Sly Mongoose (25 page)

He looked at her, confused. “I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?”

Katerina sighed. “Timas, it’s a pejorative. My father’s a ‘foojie.’ My mother’s from New Anegada. They settled here. Dad was a refugee, he came from Astragalai. He fled both the League and the Gahe.”

“Gahe?” Timas asked.

“Aliens. With tentacled tongues.” She shuddered and made a face. “They use the tongues to pick things up and build things. Nasty.”

“But he’s seen them?” Timas wanted to know. That sounded similar to the alien he saw on the surface. He wanted to know more. It was almost a forbidden topic on Yatapek. The scars of their history still ran too close to the surface. But he’d seen one, and he wanted to know more
about them. His whole life had been turned upside down by that glimpse. And his world was threatened by another.

“Gahe, yes. His family used to be owned by a prominent household on the planet. After emancipation he spent time in a human reservation, one that was liberated by Ragamuffin forces during the uprising.”

Timas didn’t see why the word irritated her so much. It was commonly used. Just like calling Aeolians zombies. “What do you call us?”

“What do you mean?”

“We call Aeolians ‘zombies’ sometimes. What do you call us?”

“Poor.” Katerina waved her hand and the door opened. Timas didn’t have time to snap back, they stood at the entry to the control center.

Seven miners sat at real control panels, complete with multiple screens set into the wooden-looking surfaces. “Can’t they just use their minds, like you do?” Timas wanted to know.

“They could,” Katerina said. “The build date on the facility is recent enough, it crawls with overlaid information. But I think the crew here uses the backups. Just in case.”

“She’s right.” Achmed sat in the center of the room, monitoring everything. “It’s a quirk of mine, mainly. I used to be a shiphand aboard a Ragamuffin merchantship doing the upstream run from New Anegada through the DMZ to Bujantjor. Raga don’t trust lamina a hundred percent.”

“Why not?” Timas asked. He’d thought they all pretty much lived in their heads, computers handing them visions of the world around them. This was the first Aeolian he’d met who said otherwise.

“The Satraps used to be able to take it over, used it to crawl up into your head.”

“But they’re all gone now. Suicided, killed, or disappeared,” Timas said.

“Doesn’t mean the risk is gone.” Achmed shrugged. “Call me old fashioned. Traditional.” He grinned.

Katerina walked over to a man who was using a pair of joysticks. “Really?” She was answering a question he’d asked her. “Sure, I’d love to.”

The man stood up and waved at the joysticks. “It’s the last run.”

“What’s she doing?” Timas asked Achmed.

“Here.” He tapped a screen and dragged the edge larger so that it took up the better part of the control panel surface between them.

They looked down at the surface of Chilo. Timas looked up, and Katerina had closed her eyes, accessing information on how to operate the device. She grabbed the joysticks and the surface jumped toward them.

A giant, serrated revolving band drilled into the ground and the whole picture vibrated as rock and debris rolled into the mouth of the hopper.

“The crew thought that someone honored by chance to be an avatar should also get honored with the chance to bring up the last load. She’s safe. It’s easy enough to operate.” Achmed grinned. “Just needs a human nudge and oversight.”

Five minutes later the crew broke out into applause as the dredge pulled the band back itself, like a giant tongue, and the ground dropped away. It began its slow climb back up.

Katerina let go of the joysticks and shook the controller’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Our pleasure.”

Achmed cocked his head. “Well, it’s going to be a few minutes while it rises. Lunch.”

Katerina walked past Timas, and he hurried up to catch her. “Are you ignoring me?”

She walked faster. “You asked if we used any nasty words to describe you. As if that somehow might excuse your using similar words. That’s deflecting the issue, Timas.”

“I’m sorry!”

She ignored the apology.

Timas sat at the table with the crew, but he was an outsider. Katerina laughed at unspoken jokes shared between them in the silent air, and spoke to them about cities and places he’d never been.

At least the small boxes of tasty orange-flavored chicken and rice with fried vegetables filled him.

Achmed must have noticed the weary look Timas had, because he leaned over. “The carrier will be here in the morning. You’ll be home soon enough. It’s all okay.”

