Heaven's Fall (42 page)

And with their capture, to finish at least one of them before they landed.

“Okay, you probably saw, we’re being escorted,” Jo Zhang said. She finally opened the cockpit door ten minutes after the destruction of the decoy plane and the turn toward the coast.

“By whom?” Chang said. He seemed the most shocked of the group.

“Those are U.S. Air Force planes,” Jo said.

“Old ones, too,” Pav said. “F-22s. They were flying those when I was a kid.”

Rachel was slumped in her seat, rubbing her temples. Xavier knew that look; he had seen it frequently in the endless, contentious planning meetings for the
Adventure
flight. “What about Benvides and Quentin?” she said.

Jo hesitated. “I could tell you I don’t know, but you don’t need bullshit right now. Their plane was destroyed.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” Edgely said.

Even from the rear of the cabin, dividing his gaze between the proteus next to him and the backs of everyone’s heads, Xavier could see that Jo’s blunt statement had not made Rachel happy. Her eyes filling with tears, she was shaking her head with great agitation. “Did we have any warning?” she said.

“Nothing,” Jo said. “One moment we were doing just fine, preparing to break off, the next . . .”

The only thing keeping Rachel from getting out of her seat and confronting Jo was Yahvi’s condition. The girl was sitting next to Rachel, hunched, probably hugging a pillow to keep from screaming. Rachel put her arm around Yahvi and leaned in to her.

Questions were still flying around the cockpit, from Chang and Edgely and Pav to Jo. None of the answers provided any information to Xavier . . . nothing he didn’t already know, that is.

They were screwed.

Jo finally said, “I’ll let you know the moment we learn anything. Right now, we’re just following our escorts.”

Leaving his machine to its final assembly, Xavier had started moving forward. “Any idea where?” he said.

“We’re flying north over the Los Angeles basin,” Jo said. “Steve thinks we’re headed for Edwards, since that’s the nearest military base.”

Xavier sat down next to Rachel. He’d always wanted to see Edwards. Living in Houston on the fringes of the space program and its culture of aviation, Xavier had grown quite familiar with the famous California base and its history of exotic aircraft and space shuttle landings.

But not like this.

“Will you be able to get anything finished?” Rachel was asking him.

“One of the packages. Maybe.”

“It should be—”

“The second one.”

Rachel nodded, as if to say,
Thank God someone is doing what I need
. “Should you be—?”
Up here with me,
she was going to say.

“It’s on auto. I’m going right back. I just wanted to”—he shrugged—“see how you’re doing.” He inclined his head toward Yahvi, who had herself bent pretzel-like, head bowed, eyes closed, hugging a pillow to her chest.

Rachel didn’t bother to fake a smile. “We’ll just see, won’t we?”

Colin Edgely had been peering out the right-side windows. “Those are F-22s, for sure,” he said.

“That’s what I said,” Pav told him.

“Sorry, mate.” The Aussie smiled. “A bit nervous, I guess. Trying to find the silver lining.”

“How’s that going for you?” Xavier said. He couldn’t help it.

“Those planes got close enough to show that the pilots were human. How about that?”

“That’s good how?” Pav was taking up the argument.

Edgely was game, however. Xavier was fascinated by the way people responded to stress—including himself. He knew that he tended to wind down, to feel sleepy, like a small animal in the jaws of a larger, hungrier one. This couldn’t be true, of course; such a trait would have evolved out of existence due to the early deaths of its holders. So, fine, then, call it calm in the face of danger.

Others, like Rachel and Pav, got tense and couldn’t hide it.

Some, like Chang and Yahvi, became tense and quiet.

Then there were those, like Edgely, who just got stupid. “It means we’re not dealing with Aggregates.” Not until we land, Xavier thought. As did everyone who heard this.

“It’s Edwards,” Jo told them, popping her head out of the cockpit for a moment. “On the ground in ten minutes.”

“Then what?” Pav said. He stood up and stretched. To Xavier, he seemed spring-loaded, ready to fight . . . someone.

