Forsaken Skies (22 page)

She led him inside the building, into a cavernous space filled with heavy milling machines and old-fashioned looking conveyor belts. Workers in paper coveralls and facial masks poured out ingredients from colorful plastic drums or sorted through the pebbly feed as it came out of the drying beds. Some of them waved at Roan as she passed. She took Thom through to a suite of offices at the back of the factory floor, just a couple of simple rooms with desks and chairs pushed up against the walls. Together they set up a folding table and some chairs, then unpacked the crates she'd brought from the Retreat. They said little as they worked at sterilizing the room, sweeping its corners with ultraviolet lights and filtering the air through a semipermeable membrane. When that was done she took out a bottle and a brush sealed in a plastic envelope. “Hold out your hands,” she said.

He did as she asked. She unwrapped the brush, then swirled it around inside the bottle, which looked mostly empty to Thom. “This is a viriphage culture,” she said. “It's a bacterium we brew up in our infirmary.”

He started to pull his hands away as she daubed at them with the brush. “Hold on—”

She actually let out a little sigh. It was the most emotion she'd displayed since he met her. “It doesn't affect human cells. The bacterium eats specific viruses that cause contagious diseases. Things like influenza and tuberculosis. This will actually make you healthier than you were before.”

He nodded and let her finish, coating his hands front and back with just a tiny film of sticky residue. She did her own hands next. “Now whenever we shake hands with somebody, we'll inoculate them at the same time.”

“Oh. You still worry about diseases like that here?”

She didn't sigh, but he thought she might have gritted her teeth a little. “Where you're from, most likely there's some incredible high-tech way of protecting people from getting sick. Here we have to use the old ways.”

Thom shrugged. He'd never bothered learning anything about medicine. He'd been genetically engineered from the chromosomes up and had never had so much as a sniffle in his life so far. “How often do you have to do this?”

“New strains of viruses come along all the time,” she said. “We try to inoculate everybody in Walden Crater at least twice a year. I'm here this week; next week I'll head over to the farmer's market. It's this or deal with an inevitable epidemic.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Yes. Now. Are you ready to meet your public?”

“I…guess so,” Thom said.

“Good.” She unrolled a minder on the table and tapped out a message. Soon the factory workers started filing in one at a time.

There was a little more to it than just shaking hands, though they made sure they did that as often as possible. Roan's minder contained full medical records for everyone they met, and she asked them if they needed anything else while she was there.

Their first patient, a middle-aged man named Alek, asked about back pain. “It gets pretty bad, leaning over the belt all day,” he said.

“There's an exercise routine that should help with that,” Roan said, reading off her minder. “I'll send you the details.”

He didn't seem thrilled by that—maybe he was expecting some drugs or something—but he nodded.

“How do we handle payment?” Thom asked.

Alek and Roan both stared at him. “Payment?” Roan asked. “For what?”

“For…this,” he said. “You just do this for free?”

“Of course we do. This is about protecting all of us. Why should anyone have to pay for something that benefits everybody?” Roan asked. “I'm sorry, Alek. He's not from here. In fact—he's come to Niraya specifically to talk to people like you.”

Thom nearly fell out of his chair. But that was right, wasn't it? A goodwill ambassador was supposed to talk to people. Get them on Lanoe's side.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I represent the—the Navy,” he said, trying to think in a hurry. Trying to remember what he was allowed to say. He wasn't supposed to mention the invasion fleet, he knew that, but he figured it was okay to talk about things that had already happened. “I'm sure you've heard the news about the drone that landed here and killed those farmers,” he said.

“There's a drone killing farmers?” the man asked. “Drones aren't supposed to do that! What are you talking about?”

“It's—it's been destroyed,” Thom said. “I'm sorry, I thought you would have heard about this on the news videos.”

“I don't bother with that kind of thing,” Alek said. He rubbed at his face, then stared down at his hands. He rubbed them together, perhaps feeling the slight stickiness of the viriphage film. “It's just a lot of religious stuff, usually. Oh hellfire. Drones are attacking people, and you're going to start charging us for health care? What's going on?”

It took Roan quite a while to calm the man down. Eventually he left but he didn't look very reassured.

“That could have gone better,” Thom said.

Roan didn't meet his eyes. “Maybe so.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. He couldn't believe what a damned mess he'd become. Ever since he'd—ever since he'd shot his—since he'd run away, nothing had gone right, he'd just made one stupid mistake after another. “I'm—I'm just sorry. I assumed everyone knew about the drone attack, at least, if not the invasion fleet.”

“The Retreat has made information about the attack publicly available, but not everyone bothers to keep up with events outside their own neighborhood,” Roan said.

“But—how could they not all be talking about this? I mean, they must have broadcast that video you have, the one of the lander attacking the bird farm.” Thom had seen the video onboard the tender before they landed—Lanoe had made them all watch it and study the telescopic imagery of the approaching fleet.

“Actually, no,” Roan said.

“What?”

“The elders published a considered, text-only report about the attack. As for the video, they held it back. They decided that it might…demoralize Nirayans to see that. It's very graphic.”

“Yeah. It is. And people should see it, anyway. They should know what's coming for them.”

“Why?” Roan asked. “So they can be terrified of something they can't do anything about?”

“If it were me, I'd rather know what was coming,” Thom said. “Can you honestly tell me you'd prefer to be kept in the dark?”

“My opinion isn't important,” Roan said.

