Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (14 page)

C
HAPTER
16

“Mommy,” said Clara, “what did Grandpa lose?”

Lila looked at her daughter. Once upon a time, she would have been shocked by the child’s ability to manage a sentence like that at two years old. But given the other developmental leaps Clara had taken ahead of time (early crawling, early walking, an eerie inability to be fooled while playing peekaboo), Lila usually thought of Clara as
normal in advance
. It wasn’t like she had a talking infant — just a precocious toddler. She could almost close her eyes, pretend she’d given birth five years ago instead of two, and forget for long periods of time that other mothers had it different.

Instead of noticing the girl’s words, Lila found herself wondering how to respond to the question’s oddity.

“I don’t know, sweetie. His wallet?”

“What’s a wallet?”

Right. That didn’t make sense. Her father had lost his wallet in the past because he didn’t carry it in his back pocket like most people, but now he didn’t even have one. Same for car keys. Maybe the world was on its way to perfection: a place with literally nothing to lose.

Lila squatted next to Clara. “I don’t know, sweetie. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“Then how do you know he lost anything?”

“No,
Mommy,” Clara said, giving her a look well beyond even her seeming years — a look straight from the derisive face of Grandma Heather. “I mean I don’t know what the thing he lost
is.”

Lila stood. She didn’t like questions like this and usually responded the way many parents answered their children’s questions about sex: by pretending they hadn’t heard then changing the subject.

Clara’s question filled Lila’s awareness with a dark cloud. Clara knew Meyer had lost something and could picture it just fine. But unlike a remote control or a tablet, Clara didn’t recognize the thing. She wasn’t asking
if
something was lost; she
knew
what was lost but couldn’t identify it. Maybe it was a wallet after all.

“Oh, I don’t know, honey.” Lila looked toward the window. “It’s such a nice day outside. Would you like to play in the yard?”

Clara brightened, her thoughts easily distracted. “Sure! Can Daddy come too?”

“Which Daddy?” Lila, hearing herself, flinched. It was a habit she was supposed to discourage, not off-the-cuff perpetuate. If Raj ever heard Clara (let alone Lila) refer to Christopher as “Daddy Chris,” he’d lose his head. He might even request that Christopher lose his.

Clara beat her to the punch. She sprang up and gave Lila another of those condescending Heather looks.

“
Daddy
daddy, Mommy.”

“I’m sorry, honey, Daddy can’t play right now.”

“Why not?”

“He’s working,” Lila said. Though
that
was a laugh.

“Oh, Daddy is
always
working!” Clara pouted.

“Well, we’ll just have to play without him. Want to go to Grandma’s house and — ”

A voice behind Lila cut her off. “Play without whom?”

Lila turned. Raj was behind her, wearing his ridiculous robe and even more ridiculous canvas shirt beneath. He claimed the outfit was culturally Indian — and that now more than ever it made sense to honor their old cultures as the world melted together. But in Lila’s opinion, the world wasn’t
melting together
so much as
melting
. It was true that cultural borders were decaying into multicultural cityscapes worldwide, almost as if humans were being deliberately shuffled. But that didn’t make his get-up any less ridiculous, or make her want to wear lederhosen and a cap with a green feather to celebrate her German-Irish roots. And besides, since when was canvas beneath a robe Indian? He did that because the shirt was warm and Raj was always cold — and never mind the incongruity.

“Daddy!” Clara ran to Raj.

He scooped her up. “You weren’t going to play without me, were you?”

“I thought you were working,” Lila said.

“It’s under control. Interestingly, it looks like your stepmother was the problem.”

“Piper?”

Raj nodded.

“That’s ridiculous. The peacekeepers are just riled up after that plane attack. There are too many out there on the streets. They’re going to cause more problems than good.” Lila couldn’t help adding, “As always.”

“I see,” said Raj. “So your solution is to just let Piper go.”

“Let her go for what? Are you saying she did something wrong?”

“Perhaps.”

“How the hell could Piper do anything to merit all the … ” Lila stopped herself from saying “shit” then took Clara from Raj’s arms and set the girl aside with her toys. Raj looked angry, but Lila didn’t feel like caring.

She whispered, “How Piper could merit all the bullshit out there is beyond me, Raj.”

“Fortunately, you don’t have to agree since it isn’t your call.”

“It’s not yours either.”

Raj’s brown eyes hardened. Lila wasn’t surprised to feel a flash of fear. Still, her irritation was stronger. As she’d reminded him before, Raj should never have made it to Colorado and had only been saved by the grace of her father. What’s more, Old Dad would have punched a hole in Raj’s face after learning that he’d knocked up his daughter. The fact that things had turned out different were just Raj’s good luck.

“I’m Commander of the Guard.”

“Christopher is
Captain
of the Guard,” Lila said. “Sounds redundant, but what do I know?”

“Are you questioning my position?”

“I’ve questioned your position for years,
hon.”

His jaw worked. Lila’s heart beat harder, but she kept her eyes on his. And to think: she’d gazed into this man’s eyes with love, back when they’d been stupid kids together.

“You’re right,” said Raj. “I guess I
don’t
have time to play today.”

“Shocking,” Lila said, tallying off a mental point won.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m a single fucking parent, Raj.
That’s
what.”

“Really? That’s my bed in there, too.”

“Oh, and how happy I am about
that
.”

Again, Raj’s eyes watched Lila’s. She reminded herself that even though the man across from her was commander of the guard (and chief network nerd, among many other useless titles) and the viceroy’s son-in-law,
she
was the viceroy’s daughter. Her father might think this family needed to appear shiny and happy for the laughably named free press, but that didn’t mean Lila had to lie down and take it from someone whose only relation was through the viceroy’s granddaughter.

