Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (6 page)

Benjamin sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You’re the expert! You spent your life researching this stuff, all over the world, in every — ”

“I don’t know,
Cameron.”

Cameron looked again at Benjamin — his father’s kind yet serious hazel eyes. His mop of still-mostly brown hair. His full beard, surprisingly devoid of gray. Benjamin had never had an ill intention. He’d accidentally destroyed the lives around him through what had once seemed a selfish pursuit but had since proved itself to be the most important hobby in history. Researching the past and extraterrestrial visitations was the one thing his dad had always excelled at, far outstripping his aptitude as a husband and father. The idea that he’d come up blank now yet feel a pressing need to surge blindly forward wasn’t just maddening. It was a living, breathing terror.

Cameron watched him for another few seconds then shook his head, resigned. He’d made the trip before and could make it again. Off he’d go, no matter what was known. Because even beyond the mission, there was a prize at the end of this particular rainbow.

“I can leave at sunrise.” Cameron sighed. “I’ll go back the way I came last time. Just tell me what you need once I’m there.”

Benjamin nodded. “It’s simple. I have something you’ll need to take with you, then either install it yourself, or get it into Terrence’s hands. But there’s still something we need to discuss about the trip itself. About which roads you should take to get there in one piece.”

“I won’t take roads,” Cameron said. In this day and age, roads were for dead men.

“That’s what we need to talk about,” Benjamin said. “About you — and the Andreus Republic.”

C
HAPTER
7

Piper went to the fourth little white house beyond the viceroy’s mansion, staying low and feeling stupid. She ducked behind the long row of hedges out front and felt even stupider. The grounds were surveilled. The alien network supposedly couldn’t read individual human minds, but she’d heard Cameron’s thoughts plainly once upon a time.

It was hard to believe she was successfully hiding from anyone, but standing upright and being seen by naked eyes was an idiot’s game.

Piper’s body tingled with nerves, watching the front porch past the hedges, wondering if she should walk up and knock. Houses to the left and right — Christopher’s and Heather’s, though Heather’s was necessarily larger — were quiet. So was the one Piper was steeling herself to approach.

Homes inside the sprawling grounds were made of wood, built entirely by human hands and human equipment, unaided by alien ships. None of the Titans had so much as glanced toward the construction, so far as Piper could recall. It was as if they’d been saying,
Sure, build whatever, we don’t care
.

But they’d needed the structures, due to pride if nothing else. Heather was first to insist, saying that if she wasn’t wanted in the main house, she’d need her own — not out with the commoners, but close to her children. A classic Heather Hawthorne power play, passive-aggressive in perfect measure (Heather wasn’t unwanted in the mansion at all, and even had her own suite), but Piper hadn’t argued. They’d all felt raw, and she’d felt desperate for peace. It had taken months following her abduction before Piper could finally settle into her new normal and feel something close to surrender.

As the sea of hippies around Meyer’s old house had grown to include well wishers, refugees fleeing the dangerous outlands, and sycophants of all stripes, willing human labor had become simple to find. That was the thing about Heaven’s Veil citizens: to a greater or lesser extent, everyone was here because they agreed to lie down as pets. Getting those hands to build not just Heather’s house but also several more (for other should-be-close-but-not-in-the-mansion staff) had been simple.

Piper glanced around, searching for cameras out of habit. There would be some, yes. But getting caught would require something less pedestrian than glass lenses. And it would mean she’d have to admit to wrongdoing, which she may or may not have been up to.

The thought made Piper touch her jeans pocket, brushing the hard lump of plastic and metal inside — the tiny slip drive she’d taken from Meyer’s office after the attack.

This is ridiculous,
she told herself.

Still, Piper fished the drive from her pocket and held it in the hand nearest the shrubs while mounting the small white home’s porch. At least this way she could toss it casually into the bushes at the sound of a shout.

Piper knocked. After a few seconds, a huge head of poufy black hair greeted her, stylish sunglasses poking into its massive halo as if saved for later.

“Hey, Piper.”

“Terrence. Hey. Can I come in?”

“Uh … sure.”

Terrence stepped aside to let Piper enter then left the door open with the screen closed to summertime insects. He looked perplexed, but of course he would. She’d always been cordial with Terrence but had missed the intense bonding period he’d spent with everyone else. Thinking this now, Piper felt more alone than she had in while. People living on the grounds could easily be partitioned into two groups: Piper and Meyer in one, those who’d remained in Vail when she’d left in the other. Even the children weren’t really in Piper’s camp. Not anymore. Meyer was her only confidant, and her feelings for him were …
complex
.

Terrence turned from the door after Piper was sitting in one of the wooden chairs around his kitchen table.

“Can you close the door?”

Terrence looked at her strangely then pushed the solid door closed. After the lawn’s brightness, the LED-lit house seemed dark to her unadjusted eyes.

Terrence walked over and sat opposite Piper.

“What’s up?”

Piper didn’t know where to start. The minute she pried at one edge and found it loose, this whole thing would pop wide open. Her question wouldn’t be easy to ask — and without the answer Piper wanted, she might be hanging herself.

“You saw what happened with the plane?”

Terrence nodded slowly. Despite all the changes, he hadn’t lost his ability to be cool.

“Of course.”

“Is everything … okay?”

“Okay how?”

“With security.”

Terrence nodded. He responded slowly, his deep voice falsely casual. “It’s fine. Not a scrap of debris. We didn’t have to do anything. A couple of shuttles just carried it off.”

“Did you see the plane come in?”

Terrence nodded. “We came out at the general alarm.”

“Did you know that was going to happen? With the … the force field or whatever?”

“No, I was pretty surprised.”

