Regeneration (Czerneda) (85 page)

The air hit like a drug. Mac drew in a greedy gasp, coughed at the cold, then immediately took another, each feeling as though it went straight to her arteries.

“There!” Nik shouted, his arm raised to point.

Mac was busy looking the other way. “Ah, Nik?”

He turned and glanced up. The five feeders they’d brought were lifting free from the hull of the
Impeci,
their small craft noiseless and quick.

A dozen, maybe more, were overhead.

“Do not fear,
Lamisah
!” Her Glory boomed. “These shall drink only of the Ro!”

“Oh, good,” Mac replied, for want of anything better to say.

Nik shrugged and pulled up his hood. “Let’s go.”

They’d only started walking when he touched her arm. “We’re expected.”

Mac followed his gesture. Coming behind them was a line of Ministry levs, large, black, and thoroughly reassuring.

Less reassuring was the plume of smoke beyond the levs, rising from a crashed hulk on the ice. “The harvester!” Mac gasped. “Emily!”

But she took only one step in that direction before Nik grabbed her. “She’s not there, Mac. C’mon!”

“This way!” Her Glory was already on the move, her six legs churning.
Those padded feet were perfect for irregular ice,
Mac couldn’t help but notice. Better traction than her borrowed boots, intended for a man half again her size.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered now. She could see their goal for herself: Emily, a dark slim line against the gray-blue ice, her attention on the Tracer.

They stumbled forward, levs landing all around them. Emily’s hood was off. Mac saw the flash of pale as she twisted her head to check out the newcomers, then turned back to the machine.

“She’s got it,” Mac shouted to Nik as they ran. “She’s found it!”

Armored figures began pouring from the levs. Some carried equipment. There were shouts, orders. Some at them. Nik slowed as someone claimed his attention. Several someones, like ice-white trees with topaz eyes.
Sinzi!

Mac kept running, for these last few steps with one hand gripping the Dhryn beside her to take advantage of the larger being’s power. Their breath puffed, out of sync.

A final slide and rush, and they arrived.

“Hi, Mac. About time you got here.” Emily’s lips pulled from her teeth in a predator’s grin. Her eyes touched and dismissed the Dhryn. “I see we need to talk. Later. He’s coming up.” She drew a finger through the ’screen hovering above the console. “See?”

It felt so utterly normal that Mac stepped to the console without a second thought, her eyes reading the status. “The ’bots are under the ice,” she said in wonder. And not in a straight line, as they’d used to scan the Tannu River, but closing in a circle like a net. “They’ve been reliable?”

“Good as your finny friends,” boasted Emily. “Case helped with the mod. But can we focus on that, please?” “That” being something large and asymmetrical, rising slowly from the depths.

Not that slowly.
“It’s underneath us?” Mac shifted her feet.

“We’re on top of it,” Em countered cheerily. “Perfect! I admit, I was wondering how to get its attention. Seemed set on anchoring to the bottom here. Running into it with ’bots didn’t seem to make any difference. But it began moving a moment ago. I should have known you’d bring the right bait.” This time, she did look at the Dhryn, a long assessing look. “Interesting.”

“Later,” Mac reminded her. “Emily, we’ve a problem. This thing—” she pointed at their quarry. “It’s capable of taking the ocean with it. Through some kind of no-space gate.”

“Why?”

It was still rising.
Mac could hear shouts across that ice and hoped that Nik and the Sinzi were ready with whatever they had.

Mac shrugged. In so many ways, the future might be measured in heartbeats.

“The Ro are trying to regrow themselves,” she explained quickly. “Here. In the ocean. When they’re stopped, they retrieve whatever they’ve done, including the water. We don’t know if it’s deliberate or a consequence—but that’s why the Chasm worlds are dry, Em. The Dhryn killed the Ro, but their gate took away the water.”

“We shall kill the Ro.” Ice snapped as Her Glory spoke for the first time. Her hand rose to the feeders overhead.

Emily followed the gesture with her eyes and appeared transfixed. “Gods, Mac. What have you done?”

“Later,” Mac said again. “Listen to me, Em. You, too.” She smacked Her Glory on a broad shoulder. “We have to do this in the right order. The Ro has to come out first, hear me? We let the Sinzi do whatever they can. Then we—”
hold a meeting, ask its name, check its agenda,
”—then we kill it,” she said, cold and sure.

“Which means we have to get out of the way!” Mac glanced at the readout.
The Ro was accelerating upward.
“Now would be good,” she urged.

Her Glory was moving back. Emily shook her head, staying with the Tracer, her fingers reaching for its ’screen. “Just let me—”

“Em!” Mac reached for Emily and pulled with all her might.

The ice smashed open from below, blocks and crystal shooting in all directions. They were knocked flat.

And a huge writhing mass of
red
reached for the sky.

She’d expected a machine or some obscene blend like a walker.
Not this.
On her back beside Emily, Mac stared up into what was most definitely alive.