“It is to me,” Thom said. “Come on. What do you really think, Roan? That holding back that video was the right thing to do?”

“I can see both sides,” she said, turning her head away from him. He could tell she had her doubts. Still, when she spoke again, it sounded like she was handing him an official line. “We've done what we can to defend Niraya, by bringing Commander Lanoe and the other pilots here.”

Thom stared at the side of her head for a long time, trying to think of what to say next. Maybe he was starting to understand why Lanoe thought they needed a goodwill ambassador. Maybe there was actually something of value he could contribute.

“Call in the next patient,” he said.

“Thom, please, don't make this difficult.”

He kept staring at her, even though she wouldn't look at him.

“Call them in,” he said.

A young woman came through the door, though she didn't close it behind her—as if she expected she might have to run away.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Roan asked.

“I just heard—the Navy is attacking farmers,” she said.

“It's like it's my birthday three months early,” Maggs said, though Ehta couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

On the concrete of the spaceport the BR.9s lay sitting in a perfect little row, their airfoils nearly touching. Lanoe stood to one side by his FA.2, his arms folded behind his back. The way he stood when he was trying to look like a proper commanding officer.

“Pop 'em open and have a look,” he said to the gathered pilots. “We start patrols in an hour. For now just get used to your new crates.”

There were more than enough to go around. Valk went immediately to the BR.9 he'd already used against the enemy fleet. One of its airfoils was broken but the jagged edge had started to turn soft and furry. The BR.9 had a self-repair function that would have the airfoil good as new in a few days. “You mind if I stick with this one?” he asked.

“Be my guest,” Lanoe told him.

Zhang went next, beaming from ear to ear as she rushed forward to claim her fighter. She lowered her canopy and slipped inside. She fiddled with the displays until they looked like they flowed with gray liquid—the kind of displays her artificial eyes could see. She didn't waste any time getting to the customization screens, moving the cockpit seat forward, adjusting the running lights. Then she found the screen for the fairing lights and she squealed with glee.

Running along either side of the canopy of the BR.9, all the way back to the main thruster package, there were two curved sections of hull armor that weren't pierced by vents or studded with equipment. Normally these twin fairings were a dull gray color, but they were embedded with chromatic filaments. On a command from the cockpit they could be made to flash various colors in varying levels of brightness. The idea was to allow pilots to light them up to indicate they were in distress, or to set them to the colors of their respective squadrons, or even use them to send coded messages back and forth during battle. Some bright pilot many years ago had realized, however, that you could program them to display pretty much any image you wanted. Back during the Establishment Crisis it had become a cliché for pilots to decorate their fighters with tiger stripes or slavering jaws full of teeth. It had become one more thing for Navy pilots to compete over—who had the most creative or shocking or aesthetically pleasing fairing art.

There was no real question what Zhang would choose. She tapped away at the controls and soon red tentacles wove and twisted across her fairings, just like the arms of the red octopus that decorated her suit. Ehta remembered that Zhang had always changed her fairing imagery every few years but once she had a motif she stuck with it.

“The irony, of course,” Maggs said, leaning over to whisper in Ehta's ear, “is delicious, a blind woman getting so excited about fairing art she'll never see.”

Ehta brushed him away like a fly. “Everybody else will see it; that's the point.”

“Hmm.” Maggs went next, picking the closest BR.9 to him. He climbed into the cockpit and went immediately for the customization panels. His fairings rippled and furled like flags snapping in a strong wind, showing first the triple-headed eagle of the Navy, then the green and black standard of the Admiralty, and finally a flag showing a red shield with crossed lightning bolts. She figured that last one must be his only family crest—she knew his father had been some kind of top brass, and the Navy let people like that have all the trappings of ancient aristocracy.

Valk shook his head—a gesture that included his shoulders, since nobody could see his head through his polarized helmet. He turned toward Lanoe. “What art are you going to fly, boss?”

“My FA.2 doesn't have customizable fairings,” Lanoe explained. He didn't seem to feel particularly left out. “I go to war with a blank shield. But you go ahead, pick something.”

Valk didn't even climb into his cockpit, just leaned over and started tapping away at the panels. His fairings lit up a shade of blue Ehta recognized at once. A pattern of black stars, galaxies, and nebulae drifted across the blue field.

“Oh, I say, that's a bit over the line,” Maggs insisted, still nestled inside his fighter's cockpit with the canopy down.

Valk had chosen the campaign colors of the Establishmentarians. Well, he had fought for them. Though Ehta could imagine less incendiary designs he might have picked. She, Zhang, and Lanoe had all fought against the Establishment—and lost a lot of friends to their attacks.

“Commander,” Maggs said, “are you going to let him get away with this?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to face Valk. “You know you lost that war, don't you?”

“You wanted the Blue Devil,” Valk said, though it was hard to see who he was addressing. “You got him.”

“Sure,” Lanoe said. “Maggs, I don't know if you've figured this out yet, but this isn't an official Navy mission. Valk's colors can stand.”

Maggs muttered something, but not loud enough that Ehta could hear it.

It didn't help that her ears were ringing. Or that her heart kept skipping beats. She knew what was coming next.

“Ensign,” Lanoe said, “I believe it's your turn.”

She nodded without looking at him. She couldn't stand to look at him, just then.

“What design are you going to use?” Zhang called. “Remember that one you had at Eblis? That fractal thing that if you looked at it hard enough you realized it was made of grinning skulls?”