Heaven's Fall (21 page)

She was also wrong. She and Pav closed the door around eleven
P.M.
local time—as good as any, given their “space lag,” as Xavier called it. Rachel snuggled against Pav, who went to sleep as fast as a human being could.

While Rachel lay there for a good long time

She carried no watch—none of the HBs did—but there was a clock on the nightstand, and it said 1:27. She had not slept at all so far, and it didn’t appear that she would.

It was frustrating. Having Edgar Chang on board meant that her team had taken its first public step toward accomplishing its mission . . . and having Xavier returning from
Adventure
with an armful of equipment, and a knowing smirk, meant that the less-public plan was now in motion, too.

All they truly needed was for Sanjay to get well. Or to recover enough to be movable. Having seen him, however, she had to be realistic: He wasn’t going anywhere soon.

The brief contacts with Harley Drake and Keanu had been sort of reassuring—Rachel hadn’t realized how truly disconnected she had been feeling.

So why the restlessness? And how the hell did Pav manage to lie there snoozing like an exhausted infant? Like Yahvi as a baby—

Yahvi, of course, was another contributor to Rachel’s lack of sleep, with her chorus of sneezes, sniffles, and moans heard from the next room. Taj had seen the afternoon signs of an oncoming cold and prescribed spicy food, but Yahvi had rejected it—not that Rachel blamed her. (The Keanu diet was bland by any standards, especially the Houston side of it. Yahvi was just as likely to eat a bowl of live insects as a dish of hot curry.)

Yahvi seemed to be quiet now, thank goodness. Rachel had never been a victim of insomnia—she had even been able to fall asleep easily on the hard-packed nanodirt of the Keanu habitat during her first months, before the Bangalore teams “created” hammocks and actual mattresses.

Of course, she had been fourteen then . . . and was thirty-four now.

Exhale. Close eyes. Empty the mind . . . these were all meditation exercises Pav and others had taught her, and they had proved useful, for meditation. As for sleep, she would see—

Then she heard—and felt—a
whump!

It was significant enough that it forced her to open her eyes, and wait. What could it be? It reminded her of her childhood in Houston, a Dumpster being emptied early on trash day—

If so, that would be the end of it.

Then she heard a second
whump
, and a third, and a series of fast rattling vibrations.

Pav sat up. “Hear that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m surprised you did.”

“You know me—” He went to the door and paused before opening it, listening for activity in the hallway.

“I want to check on Yahvi,” Rachel said.

Pav opened the door and their daughter was there, red-eyed and miserable looking. “Mommy,” she said.

As Pav slipped past, Rachel drew Yahvi into the room and sat her on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Look at me!”

Rachel had to stifle a smile and a laugh. She felt like a terrible mother, but Yahvi’s countenance was comical—red runny nose, her normally pretty blue eyes all bloodshot, her hair a tangled mess. She looked like a cartoon version of herself. “You’ve looked better,” she said, “but it’s just a cold.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you stay warm, drink fluids, rest for three days, and it will be gone.”

“For you, maybe. What if I don’t have immunity? What if this makes me really sick?”

That troublesome thought had been simmering in Rachel’s mind, likely another cause of her sleeplessness. She placed the back of her hand on Yahvi’s forehead, the way her mother had when she was a child. “You don’t have a fever.”

“Like that’s really scientific. God.”

“We’ll have one of the Indian doctors check you in the morning.”

“That fills me with confidence.”

Rachel had to work to keep from laughing again. It was so . . . typical of Yahvi, or any girl her age—indeed, of Rachel herself at that age—to inflate every minor discomfort into a case of the plague. Obviously the girl was ill, and, never having experienced anything like a common terrestrial cold, clearly struggling with it. But she was strong, healthy, and likely to be over it in forty-eight hours or less.

Falling into wise mother mode, as Pav called it, also had the benefit of distracting Rachel from her own situation . . . the lack of sleep, the uncertainty about their next step, and what the hell were those sounds that reminded her of explosions and machine guns?

