Viking (38 page)

“It’s me again, Agent Geire. Sorry to interrupt your lunch.” Julie’s voice was
quivering with tension.

Geire waved dismissively and pushed aside the half-wrapped sandwich on his desktop,
his jaws working to finish a bite. He swallowed and wiped his lips with a crumbled
napkin. “That’s fine, Mrs. Orosco. I was just about done, anyway. I imagine you’re
calling for a status update.”

Julie nodded. “That, and to give you an update of my own.”

“Well, I’ll go first, but I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. We’re monitoring
MEEGO now, but not with any particular success. Agent Oristano is supposed to be
calling in a report later in the day.”

“I think I may know what MEEGO is up to, now.”

He raised his eyebrows politely.

“They’ve found aliens.”

Geire’s smile was a trifle condescending. “Intelligent aliens are about as probable
as mermaids and flying horses, according to most biologists.”

“Before you write me off as a nut case, let me send you something.”

“What?”

“A clip from my husband’s implants.”

“From before the stampede?”

“After.”

“Then they got some clips before he fell off the skimmer?”

Julie looked confused. “When did that happen? Not in the last few hours.”

“No, no. This was almost thirty-six hours ago.”

“Well, my clip is only half an hour old.”

“But that’s impossible...” Geire caught himself. “MEEGO claims he fell on the way
back to their new base camp, and they’re running up big fines stalling the release of
routine viking clips from anyone. It means we can’t verify their story one way or
another.”

“They’re lying. Rafa’s still broadcasting.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve got his transmissions.”

“How could you do that?”

“Remember the stuff my hacker friend found?”

“In the signal cache? That doesn’t hold viking broadcasts.” The FBI’s own
unadvertised stream lived there, but surely she wouldn’t know about
that
. Even
if her hacker friend had found it, the encryption was pretty bullet-proof.

“I have no idea how or why, but every so often the cache gets a new chunk of data.
It’s always garbled and encrypted, and it doesn’t use the standard viking codec, but
it’s definitely from Rafa.”

“And you say one of these chunks shows little green men?” Geire pulled out a drawer
and began to rub lotion onto his cracking palms. His voice still sounded
disbelieving.

“Not live aliens. A city, half-buried in jungle. See for yourself.”

Geire looked up as a jumping, static-filled picture flickered on his screen. He
watched in silence for almost two minutes. When it was over his hands were frozen, and
his face was very, very blank.

“See what I mean?” Julie asked, her face returning.

Geire shook himself and assumed a brisk, businesslike demeanor. “I’m sorry if I came
across a bit rude, Mrs. Orosco. It’s just that this turns all sorts of wisdom on its
ear.”

“Does this give you what you need to go in and protect Rafa?”

“We can’t let MEEGO cover up something this big. That doesn’t mean we’re going to
provide bodyguards for your husband, but I think it’s a safe bet we’ll have agents
visiting company headquarters both on Earth and the planet, in fairly short order.”

A wave of relief shot through Julie. For the first time she allowed herself to
imagine a peaceful end to this bloody, violent mission. How would it be to hold her
husband again?

Of course, if she wanted that to happen, she had to bring up another question as
well.

“You were right about MEEGO being dangerous. Someone tried to kill us on
Wednesday.”

“Us?”

Julie realized her slip. She’d been trying to keep Satler’s name out of this, so
hard questions about illegal hacking didn’t trace back to him. Well, too late now.
“Mike Satler. He was going to drive me to the shuttleport, and the skimmer blew
up.”

“Not a mechanical problem?”

“This was an explosion. It was deliberate.”

“Is that why you’re routing this call through an anonomizer?”

Julie nodded. “It spooked us both pretty bad, so we went into hiding. We’ve been
paying for everything off his aunt’s card.”

“Would you like some protection till this is all over?”

Julie’s face flooded with relief for the second time in a minute. “Is that possible?
You don’t think I’m imagining things?”

Geire replaced his lotion bottle and smiled grimly. “I’d be pretty stupid to say
something like that, after the clip I just saw. Tell me where you’re staying, and I’ll
send somebody down.”

“I’m not much on Houston geography. I think it’s called the Regal Inn.”

