Outlanders Closing the Cosmic Eye, page 27
"Glitch in your software?" Robison asked.
"No. Me trying to use your weird Terran idiom, Dammit! Anyway, we don't know what's going to happen. All we can do...is all we can do."
"Amen to that," Major Mike said.
THE SUN HADN'T CLEARED the peaks behind the camp when Kane stepped out into the cool breeze of morning, although the desert stretching to the west was a sea of rose dazzle. He stretched as he walked over to the campfire where the others were already gathered. Apparently the aliens just liked campfires, just as humans did. They sure didn't need them for heat, light or even cooking.
"So what's up. Bug Mama?" he called. "As far as I'm concerned, I still haven't made up my mind about your job offer."
"Same for the rest of us," Grant said.
"But something's happened, Kane," Brigid said. Something in her tone made him tip his head to the side as he accepted a mug of steaming local been from Domi. "We received an object," Wix said. It was the first time Kane had seen the chief whitecoat since they'd landed, just out of sight over a hill from the big coalition camp, where the Forlorn Hope still lay beneath spoofer screens to hide it from overhead detection. The alien scientist had been busy in some underground lab, gleefully analyzing the data from events in the Eye system. Before making planet-fall he had come up for air long enough to make clear that, once he started publishing, a sizable proportion of the Far Arm's cosmologists and high-end physicists were going to combust spontaneously.
Maybe literally.
"An object," Kane echoed.
Wix gestured. On a folding table sat a metallic object, a pyramid about eight inches in height and along each base. "It looks like an interphaser, kinda," Domi said "Except for the red button," Grant said. "And the note above it with the arrow pointing down, that says, 'Press
"It would appear that some of your friends," Bug Mama said, "are either exceptionally waggish or exceptionally literal-minded."
"Philboyd," Grant grumbled. "He thinks we're retards." The aliens, Bug Mama, Wix and a dozen or so random spectators stood waiting expectantly.
"What?' Kane said.
"Well," Bug Mama said. "Aren't you?"
"Aren't I what?"
"Going to press it?"
"Oh. Mebbe Philboyd has a point."
"That bastard," Domi said.
Kane stepped up, paused, pressed the button.
A column of radiance shot out the top of the pyramid. It took the form, three feet tall, of -
"Lakesh?" Kane said, incredulous.
"Friend Kane, my good Grant," the hologram said unctuously, "Brigid dear, darlingest Domi, and our esteemed friends and allies of Team Phoenix. You no doubt wonder how we managed to locate you, since an explosion, apparently initiated by an AI security routine, destroyed the Starwatch extra-ecliptic orbital station approximately 1.5 milliseconds after you jumped out, according to some quite brilliant calculations by Dr. Philboyd reconciling orbital-telescope observation with our own mat-trans monitors' recording of the outbound transmission. Unfortunately, not even Cerberus redoubt's jump network monitoring capabilities were able to discern where you had jumped to. Indeed it strained our capabilities to receive even the crudest telemetry from the station."
The figure sighed. "All academic now, of course. Another crime against science must be added to Bates' tally—" "Not to mention those poor people," Robison said under his breath.
"By the way, I trust that by this time you have achieved some resolution of the Bates situation. I assure you I am most eager to hear the details."
"Get to the goddam point," Kane gritted.
"In any event, our rather remarkably gifted Sally Wright appears to have located you by remote viewing," the hologram said. "Several days ago, by our reckoning, she perceived some kind of upheaval in the Far Arm. One of a truly cataclysmic nature and scale."
Hays pointed a stubby finger at Reichert and switched it to Robison. "If either of you quotes Star Wars about that," he growled, "I'll shoot you myself."
"Hush," Brigid said.
"Her comment was, it had to be you, my friends, because, and I quote, 'only they can cause trouble like that " "Your friends know you well," Bug Mama murmured.
"That enabled her to home in on your psychic emanations," the recorded Lakesh went on. "Apparently the bond between Kane and dear Brigid creates a feedback loop that broadcasts quite clearly, in psychic terms. You form a sort of beacon, at least to one of Ms. Wright's esoteric gifts. So to make a long story short—"
"That's a change," Grant said sotto voce.
“—we are ready to bring you home. If you will repair to the following location, you and our friends from Team Phoenix will be transported back here to Cerberus."
"SAY WHAT?" Kane asked.
They stood on a hilltop overlooking the coalition camp. The recording and transponder device, or whatever it was, sat on the ground in the midst of the Cerberus four, as per instructions.
"I said," Major Mike Hays said, "we're not going." Kane looked from one of the four to the other. Each man nodded.
Marina stood among them, looking small but standing upright. She nodded, too.
