Heritage of Flight (35 page)

At least, though, the children no longer looked down at the ground, following their elders’ example. Many flew now, true to the heritage Pauli insisted that they remember. Farmers they were: that much was true. But Pauli forced them to remember an older truth: theirs had been a tradition of flight, of faring from star to star, whether any of them would ever see a starship again.

But this was a
good
life now, wasn't it?
he pleaded at his memories. They had a fine life, now, purged of war, of vanities, or hunger, and full of productive work which enabled a man to see his own rewards. Even the feral children who had tried to run away had flourished into a unique harvest: Lohr was a capable aide to Pauli now, and an assistant to Thorn Halgerd, off by himself once again, testing the ultralight craft he hoped might let them cross the stormy Cynthian seas and explore other continents. He was happier alone, Lohr said, happiest of all while working on his designs for the ultralights. Ben Yehuda said his work was brilliant: unsurprising, if one reminded oneself of Thorn's real father—laureate, renegade, and their friend Alicia's old lover.

The alarm from Rafe's communicator buzzed imperiously, and Rafe started. It had been months since anyone had chosen that particular signal to summon him. He activated the device and heard Ayelet's husky voice. “Rafe, can you come to CommCentral? Bring Father ... and the captain.” Ayelet's voice was higher-pitched than usual, and Rafe didn't think he'd heard her call Dave “Father” or Pauli “captain” for years.

"What's the matter?” he asked, but knowledge began to turn his hands and belly chill. When the cold crept up to his heart, he would be wholly frozen, he suspected. But it was right. It was time. He started down the hill, Ayelet's plaintive voice floating in the clear air of his home.

"We've got ship signals."

Almost the same name as before, even. Gods. Ayelet thumbed communications to record the transmission, and held her breath to listen for the numbers and code series that must surely follow.

If the codes weren't right, they were all dead.

She thinned her lips and hit the panic button, then winced as she heard the sirens hoot across the settlement.
That
would ground the fliers, pull children from their play, adults from their duties or their rest, and send them seething into their evacuation groups by the numbers. The only people who would be spared the climb would be those too sick to walk.
And me
, Ayelet thought.
And me
.

The numbers flickered, then marched across her screens. So the war was really over? She'd believe it when Rafe and Pauli and her father confirmed it. And meanwhile, she'd give the settlement the time it needed to flee, just in case this was a trick.

Rubbing her lower back again, Ayelet settled in to wait. Adult that she was, wife that she was, and mother that she was about to be, nevertheless, she had called for help—fearful of a chancy universe, well taught from her years as a refugee.

The door irised to admit Pauli Yeager, running despite the limp that made her look older than her years. As its panels shrank back into place, an arm forced them apart, and Rafe thrust himself inside, followed by her father, and several others of the adults who really ran the colony. Ayelet shivered with relief, then forced herself (despite a back that ached more and more every day) to sit almost at attention. The last thing anyone needed was for her to cry.

( ... “Don't cry, Ayelet, Ari. The captain knows what he's doing. We can outrun that ship ... no, that salvo missed us, and in a minute or two, we'll Jump ... remember, Jump is strange, but you can make it. Just one more time ... “)

Just one more time
, Ayelet thought. One more time to summon her courage and the stolid silence that had lifelong proved to be her best defense. Her father had always told her, “You can make it just this once more,” and he had always been right.

But even he had never faced
this
.

Still, years of love, security, trust ...
yes, and continued survival
... made her smile at him.

"Just one more time,” she shaped the words with dry lips. Even now, that won a twisted smile from her.
("Be my big girl. Don't show the littlests how scared you are.")
Damn, the old trick still worked!

The door ground back. Damage there, Ayelet thought, as the panels sagged, then forced themselves open again to admit Lohr, who supported Dr. Pryor.

"I relieve you, Ayelet,” Pauli Yeager spoke formally, as she rarely did these days. Her voice returned Ayelet to the security of her brief childhood after the flight across hostile space to Cynthia. Once they were settled downworld, a word from Captain Yeager meant unquestioned reassurance. A small hand patted her shoulder, and “Good thinking” made her tingle with pride for an instant. The captain slid into the place she vacated and studied the record of transmissions.