“Well,” Rachel said, “if they wanted us dead, they would have just blown us out of the sky like the other plane. So I’m guessing it’s prison and interrogation.”

“Probably some kind of show, too,” Edgely said.

“Colin, please stop speaking,” Rachel said.

Chang finally spoke. “I’m guessing we should all belt in.”

“Thank you for that,” Pav said, not hiding the sarcasm.

“Who speaks for us?” Chang said.

“Why would it matter?” Rachel said.

Chang turned toward her. Xavier could see genuine fear on the man’s face. “Let me rephrase that: How are we to act? Do you plan to cooperate, or resist?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Rachel said. “Are you in a hurry?”

“We might have different agendas,” Chang said.

“Meaning you’ll, what? Surrender? Rat us out?” Hearing this, Xavier remembered that Chang knew something of their plans. His lassitude vanished, replaced by fear: Even in 2019, it was possible to drug a prisoner and get him to say every secret he knew. He couldn’t imagine that the Aggregates were less capable.

He glanced back at the proteus, still laboring away. The second package wasn’t going to be done, anyway, but Xavier hated the idea that the Aggregates would know all about it the moment they shot his brain full of truth serum or the Reiver equivalent.

“I can try to bargain,” Chang was saying. “My government might have some leverage. The question is . . . do you want to be included? Or is it everyone for himself?”

“Given that we have no weapons,” Rachel said, “no idea where we are, and no cavalry to ride to the rescue, I am eager to tell you, sure, do what you can.”

Even with Rachel’s cold, accurate description of the situation, to Xavier, fighting still sounded like a better idea than simply taking what the Aggregates handed out.

Xavier sat through the by-now-familiar touchdown and used the longer-than-expected taxi to squeeze a few more precious minutes out of his 3-D printer. The package was not complete; he would need another hour, perhaps two. And clearly he wasn’t going to get it.

He hoped Rachel and Pav had a Plan C. “We’re not going to the main base,” Pav said. “They’re taking us to the north end.”

“Probably more secure,” Edgely said. He had recovered from Rachel’s rebuke. “And look at that!” He pointed out the window. In spite of his other concerns, Xavier looked, too, seeing a giant cube-shaped structure off to the north and west. It appeared to be featureless, dun-colored, twenty stories for sure, three or four times taller than any of the more normal-looking towers and office buildings that made up the Edwards main base. “Some kind of Aggregate thing, you suppose?”

“Tell you what,” Pav said. “Let’s just ask when we have time.”

The plane stopped in front of a weathered, ancient hangar. Xavier decided to keep the proteus running—what the hell.

Rachel and Pav were out of their seats instantly. Pav went to the door. “Can you see who’s out there?” Rachel said. She was headed to the rear of the plane.

“People,” Pav said. “No Reivers yet.”

Rachel patted Zeds on his massive shoulder, then crouched next to Xavier. “How are we doing?”

Xavier chanced a look and saw the expected armed guards, four helmeted U.S. military types with weapons waiting where the Gulfstream’s door and ramp would land. Behind them were half a dozen other humans, three of them in strange black uniforms. “Not finished.”

“Shit.” Rachel turned to Zeds, then back to Xavier. “Keep it running as long as possible. We don’t know if they’ll realize what it is.”

As she stood up, and Zeds began the process of standing up and moving, the cockpit door opened. Steve and Jo emerged, looking shaken. “Let us go first,” Jo said.

Except for Xavier, they were all out of their seats as the door opened, letting in fresh desert air. Such a pretty day, Xavier thought, so much more inviting than Bangalore.

Such a shame.

As Steve and Jo went out, Xavier could hear harsh voices and words from outside. Xavier could make out words. “Down!” “Hands up!”

Two soldiers entered, weapons tracking from person to person. Yahvi whimpered. “For Christ’s sake,” Pav said. “We’re coming out.”

At that moment the soldiers registered Zeds’s presence. One of them shouted a muffled, “Jesus!” and backed up, bumping into Edgar Chang.

