The Stars Down Under (33 page)

Pain knifed through her just as hot light exploded out of nowhere. Scorching and blue hot, it crackled across the adjacent chamber. The air came alive around her, sparking and tingling. The accompanying clap of thunder slammed through her like the volley of cannons. She couldn't hear, couldn't see, couldn't think …

Then all fell silent and dark. She wasn't even sure that she was still alive, but the gritty taste in her mouth as she gasped for air had to mean something.

Jodenny sat up. Pain sang along her right arm, wrist to elbow, bright and hot and demanding of attention. She wanted to vomit. Her ears felt numb but were quickly recovering, and blue-white imprints danced in her vision. The station had stopped rumbling, which she hoped was a good sign, but most of the ambient illumination had disappeared and the air smelled like char and ash. Legs wobbly, coughing out dirt, she found her footing, tried not to move her broken arm, and lurched to the archway of the beehive room.

At first she thought Myell was dead.

Nam, too. And Collins. All of them, sprawled on the ground and unmoving. Jodenny fell to her knees and touched Myell's face ever so carefully. His skin was blistered and burned. His lips were slightly parted, and his faint breathing had a whistling sound to it. She didn't want to touch him further, didn't want to aggravate any injuries or cause him more pain, but it was a torture not to tug his head into her lap, to keep from pressing her head against his shoulder.

Collins stirred. Nam sat up with a groan. Under the dim, flickering light they looked as ghastly as Myell. Beside Collins was a shrunken gray thing that she realized was Garanwa's corpse. It was shriveled like a dried fruit, and the lips were so retracted that she could see a half-dozen rotted teeth. The beehive towers of rock throughout the room had toppled or shattered, leaving the air thick and bitter.

“What happened?” Collins asked.

“Lightning Man,” Nam murmured, one hand pressed to his head.

Behind them, a green crocodile ring faded into existence. It glowed with an uneven light, as if it was barely sustaining itself.

The ground rumbled, an aftershock or a preamble of more devastation to come.

Collins started crawling toward Myell. He spared a glance for the crocodile ring, asking, “Last chance to escape?”

“Or a one-way trip to nowhere,” Nam said.

“Is your arm broken?” Collins asked Jodenny.

“I think so.” She touched Myell's brow with the fingers of her left hand. “Is he … he's burned. You all are.”

Collins had a gib, but it was a blackened, useless shell and he tossed it aside. The far-off rumbling increased, moving closer. Jodenny imagined a rock crusher or some other mammoth machine jawing toward them, devouring everything in its path.

“We have to get out of here, sir,” Collins said.

“Not until I know the others are safe,” Nam said. “Breme, Holt, Gayle…”

Jodenny understood. He was the commander of this mission, responsible for his team. Their lives were more valuable than his own. But she had no such burden of command. She hooked her left hand under Myell's armpit.

“Help me,” she told Collins.

Together, using her one good arm and his two fully useful ones, they dragged Myell to the crocodile ring. He was heavier than Jodenny remembered. Deadweight. He made a faint protesting noise, a mewl of pain, but they could do nothing for him but escape, and hope for help wherever the token took them.

Nam got to his feet, his gaze on the archways. He tried his radio but it was as dead as Collins's gib. He shouted out, “Gayle! Breme!”

No one answered. The only sounds were their own breathing, and the growing sound of thunder, and Myell's increasing distress as he regained consciousness.

“Easy,” Collins said, as they tugged Myell over the ring's edges. He himself didn't enter the ring, but instead glanced back at Nam.

“Go,” Nam ordered.

“Another ring might not come,” Collins said.

Myell gasped and arched against the ground, his spine stiffening, his arms twitching. Jodenny bent close to his face and whispered, “Ssh, I'm here. It's going to be okay.”

A lie, obviously a lie, but he quieted at her voice. Twin drops of water landed on his cheeks. Jodenny wiped at her face, surprised to find tears there. Though Myell kept his eyelids closed, his mouth opened and he tried to speak.

“Ssh,” she said again. “Don't talk.”

His cracked lips kept moving. Jodenny bent close, trying to make sense of his hoarse, broken whispers. When she looked up, Nam was giving them both a deeply etched frown.

