Nomad (19 page)

“Understood,” she said.

They watched the heart of the sky.

Sapi amused herself by sinking down into the cloud and popping up again in random places. Then she moved slowly closer to Gabe and Kaen and tapped both of their shoulders, hard.

“We have alarming company,” she said.

Gabe looked where she pointed.

Omegan hovered at the edge of the cloud. He waited there, unsure of his welcome.

Sapi looked ready to flee. Kaen looked ready to fight.

“Wait,” Gabe said. “Please wait. Let's find out what he wants.”

Sapi punched his arm. “Ambassador Gabe, I am always impressed by your infinite stupidity.”

“Please,” Gabe said again.

“No,” said Kaen. “Whatever he knows, the rest of the Outlast will learn.”

“That is no longer true,” Omegan said. He hovered cautiously closer. “I come alone. I speak alone. No one else watches through me. I represent no one other than myself.”

“How?” Kaen demanded. “All Outlast overlap with each other.”

“And the worst punishment that we have is to be severed from all others,” Omegan explained. He kept his voice soft and low, but Gabe heard pain behind it. “This was my punishment. I told you about the lanes and how we move through them. I tried to warn you before the attack aboard
Calendar
. So I have been severed. I no longer qualify as a sentient person. They meant to cut me off from the Embassy as well, but that part of the punishment did not succeed. Obviously. I am still here. I come to you alone, in absolute solitude.”

Kaen crossed her arms and spoke with effort. “We have no way to know whether or not you're telling the truth.”

“Then tell me
nothing
,” Omegan pleaded. “Make sure that I learn nothing more about you, or your location, or your capabilities. Listen instead. Listen to me. And understand that
I already know
. Our warships travel through the lanes, all of them together, all bound for the Terran system. They are coming for you. They are hunting the three human ambassadors, the three who seek to shut the lanes against us. One of you moves through the lanes now. They will hunt her down. Two of you are still in the Terran system. They will hunt you down. One single Outlast is
already
hunting you down. His name is Psain. He sabotaged the sun inside
Calendar
while others attacked you there. He remained hidden in the aftermath, and he followed you down to the planet. He will find you. He tracks the energy signature of your entanglements. And he was very close behind you when I became severed and isolated. I cannot see him now. I don't know where he is, but I'm sure he is close. Keep moving. Keep running. Don't let him find you. Leave the whole system behind if you can, because every one of our warships will be there soon.”

Nadia woke. Darkness and silence spread around her like a solid, immovable thing.

“Rem?” she asked. “Hello? Are you there?”

The floor felt more smooth and level beneath her suit-gloved hands. She climbed to her feet. Then she opened her eyes, just to see what would happen.

Pale lights floated and flickered all around her. Nadia didn't understand what they were or what they meant. She closed her eyes again.

“Ambassador Emeritus Nadia Antonovna Kollontai,” said a very familiar voice. “Be welcome.”

“Protocol? Hi. Greetings. I've missed you. Am I in the Embassy now? I must be, since you never leave. I was in the Machinae lanes just a moment ago.”

“You are likely still in the Machinae lanes,” Protocol told her. “Your entanglement signal is fluctuating strangely.
And you are not using any single sensory remote to receive that signal, as the current ambassadors do. You are using
all
of the remotes. How strange. You currently perceive the untranslated Chancery.”

“I'm not currently perceiving very much about my surroundings,” Nadia said. “But this was the plan. Sort of. Not the Embassy visit, but borrowing everyone's signal and using them all to map out new and exciting synaptic pathways in the speech centers of my brain. I need to talk to the Machinae.”

“And have you succeeded?” Protocol asked.

“No,” Nadia said. “I did make contact. I got some sense of sentences and shades of meaning shooting off in all directions . . . but it knocked me unconscious. Now I'm here.”

“Perhaps I can assist you,” Protocol suggested. “It is my purpose to facilitate communication. And it would be gratifying if the Machinae sent me ambassadors again. They have not done so for a very long time. You might ask them, if you succeed.”