"You boys know this is likely the only train out," he said.
"We do"
The breeze kicked the fabric of Kane's trousers around his calves. The pants and shirt were looser than what he was used to from home, but nothing too unusual. His comrades were dressed similarly; Domi, characteristically, had her shirt tied up to bare her flat white midriff. Their shadow suits were folded surprisingly small in the rucksacks resting beside them on the dusty blue ground cover.
"But why won't you come back to Earth with us?" Brigid asked.
Larry Robison laughed. "A better question might be, why are you going back?"
"We got a fight back there," Kane said. He glanced at Grant. "Some of us got more than that."
"Well, we don't have anything," Hays said around the stump of a cigar. "Nothing tying us to good old Earth at all." "The world we knew is gone," Joe Weaver said quietly. "Bless assay on the wind two centuries ago."
"The planet we left behind," Robison said, "is just another place to us."
"And you saw our last gig there didn't turn out so well." "What about fighting the overlords?" Grant asked. Hays shrugged. "What about 'em?" He shook his head. "They're not real to us, Kane. Nothing on Earth has seemed really real to us since we woke up."
"And the struggle for the Shuara tribesfolk was a whole lot more real to us than the whole battle against the barons or the Annunaki," Weaver said. He chuckled softly, if without much humor. "And as Sean said, it turned out we cared a lot more for them than they did for us."
"I thought you were supposed to rebuild the world," Domi said. "Or even just America." She seemed on the verge of tears again, and fighting hard not to show it. Robison sighed and shook his head. "That's what Bates hired us to do. What he told us he hired us to do." "Another one of his damnable lies," Weaver said. "You folks should know that if anybody does."
It was Kane's turn to shrug. "Yeah, turned out the job he woke you back up for, was to hit us and take over Cerberus."
"That contract is invalid, if I might revert to a previous incarnation—for what I have to say I hope is the last time ever," Weaver said.
"That's the long and the short of it, kids," Hays said. "Earth's turned her back on us—we're just returning the favor. And if that makes you think we're running away from a fight, so be it."
"No," Kane said, surprising himself more than anyone. "I don't think that at all. Any more than you people could say we're running out on this fight here. Hell, mebbe we should be glad that this time we get to pick our battle." "Yeah," Grant said, after a moment. "Even if we don't really have much choice."
"What about you, Marina?" Brigid asked. "Do you want to go home."
"I ran away from my home," the girl said. She put her arms around Hays's waist and hugged him fiercely. "I want to stay with my family."
"You could stay," Pine said, stepping forward to take hold of both Kane's hands. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "You could help as fight the remnants of the Grand Council. And then perhaps we could come aid you in your fight!"
Bug Mama stepped up and laid a gentle hand on the girl's robed shoulder. "Sweetheart," she said, "we got a long hard slog ahead of us. Our battle won't be done soon. If it ever is."
"And I dunno if that's such a good idea," Kane said. He turned over his hands to take the girl's in his, and looked over her shoulder at the diminutive alien.
"We've seen how politics play out here in the Far Arm,
“Pine." Brigid said. "Perhaps it's a blessing that the council never learned of Earth's location from Gilgamesh Bates." "Yeah," Reichert said. "They came within a whisker of vaporizing Sidra as collateral damage. We may not be too fond of what Earth's become, but I don't think any of us want to see it blown away."
"But we'd help," Pine said. But she wept openly, and shook her head in a gesture that meant the same for her as it did the Terrans.
"We would, maybe," Bug Mama said gently. "You, me. Some of the beings standing here. But we don't even speak for the whole coalition, child. You know that. And we'd never keep the planet's location secret if we started up traffic between the worlds. Even the Paa and the Zuri have a lot of clout left. And enough malice for the whole galactic group."
She shook her huge-eyed head. "Not to name names, my people are more than capable of turning Earth to charcoal just for vengeance. Even if they've lost their dominance over the Circle of Life. Maybe more if they have—we have a vengeful streak, if you haven't noticed.
"No. I think Kane and his friends are right. Best to let sleeping frogs lie."
Brigid opened her mouth.
"It's okay," Kane told her. "Leave it."
Pine wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a moist kiss on his beard. He winced by pure reflex, although the burned skin had been totally healed in minutes by Arm med tech. The beard still had a mighty sparse patch on that side, though.
Hays stepped up to Kane and held out a hand. They gripped forearm to forearm. The silver-haired man stepped back.
"Vayan can Dios," Reichert said. The Phoenix four saluted.
Reality twisted.
Somehow it didn't seem like a big deal to Kane.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
James Axler, Outlanders Closing the Cosmic Eye
