More from habit than any other impulse, he looked at Megan, who was standing still, facing away from him, eyes closed and head down.
Camilla was in the same posture.
“Megan,” he said.
Megan literally shuddered, then opened her eyes. “Oh, fuck.”
The wind had continued to rise. The dense foliage all around them waved. It was like being on the leading edge of a tropical storm, the kind that blew through Houston every few years.
The air even began to smell different . . . moist, thick.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Something bad happened.”
“What?”
“On the surface.” Megan was pressing her fingers to her temples, as if trying to tune in a poor signal. Then she abruptly dropped her hands and looked at him, wide-eyed. “Did you have a bomb?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s so damn weird . . . like, like you just picked up an old family album and remembered some uncle.” She pointed to the glowworms, then at the waving, windblown trees. “The light faded for a moment, and then I knew that something had gone boom. Something you brought.”
Camilla started clutching at Lucas, talking to him in Portuguese.
“And she knows, too?” Zack said.
Lucas held the girl, listening briefly, then said, “Yes, something bad happened. She’s very afraid.”
Zack turned to Megan. “I didn’t bring a bomb.” Even as he said it, he could easily imagine two possibilities: One, Brahma had a weapon. Two, Venture did, too . . . but the commander never knew.
There was a sound from somewhere nearby, a deep, guttural noise. Like a giant clearing his throat, Zack thought.
The others heard it, too. “Zack, what do we do?” Natalia asked.
“For the moment, record it,” he said, wondering at the sad sound of his own voice. He looked at Lucas, who had his camera out. Then at Megan. “Unless we should run. . . .”
Megan looked as numb as Zack felt. She could only shrug as, with no warning, two giant watery globes appeared from the woods.
They stopped, dissolved, and disgorged a Sentry each. The beings looked identical in size and coloring. The only difference was in their vest belts; one of them looked worn and used, the other straight from the box.
Like dogs after a bath, the Sentry pair shivered and shed the enveloping goo, splashing it on the five humans. Zack was horrified, both by the potential contamination and by the taste, which reminded him of polluted seawater.
Now he had to act. “Everybody back!”
He took Megan by the arm. To his surprise, she fought him! Camilla did the same with Lucas.
Zack started to say, “Let’s get out of here—” But before he could finish the order, the nearest Sentry snapped out a limb and reached directly for Megan. Zack feared that, like Pogo, she would be sliced up.
But the Sentry pulled her close, then rolled into a giant three-meter-tall ball, enveloping her.
The other Sentry did the same with Camilla. Natalia and Lucas were unable to react any more effectively than Zack.
The Sentries then rolled off, deeper into Keanu.
Zack stared after them, stunned to immobility, hearing Lucas say, “I think they’re headed for the Temple.”
Approximately twenty-eight hours after landing on Keanu, one hundred twenty hours after launch from Kourou, Bangalore Space Centre lost contact with spacecraft Brahma . The cause of the problem is not known at present. Further information will be made available in due course.
ISRO PRESS RELEASE, 23 AUGUST 2019
“Tell me you didn’t put a nuke on this mission.”
Harley Drake rolled up to Brent Bynum. The White House representative was standing behind Shane Weldon and Josh Kennedy, who were asking every member of the flight control team, one by one, what data they had last recorded prior to loss of contact—and what, if anything, they were seeing now.
“This isn’t the place to discuss those issues,” Bynum said. “We need to go to the Vault.” He picked up his Slate—which had been vibrating nonstop ever since the most recent “event” on Keanu—and headed for the door.
“Fuck the Vault,” Harley said. “I’ve made my last visit to that place.”
Weldon pushed back his chair. “So, Harley, is that the status report from Home Team?”
“No. But I can probably give you a tentative report, along the lines of ‘We got nothing.’”
“What makes you think there was a nuke on board?”
“I know you guys. A couple of hours ago you were telling me to class the ‘entities’ as ‘hostile.’ Then you start talking about some ‘Item.’” Harley jerked a thumb toward the screen, which was still showing a ground-based telescopic view of Keanu and a scattering debris cloud. “Then there’s that.”
Bynum looked beaten down. “I still don’t think we should talk here.”
“Every person in this room has a need to know,” Harley said. “If you can’t trust them . . . well,” he said, shaking his head, “you really can’t be more fucked than you are now, can you?”
Before Bynum could answer, Weldon stood up. “Harley is correct. NASA, the White House, the Department of Defense, and Homeland Security authorized the placement of a small nuclear device aboard Venture . Although no orders were given for its use, it is likely that it was detonated and caused the loss of the vehicle.”
“And Brahma,” said capcom Travis Buell. “The guys in Bangalore don’t know what hit them.”
“I wonder what’s on the news,” Jasmine Trieu said. Red-eyed, she was sitting next to Buell, having finally been ordered to stop calling for Venture to answer.
Bynum held up his Slate. “It’s every bit as bad as you could imagine. . . .”
“They’re reporting loss of both vehicles?” Harley said. Bynum nodded. “What do they give as a cause?”
“So far, unexplained venting. Natural causes.”
“Well, they’re going to figure it out soon enough.”
Bynum opened his hands. “Sure. But they’re not going to learn it from me.”
“Brent,” Harley said, “we aren’t learning much from you and we’re all here together.”
Weldon stood. “There isn’t much point to assigning blame. The Item was triggered—why, by whom, we don’t know, though Yvonne Hall was the one with the codes.”
“And a crazed Revenant banging on her door.” That comment came from Jasmine Trieu.
“We still have two crew members unaccounted for,” Weldon said.
“Two plus three from Brahma, plus the Revenants,” Harley said. “Or is there something else you guys are keeping from me?”
“No,” Bynum said. “That number is correct.”
“Then we’ve got to keep trying to raise them,” Harley said. He rolled toward Buell. “Brahma had that relay sat. Is it still alive?”
Before Buell could respond—and his posture told Harley the answer was likely negative—one of the other controllers in the front row suddenly shot to his feet.
“I got something!” he said. He was a young man of Indian ancestry, but Texan in voice. “I’ve got Destiny.”
“How the hell did it survive?” Buell asked.
“It was on the other side of Keanu when the bomb went off,” Trieu said. “And, am I right? Shock waves don’t propagate in vacuum?”
“It was several hundred kilometers away,” Weldon said. “Even on Earth, it wouldn’t have sustained much actual damage. I was worried about its electronics, though. Keanu must have shielded it. . . .”
With that news, the group—Bynum included—reacted like hangover victims given a dose of vitamin E.
“Okay, everyone,” Weldon said. “Let’s see what kind of shape our bird is in. At least we’ve still got something out there we can use.”
He turned to Harley, who was already in motion. “I’ll see what the great minds can do with this.”