Not a tentacle
, she decided. More like a rapidly growing tendril or root, pulsing wider every bit as quickly as it expanded in length. Transparent in places, with budlike protrusions also growing. Utter black in others. All of it in motion, yet she could swear she glimpsed stars within those patches of darkness.

~YOU WILL NOT INTERFERE WITH US~

The words tore into Mac’s skin, cutting to the bone. She could hear Emily screaming.

The pain wasn’t as important as the triumph.
They had the Ro!

~WE CONTINUE~

Mac writhed, her back arching, but found her voice. “We’ll stop you!”

~YOU ARE INSIGNIFICANT. YOU WILL END~

~WE ARE WHAT WILL LIVE FOREVER~

The tendril seemed to reach the clouds.

There was a roar that shook the ice. Mac and Emily clung to one another.

Then, gently, it began to rain.

Green rain, the color of growing things, of spring.

The first drops struck the tendril and it flung itself from side to side, succeeding only in spreading the liquid.

More drops fell.

Great suppurating wounds appeared. The tendril flailed once more, then dropped to the ice with a heavy thud.

~WE MUST SUR~

And more drops fell.

Until nothing was left of the tendril but a pool of green liquid on the ice.

Then the mouths began to drink.

 

 

 

M
AC SPAT SNOW. “You dead?” Emily asked, her tone one of idle curiosity. “You dead?” Emily asked, her tone one of idle

Cold
.
And it felt like someone had pounded nails through her skin.
Mac took a cautiously deep breath. “Nope. You?”

Emily Mamani rolled over on her stomach. Her dark eyes shone. There was snow in her hair. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“What about everyone else?”

The two biologists sat up and looked around.

Floating ice filled the hole torn by the Ro. Crystals were sifting into the cracks. The hole would be gone soon.

The ocean remained.

They’d done it.
Mac said it to herself.
Didn’t quite believe, yet.

“Tracer’s pooched,” Emily commented. Sure enough, all that showed of the device was a bent support strut poking through the ice.

“Looks like it.” They helped each other stand, the process complicated more by a tendency to giggle than the freshening wind. “What parts do you—”

“Mac!” She whirled at the voice and immediately lost her footing. It didn’t help that Nik slipped as he tried to catch her. They fell to the ice laughing.

Emily leaned over to look down at them. “Gee, that’s romantic.”

“Get your own spy,” Mac said, and proceeded to pay attention to her own.

There were details.
There were always details,
Mac fussed, holding Nik’s hand. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, it was more that she viewed what was done as done.

She could taste spring in the air, this close to the Arctic Circle.

But no, there were details. Which required standing in what the Ministry apparently viewed as a landing field.
She could tell them a thing or two about the seeming permanence of sea ice.
The levs were hovering, at least. The scattered clumps of people were taking their own chances.

The crew of the harvester were recovering from it. The few who’d been on board when the Ro attacked had landed in the icy water. They’d all been wearing survival skins beneath their gear.
Base regulations had their reasons,
Mac thought rather smugly.

“What’s the situation?” Nik asked a newcomer, another of the armored anonymous in black.

The Sinzi had brought their own equipment. Mac had listened to the edges of that conversation. Something about transect gate management then the Sinzi ran out of words. She’d been mildly entertained by the ensuing charades, particularly as the Sinzi were wearing slim gloves over their muscular fingers, the
lamnas
adding odd lumps. They’d lost her well before the other Humans stopped nodding and looked mutely grateful.

The Sinzi weren’t in danger of losing their role as no-space guardians any time soon,
Mac thought. Although she suspected there’d be some hard discussions about consulting with their allies rather than simply maneuvering them into a desired location.

The Naralax Transect was as it had been, Sol’s gate where it had been, to the relief of Venus Orbital and the now-quiet Trisulian armada.

She wasn’t even going to ask.
The Sinzi had put themselves at risk to prove a point. The Trisulians—they’d made a point as well. The Inner Council faced a hard decision.
If they asked her,
Mac thought, while profoundly hoping no one did,
she’d wait until after they’d all given birth.
No new mother in her experience had time to make trouble.

She found herself yawning and watched the cloud of breath condense.

Nik’s hand abruptly tightened. “Mac. Wake up!”

“Wasn’t asleep,” she protested, shifting from foot to foot.
Maybe close.

“You tell her,” he ordered, shaking his head and grinning.

The newcomer tapped his left forefinger against his holster and Mac’s eyes widened. “Sing-li?”

Up went the visor, revealing a huge grin. “Can’t fool you, Mac. Nice having you back.”

Her smile was so wide it hurt. “Nice to be back.”

Sing-li glanced at Nik, then at her. “I see you’re in good hands.”
With a wink
.

She tried to scowl, but couldn’t. “I think so,” she grinned, tightening her arm around Nik’s waist.

“The message?” Nik suggested.
She could hear his smile.

“Delighted, sir. Dr. Connor,” semiofficious, “a message for you has been relayed from Myriam.” Another wink. “There’s only one person I know who could sneak something personal directly here and this fast.”