Contact (7 page)

A series of slams came from the Earth craft. The sound was muffled, almost below his hearing. “They’re closing the porthole coverings.”

Trist made a sound of annoyance. “Now we can’t see inside the craft.”

“No matter. We can still talk”—he started walking toward the Earth craft—“in person.”

“How?”

“By knocking on their front door. A smile and a gentle tone will work wonders, you’ll see.”

“Oh, my God! They’re
coming
!”

Ann’s shout drove a spear of pure terror into Jordan’s soul. She kept control somehow, saying calmly, “Which door?”

“One-left.”

Jordan cut short the security inspection she’d been performing
and headed to the door, where the Marines stood guard. Dillon-the-Irishman still hadn’t turned the AED into a weapon, but he promised her he was getting close. Either way, it was too late. The aircraft was as impenetrable as they could make it with limited materials and time.

Her stomach felt wobbly and her head hurt. She tried to work moisture into her mouth as she gripped the Taser in her sweaty hand. Outside the small, scratched window in the door, she saw the tall man pushing a portable stand toward the plane. Behind him walked the albino woman and the four guards.

With a clang, the stand settled against the side of the fuselage. Down below, the woman made hand signals. She wanted the door opened. Jordan frowned. “In your dreams, lady,” she muttered.

Clearly thwarted, the woman exchanged glances with the man. He tapped what looked like a touch screen on the ladder—pretty hi-tech for a loading platform—and the stand ascended. The guards remained on the ground level, watching the plane.

Jordan turned to Ann. “Throw the switch.”

Ann smiled. “With pleasure, Captain.”

With a grunt, Ann yanked on the door handle, cracking the door ajar. The movement deployed the emergency escape slide, as advertised. An explosive screeching hiss pinched Jordan’s eardrums as the life raft inflated instantly and formed a slide. Rock hard, it plowed into the ladder-platform, throwing it across the floor and scattering their would-be boarders like toy action figures.

“Woo hoo!” Ann yelled.

“You got that right.” Quickly, Jordan helped the flight attendant detach the slide-raft from the door. The discarded slide fell heavily to the floor as they pulled the door closed.

Ben shouted over the megaphone: “Flight Fifty-eight—one.
Hijackers—zero!” The passengers cheered, and the flight attendants gave each other high fives.

Ann was breathless, her eyes bright with triumph and adrenaline. Jordan suspected she herself looked the same way. “We can move slides from the other doors if we need to, Captain. I don’t think they’re going to try this one for a while.”

Jordan peeked outside. “I agree. They don’t look very good.” Three guards were kneeling over a fourth lying motionless on the floor as the tall, brown-haired man and the albino woman wobbled to their feet. Blood flowed from the pale-haired woman’s nose. She tried to stanch it with her bare hands. Her partner showed no outward signs of injury, but judging by his contorted mouth and surly expression, he was furious. And he turned his attention to Jordan.

Hard and obsidian-black, his eyes remained focused on her for longer than was comfortable, a formidable, discerning stare. But Jordan scowled back at him.
He
was the evil-doer.
He
was the one who stood between her and getting home. No way would she feel sorry for the guy.

The man turned to assist his wounded partner, and the guards lifted their comrade to his feet. As a group, they limped out of sight. “Good. They’re leaving,” Jordan said.

Natalie and Ben had joined her. “I doubt they’ll try the door again,” Ben said.

“If they wanted to, they could try the other doors, one at a time,” Jordan pointed out. “And if they force us to blow all the slides, we’ll have none.”

Natalie shrugged. “We’ll have to stay one step ahead. That’s all there is to it.”

“Exactly.” Jordan managed a smile. They were beginning to sound like a team. A good team. For the first time since plunging into this catastrophe, she felt that they might really have a chance at getting home safely.

At a cargo handler’s station behind a bank of computers hidden from the refugees’ ship, Kào took a careful breath to see how his ribs stood the expansion of an inhalation. They burned, but the act of breathing didn’t bring shooting pain, the sign of broken bones. Unfortunately, he was quite familiar with broken ribs and the healing process that followed. It was nice to think that, this time at least, his ribs had remained intact.

