Alien Taste (25 page)

“You okay?” Indigo asked, touching his elbow, drawing him back to the room full of puzzled programmers.

He nodded vaguely. “This course change. Do you know where the Rover is going now?”

“Well . . .” Doctor Janda shuffled through paper on a side desk to pull out a map. She talked as she hunched over the map, skimming fingers over valleys and mountains. “We think it has somehow deviated back to an old course path. There were several camps as to what should be explored. Lots of
big-money special interest groups had different ideas on what the mission should be, what was to be explored. In the end, it was the luck of the draw, you know, window of opportunity, and if the Lander sets down where it was supposed to.”

“And?” Ukiah pressed.

“Navigating Mars isn't like a jaunt on the moon, or even Earth. Clouds obscure landmarks, and dust storms habitably change them beyond recognition.” The project leader paused to finally locate what she was searching for. “Here's the landing site.” She traced a meandering line and then tapped on the map. “This is where the course change came in. See this line? This was one of the original mission paths; it leads up to this crater. It looks like the Rover has merely defaulted back to some prototype code.”

“This looks like an impact site.” Indigo ran a finger along the curved wall of the indicated valley. Ukiah stared at the sight with his stomach turning to lead and sinking down through his guts.

“Sure is!” Doctor Janda smiled, oblivious to Ukiah's distress. “Something large hit it about three hundred years ago.” The right time frame for the crater to have been made by the main invasion ship. “Astronomers of the time made note of a flash of light on Mars. There was a lot of interest in studying this crater, but just before the Rover was launched, information from the Hubble telescope indicated that this area would be difficult to transverse. The Rover probably can make it, but no one wanted to take the risk of sending it all that distance to get stuck the second day out. Not with the primary mission being to return mineral samples to Earth.”

“How long will it take for the Rover to get into the crater?” Ukiah asked, trying to fight down his growing panic.

Doctor Janda chewed on her bottom lip, eyes squinted as she thought. “Three days—probably. But we're hoping to upload a course correction and get it back on its original mission.”

Three days.

“Can you turn off Sam Robb's diddle?”

Doctor Janda looked at him in surprise. “Um, no. We need control of the Rover to do that.”

Indigo glanced at him, and her eyes widened slightly. “Thank you, Doctor Janda.” She caught Ukiah by the arm and guided him toward the door. “We'll let you get back to work. I'll be contacting you later.”

Outside in the hall, Indigo gazed up at Ukiah as he leaned heavily against the wall. “What's wrong?”

“My father's people came to invade Earth. A hundred thousand warriors. We thought Prime reduced the main ship to space dust, but he didn't. The ship is on Mars. It made that impact crater. And if the Ontongard has gone through all this to get the Rover to the ship, then they believe that they can bring those warriors to Earth. I need to go find the Pack and talk to them.”

He pushed off the wall and started for the door.

“Why the Pack?” Indigo kept pace with him. “What can they do?”

“I don't know, but Indigo, do you think that anyone else is going to believe that there's an alien invasion ship sitting on Mars and that its sleeping crew is about to be awakened by the hijacked Mars Rover? Hell, it sounds like they don't even know that the Rover has been hijacked.”

She considered it. “No. They've searched that crater with everything man can turn on Mars. The Hubble telescope. SALT. There's no sign of a space ship.”

“The ship has shields against electronic and visual detection,” Ukiah said.

“Surely the Rover isn't sophisticated enough to pilot an alien space ship to Earth. Hell, if the shields are anything like those in the movies, the Rover won't even be able to get through to the ship.”

They passed the receptionist and went out into the afternoon heat.

“Pack memories are so weird.” Ukiah struggled to explain. “It's like that old story about five blind men and an elephant, each describing the animal by the piece he's standing next to and failing to see the rest. I can wonder ‘why can't the humans see the ship?' and the answer ‘because of the shields' comes back. I can tell you where the shield control panel is, how to fix the shields, how to sabotage them, the standard protocol in emergency situations dealing with shields. But what can the Ontongard do with the Rover with the shields up—I don't have the faintest.”

She rubbed her face. “I have to get some sleep. This has gotten too weird for even me. We have three days to stop the Rover. You talk to the Pack tonight, and tomorrow we'll figure something out.”

He pulled her close and kissed her. “Want me to drive you home?”

She nuzzled into him. “No. It would just strand me in the South Hills. Drop me downtown and I'll pick up a company car.”

“Why not your motorcycle?”

She laughed. “They asked me to ride in something a little more sturdy until this blows over. This time, when you get done with the Pack, give me a call.”

“I could be real late,” he warned.

“Then I'll be slightly incoherent. Wake me and talk to me, okay?”

 

Finding the Pack was easy this time. They scattered and reformed like a flock of birds, but not without coordination. Long ago Rennie had marked out sites to gather, and they cycled through them with the phases of the moon. It was full moon, the sixth month of the year, and thus they were at Rochester Inn.

Ukiah parked his motorcycle in the vast gravel parking lot and pushed his way into the crowded bar. A big-screen TV was playing a baseball game, and as he entered, there was a roar as a fly ball was caught and the score remained deadlocked at the top of the ninth. The air stank of beer, sweat, cigars, whiskey, and an underlying scent of Pack. He brushed through people, learning odd bits of information from them as he worked his way to the Pack.

He found the Pack taking up the back corner of the bar, several tables pushed together and scattered with dirty dishes and beer bottles. The Pack had sensed him coming and had a chair ready for him beside Rennie.

“The memory work?” Rennie asked as Ukiah straddled the chair.

Ukiah nodded. “Worked great. Worked well enough for me to figure out what the Ontongard are up to. We're screwed.”

Rennie frowned and the table stilled. “What do you mean?”

