Heaven's War (60 page)

“I’m the leader,” Harley said.

“I’m the leader, too,” a voice said behind them.

It was Gabriel Jones, his eyes still red and face still shining from a very emotional conversation. “These people were my responsibility from the beginning. The weapon uses my…tissue. If anyone should make the sacrifice, it should be me.”

“You need to see Yvonne face-to-face again,” Harley said.

“Oh, Harley, she’s wearing out. Dying like Bynum.” He forced a smile. “She seems okay with it…says she fulfilled her mission, redeemed herself. But she won’t last.”

“Actually,” Shane Weldon said, “none of us will last if the core isn’t rebooted and the Reivers eliminated.”

Jones pointed at Weldon. “Exactly. And I’m the biggest medical burden. I’m past my sell-by date. Give
me
the zapper.”

For one selfish moment, Harley felt a flood of relief. Gabriel Jones
was
the most logical victim.

And yet…Harley was in charge. If there was one lesson he had learned in life, one thing he believed in without question, it was this: The guy in charge makes the big decisions. The captain goes down with the ship. “Sorry, Gabe,” he said, and reached for the injector.

Then Xavier Toutant stepped forward, snatched up the injector—and handed it to Jones! Before any of them could stop him, the JSC director touched it to his arm and triggered it.

He seemed about to say something…but failed, as his eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted.

Nayar and Jaidev caught him and gently lowered him to the floor. “For God’s sake,” Harley said, “make him comfortable.”
As he dies.

“God, that was brave,” Sasha said.

“Let’s hope it wasn’t for nothing,” Shane Weldon said.

The encounter with the Skyphoi had been strange even by Zack Stewart’s improved and expanded scale of strangeness.

The survivors of the Dash treachery had returned to the “station” in the railcar, bumping along on low power, like a golf cart with a dying battery. A pair of the giant balloon creatures had been waiting, both flashing chromatophores in patterns the humans could not and would likely never understand.

The failing state of the railcar matched that of the Architect. It seemed to be declining into immobility and likely death at the same rate as the entire NEO. When Zack said as much, Rachel announced, “That’s because he is Keanu.” Zack would have loved to pursue that, but the Architect went into terminal failure at that instant, slumping to one side and almost crushing Zhao. “Daddy!” Rachel shouted.

Zack and Dale reached for the Architect, their hands failing to find purchase on the creature’s garments. But sheer muscle power allowed them to extricate Zhao.

As the Chinese spy slid out from under the Architect, he said, “Should I try some kind of resuscitation?”

“Where the hell would you start?” Dale said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Yvonne said. “He’s gone.”

Zack didn’t like the way Yvonne looked: gray and listless. “How are you doing?” Had she been linked, somehow, to the Architect as the alien died? And how did the death of this creature relate to the possible death of Keanu itself? Was the Near-Earth Object itself dead already? How would you be able to tell?

“As okay as I’m going to be,” she said. “For the first time since…coming back, I feel like myself. No more voices in my head.” She managed
a smile, one that was so familiar to Zack from their time as astronauts that it brought tears to his eyes.

Well, hell, everything was bringing tears to his eyes right now.

“Last things,” she said. “Think of the Skyphoi as custodians or caretakers. They live a long time by our standards. They aren’t truly individuals, or not all the time, so there’s a lot of continuity over generations. They’re masters of the systems, though. They devise repairs, and other races, with hands, do the dirty work.”

“So that’s us,” Makali said. “Hands.”

“For a vessel like this, yes,” Yvonne said. “The Skyphoi wouldn’t have built anything like Keanu.”

“What do they have?” Zack said.

“A trigger to restart the power core.”

“Won’t that be…very large?” Dale said. “I mean, the power core has got to be massive.”

“It will be powerful but appropriately sized,” Yvonne said. “Our job is to deliver it and activate it.”

“Then what?” Zack said. “The lights come back on, we find our way back to the habitat, great. But the Reivers are still running loose, right?”

“Correct,” Yvonne said. “But with Keanu’s systems up and running again, there will be…sanitary measures.”

Zack recognized the words. Dash had used them to describe the blasted habitat of the crab creatures. Dale caught it, too. “Okay, note to the Skyphoi: We have a say in sanitary measures. No zapping of the human habitat.”

But he seemed too tired to say more, and Zack, realizing there would be more and trickier work after a reboot, felt the same.

He reminded himself of his NASA training. Follow the checklist, one step at a time. The reboot would be a big one.

He had handed Yvonne the Tik-Talk at that point. Then, with some distance yet to travel, seeing that Dale and Makali were sunk in one corner, Rachel and Pav clinging to each other and holding hands, the dog resting its head on its paws, and Yvonne tearfully talking to her father…all of his charges accounted for…Zack allowed himself to close his eyes.

And fell into the deepest sleep he had known in days, since before the
arrival of the vesicle Objects…likely before his launch from Earth on
Destiny
-
7
.

He was in a crowded bus or a subway car much like this railcar…in his dream, he was aware of the similarity…but pressed up against him was Megan. She looked younger, as she had when they first met and fell in love, long before the astronaut or journalist or parental years.

And they kissed, lips on lips, his hand sliding into her shirt…again, as he and she and they often had, falling into a sweet surging stupor that he wanted to last and last and last and—

He woke. No one was moving except the door. The railcar had stopped. The interior was dark, the only illumination a series of flickering lights from somewhere outside.

And he felt…elated. Not aroused, though there was a bit of that, just happy for once. He was a bit rested, that was good.

