Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (35 page)

“The Captain?” Kirby said, her voice rising. “Did you shoot somebody?”

“No, I didn’t shoot somebody,” Sikes said as he made the turn into his building’s driveway and hit the remote for the garage door. “I just got involved with a complicated case and . . . it looks like we’re going to need some help, that’s all.”

“From who?”

“The FBI,” Sikes said. He drove down into the parking garage.

“Cool,” Kirby said, impressed.

That’s better, Sikes thought. Trust a cop’s daughter to trust in authority.

“Dad? Like, no one’s trying to kill you or anything, are they?”

So much for no lying. “God, no, honey. Nothing like that.” He turned in his seat to back into his parking spot, glad to be able to avoid her eyes. He’d get Kirby settled with some pizza money and her homework and be back on his way in ten minutes max.

“You’re sure?”

Sikes pulled on the parking brake and killed the ignition. Then he undid his seat belt and gave Kirby a hug. “At least you know what it’s like to worry about someone. But no, no one’s out to get your old dad. I just might have to spend a lot of time at the station house tonight, that’s all. There’s nothing for me to worry about, and there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about either. Okay?”

Sikes sat back. Kirby’s expression was wide-eyed shock, as if she hadn’t believed a single word he said.

“Come on, Kirby. Don’t make this—”

He heard the unmistakable click of a .45 automatic an instant before he felt the cold ring of its muzzle kiss his neck, just under his skull.

“Detective Matthew Sikes?” a muffled voice asked.

“Don’t hurt my daughter,” Sikes warned.

“Well, that’s going to be up to you now, isn’t it?”

Sikes started to turn to face his attacker. But a stunning shock of pain burst against his head as a field of stars exploded across his vision. And just before everything went dark, he thought he saw something move against those stars.

Coming closer.

I
N THE OPEN CORRIDORS
George walked as a slave. His gait was slow. His head hung listlessly. He had abandoned his molecular probe, yet he moved as if its backpack still weighed him down. Thus disguised he made his way to a water hub.

The routine of the ship had not yet returned to normal following the previous
crayg’s
unprecedented torrential release of holy gas. As always, the main corridors were filled with Tenctonese moving from one work station to another or to and from their dormitories according to their shifts. But everyone moved sluggishly, still recovering from the gas overdose. And many were moaning. The sound of their combined voices was like a dirge.

But George knew it would not last long.

Under his tunic he carried the dead Overseer’s communication device. It was the same as that which his brother Ruhtra had worn when he had saved Susan and George by leading them into the hidden service tunnels. The Overseers used the small devices to talk to each other from one corridor to another, and to the protected section of the ship where their own quarters were. George had often seen the devices in use as the Overseers gathered data—the location of certain facilities, the actual work schedule for a worker stopped at random in the corridors. It was for exactly that type of information that George had taken the device.

He came to the water hub that linked nine levels near the section of the ship that housed the power plants. The constant background thrumming of the enormous machines was louder here. Vacuum energy extractors, the Elders called them, as if energy could be extracted from nothing. George didn’t think it could, but George didn’t really care about what the Elders knew. He had come here not to be closer to the power plants but to have many possible avenues of escape open to him in case his plan didn’t work.

He trudged down one open metal stairway until he was on the catwalk that ringed the water hub’s eighth level. He continued moving along it until he came to a corridor entrance that no one had recently entered. He stepped into it quickly, letting his eyes adjust to the low level of light inside. He peered down into its misty depths. The length of the corridor was deserted.

George walked rapidly down the corridor to a structure support that angled out from the wall and flattened himself against it. If anyone looked down into the corridor from the catwalk, he would be invisible in the gloom. If anyone looked up the tunnel from the end of the corridor, he would be lost in the glare from the brighter light of the hub beyond. He slipped the communications headband over his head and adjusted it so the device covered his right ear valley. His cupped his hand to it as the Overseers did. Then he spoke gruffly: “Location request.”