The other soldier misinterpreted that as Chang attacking the soldier, slamming him with the butt of his rifle. “Hey!” Pav shouted, grabbing the first soldier. Suddenly four men were shoving and shouting—the two soldiers, Pav, and Edgely. Chang lay slumped in a seat.

“Leave them alone!” Rachel was shouting. “We aren’t resisting!”

Xavier glanced at the proteus. He still needed more time—

Another human entered, a young man in black. “Oh, no,” he said, swiftly inserting himself between the combatants and preventing real injury, not that it was possible, in the tight space, for anyone to do much damage with bare hands. The soldiers had not fired their weapons.

“Everyone, I am Counselor Nigel.” The young man’s voice was confident, relaxed, as if he broke up fights every day. Perhaps the English accent helped. From what Xavier could see he was thin, south of thirty, the kind of person who handles large sums of money with little awareness. “These are my companions, Counselors Cory and Ivetta.” Two more young people in black had crowded into the cabin. They were young, too: a thickset man and a petite, dark-haired woman.

Meanwhile, the soldiers backed themselves up against the cockpit bulkhead. “We welcome the crew of
Adventure
to Free Nation U.S.”

Rachel slid forward. “Wow, so polite, considering you just shot down one of our planes and killed two of our friends.”

“That was regrettable and avoidable,” Counselor Nigel said. “We mean you no harm.”

“Which is why our pilots are kneeling at gunpoint.”

Xavier glanced out the window. Steve and Jo were kneeling on the tarmac, hands behind their heads.

“These are precautions that will end as soon as possible.”

Rachel was in Counselor Nigel’s face. “Do you want to put the handcuffs on us here and march us out one at a time, or wait until we’re outside?”

Counselor Nigel stared at her for a moment, then chose—wisely, Xavier thought—to drop the pretense of normality. “One at a time,” he said. He turned to Chang and Edgely. “You two will go first.”

Edgely helped Chang to the door. The older man looked badly shaken and unsteady. “Then you, Captain Stewart, followed by your daughter, then Mr. Radhakrishnan,” Counselor Nigel said.

Rachel took Yahvi’s hand, partly to reassure the girl, partly, Xavier suspected, to show a bit more defiance. “Better leave Zeds for last,” Rachel said to Counselor Nigel. “He takes a while.”

Then she and Yahvi went through the door.

Xavier glanced at the readouts. He still needed more time, though less than he’d thought earlier. That was one of the problems with the proteus—lack of precision. Ten minutes, possibly.

And the three officers were working their way toward him. “Mr. Toutant,” Counselor Nigel said.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Would you come with us, please?”

“I’m not actually feeling that good,” Xavier said, improvising only slightly. The tense maneuvers had left him momentarily queasy and dizzy. “Can I just rest here for a while?”

“You’d be more comfortable in quarters.”

“You mean jail?”

“You’re not going to jail.”

“Great, then I’d like to rent a car. I’ve always wanted to see L.A. Maybe you guys could help me with that.”

Counselor Nigel’s patience expired. He gestured to his companions and the soldiers, who started for Xavier.

Zeds, who had been silent and motionless throughout the whole exchange, stepped forward, blocking the five assailants as easily as an NFL lineman would a group of peewees.

“Mr. Toutant, tell it to step aside!”

“Zeds,” Xavier said, trying not to laugh, “try to get out of their way.”

“I am,” Zeds said, his voice booming in the cabin. Xavier wasn’t actually sure that Zeds had deliberately gotten in Nigel’s way . . . apparently Nigel and his cronies were confused, too—or they might have shot the Sentry.

Or tried to. Xavier wasn’t sure gunfire would be an effective way to stop the big alien.

While the six beings were trying to sort themselves out, Xavier watched the printer and its line to the Plan B container, weighing the moment when he would have to disconnect it.

Minutes. “Hey, Counselor Nigel, everyone. I think I’m feeling better, so let’s just all relax—”

Bing!
It took Xavier a considerable amount of willpower to keep from looking at the proteus.

Zeds’s struggles had ceased. He was now past Counselor Nigel and passing between the two soldiers, who were keeping their weapons trained on him.