Reclamation (47 page)

His quiet, steady voice went straight through Avir, soothing her instantly. She wanted to lean toward the screen and drink in his voice, as a reminder of what she ought to be.

“Bio-technician Uary has confessed himself to be an Imperialist and has volunteered the location of the Unifier base just outside your division. One of their operators is Jahidh of the
Grand Errand.
He has been transmitting information about the Home Ground to his Imperialist contacts for four years.”

Blood of my ancestors,
Avir staggered.
There’s been an Imperialist on the Home Ground for FOUR YEARS?
Avir felt her breathing go harsh and shallow. “Where is he now?” she croaked. “Do we know that?”

“These are your orders, Contractor Avir,” said Laefhur. “You will investigate the Unifiers’ finds. You will not waste resources hunting for Jahidh.”

“Contractor,” Avir drew her shoulders back. This man might hold a senior ranking and an Assembly seat, but he did not hold her name. “How can …”

“We want him free to continue his researches,” said the Contractor. “He has made great contributions to the understanding of the artifacts. As long as he believes he is undetected, he will continue to do so. The Witnesses will take charge of him if he oversteps the bounds the Assembly has laid down on his conduct.”

Avir could not force a single word out of her throat.

“It is the Reclamation that is important, Contractor. We must not lose time because of lack of skilled hands.”

And it must not be seen that the Assembly allowed Imperialists to slip through their notice.
Resolve hardened inside her. “I can make this my work and I will,” she said, giving a properly deep obeisance.

Laefhur’s image was gone by the time she straightened up. Avir realized her hands had curled into fists. Her mind was already racing. Transportation would have to be acquired from the Acquisitions committee, and a security team contracted. The Unifiers’ base would have to be thoroughly explored and cataloged. Extra personnel would certainly be needed once the initial survey of the base was complete.

She would obey her orders, but communication with the artifacts was still at an uncertain stage. Everyone was aware of that. It was well documented and witnessed. If they did not understand they were to cease their search for one particular Skyman, that, surely, was not her fault.

Jay cast another glance at Heart of the Seablade. The Teacher hunched in front of the fire watching the flames in a way that suggested he did not like what he saw. Jay shivered as the wind blew through the tent flaps and, for the hundredth time, he cursed the necessity of bringing the Teacher along. Heart had too many distractions inside his head to allow Jay to predict the outcome of his thoughts. But they needed a Teacher to help bring the Notouch into line in case Cor’s efforts at persuasion were not totally successful, so Jay needed Heart.

Years of practiced acting allowed Jay to put a concerned tone in his voice. “What is it you are worried about now, Teacher?”

Heart picked up a cold lump of charcoal from the meager stack that was their night’s supply of fuel. “My wife was in the High House when they came down, Messenger. What will they do to her?”

Be patient. You need him to keep the Notouch in line. Say it again.
Jay wrapped his poncho a little closer around him. “Nothing, Heart. She’s valuable to them. You all are. That’s what’s buying us this time.”
That and King Silver’s pride.

“I do hold her in my regard, Messenger.” Heart pitched the charcoal onto the flames. The fire hissed and a flurry of sparks danced above the flames. “She is so unwavering … I fear they will grow impatient with her.”

Jay considered laying a hand on the man’s shoulder, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. “I know these people, Heart. They’re born patient. They cannot be rushed. I once …” His translator disk beeped.

Cor’s voice hissed in his ear. “Jay, get your sodden face out here. I’m about to be bludgeoned.”

“Blood of my …” Jay scrabbled at the tent’s laces and tore them open.

It was full night outside. The icy wind drove straight down on his head, making him stagger as he emerged from the tent. The only light was from the four orange watchfires. Everything else was a solid curtain of black.

“Hold your hand!” he bellowed to the world in general.

Jay squinted at one fire after another. The one toward his left flopped sideways in the wind and Jay saw a pair of human shadows, one standing and one kneeling. He took a bead on the fire and, ignoring the violent crawling of the goose bumps rising on his skin, waded through the weeds and reeds toward it.

“I speak for her!” he shouted as he approached.

