely out. The only person who could remotely help them out was Masao,
and Roan pressed the number to dial him, hoping the copilot didn’t have too
much of a hangover.

One ring. Two. Three. On the fourth, a click and a sniff.

“Masao here.”

“Thank God! Listen, it’s Nick.”

“Nick?”

“Yeah, I need your help. I’m kind of being chased.”

“What? Nick, you been hitting the Centauri stuff?”

“No, no! Masao, listen to me very carefully.”
 
He gave Masao a brief rundown of what
happened. On the other end there was silence, punctuated by periodic coughing.
When he finished, Roan waited for a quick question of where he was and an
estimate of how quickly Masao could get there.

Instead: “Seriously, Nick, I thought you were done with
narcos.”

“Goddammit, Masao.”
 
Roan shoved the com into David’s face. “Say something, David.”

“Um…hello…”

“Am I telling the truth, David?”

“Yes, Mr. Roan.”

“Now say something in your own language.”

David considered this for a moment, then let loose a few
sentences in his native tongue. To Roan, it all sounded like a congested,
cawing crow, but he hoped it was enough to convince Masao. In his twenty years
of service to the Company, Masao had picked up a bit of the language as he
accepted runs to Nydaya every few months or so. Roan returned the com to his
own ear.

“Do you believe me now?”

“Well, he sounds Nyden. And I know you couldn’t be counted
on to learn proper grammar in English, much less an alien language.”

“Look, Masao. Turn on the BV if you have to. There’s bound
to be something about the Yuko Mall. This is important.”

“I’m not really in a position to do that right now…” There
was rustling and a feminine giggle on the other end. All the telltale signs
that Masao decided it was prudent to go clubbing in Tokyo the night after
returning from two months in deep space.

“I don’t care. Masao, I need to use your credit account.”

“My what?”
 
Credit accounts were usually confidential, and your money secure from
prying eyes, unless there was some reason why your account was a threat to
planetary security. In the aftermath of what happened at the mall, Roan was
sure the Japanese police were perusing his account. All they had to do to track
him was monitor his withdrawals. He was even taking too much of chance talking
on the com.

“You heard me. I need some tickets to the Tubes.”

“The Tubes? You’re crazy. You’re on the run from the police
and you want to flee the planet?”

“Remember the Kotarans, Masao.”

“The Company’s going to raise hell about this. You’ll
probably be sacked.”

“No time to worry about that. Masao, I need your account.
Mine will only get me caught.”

“Don’t you have an extra one, Nick? For emergencies?”

“Can’t say I do.”
 
He
did
at one point, before it
was overdrawn and shut down. So long, Mr. Jed Smith of Okinawa. That was for
another age. Luckily, Roan had stayed within the law since then and hadn’t
needed to withdraw sixty grand in the night.

“
Chikushou
,” Masao
breathed. He was doing some major contemplating. Skimmers shot by outside, each
one a potential police cruiser. “Can’t you ask the Nyden?”

Roan turned to David, cradling the com near his chest. “You
have any money?”

David squawked. “Yes, I have an expense account.”

“Is it in your name?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Roan returned the com to his ear. “Nope, he doesn’t have
one.”

“Fine, I’m coming up there.”

“Masao, you don’t have to meet us anywhere.”
 
On the other end of the line, something
rustled and moaned. Masao shushed whoever was in his bed.

“No no no, Nick, I do. I ain’t the kind of person to give
out account numbers on a whim. Where are you now?”

Ahead of them, the buttresses of the Tokyo spaceport gleamed
in the sunlight. The vast terminal and the monolithic control towers seemed
like paradise for Roan, their gate to safety and for an end to this earthly
madness.

“We’re just a few minutes from the spaceport. I want to get
a ticket up to the Tubes, and then get to the Entrepot. How soon can you be
here?”

“Give me fifteen. Where are you trying to go, anyway?”

Might as well tell him. “There’s a Company ship to Orion
today. Kel’s going to be on it.”

“Oh boy. That’s going to be fun.”
 
On Masao’s end, there was a zip and the
ruffling of a coat. Masao was probably running his arms through his jacket
sleeves and walking to the door. Roan heard Masao murmur a command in Japanese
to wait for a few hours and a sigh in response. As he listened to all this
trivial noise, Roan realized that the longer he was on the com the more danger
there was that the call would be traced.

“You’re going to have to be quick, Masao. The police are
probably plastering my face all over the security network. And I don’t want to
even know what the Kotarans are doing.”

A sigh on the other end. “I’m going as fast as I fucking
can. I’ll meet you at Grand Central in fifteen.”
 
Masao abruptly hung up. Roan pocketed
the com and scooped off his cap, running his hands through his hair. Traffic grew
heavier as they approached the spaceport, but he was glad they were in a hovercar
and could avoid the crowded lanes above the terminals. The sky swarmed with
orbital rockets and low-flying shuttles zigzagging about, a synchronized dance
to the heavens.

“Is your friend coming?” David asked, interrupting the ship
spotting.

“Yes, he is. We’ll just have to wait in the concourse.”

David blinked and maneuvered the skimmer toward a parking
structure. They passed through a security booth, which scanned them. Roan held
his breath; it was yet another way for their skimmer to be logged and recorded.
The police were sure to be close behind.

“You will need to look at what’s on that pad,” David said.

“Huh? What pad?”

“The one Aaron gave you.”
 
Then Roan remembered what was in his
pocket, the parting gift of a murdered friend. He muttered that he’d look at it
later. If something like that was worth two energy bolts to the back, it wasn’t
something that Roan wanted on his person. Part of him wished the Kotarans would
offer him ten million to give up the pad, making him both rich and rid of this
panspermia nonsense. But they’d killed Aaron for the information on it, and
Roan sure as hell wanted to know what was worth dying over.

***

By the time the shuttlepod came to pluck him out of Tokyo
Bay, Grinek had vowed never to swim again. He was glad to get off the wet buoy,
but even as he curled his tail and sat down in one of the shuttle’s seats, he
could not escape the water’s effects.

His body suit was thoroughly soaked and dripped like a leaky
pipe. Every time he moved his head he could hear an annoying sloshing sound in
his ears. And his grey skin had started to wrinkle from being his time in the
water, resulting in a most unappealing look. The soldiers attending to him
could do nothing but watch as he struggled to dry his fur, since they had
neglected to bring any towels on board the shuttle. Grinek ordered an officer
to strip and give him his tunic, and the officer promptly complied. As he wiped
himself down with the piece of fabric, Grinek made a note to order a demotion
for all on board.

The operations ship came into view out the pod’s window. It
was not a typical Kotaran ship; in fact, its exterior was not Kotaran at all.
In order for their expedition to attract the least amount of suspicion, the
Ruling Council had provided Grinek with an old Earth colonial freighter
captured years earlier. Any Kotaran ship that arrived at Earth, even a
diplomatic one, was scrutinized to the utmost degree by the
authorities—but no one would bother checking an obsolete freighter
lingering above the planet. It was not the only Kotaran ship in the solar
system: the
Hanyek
, which could carry
the operations vessel in its hangar, was waiting out beyond the planet called
Neptune.