Chapter 13

Just when he was really starting to enjoy it, Chumley’s dream changed, and he was kneeling beside the dying Green out in the desert, placing a hand against one of its blackened stumps of a limb.

A thousand images and sensations whirled through his head, some pleasant, and some far from it. Verdant fields stretching from one horizon to the next, swooping birds unlike any he’d ever seen, ranks upon ranks of Greens stretching their limbs to the sky as their song filled the air . . .

He felt a hand on his and glanced to his right as the dream made another abrupt shift like someone changing the channels.

Dalton, sunburned and hatless, huddled against a gunmetal-gray wall, gripping Chumley’s right hand in his left one. The man’s eyes were over-dilated and out of focus, and tears trickled down his weather-beaten cheeks.

Chumley tried to pull his hand away from him, but Dalton wouldn’t let go.

“Oh, Darneisha,” Dalton moaned. “I wish you were here.”

“Darneisha was your wife?” Chumley asked. He flicked his gaze to his left, spotting a sealed metal doorway, and then to the right, where two dozen school desks were inexplicably stacked against the wall next to a golden statue of Ganesh and a crate overflowing with boxes of drywall screws. Just what was his subconscious mind trying to represent here?

Dalton nodded. “Greens ate her, you know. They ate all of them.” He slid his hand out of Chumley’s and rubbed his eyes. “You know Alpha Centauri?”

Chumley could only frown—this dream was taking a particularly strange turn. “What about it?”

“Darneisha loved astronomy. She said . . . well, you know the Alpha Centauri System is the closest one to Earth. People knew about Alpha Centauri from the time they crawled out of the mud, but didn’t know it was binary until the 1600s. Darneisha told me.”

“That’s nice.” Chumley pinched his arm, wishing to wake up so he could figure out why the person in white had shot him.

“Darneisha always said, she said that was the two of us,” Dalton went on. “Alpha Centauri is two stars orbiting each other so close, you can’t even tell without a telescope. She said she and I were those two stars. And now she’s gone, and what does that make me?”

The sheriff fell silent. Chumley wondered why this dream wouldn’t just hurry up and change back to the beach one.

Time passed. Chumley gradually became aware that the place they were in was vibrating, ever so faintly. He also noticed a porthole through which he could see a bit of sky. His frown deepening, he crossed the metallic space toward the round window and held his face to it.

They were up in the air. The land was transitioning from sand to rockier terrain covered in low-growing plants that didn’t appear to be mobile. After perhaps ten minutes, the airship banked, causing the room to tilt, and Chumley gasped.

For as far as he could see, the ground was blackened with broken trunks jutting up feebly from the uneven ground, and heavy machinery trundled along shoving it into piles.

He could smell the char even from up in the air.

Chumley pinched his arm again.

Nothing happened.

Then the metal door behind him slid open.

Swallowing, Chumley turned.

Dalton, still in a daze from whatever they’d doped him up with, lifted his head when the room’s single door opened.

A figure dressed entirely in white stepped inside, and the door whooshed shut behind them. They looked exactly like the invisible intruders he and Chumley had both spotted in Richport, and Dalton knew deep down that they had nothing to do with FCU, since FCU was not known for luring people out of their vehicles and tranquilizing them for no apparent reason.

When Dalton had heard people outside the stranded motorhome, he thought someone had shown up to rescue him, which just went to show what one got for hoping.

The figure lifted the veil from their face, revealing icy violet eyes and pale cheeks that managed to look just as frigid.

They weren’t human.

“Greetings,” they said in a masculine voice with an unidentifiable accent.

Dalton scowled up at his alien captor. His vision doubled for a moment before resolving back to normal. “You speak English.”

“Yes. We intercepted some of your transmissions before we took you. We assume you do not speak Haa’anu.”

Chumley, who’d been standing near a porthole with a hand on his chin, looked as though he’d seen a whole platoon of ghosts. “Haa’anu?”

The man—Dalton assumed it was a man—grinned, displaying two rows of thin, razor-sharp teeth. “You have heard of us, then.”

“You’re planet-killers.”

“I’m a businessman, hardly a planet-killer. My name is Kedd.”

Dalton tried to stand up, but he must have gotten a much higher dose than Chumley, because his legs wouldn’t cooperate. “Care to enlighten me?”

A subtle sort of rage trickled into Chumley’s expression. “Haa’anu is a language of the Haa’la people of Leeprau. Loads of them make their money by scalping planets into dust. One of the news outlets on Pelstring Four broadcast a nasty piece about them.”

Dalton tried to process this—he’d heard of the Haa’la but knew little about them. “When you say ‘scalping’ . . . ”

“They sent a fleet of miners to the Gem of Antaka last year, dug out everything that made it beautiful, and turned it to ash. The Feds arrested the ones who didn’t get away. Not that it made a difference at that point.”

Kedd managed to look offended. “That was one of our competitors.”

“But now you’re doing it to Molorthia Six,” Chumley went on. “Why?”

