“Yes. What about it?”
“Every engine has it own note—get to know it. If you ever hear it off-tone—and especially if you ever hear the slightest hum or warble—abort immediately. Those turbines throwing a blade will ruin your whole day. “
“Yes sir!”
“Good. I hope to hell you’re not tone deaf. Now another thing”—she could hear the smile in his calm tone—“she’s not much like that slug you flew last week. When you release brakes, she’s going to bolt. Don’t worry. She’s kind of a high-strung girl and she just wants you to be gentle with her. Yank the stick around and she’s liable to take offense. That will also ruin your whole day.”
Jeezus! What did I get myself into here? “Oh, ah—yes sir.”
“Take it sweet and easy, and she’ll give you a very nice ride.” He glanced over at her. “You ready?”
Kris took a deep breath. “Yes . . . sir.”
“Then let her go.”
As ready as she thought she was, Kris was not prepared for what Huron had meant when he’d said bolt. The flyer shot forward with an acceleration that squashed the air out of her chest and the end to jetway approached faster than seemed possible. It felt like she was fighting a hundredweight as she eased the stick back but the little craft took to the air almost magically without a flutter.
As they screamed over the trees beyond the end of the jetway, she pitched the nose up to thirty degrees, eased back on the throttle and a few seconds later they broke supersonic. She was getting her breath back and her vision had returned to normal when Huron nodded. “Not bad.”
He leaned over and punched up some data on the Nav-Tac and her heads-up display came alive with traces. “Okay, now take her over to two-one-niner, angels thirty, and show me what you got.”
Kris had never in her life felt so thoroughly alive. The darling little flyer responded charmingly to her slightest pressure; the sound of the scramjets was a song of purest joy; the dark blue dome of the sky shading to the deepest sapphire at the zenith beckoned wantonly but she held firmly to her promise, all the time remembering his.
She showed off the simple evolutions she’d learned in her prior lessons and Huron talked her through a few new ones. After what seemed an age—though it lasted maybe fifty minutes—they descended in a long smooth curve to about ten thousand meters and she engaged the Nav-Tac to take them back home. Far to the east was a bank of the immense lenticular clouds that often formed in Nedaema’s lower atmosphere at these latitudes and Huron was looking at something above them that had caught his attention. He reached over, fiddled with the main console and looked at the HUD. “Bank right,” he said and his tone was flat. As they came around, he pointed toward the clouds. “What the hell’s that?”
Kris followed the line of his arm and saw a small black speck—a speck that did not seem to be moving but did appear to be creating a shock cone. She continued her turn and the speck remained on a fixed bearing as the clouds in the background swept by. It was getting bigger and the shock cone more obvious. Huron’s voice came, firm and clipped: “Hard roll left. Full throttle. On my mark, throttle back and hit the airbrakes.”
Kris pushed the stick hard left as she punched the throttle. The flyer leaped forward, the horizon spun crazily and she heard Huron counting out loud: “. . . two, one . . . Brake!”
She deployed the airbrakes and down-throttled. The nose came up hard as they were thrown forward into the straps with crushing force and the flyer bucked and rocked as something rocketed by with a tearing scream, more felt than heard but still deafening, even through their helmets.
“What the hell!” Kris yelled, her ears ringing and her vision filled with sparks as she brought the flyer back under control. Huron, looking behind them, snapped, “Get down on the deck. Fast!”
Kris dropped the nose. The flyer stooped as she watched the airspeed climb at an unbelievable rate. “What the fuck was that?”
“Not now.” She’d never heard anyone’s voice so hard, so cold. He looked forward again. “You see that lake?” He pointed at a finger of water, the nearest of a chain of lakes running in long silver-blue gaps through the dark endless forest rushing up at them at an appalling speed. She nodded.
“Head for it.” She eased the stick over.
Huron glanced behind again. “Max boost.”
She pushed the throttle open as far as it would go. Her heart hammered, the flyer shuddered as it burned through the denser air. The horizon was just a smear, the stick shook as she held it with both hands. Beads of sweat tickled as they ran down her neck inside her suit.
