Nobles alerted me when we neared the planet. We entered an atmosphere with clouds instead of smoke. We crossed over snowcapped mountains and frost-dusted forests that would soon be burned to ash. I took in the beauty, knowing that nothing could be done to protect it. No weapon existed that could defend this planet, and humanity had no bargaining chip that could turn the attackers away. The most I could hope for was to save a few people. Ava.
Far ahead of us, Norristown shimmered in the afternoon sun, a city healed from most of its wounds. The wreckage had been cleared, and an extensive patchwork of parks and open markets now filled the void.
We received a message from the spaceport asking us to identify ourselves. When Nobles answered that we were an unarmed envoy from the Enlisted Man’s Fleet, the control tower cleared us to land.
Judging by the lines of military trucks and police cars waiting along the runway as we began our approach, I got the feeling that the locals did not want guests.
“I don’t think they’re happy to see us,” Nobles said.
If understatement were a form of humor, Christian Nobles would have been the funniest man alive.
Police cars closed in behind us as we rolled forward down the runway, moving toward the line of armored trucks and the militiamen with guns. Doctorow did not want Marines on his planet, but that did not stop him from using his militia. Judging by the tanks and transports, he’d helped himself to the weapons we left behind.
We rolled to within twenty feet of the trucks and stopped. The shuttle’s struts compressed, and the fuselage dropped. Men with anxious, angry faces and government-issue M27s stared in at us.
With Nobles following behind me, I opened the shuttle door. Guns pointed directly at us. I could see that much through the glare, but I stopped and had to place a hand over my eyes to block the sun. Somebody yelled for us to step out, so I held my hands above my head and stepped out into the sunlight. Men with guns intercepted me as I stepped to the ground. Dozens of militiamen formed a circle around me. One of them shoved me from behind to get me clear of the shuttle, but most of the militiamen looked scared. They had the numbers and the guns; but I got the feeling that they were more scared of me than I was of them.
For a split second, we all stood there in silence in the cool evening breeze, then a militiaman asked, “Are you carrying weapons?”
I said, “Not on me.”
Nobles shook his head.
A captain in the militia stepped up to me, gave me an embarrassed grin, and asked, “Do you mind if we search your ship?”
Nice of him to ask, I thought. I told him, “We came empty-handed, but feel free.”
The standoff continued as three men in soft-shelled engineering armor carrying an array of detection equipment entered the shuttle. A couple of minutes ticked away as we waited for them to conclude the obvious, that two men traveling in an unarmed shuttle did not pose much of a threat.
There was no point in trying to explain why we had come, not to these men. They were just the foot soldiers. I needed to take my story to the top. I needed to explain everything to the president himself. No one under Doctorow would have the authority to react even if they believed me. In the meantime, every second wasted here on the runway felt like a crime. Had the planet already seen temperature fluctuations? Maybe we would be cooked as we stood on the airfield waiting for locals to search our unarmed ship.
“Any weapons?” the militia leader asked.
I turned and saw one of the men waving the go-pack I had taken to Olympus Kri. He held up the pack, and said, “He’s got combat armor, a couple of grenade launchers, a particle-beam pistol, and a cannon.”
“Was that a particle-beam cannon?” asked the captain. He turned back to me, and said, “I thought you said you came unarmed?”
“I forgot they were there,” I said.
“Anything else you forgot, Harris?” the captain asked. I did not recognize him, but apparently he recognized me. I had spent a lot of time on this planet and made a lot of enemies.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
They did not place us in handcuffs. They led me and Nobles into the back of an armored truck along with a dozen guards, and they drove to town. Jeeps and trucks followed behind us.
Our escort delivered us to a police station, where a platoon of militiamen led us down two flights of stairs and into a basement. The militiamen hauled Nobles away. I watched them lead him down a hall with a sinking feeling.
I ended up locked in an interrogation room, and there I sat and waited. A team of armed guards stood outside the door. I would not have known they were there except that they looked in on me every few minutes. For all I knew, an entire firing squad waited for me just outside that door.
I sat alone in that little room with its soundproofed walls and wondered what happened to all of the big talk about utopian ideals. In Ellery Doctorow’s new order, the terms “police,” “military,” and “militia” seemed nearly interchangeable. From my perspective, liberated Norristown operated like any other police state.
Precious time slipped irretrievably away as I sat alone in that room.
I tried to piece together how much time passed between the attacks on New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri. Had it been a week? Five days? It was possible that nobody knew. The only video Sweetwater had of the attack on New Copenhagen was of the aftermath. The planet might have been a scorched wreck for a week before anyone noticed.
Only a day had passed since I left Olympus Kri. Time might have been running out, but I did not think we had reached the midnight hour just yet.
The door opened. “Okay, Harris, so why did you come back?” the man asked as he stepped into the interrogation room. He was a natural-born, of course, a tall man with a slender build, his black hair combed back and oiled.
He could have been a hard-living twenty-year-old or a well-preserved quadragenarian. He had a trace of stubble across his cheeks, chin, and throat, and he projected confidence with his cold gaze. I looked at him, sized him up as someone of minimal importance, and dismissed him all in an instant.
How long would it take the Avatari to reach Terraneau? I wondered. A week? I had time, but I wanted to be out of this jail and off the planet I when they came. I was in a basement, but it wasn’t very deep. If the attack occurred while I was down here, my cell would turn into a crematorium.
“I asked you a question,” he said, demanding my attention. He had the demeanor of a gangster; but, of course, now he was an idealist working for Ellery Doctorow. Gangster, militant, pacifist; chameleons like this guy presented themselves as true believers in any cause that kept them in power.
I glared back at him and said nothing.
“I asked you why you came back to Terraneau,” he said.
“A mission of mercy,” I said. “I came to save you.”
“To save us from what?”
“From an invasion,” I said. “Look, I’m sure you’re a very big man around here; but I need to see Doctorow.” That was my best attempt at being polite. I had no idea how I might act on my next approach.
“Maybe he’s already listening,” the man said. He pointed to a little glass window built into the wall. The window was a square inch of bulletproof glass with a tiny surveillance camera peering out behind it. “Tell me what you got, and maybe we’ll both hear it at the same time.”
“He’s not watching,” I said. I knew assholes like this guy. They’d do anything to increase their sphere of influence, the unscrupulous specks. The problem is, by the time this fool figured out that he was in over his head, it might be too late. “He’s not watching, and this situation is out of your pay grade.”
“What makes you so sure?” the man asked.