Heaven's War (19 page)

Nayar was shaking his head. “We would be lucky to launch
Brahma-2
in two years.”

“Even if you launched all three vehicles uncrewed, that’s twelve seats. Okay, you can squeeze one extra body…call it fifteen. We have a hundred and eighty-seven souls on board! What would you do? Have a fucking lottery?”

“Actually,” Harley said, “it’s a hundred and eighty-six.” When no one responded, he added: “Minus Bynum.”

That brought a savage smile to Weldon’s face. “Well, that improves the picture. So we’d only have a hundred and seventy-one people condemned to death—”

“Shut up!” Makali Pillay placed herself in front of Weldon, who, probably to his great surprise, did not tower over her. Rather the opposite…she actually pushed the man back a step. “Since when does NASA run away from a challenge?”

“Since I’ve been around,” Harley said, in a voice so low only Zack could hear. And he couldn’t help laughing a little.

“Shane, you sound like my mother.” Makali turned to Nayar;
she wasn’t going to spare him, either. “And you, too. Zack is talking about a chance, that’s all. He can do the math; he knows we can’t be rescued.

“But some of us could be! And the others…wouldn’t it be great to be resupplied from Earth? Be back in touch? We might be exiles, but we wouldn’t be alone! And how would this be any different from being colonists on the Moon or Mars? Fine, we didn’t volunteer…but here we are! Let’s make the best of the situation!”

The combination of youth, beauty, vehemence—and righteous fury—was successful. Weldon actually blushed. “Good point,” he said. “Sorry, Zack, I—”

“No problem.” It was probably valuable to have let Weldon have his say. He was the great soldier type: full of complaints and justifiable worries, but once allowed to vent…ready to take the hill. “So, do we have a plan for tomorrow?” Weldon said. “Election, then most of the company engaged in finding food, water, and shelter while some of us become scouts?”

The agreement was universal, but muted. Zack was amazed to see how quickly everyone’s enthusiasm waned. His, too. Five minutes ago he had been ready to venture to the far ends of the Temple…now all he wanted to do was sit back down.

As he sank against the wall, Xavier sidled up to him, a half-smile on his face. “Say, boss, you know this vege-fruit everybody keeps talkin’ about? Like it’s alien food?”

“Yeah?”

“Any of them ever seen a pawpaw before?” Xavier giggled. “’Cause that’s what they are.” He waddled off, pleased with himself…and Zack couldn’t blame him. All the supposed brainpower on display here in the Temple wasn’t a match for a teenage fry cook from the bayou.

Zack resolved to keep Xavier in his sights. Who knew what other useful information the kid would turn up? Or what kind of unexpected trouble he might cause?

For the moment, he fell back on his training. This was like a long day on the International Space Station…just before bed, tomorrow’s schedule would be uploaded. And in Zack’s mental checklist, there was this: Return to the Beehive.

After four hours of searching for, finding, then picking and hauling vege-fruits and herky jerky, followed by a frantic ten minutes of ravenous consumption, Pav Radhakrishnan decided he needed some Pav time.

So he hiked deeper into the habitat from the Temple—anything to get away from the insane mob—and found himself a rock to lean against.

Makali Pillay had told him that there were no monsters running around, no creepy alien snakes or shit like that, not that he was convinced anyone really knew the truth of the matter. Not even Makali, who was supposed to be the expert on Keanu, or so Pav’s father had told him before the
Brahma
launch.

But Pav was willing to risk it, just to get away from Nayar’s attentions. Fine, the man had been a close friend of his father’s—his boss, in fact. It didn’t mean he was responsible for Pav. It didn’t mean Pav would treat him like his absent father.

Thinking of Taj made him wonder where he was. One of the Houston people had confirmed that the
Brahma
commander was aboard
Destiny
with two of his surviving crew members, that he could even be back on Earth by now. Fucking great—Taj had always mocked the United States and its
Destiny
spacecraft because it had to splash down in the ocean. “Are we fish or mammals?” he would say.

“Bet he’s happier now,” Pav said out loud.

Then he began to wonder, for the hundredth time, if his father knew that he’d been taken. His mother knew, of course. (She had probably watched the whole thing on television from Russia. Good for her. Pav hoped she was crying her eyes out.)

But what would vyomanaut Taj Radhakrishnan think about the
Object that had plastered the Bangalore Control Center and scooped up some of the survivors…including his son?

At some level, he would have to admit that it was kind of cool that his son—who had never given a shit about going into the space program—had now traveled just as far from Earth as he had.

Take that, Papa.

More likely, he was freaking out. He would probably find some consolation in the fact that Nayar and Makali and other associates were with Pav. One of the few life lessons Pav could remember his father telling him was, “Trouble goes better with company.”

Well, Pav sure had company. He had been living at the control center since
Brahma
landed on Keanu, sleeping when he could on the couch in Nayar’s palatial office suite. (The flight director was never there; for Pav it was like having a swanky hotel room.) He had spent most of his waking time in the control center itself…the thing reminded Pav of one of those Best Buy stores he’d seen in the United States, twice as big as it needed to be, crammed with screens and consoles—and not enough staff. He’d been able to lurk there for hours, largely unseen.

But then he’d begun to hear about problems with the mission. The other life lesson Taj had shared with him was, “Spaceflight is incredibly dangerous even in low Earth orbit. I’m going where no human has gone before. Don’t be surprised if something goes wrong.” So it wasn’t technically a surprise, but learning that his father was out of contact with
Brahma
and Bangalore…hearing that one or more of the human explorers, from either
Brahma
or the American team, had been killed…then watching as the
Brahma
lander, the pride of ISRO and an entire nation, a twenty-meter-tall vehicle that cost a billion rupees for every meter of height, simply disappeared.

