Chapter 25

The sailplane was barely visible, tucked into the dim, overcast sky. It banked left, slowly slipping towards the rising hills beneath it, finally finding a rising thermal in the too-cool air and spiraling back up into the clouds.

"Mother this is Sunburst. I'm in position over the city."

"Affirmative Sunburst. Mother is recording, initiate transmission."

Rika flipped the switch and the video captures she'd made were pumped up the pipe to the suborbital transceiver ship. From there they too would go to Mother on a secure, encrypted transmission.

"Transmission complete," Rika called once the signal that indicated an active transmission blinked out. There was a long moment of silence before the reply came back.

"Confirmed Sunburst. Transmission received. Initiate your new heading. Sundown is coming."

Rika banked the sailplane again. She worked the thermals while she could, gaining as much altitude as practical before turning her nose towards the sea to the south. There would be no rising thermals to use once she was over the water. It would be a long, slow glide into the cold, wet sea. Well, it would be if Sundown didn't rendezvous with her as planned.

Once her onboard guidance system told her she was above deep water, she flipped a switch and watched the telltale until it dimmed completely. This was supposed to indicate that the delicate electronic systems had all been wiped, the circuits fused into a molten mass from which no intelligence could be retrieved. The sailplane's entire array of gear was contained in a box three feet long, eighteen inches wide and a foot deep. Now that it had been wiped, she jettisoned it into the deep. The sailplane's small cockpit didn't allow her to watch it while it fell. A moment later she jettisoned the batteries that had powered the system, fighting the slight moment of instability the sudden loss of weight caused.

Now she was dependent entirely on Sundown, waiting for the retrieval craft to find her and bring her home safely. She was mute, and powerless to do anything more than choose between continuing to glide along her intended path, holding the plane to its course by dead reckoning, or saying to hell with it and corkscrewing her fragile craft into the cold sea below. To be honest, she wasn't even sure if there was a Sundown. Oh, she'd seen the ship of course, and they'd practiced the midair retrieval countless times in preparation for the mission. There was a ship and a crew, and that ship and crew had the tools and training needed to retrieve her. Rika just wasn't sure that those responsible for this plan would actually follow through with it. She was after all, as expendable a piece of cannon fodder as you were ever likely to see.

The sea below her was becoming too close, and the time left before she and it joined too short, when she saw the flash of light at her two o'clock.

"All Right!" she cackled. "No seawater bath for me!"

The second time she saw it though, she realized something wasn't right. It wasn't Sundown; it wasn't anything she knew of. The next flash was brilliant white and very close, filling her senses. For a moment, she felt like she was falling, and then her world went dark.

Rika loved her new job. She loved her new life and she loved her boss. Together, they had found and trained a thousand agents in the Southern Polity. Today her target was Fenir Mak, Minister of Transportation for the Bacavian Committee-States. She found him on the road to Damvasin and the armored vehicle and the guards did not prevent their meeting.

"Greetings, Fenir Mak," She told the bewildered minister as he stumbled from his vehicle. "I come to show you salvation."

"Salvation?" He gasped, looking wildly around. "Are you mad?"

"No Minister, I am saved, and I come to ask you to accept salvation also."

"You offer me salvation? From what? My sins?" derisive laughter followed, while his eyes continued to seek escape.

""No, let your sins be your own concern, for they are weaknesses of the flesh and the mind and all beings have them."

"Then what, you're going to save me from the doom that cannot be avoided? Are you going to save me from inevitable death?"

"I am not your savior, but I will guide you to her. Only through her can you be saved."

"Her?" Fenir Mak's brow wrinkled. Rika nodded to his side and he looked. A woman did indeed stand there, having arrived unnoticed.

"You?" he asked. "God is no woman!"

"I am no god, Fenir Mak," she said. "But I will save you, if you will let me."

"Shall I fall to my knees then? Shall I kiss your feet and declare my adoration?"

"No," the woman said, laughing. "Rika loves me, that is enough."

"Then what? The world ends and you offer me mysticism."

"No mysticism, only hope. To keep that hope alive, listen now to what I tell you..."

Rodi Oma studied the data again and again. Ships could reach Tiroma, the only other planet in their system with even a remote chance of supporting life. The entire resources of the Northern Union of Peoples, marshaled together and used wisely could deliver a hundred thousand people from Sianda to Tiroma, along with the equipment they would need to reshape that planet into something habitable. If the people in the Southern Polity didn't interfere. If there was enough time.

Sadly, even that valiant effort, executed flawlessly and as early as possible was utterly, utterly useless.

The people of Sianda were doomed, he'd discovered. Well, Sianda itself was doomed, and that would include all the people living on it when the planet's sun began to swell and grow, eventually swallowing Sianda, sending it to its doom. The people would die long before the planet finally did, but both would die, just as inevitably. Sianda would be consumed, but Tirama would not.

Tirama would remain, but God-forsaken luck, the sun's insanity would leave it a lifeless cinder; utterly, utterly useless. There was no other place to go, no other way of getting there. Rodi Oma's life work was a miracle of the possible. A miracle made moot by the implacable energy of a sun going wild.

Rodi Oma sat at his desk; his eyes wet with pain and helplessness. Through it, he thought he heard someone behind him.

"Ceri, I thought I..." He began to say as he turned towards the door. The woman who stood there was not his assistant though. Rodi didn't recognize her. "Who are you?"

"I'm here to help you."

"Help me how?" he asked bitterly. "You can't save me, and I can't save anyone. Everything else is a waste of time."

"You're right," she said softly. "I can't save you, at least not from that." walking up to where he sat slumped in his chair, she reached down and put a hand on his shoulder. " ... But I know someone who can, if you'll give her the chance."

"That ... that's impossible."

"As impossible as my being here tonight? Your opponents have set a bomb that is set to detonate in just a few minutes, so we cannot delay. This I can save you from."

She held out her hand, and hesitantly, he reached up and took it. The pair disappeared from the room and all was quiet for a long moment in the main lab of the Advanced Propulsion Research Center of the People's Center for Science before the quiet was suddenly shattered by an explosion and consumed by a too-intense fire that followed the blast. The cleansing fires left Rodi Oma with a new job, one of salvation. He spent his days working for his savior and recruiting thousands of supporters to her cause. He was glad to be able to help the people he had thought himself helpless to save, but he was even happier to work for she who would save them, for she had shown him love.

Sianda was not the place I would have chosen, but it was the first one I'd come to that needed me, and so it was where I would first exercise the part of me that most made me a Walker. That the people of Sandia were cleanly split into two politically and geographically would make it easier for me, so in that way, perhaps it was better this way after all. Still, the paranoid secrecy and fear made it hard to gather the support I needed. It had to be done covertly,