Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (44 page)

At least I could still be a father to my daughter, Sikes thought. At least I could keep being a cop and lock up other killers.

But what kind of a cop lets a killer go free?

Sikes didn’t like the answer to that one. He wanted to talk it over with someone—Angie, who had finally come to and was even more pissed off than Sikes had been, or Theo, probably wearing his chains and hanging out at another strip show. Sikes would even settle for attempting a conversation with Bryon Grazer. But Stewart wasn’t allowing anyone to talk anymore, except to request an escorted trip to the bathroom.

Four hours into “The Voronezh Encounter,” CNN switched back to a bleary-eyed astronomer at the University of London for the third time in an hour. Amy went into the kitchen. Sikes, Angie, and Grazer sat like the proverbial three monkeys on the navy-blue couch, while Kirby, to Sikes’s relief, had curled up in the recliner and fallen asleep from exhaustion.

On television the sleepy Dr. Robin Kingsburgh repeated what she had said twice before about the escape velocity of the sun and the fact that, given the speed at which the Voronezh Object was traveling, it could not be from our solar system. In any event, she added, its speed meant it would not be staying here. Her expression conveyed the impression that she would not be staying either if her interviewer did not come up with a new question to ask.

Sikes sensed the excitement over the object was already dying down. “Hey, Uncle Frank, see if there’s a basketball game on,” Sikes said, just to bother Stewart. “No one’s said anything new for the past hour.”

“Good,” Stewart said. “That means no observatory has managed any worthwhile observations yet.”

Amy came out of the kitchen with a large platter stacked with bread, some kind of sliced meat, and a jar of mustard.

“Gee,” Angie muttered, “just like a regular evening at home.”

“You don’t have to eat anything.” Amy put the platter down on the broadloom in front of the sofa. She used a plastic knife to spread mustard onto two pieces of bread and added a stack of mystery-meat slices to make a sandwich. She held it up in offering. “Anyone?” she asked.

“Well, if no one else wants it,” Grazer said.

Amy stuck the sandwich in his cuffed hands and ignored his request for a napkin.

“What do you do after this?” Sikes made himself ask her.

“Go back to the university,” she said. “Finish my Ph.D.”

“Kill a few more astronomers,” Angie suggested.

Amy stood up. “I’m not going through all that again. People like you should be thankful there’re people like me taking care of the important things in life.” She went back to sit in a chair by her uncle. The blond killer with the .45 remained at the back of the room so that Sikes couldn’t see him without turning his head.

CNN went back to Orange County and the science fiction writers, who enthusiastically described what an incoming alien spacecraft might look like and how the Voronezh Object did not fit any of the characteristics they would expect.

Stewart laughed scornfully at the screen.

The science fiction writers began talking about the alien spacecraft they had described in another of their books about an invasion of Earth.

“Hey, Uncle Frank, you must’ve read that one,” Sikes said as the cover of the book went up on the screen. “No wonder you’re worried. Giant elephants from Mars would scare anyone.”

Stewart turned around in his chair. “Detective Sikes, would you prefer to be gagged or simply beaten unconscious?”

“How about letting me use the phone to call CNN so they can get
your
perspective on the object?” Sikes said. “Set those sci-fi guys straight.” Stewart got up, just as Sikes had hoped he would, and Sikes glanced at the sandwich platter, fixing the position of the plastic knife in his memory. If he could just provoke Stewart enough to have the man slap him the way he had slapped Grazer, then he could fall off the couch and grab the knife and maybe saw through the ropes before morning.

Stewart stood by Sikes again, almost within arm’s reach. “You’re all going to be released in the morning,” he said coolly. “Whether your captain sends you home or to the hospital is your choice.”

Sikes adjusted his position on the couch. He knew just what to say and was glad that Kirby was asleep. “So where are you and your niece going to go after this?” Sikes asked. But before he could finish the insult that would guarantee Stewart’s attack, a car drove up outside.

Everyone but Grazer looked to the curtained windows. Grazer was concentrating on his sandwich, being very careful not to drip mustard on his rumpled suit. Headlights sprayed across the living room, then stopped.

