Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “So you opted out of the competition. Neat trick.”

  “No. It’s just they defined the terms of competing along lines we could all live with. If a challenge came—and, okay, those kinds of challenges always come, that’s part of growing up—they shunted it into arenas where we were all pretty much on an equal footing. When you sail or fly, it’s the same sea and sky regardless. The folks’ edge was that they were older, more experienced, but us kids were quicker off the mark and in some ways—because this was all new and we were scared stiff at first of screwing up—a lot more on the ball. And what we got, Alex, we earned. My flying lessons came out of weekends and after-school busting my ass at the airport.”

  “The problem with being labeled the best, right from the start, is living up to it. A four-oh score merely fulfills expectations. Anything less... ”

  “At least it’s your score, Alex. The standard you establish for yourself.”

  “I wish. The problem you know with being a chip off the old block is that you always remain a chip. And the Old Man, the block. Worse, by far, when the chip turns out to be less than perfect.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Pretty much. The danger of cutting-edge technology. The blade isn’t necessarily as sharp—the material as cuttable—as you assume.”

  “He said, your father, that night at Edwards, when they threw the welcoming party for the Hal, he just sort of sidled over and started chatting me up, that you were a bit too much your mother’s child.”

  “Bad genes. But if at first you don’t succeed... ”

  “ ‘Keep trying ’til you get it right,’ was what he told me. At the time, I couldn’t figure the joke.”

  “You do, now?”

  “I’ve been watching Amy.”

  “There is a resemblance.”

  “Alex, for Christ’s sake, cut yourself loose. It isn’t this mess with Russell that’s going to destroy you, it’s your father. That’s all the man is, Alex, he’s not God!”

  “Isn’t he, Nicole?” And the young man turned his head from where he sat to look her in the eye. “He made me what I am. And then made my sister better. Learned from his mistakes, same as he did turning Baumier’s equations into a viable power system. All his assets, none of his flaws.”

  “Alex!” she cried, forgetting herself and rising from her seat.

  “You’re right, actually. I don’t have any choice. I can’t live with him anymore. Amy’s young, Nicole, at least she’s still got time to pull her own head together, without him twisting it the way he did mine.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m glad you’re here, you’ll be out of it.”

  “I’m out of nothing. And you’re a fool if you think you can end this by yourself.”

  “I have to try.”

  “You’re just as much programmed as everyone else, don’t you realize that? Alex, come down.”

  “Give myself up, throw myself on the tender mercy of the Court and probably spend the rest of my life locked in a silk-lined box somewhere?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all your life?”

  “It’s my choice, Nicole, that’s the difference. I can always pull the plug. This way, someone else’s hand’s forever on the switch, I’ll be at their mercy, I won’t have any control. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you!”

  “Please.” He hadn’t seemed to notice as she’d gathered herself—slowly and progressively—to the top of the landing, trying to keep the dryness of her mouth from affecting her speech, eyes flicking from gun to his face and back again, remembering Matai’s speed when she lunged and her own shocked disbelief as the gun had fired. Still wasn’t sure whether to go slow or fast.

  “It’s a done deal, Nicole. Already set in motion. I won’t stop it. And if you’re stupid enough to try, I won’t let you stop it, either. Cast it as an Oedipal squabble and leave it in the family, ’kay? That’s best for everyone.”

  She moved, came up three paces short to find the gun aimed right at her head, Alex impossibly instantly on his feet before her, a transition so fast she could have sworn it hadn’t really happened.

  “I warned you,” he said.

  And pulled the trigger.

  And shimmered under an intentional burst of static as he played with the visual gain.

  “Son of a bitch,” she screamed, swinging furiously for his head only to see her clenched fist fly right through the holographic projection.

  “Nicole,” he admonished gently, as though to a child, “Nicole. Did you really think I’d be here in person? Or anywhere anyone could get a decent line on me?”