"Message incoming,” Ayelet warned, and watched the older woman nod. Her fingers tapped and she whistled under her breath while decrypt puzzled it out. “What are those damned codes?” she muttered. Then her brow cleared and her fingers blurred on the comm as she sent back recognition codes that surely must be ten years obsolete. Rafe leaned over her, one hand on her shoulder.

"I know, Rafe,” the captain said hoarsely. “But look at the codes
they
sent. They don't just know someone's out here; they think it's us, or someone like us. One of them damned seedcorn dumps. And if they don't know the codes—” she shrugged.

Pauli muttered to herself, then, experimentally tapped out a number sequence. Static erupted, faded then solidified. She nodded to herself.

"Ayelet,” asked Captain Yeager, “would you care to do the honors?"

Terror, buried all these years, bubbled to the surface and threatened to erupt in childish wails as, once again comm lights flashed on her board. Though Pauli Yeager’ words had been phrased as a question, Ayelet knew that they were an order. She drew a deep breath
("Yes, I am Father's brave girl, and yours ... and my own, dammit!"
and punched for audio.

"Cynthia, is that you? This is
Amherst II
..."

Behind them, the door began to slide open again.

"Keep them out!” Rafe had a sudden vision of yelling children, though
these
children, even now, were likelier by far to go silent and prepare to fight to the death.

Pauli looked up at him, her eyes so bright that Rafe raised work-stained fingers to brush something shiny from her cheek.

"I remember that voice,” she announced in a harsh voice. “It's Becker.
Becker
. The marshal. Remember him?"

"He left us here,” Rafe nodded. “Lousy survey, barely enough equipment, and a ship's bay full of kids—and he left us here with fine words about our maybe being the last generations of humans to survive with their genes intact. Let me get my hands on him, and his genes may be the only thing of his that I'll leave intact. And that won't be for lack of trying."

"The war's over, he says,” Pauli breathed. “And now he's come—"

"To fetch us?” Pryor whispered, then coughed, and bent double coughing harder. Lohr tore himself from the green-lit comm screens long enough to fetch her a cup of water.

"You're good at making us take our medicine,” Ayelet heard him say. “You should take your own advice.” Pryor muttered something rueful and profane back at him, and, despite the time and place, Ayelet grinned.

"That, or bring others to join us. Secess’ types, maybe. Look at this!” Pauli cried. “The
Amherst II's
crew. The roster lists their homeworlds: equal parts Alliance, Secess'—and Earth."

She looked up, and for a moment Ayelet saw the young, eager Pauli Yeager who had visited the refugees on board the old
Amherst
so many years ago: the hot pilot, enraged by the sacrifice of a ship, who took the time to speak kindly with the littlests even when they sensed how angry she was that anyone could abandon people like that. It made them like her, talk about her, dream about being like her, even now. But no one, not even the captain, ever had dreamed of contact with Earth again.

Pauli bent over the computers, punching up a course, running her hands through her hair, close-cropped for practicality though she rarely wore a helmet or any type of headgear now, and muttering to herself in a pilot's trance of calculation as she saw trajectories form and flatten on the screens.

"Can't land there,” she told the screen. Her fingers danced, and the trajectories curved again, and the machines beeped to indicate a course locked in.

"We'll be in voice contact within minutes,” she said. “Best get everyone out of the way."

"Do we evacuate?” Rafe asked, low-voiced. “The groups are ready to move."

Pauli shook her head. “They need to be here to see,” she told him. “You remember, love. We discussed it. There can be
no
extenuating circumstances. No exceptions. I'll clear the landing area."

She punched the panic button. Once again, the siren shrieked like the very throat of hell, then was replaced by Pauli's calm voice.

"Cancel evacuation, but clear the area. I repeat, clear the area. We have a ship incoming. Duty crews should stand by with fire extinguishers and await my orders."

