Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  “Close everything up,” Tanner replied. “And get in here, quick.”

  Philip secured the cargo bay door and reentered the airlock. A newbie messiah could use some fireworks.

  Chuck joined them on the radio. “Fellas, I think we have company.”

  FORTY-THREE

  In the minutes it took Philip to return through the airlock, Tanner maneuvered Gloria away from Cambiar 21 and slewed her to face the direction from which the missile had come. When Philip emerged from the lock, Chuck was hunched in the left chair, reaching for something under the panel, his helmeted head thumping against a windshield coaming.

  Philip removed his own helmet. “What do we have?”

  “We have weather radar,” Chuck groused, “not the North American Aerospace Defense Command.” He jabbed at the controls with gloved hands. “Trying to tune this thing.”

  “Twenty-one is clear and active,” Tanner announced. He held the lap panel loosely and clicked through several displays. “Checking the other birds.”

  Philip floated past Tanner’s shoulder, to the copilot’s chair, and switched off the interior lights. He pointed. “One o’clock, drifting right, ten degrees up.”

  “Got it,” Chuck said.

  “Cambiar 14 passed while you were on the porch,” Tanner said. “It’s still responding, but our radar is full of clutter—could be countermeasures.”

  Philip glanced to Chuck. “What do you think, Pops?”

  “I think somebody doesn’t like us.”

  Philip activated a sensor they seldom used. “There’s a hotspot on infrared,” he said. “Weak definition, but we are closing with it. Match us up, Tanner. Use Fourteen’s orbit for a baseline.”

  Tanner fed a two-kilometer offset into the orbit-matching software, which would have to be corrected, and the beam engine began firing in a feathery hum. He clutched Philip’s backrest against the acceleration.

  Philip collected a pair of binoculars. “Closing,” he said, “dead ahead.”

  Seconds later, the propulsion computer switched the beam engine from aft projection to forward projection, and Gloria’s acceleration reversed. Her attitude thrusters fired corrective bursts, and a loose mission binder sailed with Philip’s helmet into the windshield. When the deceleration beam winked out, Philip spied a white-tailed delta-wing, similar to the first space shuttles, only smaller.

  “Give me the controls,” he said.

  Tanner exchanged his board for Philip’s binoculars.

  “Holy cow,” Tanner said as he peered. “It’s one of those mini-shuttles the Pentagon says they don’t have.”

  Philip guided them closer, and the damage became apparent. Multicolored scorch marks radiated from an external rail aft of the cockpit. The pilot’s canopy was crazed and deformed, but a white helmet remained visible inside.

  “Weapons malfunction,” Tanner guessed. “Probably hung on the rail before it broke free.”

  “Well, he missed Cambiar 14,” Philip said, “if that was his target.”

  “He was shooting at us,” Chuck said.

  Tanner squinted through the binoculars. “He’s not moving, Boss. Could be dead.”

  Philip nodded. Dead would be all right. This guy for Uncle Orin.

  “Okay,” he said. “Only one way to find out. Chuck, you stay here. Tanner and I will investigate.” And maybe leave him for the space buzzards.

  He sealed his helmet and joined Tanner in the airlock, where they finished suiting-up and cycled out. In the bay, they tethered themselves to Gloria’s frame and reopened the cargo door. Philip retrieved a length of polypropylene rope from a gear locker and handed it to Tanner. Without jetpacks, they could reach the damaged shuttle only by ballistic leaps, good old-fashioned long-jumps.

  “I’ll go get him,” Philip said. “You haul us back.” Dead or alive.

  Tanner unclipped his tether and secured the rope to Philip’s belt. He tied the other end to a pad eye on the cargo deck.

  Philip braced himself in the doorway and crouched. “Stand by,” he said. He pushed steadily against his grip on the door. “Release on one.”

  He counted down from three, then leaped. He flew with arms extended, a slow-motion Superman, across the gap. He sailed over the cracked canopy, inches from the lone pilot, who remained slumped and unmoving. The overshoot continued in silence until the rope jerked him to a halt. While Tanner retrieved him, he scanned the shuttle for hand-holds. Whatever made those scorch marks had also burned a man-sized hole in the fuselage. If the pilot wasn’t dead, his ride certainly was.

  On the second try, Philip snared the exposed weapons launch rail, and his momentum swung him into the canopy with surprising force. He held fast through the impact and located an emergency release, which he levered. The canopy flung itself away and knocked him adrift again. On his third attempt, he got a leg into the open cockpit and wedged his boot. The stranger’s helmet and shoulders were charred but intact. Grasping the man’s arm produced no response, so Philip cut his restraints and pried him free. He wrapped his arms around the pilot and wriggled him clear of the cockpit. Like that time his sister Sandra caught her ankle in a drainage grate, he just did it. Not a matter of concern, really. When people needed help, you helped, that’s all.

