“Elevators? Stairs?”

  “Both are bad, but elevators are worse. Maybe we can … Ah.” Two cops had just stepped out of a door marked Emergency Exit. “Through that door before it closes.”

  Fortunately, the two cops had turned in the opposite direction, leaving a clear avenue for us. I moved toward the door, my hands out in front of me. I felt a body in my way and hesitated, then barely squeezed through before the emergency door closed.

  “Most likely they were sweeping the stairway,” Patrick said. “Sheldon, did you get their images?”

  “Affirmative. One moment … ”

  I jumped a little as a cop appeared in front of me. I looked down to realize I was dressed in identical paramilitary gear. I appeared to have an assault rifle of some kind in my hand, held casually by my side.

  Patrick gestured to it. “Try to look like you’re carrying an AR-15.” He gestured with his arm, holding the weapon up against his chest. “Do you not watch any TV?”

  I nodded and adopted the same posture, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. “What now?”

  Patrick pointed. “Down,” he said. “And remember, we’re part of this operation and we just cleared the stairway.”

  We proceeded down several flights, finally arriving on the main floor. Patrick glanced out the small safety-glass window in the door. “Shit, there’s someone out there, looks like a civilian, with a suitcase-like object in one hand.”

  “So we have either a Lorann or a collaborator.” I glanced around. “Stairs continue down to parking levels. Should we take the chance?”

  Patrick nodded. “Anywhere else is safer than near that detector. I just hope they don’t have more than one.”

  We hurried down the stairs to the first parking level. Again, Patrick glanced through the small window. “Nothing.” He opened the door and we stepped through.

  I glanced around. “We could just turn invisible and go out the parking ramp.”

  “That sounds too easy,” he said, “but let’s at least check it out.” He reached down to his belt and disappeared.

  I copied the action and subvocalized, “Heading for the ramp now.”

  “Stop running, doofus. You’re making too much noise.”

  I slowed to a walk, and felt myself brush up against something. I grabbed a handful of invisible shirt sleeve. “This doesn’t mean we’re dating,” I muttered.

  There was a soft snort from empty air.

  We arrived at the parking lot exit in less than a minute, to find two problems. One, the exit was gated, and two, a couple of cops stood on the other side of the gate, presumably watching for anyone trying to leave. If we activated the gate, the cops would be on alert, and might even know enough to be watching for invisible fugitives, if that statement even made sense.

  I was about to suggest we head back, when a van, with the logo of a computer-support company on its side, drove up to the gate and over the rubber sensor hose. The gate began rising and the two cops drew their weapons and took up positions to block the vehicle. The driver rolled down his window and began yelling at them.

  As the cops settled into a loud exchange with the van driver, I felt Patrick tug me to the side, and we made our way up the ramp to street level. I glanced back several times to make sure the van hadn’t started up the ramp. It would probably get at least one of us in the narrow space. But the driver and the two cops continued to exchange threats and insults.

  We reached the sidewalk and the normal downtown foot traffic. I subvocalized, “Sheldon, give us random businessman appearance.” A pedestrian jumped in surprise as the two men apparently appeared out of nowhere, but I hoped the normal human reaction to rationalize it away would kick in.

  We began walking along the sidewalk with the heaviest traffic flow. I subvocalized, “Sheldon, change our appearance a little bit every few seconds. Nothing big, we just want to gradually look like someone else. Just enough to confuse any kind of camera-by-camera tracking.”

  After a moment, Patrick asked, “Do we know where we’re going?”

  “South, for now,” I replied. “Let’s just get some distance between us and the building. Then we’ll worry about getting picked up.”

  “At least a mile,” Sheldon added. “And make sure there’s space for me to land. Oh, and some privacy would be just peachy as well.”