“Ease off to point eight. I’m going to give you a three-count to pull out. The control surfaces are going to be heavy but pull smooth The dampers will take about eighty gees—the wings will come off at around a hundred. So no matter how heavy it feels, don’t jerk it.”
“What altitude?” A whisper because she could no longer breath.
“We need to skim the surface at about ten meters.”
Her breath froze in her throat. Ten meters? At this velocity? Her eyes were locked on the narrow lake, growing in her vision faster than anything possibly could and her heartbeats were all she could hear, booming long and slow. There were only two before Huron put his gloved hand over both of hers and she heard him distantly: “Ready, two one—Now!”
Lake water was all she could see, the ripples frozen in time across its surface, but before she heard the last syllable, his hand pressed gently and she was tugging the stick back with both hands. The horizon swooped down; the sky appeared like a great azure eye suddenly opening. Her vision grayed out, there was a stabbing pain in her ears and something slapped them hugely from behind.
She felt pressure on her hands and followed it, easing off stick and throttle and her chest convulsed with a huge tearing sob as she gulped oxygen. Her ears were ringing and there was a terrible pain behind her forehead and her vision was coming back all blurred and smeared with red.
“Wha—what . . .” She struggled to breathe; moving her head was agony. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and willed them open clear. They did—not entirely, but better. Huron’s hand left hers. “You okay?” His voice sounded breathy but almost human.
“Yeah,” she gasped. “Yes.”
“Good.” He was tapping a series of commands on the console. “Let’s keep it down on the deck. I don’t fancy another one of those.”
They flew back on autopilot programmed for nap-of-the-earth and it took a good long time for Kris’s shoulders to stop shaking. By the time they picked up the landing beacon, she had her breath under control and, except for the occasional sharp violent shudder, the rest of her. As the approach lit up on the HUD, Huron appraised her and asked, “Can you take her in?”
Kris nodded. “Yes sir.”
He eased back in his seat. “Never doubted it.”
His confidence was not misplaced, though she did feather it a bit early and dropped them jarringly from almost two meters up when she cut power. Neither of them said anything as the flyer came to a stop and she switched off. She broke her helmet seals and opened the canopy. A rush of air chilling the sweat on her neck and brow made her shiver as she took the helmet off and put it in her lap.
“Now,” she said, getting a grip on her frayed nerves. “Now tell me what the hell happened.”
Huron also had his helmet off and was fiddling with the console, scrolling reams of data down the display while he tapped out messages on the xel he held in one hand. “Off hand, I’d say that was some sort of stealth drone with—fortunately for us—a non-adaptive proximity fuse.”
“What?”
“Yep,” Huron said, biting the syllable off as he touched a blinking red icon on his xel and rapped out another message.
“Someone just tried to kill us?” Kris was staring at him, her eyes huge and her mouth agape.
“That’s my guess.” He reached over and released her straps.
“But why?”
Huron slid out of his st
raps with practiced ease. “That, I couldn’t say.” He climbed out on the wing root and gave her a hand. “But I’m arranging a ride home for you.” She nodded. “And I’d be a little careful about who I talked to for the next few days.”
After Kris was bundled into an anonymous groundcar driven by a marine in mufti who took his instructions from Huron very seriously and without saying a word, Huron waited in the hanger for his own transport. He’d sent his groundcar back by an appropriately circuitous route and had arranged for another, much more difficult to trace. It was unlikely whoever was behind the attack would try again so soon, but there was no point in taking chances. Trying to kill someone with a stealth drone was far beyond the run-of-the-mill assassination attempt.
As he waited, he heard footsteps and a moment later, Fred poked his head around the corner. “So how’d she do?”
“I’ve got no complaints,” Huron answered as he scanned the last few replies from CEF HQ.
“Bit rough there on the landing, I thought, though.”
Huron’s lips tugged left in his trademark half-smile. “Well, you know. She’s learning.”
