Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “On Range Guide,” he told her, “I stood as Shavrin’s First.” Second in command. “To her went the tribute of the Contact.”

  “While you stood in the background and took notes.”

  “Copious.” He growled something to the empty air—Nicole haltingly able to follow, sighing to herself in frustration at the difference between coping with Ciari’s tapes and the real thing. To follow Kymri’s colloquial use of the language, she had to be able to think in it as well. She was still translating Halyan’t’a to English and back again inside her head and praying she’d chosen the proper turn of phrase. In this instance, though, she didn’t need the details to get the gist and had no trouble at all with the response from the next room. A thump that shook the wall.

  “Some people,” she said with a smile, “don’t appreciate being hurried.”

  “It is important to make a positive impression.”

  “You don’t seem to have any worries.”

  He made a small movement with his hand, the Hal equivalent of a shrug, and Nicole had an even stronger flash of recognition that had nothing whatsoever to do with having met Kymri himself, and everything with the type of man he was. Confirmed, with his next words. “I made my impression,” he said, “this morning.” Landing the spacecraft, she realized, thinking, Sonofabitch, a pilot is a pilot is a pilot.

  An instinct, more than any noise, prompted a half turn towards the hall as Kymri’s two companions emerged. Both females, but one was a match and more for his physique. He was built broad for his height and, given the natural compactness of the Halyan’t’a form, was easily half again Nicole’s mass, despite her being taller. Superb body form for withstanding the stresses of high-gravity maneuvering.

  If anything, though, the first female was larger, wider in the shoulders, without a gram of excess fat anywhere on her superbly muscled body. She was the engineer, Tscadi, with the knowledge to take the Halyan’t’a spacecraft apart and whang it back together again combined with the raw strength to do it pretty much on her own. Matai was the designer, mission specialist primarily in cybernetics. All three were, like Nicole, in uniform, though she’d have given anything by that point (the evening barely begun) to trade. Soft boots and comfortable slacks for all, in a soft khaki cream, snug-fitting shirt and jacket completing the ensemble. Mission patch on one sleeve, intricate swirls of braid down the other, practical pockets at the hip. Like everything else about the Halyan’t’a, the clothes were as much for function as show.

  Nicole led the way out to the waiting car; they went in the back while she shared the front seat with the driver. Ten minutes later they were at the Officer’s Club. An impressive turnout—senior brass from Fifteenth Air Force (who had jurisdiction over the Pacific Coast) and Air Force Systems Command out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (who actually ran Edwards), a whole host of foreign military, everybody who was anybody out of NASA plus the usual clutch of folks who thought they were. Taking a quick eyeball sweep of the room, Nicole figured she was the only one present who wasn’t at least field grade, and all the Majors she spotted looked like hat-holders for some General or other.

  Of course, the moment the Hal entered, they became the focus of attention. Those first seconds, the four of them grouped in the doorway facing a phalanx of uniforms and suits and gowns, imagery scattershot across Nicole’s mind: Christ, she thought, do we as a species really look this dumb! And in that flash, she was floating in her pressure suit, on Range Guide’s Command Bridge, staring over Ben Ciari’s head at a combat string of Halyan’t’a, her breath coming in deliberate huffs, gripped body and soul by an eerie calm that was the smallest step removed from shrill, shrieking terror. A series of moves to make, instantaneous choices which had so little time for deliberation, the knowledge that right or wrong her actions would have untold consequences. Never imagining, in her wildest, this might be one of them.

  “Good to see you, Nicole,” said Colonel Sallinger, breaking the ice.

  “What, boss, you think we got lost en route?”

  “Never can tell. Happens to my daughter all the time.”

  A seemingly endless round of introductions began, with Nicole and Kymri alternating the translations, Nicole omitting any gratuitous background comments. She thought Kymri was doing the same, nothing in what he said indicated any different, but there were looks to the two females’ eyes, the barest flicks of the head in the direction of an offending voice, that made her suspect otherwise.

  Someone reached out, flicked the metal cross on her breast. Nicole found herself face-to-face with another woman, maybe ten years older and wearing them very well, prime condition, shoulder-length hair hanging loose in a feminine wave that was well within regs but managed quite nicely to soften the formal lines of the uniform. Not, though, the commanding arrogance to her features.