She had just tucked Yahvi back into her bed when Pav returned, meeting her in the empty hallway. “It’s over, whatever it was. The guards seemed relaxed.”

“Pav, you know what it sounded like.”

“Completely. It sounded like three grenades or mortars, followed by machine-gun fire.”

“So—”

“Hey, friends, what’s up?” Xavier poked his head out of his room, blinking sleepily. He was wearing nothing but baggy shorts, allowing his notable belly to precede him wherever he turned.

“Investigating a disturbance,” Pav said.

“A what?”

Pav looked at Rachel. “What sounded like explosions. Apparently they were not.”

Xavier shrugged and scratched his hind parts—never, to Rachel’s eyes, an attractive gesture. “I didn’t hear anything. You guys woke me up.”

“Well, then,” Rachel said, “go back to sleep.”

“As I said,” Pav told him. “It’s probably nothing.”

Okay, late update:

We have an opening, a good chance.

Can’t tell you more. But watch this space—

Until it goes dark. That will be a sign.

COLIN EDGELY TO THE KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 14, 2040

But it
was
something.

Zeds had been told—repeatedly, by Rachel and Pav and Taj, and at least two other Indian officials—that he was not a prisoner, that the chamber was closed for his protection . . . but not locked.

Nevertheless, the first time he was left alone in the chamber, he had tried the latch . . . and found it locked. He had not attempted to force it that first night, preferring to rest and gather strength, and to more closely observe the workings of the mechanism when he was released the next day, and locked up again that evening.

Zeds wasn’t convinced that he could be locked into the chamber; he possessed sheer muscular strength far beyond that of any human. His extra arms provided additional leverage, another force multiplier. He could probably have torn the metal and glass door off its hinges.

But Zeds also possessed a weapon common to Sentries—a tool vest, as Zachary Stewart had named it twenty years past. It was more than that, of course . . . it was a garment that Sentries generally wore when anticipating lengthy excursions outside the sea (which was what they called any aquatic environment larger than a human bathtub). Most of the “pockets” held gas and chemicals that, when combined, created a liquid that could be breathed by a Sentry who would otherwise collapse.

(Harley Drake said it reminded him of the spare oxygen tanks firefighters carried, an image it took Zeds months to understand: What were these “fires” and how where they “fought”?)

The vest also contained any number of helpful items, such as several translating devices, weapons, and tools.

It bulked up under the overall environment suit Zeds was wearing for landing and other excursions and was actually rather uncomfortable. But he had agreed to that because he and Rachel anticipated situations where he might be out of the sea for ten hours or more, far beyond the support limits of a vest.

So, on night two, feeling constrained and also a bit annoyed that he had been eliminated from Rachel’s press conference—she and Pav had told him repeatedly that humans might react badly to his presence, and that they would have to be cautious—

Zeds believed differently; half of planet Earth was under the domination of a dangerous alien race! One four-armed ally shouldn’t frighten anyone, and might even give some hope that the universe wasn’t completely hostile!

He would not blatantly contradict Rachel and Pav; they were good friends, though not, perhaps, as close as Xavier, and certainly not as close as Yahvi, who had grown up with Sentries.

But Zeds felt quite comfortable engaging in activities that had not been specifically forbidden.

Besides, he required less rest than humans. He was no longer capable of entertaining himself in isolation, even with various items in his vest.

He was not a prisoner, so if the door to his chamber happened to be somehow stuck, he was within his rights to open it, was he not?

Which he did, using one of his tools to disassemble the closure mechanism, and another one to remove the hinges.

He had a moment of concern about the depletion of his semiaquatic environment . . . the moist atmosphere quickly dissipated, but that could easily be replaced. The pool in which he rested remained full; it did not evaporate or boil off.

And while he did not anticipate hours of freedom, he chose to wear the external suit. It turned what was likely to be a mundane excursion into a bit of an adventure.