* * *
Six hours later, Huron jogged up the steps of CEF HQ in Nemeton. News of the attack had been all over the media since 1700. The authorities had announced a Code 3 surveillance condition and most traffic was at a stand: flights grounded and ports closed. Around the perimeter and on the portico of the singularly unattractive gray HQ building the barricades were up, though they were not terribly obvious. Nor were the additional marine guards, except for those patrolling for show in full combat armor, and only someone with very good sensors or a secure link to the Operations Center would have been aware the high-altitude CAP now orbiting over the city.
None of that concerned Huron as he breezed through security and took a lift to the seven-floor suite that served as a temporary workspace for him and the Arizona’s other junior officers. He exchanged salutes with a number of acquaintances on the way, most of whom favored him with significant looks. What the looks might be significant of did not concern him either, and he had in fact forgotten them by the time he arrived at his cube and found, as he’d expected, a lieutenant with the lank build and albino coloring of a born Belter waiting for him.
“Hey Boss,” the lieutenant greeted him, making only a negligent motion toward saluting. “Who’d you piss off this time?”
Huron chuckled and reached out to shake the other man’s hand. “Well, as you know, the list is long but distinguished. Thanks for coming.” He and Geoff N’Komo had gone through the Academy together and N’Komo had been his wingman for most of their deployments before his elevation to Arizona’s TAO. Lieutenant N’Komo was currently the senior SRF squadron leader on the light carrier LSS Calypso, which had come in last month. But whenever they met, regardless of their personal circumstances, he insisted on calling Huron ‘Boss.’
“Do we have anything yet?” Huron asked, logging onto his system and his linking his xel.
“Lotta bullshit media hype,” N’Komo replied. “And downstairs they’re spooling through the message traffic like fiends.”
“Recover any of the wreckage?”
“Part of one fin, some of the tail section and a few bits of the casing.”
“Interesting?”
N’Komo spread his unnaturally long hands. “Typical gray-market stuff. Standard C-12 explosive—no particular mix. Isotopes suggest it’s originally Bannerman manufacture but that describes about half the stuff you’d find out there.”
Huron drummed his fingers on his desk as he watched data flow to and fro. “Nothing else? Nothing unusual?”
“Not really, except that they think it was here for a while—couple of months, at least.”
“How do they know that?”
“You know how those stealth coatings pick stuff up—react to light.” Huron actually did not know but he nodded anyway. “Besides, you can’t just smuggle in a drone. Gotta bring in the pieces and assemble it here. Probably take more than a couple of months to pull all that off.”
“Yeah.” Huron rubbed his knuckles on his palm. “But they didn’t take time to swap the fuse.”
“What do you mean?”
Huron sat on the edge of his desk, showed Geoff the reconstructed trajectories. “See? It was a non-adaptive proximity fuse. That’s why it fired on the lake’s surface.”
“Yeah. Damn nice move that.”
“If it was meant for aerial attack, why not use an adaptive fuse? They had plenty of time.”
“Maybe they were in a hurry for some reason.”
“Okay. Why?”
N’Komo shrugged, an angular gesture. “Target of opportunity? Who knew you were going to fly today?”
“No one.” Huron frowned. “I didn’t decide until this AM.” He shook his head. “We’ve been down here for weeks. Why take a shot now? It doesn’t make sense.”
They exchanged a look and shook their heads in unison. “Fuck it,” Huron muttered. Then: “Who’d the Nedaemans put on it?”
“Their Chief Inspector. Fellow named Taliaferro. He wants to talk to you, by the way.”
“Of course.” Huron’s brows crimped. He checked his xel. “I guess no time like the present. Did he leave a card?”
“I think you’re sitting on it.”
“Oh.” Huron shifted his hip, found the calling card. Picking it up, he said, “Look Geoff, I want you to do me a favor.”
“You got it, Boss.”
“I got a weird feeling about this. Find somebody to keep an eye on that girl. Somebody good. Somebody not associated with me. You follow?”
“A-firm, Boss. You think Corporal Vasquez would do? Her unit’s in town.”
Huron laughed, shook his head and smiled. The smile had an unpleasant edge to it. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah.” Still smiling, he stood and slipped the inspector’s calling card in his pocket. “Well, time to talk to the cops, I suppose. You’ll let me know if they find anything.”
“You know I will.”
