Rogue Powers (39 page)

And C'astille called her
friend,
and aided her cause against her own kind.

Something big growled at the edge of the clearing. C'astille fired a few rounds at it on general principles, and as the roaring boom of her gun faded she heard a heavy body slump over and collapse into the brush.

There was electric power. Plenty of it. The cryo-stable tanks had lived up to their name and held the liquid oxygen and hydrogen at temperature all this time. The air, which was probably a little musty in reality, was totally, blissfully odorless to Lucy's Outpost-acclimated nose. Lights came on at the flick of a switch, and Lucy had forgotten how
friendly
a warm yellow light could be, after so many days of Outpost's too-white sun.

So the lander had held together. The next jobs she could do better if she was clean. The shower. Clean clothes. Food.

Outside, C'astille wondered what was taking so long in there. In the excitement of being back on her own Road (she realized she was beginning to think a bit like a Z'ensam) Lucy forgot about her escort for quite a while. It wasn't until she had sat down in a real chair (well, a crash couch, but it was designed by and for a human), and had a cup of properly hot, fresh coffee that she remembered her escort. It took her a minute to find the external mikes and speakers on the unfamiliar comm control panel. She switched on the mike and spoke in English. "Can you hear me?"

"Very well, for too well," C'astille's voice replied a bit testily. "We all just bolted and ran half across the field out of reflex."

"Sorry. Let me turn it down. Is that quiet enough?"

"Much better. Now perhaps we won't attract every Hungry for a day's gallop around. What have you been doing? Night is coming on."

"Sorry, C'astille. I was just cleaning myself and getting some human food and drink. Things I even forgot I missed.

I lost track of the time. But if it's night, perhaps I'd better just sit tight here for the night. It would take a while to get into a suit and get out to the wagons."

"Very well, though you could have mentioned it sooner. We were getting nervous, and I had no way of contacting you. I thought the air might have gone bad in there and killed you."

"Thank you for worrying, C'astille, and I apologize for worrying you."

"No more will be said. Is your lander well?"

"She seems to be in very good shape, though it will take some hours more of work to get her powered up and operational. Tomorrow will be time enough. Rest well, and I'll see you in the morning. I'll leave the hearing and speaking devices on so you can call me."

C'astille, still a bit miffed, summed up the English exchange to her companions, and the Z'ensam retreated to the protection of the wagons.

If the truth be known, it wasn't the difficulty and delay of suiting up that kept Lucy inside the lander, but the comfort of being in human air, human light, with human food in her gut—and the thought of sleeping in a proper bed, even a collapsible mattress, was an overwhelming temptation.

She left the comm station on standby and beside the external pickups, she set the radio on scanner/receive without even thinking, unfamiliar board or not. That was standard operating procedure, one of a thousand things they bashed into a pilot s skull.

It was one of the thousand things that kept pilots alive.

Left to itself, the cabin air was lovely in its scentlessness. With the air-conditioning on, bringing the temperature down from the usual high thirties of Outpost to a sinfully cool eighteen degrees centigrade, it was paradise. Lucy dragged the fold-up mattress out into the center of the cabin deck and flopped it down. Sheets, top and bottom! A pillow! She felt that she truly appreciated civilization for the first time.

She dropped off to sleep the moment she had cuddled herself into a comfy position, the now-familiar growls and screams of an Outpost night coming through the external mikes to serve for a lullaby.

Half an hour after Lucy dozed off, the emergency alarm blared into life, and she was in front of the comm board before she was fully awake. Where was the bloody alarm cut-off? There. The yowling of the siren cut off in mid scream.

What the bloody hell was going on—a
text
message on channel 30? She shunted the message over to the computer screen:

URGENT YOU DEPART FOR BARYCENTER DURING TIME PERIOD STARTING IN ONE HOUR TWO MINUTES AND ENDING IN ONE HOUR NINETEEN MINUTES. MANY SHIPS IN ORBIT AND THIS WILL BE ONLY CLEAR WINDOW FOR SOME DAYS DEPENDING ON SHIP MOVEMENTS. GOOD LUCK FRIEND WU MAINTAIN RADIO SILENCE DO NOT REPLY WE'LL KNOW IF YOU GO. MESSAGE REPEATS: URGENT YOU—

Jesus! Lucy cleared the screen and rubbed her eyes. How the hell did Cynthia—of course, the beacon. Thank God for that.

A loud thumping noise came from the external pickups. Lucy kicked in the cameras. It was C'astille, pounding on the hull. Damn! That reminded Lucy that she had wanted to record some images of the Z'ensam, get some sort of proof they existed. She had planned to do it in the morning, but it was too late now. She twisted a few knobs and set the external cameras to record. "Yes, C'astille. What is it?

"We heard a loud scream come from the talking device that comes from your ship. Are you all right?"

"Yes, thank you. It was an emergency message, from, from one of my Group who guessed I would be here. She tells me I must leave this place very soon, or not at all,
because later the enemy will be where it can find me as I launch."

"You must leave now?"

"Yes." Lucy hesitated and shifted to Z'ensam. "You will sense me again. I will be here again, and we shall journey more. But there is a thing you must do. The device I called a beacon—the radio-direction finder. It is in the wagon. Keep it with you. It will show me the Road that leads to you, no matter where you are."

"It will be with me. Good luck." The last C'astille spoke in English. There was no way to say it in her own speech.

"Thank you. Now, bright lights will come on for a few minutes. My camera will get pictures of you for my Group to see, so they will have knowledge that you truly exist. My people still have never sensed you. The lights will stop before too many large night animals are attracted."

