One window on his wallscreen showed Shiva in closeup, from the telescopes on the moon. Another showed Shiva as everyone else saw it, a view from the vidcam on his deck. A great tentacle of cloud swept across the moon; Shiva was alone in the sky. For a moment Morgan wondered how many billions of others were looking at the ship as he was, this night.
The third window on his wallscreen showed four young men and a child of a woman, all their attention focused on him.
Morgan barked at the Angels, "What's the difference between real Shiva robots and sims?"
The Angels answered in unison. "They're stronger than sims. They're faster than sims. And they really want to kill us."
"What's the difference between the Angels and the robots?"
"We're smarter than they are. We know we have to win."
Morgan nodded in mute satisfaction. "The robots have the stupidity of the casually brave. They waste themselves to no purpose." He looked each member of the team in the eyes. "You will not be wasted. That, above all, I promise."
His Angels stood very straight. Even from two hundred thousand miles away, he could see that they were radiant in their quiet pride and power. They would need it.
"Dismissed. I'll see you after you've docked." The images of four of the Angels winked out. One did not. Morgan was not surprised. "CJ," he said lovingly, "go join your team."
"I will," she said quietly, then smiled widely. "I just had to make sure you knew that I'm going to come see you again after we get out."
Morgan knew he shouldn't say anything—how he knew! "When you get out, I'll take you on a date," he promised. "A raging water date."
Her eyes widened. "Back to Topock Gorge," she asked excitedly.
"Of course not. Been there, done that. I was thinking of Fiji. We'll buy a boat and sail the islands."
"Cool!" She lowered her eyes. "I have to go suit up now."
"Yes, you do."
CJ raised one eyebrow, blew him a kiss, and blinked out of existence.
After a moment of frozen silence, Morgan slowly raised his lips to his fingers and blew a kiss back.
Sofia led him by the hand, out into the lush darkness of the garden. Paolo remembered how dangerous the garden had seemed in the daylight when he had entered it alone. Now, lit only by the shadowlight of a dwindling moon and a growing Shiva, the garden felt comfortable and safe. The difference was Sofia's guidance, the warmth of her nearness, the firm strength of her hand.
They came to a loveseat surrounded by thickets. Paolo put his arms around Sofia, and they sat down together, laid their heads back, and looked up to the cloudless sky.
Sofia huffed, "It washes out all the stars."
Sofia's "it" was, of course, Shiva V. Though close enough to suggest its immensity, it was still too far to make out details in its armor. At the moment, it looked like a fairy jewel, a shiny alabaster bauble in a child's treasure chest.
Paolo squeezed her tight. "It will not be there for long, of that, I can assure you." He did not mention that it might not be there because it would soon be here.
"I know, darling." She turned to him and kissed his cheek. "Kill it for me, please, darling?" In the tone of her voice, all wrapped together in that moment, were all the emotions ever devised by a woman: love, hate, teasing, fear, yearning, puzzlement, and a host of others too subtle ever to be named or understood by a mere male.
But Paolo knew they were there, and responded to them, as men do. "We will kill it," he promised.
"And their homeworld. Destroy their homeworld, so they never come again." Sofia shuddered in the darkness.
Paolo exhaled slowly. There was a limit to his willingness to embrace a lie, even to comfort his beloved. He felt a shiver of tension rise up his back, knowing what Sofia needed to hear, knowing he could not say it.
And then he was calm—unnaturally calm, calm beyond quiet. The shiver of fear disappeared, and a tranquil certainty he had known once before filled him, and he was not himself. He became, for that moment, someone else, someone looking back upon this moment from a distant future, someone who knew the truth as it had already been writ. "I will not destroy their homeworld," he said at last from that distant place. "The fate of their star is for Mercedes to decide, and for the people who will join her."
"As long as we keep it in the family," Sofia replied, pressing her head into his shoulder.
Jessica stepped from her cocoon, wobbled a moment, and walked quietly out of her office, out of the hall, out of the building, into the night sky. She discovered the nighttime had drawn a crowd. As nearly as she could tell, everyone at Fort Powell was out here, staring into the sky.
She did not have to look up to see what drew their attention. Shiva hung there, a most beautiful harbinger of death. Seeing the others standing there transfixed, Jessica considered going back inside. But she peeked up for just a moment, and could not take her eyes off of it.
A deep male voice made her jump. "Gorgeous, isn't it?" General Samuels said, wistfully.
