A quarter of an hour after the gliders arrived, small pods full of equipment fell out of the sky, dangling beneath big gaudy yellow parachutes. They were all drifting into the parks and meadows to the west of Durrell. Cameras followed several whose chutes had tangled, hurtling down to smash apart in a cascade of metal and plastic fragments.
To start with, she'd kept a line open to her parents over at Colmore, a settlement two thousand kilometers to the south. It might have been weak of her, but they understood how frightened she was by the invasion. This was her first year at the university, and she didn't make friends too well. All she wanted was to go home, but the commercial flights had all stopped within half a day of the starships being detected. She was stuck here for the duration.
Every time she thought about it, she told herself that she was an adult and should be able to cope. Then she started crying. Durrell was the capital, there would be more of the invaders here than anywhere else. Everything was bigger in Durrell, including the potential for trouble.
An hour after the drop gliders landed, her link to Colmore was cut. Nothing she could do would bring it back; the data-pool management AS kept saying that the satellite links were down—nothing about how or why they were down.
She'd hugged herself tighter, flinching at every tiny sound in the building. Her imagination filled the stairs and corridors with Skin suits as the invaders dragged students out of their rooms and snapped the explosive collars around their necks. They'd do it because everyone knew students always caused trouble, and rioted and demonstrated, and campus was a perpetual hotbed of revolutionaries.
There was a knock at the door. Michelle squealed in shock. The knock came again. She stared across the room at the door. There was nowhere for her to hide, no way she could escape.
She uncurled and stood up. The knock came again. It didn't sound authoritative or impatient. Hating herself for being so fearful, she padded across the threadbare carpet and turned the lock. "It's open," she whispered. She was trembling as if the world were in winter while the door slowly swung back. Somebody was standing there, giving her a curious look. He was so totally out of context that she thought her feverish brain was producing hallucinations.
"Josep?" she muttered.
"Hi, babe."
"Ohmygod, it's you!" She jumped at him, clutching him so hard she would surely squeeze him to death. But... Josep!
They'd met that summer when she was on vacation, celebrating her entrance exams—the first vacation she'd ever had by herself. It had been the most incredible time. Before then she'd always laughed at the clichйd stupidity of a vacation romance. But this had been different, she really had fallen in love. And at night she'd almost been frightened by her body's passion, the things they did with each other in her hotel bed. Almost Leaving Memu Bay had torn her very soul in half.
She sobbed helplessly as he held on to her. "I thought you were one of them," she babbled. "I thought I was going to be made a hostage."
"No, no." His hands stroked her back. "It's only me."
"How did you get here? Why are you here? Oh, Josep, I've been so frightened."
"I caught the last flight out of Memu Bay. I told you, I wanted to come with you and enroll at the university here. I'd just decided to leave the diving school when these Z-B bastards arrived."
"You came here ... for me?"
He took both of her hands, pressing them together inside his own until they stopped shaking. "Of course I did. I couldn't forget you, not ever."
She started crying again.
He kissed her gently on the brow, then moved down her cheek. Each touch of his lips was like a blessing. He was here, wonderful Josep with his strong, exciting body. And all the badness that had fallen upon their world wouldn't, couldn't touch her anymore.
Steve Anders made his way carefully down the concrete steps into the basement underneath the bar. The concrete steps had worn and crumbled in the coastal humidity, making them treacherous. He hadn't even known the bar had such a room underneath, but then it was a long time since he'd been in one of the tourist traps along the marina water-front. His walking stick tapped its way gingerly across each curved surface before he put his feet down. At his age he didn't want to risk a broken bone.
He chuckled at that. It was his age that had brought him here. By God, it was good to be helping fight back against the swine who'd killed his son last time around. Good that he could do something, that his age was finally an asset.
It was a typical bar's storage room. Crates of empty and full bottles stacked against the walls. A trapdoor with a power platform to bring the beer barrels in and out. Broken chairs, advertising placards from years ago, boxes of old tankards, torn sheet screens rolled up and stuffed behind a pile of elaborate clay pots that still held desiccated plants.
He reached the floor and peered around the gloomy shapes. The place was lit by a single green-tinged light cone.
"Hello, Mr. Anders."
He squinted at the girl who came out of the shadows. Pretty, young thing. "I know you," he said. "You're the schoolteacher."
"Best not to label people," Denise said.
"Yes. Yes, of course. I'm sorry."
"That's all right. I thank you for what you've done. It was very brave."
"Pha." His free hand came up automatically to stroke the plastic collateral necklace. "It was easy enough to get. And I had fun annoying that young shit who put it on me."
Denise smiled and indicated a chair. Steve nodded gruffly, covering his rising nerves, and sat down. He watched with interest as she took a standard desktop pearl from her canvas shoulder bag. The unit was a rectangle of black plastic, fractionally larger than her hand, with its pane furled up along one edge. Nothing special.
She put it on her open palm, as if she were holding an injured bird. Her eyes closed and the slightest frown creased her forehead.
Steve Anders wished he were sixty years younger. She was enchanting. Some young lad didn't know how lucky he was.
The desktop pearl changed shape, stiff plastic flowing into a crescent with needle-sharp tips.
"That's unusual," Steve said, trying to keep his voice light. Before he'd retired, he'd been a protein cell technician. Nothing fancy, just a time server at Memu Bay's food refinery. But he knew Thallspring's level of technology.
Denise's eyes fluttered open. "Yes. Are you ready?"
Steve suddenly had a lot more confidence he was going to live through this. "Go ahead."