“Prime didn't blow the ship. It's on Mars. The damn Rover that Janet Haze helped build is on Mars. They're going to wake the sleepers.”

“That can't be,” Hellena whispered.

“They've already taken control of the Rover. They might have already awakened them.”

The Pack stood as one and pushed their way through to the big-screen TV. A fly ball had just been
hit deep into center field and the outfielder was scrambling. Bear got to the TV first, reached out, and changed the channel as the outfielder missed the ball. There was a howl from the fans, drowned quickly by a snarl from the Pack.

Bear hit the local early news first, doing the headline news. They played updates on the FBI killings—Warner's body had apparently turned up while Indigo was with him. The dead FBI agent's picture vanished to be replaced with the Mars Mission logo. “Late this afternoon, NASA reported that they lost control of the Mars Rover. Attempts are being made to reestablish control.” They went to a press conference where a thin, nervous man explained to the local affiliate the exact time and place that they lost control.

“Hex must have known since the beginning that the ship wasn't destroyed,” Rennie raged. “That bastard! No wonder he's always been so smug. All his little plots and deals—they never made sense without knowing this. This is what he's been working toward.”

“I don't get it,” Bear murmured. “If the ship's been up there all this time, and the Ontongard have always had the remote key, why do they need the Rover?”

“Listen to the background,” Hellena suddenly hissed.

There was a strange warbling noise, repeated over and over again. It was, Ukiah realized, Sam Robb's “wake up and come here” signal. Ukiah frowned, the Pack memory recognizing it as familiar but slow in revealing the information to him.

Rennie growled beside him, recognizing it first. “The shutdown code for the ECM shield. The shield must have gone up when the ship crashed, and the
remote key had been rendered useless. Normal security protocol. Origination of the shutdown code has to be within the short-range weapon perimeter. That's what they need the Rover for. Once the shield is down, they can wake the sleepers with the remote.”

His words triggered memories and Ukiah groaned aloud.

“What is it, cub?”

“Janet Haze had the remote key. That's why the Ontongard are kidnapping the FBI agents. When the key didn't turn up in police evidence, they assumed it was turned over to the FBI. But FBI doesn't have it.”

“They don't?”

“I found it and didn't know what it was until now. They can't wake the sleepers. They can't control the ship.”

“You have the remote key?” Rennie repeated with amazement. “And you didn't realize it?”

“I didn't have Pack memory earlier,” Ukiah reminded him. “I put it in a safe place until I had time to figure out what it was.”

“Then there's lots of hope here.” Rennie laughed. “This is the first time the Pack's got their hands on that damn remote, and we'll make the most of it. Go smash the bloody thing, cub, and scatter the pieces in the river. The rest of you, if Hex's here in Pittsburgh making Gets, then they're controlling the Rover from somewhere in Pittsburgh, maybe from that ugly yellow building in Oakland. If we stop the Rover, then the shields stay up. Screw the bastards every way we can.”

“At least until the colonization of Mars starts.”

“We'll fight that war when it comes. Tonight we fight this war.”

Ukiah glanced up at the TV screen, and his knees almost buckled under him.

“What?” Rennie looked too at the screen where the story had changed from the lost Rover to the newest of the kidnapped FBI agents.

“Indigo,” Ukiah could only manage a whisper, staring up at her photo. “They've taken Indigo. They're going to try to make her a Get.” He turned to Rennie. “You've got to help me find her.”

“Cub, the FBI and the police are going to turn the city upside-down to find her. No one else but the Pack will be looking for the Rover control system. If she dies, she dies. If we don't stop that Rover, all of mankind will die.”

He wanted to beg, to plead, to point out that they had three days to stop the Rover, but he couldn't. Pack memories supplied too many details on Prime's home world, an entire race supplanted by the Ontongard. Much as he loved her, Indigo's life couldn't weigh against all the lives on the planet. He slowly nodded. “You're right.”

Rennie gripped his shoulder and gave him a slight shake. “Look for her. If you find her in time, we'll come and help you free her.”

 

Max answered the phone with “Bennett,” which meant he was driving.

“Max. Where are you?” Ukiah hiked quickly across the bar's parking lot. Dusk was setting in quickly, bleeding the light from the sky.

“Wheeling.”

Ukiah swore, stopping beside his bike. “Still? I need you.”

“What's wrong?”

“The Ontongard, they took Indigo. I need to find her now, before they kill her.”

There was a long silence from Max. “Kid, I won't be back for another two hours, even at eighty miles per hour.”

“I know. I know. I'm heading downtown to get a trail on them. It might take me that long just to get a trace. I'll call you when I know more.”

“Do that.”

Ukiah hung up and glanced at the darkening night sky. Never before did it seem to press so close or hold so much menace.

 

He found Kraynak and asked to see the dead FBI agents. Kraynak refused him at first, and Ukiah hounded him out into the night, a small covered porch where the smokers practiced their habit in a smoke-free world.

“Damn it, Kraynak, just let me see their clothes. What can it hurt?”

“Lately, the mind boggles.” Kraynak lit a cigarette, the match flaring in the shadows. The swirl of smoke and the glowing end marked the detective as he stood silently considering. “Okay, kid, on one condition. You said that Bennett was down in Wheeling but hauling ass to get in here. If I let you in, you wait for him, because he'll be all over my ass if you go off alone.”

Ukiah shook his head. “I can't do that. They're playing with a type of germ-warfare virus, Kraynak. The minute they inject her, she's dead. There's no cure. There's no hope. If they did it like they did the others, they injected her with an immune-suppression drug when they grabbed her. They'll give it time to work and then they hit her with the virus. When they do that, she's as good as dead. I can't wait.”