Jay entered the tiny circle of flickering light and saw Cor on her knees with her hands in front of her eyes. A soldier with Bondless tattoos on his hands and a craggy face that Jay didn’t recognize held his metal-studded club over her head.

“What in the sight of the Nameless is all this?” Cor demanded as Jay waved the soldier aside. “An invasion?”

“Hardly.” A fresh wind hit him and Jay shivered. “The Vitae have got that show to themselves.” He brushed the soldier back. The man gave Jay the barest possible salute and tramped off into the darkness.

“I noticed.” Cor stood and picked up her handlight. She seemed oblivious to the cold. “We had word. They’ve started giving orders that the Notouch be rounded up.” She clipped her light onto her belt.

“So you found Stone in the Wall’s relatives?” For a moment, eagerness was stronger than the cold.

“Yeah, I found them.” Cor stretched her hands out to the fire and let the light shine between her fingers. “I thought you were going to King Silver for letters of authority, not for a small army.” She nodded toward the cluster of a dozen tents.

“Cor …” Jay began angrily. He stopped and gripped his temper. “We need protection in case we run into First City troops. They’re working for the Vitae now.”

Cor watched the fire between her fingers.

“Cor.” Jay moved closer. “Where’re the Notouch?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I sent them running.”

Jay’s heart thudded once, hard, against his ribs. “You what?”

“I told them to grab their gear and run like the wind.” She rubbed her hands together. “And not to tell me where they would go.”

“Cor, the Vitae are rounding up Notouch!” Jay shouted. “They know something! We have to find …”

“We have to get out of here!” Cor screamed up at him to be heard over the wild night wind. “We have to get out of here and leave these people alone!”

“They aren’t people!”

Cor didn’t even flinch. “I don’t think they’d agree with you.”

Jay took a deep breath, trying to get control of himself again. It was too much. He had come all this way, he had worked all this time, and now he was so close. He was too close.

“Cor,” he said, hoping she couldn’t hear the tremor in his voice over the sound of the wind and the crackle of the fire, “you’re not thinking straight. If the Vitae find out how this place works, they will rule the Quarter Galaxy.”

“And if the Family finds out how this place works, then what?” Cor shook her head and Jay saw the rock-hard resistance behind her eyes. The fire struck sparks in them. “No. No matter who gets hold of them, they’re never going to be left alone again. The only thing they can do is keep running and fighting us all off.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “With the number of birth defects they’ve got, I doubt the whole place has more than four generations left anyway. Then it’s over with, but they’re at least not being bred into slavery.”

Jay felt the world tilt under his feet. Anger rushed through him, faster than the wind through the reeds, and all of it focused on the woman in front of him, calmly facing him down as if he were no more than a Bonded, or a total fool.

“Then why in all this hell did you come here?” he croaked. “Why didn’t you stay with your Notouch?”

Her chin shifted left, then right. “I wanted to see if you’d be willing to leave. I didn’t want you and Lu hanging around making things hard … harder.” Her green eyes were honest and a little ashamed. “I wanted you to know I’m willing to get you both offworld, but if you decide to keep going on the assignment, then, as of now, you’ve got no pilot and you’d better watch your back, because I’ll be on it.”

The night was suddenly crystal clear to Jay. The fire didn’t even flicker. Cor’s headcloth didn’t stir. He could hear her breathing, even over the rush of blood in his ears.

“And you really don’t know where the Notouch have gone?” he said coolly.

She shook her head. “No. I really don’t.”

Jay lashed out. His fist caught her in the throat and knocked her backward. She choked as she fell. He grabbed hold of her shoulders and flipped her onto her stomach. Her spine was stiff and knobbly under his knees. He pressed all his weight against her back. Her neck muscles corded against his palms as he forced her face into the mud. She clawed at him, raking great long scratches down his hands. She screamed to the ground. Jay held on until her hands fell into the weeds and he felt her neck go limp.

He stood. He thought he would be shaking, but he wasn’t. He was perfectly calm. Cor was nothing but a crooked shadow in the grass. In a moment he’d call the watch back to toss her into the swamp.