"Gorgeous," Jessica agreed. They stood quietly for a moment, staring at the now-angelic orb. "Why are they so determined to kill us?" she asked of no one in particular.
She should have known, the General would somehow respond. He shook his head. "There is a more interesting question, Jessica. Why is their determination so half-hearted?"
Jessica turned to look at him with upraised eyebrows. "It doesn't seem very half-hearted to me, General."
Samuels shrugged. "And most people sleep better, believing this is a full-out effort on the Shiva's part. But really, Jessica, suppose you wanted to destroy us at all costs. Would you drop a Shiva into orbit before blowing up cities? Why bother with individual cities?" He pointed into the sky. "Our calculations suggest that when a Shiva comes through our Oort Cloud, it is traveling at eighty percent the speed of light. If they didn't care about anything except destroying us, it wouldn't slow down, Jessica. It would just charge right through the system, and hit Earth head-on at full speed. There wouldn't be anything left except molten rock." Samuels spread his hands. "Nothing left at all."
Jessica shivered. "So they want us—or at least our planet—for some purpose of their own." She shook her head. "What could it be?"
Once more Samuels just shrugged. "The 'castpoints have a lot of theories, all with low probabilities." He smiled. "My own personal favorite explanation is the 'Galactic Sierra Club gone amuck' theory." He gave her a short laugh, which subsided when she just stared at him.
"What's a Sierra Club?" she asked, puzzled.
The General deflated as she watched. "It was an organization I belonged to in my youth that . . . ah . . . well, never mind. Some jokes just don't span the generations very well, I guess."
To cheer him up, Jessica decided to offer him the most ridiculous explanation she'd heard. "My grandmother thinks the Shivas are manufactured by a machine, originally built for a big government by the lowest bidder. The original purpose was for wiping out competing governments, while keeping most of the people alive to serve the Shivas' government. Granma says the good news is, after becoming operational, the Shivas almost certainly destroyed the bureaucrats who spawned them." She gave the General her warmest smile.
But he didn't find her story any funnier than she'd found his. He nodded quite seriously. "A variant of Saberhagen's Berserkers," he said. He watched her eyes nervously, wondering if she'd understand at least that reference from long ago.
"Right, I've heard of the Berserkers," Jessica said. The General visibly relaxed, knowing he wouldn't have to explain that one. They laughed together.
Samuels tilted his head back to Shiva V. "You think it's beautiful now? Wait till we blow it up. That is a sight of corruscating splendor," he said with a confidence she knew he could not feel.
"Why General, you're a poet." She batted her eyeflashes at him, then continued, "I can't wait to see it," she replied with a burst of verve she knew that he knew she could not feel, either.
The Dealer sat alone in his apartment and looked out his tiny window at the bright, terrible face of his greatest opportunity. By this time tomorrow, he would be a rich man.
He considered emailing to thank Reggie Oxenford for giving him the insight. Now the Dealer not only knew he would soon become rich, but he would become rich helping, more or less, to save the world. It was a good thing to believe, looking up into the sky at a terror so cold and alien.
Yes, the time for scams was past. Or at least his next great scam was put on hold for a couple of days.
Reggie stepped off the roton with a gratefulness even greater than usual; all the time they'd been in orbit, he'd kept expecting the ship to get hit by a missile from Shiva. It was a silly thought, of course, but with the enemy vessel so close, so big in the tiny viewplates of the roton, it was hard to avoid.
He walked to the edge of the landing pad and looked up into the night sky. Deadly beauty gleamed back down.
A silken voice of lace and satin spoke, "Taxi, sir?" The voice ended in a mocking tone. He saw from the corner of his eye that the speaker was throwing him a salute. Mercedes' eyes glowed in the night, almost as bright, in his opinion, as the light of Shiva.
Reggie shook his head. "You are outrageous, girl." He held his hand out to her, and Mercedes stepped close. Reggie continued, "Take me to milady's apartment," he said with appropriate haughtiness.
"No way, mister." The tone was still laughing, but the message was serious. "This here taxi service takes you to your motel." Mercedes stepped closer, so close, but not touching. " 'Milady' has to work tomorrow, and she needs to be undisturbed."
Reggie sighed. "I suppose I can understand that." Unable to restrain himself in such close proximity, he reached suddenly around her head, grasped her hair in his hands, and pulled her in for a kiss. "For luck," he explained.
She responded with surprised pleasure, then stopped. They stood together, holding hands, looking up into the face of night.