Regeneration (Czerneda) (83 page)

His visor angled down so he could look at her, but she couldn’t see enough of his face to read his expression. His tone was neutral. “She’s promised to leave Earth alone.”

“But I don’t believe She can,” Mac said urgently. “Her feeders—they won’t let Her starve to death, not with a planetful of life in reach. You brought—” She swallowed hard. “I know you have the means on board.”

“You know what you’re asking, Mac?” Still that neutral voice.

Optimist, not idiot,
Mac wanted to say. Instead, she snapped: “Of course I know,” then regretted her temper.
It wasn’t Nik’s fault.
She put her gloved hand on his wrist in apology. “We must be able to stop Her, if it becomes necessary.”

His glove covered hers. “Spy, remember? A certain level of mistrust’s a job skill.” More soberly. “I rigged charges when we first boarded, controlled from the
Impeci
. Two failsafes. One’s here. Anything interrupts the signal from this ship, boom.”

Mac shuddered inwardly. “The other?”

His hand moved to pat the biceps on his other arm.

Gods.
“I really didn’t want to know that.”

“You might need to.” A gesture forward. “Let’s get going.”

She’d—
almost
—prided herself achieving a level of ruthlessness she’d never imagined before.

The
Impeci’s
bridge was small and straightforward. Once the Dhryn ripped out the chairs, there was room for all of them. Mac stayed back. Her role, if any, would come once they landed.

That had been the modification to the plan. Emily, and she supposed Case Wilson, had used the Tracer to pinpoint the location of the Ro chamber. Mac was the only other Human qualified to use the device; made sense to have her available.

The Ro had used the same technology to find her once. They had—
how had Fy put it?
—an interest in a certain salmon researcher.

Mac crossed her arms as best she could in the evacsuit.
There was,
she thought with no little irony,
distinct circularity to it all
. If she was Sinzi, she’d enjoy it.

The Tracer could find the Ro—Emily’s hunt had proved that. What would happen next depended on luring the Ro from its chamber into the open.

Once the Ro was exposed, Her Glory was more than willing to tackle the creature.
And probably could.
Though to Mac’s unspoken relief, Nik had assured them that, if needed, reinforcements would be there.

But dealing with the Ro was only the first step. They had to seal the chamber’s connection to no-space before it began draining Earth’s oceans.

Fy believed it could be done.

They were,
Mac decided,
leaping blind.

“We’re clear of the Progenitor,” Nik announced. He cued the main screen. A mass of dim silver rushed by overhead, but Mac stared hungrily at their goal. Earth. Northern hemisphere. Pacific.
Home indeed.

Deruym Ma Nas peered at the display. “What’s that?”

Her Glory hooted. “Another world, Deruym Ma Nas.”

“Are you sure? It looks too small,” the archivist argued.

A louder hoot greeted that.

Fy came up to Mac. The Sinzi version of an evacsuit was a clear membrane, as if the being was coated with flexible glass. It silenced her rings, but not the restlessness of her fingers. “Mac, I have a difficulty.”

Nik heard and frowned.
The man who knew the species.
Mac gave him a slight warning shake of her head, having a little more experience with this particular Sinzi. “What difficulty?”

“I must confer in more detail with Anchen—”

“The connection’s open, Fy,” Nik said, gesturing to the com panel. “But I thought you’d already discussed what needs to be done with the Sinzi-ra.” Mac was likely the only one on board who could interpret his tone as:
don’t need a problem, busy saving the world.

Fy spun in a tight circle, fingers close to her body, then stopped as quickly, her neck bending to bring her face almost touching Mac’s. “Instella is inadequate,” she whispered miserably. “I must speak as Sinzi do, but that’s not permitted in front of—”

“Aliens,” Mac said helpfully, when the being faltered. The
Impeci
was plummeting to Earth, they were standing in evacsuits to survive even this brief exposure to the contaminated ship, and—
if she grasped the essentials
—the being who was to help save the planet was worrying over manners while her species faced near-extinction.

Somehow, Mac managed not to laugh, protest, or tear at her hair. Watching this exchange, Nik’s frown turned into a look of serious concern and he pointed to the time.
Of which they had none.
“Tell you what, Fy,” this as cheerfully as possible. “Close your eyes and pretend we aren’t here.”

Now Fy was frowning, too, although in a Sinzi the expression involved a painful-looking knot of fingers.

Plan B.
Mac reached into the right side pocket of her evacsuit, pushed her hand through the sealant layer, and fumbled her way into the pocket of her coveralls.
Finally a real use for the damn thing.
“Hang on,” she grunted, trying to snag her prize with two gloved fingers.
The world dies because she can’t reach a stupid . . .
“There!” With that, she tugged free a blue-and-green envelope barred with gold. Her name appeared over its surface in moving letters of mauve. “By the authority of the Interspecies Union,” Mac said glibly, “I demand you speak to Anchen in whatever language will save us.” She brandished the envelope like a flag under the Sinzi’s eyes. “Okay?”

There was a moment of complete silence on the bridge.