It was like the early weeks of his first space station mission, once he’d passed that crucial thirty-day point, becoming not only physically acclimated to life in microgravity, but at home with the long days, the isolation, the small joys of making an experiment work, or just creating a meal.

It was a mind-set suited to life off Earth…life on Keanu, perhaps.

“Everybody out,” he said, “end of the line.”

A pair of Skyphoi were waiting. As Zack and the others approached, one of them extruded a silvery package, which clattered to the ground.

Zack was distracted by the swirling gasbags as they kept shifting positions, and by the look on Rachel’s face, which varied from wonder to terror.

But now he finally focused on the package…a silvery suitcase that looked a lot like the Personal Preference Kits astronauts carried on missions—the containers for personal items, patches, photographs, school pennants.

He wondered why the Skyphoi had used it, but only for a moment. He touched Yvonne’s shoulder and said, quietly, “Is that where they put the nuke on
Venture
? In one of the PPKs?”

She nodded. “The Skyphoi like to use templates that we would recognize. That way they know what we can carry.”

“I wish they’d picked something else,” he said.

Now one of the Skyphoi started moving away, farther up the tunnel. “Where do you suppose he’s going?” Makali said.

They found an answer with the second Skyphoi, which dropped behind them and, strangely, began to expand, like an inflating balloon. “I think we’re being herded,” Zhao said.

“No,” Makali said. “Defended.”

Zack heard a growling buzz from somewhere down the tunnel…through the semitransparent body of the second Skyphoi, he could see swiftly moving shapes. “What the hell is that?”

“Oh, God, Daddy, it’s a Long Legs.”

Before he could ask for clarification, Pav said, “A type of Reiver.”

“Commander,” Dale said, “we’ve gotta go.”

Zack picked up the case. It was so light he wondered if it actually held anything useful. What did you use to reignite the power core of a starship? Well, Dr. Stewart, that depends on the nature of the core—anti-matter? Or something even more exotic?

He didn’t need to know. He just needed to make it work.

As the second Skyphoi fought its rearguard action, the humans followed the first creature up the tunnel…Zack, Rachel, and Yvonne in the lead, Zhao and Pav and Cowboy right behind…Makali and Dale at the rear.

“So the plan,” Zack said, huffing and puffing, “is this: Enter the core, place the unit within, get out. How long do I have?”

“I don’t know,” Yvonne said. “I really, really wish I could tell you, but I’m out of info.” She nodded at the floating Skyphoi. “They control the ignition. They’ll know.”

Zack wanted to scream with laughter. All the decisions he had made, from the crazy gravity gauge trick on
Brahma
to throwing the rover off the side of Vesuvius Vent, to confronting the first Architect to going overland from the shattered Beehive to the Sentry habitat…each one had been his to make, his to live with.

Now he was a courier for implacable, uncommunicative, unknowable aliens.

And not only his life, but the lives of every human on Keanu—and very possibly the lives of the entire human race—depended on them.

There was a universal lesson in that somewhere. But he was too tired and frustrated to appreciate it.

The Skyphoi brought them to a side shaft and a Membrane. “This is the core?” Pav said.

“Might be the entrance to another shaft,” Dale said. He turned to Zack. “Okay, Commander, hand it over.”

“It’s my job, Dale.”

Dale nodded toward Rachel. “Your daughter disagrees.”

“He’s right, Daddy,” Rachel said. “Let someone else do this. Please!”

Zack looked at her dirty, pretty, exhausted, distraught face, seeing traces of her mother. “I’d draw straws, but we don’t have any,” he said. That wasn’t enough, for either of them.

He took his daughter’s hand and led her away, to where they were directly under the floating, flashing Skyphoi…the closest thing to a zone of privacy. “I love you, Rachel—”

“Don’t say that! It means you think you’re never going to see me again.”

“I am going to see you again. In a few minutes, the moment I drop this thing off.”

“I’m afraid,” she said. “Mom went away, then she came back, then…” She collapsed against him, sobbing.

He couldn’t allow himself to do the same.
Be a father. Be a leader.

“Look, honey, baby girl.” He kissed her. “Look!” He finally got her attention. “We’re all…information. That’s what the universe is. And it never really dies, okay? But it has to keep changing. That’s why the Reivers are bad—they’re frozen, they don’t get worse and they never get better. We may have to die or go away or change state to get better.”

“I hate that.”

“Don’t hate it. It’s the most miraculous thing humans have ever discovered.”

Saying it aloud, he almost convinced himself. But all around them, the air began to grow stagnant. Temperatures were dropping.

There was an ominous rumbling, as if Keanu were suffering death throes.
Maybe that’s what a NEO’s death is like,
Zack thought;
it breaks up, scattering itself across space….

He had to act now. One last hug, one last kiss. “I’ll see you in a little while. Go with Makali.”

He turned to the others. He was almost shouting. “This isn’t a suicide mission. I’ll meet you guys right here once I’ve got this bad boy working again.”

He never let go of the unit. If he did, he’d never pick it up again.

He pointed to the Tik-Talk, which was now in Zhao’s hands. “Tell Harley that I expect a decent meal for the first time. Something in a steak should do it.”

Then, picking up the package, he stepped into the Membrane, and fell into darkness.

There was almost no gravity in the shaft. Zack was barely aware that he was falling.

The landing was soft, featherlike, so gentle that he was able to tuck his knees up—just like living in microgravity aboard the International Space Station—and land on both feet.

He wasn’t steady; the entire chamber continued to rock, like Los Angeles with aftershocks. It made every movement more difficult, more urgent—

He ended up in another ancient stone tile chamber with five shafts leading in different directions. Before he had to confront the decision of which to take, he saw that he wasn’t alone.