'very well. There is no time for your descent from the machine for a true goodbye?"

"No." There wasn't much else she could say. "I wish there were time," she said, switching back to English. "But let me get your picture, and then you must all get quite far away, for the lander is dangerous to those outside."

"I have seen many landers fly. We will get well out of the way. When will you launch?"

"In about an hour. I'm sorry, I can't think well enough to convert that to your measures."

"I know what an hour is. We will be out of the way in time."

The floodlight blossomed on, blanketing the area around the lander in a harsh white light. C'astille shielded her eyes with her hand and waited for her eyes to adjust. She told herself to act intelligent, to convince this mysterious halfwalker Group of Lucy's that she wasn't just an animal. She wondered what, exactly, would constitute intelligent behavior.

Unsure of what to do, she did what billions in the same

situation had done before. She waved at the camera.

*
      
*
      
*

Lucy would have smiled at that if she had been watching the monitors, but she was already over her head in calculations. How the hell to get off the planet without being converted into radioactive gases? If the Guards were in line-of-sight of her, they would spot the plume of her lander's fusion engines instantly. It would be impossible to miss. Having spotted her, they would know who it had to be, and where she had to be going. They would blow her out of the sky, and probably bomb her launch point just to be on the safe side.

She had to stay out of line of sight while firing her engine. Okay, fine. That meant a short boost at high thrust so she could get up to escape velocity and shut down the engine
fast.
She had to dive for southern skies, toward the barycenter, and that would help. She knew from running the radar on
Ariadne
that there was very little surveillance of that direction—and what there was run from
Ariadne
—and if the Guards didn't breathe down their necks too hard, there were fair odds that the CIs could manage to look the other way. Cynthia Wu would make sure of that.

Then, a long run powered-down, to get far, far away before she relit her fusion engines for an extended burn that would get her to the barycenter, 7.65 billion kilometers away. The further from Outpost she was, the better a head start she would have on any pursuit. And if they couldn't backtrack her launch point, they couldn't identify her—and that meant that, with their hands full with an invading fleet, they wouldn't be likely to bother with her.

But she had to get this tub ticking along, bring her to life carefully after her months-long slumber. God only knew what systems had gummed themselves up without maintenance. Lucy had hoped to take at least a day or two to check things out, but it looked like it was time to have faith in the backups. Engine test cycle go. Fuel system at go. Fuel tanks at ninety percent—and she was going to need every drop of it. Food, water—there should be enough aboard for this trip, and if not she could stay alive on not
much for a few days. No time to take an inventory now. Guidance. The computer seemed sane, and seemed to know where the sky was. She would have to trust it. No benchmark to test it against, and with forty-five minutes until her launch window opened, no time to calibrate against the sextant.

Damn! No time to toss the dead-weight mass out of the lander. Well, she'd have to deadhead it to escape velocity, then toss it through the airlock when she was running doggo, all engines powered down.

What about the hull? Did it still have integrity, or had some damned Outpost plant secreted some weird acid that had weakened it so it'd split a seam and start losing air under the stress of acceleration and vacuum? No time and no way to check. But she could take precautions. The second pressure suit. Lucy dug it out of the storage locker, and didn't realize she was buck naked until she started to put the suit on over bare skin. It had felt good to sleep in the nude, but time to get back into a damned monkey suit again. At least it was a clean one.

There was a rather awkward series of mechanisms on the suit that would take care of wastes, a sipping straw that would stave off death by dehydration, and even a little airlock gizmo that would let her pass food in toward the general direction of her mouth. If the hull leaked, she could stay alive in the suit long enough to get to the barycenter. But it wouldn't be fun.

She was on the clock and the minutes were dying. Back to the pilot's station. Fusion chamber pressure okay. Atmosphere engines cranked up and ready. She was tempted to skip them and boost on fusion, but C'astille and company might be too close. If the plume of fusion rocket exhaust brushed past them as she was on the way up, they'd never feel it before they died. Even if they were out of range, the actinic light of fusion could blind them.

No, she d have to go up on the old liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines. Half a tick. Why not ride the lox/l.h. as far as she could? It'd be the most efficient way to dump the mass of the liquid oxygen, and burning conventional propellant produced a much less noticeable flame—oh, they would spot it if they knew to look—but more than likely they wouldn't be rigged to spot such an inefficient fuel combination.

Lucy knew that she might begrudge every gram of hydrogen wasted in the lox/l.h. burn later on, but she knew damn well there might not be a later on if she didn't take the gamble.

She wasn't the sort to look back once she made a decision. She'd use the lox/l.h. system. Eighteen minutes until the window—and when it opened she'd jump through it, with any sort of luck.

Luck. And there she was on a nameless lander. It wouldn't do. She did nothing but
think
of the name. That was enough to ward off bad luck.
Halfwalker.
C'astille was possibly the only person of any species who would appreciate the humor in that. Lucy resolved to stay alive long enough to tell her about it.

Working quickly and carefully, Lucy brought
Halfwalker
to life. The minutes died, all too fast. Too many systems were taken on faith, too much she just had to cross her fingers on.

Three minutes. She had a course, of sorts, laid in, a brute-force run into the south, and then she'd see what happened.

Two minutes; one; none. Show time. Power to take-off engines—

And a red light came on. Lucy's fingers rattled over the keyboard, demanding details on the malfunction, and her heart hammered in her chest. She had only seventeen minutes to solve it, fix it, or else—oh bloody hell, it was only the damn manual crank on the outer airlock. She had forgotten to fold the thing and close and cover on it. More than likely it would be sheared off by air resistance as she headed out of the atmosphere.