  She said nothing, merely glared at the image, trying to determine without actively looking where the receptors and projectors were stashed. And from there, the source. Had to be line-of-sight transmission, there was no other way to establish so coherent an image, even through cable.

  “You can’t kill him, Alex.”

  “The way I see it, he’s killing himself. Mary Shelley, right? Be seeing you, Nicole. Just no more this lifetime.”

  And he vanished.

  She dashed through the living room beyond, out onto the deck, grabbing a pair of binoculars on the way to sweep the horizon, paling with the approaching sunrise—she hadn’t realized how long they’d talked—then scrambling up to the peak of the roof for a search of the land. That nothing came immediately to view meant even less. A boat could’ve been far out to sea—although size played a role there, for too small a craft would have meant a less stable image; anything else, she should be able to see. Also, for land or sea projection, there would have to be a receiving nexus, a fairly considerable rectenna array to process the image, especially for a two-way livetime link. But there was nothing on the house, or anywhere near it.

  She hunkered down on the roof, dangling the glasses between her splayed knees. A plane was another possibility. Given sufficient altitude, and a clear shot, he could be broadcasting from fifty kilometers distant and more. Made sense. That way, the entire building could be used as the antenna, through its internal wiring, with just the addition of some internal remotes to process the signal in both directions. But where to get a plane loaded with that kind of specialized equipment, much less operate it, with no one being the wiser, when Alex’s picture was plastered across every newsline and video on the continent, if not the world? At least the young man had that aspect of reality pegged—he bore the Cobri name, but his father held the power. No one would even think of defying Manuel to protect Alex, or help him. No, whatever was planned, Alex was acting wholly on his own.

  Even as she thought that, she found her gaze rising upward, mouth forming an “O” of astonishment as she found the one place that fit every requirement. Which led to an equally mad dash back into the house, one almost fatal misstep as she came off the roof, a twisting, tumbling recovery that saved her from any injury worse than the ankle that got jammed on landing plus the usual assortment of bumps and bruises, no more than she used to regularly acquire as a kid, the only problem being that she was a long way from a kid’s body and reflexes. Scrambled for her PortaComp, called up a SkyChart, gave a clenched fist “yes” of triumph when her query came up aces.

  She was grabbing for the phone when it rang. She couldn’t help flinching, holding back for two more rings while asking herself if this was Alex?

  It was, to her amazement, Al Maguire.

  “I know where Alex Cobri is,” Nicole said, right off.

  “This isn’t a secure line,” was the reply, “and there are more important concerns. How’s the tide where you are?”

  Nicole furrowed her brow in confusion. “Lowering, I think,” she replied.

  “Go down on the beach. There’s a blue suit helo already en route from Otis”—meaning the Air Force base on Cape Cod, about sixty klicks distant—“it’ll take you back to Westchester. Your Corsair’s already being prepped, it’ll be ready to go when you get there.”

  “Go where?”
/>
  “Edwards. You have emergency clearance to altitude and authorization to firewall, you’re needed in the barn ASAP.”

  She took a breath, a trifle dizzy from the lack. “What’s happened?”

  “We have a Situation. We may need your help. No more questions, Nicole.”

  “I can hear the helo.” One of the big Sikorsky Air-Sea Rescue brutes, beside which even the Edwards beasts looked small in comparison, kicking up an impressive spray as it banked in low over the waves, swinging sideways towards the house. “I’m gone.”

  And in less than five minutes—remembering at the last to lock the door and stash the key—she was.

  * * *

  fourteen

  She ached in more places than she knew she had and didn’t even want to consider how she smelled—appearance had gone by the board on the other side of the continent, as hair and clothes were pummeled by the downwash of the Sikorsky’s giant rotor blades. Maguire was as good as her word, the helo roared down Long Island Sound at full throttle, descending onto the federal ramp at Westchester in a military touchdown. There was nowhere really to change and from the way everyone was behaving, precious little time, so she simply shucked jeans and top and pulled on her flight suit, thankful she’d worn a camisole for once (giggling at the memory of the classic Gramma moment, where she’d been cautioned always to wear clean—and respectable—underwear, because you never knew what might happen and you always wanted to look your best for strangers).