“He says you have to come.” Jodenny's voice choked in her throat. “Don't kill yourself.”

“I'm not killing myself,” Nam said fiercely.

Collins said, “Commander, please.”

Myell stiffened again, letting out a sharp cry.

“The ring won't leave without you,” Jodenny said.

“Breme!” Nam shouted out again. “Gayle! Holt!”

No answer, only the unseen beast drawing nearer. The lights in the damaged dome went dark, flickered on again, then started to rain down sparkles of green and white. Tiny specks of light, falling like stars. Cradling her broken arm, Jodenny shielded Myell before any could land on him. Three or four fell onto her exposed skin and melted like snowflakes.

Nam let out a long growl of words that might have been, “Goddamn heroics,” and joined them in the crocodile ring.

Jodenny closed her eyes against a bright green flash.

The next thing she saw was the overhead of the
Kamchatka'
s infirmary.

*   *   *

“Easy, now,” Farber said from nearby, as Jodenny tried to sit up. “You're not ready for that yet.”

Jodenny agreed. Her mouth was sandpaper dry, her right arm had a twinge of pain in it, and she couldn't quite remember why she should be in bed. Nevertheless, she pushed herself up from the pillow. The infirmary room started spinning around her, and she would have sagged back down again if not for Farber's steadying hand and the sight of Myell lying in the next bed over.

Memory flooded back. Garanwa and the space station and the lightning.

“You're fine. The doctors fixed you up,” Farber said. “Both of you, as best they could.”

For the first time Jodenny noticed a security tech in the small room with them. He was armed, and stationed inside the hatch, not outside, which didn't bode well.

She would worry about that later. Jodenny got herself standing, her bare feet cold against the deck, and lurched across the small space separating her bed from Myell's. He was curled up on his side with his face to the bulkhead. Sleeping. His skin was no longer burned and the facial tattoos had faded to ghostly imprints. Under his eyelids, his eyes moved back and forth quickly.

“Commander Scott!” A thin, wiry doctor had entered the room while her attention was on Myell. “I'm Dr. Ruiz, ship's Medical Officer.”

He didn't appear old enough to be out of medical school, but Jodenny shook his hand anyway.

“You know my name,” she said, with a glance toward Farber.

“Oh, yes, we had to scan your embedded dog tag to access your medical profile. We ran Chief Myell's tag too, and luckily the next-of-kin information is all up-to-date. You'd be amazed how many people forget to do that when they get married,” Ruiz said. “You can see we healed up the burns, we rehydrated him, blood pressure down, that's all good. Do you know what exactly happened to him? I've been told he was hit by lightning. Twice. That would be amazingly bad luck.”

Farber asked, “Wouldn't it have killed him?”

“Not necessarily. A lot of people get hit by lightning, and many of them survive, often with some disabilities—” Ruiz abruptly stopped, eyeing Farber and the security tech. “I'm sorry, Commander. Your husband does have the right to medical privacy. Do you want to speak alone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Sorry, ma'am,” the security guard said. “I'm not authorized to leave.”

“The captain has some concerns,” Farber added.

Ruiz wrung his hands. “Team Space is very clear on the issue of medical privacy.”

Jodenny sighed. “I give you permission to go on.”

“Usually we're talking frontal-lobe injuries, the neural circuits all fried up. Moodiness, sleep problems, memory problems, and depression are all common. Was he evidencing any of that?”

“He was tired,” she admitted, stroking the side of his face.

Ruiz nodded. “We'll know more when he wakes up. His frontal lobe is scanning fine but there's an unusual amount of dreaming going on, from what we can tell.”

“Can we just wake him?” Jodenny asked.

“They've tried,” Farber said.

Jodenny tried, too. His breathing didn't change, his eyes kept moving, his hands remained warm and relaxed in hers, and he kept sleeping.

Ruiz said, “Let's see how the next few hours unfold. As for you, Commander, we patched up your broken arm with the bone knitter and it's as good as new. You're clear to be discharged, unless you have any medical complaints.”

Farber said, “I think she's still a little woozy.”