  “Okay,” he said, “haul away.”

  Two minutes later, Chuck helped Philip extract their unconscious guest from Gloria’s airlock. When they removed his helmet, a stench of charred flesh huffed into their faces. Fabric and metal had fused to the man’s neck, just above the name tag, Captain J. Melzer, USAF. Viscous blobs drifted outward from the wound, staining Chuck’s gloves with red splotches.

  “Jesus,” he said. “The guys drowned in his own blood.”

  Philip braced himself, and with a booted foot compressed Melzer’s chest against the deck. This produced a spray of pink droplets, along with a sputter and a gasp. The captain stirred and gurgled. Philip compressed the chest again. Melzer heaved one great breath and continued breathing.

  Philip waved a path through the expanding pink cloud and wedged the captain’s helmet under the jump seat. He yanked their medical pouch from its locker. While Chuck pressed thick dressings to Melzer’s neck, Philip inserted a curved plastic airway to keep the captain’s tongue out of his throat.

  Tanner emerged from the airlock and removed his helmet. “What a mess.”

  “Oxygen,” Philip said.

  Tanner propelled himself to retrieve the tank and mask. Chuck cradled Captain Melzer’s head and neck while Tanner set the regulator and fitted the mask. Still unconscious, their patient groaned.

  “That’s better,” Philip said, half-pleased and half-annoyed.

  They wrapped him in an electric blanket and strapped him into the jump seat, careful to avoid the ghastly fusion on his neck. Tanner began snatch-blotting airborne debris with soft, white dressings. Chuck joined him.

  “Lucky duck,” Chuck said as he hovered over the patient and plucked away.

  Philip floated to a corner where he flexed his right hand, observed its patterns of flesh and sinew, born of protons and guilt. Saving Melzer would require a full stop landing at a major airport. Even if they got airborne again, the authorities would track them, maybe cancel their tickets in midair. At best they might be forced down somewhere, arrested and locked up, unable to replace satellites or to help anyone.

  “He’s dying, you know.” Tanner stuffed bloody bandages into the medical pouch and took up a fresh set. “He’s gonna croak before we get him downstairs.”

  Philip nodded.

  “If we take him to a hospital,” Tanner said, “the boogeyman will get us. We could be wasting ourselves on a corpse.”

  Philip drew a breath and let it go. “This isn’t war, Tanner, even if Captain Melzer thinks it is.” If war has not already been declared.

  Tanner drilled him. “What about all those folks counting on us?”

  Philip envisioned their faces: Karen and Tiff; Otavio and Dr. de Bier; Admin Joe and the priest; the bea
uty shop ladies; nurses at the clinic. Thousands more in Maker enclaves around the world.

  “What about them, Tanner? You know the deal.”

  Tanner bunched his eyebrows. “Yeah, but—”

  “Letting someone die because we don’t like him—that’s murder.” He reminded himself as much as his partners. Though Melzer’s no better than the bastard who killed my family.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We are not giving up,” Philip reasoned. “We can do this.”

  “But he’s doomed, Boss, killed by his own ordinance. If we put him back in the saddle over there, nobody needs to know we ever found him. His orbit will decay, and he’ll burn up when Mother Gravity collects him.”

  But we would know. And ground radars might detect our presence.

  Chuck tried to split the difference. “You don’t suppose we could lay him down beside a runway someplace, and then skedaddle?” He looked at Philip. “Gloria can out-climb anything but a missile. Outrun those, too, if she gets a head start.”

  “Maybe they’ll get us,” Philip said, “but I’m not going to abandon this guy while he’s still breathing. Unless we hand him over as gently as possible to qualified people, Captain Melzer is going to die.” And if I don’t really believe that, I should.

  Tanner shook his head, but the discussion was over.

  “Ain’t that a bitch,” Chuck said. “If that’s what you want, Philip, I’ll do ‘er. But ain’t that a bitch.”

  “Best burn center I know is in Santa Clara, near the university.” Philip said it quickly before he could change his mind. He reached for his lap panel, began tapping and clicking. “Chuck, you’ve flown into San Jose Mineta before. You do the landing. Soon as Tanner puts us on the down escalator, would you please call up the approach plates? Any better ideas, I need to hear ‘em now.”

  Tanner made a show of securing the medical pouch, then wormed his way into the co-pilot’s chair and strapped in.

  “Hold Mach point seven down to flight level 60,” Philip said, “then light the windmills. Fly the profile to the waypoint, and head for San Francisco. They’ll think we’re inbound from Hawaii.”

  Tanner nodded. “Okay, but—”

  “Well, it had to be something, didn’t it?” Philip allowed. “We always said it was going to be something. Turns out, this guy was killing our birds. Hunting us, too, maybe. But who would we be if we didn’t help him?”