Raj’s head twitched toward Clara, who Lila hoped had managed to miss every word, despite her excellent hearing and astonishing powers of comprehension. Her father’s voice, when he spoke next, was saccharine sweet.

“Hey, honey,” he said to Clara. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you after all.”

“What? Why?” Clara snapped.

Despite her fury at Raj, Lila had to cover her mouth to hold in a smile. Hearing her husband abused by his barely-out-of-diapers daughter was funny in itself, and it got funnier when she did it in Heather’s caustic, mocking tone. Lila half expected a racial epithet to follow — possibly something having to do with spicy food or math skills.

“I have to work,” Raj said, his voice still pleasant. He crossed to the girl, stooped, then gave Lila a look before kissing Clara and straightening again. Lila recognized that look, too, and tallied it as another point in her favor. It was his old look: pathetic and sad, as if she’d wounded him and should feel awful about it. Fortunately, Lila had grown immune.

Raj paused at the door then spoke quietly to Lila, his voice edged with spite.

“I know you’re close with Piper.”

Lila didn’t reply, not wanting to play into his games.

“As it turns out, your father seems to think she copied something from his office computer. He won’t go into detail, but it seems to be of some importance. Something new from above.”

Raj looked up, indicating the mothership. Lila tried to keep her face impassive, but doing so was becoming hard. She knew her father’s modified mind was somehow able to talk directly to the Astrals — not to individuals, but to the hive mind they all seemed to share — but that some information still came down in traditional ways. Before now, that information usually had to do with insurgency and pending attacks, because those things most directly required human involvement and assistance. Raj’s assertion that Piper may have stolen from her father — perhaps claimed by the Astrals above — filled Lila with chills. If it were true, Piper would have some serious explaining to do when she returned.

If, that was, she ever
did
return — something a few piecemeal comments by Clara had already caused Lila to doubt.

“So?” said Lila, not feeling the word’s intended apathy.

“If it turns out to be a problem, I imagine the questions could extend to others who are friendly with Piper. In the interest of being thorough, you understand.”

Lila chewed her lip for a second then stopped. The nervous habit betrayed her.

“Whatever you say,
Commander
.”

Lila turned back to Clara, waiting for Raj to leave.

“If the Astrals themselves feel they’ve lost something to Piper and those who might have helped her,” he told Lila’s back, “I wonder how far a viceroy’s protection could possibly extend?”

C
HAPTER
17

Cameron killed the connection before considering that he should have maybe kept the radio on. But before he could move his finger to reactivate the connection, he realized that the large, burnished-metal spheres above the road ahead weren’t the problem. The problem was that he was still screaming down the highway at nearly forty miles per hour, and someone had covered the road with thousands upon thousands of ball bearings.

Cameron used his final moment of wobbling stability to jockey a few inches closer to the left-side berm and gently apply the brakes then surrendered to the inevitable skid.

He managed to slow some but not enough.

When the bike bit the dust, canting hard to the left as the bearings overwhelmed its traction, he struck the ribbed concrete first. He bounced farther left, and his helmet smacked the ribs like keys on a xylophone. Then he rolled into the grass, trying to form a ball to protect his guts from harm.

The bike stalled. He wedged to a stop then lay on the grass, breathing heavily.

Rolling, Cameron managed to extricate what turned out to be a rather thrashed leg from under the bike. He paused to wonder if he was still alive. He was. By luck, not fate.

Now looking around, Cameron counted himself fortunate — first to have had the helmet, which now had a sizable crack down its middle, then for the grass itself. Back when this road had been maintained, the berm would mostly be hard-packed dirt and gravel. Today, it had sprouted a bushy coating.

Which, for the time being, was also hiding him from sight as long as he stayed mostly flat.

But thinking of the grass as cover was stupid. Someone had placed those ball bearings, and whoever had — likely Andreus’s people — would be watching for someone to fall into their booby trap. The spheres ahead, too, had almost certainly seen him coming. And even if they hadn’t, they’d surely heard his engine. He’d seen as few Astrals in person as possible but knew from their pirate connection — the censored Internet he was currently on a mission to free — that the two known classes of Astrals could hear just fine.

But even after Cameron sat up, nobody came for him. He could still see the shuttles ahead — not sitting on the ground because the things never seemed to, but floating a few feet above the road — and they hadn’t flinched.

They gave no indication that they knew he was even there.

Cameron looked around, not trying to hide, figuring that he almost certainly
had
been noticed, and that the ships simply didn’t care, just like they didn’t care about Moab. Like they didn’t seem to care about the rebel camp nearby.

It was almost insulting.

Cameron looked at down at his leg. He’d been wearing jeans and boots. The denim was shredded, but the damage appeared superficial. He’d managed to slow some and had heaved toward the berm. His jeans seemed to have taken it worst. His skin was still raw and bloody. He’d be picking gravel from wounds for a while and really could use some hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin, but he’d live.

Still leery about exposing himself too fully, Cameron crawled farther over the down-sloping berm and into a drainage ditch before kneeling to give the leg some weight. Tentatively, he stood. It ached, and his jeans seemed to be sticking to the wound even now, but he could walk. And if he could get past, he could still definitely ride. At least far enough to pick up some salve and an assload of Band-Aids.

Now fully upright, he looked at the shuttles above the road ahead. There were five of them, huddled together like beads on a string. Three mostly covered the breadth of the eastbound highway, with one hanging over the grass on either side for good measure.