Zeds had heard many tales of human space exploration from Harley Drake and even Dale Scott. He especially enjoyed Drake’s account of a “space walk” outside the International Space Station, wrapped in an environment suit, floating at the end of a tether, seeing the Earth hundreds of kilometers below you . . . that was what this felt like.

He had barely taken half a dozen steps when he detected the first anomalous sound—possibly an explosion.

He had prepared himself for an unpleasant encounter with one or more Indian Air Force police, but none showed. He was able to leave the hospital building by a side exit and walk freely into the Bangalore night.

He opened his mask and his vest to fully experience the environment. It was warm and humid, he knew, by human standards . . . notably different from the temperature and humidity the Houston-Bangalores preferred in the Keanu habitat. To an amphibian Sentry, however, evolved in an aquatic environment, the air felt cold and thin . . . likely what a human would feel walking on Mars (well, not that bad; Zeds and Harley Drake had spent considerable time educating him about the difference).

But he was not able to truly enjoy the experience; he was troubled by the nature of the anomalous sound.

There was a fence along the rear perimeter of the hospital—a wire mesh of some kind, its sections strung between metal poles. The fence had been damaged—one entire section had been blown open.

Zeds sensed a team beyond the fence—saw shadows, felt footfalls, heard breathing from multiple beings, half a dozen at least. Their guards? Or assailants.

To his left and rear he detected other humans—four of them—in a position that suggested these were his guards.

There was a flash of light followed by a concussion that flattened the guards and rocked Zeds.

Then a third explosion—there was no longer any doubt about what these were—blew open the fence. The figures from beyond rushed toward it, all of them armed. All were humans with fit profiles wearing black clothing, helmets, and goggles of some kind, likely for night vision.

Three quickly slipped around the building, leaving Zeds to confront one of them.

Had Zeds not been traveling in an environment suit . . . had this encounter taken place on Keanu, for example . . . he might have triggered his vest, with the inflatable, expandable fluid sac frightening his opponent.

And he would have simply opened all four arms, swiftly wrapped up the human, then collapsed into transport mode and rolled away with him.

The suit prevented that. And he had no use for a captive. This man was an assailant, and so were his companions.

He removed two tools from his suit. Just as the opponent saw him—and reacted with obvious surprise, firing a wild burst with his weapon—Zeds lashed out with upper and lower right arms, each with its own blade, neatly dividing the opponent into three sections.

My first kill,
he thought. So fast and so easy, little more than a second.

Sentries, he had learned, from Houston-Bangalores, from brief encounters with the Skyphoi, and especially from his own kind, had a history of violence—at least on the long-lost home world, where limited resources created a culture where the struggle for dominance and status was the same as that for survival.

A Sentry had killed Patrick Downey, an American astronaut exploring Keanu twenty years back; another had killed Megan Stewart. Zeds’s twice-removed connate, Dash, had killed at least one human as well.

Yes, a history that he now shared . . . it was actually difficult to suppress the surge of sheer pride this swift kill triggered—followed almost immediately by shame. (He had grown up with humans, some of them eager to remind him of past Sentry crimes.)

What if he had erred? What did he truly know about this human’s motives or actions?

What if he had made matters worse?

Two more explosions, one right after the other, convinced him his actions had been correct . . . that these men were attackers. Pieces of the hospital building filled the air, raining down on Zeds. His e-suit provided a great deal of protection, but he still found himself taking shelter. Reflexes again.

Then, equally reflexive, he was in motion, running toward the site of the explosions and almost colliding with two of the attackers as they attempted to enter the hospital through a door they had blown open.

Both men reacted with surprise, possibly confusion—for them, fatal delays.

Zeds slashed first right to left, then left to right. Both men were down, in three pieces each.

The view inside the hospital was disturbing—two Indian Air Force guards in bloodied pieces, killed by the explosion. Zeds wondered about Rachel and Pav, Yahvi and Xavier—and Sanjay. Were they safe?

What other actions could he take? There had been three other attackers . . . where were they?