A voice responded so quickly that George almost began to run in fear. It was harsh, almost the type of voice he would expect a machine to have if a machine could talk. “Proceed,” it said.

George spoke again, as loudly as he dared. “Cargo designation: Ruhtra, Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh, Family: Third Star’s Ocean.”

The harsh voice took longer to reply this time. George wondered if whoever it was had to consult some master list. If the delay was too long, though, George was prepared to throw the device away and flee.

But the voice replied before panic set in. “Dormitory ninety-one, segment four hundred, berth eighty-seven, platform three.”

George stifled the automatic impulse to say “Thank you.” He had never heard an Overseer acknowledge a communication in that way, and he stopped himself just in time. He leaned forward from the structure support and checked the corridor again. Still clear. For a moment he considered using the device to find the location of his son, Finiksa. But two such requests for members of the same lineage might seem suspicious to whoever had spoken to him. There would be time to find Finiksa after joining the rebellion. And it was fitting that it would be Ruhtra through whom he would join.

George dropped the communications device to the deck and stepped on it, grinding it into rubbish for the scavengers. If he came to a point where he needed another such device, then he would simply kill another Overseer. He found the very fact that he could have a thought like that a sign of his impending freedom. As he ran back to the water hub, he was already planning his route to dormitory ninety-one.

It took George almost an hour of deliberately slow walking to reach Ruhtra’s dormitory. He successfully passed three Overseer checkpoints along the way. None of the Overseers was interested in him, and after George had passed through the second pair unchallenged he felt invincible. As he approached the third pair, just outside the main corridor leading to dormitory ninety-one, he even walked up to the Overseers as if he had seen them wave him over. But they simply waved him on, continuing to watch the other gray-clad slaves that moved in an unending chain behind him.

Dormitory ninety-one was almost indistinguishable from George’s own dorm, and he easily found corridor segment four hundred. Most of the Tenctonese who lived in this part of the ship were on their rest shift, and the corridor was crowded. Groups of children ran as best as they were able past the tired adults who gathered in small groups. Podlings cried. The air was thick with the smell of old meatgrowth. And for the first time George saw a dormitory as he imagined the Elders must see them, against memories of the open fields of Tencton, a sky of sweet air higher than the ship was thick, a place with room for all the planet’s tribes to have vast tracts of land and clear water all for themselves.

For the first time George understood why their religions stressed acceptance. It was either that or madness.

The closer George moved to berth eighty-seven, the more he was stared at by the others who lived in that segment. He did not belong with them, and they knew it.

He came to Ruhtra’s berth. The second and third platforms were empty. Gently George shook the shoulder of the frail female who slept on platform one. Her spots were faded by too much sleep.

“Pardon me, I am trying to find the person who sleeps here on platform three. Do you know him?”

The old female didn’t respond. George tugged her over. Her face was lined and haggard. “His name is Ruhtra. Can you help me?”

The old female’s hand shot out and grabbed George by his neck. Startled, he felt the cold ridges of a crate-moving claw press against his skin. Then two other pairs of hands grabbed his arms and pulled him away from the sleeping platform. George tensed with fear, yet he was ready to fight to the death with the Overseers who had captured him.

But they were not Overseers. They were other Tenctonese, dressed just as he was.

Both of the Tenctonese who had grabbed him were
binnaum-ta,
and they threw George against the corridor wall and kept him there. One leaned against George, pushing his forearm against George’s throat. Behind the
binnaum-ta,
the old female rose from her platform. She held her cargo-handler’s claw up so George could take a good look at the metal spikes that helped cargo workers keep their grips on heavy crates. He had no idea how she had managed to smuggle the tool from a work station. Perhaps he was not the only one to rob an Overseer.

“Why are you here?” the old female croaked, keeping the claw in view.

George had no quarrel with her or her companions. “I am trying to find Ruhtra,” he said, as calmly as he could.

“Why?” she asked. A crowd was gathering in the closed-in corridor.

