Buried Deep Part 38

Maybe the best she could hope for was that the Disty would forget that one small detail.

"Is there anything else?" she asked.

"Um, how do we determine where you fit in?" Trouvelot asked.

"I'll have you work with Nigel," she said, and signed off. Nigel made a choking sound beside her. When she looked at him, he rolled his eyes.

"Don't I have enough to do?" he asked.

She let out a small, humorless laugh. "Don't worry. He won't contact us again for a while. We might even have to contact him when it comes time for our decontamination."

Nigel wheeled one of the finished corpses toward the back room. He no longer seemed squeamish about anything. When he reached the door, he stopped. "It is good news, though, isn't it? The decontamination?"

It was much too late. All of these people, as well as the Disty and the people in Wells and other parts of Mars, would still be alive if someone had taken care of this sooner.

Maybe Costard had done some good after all. The survivors were coming from the Moon. That Retrieval Artist had said he had some leads.

At least things weren't going to get worse.

"It's good," Scott-Olson said. "In fact, it's the best we can hope for."

61.

Mars floated in Flint's view screen. The red-and-brown planet looked like its sandy surface had been mixed with blood.

He had all of the Emmeline's Emmeline's defenses on high alert. Every angle of his s.h.i.+p monitored the exterior. He needed to know the moment something showed up on his sensors, and he needed that something evaluated. Too many Disty s.h.i.+ps had exploded or been crippled because other s.h.i.+ps crashed into them. defenses on high alert. Every angle of his s.h.i.+p monitored the exterior. He needed to know the moment something showed up on his sensors, and he needed that something evaluated. Too many Disty s.h.i.+ps had exploded or been crippled because other s.h.i.+ps crashed into them.

He wasn't going to die because Mars's s.p.a.ce Traffic Control system had gigantic holes. Flint had taken other precautions. The six remaining survivors didn't know it, but they were locked into the pa.s.senger wing of the s.h.i.+p. They had no access to the maintenance areas or the c.o.c.kpit-something he should have done when they first came on board.

Norton was still in the brig, where he would remain until the Disty came for him. He was seriously injured, but not in any immediate danger. With proper medical attention, he would be just fine.

Flint would tell the Disty that.

But he wouldn't tell them about the small disc that Norton had brought onto Flint's s.h.i.+p. Flint had made a study of that disc, and he was convinced that it wasn't a weapon at all. Norton had been improvising, and he had done it well. Still, Flint kept the disc in the small locked drawer on the console.

So far he had sent two messages to the surface, and had received no reply. He wasn't sure what he would do if the Disty refused to contact his s.h.i.+p. He had made certain that his survivors had had no outside access since he got within range of Mars's various systems, but he wasn't sure if things had changed.

His long-range sensors pinged. A square s.h.i.+p, completely black, was heading toward him from deep s.p.a.ce. He put his weapons systems online and sent a message, asking the s.h.i.+p to identify itself.

The reply came quickly: "Disty vessel 665443: Death Squad. We have been appointed to rendezvous with your s.h.i.+p. Respond."

Flint let out the breath he had been holding. "We're waiting for you, Disty vessel. We were told you will dock with us?"

"We will. You will prepare for the docking."

Then the Disty signed out.

Flint watched as the s.h.i.+p got closer. Its design wasn't cla.s.sically Disty, but it fit into the Death Squad configurations. He had studied a lot of Death Squad s.h.i.+ps when he had worked s.p.a.ce Traffic Control so that he would recognize them when they came through.

The Disty s.h.i.+p reached his s.h.i.+p. Then the Emmeline Emmeline shook as the Disty s.h.i.+p's grapplers attached. He heard faint bleets of nervousness coming from the game room. The poor survivors were probably more worried than they had ever been. shook as the Disty s.h.i.+p's grapplers attached. He heard faint bleets of nervousness coming from the game room. The poor survivors were probably more worried than they had ever been.

Perhaps they were even regretting their decision.