  “Lot of medal, for such a little girl,” Grace Kinsella said, looking Nicole in the eye as she took another sip of bourbon. Nicole was on seltzer for the duration, her choice even before Sallinger’s orders.

  “So I’m told, Colonel.” Only a light, actually—Lieutenant-Colonel—top of her class at the Test Pilot’s School midway through her first tour at the Center. On track for the rank, so said the word along the flight line, skating the high end of the career curve, with a better than fair shot at a General’s stars. Senior pilot wings—but only in air-breathers. She may have trained as an astronaut, but she hadn’t yet flown.

  “You figure Pussy’s your ticket to glory, Lieutenant?”

  “Colonel, with all due respect, you’re out of line.”

  “You think? Bright, shiny, gold-bar shavetail like yourself?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, I have duties to attend to.”

  “Very touchy. Line I heard on you said you gave as good as you got.”

  Nicole knew the type, barn-burning fighter jocks, always hot to push the outside of the envelope, any envelope, with what seemed like only the most minimal awareness of the consequences. Game was, they push, you push back.

  “You heard wrong.”

  “Poor dear. Must’ve broken Canfield’s heart to see her prime protégée dropped down the Well right out of the box.”

  She walked away with deliberate speed, daring Kinsella to make a scene, well aware there were an infinite number of ways the Colonel could make her life miserable over the course of her tour, not to mention her career, and surprising herself to discover she didn’t give a damn. She felt Kinsella’s eyes on her every step, though when she finally turned for a look back, the older woman was engrossed in conversation with Alex Cobri. His eyes flashed her way once and he said something while they were on her that made Kinsella laugh. But beyond them stood Kymri, watching with an expression Nicole remembered only too well from the firefight on Range Guide—until Matai alerted him to Nicole. And suddenly he was offering only the most professionally bland of smiles, so complete a shift of mood, accomplished with such ease, that Nicole found herself doubting what she’d seen, wondering if she’d somehow misread him, realizing in the same instant that was precisely how he wanted her to feel.

  “There are words that apply to Grace,” a youngish voice commented, “and my brother, but I’m not supposed to use them.” A slender powerhouse of a girl, on the leading crest of puberty, one smooth line from top to bottom, impeccably dressed in a way that didn’t deny her age yet carrying herself with a gravity that belied it. Helped by a clearly evident muscularity that bespoke natural gifts in the process of being superbly honed. The shape of the jaw, the lustrous dark hair, and Catalan eyes—and, most especially, the way she stood and surveyed the room—marked her immediately as a Cobri.

  “Quite right, too.”

  “She’s a bully.”

  “No comment.”

  “Are you afraid of her?”

  “First thing I learned was never fly into a thunderstorm. If you can avoid it.”

  “So you’d call it common sense,” the girl sneered in a tone that made plain she considered it s
omething else.

  Nicole shrugged. “If you like.”

  “That’s terribly discreet.”

  “State of being for Second Lieutenants.”

  “Even heroes?”

  “Especially heroes. How fortunate then that doesn’t apply in my case.”

  “I’m Amelia,” the girl said, plain, unadorned statement of fact, forthright and direct.

  “Nicole,” was the reply. “Come here often?” she asked, and got a ghost of a grin in return.

  “Meaning, am I crashing?”

  “No one else your age about.”

  “No one else my age is a Cobri.”

  “Which cuts you all manner of slack.”

  “It has advantages.” Bland words, with a pose to match.

  “How lucky for you. Still”—Nicole took a look towards Sallinger, but he was engrossed with a brace of Generals, while the Halyan’t’a appeared to be doing fine on their own, and neither had any need for her—“this can’t be the most exciting of ways to spend an evening.”

  “I always check out the new arrivals, see if there’s anyone interesting.”

  “I suppose the Halyan’t’a qualify on both counts.”

  Another bored shrug. “Old news really. I mean, it’s been over a year since the Contact. I met my first batch in Washington, right after their landing.”

  “Crash that party, too?”

