The Stars Down Under (41 page)

“As is the Roon's,” Jungali said. “These soldiers will no longer trouble you. But more will come from the stars. They're already on their way.”

Up in the sky, the First Egg became a glassy vision of ocean and land. James Cook and his crew sailed the
Endeavour
into a tranquil bay. A tribe of Aboriginals stood on the shore, watching. Destruction rode the wind. Ruin. The lives of the indigenous people of Australia would never be the same. Their societies would be ripped apart by illness and war. Their children would be stolen off, their lands stripped from their control.

“Is that the fate of Earth?” Jodenny asked, bitterly.

Jungali gazed down on her. “Only if it must be.”

The rain had stopped, though she wasn't sure when. She stared into the eyes of this creature that had come from Terry Myell but was not him. Would never be him again. She felt hollowed out inside, ready to die herself. Let the people of Earth take care of themselves. Maybe if she threw herself into the pit, or off the cliff's edge of Burringurrah—

“Your fate is elsewhere,” Jungali said.

A crocodile ouroboros appeared, shimmering green with promise.

“No,” Nam said. “We're not going anywhere.”

Jungali touched Jodenny's cheek with fingers soft as clouds. “Your fate is out there. With them. Lead them. Show them the way,” he said. So softly she might have imagined it, he added, “Take me.”

Then the Nogomain was gone, vanished on the wind so thoroughly that she wasn't sure he'd ever been real.

Jodenny lifted Myell's corpse by the shoulders and dragged him into the ouroboros. She had done this before, on Garanwa's station. But now he was impossibly heavy, and rain and blood made it difficult to keep her grip.

“Help me,” she said.

Hands reached in to help. Not Nam, not Sweeney, but Sam Osherman, whose arms looked stick-thin and fragile. He met her gaze for just one brief second before looking away. Together they dragged the body into the circle. Jodenny sat with him cradled in her lap, the ground cold beneath her legs. His head lolled. Blood glistened on his mangled throat and his eyes were closed forever.

“Warn them,” she told Nam. “Warn Fortune, warn everyone.”

Sam stepped into the ring. Above him, the lightning branches had almost faded.

Sweeney joined them. “I'm coming with you.”

“No,” she said dully. “Take care of Commander Nam. There's a whirlybird back there. And the pilot, somewhere.”

Nam leaned against the statue of the Roon King for support. “I'll be fine,” he said gruffly. “But where the hell are you going?”

Jodenny gazed one last time at the Australian outback, and the dark First Egg. “I don't know.”

The crocodile ring flared with Myell, Jodenny, Sam, and Sweeney in it. Seconds before it took them away, before it swept her to a future unknown, Jodenny saw the great Rainbow Serpent curl down from the sky and snatch the First Egg in its mouth. It was a glorious snake, all color and light and power. It ate the Egg like candy, then bit its own tail and spiraled away into the sky. Later, she told herself she had merely dreamed it.

*   *   *

The bridge of the
Kamchatka
flashed into existence around them.

“Intruders!” someone yelled, and three security techs with mazers descended on Jodenny before she could even take a breath.

Sweeney ordered, “Stand down!”

“Commander Scott,” Balandra said, her hands fisted with urgency. “What the hell is going on?”

Jodenny thought about answering, but she couldn't even begin to explain. Not about the corpse in her arms or the emptiness in her heart. Not about Sam, who was cowering in the sudden brightness and noise. Not about anything at all.

“Captain!” That was someone down at the Drive station. “We're moving. Autopilot has taken over.”

Balandra moved down the bridge. Techs scurried out of her way. On the main vidscreen, Earth began falling away at an alarming rate.

“Engines engaged,” another crewman reported. “Exterior sensors are going wild.”

“We're headed for the Little A!” someone added.

“Too fast,” one of the officers said. “Captain, there's no way our ship can be going this fast—”

Jodenny closed her eyes and held tight to Myell's corpse as the
Kamchatka
took flight and soared like a Great Egret. Air whistled by her ears, the winds uplifting and pushing and buffeting, the ground so wide and glorious below, the sky endless and full of promise. She felt as one with all the souls on the
Kamchatka,
passengers like Hullabaloo and Louise and the Fraser family, worried techs like Putty Romero and Hanne Tingley, Captain Balandra herself, Teddy Toledo and Leorah Farber, Sam and his awful pain—and she saw the threads that tied her to Team Space snapping and breaking in a painless but tangible way, like a quick yank, silk parting.