His outside cameras caught the entire maneuver. The grapplers were black and efficient, pulling his s.h.i.+p closer. Then the Disty s.h.i.+p sent its tunnel along the arms of the grapplers, creating an easy environment for the Disty to board the Emmeline. Emmeline.

Flint kept his main doors locked. He wouldn't open them until he was certain he needed to. He did, however, unlock the outside doors.

He stayed in the c.o.c.kpit as he did this. He wasn't going to greet the Disty until he had seen them.

Ten Disty filed down the tunnel and into his airlock. They were so small they all fit into the tiny s.p.a.ce. They were wearing black over their bodies. They wore a white cord around their necks. From the cord, a sheathed knife hung. Flint had only seen the knife blade once: It was also black, made of some kind of tempered gla.s.s, the strength reinforced through some sort of secret technique. The knife's dual edges were sharp enough to slice off a finger without much effort, and the flat part of the blade had little ridges that left slivers of gla.s.s inside the skin of anyone who touched it.

Those knives were used in many Death Squad rituals, including vengeance killings.

The Disty closed the exterior door. The tunnel remained attached to his s.h.i.+p. One Disty tried the interior door, then looked at the others. The look rippled through the crowd of Disty as if they could read an answer on the back wall.

"Your interior door is sealed," said one of the Disty.

"Standard precaution," Flint said. "I had to wait until the exterior door was sealed."

He opened the interior door, set the s.h.i.+p on autopilot, and grabbed his laser pistol, putting it in the holster he had saved from his police days. Then he left the c.o.c.kpit. Before he walked down the corridor, he shut and locked the c.o.c.kpit door. The lock was keyed to his left palm print.

Flint hurried down the corridor. He reached the main entrance as the last of the Disty stepped inside.

Individually, Disty were small and unthreatening. In a group, they usually seemed like overgrown human children. But this group had a level of menace to it; part of that was the clothing and the knives, but most of it was the level of confidence they exuded-the way they moved, almost as if they were a group mind instead of a group of individuals.

"Where are our pa.s.sengers?" the lead Disty asked.

Flint could never tell the gender of these creatures, and he knew better than to ask for names. He did, however, ask for identification.

They presented him with a small pad. It had the Disty High Command's seal. When he tapped the seal, he saw dozens of official doc.u.ments, all of them pertaining to this group of humans. He even saw two doc.u.ments from DeRicci, swearing that the humans on this s.h.i.+p were survivors of the Sahara Dome ma.s.sacre.

"Thank you," Flint said. "I will have to download a copy of this into my systems."

"Please do," the Disty said, and leaned back, its hands clasped at its waist. Its eyes glittered as it watched Flint.

He didn't take the pad to the nearest computer interface. Instead, he pushed a knuckle against the pad's surface, and downloaded into a chip he wore on his left hand.

The chip was not attached to any of his systems. It merely recorded the information. He then downloaded into one other chip-also an unattached chip-for backup, and handed the pad back to the Disty.

"I'll take you to the survivors," Flint said.

62.

The news story had stalled. Ki Bowles sat in the broadcast booth and stared at the various wall screens. Disty s.h.i.+ps still remained outside the Moon's perimeter. Moon-based s.h.i.+ps, most from Armstrong, but some from the other port cities, lined the perimeter as if they were waiting for a fight.

But in the hours of the standoff, no fight ever came.

That alone stunned Bowles. She figured something else was going on. Someone had to know what was happening.

Someone was making deals.

The two freelancers in their rogue s.h.i.+p had gotten precious few Disty quotes. The Disty who initially contacted the rogue s.h.i.+p, thinking it was an official human vessel, signed off as soon as they realized it wasn't.

The footage was interesting. Some of those Disty s.h.i.+ps were so crammed that half a dozen Disty were visible behind the pilot. And some of those Disty looked smaller than usual-children, probably. All of their eyes seemed unusually moist, and their faces a darker gray than normal.

So the freelancers were able to make the crisis personal, just like they had claimed. But their window to interview the Disty pa.s.sed within five minutes.

It was a tribute the freelancers' talent that they were able to stretch those short contacts into much longer pieces.