  Again, the ghost smile, showing just the smallest amount of pride, and Nicole thought it was perhaps the first real emotion she’d seen from the girl. “Got the Secret Service major upset. Papa, too. Tried to ground me for an age. President thought it was a total goof. Persuaded Papa to ease off.”

  “Old man have a temper?” Amelia made a dismissive face, a tiny, reflexive warding gesture with her hands that spoke volumes. Made sense to Nicole, actually; Manuel Cobri was a physical man, who’d grown up doing the most physical of work, stood to reason those ways of dealing with things would carry over to his personal life. “With me,” she said, “it was my mom. I had a knack of always crossing her the worst way, at the worst time.”

  “So what happened in the end?” Hint of genuine interest.

  “I grew up, went my own way.”

  “Some people have all the luck.”

  “Hang in there, kiddo, you’ll get your turn.”

  “The way she keeps pushing,” her brother interrupted, “I wouldn’t make book on it.”

  “So, who asked you?” Nicole challenged, shifting a half step to place herself between Amelia and Alex.

  “No skin off my backside, L’il Loot”—Nicole’s eyes narrowing at his appropriation of Ramsey’s nickname for her—“if the baby chooses to break the rules.”

  “And there I thought that was a Cobri trademark.”

  “We can afford it.”

  “Or anything else, for that matter.”

  “I just don’t want to see you burn with her.”

  “I’m surprised you care.”

  Alex threw up his hands, chest high, a dismissive-defensive gesture. “Tell you the truth, so am I.” He looked down at his sister. “Old man’s circulating this way, you won’t have crowd cover for long. You don’t want a fight, pull a fade.” And he snagged the arm of a passing woman, sidling her onto the dance floor.

  “Man has moves,” Nicole noted, mostly to herself.

  “If it wears a skirt,” Amelia groused, “it’s fair game.”

  “Including Scotsmen?”

  Took a second for the deadpanned reference to click, and Amelia couldn’t repress a giggle at the concept. Second time tonight, Nicole thought, a real emotion’s slipped out from behind the mask. Must be a helluva life at the top of the pyramid that forces you to endure it in such a straitjacket.

  “Alex is right, Amelia, there’s your father. You got a way out or do you need a diversion?”

  “You’d do that?”

  Nicole shrugged.

  But Amelia shook her head. Different order of smile on her face this time, akin to her look earlier surveying the room: no less real, a lot less girlish.

  “I own the place,” she said with a kid’s fierce delight at having put something over on the adults. “Isn’t a corner of this base I can’t get into. Or out of. Be seeing you, Nicole.”

  “Hope so.” Thinking, It’s been a pleasure, kiddo.

  “We meet at last, young Lieutenant,” Manuel Cobri boomed, clasping her hand in both of his, before gathering her in close with an arm about her waist—and Nicole had a flash of where Alex inherited his technique. There couldn’t be a more absolute contrast between father and son, the one rough-hewn where the other was sleek, his broad-shouldered laborer’s body built low to the ground. There was something almost gnomish about the man, as though whoever crafted him chose to do so in broad, sweeping strokes, creating an essential being, without any sort of smoothing or finishing. Far more suited at first glance to workingman’s clothes rather than the custom-fitted tuxedo he was wearing. His wasn’t a particularly handsome face; it held only the barest promise of the idealized perfection of his son, with surprisingly more in common with his daughter, yet there was a strength of feature that matched the rest of him. He wore his silver hair cropped short, which suited him, and Nicole could see looking down at him that it was thinning at the temples.

  “The honor is mine, sir.” She tried to sidestep but found no way to do so gracefully and settled instead for edging him in the direction of Sallinger and the Halyan’t’a.

  “Did I perhaps notice you talking with one of my children?” There was an ease to his manner that took Nicole almost completely aback; he was totally relaxed, unaffected in the slightest by this assemblage of the so-called great and powerful. Small wonder, she thought with an inner smile, he could probably buy and sell the lot for chump change.

  “Your son? Briefly.”

  “You know very well who I mean.” She said nothing, and he sighed heavily, shaking his head. Disappointment in Amy, Nicole asked herself, or me? And looked about for either escape or rescue. “One of these days... ”

  “It’s a rebellious age, sir. You’re desperate for structure yet starting to feel the need to make your own mark.”