Kedd shrugged. “We have powerful scanning equipment. Your planet is rich with raw materials, but unfortunately the resident life forms get a bit feisty if you try to get near them, so we started burning their forests to the ground for our own safety. We’ve already cleared two million square kushkims of land and installed our drills. We plan to burn the rest of this zone over the next one hundred forty-four days.”

Dalton didn’t know how big a kushkim was, but two million sounded like an awful lot. “You’re burning all the vegetation,” he said.

“We believe it’s safer that way.” Kedd sounded grave, and his lips drooped into a frown. “We lost sixty workers during our first week here. We’d heard the rumors about the locals, of course, but thought they might have been exaggerated.”

Conversely, Dalton found himself grinning. “You’re doing this planet an immense favor.”

Chumley whirled upon him, mouth falling open. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Kedd, we ought to give you an award.”

Chumley folded his arms. “It’s because of the fires this lot started that the Greens fled through your town and murdered your people.”

That gave Dalton pause. He closed his eyes and snuggled up closer to the wall.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Chumley said. “So, you’re burning the planet down to drill for minerals. Why did you capture us?”

Kedd shrugged. “You were getting too close to one of our listening posts.”

“What’s a listening post?”

“It’s where we go to monitor human communication channels. Bureen and I heard your transmissions, came across your derelict transport, and tranquilized your friend, and you know the rest of the story. Where were you headed?”

Dalton opened his mouth to tell the man they’d intended to find out what was causing the fires, but Chumley spoke first. “We were on our way to Paris but got turned around in the sandstorm. Nasty bugger. Never seen one like it before.”

You don’t say, Dalton thought.

Kedd nodded. “And what were you to be doing in Paris?”

“Well . . . ” Inexplicably, Chumley blushed. “It was supposed to be a romantic getaway, just the two of us. There’s a little place up there that . . . well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? You’ve captured us. Well done.”

Dalton glared at Chumley, vowing to kill him at the first available chance.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” said Kedd. “But you must understand why it was necessary.”

“What will you be doing to us now?” Dalton asked.

“Killing us, I suppose,” Chumley said, eyes downcast.

Kedd made a scoffing sound. “If we wanted to kill you, we would have done that out in the desert and burned your bodies. We’ll be putting the two of you to work once we reach Nydo Base headquarters.”

“Doing what?” Dalton asked.

Kedd’s grin spread wide. It said, Don’t you want to know?

The small airship began its descent from the sky about twenty minutes later and landed beside a hangar in a charred valley that had most likely been full of old-growth forest a few months earlier. An impressive block of office buildings sat in a row beside a stream full of sludgy, gray water, and when Kedd and his associate, a stony-faced Haa’la woman named Bureen, shuffled Dalton and Chumley out of the airship, Dalton could hear the low hum of mining equipment in the distance.

The air stank like a campfire, though nothing nearby was aflame.

Off to their left lay a long, one-story building that might have been flats for the workers. More white-clad figures milled about near the entrance, some of them in hard hats.

“How many workers live here?” Chumley asked conversationally as Kedd and Bureen steered them toward the largest office building, a completely white three-story structure with rectangular windows. Flagpoles had been erected out front, bearing violet banners emblazoned with white symbols.

“About two hundred eighty-eight,” said Kedd. “Nearly two hundred eighty-eight more are stationed at smaller mines outside of this valley, and a crew of one hundred forty-four is clearing more land south of here.”

“How lovely,” Chumley said, absently rubbing his hands together. Dalton noticed his pocket still bulging with that mysterious squarish shape. Their captors must not have deemed it a threat, or they would have removed it from his person.

They entered the building. It smelled sterile, like new buildings do. A white-haired Haa’la woman with purple eyes and a narrow face regarded them blandly from behind a reception desk. Kedd conversed with her in their own language before switching back to English for Dalton and Chumley’s benefit.

“We have taken other prisoners these past few weeks,” Kedd said to them. “We’ve employed some of them in our gold and diamond mines, but you two might do just as well here. How do you feel about cooking or cleaning?”

Dalton, who felt much more coherent now that the last of the tranquilizer had worn off, let out a snort. “You’re the jailers. Shouldn’t you be the ones to decide that?”

“Like I said, we’re businesspeople. You happened to be encroaching upon a listening post, so we had to get you out of the way in order to maintain our secrecy. Besides, our support staff here at headquarters got a trifle decimated when the natives attacked.”

Dalton looked him up and down, taking in Kedd’s solid white ensemble. “Your people have been in Richport. Why?”

“I’d rather talk about it in my office. Come this way, please.”

Dalton and Chumley exchanged a glance before following Kedd down a bone-white corridor. Bureen stayed in the lobby to converse with the receptionist, probably making snide remarks about humans.

Kedd’s office lay on the second floor, overlooking the polluted stream. Kedd motioned for them to sit in a pair of gray chairs.

“Would you like any refreshments?” Kedd asked, moving toward a waist-high cabinet. “I have grapefruit.”

Something about the word “grapefruit” made the skin tingle on the back of Dalton’s neck, but he couldn’t remember why.

“I’ll have water,” Dalton said. “Your kind does drink that, right?”