  We were back in the Halo, and had just settled into chairs in the conference room. Nat turned from the video window she’d been watching. “Apparently there’s a terrorist incident at CNN, which is why SWAT is there. Nothing to do with us, of course. Some people spotted the Halo floating around the building, but it’s already being explained away as a hot-air balloon. Apparently, the terrorists used it to get in through the roof.”

  “What?” Patrick exclaimed. “It’s been an hour. How the hell are they able to react so fast?”

  “That is why I have conjectured that they have a conscious A.I.,” Sheldon said. “Their speed of response, efficiency, and deep planning are inconsistent with a small clan with limited resources.”

  “I don’t really understand why that would be a surprise,” Nat said. “It seems so, well, so handy.”

  “I’m so pleased I can be handy for you. But to answer your question, in Covenant society, awakening an A.I. for a specific purpose would be viewed the way you would view human slavery. Any corporation or state that engages in the practice would suffer a level of sanctioning that would cripple them. The problem from our point of view is—uh-oh.”

  Patrick looked alarmed. “Uh-oh? What do you mean, uh-oh? That’s not good. That’s never good.”

  The main view abruptly shifted as the Halo headed straight up at high speed.

  “We have been tagged by a cloaking-field detector. The good news is that if they are close enough to detect us, then I can detect them. The bad news—”

  “Is that we’ve been detected,” I finished for him. “Got it. Are we going to survive this?”

  “Gennan ships have a slight edge in terms of acceleration and top speed. But the vessel pursuing us will certainly have weapons; otherwise why would they bother? We can’t outrun those. We can dodge, but sooner or later the odds will catch up with us.”

  The view jinked several times as Sheldon changed direction randomly. A fireball erupted slightly behind us and to one side, disappearing rapidly in the distance.

  Nat gasped. “Was that them shooting at us?”

  “Yes. Despite the preponderance of energy weapons in your popular science fiction movies, missile and artillery-style weaponry remains the most effective method of destruction.”

  The view rocked sickeningly as Sheldon did a barrel roll and accelerated straight for the ground. Since the ground at the moment was covered in buildings, this created a very convincing illusion of falling. I mentally corrected myself. It really wasn’t an illusion.

  Natalie said, “Urk,” and gripped the edge of the conference table as the Halo did an abrupt right-angle turn and rocketed up a wide boulevard between skyscrapers. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it might be Boston.

  The Halo did another right-angle turn, just as something flashed by and impacted a building. A fireball blossomed from the side of the structure just as it disappeared to the rear.

  “Jesus,” Nat muttered. “They just bombed a building. There are going to be huge fatalities.”

  “I am sorry, Nat. If I can get a few seconds more separation, I can try for a straight sprint. But right now, the moment we move into open air, we will be destroyed.”

  “Should we just let them?” Nat asked. “Are our lives worth more than dozens or hundreds of people?”

  Patrick almost snarled back, “If we give up, it’s all for nothing, Nat. The Loranna will win. That’ll be hundreds of millions, if not billions of deaths.”

  “I agree with Patrick,” Sheldon said. “Which is a sentence I never would have expected to utter. I am willing to give my life, but not waste it.”

  “Sheldon, any solutions with a good probability?” I asked.

  “Nothing comes to mind. At the moment, I am simply attempting to stay ahead.”

  “What about going FTL?” Patrick suggested.

  “That is simply a quicker form of death.”

  I frowned for a moment, then said, “Uh, Sheldon, you said the weapon would come out of the wormhole as soon as we open it, right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Even if we weren’t right in front of the wormhole?”

  “The device is nuclear in nature, Jack. Close is more than good enough to annihilate us.”

  “What if the wormhole was facing our pursuer? Can you do that? Open the wormhole pointing in a different direction?”

