"You agree with the Eternals, then? Life is in a permanent cycle."
Lawrence let out a long breath, exhausted with holding back his anger and despair. "Could be. You know what? I really don't care. I don't care that you killed my friends. I don't care that I killed your ambush party. I don't care if that makes us quits or not. I don't care that Z-B is quietly collapsing. I don't care that you want to build some noble civilization based on total bullshit about people being perpetually nice to each other. I don't care that your deranged sister is willing to sacrifice herself and everyone she knows to save some piece of talking rock. I don't damn well care that the universe is doomed and the galaxy is falling into a black hole. I have spent the last twenty years caring. I cared for my platoon. I cared about what the human race was doing and where it was going. I cared that we didn't have frontiers anymore. I cared about my career. I even cared about what I was doing with my life. And look where I am because of that. Helping a bunch of cosmic hippies hijack a starship. Sweet fucking Fate!"
"You mean we can't trust you?"
"You got it, girl. Denise cannot trust me, not now, not ever. I do not like her. I will never like her. I will, however, respect her abilities. And I expect a similar respect in return. What you can have from me is reliability. I am dependable in this in a way none of you are. I will hijack that starship, and it will fly to Aldebaran. Of that you can be certain."
"I'm not sure I can be, Lawrence."
"This is for me, now. Not you and your ideals. That's why you can be certain. I finally, finally, have a chance to put my life back together and live it the way I was born to live it. To cancel out the last twenty miserable years. After Aldebaran I'm going home. That's alclass="underline" home. And nothing and nobody can stop that from happening."
The sound of the hovercraft approaching made both of them turn and look out across the crater lake. Lawrence couldn't help a derisory laugh at the absurdity of the vehicle. It was made from wood, Arnoon's lightest, hardest timber, crafted into a simple oval platform with a cabin grafted onto the prow. Two big steerable propellers stood high on smooth, tall fins at the rear. The skirt was willow wool, a fine tight weave easily holding in the cushion of air on which it rode. Electric motors powered the propellers and impellers, salvaged from an assortment of heavy machinery across the plateau.
It swept lightly across the water, with a thin haze of spray escaping from underneath its skirt, and a creamy V-shaped wake spreading wide. When it reached the island it rocked slightly as the front skirt rode up the shingle and onto the scanty grassmoss. The propellers reversed pitch, bringing it to a halt. It sank down with a prolonged wheeze of escaping air.
The heavylift robot carrying the dragon trundled over to it. A ramp was deployed in front of the propeller fins, enabling it to climb up onto the deck.
"We're ready," Denise said. She gave Lawrence and her sister an anxious glance, aware that they'd been quarreling.
"Sure," Lawrence said brightly. "Is that thing really going to work?"
"Certainly." Denise sounded offended. "We've practiced the route a dozen times. The river is the easiest way out of Arnoon. The hovercraft will take us straight to Rhapsody Province. One of the articulated trucks from Dixon is already at the rendezvous point. It'll take the dragon all the way down to Memu Bay's airport. We'll be there in fifteen hours. After that, it's all up to you."
"Don't worry, my contact has sent a plane to collect us. Where's the cargo pod? We can hardly load the dragon into a Xianti as it is."
"The cargo pod is with the truck. An RL-thirty-three, industry standard sixty-ton capacity. We'll put the dragon inside it when we get there."
"Okay. Let's go."
* * *
Simon was appalled to discover that there was no supersonic transport on Thallspring. He wound up commandeering the presidential jet, which could barely reach Mach 9. It was a converted fifty-seat medium-range commuter jet that had a flight time of four hours to Memu Bay.
He spent the time working with his personal AS, dropping hundreds of askpings into Memu Bay's datapool. The leisure company that Michelle had signed up with to go diving among the atolls had no file on any employee called Josep, nor on Raymond, who was supposed to be his friend. The AS trawl couldn't find any abnormalities in the company's memory blocks. No substituted files, no gaps in the daily boat trip logs for a month either side of Michelle's visit; even the financial accounts were in order.
"Arrest them," Simon ordered Ebrey Zhang.
"Who, exactly?" Memu Bay's governor asked.
"The company's senior management. Their diving gill instructors. Boat crews. Bring them all in for questioning. I want them in custody by the time I arrive."
"Yes, sir."
The governor's noticeable reluctance made Simon review the current situation report for Memu Bay. "For God's sake," he muttered as the indigo script scrolled down. And to think, he'd warned the SK2 to keep an eye on the place.
Memu Bay had gone into meltdown over the last week. Asset realization was down to 50 percent of estimated targets. Two-thirds of the settlement's factories had some kind of strike action going on. The entire mayor's office had walked out and refused to work with Ebrey Zhang following the Grabowski rape case. The rest of the civil sector was reduced to emergency services only. Platoon morale was rock bottom, with charges accumulating against 30 percent of Z-B's personnel. TB cases were still being reported; immunization implementation was slow. Sabotage against utilities was a daily occurrence. Several districts had become no-go zones—and that included for Skin platoons. Collateral no longer worked. There were reprisals every time. Zhang was afraid to use any more necklaces for fear of making the situation even worse.
The more Simon studied the breakdown and its history, the more interested he became. Essentially, Z-B had lost control of the settlement. The resistance group led by KillBoy had waged a beautifully orchestrated campaign against the invasion, building to this climax of near anarchy.
"Why, though?" Simon asked a dismayed Braddock Raines. "How does this help our alien? Wiping out Zhang's little command is hardly going to cripple Zantiu-Braun."
"I'm not sure they could even do that," Braddock commented. "Physically eliminating every Skin stationed in Memu Bay would be difficult even for them. They can force the platoons off the streets and back into their barracks, maybe even make them fall back all the way to the airport. But if you hit those lads too hard, they'll hit you back. Part of the problem is Zhang holding back."
"You might be on to something there," Simon said. "With the platoons off the streets, the alien is free to do what it wants in Memu Bay without us noticing. But we still don't know what that is."
The presidential jet landed without incident. There was very little activity at the airport. Half of its buildings were operating on reserve power supplies, thanks to the resistance group severing a set of superconductor cables two nights earlier. Skins patrolled the perimeter.