“Look at my spots,” George said. “That’s why.” His spots and Ruhtra’s clearly showed they were related.

The
binnaum
that dug his arm into George reached up with his other hand and picked at George’s spots. George tried to twist away.

The old female stepped closer. “Overseers look for Ruhtra. You look for Ruhtra. Maybe you’re Overseer.” She spat the final frictive click in the word as if it were something to gag on. “Show your wrists.”

George held up both his hands and felt his sleeves tugged down. Sharp fingernails scratched roughly at the skin of his wrists in an attempt to peel off any covering he might have there.

The
binnaum-ta
stepped away. George rubbed at his throat.

“Not your dormitory,” the old female said.

“It is important I find Ruhtra,” George told her.

“If Ruhtra hides from the Overseers, you’ll not find him soon.”

“I must,” George said.

The old female leaned closely against George, making him lower an ear valley to her lips. “Go back to where you belong,” she whispered hoarsely. “There is not much time.”

George stared at the faint pattern her faded spots made. He looked again at the
binnaum-ta. Binnaum
spots were hard to read—they were larger, more melted together in the blending of the other two sexes. But the similarities to the old female’s pattern was clear.

George dropped his own voice to a whisper. “Are these your children?” Both
binnuam-ta
were clearly older than George. By rights they should be nowhere near their mother.

A smile flickered on the old female’s face. She leaned forward again. “Gather the children,” she said softly. “That is what we were told, that is what you should be doing as well. Don’t look for your brother. Look for your children.”

George felt his spots pucker. Had some order gone out on a network he had no knowledge of?
Gather the children?
Why? Unless . . . of course, he thought, the rebellion is beginning. The rebels have sent out word that we are to gather our children around us. But how will everyone know where their children are?

“How is this possible?” George asked.

But the old female held her fingers to cover her lips.
“Keer’chatlas,”
she whispered. Then she returned to her platform, and her
binnaum-ta
stepped in front of it, thick arms folded over muscular chests, standing guard.

Unsettled by the encounter, George pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered, leaving the dormitory-corridor segments from a direction different from the one by which he had arrived. If the Overseers were searching for Ruhtra, then he wasn’t sure why he himself hadn’t been stopped at any of the Overseer checkpoints he had passed. Certainly his spots were similar enough that if the Overseers had been shown Ruhtra’s spot pattern, then George would have been just as likely to have been recognized. No matter how invincible he felt, George wasn’t keen to trust the Overseers to make the same mistake twice.

Five sectors away from Ruhtra’s dormitory George fell in with a group of scavengers walking listlessly on patrol. He edged his way into the middle of the group and walked with them for cover, trying to use the time to focus his thoughts. If he felt he had the time, he could go back to the hull access zone, reclaim his molecular probe, and hunt for another Overseer. Enough time might have passed that a request for the location of Finiksa might not appear to be related to the earlier request for Ruhtra’s location. But as he recalled the look on the old female’s face, George felt sure that there was no time even for that.

Gather the children. Gather the children.
The phrase kept running through George’s mind. For the rebellion leaders to have put out such a command to be passed on to everyone, they must have been convinced that the origin of the command could not be traced back to them by the Overseers. And since the Overseers had the ability to make any victim reveal his or her or
binn
secrets, the leaders must have determined that the Overseers would no longer have
time
to question enough Tenctons.

It was going to happen soon, George knew. Whatever was to happen, it would happen within a
crayg,
perhaps even a shift. Something was going to happen.

He stayed with the scavenger patrol, his mind churning with indecision. Should he return to Susan? No. She was on a work shift, and he would never be able to gain entrance to her station. Should he return to the hull and retrieve his probe to have as a weapon? No, that seemed wrong as well. If the rebels were going to gain control of the ship, then it would likely have to undergo a translation back into its superluminal mode shortly after so it could begin the long voyage back to Tencton. The hull would not be the place to be during that translation.