“I'll ask,” Nadia promised.

“Then I will adjust the remotes and allow you to borrow their signal pathways more easily. Please be patient.”

Nadia waited and considered the idea of an untranslated Embassy.
No playground. No fields and forests and
water and swooping, soaring games in the clouds. Just a big, dark, empty space filled with little lights, each one a remote carrying entangled, imaginary dreams. That's all this is.

She shook her head and stamped hard on that thought.
No. Not true. Translation is never just wishes and lies. We aren't all wandering around pretending to understand each other. We do understand each other.

Ambassadors moved through the vast expanse of the Chancery. Maybe the place looked very different to every one of them, but they still met, and spoke, and played, and understood.

“Brace yourself, Ambassador Emeritus.”

“Poyekhali,” Nadia said.

She opened her eyes and watched the swirling motion of ambassadors, unable to properly recognize the sight. The remotes did not resemble anything else. Then, suddenly, they looked like stars. And then every single one of them went nova.

“Am I understood?” Omegan asked, his voice small. “Am I believed? You must run. You must wake up now and run. Psain will find you soon.”

“We can't run,” Gabe said, his voice small. “We're trapped where we are now. Both of us. And my people are trapped. We can't leave this planet, or this system. We don't know how.”

Kaen held her own wrist where her bracelet used to be.

She can't contact the fleet from here either
, Gabe thought.
She can't tell them to leave now, to start running. They'll be trapped inside Ceres when the Outlast arrive.
He felt a thousand guilt knives stab his stomach.

“Then I regret what you will soon suffer,” Omegan told them. “I should leave you now. I should not remind you further of the suffering to come.”

“Wait!” Kaen called out.

Omegan waited, uncertain.

Kaen waved him closer. “Ambassador, please join us.”

Gabe, Sapi, and Omegan himself all stared at Kaen.

“I am no longer an ambassador,” Omegan finally said. “I do not represent my people, or speak on behalf of my people.”

“Ambassador Omegan,” Kaen said again, her voice solid and insistent. “I invite you to join us.”

Omegan came to sit beside them.

“This is aaaaaawkwaaaaard,” Sapi sang under her breath.

“Shush,” said Kaen. “Ambassador, tell us more about Psain. Tell us what he's likely to do when he finds us.”

*  *  *  *

Gabe woke. He lifted his head to peer through the dim light and the chain-link fences. He saw a sea of mylar blankets and sleeping kids. He saw two border patrol guards near the wall.

He closed his eyes to see the Embassy and stars dying in the galactic center. The transition came easily this time. He still felt the blanket and the hard floor beneath him. He also felt cold wisps of cloud against his face.

“Nothing,” he said. “Kaen?”

“Nothing here,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“We prefer to attack in overwhelming numbers,” Omegan explained, “but Psain is alone. He must hunt for
you alone. He will be cautious, and try to move unseen and unnoticed. He will come very close to you before striking.”

“Then he might not be able to reach us,” Gabe suggested. “We're stuck behind walls and razor wire at the moment.”

“No,” Omegan said. “Nothing about your immobility will be helpful. He will find a way to reach you.”

Gabe woke. He looked around. He peered up at the distant ceiling to see if a tentacled Outlast slithered there between the fluorescent lights. Then he blinked and returned to the Embassy.

I'm getting better at quick transitions, at least
, he noticed.
Raw terror is motivating.

“Can you defend yourselves?” Omegan asked. “Hiding will not protect you, not while he can track the energy of your entanglements.”

“Not really,” Gabe said. He missed his cane sword, but he'd left it in the shuttlecraft. The border patrol would have confiscated it anyway. “I could throw my blanket at him, or try to make a whip out of shoelaces.”

“Does your species have any native protections?” Omegan asked. “Tooth and claw? Venom and shell? I hope that you do.”

“We mostly survive by cleverness,” Gabe admitted.

Sapi punched his arm several times. “Then be clever!”

