Quiet Invasion(158)

“I will not leave my city.”

All the air left Br’sei at a rush. He had lost. They had lost. He had tried to bring protection for himself and the New People, and that had failed.

Now what? he asked himself, but he already knew the answer, and it frightened him.

“There is nothing I can say then.” He spoke his words to her wings and crest. “But, you must forgive me, I am going back. I am going to warn them. Maybe they can defend themselves, maybe not. But life helps life, and I must do what I can.”

He banked around and flew away. There were still the quarantine checks with their brother and worry to get through, but he would deal with that. He had to. He was all the New People had now, all New Home had. Himself, alone and afraid.

In some small part of his soul, he hoped to feel the touch of T’sha’s voice against his back, but it did not come.





Chapter Eighteen


“SCARAB TEN APPROACHING THE runway. Welcome home, Scarab Ten.”

Tori’s words reverberated through the P.A. From the internal speakers, Michael heard a tinny reproduction of the cheers filling the corridors.

At the sound, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.

Michael remembered being selected for the governing board. He remembered reading the notice on his briefcase screen, leaping up, yelling like a fool, and dancing Jolynn, who was then six months pregnant, around the apartment.

Gregory Schoma had retired and moved back to Mother Earth. Helen and Ben between them had decided that his replacement should be someone born on the station. They had noticed the prestige schism growing between research and nonresearch personnel. That was a problem all outposts had dealt with since the first permanent settlement in Antarctica. They had also noticed, however, that a growing number of the nonresearch personnel were native Venerans.

That did not suit either of their visions for the base. So they looked for a Veneran who would be acceptable to the various funding groups and found Michael Lum. Veneran-born, Earth-educated, a talented administrator, trained by Schoma himself, and married, with a baby on the way.

“I know,” he’d told Jolynn, when they’d collapsed breathless on the sofa. “It’s partly a face appointment, but that’s okay. Just think what I can do from up there. Think about it! I’ll be doing the security and infrastructure maintenance, but I’ll be constantly meeting with Bennet Godwin. Access to Dr. Personnel himself.”

From the beginning, Ben had shown concern for the issues Michael raised. Ben had listened. Ben had worked with him to improve the base’s on-site education facilities, had worked to get Terran equivalencies and Terran accreditations for Venera’s schools. He’d worked quietly to see that the details of tech and maintenancer jobs were publicized to those children so that they could be someone important to the well-being of their world, rather than just a janitor.

And Grandma Helen had smiled on them all, and it had been good.

And now? Michael’s knuckles ached. Now he had opened the files he swore he was never, ever going to use. He had his people looking at Grace Meyer as a murderer and Ben Godwin as a traitor, and he didn’t know what to do.

He heard the faint rumble of the hangar airlock cycling for the scarab.

“Airlock open, you’re clear for the hangar, Scarab Ten,” announced Tori.

Michael had seen Tori take her post at flight control this morning. He’d done high school equivalencies with her. She was a cynic. She took nothing at face value. But at that moment, she had looked like she had seen a miracle, or at least a really fine illusion.

She wasn’t the only one. The whole base had turned out to welcome Helen home. Somehow, her trip down to talk to the aliens had traveled through the rumor mill and become a Historic Meeting of Peoples to Reach a Great Accord. Everyone had heard about Secretary Kent’s conversation with Helen, along with one version or another of its unveiled threats.

A copy of the transmission had even shown up in the base’s public stream. Michael suspected Ben was responsible for that. Ben was responsible for so many things.

You wait, he thought toward the man standing tall, and strangely serene, at his side. What will you do when she finds out you are the traitor?

Michael and Ben stood in the passenger clearing area, watching on the wall screen as the hangar doors parted and the scarab, its cermet hide scarred and pitted from use, rolled in between the silent rows of machinery—shuttles on the left side, the other scarabs on the right. It slotted itself neatly into the empty bay.

“Extending ramp,” said Tori as a walkway stretched itself toward the scarab’s airlock. It wasn’t all that hot out there, and the pressure was almost exactly one atmosphere, but the combination of CO2 and hydrogen sulfides was not healthy to breathe for very long.