Jay fished his translator disk out of his ear and rucked it into its slot in his torque and waited.

“Jahidh? Be quick,” came Kelat’s voice.

“I need you to do a satellite scan of the area about twenty kilometers around this transmission point.” Jay kept looking at Cor’s body, noting how it didn’t move. “Stone in the Wall’s relatives are on the run and I need to know where they’ve gone.”

“It won’t be easy,” said Kelat. “But I’ll make it my work.”

Kelat closed the line and Jay disengaged his disk from the torque.

Do you know, Kelat,
he thought toward the canyon wall,
you’ve just described this whole fool Reclamation.

Jay whistled and waved to a quartet of silhouettes that he was fairly sure were soldiers. He’d have to tell Heart. He’d have to tell them all that they’d been betrayed. He’d have to, if they were to keep going, and they had to keep going.

Because now there was absolutely nothing else to do.

It was four hours past dark before the transport was lowered from the tether’s end. Avir had to order Ivale to come with her and she was ready to swear that if there had not been a host of Beholden to see, he would have balked at the assignment.

Sealed in pressure suits, Avir, Ivale, and Nal walked down the steps to meet the transport. Darkness and the accompanying cold cleared the streets of even the most lost of the artifacts.

From the outside, the transport was little more than a computerized box with thick, heavy tires that could grip and climb even the Home Ground’s chaotic terrain. As they approached, a door in the side lifted away, letting loose a flood of clear light.

Nice dressing,
thought Avir as she squinted up the ramp that was lowering and tried to find her footing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about a security team leader with a sense of the dramatic.

The door closed behind them and Avir’s eyes adjusted to the light. It was a standard transport: drive boards in the front, seating for a dozen passengers down the middle, comm terminals at the rear, and storage lockers lining the walls. Eight of the seats were filled with the security team; males and females with brown or pinkish skins and all as bald as Ambassadors. The team leader got out of the pilot’s chair as soon as Avir walked up the ramp, but did not make obeisance until her eyes had had a chance to adjust.

The name he handed her was Security Chief Panair of the Hundredth Core. Avir accepted it with a nod. She didn’t trust her voice. It felt too good to be between soundproofed walls breathing air that was free of any kind of reek.

Security Chief Panair was not one to waste time. He accepted her silence as she had accepted his name and returned to his station. He snapped the seat restraints across his waist and passed his hands over the controls. The hum of the engines heightened its pitch.

Avir took the farthest seat on the empty row. Ivale stood aside to let Nal sit next to her. Avir wished she was free to roll her eyes. Ivale was being positively childish.

The transport lurched forward and Avir tried to resign herself to a long, dull trip. Outside the windows, the night brought down lashings of rain and ice carried on a wind that shook the transport. Panair kept his eyes on the boards, Avir noticed. Despite his bright running lights, he was navigating more by the satellite transmission on the terminals than by line of sight.

The journey wore on. The transport lurched and rattled through a landscape that could barely be seen, and Ivale’s silence began to wear on Avir’s nerves. Nal was using the seat’s terminal, absorbed in his own work, but Ivale just sat with his eyes kept rigidly forward, watching the blobs of shadow that passed through the transport’s lights so quickly that it was often difficult to tell if they were trees or mere stones.

Avir sat back and tried to feel sympathy for him. This was not what any of them had been chosen for. They were supposed to convert a series of buildings for use by the Vitae and begin researches on the artifacts. They were not a boarding party, even if the team surrounding them were.

Panair swung the transport to the left and they lurched up a steep incline. The lights showed up nothing but rocks, boulders, and mud.

“Approaching the Unifier shelter,” Panair announced.

Avir looked out the window automatically, but there was nothing there except stone and shadow. The terminal on Panair’s board showed a smooth-sided dome, glowing with incandescent light and heat in the infrared spectrum.

Avir felt her beating heart rise until it filled her throat.

The white dome drifted into view. The transport ground to a halt and the door lifted itself open. The security team leapt out and dived straight for the dome’s entrance, leaving Avir, Ivale, and Nal trailing, a little stunned, in their wake.

“What … !” shouted a man’s voice inside the dome.