Ambassador 4: Coming Home (30 page)

He again eyed the lump in the sand as if rearranging his thoughts. I saw it as a hopeful sign. He
had
to be reasonably smart to have made it this far.

I continued, “Right now, a lot of people are working very hard to destroy as many relays as possible. I’m sure you read the statement Ezhya Palayi sent from my account to the
gamra
assembly.”

He snorted. “I
highly
disagree with this kind of unilateral action.”

“They do have the right to defend their own world.”

“But why the hostility? That will only provoke the aggression that Asto so dearly wishes to see. Why go to such lengths to stop them? They will come anyway. We have no technology to stop them. I can only imagine that you want to stop the ship jumping because the Aghyrians will want to displace the Coldi.”

“These Aghyrians want to displace
all
of us. These people do not come here in peace. They come here to wage war.”

He snorted. “Well. That’s news to me. Why haven’t you raised that with the assembly? We could have instated a negotiating team.”

What do you think I’ve been doing?
“The most damning evidence against the Aghyrians has only come to light overnight. We heard from Marin Federza.”

“Marin . . . Federza?”
That
seemed to shake him. “He’s . . . not here, is he? He’s gone . . . to Guild headquarters at Kedras, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” I lied.

I would have laughed at the utterly confused face he pulled had the situation not been so serious. I would love to have known what he’d been told about Federza. Something that was obviously a lie, because he seemed genuinely surprised.

“Federza had some very interesting data that I will be presenting at the next assembly, but first, I have to make sure that we will still
have
an assembly. We have to stop that ship coming into the system. Step aside, and let us destroy the relay.”

“Never.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“But I explained to you—”

“A lot of tall tales and false accusations, that’s what you told us. Nothing substantial.”

“Oh, there will be plenty of substantial evidence.”
Including evidence against you
. “I would go to the assembly if there were time. I would even call for an emergency meeting, but we don’t have that time. We have to destroy this thing as soon as possible. Before the array can form and the ship jumps. Tonight. So please stand aside and let us—”

“No.” He placed himself at the top of the stairs that went down to the dig site. “If you do that, you’ll have to destroy me, too.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You dare call me stupid? Do you even know what you are saying? Do you know that I have the power to sack you and send you home to your miserable little planet, or better still I’ll send you to Asto since you seem to love them so much.”

A strange wailing sound echoed over the water outside. The walkway thudded with the sound of people running.

“What was that?” Delegate Namion said, turning his head to listen.

A high-pitched squealing noise echoed over the water.

People yelled in the distance.

I
HAD NO IDEA
what was going on. The sounds and voices were unfamiliar, not close enough to be anywhere near the tent.

One of Delegate Namion’s guards went to have a look—and came back a moment later, pushing a Pengali youth in front of him, holding him by the hair. The young man kicked and tried to yank his hair free. His tail lashed up and around the guard’s arms. The guard grabbed the tail and pulled it until the young man’s feet almost left the ground.

You did
not
hold a Pengali by the tail. A woman, also Pengali, ran into the tent letting out an angry shriek, attempting to stab the guard with a fearfully sharp diamond knife. The guard tried to fend her off with his free arm. He wore armour, clearly.

Delegate Namion retreated while this fight was going on.

In the chaos, I gestured to Sheydu, who was looking in through the tent flap on the other side. I gestured,
Quick
.

She ran across the walkway and jumped over the side railing onto the platform below, landing with a heavy thud that made the planks under my feet shudder. Coldi strength never ceased to amaze me. If I’d have tried that, I would have broken both my legs.

She slid the pack from her shoulder.

Two more Pengali had entered the tent, as well as another guard in response to calls for help from the first. They had restrained the woman with the knife, but the youth had managed to free himself.

Delegate Namion had retreated behind the tables where the researchers had been working. He was shouting at all of them to go outside and continue their fight there, while the guards struggled to get the situation under control. They were
gamra
guards, both Damarcian. I didn’t know that Damarcians made decent guards. Damarcians were thinking people who valued knowledge highly. They were thin and often moved awkwardly, and these were no exception.