She rose and limped out the door before it had struggled halfway open, and Rafe followed her.

That damned ground, scrub! and they had fields to protect. Had Ayelet been in the captain's place, she would have forgotten the fires that a landing might spark. How would she, Ari, and Lohr ever remember all the details that Pauli had mastered?
Be patient
, Ayelet told herself and glanced at Lohr.

But for once he neither smiled nor looked at her. He had on the expression that Ayelet privately called his “scenting danger” took, a blend of fear, instinct, and cunning raised to the level of tactical planning. He had one arm about the doctor, who sagged against him and looked older than Ayelet had ever seen her. She blinked, shook her head irritably, then seemed to twitch, all except her left hand.

"I'll be all right,” said the physician, but her speech was slurred.

Lohr stared at her, his dark eyes cynical.

"I have to be there for them,” she insisted. “Lohr, don't make me beg—"

"We'll all go,” said Ayelet, shutting down the comm. No need to stand a watch against landing ships now. After a lifetime of running and hiding, for once, she intended to stand her ground.

The
Amherst II
descended in a wildness of light and sound, a wreathing of smoke, against which masked settlers rushed with fire extinguishers to protect their land—if not their skins. The ship's sides had been sleek once, but now showed scars and the too-worn contours of a ship better suited now for salvage than starflight. Its markings were strange: the sigil of Earth superimposed over what looked like the emblem of the Alliance. Smoke and foam wreathed about that too-rakish hull. Then the settlers stood back, a ramp slid down—

And out walked the Security Marshal Becker who Ayelet remembered: older, slower, but just as watchful as she remembered from the days before they landed on Cynthia. Following him was a strange, wiry brown man who wore a blue uniform that she had never seen before. Then came many other crewmembers, dressed in a patched assortment of flightsuits that could be called uniforms only because they bore the same insignia worn by the brown man, modified by various emblems that Ayelet understood meant various ranks and specialties. She almost thought she remembered which were which.

Despite the fear that clawed at her, how wonderful it was to see new faces, faces from a hundred worlds, Secess’ and Alliance together. Ayelet's eyes filled. The war was over. Crew from Alliance and Secess’ alike wore those new markings over their old uniforms. It gave them a type of kinship. What was that line from one of her father's old plays?
"O brave new world, that hath such people in't."

Were they the brave new world, though, or were the newcomers? Their expressions didn't seem to match Ayelet's exultation, now that her fear had turned to joy. Gradually that joy cooled. She had been right about the kinship among the newcomers; wrong, however, in attributing it to their uniforms. What really made them look akin was their expression, the strained look of veterans-forced to the limits of their understanding: that and the well-kept weapons they held trained on the settlement.

Ayelet turned instinctively to look for her settlement's leaders. Surely the captain would shout an order, and this stranger-crew would lay its weapons aside; or Rafe would smile, and say something tactful. But even as Ayelet watched, Rafe and Pauli approached the ship and its tense, heavily armed crew. Limping slightly, Pauli Yeager lagged behind her taller husband, who turned to wait for her.

They had changed into their flightsuits. Even those durable synthetics were faded and much creased after the many years they had been folded away from bugs, vermin, fresh air, and light. After the many years of sparse rations and sparser leisure, the old uniforms sagged. Neither of them wore weapons but Pauli carried what looked like a recorder tucked beneath one arm.

As Marshal Becker and the brown man walked down the ramp, Pauli drew herself up and saluted. Tears ran down her cheeks.

21

"They know you. So you go first,” the thin, brown man, whose three names, Amory Eliot Neave, lettered across his chest betrayed lineage as much as the sigil he wore, told the Alliance marshal. Nodding brusque thanks, Becker strode down the
Amherst'
s ramp before the smoke from ground cover ignited by the ship's landing could spin away to nothing. The woman behind Neave himself, a tall, pale virago from Abendstern, hissed under her breath as Neave gave him the precedence. But she was as well trained as the other Secess’ in the mixed crew, and neither fidgeted nor protested, not by so much as an indignant, choked-off “Sir!"