He would have gotten out of the center and gone home, but it was too far, and there was no one at home except his grandparents. (And what were
they
doing right now? Treating him as if he were dead?)

And Nayar wasn’t letting him go. If, prior to the loss of
Brahma
, Pav had had to sneak into the control center, afterward he was not only welcome…he was required to be there.

So he had had an up-close-and-personal view of the approach of the
first Object. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the stunned reactions of the control team when they realized it was heading straight for them.

Only then had Pav directly disobeyed an order. He had tried to get out of the building and run, and while running, jump onto the back of a truck or a car that was making an escape.

He hadn’t made it.

And here he was.

Sitting on the ground, which did, indeed, look like good old Earth dirt, he kicked off his sandals and rubbed his feet. He wondered how long they were all going to be on Keanu. Weeks? Months? Years?

The rest of their sorry lives?

How long would his sandals last? Would he wind up running around barefoot and naked?

Or would he die of starvation?

All he had been hearing from the other Bangalores—none of the
Brahma
control people, though—were rumors that NASA or ISRO would send a rescue ship.
How
they had any way of knowing that, Pav couldn’t imagine.

It wasn’t as though they were using their Slates. He had turned his on at various times and wasn’t getting a link from anywhere or anything, not that he’d expected to. He’d disabled the Wi-Fi anyway, to save on battery life.

Pav knew the batteries on his Slate were running down, that there was no place he would be able to recharge them, and that once they were gone, they were likely gone forever. And along with it, his stories, his pictures, and especially his tunes.

He would have them in his head, that’s all.

For now, though, he pulled the Slate out of its case and thumbed the on switch. He was tempted to let the speakers thump and wail, but that might let one of the others know where he was. He was just as tempted to access his private folder of female favorites….

He didn’t want to see or talk to anyone else right now. He wanted to slip in his earbuds, close his eyes, and pretend he was back in his bedroom in Delhi.

Or, at least, Vikram Nayar’s big office.

Thinking about the office got him thinking about Nayar’s attractive
secretary, and, without the added spice of his collection of babes, next thing he knew his hand was sliding into his pants. Then he unzipped them. The potential shame of discovery was outweighed by the wicked certainty that he would score the first orgasm on Keanu.

Talk about your giant leap for mankind—

What was that?

Something had flown across his field of view!

Or had it? The light here was so low—like perpetual twilight—that he couldn’t be sure.

Carefully returning his half-erect penis to his pants, he scanned the scene…a slightly uneven landscape, part dirt, a few rocks, and some bushes. In the far distance was a hazy suggestion of a wall of some kind.

But close up? Nothing. No rustling leaves, no chittering birds, no buzzing insects.

Just the very clear
whump
of his heart in his chest…and the insane rhythms of Summer Jihad in his buds.

Nothing else.

He sat down again. No possible way he was going to resume the quest for the Keanu jack. All he could do was relax, and think about…how the fuck this had happened.

It was his father’s job, of course. Pav could barely remember the time before Taj joined the space program. He had been a fairly young Indian Air Force pilot, where your long-term goal was to be able to drop a nuke on Karachi or Islamabad, when the Indian Space Research Organization made a deal with the Russians to fly a vyomanaut on a
Soyuz
, one step toward the building and launch of an indigenous craft of its own.

Taj and Wing Commander Asahi had been selected…and the whole Radhakrishnan family had relocated to Star City outside Moscow.

Pav had been eight at the time, and what he remembered most about the new home was that it was cold and dark, and nobody spoke Hindi.

ISRO sent a small support team to Star City; they were the only people the family could talk to, and not one of them was under the age of twenty-seven. They were forced to depend on each other—perhaps too much, because Pav’s mother, Amita, had fallen in love with…Vikram Nayar. When that got discovered, Taj had thrown her out—and Nayar had, too.

Amita had taken up with a Russian guy at Star City. And Pav’s life, not especially good at that time, had gotten much, much worse.

Pav had had to learn Russian in a hurry. His first words were
chorny mat
—“black ass,” the charming term his Russian classmates had for a person of color.

Eventually things had gotten better (Russians would still roll over for anyone who could play classical piano, which was Pav’s big skill), though never great, or even good. In fact, at the moment, Pav still thought the insane floating smelly ride in the Object and the crazy weird day on Keanu weren’t as bad as those first months in Russia.

Another one! Something had definitely hit the fucking ground about ten meters in front of him.

Pav slowly got to his feet, slipping on the sandals. He was going to have to check this out—

Carefully, he crossed the distance to the landing spot….

Two objects lay in the dirt. Pav picked them up…a lipstick and a coin, an American quarter—

“Boo!”

He had been ready for it, but he still started. “Goddammit,” he said. Really, it was all he could think to say.

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist. You’re Pav, right?” It was Rachel, Zack Stewart’s daughter. They had met at least twice back on Earth, but years ago, when she was, like, eleven. She’d grown up and filled out. But so had Pav; he stood almost six feet now.

“How long have you been watching me?”

“Not long.” Rachel’s voice was neutral, and in this fucked-up half-light it was impossible for Pav to tell whether she was giving him an I-saw-you-playing-with-yourself smirk.

“Do you want your things back?” He held out the lipstick and the quarter.

“Not unless you can show me where I can use them.”

“Well, I think the quarter’s no good. But you might need that lipstick—”