  “By kicking that structure down?”

  “You never did?”

  “Not I, the perfect paragon.”

  Nicole spoke before she could stop herself: “Forgive me, sir,” she said, “but that kind of remark seems more your son’s profile.”

  “Alex”—he thought a moment, eyes taking on a slight glaze while he considered some distant memory before focusing back to her—“is a bit too much his mother’s child.”

  “And you thought you’d rectified that error with Amelia.”

  A sudden sharp look—she wondered what she’d said to prompt it, alarmed that she’d put a major foot wrong and somehow offended him—masked as quickly by a smile she recognized as twin to Amelia’s, just as false but far more deliberately charming. She had the sense she’d just tripped over a major joke but that Cobri was the only one privy to it. And Cobris didn’t share.

  “That’s why one has more than one, didn’t you know,” he said with sage good humor, “to keep trying ’til you get it right.”

  Practice makes perfect, Nicole thought. And said, “I’m not trying to be rude, sir, I really wish we could continue, but my time this evening isn’t my own and I believe I’m needed.”

  “You don’t much like my son, do you, Lieutenant?”

  “I hardly know him, sir.”

  “He’ll be handling some of the primary cybernetics work on the proposed Hybrid Shuttle, so you’ll be working quite extensively together. I just want to ensure there’ll be no problem.”

  “I understand he has quite a considerable professional reputation, Mr. Cobri. I’m sure everything’ll be fine. I’m sorry, sir, I really must go. If you’ll excuse me... ”

  “Colonel Kinsella will be a project officer, as well.” Why, she thought, wondering what disaster was coming next, am I not surprised
? Wondering more why Cobri was telling her this?

  Alex and Kinsella were watching, she saw that as she turned towards Sallinger and the Halyan’t’a, Kinsella smiling, cat to cornered mouse. Surprisingly, though, Alex was glaring towards his father with barely disguised fury. Was he angry at what the old man had just done, or simply that he’d wanted to drop the boom on Nicole himself and Manuel had stolen his thunder? And Nicole found herself starting a step forward, gripped from deep within by something fierce and predatory that refused to allow Kinsella’s challenge to go unanswered.

  The MicroCom beeped, gave voice to a basso rumble so low it was basically subvocal requesting her immediate presence. Kymri. He hadn’t missed a thing and he was calling her away before events got out of hand. And she turned to obey, forcing herself to take a deep breath. It came with the quavery shudder, echoed by a slight tremble to the body that she’d felt all too often of late. Fear, she knew. Of what was about to happen. But was it what would happen to her, or what she was afraid she’d do?

  She looked up, found Kymri’s eyes, favored him with the blandest and most accommodating of subordinate smiles. Before hurrying to his side to help him through the rest of the evening.

  * * *

  four

  Along about the seventh hill, pride gave way to common sense and she stopped dead in her tracks. Hunched over, knees slightly bent, letting hands resting on her thighs take the weight of her upper body. She was breathing in a steady, deliberate rhythm, with a fair way to go before she was winded. But enough, she decided, was enough.

  She’d reached the crest of a ridge overlooking the vast expanse of Rogers Dry Lake. A line of heights marked this southern “shore,” dotted with a random scattering of various bunkers—some active, most left over from the rash of esoteric weapons testing that marked the end of the last century. What passed for roads were actually tracks worn in the desert earth by long usage, there was never sufficient traffic to have them properly graded and paved; most of the operational systems were completely automatic, requiring technicians only to install and remove the equipment, and service the rare malfunctions. It was Harry Macon who first brought Nicole up here, the week she arrived at Edwards. He liked running, said that getting his blood pumping—then roaring—through his veins helped him think. It was also one of the few opportunities he had to escape on a more-or-less regular basis the pressures and responsibilities of his job. To regain at least a partial sense of perspective and, when necessary, vent the more than occasional frustration. “Out in the boonies,” he told her, “no one can hear you scream.” Except Nicole, of course, huffing along a dozen or so steps behind, wearing MicroCorder and PortaComp in case he had a flash of inspiration.