He reached for his comm and called medical. “Heest is down. Yes—from the security detail. He’s unconscious, bleeding from a gash on his scalp.”

With medical personnel on the way, Kào peered at Trist’s face. “When they get here, you go with them, too.”

She shook her head and mumbled something moist and unintelligible from behind a blood-smeared cloth.

“No arguments. Your nose is probably broken.”

She moved the sodden cloth aside. Blood gushed from her nostrils. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Is that so?” Trist replaced the cloth. Her red eyes narrowed to slits. “What about you?”

Yes, what about me?
He almost laughed. He hardly felt anything anymore—a blessed condition of the spirit. However, he kept that fact to himself.

Trist didn’t press him for an answer. He imagined she considered him an enigma, and he was more than happy to maintain that belief.

Heavily she sat on a chair and made a sound of reluctant assent. “They could have tried to talk to us before they attacked. Why didn’t they? What is their problem?”

“I don’t know. I’m not from their world.”
Or yours
, he thought.

“They won’t be able to stay on their craft much longer. Their water tanks are halfway to empty, and once the water is gone . . . well, the hygiene problems will be obvious. We
photo-sterilized them after the rescue. What microorganisms we didn’t kill I assume we can treat. But what if I’m wrong? We could lose them all to sickness. Such fools they are!” She pressed the cloth to her nose. “Use the sedative gas, Kào. It will simplify the evacuation.”

“Trist, in order to assure them that we won’t harm them, they should leave their ship of their own volition. Their trust will make the coming weeks inordinately more enjoyable. For me . . . and for you.” This duty would be a nuisance as it was, working with unruly refugees and a sullen Talagar. Kào didn’t need more trouble.

Her reddish irises flicked to his. She didn’t look convinced. But then her area of expertise was code breaking and languages; she worked with consonants and vowels, not people. In that respect, she was as out of her league as he was—a weapons officer handed the most peculiar of tasks.

Several crew members from medical arrived with a buoyant stretcher for the injured security guard. Heest, the guard, moaned as they fitted a brace around his neck and lifted him off the floor. His pink-white, almost transparent skin was chalky.

“Look at him. I’d reconsider the sedative gas if I were you,” Trist said over her shoulder before she walked somewhat unsteadily through the hatchway.

Exhaling, Kào ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. People were so complicated and exasperating. He was at his best when dealing with machines: computers that oversaw shipboard weapons systems and targeted objectives with cold, emotionless precision. If only it were possible to deal with life in the same way.

Ah, but he was trying. It was those around him who refused to behave rationally.

He dug his remote viewer from his belt and called up the live image of the exterior of the refugees’ vessel. All
seemed peaceful, but he had a feeling this was only the beginning of the trouble they’d cause him. And then there were the weeks, perhaps months, to look forward to before the refugees were brought to the starport from where they would be relocated.

But if he was to bolster his father’s good reputation, he needed the refugee situation to conclude peaceably, successfully—and soon.

Trist had gathered data during the brief time they had orbited Earth. Using that database, and what she’d collected from eavesdropping on conversations within the vessel, she said she’d be able to create a program to teach the refugees Key, the everyday language of the Alliance learned by all in addition to their own local planetary dialects.

When she returned from her nose repairs in medical, she went immediately to work on her computer in a section of the cargo bay hidden from the refugee vessel. Paler than even her normal coloring, she put the final touches on the program she’d created as three security guards waited silently nearby. Heest was done for the day. Possibly the week.

Trist’s face contorted—in concentration, Kào guessed, not from the newly fused cartilage in her bruised nose.

“Update me,” he said.

“Almost there.” She continued typing. “I’ve completed the alphabetic conversion—theirs to ours and back again. But I’ll need both phonetic confirmation and access to their personal computers before I finalize my instructional lessons.” She set a small rectangular box on the table. There was a soft whirring noise as a door in the container opened. From the shallow inner compartment she extracted two pairs of conversion-glasses, sleek and dark. “Using these, whatever is said is written down and translated into their language and ours—Key.”

“I read the words off the inside of the lenses,” he confirmed.