“That’s enough. I’ll get the address and get someone going. It might take an hour
or two, though; can you hold out that long?”

Julie nodded eagerly. The whole nightmare was coming to an end; maybe she’d even get
a chance to speak to Rafa soon. The sense of liberation was palpable.

“Good. I’ll have my man page you from the lobby when he gets there.”

“Me?”

“The page will be for David Rosales. Is that okay?”

“Yes, but how will I recognize him?”

Geire frowned thoughtfully. “You like apples?”

“Sure.”

“He’ll be reading a novel with an apple in his lap. Walk up and mention it, and
he’ll ask if you want a bite. That sound okay?”

“Sounds wonderful.”

Rafa opened his eyes feeling totally disoriented. It was pitch dark in the tent, and
breezes rolling off the pounding surf twitched the styrocil near his cheek
fitfully.

How had he known this was a tent?

Where was he?

What woke him up? He was uneasy for some reason.

The ferocious pain that had seared his ankle and heel unceasingly since the accident
on the deck of the skimmer was dull and subdued now. Rafa flexed his knee
experimentally, and felt a strange heaviness. No stabbing agony. No sense of contact
with the sand beneath his back.

A cast. His foot was in a cast. And so was the arm that had been damaged in the
stampede.

He dug strong brown fingers into the sand near his hips, finally registering the
gritty texture of the soil.

It all came flooding back to him. He remembered seeing the crew, down on the beach.
But they’d looked like they were leaving, and he’d shouted himself hoarse up on the
strangely carved alien stairway.

They must have seen him.

Searching his memory, he identified a vague impression of being hauled onto a
skimmer deck. A murmur of voices, heavy with incredulity, and a prick on his arm. Then
long nothingness, a brief resurfacing to night, Chen’s voice whispering
something—something urgent—then more nothing.

His grip on consciousness was still tenuous. A juggernaut of vertigo swept over him.
As he battled nausea and disorientation, all went black again.

* * *

Heward approached at a crouch, moving with a catlike grace born of training and long
habit. The blade in his hand was a fang that merged almost invisibly into the
darkness.

A desolate howl floated from the apron of the jungle.

He smiled.

If anybody remembered
that
in the morning, it would make the official account
of this attack all the more believable. He intended to dispatch Orosco quickly, while
he was still sleeping off the sedatives from Chen’s amateurish surgery. Then he’d shred
the tent a bit and drag the body down to the water, leaving just enough tell-tale
bloodstains and fake howler footprints to pin the blame on a carnivore.

It would be a poor job of camouflage, no doubt, but only minimal plausibility was
required. Nobody planetside was about to risk their necks nosing into a private
vendetta, and he had no worries about MEEGO’s potential interest in the tragedy.

With luck he’d have time to smuggle out a third load of artifacts, before someone
discovered the accident as the shift began.

Bezovnik had set up the looting operation as soon as they arrived. Each night after
the crew went to sleep, Heward took a catnap and a monstrous dose of sleep retardant.
Then it was off to the ruins, scouring for the choicest articles to sell on the black
market.

He had to be careful. Every day, more pieces were studied and cataloged by the crew,
under the direction of giddy scientists on earth. He had explicit instructions to avoid
anything that made it onto their growing inventory; Erisa Explorer’s records would be
scrutinized as soon as the story broke. MEEGO had to demonstrate good faith and lofty
principles on paper.

Luckily, there was no shortage of relics to find. Since they’d penetrated the large
centrally-located factory-like structure three days ago, he’d been gathering enormous
cartons of tools and computer components—that’s what they looked like, anyway—plus the
amazingly well preserved wall hangings and weird sculptures—anything that looked easy
to carry and was not nailed down. By the time the cataloging work caught up, there
would be no way to spot what was missing.

Just like Bezovnik promised, a glowing violet ring blinked them away from the
skimmer deck right on schedule every night. Where they went from there, he had no
idea—but it was certain that many objects would turn up in black-market auctions on
Earth, if they didn’t get snatched by unscrupulous businesses eager to reverse-engineer
new technologies.

He didn’t really care.