  Within ten minutes of touchdown, she was airborne, cleared to the Corsair’s max of fifty kay, with a ninety-minute run slotted to the coast. She didn’t inquire about what was up and nobody along the way felt obliged to enlighten her as she scattered shock diamonds out her tail and beat the sun to Edwards, leaving predawn half-light for full darkness.

  As she shambled into the Ready Room, Colonel Sallinger shoved a steaming mug of black tea into her hand and she took a reflexive, incautious sip, wincing at the heat and the bitter, battery-acid taste.

  “You functional?” she was asked.

  “Do I have to be?” she responded in kind. The main board was lit, displaying a hemispherical schematic centered on the African continent, with a series of orbital tracks as well, each marked by its own individual color. Data columns off to the side flashed constantly changing numbers, which she twigged immediately as course, velocity, and altitude. Faces filled the secondary screens: Al Maguire up top, Grace Kinsella in the middle, a middle-aged civvie male below who rang a vague bell in Nicole’s head as someone senior connected with the White House staff. Tscadi was present in the flesh, as was Sallinger, his Vice-Commander, and the State Department liaison. Belatedly, Nicole recognized the faces in two other screens: Judith Canfield and her Chief Astronaut, David Elias.

  Nicole shot a nervous glance in Sallinger’s direction, silently asking, “What?”

  He leaned her way, offering a slightly less vicious mug of tea—cut more the way Nicole liked it, with a dollop of milk and sugar—and spoke fast and low in reply. “In a nutshell, young Master Cobri appears to have seized control of the guidance system of his father’s spaceplane and locked it onto a collision course with Patriot Station.”

  “Which is where he is,” Nicole said back to him.

  Sallinger cocked an eyebrow.

  “He was waiting for me at my folks’ home on Nantucket. I thought he was there for real, it was a brilliant hologram.” And brilliantly staged, she realized, keeping her far enough away and himself in a moderately shadowed corner so that she could never get a chance to spot that she was being conned. “I tried to tell Marshal Maguire when she called.”

  “That’s only part of it. Patriot’s internals have been activated. The orbit’s no longer stable. We forecast twelve hours max before reentry. Any sort of violent collision between the spaceplane and the station can only make things worse.”

  “That stupid, pathetic son of a bitch,” she breathed. And then, louder, “Twelve hours, that’s a lifetime these days. More than enough time to launch a retrieval.”

  “The boy’s been very busy. He’s managed to infiltrate and corrupt the master guidance links both on Earth and up on Sutherland. The numbers can’t be trusted. The best anyone can figure to do is purge the entire system and reload from scratch. Even then, the software will have to be recalibrated and checked for glitches. There simply isn’t enough time. Baikonur hasn’t got anything in position for a tower launch and Canaveral’s closed down because of the damned weather.”

  “The Japanese?”

  “We’re victims of our own damn success. The spaceplanes do the manned lifting so well that all the old launch centers have shifted almost exclusively to unmanned shots. There’s no hardware they can get ready in time, nothing that can be diverted down the gravity well from the Moon.”

  “So what rocket scientist suggested the Hal shuttle as our ace in the hole?”

  Sallinger sighed and shook his head, visibly impressed. “Very good, Lieutenant,” he told her, “I was wondering how to break the news.”

  “I can’t fly it.”

  “Under the circumstances, you’re about the only one who can. Kymri’s out of action; Grace as you can see is otherwise occupied; I submit it’s you or no one.”

  “I submit in return, Colonel, I’m not qualified. For reasons that have nothing to do with my ability to fly the bloody thing. Besides, even if you use the Hal CyberNet, you’ll have to interface with ours to input the raw intercept data. Alex is no fool—hell, he helped design the interface—they’ll be corrupted same as ours were.”