“I do at that.” He clapped N’Komo on the shoulder. “Be back as soon as I’m finished.”
“Hey, Boss?” N’Komo stopped him as he turned to go. “How did you know about the fuse?”
“I didn’t. It was the only chance we had.”
“Well, it was still a damn nice move. Never thought you could pull that off in a civil bird.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t.” N’Komo looked blank. “I mean I wasn’t doing the flying. That was her, Geoff. No co-pilot seat in that thing.”
N’Komo looked blanker. “You’re kidding, right.”
“Not at all. She had it locked in like I’ve never seen. Not a shiver. Well . . .” He gave his head a little sideways nod and smiled that crooked half-smile. “Not until we were on the ground.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, smile twitching down on one side. “Did drop it a bit hard on the landing though. Gotta work on that.”
“Okay.” N’Komo finally got some expression back in his face: part irony, part puzzlement. “If you say so. You know best.”
“So I do. Have Vasquez keep a good watch on her, Geoff. I’d hate like hell to lose this one.”
Chapter Eleven
NBPS HQ, Mare Nemeton
Nedaema, Pleiades Sector
Behind the desk of the Chief Inspector of Nedaema’s Bureau of Public Safety was a round-headed man with broad mobile features and a halo of unruly white hair that contrasted shockingly with skin burned almost black by the suns of many less pleasant worlds. He was of middle height with a thick lumpish build and wore an indifferently tailored dark gray suit. Rising to greet Huron, he extended a wide short-fingered hand with an improbable amount of silvery hair on the back of it.
“Hello Lieutenant. Nikolai Taliaferro,” he said, taking Huron’s hand in a crushing grip. “As you may have guessed, I am not from these parts.”
Huron had indeed guessed but he was not entirely prepared for just how remote Taliaferro’s na
tive parts must have been. He pronounced his surname Tolliver in wonderful defiance of its spelling and he did so in one of the thickest colonial accents Huron had ever encountered. Huron could not quite place it; likely it had been blurred by a lifetime in the League’s backwaters or places even more remote, but its origin was probably Whitworth or maybe Reunion.
How a colonial had risen to such a high position in a society as obsessively class unconscious as Nedaema—which is to say they talked of egalitarianism at length and greatly valued diversity in everything but thought and manner—was likely a fascinating tale and Huron thought that it would be fun someday to hear it. But today was not that day, so he just returned Taliaferro’s handshake with a polite nod. “Thank you, Inspector. I’m sorry we have to meet under such circumstances.”
Taliaferro laughed, a rich rather burbling laugh. His eyes were small and bright blue, and almost disappeared in the creases of his face when he laughed. “Well, if I wanted to meet people under pleasant circumstances, I’d get a job as the doorman of a bordello.”
Huron got the impression he said bordello out of respect for his company or because it was duty hours, and otherwise the earthier colonial terms for such an establishment would come more readily to his tongue: whorehouse, knocking shop, and of course fuckery. “I fully understand.”
“Sit down. Sit down.” Taliaferro waved him to a seat. “Mind if I smoke?” He was already rummaging in the recesses of his suit as Huron said he did not. Tobacco had long since been deprived of it’s harmful character, but something of the stigma lingered and smoking was almost unheard of in the Homeworlds, except among the eccentric rich. Huron had a maiden aunt who smoked ostentatiously when with company.
“Thanks.” The Chief Inspector removed the cigarette he had located, lit it with a flick of his thumbnail, and inhaled a welcome lungful. Then he fiddled behind his desk and a holographic display popped into existence above it. “So. It seems that was a hell of a day.” Taliaferro exhaled a vast blue cloud that the office air-conditioning instantly detected and began to try to deal with while he continued to fiddle and the display came alive with data. “We’ve got the air-traffic control logs, of course, and whatever the planetary civil sensors can tell us—damn little it looks like—and your flyer’s telemetry, and I’ve got teams combing the weeds for a launch site. I understand that your people already nicked the debris. I got a nice preliminary email on the findings.” Huron inclined his head politely. “So why don’t we go over what you have and we’ll take it from there.”
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