“Yes. The text appears to float in front of your field of vision, between you and your subject. Even if you turn your head, the caption will remain in sight. I have only a few of these glasses at my disposal.” She shrugged. “Just as well. A handheld aural translator works better. But until I program enough handhelds—hundreds, it would seem—the glasses are our only choice.”

“No matter. They will make communication possible. I, for one, would like to avoid further misunderstandings. I suspect you would, too.”

Trist’s fingers crept toward her nose, her expression souring.

“Initial contact with any people cannot be a hasty process. I’ll have to take my time. I expect it will take a while to explain the situation. Then I’ll have to initiate the evacuation. I’ll call you before I let anyone off the vessel, though.”

“You’re going alone?”

“I’m going alone.”

A guard of Talagar ancestry named Poul protested. Kào knew that he was thinking of his partner, Heest, in medical with a concussion. “But, Mr. Vantaar-Moray, you asked for protection.”

“I know what I asked of you. But circumstances have changed. The refugees reacted the way they did only because they’re overwhelmed and frightened. If they see I’m unarmed and alone, I believe they’ll listen to reason. I have my comm. If I have any trouble, you’ll be the first to know. Trist, you remain here at the workstation and monitor the Earth craft remotely. Poul, you and your men take a position from where you can keep a watch on the vessel.”

Poul nodded curtly and left with the three remaining security guards. Kào took the container with the glasses and
began walking toward the refugees’ craft. Once in the main part of the bay, Kào commenced the plan he had plotted out during Trist’s absence. Reaching for the nearest wall-mounted touch-screen computer, he entered a confidential access code followed by a lengthy command, and the interior and exterior lights on the Earth vessel flickered on.

Power, he thought. The gift of normalcy. It was one of the ways he hoped to show the refugees that he meant no harm.

A few window shades covering the portholes lifted but slammed closed just as quickly. Undeterred, he began walking toward the vessel. The blond woman—he’d get her attention first. She was the Earth people’s leader—he was sure of it. Her expression of triumph as the inflatable device roared out of the hatch wasn’t one he’d soon forget. Yet her actions could be interpreted as nerve, a willingness to fight despite overwhelming odds. Not only had her defensive measures led to cracking his ribs and breaking Trist’s nose, she’d knocked out a security guard who had to be twice her size, all to defend her vessel, which she’d probably assumed—rashly—was under attack. But he was going to give her a second chance to act civilized.

If she didn’t kill him outright, he’d try his damnedest to woo her and her compatriots off the ship.

Inside the main cabin of the 747, the lights had come back on. Their captors had turned on the power!

Why? Jordan thought. Did they want to buy trust in order to lure their captives off the plane? They were armed; they could have easily chosen force to ferret the passengers out of the aircraft. But they hadn’t. Yet. Still, she couldn’t afford to take any chances until she knew what they were all about.

A burning smell surfaced, mixed with other, nastier odors—the result of stagnant air. Natalie swore. “The electricity—it turned on the ovens, too!” She sprinted away with Ann and several other flight attendants to secure the galleys, killing a potential fire hazard.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Jordan told Ben. “If the ovens work, maybe the radios do, too. I’ll send out as many emergency signals as I can—and in as many forms as I can.”

“Call if you need me.”

“Will do. Meanwhile, keep minding the store down here.”

“Sure,” he said, tugging on the cuffs of his sleeves, something she noticed he did when he was nervous.

She paused by the stairwell to the upper deck, one hand resting on the railing. “You okay?” she asked him.

“Well.” He swallowed twice. “I don’t want to die.”

She held herself very still. “None of us do.”

He hesitated before answering. “I believe in heaven, an afterlife. You know. But what if there isn’t one? I mean, what if your soul just blows out and you cease to exist?” He squeezed the handrail. His knuckles were white. “I don’t want that.”

As the mother of a child that she very much wanted to see again, Jordan didn’t know what to say. It’d be easy to break down, to voice her fears, but she couldn’t. She was the leader, and she needed to appear strong, confident, even when she felt like curling into a ball and weeping. “It’s normal to be scared,” she said tentatively.