“You seem blasé about it all.”

“It’s over now.” Terrence shrugged.

“But we almost got suicide bombed.”

“Apparently, it was never a threat.” He tipped his head. “You know, if you’re worried about security, you should maybe be talking to Christopher.”

Piper didn’t want to talk to Christopher. He was too much of a wild card for this, and Piper had no idea where his loyalties lay — if they were where they were officially supposed to be, or elsewhere. And Christopher, unlike Terrence, had never hot wired a radio connection across a hundred miles for her.

“You know what I was thinking about the other day?”

Terrence shook his head.

“Raj’s watch.”

“Why were you thinking about Raj’s watch?” Then Terrence’s cool dark eyes grew uneasy. “Was he asking about it? Was Raj asking about his watch or something?”

“No, no … ”

“Because I gave it back to him.
Years
ago, I mean. Before that all happened with the ship. He might have lost it when — ”

“Not literally about the watch, Terrence,” Piper said, strangely calmed by his unease. An angle occurred to her — a way to ask what she wanted — and she grew calmer still. “I was remembering the way you used that watch to get through blocked communications when Cameron and I were on the road.”

Terrence hummed acknowledgement but didn’t say more, clearly uneasy. Back then, he’d been subverting the Astrals (before they’d even been called Astrals) and working with Cameron. Now, he was more or less employed by the aliens and was supposed to consider Cameron an enemy. Everyone seemed to hide those facts in front of Meyer, more comfortable saying they were allegiant to
the capital
and its
viceroy
than to the ships pulling the strings. But in the end you took one side or the other, not both. Sometimes, it seemed to Piper that everyone in Heaven’s Veil had chosen security over their species. Ironically, few seemed at peace with that choice, but the contents of a person’s heart didn’t determine morality or bravery. Actions spoke louder, and they’d chosen to act for the colony — and therefore against people like Cameron. Herself included.

“Well,” Piper went on, “don’t you think that the … the insurgents — ” Careful to use an official word, rather than something biased. “ — might be using some of those same old ways to communicate?”

“The airwaves are open. Phone, Internet, radio, you name it.”

Piper decided not to call Terrence on his bullshit. Terrence, of all people, couldn’t possibly believe all the old channels were truly open — or that they weren’t being scrutinized with incredible efficiency thanks to the assistance of the neural net threading the globe in double lines of monolithic stones.

“But the rebels would want to hide, right? If they’re communicating, they wouldn’t want to use open frequencies. They’d need secret ones they could keep on the down-low.”

“Maybe.” He looked like he thought Piper might be ready to hurl an accusation.

“If you wanted, could you tap into what you were doing back then?”

Terrence’s cool had fragmented, now it looked ready to break. There was no obviously correct way to answer. He clearly didn’t know where Piper stood. She was Meyer’s wife, queen of the city’s stone mansion. Her family was the new royalty. Everyone knew Piper Dempsey just like everyone knew the beloved and godlike Meyer. If she was asking about old subterfuge, Terrence probably thought, it might be because she suspected something about Terrence — and was here to call for his head.

“I
could,
maybe,” he said, “but I
wouldn’t
ever — ”

“Those channels you were ‘tunneling’ for me and Cameron, through devices like Raj’s watch, using the old cell networks … have they been blocked?”

“I don’t know.” Defensive now.

“But did you tell someone, Terrence? Did you tell anyone about the vulnerabilities, so someone else — not you, necessarily — could see about plugging the holes in security?”

“Well … no … but — ”

“So they could still be accessible? The rebels could still be using them to talk?”

Terrence looked at his feet, touched one hand to another, spoke quickly without quite meeting Piper’s eye. “Well even if they could, it’s nothing that would affect us here, in the city anyway; they’d just be using it out in the outlands, among themselves I mean, and there’s no evidence that they’re coordinating among pockets of people in different places, so it’s not like — ”

There was the sound of a door closing outside. It was the house next door — Christopher’s maybe — but still it broke Terrence’s hypnosis. He stopped speaking, after inadvertently spilling his guts. Piper felt sure Terrence was hiding something. And maybe that was good.

“Terrence,” Piper said slowly. “Have you talked to them?”

“Who?”

Piper watched him carefully. Whatever power existed in this discussion, it had started with Terrence and now resided wholly in her hands.

“Cameron and Benjamin.”

“No.”

“Or Charlie? Any of them in Moab?”

“Of course not. If you’re implying that I somehow had something to do with — ”

“It’s okay, Terrence. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Piper knew one thing for sure. Those lines of communication had never been divulged. They’d still be open. And Terrence, if she could read behavior at all, was either still using them or trying to. And that was okay. Ideal, in fact.

Terrence relaxed but still seemed to be reserving judgment. As if he didn’t truly believe her. Outside, the door slammed again, and Piper heard someone shout.

“And no,” she added. “I haven’t talked to Raj.”

He relaxed a little more.

Piper shifted on the chair and slipped fingers into her pocket. Her fingers touched the stolen drive, but her jeans were tight, and she’d have to stand to retrieve it.

“If
you thought talking to Moab was possible — ” Piper paused to give Terrence an out, knowing it might help him speak with a thinner guard. “ — Or if you found a way to monitor any of
their
communications, as part of your job in security, I’d be interested in knowing.”

“So we can know what future attacks the rebels might launch on the city.” His eyes ticked toward the window, and the blue hue from the enormous under-construction glass pyramid. “Or on the
Apex
, or your house.”

The way he’d stressed the word Apex told Piper something more. Something Terrence might know about the pyramid or Moab, or Moab’s thoughts on the pyramid. Something, Piper decided on a leap of faith, that meant she could trust him — or try to anyway.