“Engines are stopped!” someone yelled, and there was chaos.

She blinked at the overvids, at a blue-green marble of a planet that was not Earth, nor one of the Seven Sisters, but a new world, virgin, unspoiled.

She kissed Myell's cold forehead and wept.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

“Commander Nam, thank you,” said the senator in charge of the Roon committee. Another day, another interminable government committee. Byron Nam wanted to scream, or throw something at the blank-faced men and women sitting on the podium.

“About the being that called itself Jungali—” he began.

“Commander,” the senator interrupted. Bland tone. Mild, but firm. “Obviously you were hallucinating, in pain, and under extreme stress. That part of your account must be taken under study.”

Bastards, all of them. Nam rose stiffly from the witness table, walked out of the room in his best uniform, and emerged into the bright sun of another day in Kimberley. Tom Gold was waiting at the curb, leaning against their silver-blue flit. He too was wearing his dress whites. His testimony had ended earlier that morning.

“They're all goddamn idiots,” Nam said.

“I hear that.” Gold opened the passenger door. “Give you a ride, sailor?”

Nam got inside. Gold turned off the autopilot and guided them through light traffic. The inside of the flit was tinted and privacy screened, and warm like a cocoon.

“They think they have all the time in the world,” Nam groused. “That we'll see the next Roon ships long before they reach Earth, now that we know they'll be coming. That we can pull new weapons platforms out of our asses.”

Gold said, “Sounds painful.”

“We don't stand a chance.”

“You don't believe that.”

Nam stared out at the streets and pedestrians, at buildings and bridges. Civilians went about their merry business down Water Street, not far from Supply School. “Yes, I do.”

“If you did, you and I would be hightailing it down the Big Alcheringa to hide,” Gold said.

“I didn't say we shouldn't fight,” Nam told him. “We should always fight.”

Gold reached over and squeezed his hand. “There's the man I love.”

Nam leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His Achilles tendon began throbbing for no good reason. It had been six months since he'd torn it on the trek up Burringurrah. The Team Space doctors told him that it seemed fully healed. To machines, perhaps. To gibs and medical DNGOs. But sometimes he limped so badly that he needed a cane, and there was talk of replacement surgery. He'd resisted so far.

“Are you thinking about her?” Gold asked.

“No,” he said truthfully, but he would. At least once a day he would stop whatever he was doing and wonder where Jodenny Scott was. At Burringurrah she had climbed into that crocodile ring with Mark Sweeney and Sam Osherman and her husband's corpse. No one had seen them since. Part of him wished he'd gone with her, and part of him was insanely glad to be back on Fortune with Gold and the chance to somehow stop the Roon, however wild and fantastically improbable that might be.

It didn't comfort him to think about the
Kamchatka,
which had disappeared from Earth's orbit immediately after Jodenny's disappearance from Burringurrah. Gone, completely. Not a shred of visual or scanner data to indicate what had happened to it or its crew and civilian passengers. The Roon ships had disappeared just as thoroughly from across Earth and up in orbit. The frozen Roon on the plain had likewise disappeared, and not even Myell's spilled blood remained in testimony.

All Nam could do about Jodenny was wonder what had happened to her. And grieve. Feel sorrow for Myell, who had died to become Jungali. Regret that he himself hadn't been Myell's biggest supporter, though he hoped in the end he'd done what he could.

“Hey,” Gold said, tapping his knee. “We're home.”

Nam opened his eyes. They had purchased a private home far from military housing. The neighborhood was good, not too crowded, not too old. Eucalyptus trees kept it fragrant. Gold pulled the flit into the garage, parked, and opened the kitchen door. Nam limped in after him. Sunlight spilled in through the oversize windows and the blue waters of the bay glittered past the edges of their backyard.

“It's your turn to make dinner,” Gold said.