Sheydu often rolled her eyes at the
gamra
guards’ competence, and I had come to see how she was right in many instances.

She couldn’t complain about these particular clumsy ones, because she used the chaos to unpack things from her bag in quick and efficient fashion. She laid out one glob-shaped wad of explosive, and another. Then a bag that went around the explosive that had a highly adhesive surface. Then two tiny buttonlike devices that she pushed into the soft material before closing the bags and tying them tightly at the top. She tapped her reader against the parcel where lumps indicated the position of the devices. They each emitted a tiny flash of light.

She flicked through a few screens on her reader. I recognised the “Device Activation” screen. Working. Contact.

She gave me the
all systems go
sign.

I needed to get all these people out.

But the struggle between the Pengali and the guards attempting to arrest them had spread. More Pengali had come into the tent. If these were all Reida’s supporters, Reida should call them off.

I checked the time.

Asha’s craft would be up there, destroying as many relays as possible. Ezhya would be doing the same, maybe talking to the sling, too, while it made its way back. I must make sure that that terrible weapon was not used.

I gave Sheydu the sign. She jumped from the fixed platform to one of the suspended ones. It swung back and forth with her weight. Carefully, she lowered one of the bags onto the encrusted surface of the relay. And then the other one. Tapped on her reader. Jumped back onto the fixed platform. The two explosive bags lay on the muddy surface like someone’s discarded garbage. The bags were white, so stood out clearly. A little light blinked at the top of each.

Sheydu ran up the stairs. “Get out, get out!”

The skirmishes stopped. People looked at her, and some noticed the white bags on top of the “rock”.

An expression of horror came to Delegate Namion’s face. He lunged for the gun on a nearby guard’s belt.

“Get out, get out!” Sheydu ran over the boards, out of the tent. She jumped over the side into the darkness of the marsh.

I followed her outside and climbed on the railing, hesitating, looking at the dark gaping void where there would be a wet landing in the mud some metre and a half below.

“Jump!” Sheydu called from the darkness below. I couldn’t see her.

“Come on!” Thayu yelled. She jumped.

Splash
.

I jumped.

There was a flash behind us. And another one.

I landed in the mud and fell to my knees. Water splashed in my face.

“What the hell was that?” Nicha.

“I think Delegate Namion must have fired at those bags,” I said. I was the only one to have seen this.

Thayu cursed. “Oh, he fucking didn’t—”

An explosion bloomed out from the tent. The sides blew out. The roof blew off. The walkway shattered, sending support poles crashing sideways.

Thayu pushed me down on my belly. In the water, of course. Various pieces rained down around me, some of them quite large. I covered my head with my arms.

“The stupid fucking idiot shot at the explosive!” Sheydu yelled somewhere close by.

Now that the light from the tent was gone, it had become seriously dark. I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t imagine that Thayu and Sheydu saw any more.

People splashed around us. I had no idea who they were. I couldn’t hear them because my ears were ringing. I could barely figure out where Thayu was, and if everyone would just stop yelling I might just be able to hear what any of them said.

Someone pulled me up onto my feet. A deep voice said, “Come.” It was Evi.

He more or less dragged me along, not in the direction of the point behind which we had left the planes.

I protested, “We have to go that way.”

“No, our transport is right here.”

There was a hoverboat in the reeds that I hadn’t seen because it carried no light at all, and both little moons had long since vanished below the horizon.

Evi pushed me in and I sat down on the first bench I encountered. Damn, I was shivering. The driver was small, likely Pengali. The dark, heavy person who sat next to me turned out to be Veyada. I sensed Thayu on the bench behind me. The boat reversed out of the reeds. Where the others were I didn’t know. The night was black and chaotic and hopefully my team would have a better idea of what was going on than I did.

But . . .

“We’re going in the wrong direction.” I could see some pinpricks of light
behind
us.

“Nah,” Veyada said.

