Звезда Пандоры

Liz and Carys were waiting by the pickup. Mark smiled and waved at Barry and Sandy, who were in the backseat with Panda. “I’m going to help Rand,” he said. “Take Barry and Sandy up to the Highmarsh.”

“I’m staying with you,” Liz said.

“But—”

“Mark, I really hope you aren’t going to come out with any crap about this being a man’s job.”

“They need a mother.”

“And a father.”

“I can’t abandon Rand. This is our life they’re destroying. At the very least I owe the people this. Some of us have to get away, that’s the only way we can rebuild afterward.”

“Agreed. And I’m helping you.”

“Carys?” he appealed.

“Don’t even think about involving me in this argument. But if you two crazies are going to join up with Rand’s guerrilla army I’ll take the kids out of here in the MG.” She patted a heavy bulge in her jacket. “They’ll be safe with me, I promise. And we’ve got the arrays, we can stay in touch.”

Mark nearly questioned when his family had become gun-toting survivalists. Instead he gave Carys a quick kiss. “Thanks.” Then he and Liz had the really difficult job of coaxing the kids into the MG, promising them Mom and Dad would be following along right behind.

Dark specks zipped out of the cloud that squatted over half of the Trine’ba. They arrowed around to line up on Randtown, accelerating hard.

“They’re coming,” Liz called.

Mark was backing the pickup into the Ables Motors garage workshop where it would be hidden from view. David Dunbavand was standing behind the truck, helping to guide him in with shouts and frantic hand signals. Mark had never appreciated how difficult it was to drive without micro radar providing a proximity scan.

“That’s enough,” David said. “Let’s go.” He slipped the safety off his maser wand as they left the back of the garage. Like most buildings, it had taken a pounding in the Regents’ blast. The office along the front was missing all its windows, and the external walls were shredded, but the main framework was intact. It would be easy to rebuild, given a little time and money.

That was the kind of thinking—visualizing a future of complete normality—that allowed Mark to keep going. He squatted down next to Liz behind a thick stone wall that bordered the Libra Bar’s beer garden. The blast had hurled the garden’s wooden tables and chairs across the lawn, smashing them against the wall of the Zanue car rental franchise next door. Liz and he had come here on many summertime evenings for a meal and a drink, sitting out in the garden with friends where they could watch the boats come and go from the quays along the waterfront.

Now they had the same clear view of the waterfront through their weapon sights. The rain had subsided to a light drizzle laced with a few slim trails of gray smoke from the dying fires. Mark could see the alien flyers skimming toward him just a few meters above the wavelets.

“Stand by,” Simon’s voice said from the handheld array. “They look like they’re slowing. Could be plan A.”

There had been a lot of shouting about that when Simon assembled his ragtag band of two dozen guerrillas in the passenger waiting lounge. Plan A envisaged the aliens landing in the town, which would allow the guerrillas to snipe at them, slowing their advance. Plan B, the worst-case scenario, would have them flying over the town to attack the convoy directly, in which case they’d have to fire a fusillade of shots at the craft as they went overhead and hope to hit some vital component. Everyone knew that would be next to useless. As always, Simon had prevailed.

Mark looked over his shoulder. The last of the buses were visible on the highway at the base of Blackwater Crag, traveling far too fast for anything that didn’t have working arrays and safety systems. They only needed a few minutes more and they’d be turning into the Highmarsh.

Looking at the approaching alien flyers, Mark wasn’t convinced that the big valley was going to be the refuge Simon had claimed. In his private vision of the future, Mark had envisaged the aliens coming ashore in boats, taking days to reach the Highmarsh.

“Carys, where are you?” Liz asked.

“We turned onto the Highmarsh road a couple of minutes ago.”

“They’re in aircraft. Looks like they’re landing here, though.”

“Okay, let me know if any are coming our way. I’ll need to get off the road fast.”

“Will do.”

Mark glanced at the unit’s screen. Their signal was routing through the still-functional sections of the district’s network. Several nodes along the Highmarsh were operating, allowing them to extend their fragile contact around the mountains. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t last long once the aliens landed and started running sensor sweeps.