Stewart turned quickly to the killer and nodded to the front door. Amy turned off the television with the remote. The killer walked noiselessly across the room, smoothly taking his automatic from his holster. Stewart moved into the kitchen and reappeared a second later, holding another .45. Sikes decided this was not the moment to jump for a plastic knife.

The doorbell rang. It was loud in the half-empty house.

Stewart shook his head at the killer by the door. Then he pointed his gun at Kirby and held his finger to his lips. The message was clear.

Sikes wanted to feel his hands close around Stewart’s throat. But he could do nothing.

From outside a muffled voice shouted, “Yo! It’s Domino’s. The thirty-minute guarantee don’t count if you keep me waiting out here!”

Inside no one moved except for Angie and Sikes, who exchanged a look. Sikes saw it in her eyes as well. They were about to find out if there were or were not coincidences in police work.

Someone pounded on the front door. “Yo! Your pizza’s getting cold!”

No response. Sikes braced himself. He could feel Angie tense beside him. Grazer’s cheeks bulged with sandwich.

“Yo, man! I am telling you I am sick of this shit! You don’t pay me for this pizza, I am calling the police! I swear to God I am!”

The killer moved cautiously to the curtained window. He moved the edge of it back with the barrel of his gun and peered outside. He looked across at Stewart and shrugged his shoulders, mouthing something Sikes couldn’t make out.

Stewart motioned angrily at the door. The killer went to it, put his hand on the doorknob.

Sikes held his breath. Angie held hers. Grazer pushed the last of the sandwich into his mouth.

The killer opened the door, keeping his gun hidden.

A delivery man in Domino’s red, white, and blue stood on the porch, holding three pizza boxes stacked together. “About time, my man. I was just about to eat—”

The killer grunted and fell twitching to the ground, trailing taser wires from his chest.

“Down!”
the Domino’s man shouted.

Stewart dropped to one knee and swung his .45 up. Sikes leapt from the couch and aimed himself at Kirby. All over the house windows shattered. The concussion grenades went off a heartbeat later.

Sikes hit the floor at Kirby’s feet but didn’t feel the impact. His ears were ringing so badly that he couldn’t tell if a shot had been fired or not. But he could see Kirby’s legs trembling. That was a good sign, he told himself. Then he threw up. His body felt like jelly. The house smelled of cordite. He had a black dot at the side of his vision that was worse than anything a flash camera could give him. But he was alive.

He tried to roll away from what he had done to the broadloom. Several pairs of black-trousered legs ran past him, then returned. He felt someone lifting him into the air. Maybe someone was speaking to him, he couldn’t be sure.

Strong arms turned him around.

Theo.

Sikes’s ex-partner spoke silently, not making sense over the explosions that were still going off in Sikes’s eardrums.

“Kirby!” Sikes yelled. “Kirby!” He felt no sound come from his mouth.

Theo helped him turn around. A tall man in black clothes and a heavy flak jacket cradled Kirby in his arms. Kirby looked at Sikes and smiled, tears running from her eyes. Sikes lurched for her, checking her clothes for signs of blood.

He didn’t see anything.

He held out his hands to her. Theo grabbed the ropes and sliced into them with a combat knife. The ropes fell to the ground. Sikes took Kirby from the other cop. She pushed her head into his shoulder. He carried her out.

The cold air tasted like freedom.

He looked up to the night sky to give thanks.

The stars were waiting for him.

T
HE SHIP SCREAMED.

Buck felt the howl of its dying run through his body.

He had no idea what furies he had unleashed. He only knew what Moodri had told him—the stardrive will be activated out of sequence, before the other systems are ready for it. The ship cannot survive the strain. Automatic mechanisms will ensure that the most important part of the ship survives. The cargo disk will be jettisoned.

Buck had less than fifty double beats.

Vornho looked up in shock, his hands under his armpits, sliding across the deck as the bridge spun and the warning sirens screeched. He struggled to his feet as Buck fell back with the first of the shudders traveling through the deck. Vornho threw himself at the stardrive console’s control surface. He closed his fist around the key.

“No, Vornho! Don’t!”
Buck shouted. He didn’t know how long the key had to remain in place, how long it would take for the circuitry to work. He pulled at Vornho’s scarf to drag him away from the console, but the clasps gave way, no strength to them.

Then D’wayn was behind them both.
“What have you done?”
she cried.

