“Right, we’ll just be goin, then,” said Ronnie, as my head popped out of the tunnel. “Oi, there’s the kid! G’day, little fella. Who else ya got in there, Mr. Kane? Come on, you lot, let’s get outta here before a dragon or somethin’ comes out. Good luck to ya, Mr. Kane.” And with that, Ronnie and the five or six other huge guards turned and made their way down the hill.
“Well, that could have been worse. Quickly now, before anyone else comes, let’s get you two into the elevator. The rest of you wait here,” said Bill, as he, Zoey Perez, and Willard dashed across the forty meters to the other side of the plateau.
Ernie was shaking the dirt off of himself and taking stock of his scratches and bruises as Cheri crawled out of the tunnel, Leena right behind her. Then I remembered… “Zoey! Ms. Perez!” I called, and as she ran, she held up her hand with the quantum communicator in it. Oh, good… I should have known she wouldn’t forget…
“Right, what’s next on the agenda?” asked Leena as she wiped grime from her sweaty face.
“We’ve got to get over to the landing strip, but I’m not sure how we will get everyone there. Originally there were just the three of us, and we all have jet suits,” said Cheri, gazing up at the sun beating down on us.
Hey, this feels good… I’m getting recharged up here… being blasted by the sun and radio waves at the same time… it feels like taking about ten of those energy drink things all at once…
“I feel it, too. We were slowing down for a while there, but ramping up to full power now. Carpe diem, sonny boy!”
Carpe diem? Everybody knows that one. Come on, you can do better than that.
“Oh, feeling chuffed, are we? I’ll give you a better challenge later, but for now, citius, altius, fortius, shorty!”
Let’s see, that’s… stronger, higher, faster? Yeah, you got that right… we need to get out of here…
“Um, you think we could, like, drive over there?” asked Ernie, picking gravel out of his hair.
“Will you look at the size of this bloke?” asked Leena, as if she had just noticed how hugely muscled Ernie is.
“Aww, don’t let that fool you. Strong as a bear, but gentle as a kitten, right, Ernie?” said Cheri, punching him in the arm in a way that I guessed would be considered playful.
“Yeah, um, well, most of the time, anyways. I kinda went crazy when they had me locked up. So, you dudes have flying suits? Does it blow up like a big balloon or something?”
At that moment Bill came jogging back from the other side of the plateau. “All right, they’re in place. We have to hope that they can remain under cover, at least until our mission is complete. We have quite a way to go, and the quicker, the better. Follow me.”
Bill led us to a path just on the south edge of the plateau, to a sandy patch next to a boulder. “Haven’t been out here in a while, let’s hope this still works,” he muttered, and fumbled with the side of the boulder. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then I felt a deep rumbling in the ground, almost like a minor earthquake. Everyone else felt it, too, and all stepped back toward the center of the plateau; a circle of sand slowly rose and fell away to reveal a four-seat VTOL rising on a platform out of the ground.
“There we go. It’s a clever little effect, eh?” Bill said out of the corner of his mouth, and he was right. “The sand falls into a trough, and when the lid is closed, it is blown back over the top. You’d never know it was there unless you knew it was there. Now, we have four seats but there are five of us, and I daresay Ernest counts for two. No offense, Ernest. I must say, we’ve had fantastic luck so far. Lucas, you and Ms. Kim will need to fly on your own, which I suspect will not be a problem for you; the only thing left to decide is whether she flies on her own, or if you carry her as you have in the past. I will suggest that she fly on her own, so she gets practice with controlling the jet suit. Ms. Kim, what do you say?”
She clapped, one real hand and one synthetic, and said, “Oh, yeah! Let’s do it!”
“Hm. fantastic luck, or a clever scheme? They’re not that far removed.”
I know, ‘keep your eyes peeled, stay alert, don’t let your guard down,’ right?
“Okay, Mr. Snarky. You’re not the only one who’s life is at stake, you know. I’m in here too.”
You’re right, I’m sorry.