  “The thought is to fly a manual intercept.”

  “You’re crazy!” She spoke too loudly, words very few people—and especially Second Lieutenants—spoke to Bird Colonels, and heads turned across the room, plus a couple (allowing for the time-lag in Trans-Lunar communications) on-screen who reacted a few seconds after the fact.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” she apologized, straightening as best she could to a semblance of attention, “I’m sorry.”

  “I know you’re tired, Nicole. You’re also looking to be the only option.”

  “I haven’t slept in better than two days, Colonel.”

  “What d’you want from me, Lieutenant? I can’t revoke the laws of physics. Whatever we say or do, Cobri’s spaceplane’s going to run smack into Patriot Station, and not terribly long after that, Patriot’s going to come back down to Earth. Question is, does it reenter empty? And as importantly, in a state that can do serious damage on the ground? SkyLab had people scared, this one’s ten times its size.”

  “What does Dr. Elias say?”

  “With all due respect to his expertise and reputation, Lieutenant, he has input here solely as a courtesy. This is my shop, and near-Earth space my bailiwick.”

  “Yes, sir. Have I time to at least freshen up? A shower might make some difference.”

  “I’ll take any edge I can get. You have a half hour, be back here ready to launch.”

  “We’ll have to structure the launch window... ”

  “What d’you think we’ve been doing all evening? Go, woman, go, go-go-go.” He made shooing motions with his hands to hurry her along.

  It wasn’t so much her eyelids that felt heavy, but the flesh atop her cheekbones, along the ridge they formed beneath her eyes, accompanied by a flatness of vision and expression and a perpetual tendency to yawn. She moved it seemed by reflex, trusting all the bits of her body to do what was expected of them with no more than the minimal prompting, painfully aware that if anything went wrong she probably wouldn’t be able to catch herself. She took refuge in the locker room, pushing the shower as blisteringly hot as she could stand, scrubbing herself from top to toe, before grabbing the knotted rope above the Cool Pool, allowing herself a few moments hang time before dropping herself in. She actually cried out underwater, the stark contrast with the shower making it seem far icier than it actually was, surfacing amid a spluttering sequence of coughs that bent her double as she spa
t water from her throat. When she’d calmed a bit, she flopped her elbows over the lip of the pool and hung off the side, rolling first her shoulders, then the whole of her back, curving it convex, then concave, before lifting herself free with an upward, straightening thrust of the arms. Only they weren’t interested tonight and gave out at the last instant and she flopped back into the water with a fair-sized splash.

  Before trying again, she decided to take a little more of a soak, stretching full length off the pool’s steps as mind and body slid back into focus. She was still exhausted but at least the effects would be held off until she let down her guard.

  The wildest aspect about being so tired while remaining fully functional was the way her thoughts wildly free-associated, memories and images scatter-shooting through her head like freeway speedsters driving California Rules. No courtesy, no quarter, you see an opening, you go for it, make the other sod get out of the way, and never ever hit the brake. Fighter jock Heaven, where they played with cars the way they did their fighters. Nicole never found herself comfortable playing those games. She loved speed, and the skill that went hand in hand, she just never felt the perpetual need to prove it the way most other hotshots indulged in at the drop of the proverbial hat. Her way of counting professional coup had always been to do the job, any job asked of her, the best it could be done.

  That was why being grounded hurt so much, it was the first time she herself had been found wanting. It wasn’t a case of making a mistake, something apart from her that could actively be isolated and corrected, this was a flaw in Nicole herself. And where before, after she’d screwed up on her original simulator evaluation—which came as close as anything could to washing her right out of the astronaut program—she’d welcomed the second chance that allowed her to prove herself, now she wasn’t so sure. She kept asking herself, would it have been better to quit that time? Chances were, Paolo would still be alive, and Cat Garcia and Chagay Shomron, and all the raiders who’d died on their asteroid. The trooper she’d shot in the back.