Right
, Gabe thought.
Sure. Okay. I'll be clever. I will
outwit another alien assassin. I'll fight him off with blankets and shoelaces.

He looked around the detention center. One border guard patrolled the hallway between fenced-in kennels of kids. Nothing else moved. Gabe lowered his head before the guard noticed him.

“Nothing yet,” he told his colleagues. “Kaen?”

“Nothing,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I see one soldier. Only one. There used to be more, but I'm not sure where they've gone. The girl beside me is dreaming about a river and swimming across it. She talks in her sleep.”

Something tickled the back of Gabe's brain.

“You understand her?” he asked. “Kaen, how can you understand her? Did you learn Spanish already?”

Kaen's eyes snapped open. “Translation. Someone nearby is using a translator.”

Gabe woke.

The border guard was closer now. He wore a stolen Kaen bracelet, and he leaned very far forward as he moved.

Gabe squinted and saw tentacles.

“He's here,” Gabe said in both places. “He's here, and he's coming for me first.”

*  *  *  *

The translated guard unlatched the gate.

Gabe stood up.

Other kids stirred at his feet.

“¿Qué tienes?” Gus asked.

“Shush,” Gabe told him. “Stay down. Tranquilo. We aren't the aliens here.”

The guard opened the gate. Electricity crackled across the chain-link fence from his fingertips.

“Greetings, Psain of the Outlast,” Gabe said.

Psain leaned far forward. “This noise is not speech. I will not recognize the noise as speaking. And no one will threaten our dominion of the lanes.”

Lightning burned across his hands.

Gabe tossed his blanket over the reaching hands and shoved. He was pretty sure mylar wouldn't conduct electricity. It didn't. The Outlast tried to hold him, to shock and strangle him, but the grasping hands held only the blanket. Gabe slipped through the gate and ran.

He heard Psain behind him. The translated sound fluctuated between thumping boots and slithering tentacles.

He heard a loud, metallic thump high above him.

He heard no alarms or adult voices, and saw the bodies of soldiers slumped against the wall as he ran by.

A voice shouted from across the warehouse, but he couldn't understand what it said.

He closed his eyes and ran harder.

“Gabe, can you hear me?”

Kaen's voice. She sat beside him in the Embassy, in the center of everything. He tried to answer. He was out of breath from running.

“Find a wide-open space,” she told him.

“Isn't one,” he gasped. “Kids and blankets cover most of the floor.”

“Then
make
a wide-open space,” she insisted. “Run for the middle. Now. Right now.”

He ran between fences. Some kids cheered him on, their voices sleepy. Others taunted him. “¡No se escapa para nada, tonto!”

He reached the center of the warehouse, the widest place between fences. Basic toys like Frisbees and Hula-Hoops lay scattered on the floor between blinking children, barely awake.

“Everybody move!” Gabe shouted. “¡Muévense todos! ¡Contra la valla!”

Everybody moved.

Gabe stood alone in the center, winded. He tried to catch up to his own breath.

Psain of the Outlast approached slowly over empty blankets and discarded toys.

Gabe looked for Kaen, but couldn't find her among all the watching faces.

He closed his eyes.

“You're not alone,” Kaen said beside him. “
We're
not alone. Listen.”

Gabe heard metal bend and tear above him. He opened his eyes.

The jaguar-shaped shuttlecraft ripped the ceiling aside. It lunged through the hole, landed in a crouch, and opened the jaws of its front hatch. It did not roar. It had no need to roar. Instead it crushed Psain of the Outlast in its jaws.

Nadia slowly crawled back up to consciousness.

She heard Rem's translated voice buzzing in her helmet radio.

He sounds upset
, she thought.
I wonder what he's upset about.

“Get up,” Rem said, over and over again, insistent.

Nadia got up. He tried to pull on her arm. She pulled back.

“Is the stone suit still here?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rem said. “Right behind you, watching us with that single, massive eye. But it knocked you flat when you tried to talk to it, so let's keep our distance, please. Come on. Back to the ship we go.”

“No.” She pulled harder. “I have to try again.”