“Yes I am, and yes you are. Now, when we’re in the air, we must slow down a little so that Cheri can stay with us, but we’ll have to do that anyway so that the quadrotor can keep up. After we improved her jet pack, it’ll do roughly three-fifty KPH, and the VTOL about the same, while our top speed is a little north of six hundred. It’ll be like a stroll in the park, sonny boy.”
Yeah, a park full of snakes and crocodiles.
“Oh, come on, now, a negative attitude won’t help. Cras es noster, shorty!”
Oh, boy. You’ve got to get over this Latin kick. Do you have a virus or something?
“Oh, excuse me for trying to enlighten you. Crescat scientia vita excolatur!”
Okay, that’s it. I’m not talking to you anymore.
“Come on, do it.”
All right, cras es noster means something like tomorrow will be ours, and crescat scientia vita excolatur is let knowledge grow so it will enrich your life. Are you happy now?
“Very. Put on your heat suit and jet engine, you’re keeping everyone waiting.”
I glanced over to see that Cheri had put on her black, skin tight heat suit, and had the bottom portion of the flying suit on. I know I’ve said it before, but when she has that heat suit on, it makes it totally obvious that she’s a girl, if you know what I mean, and, oh, boy, I won’t say any more about that. Bill, Ernie, and Leena were already sitting in the VTOL, and had weird grins on their faces. “Lucas, if you’re done with your trance or meditation or whatever you’re doing, could you help me get this engine strapped on? I mean, unless you’d rather just stay here.”
“Oh, sorry, I… Ava was talking to me in Latin, and… anyway, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going!”
28
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC BG, LPJ, JR
121952 19:25
-(BG) …well, even if we don’t know exactly where they’ll be setting down, there are a finite number of places they could land a jet in and around Las Vegas.
-(LPJ) Right, and we have twenty-four hours, which is more than enough time to map them all out and eliminate the ones where we can be reasonably sure they won’t land, then be ready to respond as they get closer. It’ll only take one sharpshooter to take (WK) down, right?
-Well, wait a second, we’re not killers, remember?
-Well, then with a dart or flechette or something of that sort. It’ll still only take one person. They won’t be able to drag (WK) along with them; they’ll have to leave him there.
-(JR), what do you think?
-(JR) Oh, I think it sounds fine in theory. We must remember that things always shade toward chaos in the actual world, so redundancy will be essential. Multiple shooters, multiple angles, multiple times. That is the only way you maximize your chances of success, as measured by an unconscious (WK) lying on a tarmac somewhere in or near Las Vegas.
-Now we’re talking. (SVC), how many agents do we have in the Las Vegas area for tomorrow night?
-(SVC) We have approximately fifty in the area now, and another twenty arriving by tomorrow afternoon.
-All right, have them all form teams of three. That’s twenty-three groups, with a couple of four instead of three. There can’t be over twenty-three landing strips that they could use, can there?
-(SVC) One moment… there are fifty-four airports in and around Las Vegas.
-Okay, you, (BG) and (LPJ) get to work eliminating the ones they obviously would not use. I think we could eliminate the major airports right off the top. We have the strip they would normally use, but I think we can assume (WK) will avoid that one as well. Narrow it down and let’s see what we have left. Then we’ll direct one team t
o each of the remaining airports, and make sure they know we want (WK) down, not out. We still need a Plan B, right?
-(JR) I think you will need plans B, C, and D as well, Director. If he manages to get past Plan A, then Plan B is to see if he makes it past the extraction of Lucas’ father. The extraction will be dangerous, no matter how much of a distraction is made at the gates.
-So Plan B is to observe and hope maybe something happens to him during their mission?
-(JR) Putting it plainly, yes, I believe so. If he makes it past the extraction, then it would be time for Plan C.