But Timas wasn’t so sure. Not after what he’d been through.

T
he two pipiltin and their escorts, warriors, Ollin, and Pepper had all gathered by the elevator exit to the topmost layer of Yatapek. Pepper figured that two hundred stood ready. The beginnings of the coup, all ready to move out.

“Pepper!” Itotia pushed her way through the crowd. “You can’t do this. Where’s Ollin?”

“On the elevator, coming up.” The groundsuit whined as it restarted and walked to meet her halfway through the loose crowd.

“I told him to wait,” Itotia muttered. “But maybe he was right, and we should have tried sooner.”

“What?” Pepper saw that some of the warriors paid very close attention to their conversation.

“We can’t do this anymore. It would split the city, and we need to remain whole. We can’t afford a coup, and more importantly, we simply have no time for something like this.”

“What happened?”

“The Swarm is moving out in an armada of airships. We’re getting radio reports from private airships passing by. It’s coming toward us.”

“When will it get here?”

“Between twenty-four and forty hours. They’re staying together, but the ships that spotted them say it looks like hundreds of airships are flying in formation, maybe thousands. We’re offering refuge for noninfected ships and people.”

Everyone nearby muttered. Pepper ignored the word spreading through the crowd. “You
have
to get xocoyotzin on the ground, now, if you all want to live. That was my reason for following your husband. We have to confront your leaders. There’s a chance the Swarm may go straight to trying to find the aliens and leave your city alone, but it’s not likely.”

“I can do that. Let me talk to Camaxtli. I’m like a daughter to him, and Ollin really rubs him the wrong way.”

“And then we need real battle plans for their attack.” Pepper raised his
voice for all to hear. “Every person in this city needs to be armed. Every nook and cranny has to be a place to kill the infected. Fallback points, zones, you name it. The Swarm must pay such a high cost, it decides you are not worth it.”

“You think we stand a chance against it?” a warrior asked.

“If you throw yourselves into it.” Pepper looked at them all. “When I faced the Swarm in orbit, it asked for a truce from me. It was scared of the price a direct fight would be. I say you force it to make the same offer again.”

The warriors nodded. “Yes. Make it pay for every inch.”

“We need to start getting weapons made.” He wanted people armed with the billhooks he’d shown them how to make. “And women and children armed. We have little time to prepare.”

Itotia nodded. “We start spreading the word. And Pepper, I promise we’ll get xocoyotzin on the ground now, just as soon as the weather lets us drop the elevator and anchor. We’ve circled around the Great Storm to the point that we’re close to where the cuatetl is. It is doable.”

She left, and Pepper looked around at his new army.

And smiled.

T
imas woke up to the sound of thunder, and then a series of thuds. He shot up out of his bunk and stood up, swaying to the motion of the carrier.

“It’s okay.” Katerina held on to the side of the bed. “They’re adjusting height.”

The carrier was about an hour away and had hailed them, Katerina said. “We should eat breakfast, and then go meet it. And you should put your shirt back on.”

He’d been too hot last night, and only she knew how to change the room’s temperature. Timas pulled his shirt on. She was still angry with him.

Several scrambled eggs and bacon strips tasted heavenly. And there were sticky buns, sugar-crusted. As well as biscuits, which he piled with butter and honey.

The crew crammed in the galley, in good spirits, talking about what they’d do with their money as they rotated out and the next group came in.

“We save some of the good stuff for the last big meal,” one of them grinned through his eggs. “A celebration.”

They talked about pools and beaches in bubbles floating near their cities. A few said they wanted to take trips up elevator strings to space.

These hardworking, dust-covered men, were rich beyond Timas’s imagination. And they were hardly at the apex of Aeolian life.

They called his people poor.

Katerina hadn’t even been trying to be cruel, it was just a fact, he thought.

He left his last biscuit uneaten and returned to the room while Katerina was distracted and laughing with one of the crew. He closed the bathroom door behind him.

Things seemed normal. The madness of the pirates, of Pepper and his crazy stories, aliens on the surface, that all felt distant, like it had hardly happened when he thought about it now here in the strange calm of the
giant processor. Maybe the Aeolians had contained the Swarm with their advanced technologies.