Then Fy bowed, almost as graciously as Ureif. “Okay.” She walked over to the com, Nik easing out of her way, and called up a ’screen above the com. “Anchen,” she said clearly. “Concerning the procedure to close the Myrokynay’s no-space connections within the target area. I have additional thoughts, based on the likeliest materials of construction. We must—” the Instella stopped and something else began.

Mac had edged closer, curious. Now she winced and covered her ears, an action which made no difference whatsoever to the bedlam coming through the speakers inside her helmet. The two Dhryn merely looked startled. Nik waved at Mac, then pantomimed how to control the volume. Mac lifted her hand to do so, but waited.

The sound issuing from Fy’s mouth was harsh to Human ears not because it was discordant, she realized, but because it was modulating so quickly and along such a scale it came across as static.
No, more than that.
Multiple tones implied a simultaneous conversation, as if Anchen’s reply—perhaps more than Anchen’s—in the same tongue overlapped Fy’s. Certainly Fy’s lips hadn’t stopped moving.

Jabulani would love this,
Mac thought. Not to mention what it implied of the usual pace of information exchange between the Sinzi.
They must think we’re snails.
The patience and skill required of any Sinzi who had to talk to another species—
no wonder they invented Instella.
They’d needed it so others could talk to them.

Finished, Fy’s fingers closed her ’screen. She turned to Nik and Mac. “Anchen has studied the penetration of the consulate by the Ro. Their technology has not significantly advanced with time as has ours. We concur there is room for confidence our efforts will be successful. If the Ro opens its gate, that is. If it remains inactive, we can do nothing.”

Great, up the odds.
Still, Mac thought this a positive sign. Nik, however, had that expressionless
nothing good
look. “We’ll get it to stick its head out,” she insisted. “I’m not the only bait.” She nodded at Her Glory.

Her Glory, perhaps fortunately, was preoccupied. She was watching the sensors.
Probably good someone was,
Mac thought.

Until the Dhryn’s hand shot forward to adjust one control, then another. No haste, but not slow either. “We have new traffic,
Lamisah
.” The announcement was quiet and sure. “Coming through the gate.”

Nik did something to the main screen, changing the display from the oncoming ball of ocean and cloud to a stream of code.

Fy let out a string of Sinzi, fingers moving more quickly than Mac could see. The Dhryn rumbled. While Nik, staring at the code, was muttering: “That’s . . . that’s . . . I don’t believe it . . . how . . .”

“Would someone tell me what’s going on?” Mac demanded.

E
ACH AND EVERY TRAFFIC controller, from the Antarctic spaceport to the Moon—and way stations between—reacted by locking down anything remotely near Earth orbit, including whatever sat in launch catapults. Although this meant a disruption in shipping likely to result in more than a few stale pastries, no one argued.

Ships differing in shape, size, and species were pouring from the gate held above the North Pole by the Sinzi. Hundreds. Thousands. There were no com calls. Protocol didn’t exist. The only reason they didn’t collide on arrival was that exiting from no-space somehow pushed existing matter aside.

That, and the fact that each ship immediately powered up to chase Dhryn.

“Even the Ar,” Hollans observed, shaking his head in wonder. “Outstanding.”

The Imrya ambassador was standing nearby. “Our fleet was the first through,” he pointed out. “These others? Why, some do not have offensive capabilities! What can they hope to accomplish?”

“The same thing we all do, Ambassador,” answered Hollans with a grim smile. “To save the Sinzi. To save the IU. Even an unarmed starship can be a weapon, if you have the will.”

Anchen had been with consular staff, about to serve species-specific refreshments. Now she came up to the Human and Imrya, and gestured to the display. “You showed them our need and they have come.” A deep bow to Hollans. “Thank you.”

Hollans lost his smile. “You knew?”

With every military and government resource days away at the original gate, he’d pulled strings at every level, threatened, begged, and bribed, all to send every orbiting Human media packet and snoop satellite through the new gate, with their vid recordings of the Sinzi spiral—and the attack of the Dhryn. There hadn’t been time to add explanations. He’d had to trust the images would be enough, even if the eyes seeing them wouldn’t be Human.

“What you did? Of course. That any would answer?” A delicate shrug. “We had hope, nothing more. There comes a time, my friends, when actions speak past any differences of language or form. Observe.”

Hollans followed the sweep of finger back to the display.

The spreading fountain of Sinzi vessels, the base already engulfed by Dhryn, slowed, then stopped. Before the Dhryn caught up to them, they began to move again, but this time inward, more and more quickly, the fountain collapsing back on itself.

Into the whirlpool of oncoming ships.

All two hundred and seventy Progenitors’ ships slowed, then stopped, a decision echoed by the glittering clouds of tiny feeder ships. Then, as if unable to fathom anything but the Call to consume the Sinzi, every Dhryn turned and followed.

The minutes ticked by, positions shifting, the future becoming inevitable.

As the last Sinzi poured through the newcomers to safety, the display showed weaponsfire—a concentrated, targeted stream from every ship capable of it, at point-blank range.

Within minutes, the Great Journey was over. That Which Was Dhryn became nothing more than glowing debris.

Except for one.

A lone Progenitor’s ship, with a slagged prow, still on course for Earth.