The driver turned the boat in a half-circle, steering it towards . . . one of the pylons that held up the railway tracks. A ladder led from the water to the track bed. There were people up there. There was also a train, with all its lights off. What the hell?

The side of the boat thunked into the concrete of the pylon. A Pengali on the ladder caught the rope that the driver threw at her and tied it to one of the rungs, chatting with the driver. After years in Barresh, the Pengali language, consonant-filled, with harsh and guttural tones, still sounded utterly foreign to me.

Someone called, “Cory!”

Nicha
was up there.

I rose and crossed the few wobbly steps to the ladder, stepped from the boat and climbed up. A thick layer of moss and algae covered the rungs of the ladder. It felt disgusting, slippery. I climbed slowly, making sure that my grip or step was secure before hauling myself up. Nicha held out a hand and pulled me up onto the track bed, behind the train. The cabin had a little door at the very back, which stood open. A few pinpricks of light pierced the darkness of the cabin. Something moved, showing up only as a shadow against the light. Too tall to be Pengali.

A Coldi voice said, “Delegate? Get in.”

Holy crap, it was Deyu.

“Since when is hijacking trains our business?”

“Since Deyu used to be a train driver in Athyl,” Thayu said next to me.

“Did she?” Here came the important bits about why Deyu was with us.

More people were climbing onto the tracks behind us. I recognised the solid form of Telaris. Sheydu was there, too.

“Are we missing anyone?”

“All here.” Reida said.

“Even if some of us are a bit bruised,” Sheydu said. She sounded exhausted.

“Did anyone see Delegate Namion?”

No one replied. A chill went through me.

“He shot at the explosives,” Thayu said, her voice dark.

“Stupid.” My mind filled with dark thoughts. What would happen if, by chance, Delegate Namion had not survived that stupidity? “Do you think that the relay is fully destroyed?”

“We’ll have to check in the morning,” Sheydu said. “Not much good hanging around now and getting caught.”

“Yes, we must get out of here soon.”

“We’ll check with my father,” Thayu said. “No need to come back to this mess.”

And it was a mess that we would definitely hear more about. Tamerians had been getting killed all over town without much publicity, because they were only Tamerians and no one knew them or cared about them, except perhaps other Tamerians—not that I’d ever seen evidence of that. But if any of the
gamra
guards, the council workers of, heaven forbid, Delegate Namion, had been injured, then the proverbial shit would hit the fan at lightspeed. And then I might well need that protection Ezhya offered.

“Get in,” Deyu called from inside the train.

We walked over the track, careful not to slip. Evi, at the front of the group, reached the door first. He climbed up the little ladder and disappeared into the cabin. Then Thayu. Then it was my turn. I put my hand on the ladder—

“Shit,” Nicha said behind me. “Look over there.”

We looked.

A faint glow emanated from the water where the excavation had been, a bright spot under the water that lit the sad remains of the tent and the walkways with a ghostly blue-green light.

“Does your explosives cause that?” Telaris asked Sheydu next to him.

“No. They shouldn’t.” Her voice sounded uncertain.

The water
moved
. It bubbled and churned as if it was boiling. In fact, it
was
boiling because steam billowed from the water in the same way it did at the volcanic vents. The light became brighter and brighter. That thing that looked like a rock had detached itself from the muddy bottom and was rising. Sharp beams lanced from cracks in the encrusted casing, making the steam glow.

As the thing broke the surface, big chunks of the casing fell away.

The object underneath was so bright that I couldn’t even make out the shape of it. It emanated a low pulsing hum, that was painfully familiar. This was the sound that had disturbed the Exchange operation at times. The sound that had destroyed the back wall of the house at the edge of the island.

Telaris raised his gun and aimed. He squeezed the release. A bright beam crossed the night sky, hit the light source—

The beam glanced off.

“The bombs didn’t work.” Sheydu stared, her face lit with a ghostly green glow. “What the fuck . . . Those two babies were big enough to destroy a military cruiser. Each.” She was covered in mud. The sleeve in her suit had ripped and blood had soaked into the fabric.