  There was almost a full second of silence. Finally, Sheldon spoke. “That is a truly nasty, duplicitous, underhanded trick. Jack, I salute you. This will take a big bite out of my reserves, so we’ll only have one shot. I will also have to risk that sprint now, in order to get us some distance. One moment … ”

  For the first time since we’d found Sheldon, the ship made a detectable noise. A rising hum, reminiscent of the original Enterprise being pushed too hard, began to build up through the structure, then ended with a pop. There was a flash from the rear view, and an explosion that I would swear could easily pass for a nuclear blast. A monster cloud blossomed in a sphere, then quickly morphed into a torus, then a mushroom shape.

  “Oh, holy shit,” Nat breathed. “Were we close to anything?”

  “Five miles up, Natalie. The good news is we’re too far for any immediate damage to anyone on the ground, except perhaps some radiation exposure. The better news, if I understand the overall situation, is that the explosion was visible over most of the eastern seaboard.”

  Patrick laughed with delight. “And obviously nuclear in nature. They won’t be covering that up anytime soon.”

  “And what about the guys that were chasing us?” I asked.

  “No signal,” Sheldon replied. “I expect they now consist of slightly radioactive dust.”

  I grinned with relief. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  “Don’t say I never give you anything.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Regrouping

  The news windows were spread around the conference room, taking up every single wall segment. Sheldon was displaying closed-captioning beside each window, to prevent the inevitable cacophony of competing audio tracks.

  “Well, it’s really hit the fan, all right,” Nat mused, leaning back in the ops chair. “The disinfo channels have started up, but most people are unwilling to swallow the idea that the huge mushroom cloud and deafening roar were actually a weather phenomenon.”

  “Or never happened at all,” Sheldon interjected. “I kid you not, there are a couple of purveyors trying to sell the idea that it’s a hoax.”

  Nat shook her head slowly with a tired expression on her face. “I guess if you were farther than a couple of hundred miles away, you wouldn’t have seen it directly. Maybe the rising mushroom cloud for another couple of hundred. The sound would probably be audible over at least half of the continental US, though. But for the rest of the country, yeah, it’s just images on the TV.” She paused, then shrugged. “If you’re already inclined to distrust anything that doesn’t come from your favorite news source, and it starts telling you not to believe the reports, well … ”

  “Hey, Sheldon,” Patrick said, “how likely are the Loranna to have figured out what we did to take out their ship?”

  “I don’t see how they could. The weapon is a standard small nuke. Think of an air-to-air missile. Every air force on your planet has them. How would you tell whose missile was responsible for an explosion?”

  “So the Loranna may think that we are actually an armed craft.”

  “Or that we were saved by an armed craft. They may not even realize we opened a wormhole. Or if they have noticed, they might think it was an incoming Gen fighter craft. Hmmm … ”

  I couldn’t help grinning. A hmmm sound was definitely an affectation. Sheldon continued to make a serious attempt to fit in. It was a good sign.

  Nat interrupted his train of thought. “Here’s something new.”

  All heads turned to the video window, where a news anchor was speaking in front of an image of the explosion:

  “Speculation has been rampant about the source of the explosion over the eastern seaboard. But it seems that we may finally have a rational explanation, one that fits all the facts. Scientists from Green Bank Observatory have suggested that the explosion was an air burst from a stony meteoroid, similar to the Tunguska event over Russia in 1908, but somewhat smaller. The traces of radioactivity detected would be explained by radioactive isotopes embedded in the object.”

  “That is such bullshit,” Patrick snarled.

  “Yeah, but they’ll make it stick,” Nat replied. “In a week there’ll be a Wikipedia page for it.”

  “Unfortunately true.” Sheldon paused. “Although it is unusual enough that it will probably be kicked upstairs by the Gen’s Expert Systems, it likely will be a low-priority item. On the other hand, they did manage to broadcast Jack’s short message. If the Expert Systems pick that up, it will rise swiftly in priority.”

  “But meanwhile we’re close but no cigar, yet again?” I gritted my teeth in frustration, then looked up. “Sheldon, is the moon visible from North America right now?”

  “Yes. First quarter. Why?”

  “Any chance that wormhole trick will work twice?”

