Heaven's Fall (29 page)

She emerged from the bathroom to find Edgar Chang and Tea waiting for her. “Edgely has something important to show us.”

The high-school-teacher-slash-astronomer had commandeered an office on the second floor of the hangar building. From the pictures on the walls—cargo aircraft going back to the last century—and models of same on the desk, the place belonged to a veteran pilot. Edgely gently removed the models to clear the desk for his datapad.

Pav, Tea, and Xavier joined them. “Where’s Yahvi?” Rachel said.

“Ferrying some interesting food-type thing to Zeds,” Tea said.

“Here we go then.” Edgely had an image on the notepad. “You will recall,” he said, sounding and acting every centimeter the secondary school lecturer, “Mr. Chang told you that there were satellites that the Aggregates mistakenly thought to be dead.

“Actually, there were quite a few of them. When your Reivers began showing themselves twenty years back, some operators turned their birds off—or, rather, pretended to. So the human race does have a few overhead assets, if you know whom to ask.

“The trick is, no one has built or launched any new ones in almost twenty years. Maneuvering fuel runs out and solar panels degrade. Satellites don’t last forever. And the low-altitude birds, which are the most useful for taking pictures, are subject to atmospheric drag.”

“How do you know all this?” Rachel said. Her suspicions, never totally put to rest, were now up and demanding attention.

“Oh, Kettering tracks them,” Edgely said. “That’s really how the group started . . . English schoolboys were tracking secret Soviet rocket launches back in the 1960s. Some of them grew up and kept up with their hobby.

“The teacher I mentioned, Mr. Hall? He was a junior member, and he later emigrated to Australia and became a teacher in Alice Springs, which is where I grew up.” He laughed a little too loudly. “It was so perfectly appropriate!”

“Why?” Pav said.

“Alice Springs was home to a big American satellite downlink station. Just outside town there was a big base, all fenced off, with these giant golf-ball-shaped domes. I mean, even if you had no interest in space and astronomy, you would still be curious!

“I think, in fact, that Mr. Hall had originally come to Alice Springs to work at the facility—lost his job, I guess, and wound up teaching me and a few others at Centralian about satellites and telescopes and . . .” He suddenly stopped. “This is boring and off the subject.”

“A little,” Rachel said. But she had enjoyed hearing it, because it went a long way to making her feel better about trusting Edgely.

“Er, let’s just say I wouldn’t have found Keanu without Mr. Hall’s help. And I sure wouldn’t have been able to get hold of this recon imagery.”

He showed his datapad, which displayed a satellite image of a desert landscape.

“Where is this?” Pav said.

“And more to the point,” Rachel said. “What?”

“You’re looking at southern Utah and northern Arizona, Free Nation U.S. That facility is what the Aggregates and their human allies call Site A, though most everyone calls it the Ring.”

It was easy to see why: A giant ring-shaped structure was obvious in the image, a blot on the desert landscape. It had been carved through several mountains and one plateau, too.

“How big is that thing?” Xavier said.

“The Ring itself is over ten kilometers in diameter,” Edgely said.

“It appears to be some kind of high-speed particle accelerator,” Chang said.

“A bit like the Large Hadron Collider?” Edgely offered.

“Larger—”

“And probably nastier,” Tea said. “I’ve actually been to the LHC, and one big difference is that the real one’s underground. So why is this aboveground?”

“I wasn’t suggesting that it actually was a particle accelerator,” Edgely said, a bit defensively. “The Aggregates or whatever you call them seem to know a lot more about physics than we do.”

Chang tapped on a strange-looking structure in the middle of the Ring. “Is that a communications dish or telescope?”

Rachel peered closely at the fuzzy image. “If it were a dish, wouldn’t it be inside a dome?” she said, remembering her father’s work after Megan’s death, how they had visited tracking sites and telescopes.

“They’ve also got some pretty standard buildings to go with this,” Pav said. He indicated a collection of rooftops at the center of a couple of roads and rail lines. It was off to one side of the Ring structure. “And a weird-looking mound—”

“Aggregate habitation,” Edgely said.

Pav grunted with disgust. “And serious power lines, coming from the south and the west.”

“Las Vegas and Phoenix,” Edgely said. “We knew there were nuke plants in both places, before the Aggregates. No reason to think they’ve shut them down since.”

“And what is all that?” Rachel said. She indicated what appeared to be fields of rectangular lumps arrayed to the north and east of the Ring, on flat ground.

“Let me,” Chang said. He zoomed the picture in. The lumps resolved into vehicles that looked as though they were armored, with rounded turrets and protruding cannon barrels. Some displayed coils, others screens. All of them looked intimidating.

“Any idea what those are?” Rachel said.

“Those look like tanks,” Pav said, surprising his wife. “Armored personnel carriers.”

“That’s what my people think, too,” Chang said.

“Why the hell,” Tea said, speaking for Rachel and everyone in the office, “would the Aggregates be assembling this . . . invasion force out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Clearly it is associated with the Ring,” Chang said.

“Obviously,” Tea snapped. Rachel could see that the former astronaut was in her element, dealing with technology and military matters with men who were slow to accept her expertise.
Go, girl.
“I mean, I look at this Ring and think particle beam weapon, some kind of big fricking ray gun.”

The fine hairs on Rachel’s back tingled. What would be the likely target for a giant Reiver ray gun? It had to be Keanu. The thought was so terrifying and appalling that she couldn’t say it out loud.

“But what’s not obvious is how that Ring becomes some kind of force multiplier.”

No one could offer an explanation.

“I don’t think we’re going to figure this thing out here,” she said. She was hoping they hadn’t.

She followed Pav out onto the tarmac. The air was thick, muggy, cool. In other circumstances, she would have enjoyed touring Darwin. For that matter, she would have enjoyed seeing some of Bangalore. Anything beyond the confines of Yelahanka Air Base.