-You know what? We have too many plans going. Plans for catching (WK), plans for catching the boy and his father, plans for extraction, plans for moving Bright Handers, plans for fusion reactors, plans for constructing a massive interstellar ship, plans for living forever, plans, plans, plans. It’s all getting too convoluted. We have so many plans nothing ever seems to get completed. Ever since the boy came along, that’s how it’s been. Maybe I’m just venting, but am I wrong? I don’t think so. I just have this odd feeling that, even though a flurry of activity is happening, time is almost standing still. Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud. Let’s just get this planning done as fast as we can so we can get you all back to your own lives, okay?
-…
-(SVC) I don’t think any of us will argue with that.
-All right, then, let’s finish this up. I’m putting a thirty-minute end time on this, so no dawdling. And (SVC), pass me that bottle.
****
A s I slipped on my extra-large, extra-stretchy, black, full-body heat suit, Leena said, from the back seat of the four rotor VTOL, “Someone played a joke on you, my son. That’s a suit fit for my new mate here, not for you.”
Ernie, her new mate, said, “Yeah, man, it’s gonna get all flappy and stuff when you’re tryin’ to fly.”
Bill made a brief grin because he knew what was about to happen. Then, the shocked look on Leena and Ernie’s faces when I expanded my arms to wings almost made everything we had gone through worth it. “Dude, what the… did you see that? I mean, what? That’s the raddest thing I ever saw, man.”
“Wait, he’s a bloody airplane? How did he do that? That’s bloody magic, that’s what that is. ‘e’s a wizard, like Gandalf, innie?”
Cheri shook her head. “That never gets old. I wish I could do that! Oh, that reminds me, I’ve never flown one of these things, so I might need a little help, at least right at the beginning.”
“Slip on your helmet, the heads-up display will guide you. Let’s get moving, friends. I’ll lead the way, and we’ll be going low and fast,” said Bill, as the clear top lowered on the VTOL. They were off in a flash, heading northeast over hilly terrain; Cheri edged toward the end of the plateau, and said, “It’s telling me to spin up the jet engine and jump… oh, man, this is scarier than I thought.”
“I’ll be right behind you. I’ll catch you if anything goes wrong. We better get going before we lose them.”
“Okay, here goes… oh, craaaaaaaap!” she screamed, as she jumped over the edge and instantly dropped out of sight; a second later, she reappeared moving forward, and over our two-way helmet-to-helmet connection, she said, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad. Are you going to join me, or am I too fast for you?”
Before long we caught up to the VTOL and were winging our way toward the secret Bright Hand airstrip in the depression between a series of hills we had used several times before. At three hundred-fifty KPH the trip took a little over an hour, the sun setting as we flew, fading the horizon into orange and purple. During our trip Cheri learned how to trust the A.I. managing her engine and heads-up display to control things, and once she did that, the trip went smoothly. We planned to land aside the only hangar at the little airstrip, and as we approached, waiting outside were the usual pilot and copilot that had flown us around the world in our previous missions, shading their eyes with their arms. The down-draft from the VTOL scattered gravel and created an enormous cloud of dust; Cheri came in a little rough and stumbled as she set down, but we all landed safely, Cheri bellowing, “WHOO HOO! Yes! That was awesome!” I pulled in my leg wings as I neared the ground, tilted my arm wings up, and came to a stop next to her, my arms flowing back into their normal shape.
As soon as the clear lid of the VTOL was up, Bill was out and approaching the pilots, who had disappeared around the edge of the hangar.
They must have been trying to get away from that dust…
“It’s possible that they didn’t get the message to back off of Billy like the rest of the Bright Hand security did. Their pingers won’t reach anywhere near this far, and we took the communications arrays down before the message went out. We better get over there before something bad happens, sonny boy.”
Oh, boy… by now, Bill had rounded the corner of the hangar, and I dashed after him; I skidded in the gravel as I got to the edge, to find Bill… shaking hands with the pilots. “We knew somethin’ was up, Mr. Kane. We had orders to detain you, and tell your entourage you were an American spy, but we didn’t believe it. They were offering quite a lot of money, and that was the reason we assumed the message was false. If you were really an American spy, why would they need to offer us a pile of cash to stop you? It didn’t pass the stupid test. On top of all that, we assumed that they would send security personnel here to intercept you, but none ever showed up, so another sign that the entire thing is bogus.”