Vornho spun around, his hand still on the key. “Watch Leader . . . this key . . .” He began to yank it from the console.

“Stop him!” Buck pleaded senselessly. But why would she?

D’wayn’s spots were dark with rage. She swung her prod up and focused it to full power.

Vornho pulled the key free. “I did it,” he said, “Watch Leader, I—”

D’wayn rammed her prod under his jaw, and it discharged with an explosive blue arc. Webs of sparking energy crawled up Vornho’s face and scalp. His eyes instantly turned solid white, as if they had been cooked, and blood gushed from his ear valleys and nose and mouth.

The child who had dreamt of
sleema
females crumpled to the deck, and whatever his last sounds might have been, they were lost in the thunder of the sirens and alarms.

D’wayn pulled the circuitry key from Vornho’s lifeless hand and crushed it in her own. Only then did Buck realize that she hadn’t seen what had happened at the console. She had only seen two boys fighting, and when she had arrived Vornho was the one with his hand on the key, and Buck was the one who was trying to stop him.

“Are you all right?” the Overseer shouted at Buck.

Buck had no words. His best friend was dead, but by dying he had given Buck his life.

“I know, I know,” D’wayn said. She swept Buck into her arms and held him close against her substantial bulk. “I should have realized it at the water hub. The way he hesitated before shooting the worker. Even before you tried to warn him.” She turned toward the tunnel entrance. “The children!” she yelled. “Get the children to the hatch!”

All was confusion for Buck. The transparent dome swam with projected lines and geometric shapes that seemed to spiral into infinity. The stars beyond moved rapidly, as if the ship spun in space, and the bridge deck began to slant, as if gravity was changing its angle of attraction.

Overseers fell from their platforms by the consoles. Uncounted voices screamed with the sirens. The tunnel entrance was jammed with Overseers and Watcher Youth.

D’wayn barreled into the thickest part of the crowd, screaming for the children to follow her. She wielded her prod before her, shocking every adult she saw trying to put himself or herself or
binn
self before her charges.

The sirens rose to an unbearable frequency. The light panels strobed, sending mad shadows flickering over terror-stricken faces and whitening spots. D’wayn was at the tunnel entrance. She dropped Buck to the moving floor. “Run, child, run!” she begged him. Then she began to pull other children from the crowd and push them onto the moving floor. But the floor was still coming forward, and the frightened, crying children were tumbling together at the end of it, creating even more of a barrier to escape.

The ship trembled. D’wayn swung her prod against a control box on the tunnel wall, and the controls sparked and burst into flame. The floor stopped. She looked behind her. Explosions erupted from the oversize consoles, filling the bridge with fire and smoke. Water began spraying from the walls.

“No!” D’wayn cried, then she picked up a screaming child, grabbed Buck by the arm, and threw herself forward down the sloping tunnel as more and more explosions burst behind her.

The tunnel walls blurred by Buck as his legs thumped in giant, uncontrollable leaps. He cried for Vornho. He cried for the key—how could it have worked in such a short time? And he cried for Moodri and his mother and father and Andarko and Celine and all his people whom he had failed.

And even as she ran, D’wayn heard his tears and lifted him to her again. “Shhh,” she said between gasps of breath. “Shhh, little spotty head. We’ve been expecting this. Everything will be all right.”

But Buck did not answer. He knew that nothing would ever be all right again.

It had been his time, and he had failed.

The ship screamed, and Moodri took pleasure in its dying.

The shudders that ran through the decks and walls filled him with satisfaction. The ship would return to the Mother, and Moodri would go with it.

He looked forward to his fate. Of all that his people would need in the years ahead, perhaps nothing was more important than the knowledge that another ship would not come for them. Moodri could give them that at such a small price—his life.

At the instant the first alarms wailed Moodri stepped forth from an alcove in a deserted corridor and walked purposefully for a hidden access hatch. His quick passage disturbed the thin layer of purple gas that lay across the deck. As the council had planned, the Overseers had been compelled to expend the bulk of their gas reserves to quell a rebellion that had not yet begun. Now there was little gas left with which to flood the corridors and chambers, and when the cargo disk landed, most of the captive Tenctonese would be clearheaded enough to run as far away as possible before the inertial stabilizers failed.