Part of that was Bowles. She hunted for-and got-death tolls. They were unofficial and human-centered: two hundred human deaths total, most of them in Wells and Sahara Dome, most, it seemed, caused by trampling.

The Disty death tolls were tougher to get and kept changing all the time. She spoke to a human liaison with the Disty, someone who worked on Mars, and got an unofficial toll of three thousand, not counting the dead still in trains or those exploded in the s.h.i.+p collisions.

Bowles couldn't comprehend the number. She couldn't even think of ways to make it real for the news viewers, since there wasn't yet any available footage from Mars.

Her work was nearly done, and to make matters worse, it had begun to resemble the work of rival reporters from the other media companies. The story had become a universal one, which meant she would have to leave it soon and move on to other things.

She had one more angle, however, one she had more or less dropped as the crisis had gotten more immediate.

Noelle DeRicci.

Bowles would finish her profile of the woman who had left thousands of Disty to die in the s.p.a.ce just beyond the Moon.

And the thing Bowles needed to finish that profile was DeRicci herself.

63.

Flint used his links to silently disable the locks as he led the Disty into the pa.s.senger wing of his s.h.i.+p. It felt like old times-transferring prisoners from one jurisdiction to another-although he doubted the survivors in his game room would consider themselves prisoners.

When he reached the room, he found the door closed. It startled him; he had expected the door to remain open, as it had been throughout the trip.

He didn't let that surprise show, however. He didn't want the Disty to remove those knives from their sheaths.

Flint knocked once, more as a warning than anything, then pressed his hand on the automatic opener. The door slid back, revealing all six survivors standing in a line in the center of the room. Weiss was in the center. When the door had opened all the way, he stepped forward, his meaty hand outstretched.

"You must be the Disty," he said, looking past Flint to the group behind him. "We're the Sahara Dome ma.s.sacre survivors. I understand you need our help."

It was a masterful moment, a great attempt at taking power and control in a situation where these six people didn't have much control at all. Flint gave them a faint smile, and stepped aside.

But the Disty who had been the spokesperson all along caught Flint's arm. "I thought there were twelve."

"We found twelve," Flint said. "Five did not agree to come to Mars."

The Disty all whistled softly. The sound made the hairs on the back of Flint's neck rise.

"We're perfectly willing to help," Weiss said, as if the other conversation hadn't gone on at all. "You just have to tell us what to do."

"You said five." The Disty was still speaking to Flint. "There should be seven survivors, then. We only count six."

"The seventh is in my brig," Flint said. "He tried to take over the s.h.i.+p and blow it up."

The Disty's eyes grew even wider. "He is a criminal, then?"

"Yes," Flint said.

"So you are leaving us with six only. It is not enough."

Flint shrugged. "This is what we could do."

Weiss walked up to the group, forcing himself into the conversation. "We've agreed to remain on Mars as long as you need us. If it takes twice as long because there are only six of us, so be it."

The Disty slowly turned its head until it faced Weiss. "You know nothing of our customs."

Weiss's skin grew a little paler, but to his credit, he did not back away. Instead, he nodded. "We are willing to learn."

"It will be taxing," the Disty said.

"We were told that the rituals were not life-threatening for survivors. If that's the case, you have our full cooperation."

Flint looked past Weiss. The other survivors had their hands clasped in front so that they looked nonthreatening. Vajra was nodding as Weiss spoke. The others watched, looking nervous.

Flint had no doubt which two were behind this ploy.

"You have heard correctly," the Disty said. "The survivor ritual causes no harm to the partic.i.p.ant. It does, however, take many hours to complete. And you will, given the number of times you must go through it, find yourselves quite exhausted before the months are through."

"Months?" Marcos asked, her beautiful face twisted with alarm.

"We have hundreds of thousands of Disty who must face you and receive the cleansing that can only come from survivors. Even if you were to do a purely human thing and shake hands, this would take days. We must do much more than that."

The Disty then looked pointedly at Weiss's hands. The Disty had noticed Weiss's attempt to be friendly, understood it, and ignored it.