“Well, we weren’t just supposed to detain you, they wanted us to take you down with flechettes. One minor thing they neglected to realize is we don’t have any flechettes out here, so we would have had to do it some other way. Oh, hello, young man. Is everything all right? You seem in quite a rush,” the copilot said as I came to a stop just behind Bill.
“What? Oh, I, uh… uh… I need to use the bathroom, that’s all.”
“Well, must be an emergency. Just around the corner, then to your left.”
As I trudged away, the pilot, thinking I was out of hearing range, said, “That kid is really something, isn’t he? We’ve been trotting him all around the globe, and then we hear reports about his exploits, and it just doesn’t match up, does it? I mean, he’s just a kid.”
That caused Bill to chuckle. “Oh, Wallace, let me assure you, he is not just a kid. By the way, you may have noticed that I have Leena Achebe with me.”
At that point I stopped listening. Ava, that was close! I was ready to take those guys down. I’m sure glad Bill was between them and me, or I might have just done it.
“Now listen, sonny boy, I’m almost beginning to believe that Billy has done enough to prove himself. Almost. Still, better safe than sorry at this point. We’re not in the US yet, so we still need either him or those pilots to get us there, and as long as we didn’t take all three of them out, we still would have been okay. I know that’s a bit harsh, but we’re in do-or-die time now. Oh, as long as you are faking the need to use the bathroom, let’s go in and relieve some gas. It’s been building up for a while, anyway.”
Oh, boy. Maybe we should just run off into the hills for that. If anyone else needs to use the bathroom, they’ll get gassed if we go in there first.
“Well, you do have an excellent idea every once in a while. Just jog off there to the left, in that seam between the rocks.”
I got a hundred meters away from the hangar and released the gas that had been building up in my system; the odd whistling sound followed by the obnoxious smell of oil and chemicals lingered as I made my way back to the hangar.
Ernie and Leena were loading the gear into the small, six-passenger jet as Bill chatted with the pilots and Cheri stripped off the bulky jet pack suit; she had removed the head covering from the heat suit she wore under the jet pack suit, and her grin was ear-to-ear. “Now I think I know a little what it feels like to be you,” she said as I approached.
“If anyone in the world knows what it’s like to be me, it’s probably you. And my dad, for sure. And Benji and Ms. Houng and Mr. Harutyu
nyan. But probably you, mostly.”
“Lucas, why are you covering your eyes?”
“Well, you just have your heat suit on, and… well, you know.”
“Oh, because I’m a girl, right? Lucas, you’ve seen me in these lots of times. You’ve seen me in my underwear, remember? You even saw my whole bare behind one time, do you remember that? I’ve seen your bare bottom too, you know. I expected it to look kind of square or something, like a robot, but it didn’t. It just looked like a normal, hairless butt. Come on, you can’t still be uncomfortable with me.”
“No, I’m not uncomfortable with you, it’s just… I’m uncomfortable in general. And I’m not a robot.”
She shuffled over to me and put her arm around my waist, and I admit I peeked for a second, but then I totally closed my eyes. “Oh, Lucas, you’ve made lots of progress, but you still have a long way to go. I’ll go use the little girl’s room and get changed, then let’s go rescue your dad, okay?”
A short while later, after Bill had convinced the pilots that he and Leena could and would pilot the plane, we taxied down the short runway, and were off on our journey across the Indian ocean to South Africa, then across the Atlantic to Brazil, and finally over what is left of the Central American countries on our way to Las Vegas. We’re coming for you, dad… we’re coming…
29
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC
122052 07:12
-Oh my God, (SVC). Why did you let me drink all that? That’s twice in a week. You’re supposed to keep me under control, you know.
Reassemble (Singular Book 4) Page 18