“Yes.” Kedd regarded him with some annoyance, which made Dalton feel marginally better about himself.

“I’ll take some too,” Chumley said, raising a hand. Dalton noticed for the first time that a pair of binoculars hung around Chumley’s neck. Where on Molorthia Six had he found binoculars?

Kedd handed them each a room-temperature bottle of water from the cabinet, then withdrew a grapefruit for himself and sliced it open with a small knife.

“As I was saying,” Kedd went on, “would you prefer cooking or cleaning? We already have enough people in the mines and won’t need more until the next mine is ready to open.”

Dalton leaned forward. “How about you tell us why you’ve been sneaking around in Richport? I saw some of you lot, but nobody else could.”

Kedd popped a slice of grapefruit into his mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it wearing a look of ecstasy. “Our cloaking devices scramble some of the signals going to your visual cortexes. It’s not perfect tech, so sometimes people catch glimpses of us anyway.”

“Why were you in town?”

“We were seeing if anything could be of use to us.”

“You’re talking about plundering. Theft.”

Kedd’s platinum blond eyebrows rose. “Am I?”

“That’s what humans call taking things that don’t belong to them.”

“Which is ever so ironic.”

Dalton had no response. Chumley twisted his hands together in his lap while making discreet glances around the room.

After a spell of silence during which Kedd consumed more of his grapefruit, Dalton said, “What about the forests down south? Are you burning them, too?”

“That will be our Phase Two project,” Kedd said. “This year our efforts will focus on the northern hemisphere, and once we start turning a profit, we’ll fly south and begin our work there.”

“Burning all the forests, you mean,” Dalton said. “To clear out the Greens.”

“That would be the idea, yes.”

“Will the forests be replanted once you’re done here?” Chumley asked.

Kedd cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean?”

“Once you’ve concluded your business on Molorthia Six, will you be replanting the forests?”

A chuckle escaped their captor’s lips. “Our scanners indicate that Molorthia Six has extra concentrations of gold, diamonds, petroleum, and a hundred other resources that make our other project planets look utterly worthless. Our work here will last many lifetimes—we’re just getting started.”

“What if my people worked with you?” Dalton asked.

Kedd gave his head a slow shake. “We prefer our own kind. We’ve only taken you into custody so you don’t go sounding the alarm—for some reason, the Feds don’t like us.” Kedd smiled, showing his delicate yet sharp teeth again. It made Dalton think of one of those spooky, deep-sea Earth fish with the dangly lights. “Now I’m going to give you two options: you can stay here and put yourselves to work, or you can try to walk back to your little city and tell your little friends about us and what we’re doing. I’d like to see you survive the desert heat and any rogue Greens we might have missed.”

Dalton knew he needed to formulate a plan, but he was too exhausted to think of one. “I can cook,” he said, “but I’ve never done alien food.”

“I’m sure you’ll do your best,” said Kedd. “And what about you?”

“I’ll clean,” said Chumley. “Now where will we be staying while we’re here?”

“Why in the bloody hell did you split us up?” Dalton grumbled after Kedd left him and Chumley in a small “flat” of their own, which consisted of a bedroom-slash-sitting area and a bathroom with a shower. Clean, white uniforms were folded and stacked on the room’s only dresser, waiting to be worn.

Chumley crossed his arms. “We can each gather intel this way—you from the kitchens, me from the cleaning staff.”

“He already told us their plans! And if you haven’t noticed, neither of us speaks their language.”

“It’s still a good idea,” Chumley went on, undeterred. “There could be plenty more he wasn’t telling us. He’s probably not even the boss of this place, because whoever’s really in charge wouldn’t have been hanging out in a secret listening post in the middle of the desert. Kedd is just trying to cover his arse by getting us out of the way.”

Dalton nodded and sat on a cot that squeaked beneath his full weight. “Why did you tell him we were on a romantic getaway?”

Chumley’s expression grew coy. “I had the feeling you were about to tell him exactly what we were doing.”

“Had the feeling?”

Chumley sank onto the room’s other cot, sniffed one armpit, and winced. “Look, Sheriff—Dalton—you’ve been kind to me—”

“Kind?”

“—and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you’re a bit naïve.”

Dalton clenched his fists. “Now just a minute!”

Chumley held up a placating hand. “You’ve led an innocent life, marrying your wife and raising your children, and when that all ended, you became sheriff because you couldn’t help your family.”

“So what?”

“What I’m saying is, you haven’t lived a deceptive lifestyle one single day in your life. You are deceiving yourself, telling yourself you’re the big, bad policeman, but inside you’re just a dad.”

“What are you talking about?” Dalton felt very cold, then remembered that was probably because they weren’t in the desert anymore.

“You rescued me! You gave me food and a place to stay. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but now I know you missed taking care of people you cared about. But I digress—I didn’t think our captors should know we’re police.”

“Why does it matter if they do or not?”

“Because we don’t know where they draw the line on violence.”

Dalton could find no holes in that argument. “That’s . . . actually kind of smart.”

“I know.” Chumley’s eyes twinkled. “That’s why I did it.”