  “The system is automated; otherwise it would not be able to react fast enough. I guess it depends if they’ve thought to turn it off.”

  “We need to try,” I said. “Aim the wormhole at the surface of the moon, on the unlit segment that’s facing Earth.”

  “Jack, that will reduce my reserves to less than a month. Are you sure—”

  “It’s kind of a Hail Mary, Sheldon. In this case, the only logical action is an act of desperation. An air burst then a lunar impact in quick succession might just be enough to get their attention.”

  “Very well. I will need to be much closer to the target. Hold on to your buttocks.”

  The view tilted, the network news windows all disappeared, and the Halo shot heavenward.

  Patrick straightened in his seat. “Hey, where’d the news go?”

  “I can’t pick up network TV while flying around the solar system. Sorry.”

  “We should have gotten cable,” Patrick muttered.

  In less than a minute, the moon had grown from an object far off in the sky to being right below us. “Here we go,” Sheldon said. The humming sound built once again, terminating in the pop.

  There was a flash on the unlit side of the moon’s surface. Without atmosphere, there was no cloud, but the explosion was still spectacular.

  “Whoa, that was even more powerful than the first one,” I said.

  “Not really. I directed the wormhole to open very close to the surface, facing down. The moon’s surface acted as a reflector, doubling the apparent luminosity of the explosion. And that is a very dirty explosion, with lots of debris, and probably at least some ignition of materials.”

  “In airless space?”

  “Apply enough heat, and all kinds of chemistry are possible.”

  “Will it be visible from Earth?” Patrick asked.

  “In areas where the sun has set, it would be bright enough to turn the sky blue for a few moments.”

  “If the Gennan expert systems don’t notice that, they’re crap,” Nat said.

  “I don’t understand, though, how this is supposed to improve the odds of the Gen noticing,” Sheldon said.

  “Look at it this way, Sheldon,” I replied. “We need to get someone sentient to look at the feeds. If the Expert Systems kick it upstairs because of this, then the reviewer scans other news stories for anything interesting … well, I mean, disinformation works for humans who don’t know anything either way, but a Gen who knows that Gennan ships actually are blue and green should pay attention.”

  Sheldon was silent for a moment. “It’s not the most terrible idea you humans have come up with. Of course, that’s a low bar.”

  “Oh, hah hah,” Nat replied. “Do you have an estimate of when the Gen might send someone?”

  “Sorry, Natalie. I have no data with which to even make a wild guess. I could probably set a minimum, though. From the point that the Gen make that decision, it would take three days for a ship to be assigned and crewed and to complete the trip.”

  “We should probably lie low then,” I replied. “We don’t want to drain your power reserves any more, and I think it would be a stretch to try the wormhole thing a third time anyway. At some point, they’re going to catch on to the con.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Waiting for Results

  Day 30. Saturday

  Network broadcast windows were up on all the compass points on the bridge view wall. Once again, Sheldon was supplying scrolling closed-captioned side windows. He had picked a low orbital position from which he could still receive network feeds. I wanted to ask how he was doing that but wasn’t entirely sure I’d like the answer.

  Patrick sat with his feet up on the conference table, despite Sheldon’s vociferous complaints and comments about Patrick’s parentage. He munched steadily through a large bag of Cheetos, while seemingly barely paying attention to the news feeds.

  Nat and I were not so relaxed. Each of us had picked a couple of windows to hover over. I was covering CNN, CBS, and MSNBC. The CNN building had been “recaptured,” by the way, albeit not without some bloodshed, with the help of some private security services hurriedly hired by the network. The local police forces were denying any involvement with the military action, even though a high percentage of the killed or captured combatants turned out to be cops or ex-military.

  Nat looked over at Patrick. “You’re very relaxed. You’re also hogging the Cheetos again.”

  Patrick waved the bag at her. “Cheetos are relaxing. Also, we bought a half dozen bags. I’m not the only one snarfing them down.”