Nam flopped down on the sofa. “I'm not very hungry.”

Gold gave him a stern look. “How can you single-handedly defeat the Roon if you don't keep up your strength?”

“That's not funny.”

“I'm not joking,” Gold replied. “Tell him, Karl.”

Karl the Koala uncurled himself from a pillow by the patio doors and lumbered toward Nam. After Burringurrah, Nam had hired a couple of off-duty sergeants to trek through the outback and rescue the little bot from the wreck of the
Kamchatka'
s lifeboat. Karl's fur was still a little singed in places, and one of his eyes had a tiny crack in the lens, but he was otherwise in fine shape. Nam was hoping Jodenny might come back for the bot someday. He'd keep the koala safe until that happened.

“Rub belly,” Karl insisted, and climbed up onto the sofa.

Nam obeyed. Gold opened the refrigerator, peered inside, and heaved a dramatic sigh.

“I'll take you to dinner,” Nam said, surrendering.

“You hate eating out.”

“For you, anything.”

“Hmmm.” Gold came to the sofa and sat beside him. “I can think of better things to do with the rest of our night.”

Nam would recognize that lecherous look anywhere. Despite his gloomy mood, he felt the definite stirring of interest.

“Fine,” he said. “We'll order in.”

Karl retreated to a cushion in the corner, curled up in the sunlight, and smiled.

*   *   *

The cemetery was on a grassy, peaceful hill not far from the colony of Providence. Under the canopy of trees stood one lone headstone with no name on it. Jodenny couldn't explain why she didn't want Myell's name engraved into the rock. She suspected that Sweeney and the others thought she was in denial, that if there was no name she could pretend her husband wasn't dead, but that was ridiculous. Every single day she lived with the hollowed-out pain in her chest that reminded her he was gone.

And every day her womb grew bigger, her body swelling and curving as expected. Myell's last gift to her.

“I dreamed last night it was a boy,” she said today, as trees swayed in the wind and grass tickled her bare feet. Though the day was sunny, rain was forecast for the afternoon. “I dreamed he could play the piano, just like you. But I don't remember you playing the piano. I never asked if you could play anything.”

The leaves bowed and rustled above, and insects hummed in the grass.

“Maybe someone in the crew could make a piano,” Jodenny murmured.

As if musical instruments were any kind of priority. Jodenny stretched out on the ground, letting the earth support her growing body. Junior, maybe waking from a nap, kicked her left ribs twice and then went still. Jodenny hadn't realized how much abuse from within pregnant women endured. Kicks and pokes and all sorts of twisting. If the kid wasn't destined to be a pianist, maybe he or she could be the colony's first gymnast.

Abuse and weight gain and fatigue, and daily fear that something would go wrong with the delivery. Jodenny was happy to endure all of it as long as this little piece of Myell continued to grow within her. Their only child. She told herself that it didn't matter but she wanted a boy, and planned to give him his father's name.

Another kick, harder than the last.

“Ouch,” Jodenny complained.

Fat and lazy clouds rolled by in the sky until her view was blocked by Leorah Farber's concerned face.

“Are you sleeping?” Farber asked.

Jodenny frowned. “I don't think so.”

“I've been calling your name.”

She sat up slowly. “Is something wrong?”

“I wanted to tell you before you heard the gossip.” Farber sat down beside her and pulled a blade of grass from the ground. She'd let her dark hair grow long in the months they'd been marooned, and the breeze blew it around her face. “Teddy and I are moving to the coast.”

Jodenny hid her surprise. The Zhangs lived at the coast, along with other passengers who had rejected Captain Balandra's leadership.

“You're joining the dissidents?” Jodenny asked.

Farber twisted the grass into a knot. “Hoping for rescue doesn't make you a rebel. They need to believe Team Space is coming for us. I guess I need to believe it, too. For my daughter's sake.”

Junior kicked again. Jodenny patted her left side, urging him to settle down.

“You could come,” Farber said hopefully. “After the baby, if you're worried about that.”

“I'm loyal to the captain,” Jodenny said. “And someone has to keep an eye on Sam.”

Farber grimaced. “He's crazy. And dangerous.”