His grandmother. Jane. J Squad… but they all made the airlock. A moment later, the jets swept low over the dome and strafed it. Shells exploded harmlessly against the alien ceiling two feet above Jason’s head. The vibrations didn’t shake the dome, exactly, but he could feel it in his bones. To Colin and the other superhearers, it must have seemed like the end of the world. Trees in the woods burst into flame.
The jets flew off, banked, and returned.
If New America had gotten the launch codes from the quantum computer at the depot…. but those were codes for ICBMs, not plane-dropped bombs. Still… if the jets carried nuclear weapons, then there was nothing Jason could do but wait for the end of Monterey Base.
It didn’t happen. The jets dropped bombs but they were not nuclear. They exploded against the dome, and the dome held. Whoever those super-aliens were who’d designed these domes, they’d known physics that Terrans hadn’t suspected existed.
The jets flew away. Somehow the eerie silence of the entire operation made it seem even more sinister.
A whole section of forest to the east had caught fire.
Jason couldn’t have it put out. He didn’t have the resources. There were only two things he could do. The armory in Lab Dome held shoulder-mounted missile launchers that could take down planes; he would have to set up a constantly-manned station in the woods. He could also surprise-attack Sierra Depot with everything he had and hope to destroy the jets or the fuel tanks—and where had New America gotten jet fuel in the first place? Or the jets? Pre-Collapse, there had been no F-35s at the depot.
Jason said to captain Goldman on a closed channel, “Send someone outside to contact the signal station and make sure it wasn’t hit.”
He waited. Duncan appeared at the door of the command post.
Goldman said, “Signal station secure.”
“Good. Stand by.” To both Duncan and Goldman he said, “I’m going to report to HQ.”
He saw the quick consternation on Duncan’s face and knew she was thinking that he should not risk it; she should go. But this time Jason had to go himself. If New America forces were hidden in the woods to follow him and take out the signal station, they’d be thwarted. He was going to call HQ from the spaceship.
He said to Duncan, “Take command while I’m gone. Relay anything important through the signal station. Captain, ready a FiVee with troops from J Squad, but you stay here, keep a force outside both domes, and stand by.”
“Yes, sir.”
Duncan said, “Sir… do you know whether Lieutenant Allen has enough control of his ship’s communications system to contact HQ specifically? When it first approached, contact was with us only because we were the closest viable receiver.”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
The spaceship might not be weaponized, but it was up to Jason to find ways to use it to maximum advantage. He tongued his mic back on. “Goldman, prepare to relay orders to the Return via the signal station.”
“Yes, sir.”
The command post dome had shed the dust from the explosion as if it had never occurred. The fire in the woods was being fanned by wind but away from the dome rather than toward it, and the heavy cloud cover looked as if it carried rain. If New America were smarter, they would have dropped their bombs on a dry windy day, and they would have dropped them to the east, so that flames spread over both domes. That might not have harmed the domes, but it would have trapped the inhabitants in hot air, which might overwhelm the domes’ built-in climate controls and be filtered through the dome walls to inside. Or not. Nobody actually knew.
The funeral pyre for Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡, a small man-made echo of the forest fire, was dying down.
Rest in peace.
Jane followed the soldier carrying Marianne Jenner through the Decontamination airlock into Lab Dome. Marianne was old; had she had klefic? Jane didn’t know the word in English, but Jane’s grandmother had klefic when Jane was six. After she woke up, she could not speak, and her brain was never the same, and she had drooled and stared vacantly until she died. The doctors hadn’t been able to do anything.
Oh, please the ancestors, not that for Marianne, so intelligent and so kind…
Claire Patel waited outside decon. “What happened… bring her here, please.”
The soldier carried Marianne through the makeshift corridors to the infirmary and laid her on a bed in a tiny cubicle. Colin’s room was only a few doors away. Claire said, “Jane, what happened?”
“I don’t know. She just seemed very tired, and then she wouldn’t wake up.”
Claire straightened from Marianne’s limp body. “Wouldn’t wake up? Did you see her eyes roll back in her head? Did she gasp for breath?”
“No. She just fell.”
“Like a faint?”
“I don’t know that word.”
“Never mind. Did she hit her head?”
“No, I don’t think she hit her head.”
Claire returned to examining Marianne, checking her pulse, counting breaths, shaking her shoulders, peering under her eyelids. Jane held her breath.
Marianne didn’t wake up.
Claire frowned and turned back to Jane. “Did you know… did anybody tell you… that Caitlin McKay can’t be woken up, either?”
“What?” The words didn’t make sense.
“Do you know of anyone else so sleepy that they can’t stay awake?”
“Belok^. Belok^ was very sleepy…” But Belok^ had been at the Burning and had come with Jane and La^vor through the airlock…
Claire said, “Where is Belok^ now? I didn’t see him.”
“I don’t know. Wherever the soldiers took him. He and La^vor don’t live in Lab Dome.”
“I’m going to call a nurse for Marianne and then we’re going to find Belok^.”
When they did, the boy lay curled on his side in the middle of a corridor, a soldier standing helplessly over Belok^’s huge form, La^vor shaking her brother. “Come awake! Come awake!”
Claire bent over Belok^ and examined him the same way she had Marianne. “All his responses are normal, but…” She didn’t finish the sentence. La^vor, too frightened to speak, clutched Jane. La^vor had just lost one brother, and now the other slept as if he were the breathing dead.
Jane thought of Claire’s curious Terran phrase: Never mind. Would Marianne, Belok^, little Caitlin never be in their minds again? And would this happen to more people?
She wanted to talk to Colin, hold his hand, draw warmth for her suddenly cold body. But La^vor needed her. Jane put her arms around her friend and murmured to her, searching for words of comfort she could not find.
Her headache grew worse.
Four people were now comatose: Caitlin McKay, Devon Jones, Marianne Jenner, Belok^. Two from the ship who’d been infected with virophage; two children from the base. But not the other four children in Enclave Dome, not Claire Patel or Mason Kandiss from the Return. Not Ka^graa, La^vor, or Jane.
Zack and Susan sat by their daughter’s bedside, Susan’s face swollen with tears. All four coma victims had been moved to Lab Dome, carried in esuits by gurney bots through the tunnel system. A special area of the infirmary had been closed off and divided with curtains into cubicles. One of the three physicians was always on call nearby. No one knew what would happen next, but Zack’s stomach had clenched when he saw that space had been left for more cubicles. Nurses were readying more beds.
Caity, with her beloved Bollers beside her on the bed, didn’t look ill. Her face, pale when she’d been awake and complaining of headaches, now flushed lightly with the rosiness of a healthy child fast asleep. Her little chest rose and fell. Her eyelids fluttered—was she dreaming? They had no MRI equipment on the base, which had been designed for research, not trauma treatment. They couldn’t tell if what had happened in Kayla’s and Glamet^vor¡’s brains was happening in Caitlin’s. They had no way to help her, and no answers.