“I am not,” Jodenny retorted, too sharply. Her vision went blurry on the edges. “Not much, anyway.”

Ruiz suggested she stay under observation for a bit longer. She was happy to do so if it kept her close to Myell. After Ruiz left, Lieutenant Sweeney came knocking at the hatch.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he said, his gaze frank and curious. “So this is your husband? When you told me you were married,
Ellen,
I didn't quite believe it.”

Relegated back to her own bed, Jodenny pulled the blanket up higher. “Traveling incognito wasn't my idea, Lieutenant.”

“I presented Captain Balandra with a copy of our sealed orders,” Farber said. “None of that is at issue, though she was irritated at being deceived. The real problem is the Bunyip ships still in orbit around Earth.”

“They're called Roon,” Jodenny said.

Farber's gaze narrowed. “So Commander Nam says. How, exactly, was that ascertained? Did you talk to them?”

Sweeney turned to the security tech. “You can go and wait outside. I'll call if I need you.”

The tech left, an unhappy look on his face.

“I didn't talk to them,” Jodenny said. “They haven't done anything while I was away?”

Sweeney asked, “How long do you think you were away?”

Jodenny squinted at the overhead as she calculated. “Six hours, maybe.”

“The ship's scanners registered a power surge in your cabin.” Sweeney folded his arms and rocked back on the heels of his boots. “An emergency team was sent. Thirty seconds later, before they arrived, another power surge registered. They opened your hatch and found you, Chief Myell, Commander Nam, and Ensign Collins all lying on the deck. Nam and Collins are up and about now. You two, not so much.”

Jodenny glanced at Farber. “I was only gone for thirty seconds?”

“So it would seem,” Farber said. “Where did you go?”

“More importantly, can we use that transportation technology to stop the aliens?” Sweeney said.

Jodenny gave Farber a raised eyebrow.

“We told them about the tokens,” Farber said. “The captain and her officers. Considering the situation, I thought security clearances were a moot point.”

Myell made a faint noise of distress. Jodenny put her hand on his forehead. His skin was warm, too warm, and his eyes were still moving quickly.

“You want us to shut up?” She squeezed his hand, but he didn't squeeze back.

Sweeney said, “Captain wants to know if those so-called tokens can be used to evacuate civilians to Earth, or transport people between ships.”

Farber cleared her throat. “Commander Nam thinks your husband can control them.”

Jodenny smoothed Myell's hair back from his temples. “I don't know if that's true.”

“You'll have to tell her yourself,” Sweeney said. “She wants to talk to you. Down here or up in her conference room, makes no difference. As soon as possible. Before the aliens start attacking.”

Jodenny kissed Myell's forehead. His skin tasted like the soap they'd used to clean him up and was soft to her touch.

“Get me a uniform,” she said.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

“Can these so-called tokens be used to board the alien ship?” Captain Balandra asked from the head of the table.

The furrows in Balandra's forehead indicated that she probably had a headache. Jodenny empathized. She herself was grateful for the sturdiness of the conference-room chairs. Her legs were still wobbly from the walk up from the infirmary. The conference room was standing-room only, crowded with Balandra's senior staff.

“Why would we want to, ma'am?” Farber asked. “We don't know anything about the conditions inside those ships. Just because the Roon can roam freely in climates conducive to us doesn't mean vice versa. We don't have any way of communicating with them, so even if we boarded, we couldn't negotiate.”

Balandra said, “We wouldn't be there to negotiate, Agent Farber.”

Toledo, sitting at the far end of the table, said, “Even if Chief Myell could somehow summon a token, we don't know anything about their shielding technology. We already know their interstellar capabilities outmatch ours. Their science might be centuries ahead.”

Balandra said, “You two aren't holding back any intelligence information, are you?”

Both Farber and Toledo looked offended. “No, ma'am,” Toledo said, and Farber said, “We've told you everything we know about previous Roon contacts. We know nothing about their civilization, their capabilities, their goals.”

It annoyed Jodenny to no end that Farber and Toledo had known there were aliens out there, known Myell might be facing them, known Jodenny had seen one on the
Yangtze,
and had said nothing. She supposed it was a grudge she could settle later, if they all survived.