If so, maybe xocoyotzin would be needed again.

All those sweets.

He had overeaten, and he needed to take care of it.

Katerina kicked the door in and grabbed his collar. “No you don’t.”

Timas squirmed and slapped her hands away. Light from the room glinted off her silvered eye as she reached back in and pulled him out. “You need to stop doing that.”

“First you’re angry with me, now you’re here dragging me out of the bathroom. Suppose I wasn’t just standing there . . .”

“About to throw up again? I had a feeling.”

“Leave me alone. You don’t understand.”

“That you need to be thin to fit in those suits? I understand. But you’re damaging yourself, Timas. You can’t do this.”

“I have responsibilities to the city.”

She hadn’t let go of his collar. “When we get to the city, on the carrier, we’re going to get you to see a doctor. There are things that we can do for you.”

“Oh sure. And do those things come free of charge?” Timas twisted free. “I am, as you pointed out, poor. We can’t pay to have technology injected into us that turns our bodies into perfect figures.”

“Be a dick about it, Timas. Just keep at it. I can’t fix everyone at Yat-apek, but I
do
have enough to help you.”

Timas walked out of the room. “I don’t need your pity.”

“You never had it.” The hull shuddered. Katerina paused to look up into the air. “The carrier is here.”

They dropped the argument to leave the room. As they walked down the corridor Katerina frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Timas asked.

“It’s weird. The carrier isn’t talking to us, usually by now their crew would be part of the immediate Consensus. Or at least all over the lamina.”

Katerina raised a hand.

“It’s the Swarm, isn’t it?” Timas said.

“I don’t know, but let’s go to the control room.”

“Good idea.”

They detoured. Katerina led the way, as Timas had only figured out the relatively straight route from the galley to their room. Achmed, alone in the control room, didn’t even look up when they entered.

He slapped the console and swore.

“Swarm.” Katerina grabbed Timas by the elbow and pulled him over to a screen.

One of the pale-skinned Aeolians lay on the floor near the middle of the docking tube. He held on to his arm and groaned. Four men shuffled down the dock, chasing the miners who retreated.

“Shut the airlock,” Timas said.

One of the miners stepped forward with a pipe wrench. He hit the first one of the Swarm, but the other three piled on him.

The entryway slammed shut. Or at least, partially shut. One of the Swarm had shoved the pipe wrench taken from the miner in between the door and the frame.

“Shit.” Achmed spotted it as well. He ran out into the corridor. Smashed glass tinkled to the floor, and Achmed peered back in, ax in hand. “I’m going down to help force them back, then unconnect the dock.”

Katerina nodded as Achmed ran down.

“Tell them not to get bit,” Timas shouted after him. On the screen the Swarm members were forcing the door open now, one of them breaking its arm from the effort.

“There are more of them.” Katerina pointed to a monitor showing the other end of the dock by the carrier. Fifteen Swarm shoved their way down the tube.

“Not good. Not good.” Timas watched them join the effort to force their way into the processor. “Why isn’t Achmed disconnecting the tube?”

“The tube is open on the carrier’s end
and
ours. The safety programs won’t allow it to be disengaged.” Katerina stared at the screen. “He needs to shut the door. Then they can manually disconnect.”

More bodies piled up, the Swarm mass trying to get into the ore carrier. Timas took a deep breath. What would Pepper do?

Kill them all, somehow. That seemed his sort of thing.

Timas looked over at the joysticks. “Katerina. You need to destroy the docking tube.”

“What?”

“Use the dredge. Now. It’s us or them.”

Her eyes widened. She ran over to the control panel and grabbed them. “Achmed says you’ve got the right idea. It’s got control jets on it, hydrogen peroxide thrusters.”

The screen by the joysticks lit up. The dredge looked down into the clouds below. Katerina closed her eyes and the camera position jumped to facing forward, then dissected into views facing up, sideways, and to the rear.

“Come on, come on,” Timas muttered.

The dredge came about slowly, dragging hoses and belts with it. Kate-rina winced. “I’m causing lots of damage.”

“There’s no time to worry about that. We’re under attack!”