“Were you able to connect with Keanu?”

Pav shook his head. “I think I got a link. You know that weird feeling you get behind your ear? So I transmitted the information—Sanjay, where we are now.”

That alarmed Rachel, and Pav noticed. “Nothing more, I promise. I got no response, but there’s some chance the message got through.”

“Only a small one.” She felt agitated and unsure. “We need to tell them about this Ring thing as soon as we can. And before we can do that with any confidence—” She turned, spotted her quarry heading for the aircraft. “Xavier!”

The rotund one detoured toward her. He still looked ashen and dazed, which made Rachel feel a bit worse about what she had to tell him. “We need the transmitter.”

“I know. If we would come to rest for more than an hour I might be able to do something—”

“Why can’t you work on the plane?”

That stumped him. He turned to look at the vehicle. “Well, it’s not stable . . .”

“Come on, even with the bumps we took going around storms, most of the flight was like glass,” Rachel said. “Are you telling me you can’t get anything done in three or four hours?”

Xavier blinked. “I’m not telling you anything like that. I just didn’t know how . . . dire this was.”

“It’s totally fucking dire. Please, please, please build that transmitter as soon as possible. Even if you only get some of it done on the plane, we’ll hold at our next stop to get it running.”

“Wait,” Xavier said. “The real problem is . . . well, power.”

“Where did we get it when all this started on Keanu?”

“From Keanu itself, the whole system. They were tapping into it inside the Temple.”

“I have an idea,” Pav said. He gestured to Xavier. “Let’s talk to Edgely and the pilots.”

To Rachel he said, “You should probably find Yahvi and get aboard.”

Has anyone heard from Colin?

As near as I can tell, he’s been dark for seventy hours—this from a guy who can’t take a breath without posting somewhere, and now that Keanu folks are back? Is something up? Is he all right? Someone tell us!

POSTER ZIRCONX, KETTERING GROUP,
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2040

If not for the changed landscape outside his window—or just the fact that he
had
a window—Whit Murray could have believed he was still working in Las Vegas. There were the same cubicles, the same lighting, the same workstations.

Even the people looked the same. Most were in their early twenties, with a few outliers who might be Dehm’s age, or Whit’s. There were probably twenty in the place.

That number didn’t include the half dozen THE supervisors, two trios this time—including Counselors Kate, Margot, and Hans, who, along with their fellow monitors, patrolled the lab like herding dogs, silent and still until some worker stretched or showed physical stress of some kind.

Then one of them would swoop . . . gently, it must be said. Even supportively. “Is there a problem? Are you in discomfort? Is a command unclear? Is the task too challenging?”

Whit knew because he had been the subject of THE “support” several times in his previous posting, though there THE counselors had tended to be more gruff and impatient.

Here, though, they were all about helping you do the work, it seemed.

Maybe it was because they were
all
—field modelers and THE action teamsters—new here.

Or maybe it was due to the critical nature of the work.

What made the current level of THE monitoring slightly creepier and more intrusive was that they had three workstations dedicated to them, meaning that any THE agent could sit down and call up a record of every keystroke a modeler made. Whit had had experienced teachers and others checking his work; this was far worse.

“Hello, Whit.”

He looked up to see Counselor Kate, the slim redhead from the trio that had “recruited” him in Las Vegas. Still wearing her standard THE uniform, minus the jacket, she looked relaxed, indecently healthy and happy. She lowered herself to a stand that Whit, a longtime baseball player, always called “on-deck circle”: one knee up, one on the floor.

Arm on the back of Whit’s chair. “How do you like the work so far? The facility?”

“The place is fine.” He was able to be truthful; his living quarters were bigger and nicer than where he had lived at Nellis. He wasn’t in a bunk bed, for one thing, and he shared his room with only three young men, down from seven.

“But . . .” Kate was offering him an opening.

The only thing lacking so far was free communication, and Whit’s experience with THE encouraged him to raise it: “I wish I could talk to my mother.”

Kate was all sympathy. “We told her Friday night that you had been called away on a special assignment, and that you would be in touch . . . Tuesday! Right after your shift today.” Her whole chirpy manner suggested that this was a wonderful coincidence. Whit also knew that if he hadn’t said anything, it wouldn’t be happening.

Here came the hand on his shoulder. “Anything else?”

Whit pushed back. Maybe it was exposure to Dehm, maybe it was a sense that time was short and that people with his skills were rare. He might have a tiny bit of leverage.

“I would be more productive if I knew what I was working on.”

“You’re working on modeling electromagnetic fields. Very, very large and powerful ones. Me, too, by the way.” She nodded toward her cubicle.

“I knew that,” he said. “But I don’t know
why
. Or what for.”

Counselor Kate seemed to process this. Whit expected to see her glance toward Counselor Hans or Margot or one of the other three for permission, but she kept her eyes focused on him as she said, “Well, then, ask me.”

“We’re creating what appears to be a giant cone—or ring—of energy, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Correct. We can’t be messing around with that kind of energy too close to population centers.”

“I understand that. I just don’t see the use of this energy cone.” He decided to press his luck. “Is it a weapon?”

Counselor Kate didn’t hesitate. “No, you have my word on that. And, since you have no special reason to trust me, look at this.” This time she did glance at Counselor Margot. Apparently having received permission, she called up a new schematic on her screen. It showed a dozen beams of some kind emanating from a projector at the center of the ring. The beams hit the ring, which then projected a gauzy cone into the sky.

Counselor Kate tapped on her mouse pad, pointing the cone in different directions. Apparently it could even be aimed parallel to the Earth’s surface. Having some idea of the energies involved, Whit hoped he would never find the cone aimed at him.