He was getting paid plenty. And of course he would make much more if he managed to
smuggle out the choicest artifacts. His private cache was buried a few hundred meters
down the beach. By the time the isolation phase of quarantine came around, he’d have
that little trick figured out. Or he could come back later, when comings and goings on
this planet were more routine.

A black shape slowly eclipsed a segment of the glowing rings overhead.

Heward studied it unblinkingly. He wasn’t particularly worried about whatever was
moaning in the trees; the biologists claimed it was smaller and less dangerous than it
sounded, and in a pinch he could use his pistol. But those pufferbellies gave him the
heebie-jeebies. They’d been thick as flies for the last couple days; once the whole
crew had even had to retreat under the skimmer when one got a bit too close.

He wanted to blast them with the cutting laser they’d been using like a scalpel on
the buildings, but even the suggestion had made earthside biologists rabid. “Low-impact
observation,” they’d chanted, like so many nutty monks to the priesthood of science.
Talk about hypocrisy. Anyway, Heward didn’t know all that much about biology, but he
seemed to recall that bees and scorpions and poisonous snakes favored brilliant colors
to advertise their lethal weapons; was a little show of mankind’s stinger so out of the
biological ordinary?

A gust of air whipped the flaps of the tent. Heward put thoughts of the floating
monster out of his head and ducked inside with renewed impatience. Time to get it over
with.

* * *

Orosco was lying prone on the clean sand, a long smear of coal on dingy white. His
breathing was slow and steady.

With stars and rings blotted out, the darkness was slightly deeper under cloth.
Heward went down on one knee and paused for a dozen breaths, allowing his eyes to
adjust. He wanted his blade to find a beating heart on the first blow—it would be
quieter that way.

Satisfied of the target, his arm flashed up, then plunged with terrific force.

And slammed harmlessly into sand.

A casted arm pulverized Heward’s nose and conjured multicolored stars from his
ringing skull, even as Orosco’s torso rolled smoothly under the side of the tent.

Heward vented a vicious oath. He could feel blood streaming down his face from deep
cheekbone abrasions and a crushed nasal bridge. A tooth had nearly pierced his mangled
lower lip. But he had no time for inventory; Orosco was out of the tent, and if he
remained inside, he was a sitting duck.

It was the first time in a long career of street fighting and assault that Heward
had ever felt panicked.

He backpedaled furiously, nearly losing his balance as he stumbled out into
starshine again.

Nothing moved.

Cautiously he scanned the beach, blood dripping off his chin in a steady rain of
black. Nothing was moving between Heward and the skimmer, which was the obvious
destination for someone seeking cover. Anyway, Orosco wouldn’t have had time to make
the scramble.

A hundred steps in the opposite direction the domes of the other viking tents
crouched in loose formation. Again, too far.

Had Orosco rolled back inside again?

Feeling worried, Heward threw back the flaps, careful to stand well back in case he
was rushed.

It took a full ten seconds, staring at the empty tent, before he knew. Then he
dashed around the tent and down the wet lip of sand, following footprints that were
only half-full of water, cursing his stupidity.

Outmaneuvered at every step. It was pointless to follow; Orosco could be anywhere.
The waves jumbled the surface into bubbling regions of ringlight and graduated shadow.
A careful swimmer would be almost impossible to spot.

But he had to come back in, sooner or later. Heward scanned the surf line in both
directions. Was that a flicker of movement? He took off at a sprint, the knife slashing
rhythmic death in his pumping fist. He couldn’t afford to let Orosco skulk around till
the others woke up.

Suddenly the lights of the skimmer flashed blindingly. Heward threw up a protective
arm from the glare and skidded to a stop, his mind racing through alternatives.

“Stupid, Orosco. Now I know where you are, and I can cover both doors of the
cockpit. I’m not such a bad aim with a knife, you know.”

“Is that a fact?” Orosco’s voice sounded calm but tired.

He has to be battling to stay awake, Heward calculated. In fact, that he was
conscious at all was hard to believe—let alone that he’d just gone for a dip and then
run up the beach with one leg in a cast. The dosage of sedatives he’d received a couple
hours ago should have lasted much, much longer—if Chen had truly administered what she
claimed.