  Tanner turned to the instrument panel and nudged his joystick. He pitched Gloria end-for-end and steadied her. Behind him, Philip transferred his calculations to Tanner’s screen.

  “Counting down for de-orbit burn,” Tanner called. “Three, two, one.”

  The mass-energy engine fired and built up thrust as if they were not decelerating from 18,000 miles per hour but starting from zero.

  On the hard deck behind the pilots, Philip jammed himself at Melzer’s feet, leaned against a locker that held their parachutes, and considered the illusions he’d been entertaining lately. Control and superiority. Things to do when nobody’s watching. His stomach churned, not from the effluvium alighting on his forehead, but from the welter of bad endings glaring at him from Gloria’s nooks and crannies. Saving Melzer could destroy it all. Ten years of struggle; everything they’d worked for; his father’s legacy; humanity’s moral tipping point. The Maker advent might die and extinguish a billion shining possibilities.

  For which he would have to destroy himself. That was the deal: a new world for everybody, or no more sunrises for Watashi-san. From the beginning, that was the bargain he’d made with himself, and he still liked it, still wanted it, that perfect self-administered clarity. The truth at any price.

  So, don’t fail, Dumbass. Make a stand. He texted Art Buddha and asked him to announce a Freemaker rally in the East Bay.

  “Chuck,” he called, “you’re going to have to land this thing by yourself. Give our regards to the folks in San Jose. Tanner, where did we stash your cutting torch?”

  FORTY-FOUR

  That same afternoon, Special Agent Parker wasn’t sure what his plan should be, but until he brought Tiffany Lavery and her mother together, he would not ask Ms. Lavery to contact Philip Machen. He would figure out what to do once they got to the Cardoza ranch. Which was taking decades.

  They had left San Leandro and Castro Valley behind and were climbing the eastbound I-580 toward Dublin when all five lanes ground to a halt. Parker plonked a flashing red beacon atop his Ford and charged along the shoulder to exit at Palomares Road. After a few minutes, he switched off the flasher. Both lanes of Palomares were jammed, as were the shoulders, and progress came in lurches.

  Three cows stared through a barbed-wire fence, and the word mosey floated through his head. He drummed his fingers, inspected the dusty oaks and stiff yellow grass, switched on the air condi­tioner. When he looked again, the cows had lost interest.

  Beside him, Ms. Lavery scrolled her Cambiar to a local news site. Somebody was shooting into the traffic near the 580/680 Interchange, between Dublin and Pleasanton, quickly jamming those freeways, as well as every arterial within ten miles. Police and the Highway Patrol were responding, but the gunfire continued.

  Palomares Road finally dumped them into Niles Canyon, and they turned east. A hundred yards later, a thundering dark shadow passed low overhead, raised swirls of dust, and rattled their bones. A military helicopter with two main rotors and a huge, half-open loading ramp at the rear. Parker glanced at Ms. Lavery, who checked the news again.

  Her screen showed National Guard bulldozers shoving civilian vehicles from the outer lane of Freeway 680. They were clearing a path for a convoy headed north from San Jose. By one o’clock, Parker was easing his Ford into that same lane, and three more helicopters had zoomed by. Now the news showed the Guard convoy rolling through the 580/680 Interchange and continuing, without engaging any snipers. Ms. Lavery put down her phone and looked away.

  Except for the incessant glare and rising heat, nothing about this day was making sense. He should have called the office to report in but resisting that impulse had become a matter of pride. Both Derek and Nedra knew he was home from Washington, but they hadn’t seen fit to contact him since the raid.

  Another hour crawled away. Finally, he edged through Pleasanton and out onto Vineyard Road, achieving a giddy 35 miles per hour. He braked hard, almost overshooting the ranch, and swerved onto its gravel driveway. As they neared the charred remnants of a barn, a gunman in full battle regalia emerged from a thicket of pampas grass and leveled an assault rifle at them. Parker slewed to a stop, then released the breath he had impounded. The gunman wore an FBI raid bib. Parker kept his hands in view and made Ms. Lavery place hers on the dashboard as well.

  The sentry approached, and Parker lowered his window. A wave of heat pushed into the car.

  “Top of the mornin’, McGee.”

  The sentry squinted. “You’re not supposed to be here, asshole.”

  “It’s pronounced ah-sole-ee,” Parker corrected. “So what’s going on?” Visions of Tiffany Lavery, injured or worse, ticked through his mind.

  McGee safed his weapon, keyed his radio, and reported. “I have Les Parker down here at the gate, along with one female prisoner. Where do you want ‘em?”

  While they waited for a reply, Ms. Lavery squirmed across Parker’s legs to shout through the open window.

  “Is my daughter here?”

  Parker pushed her back. “Sit down.”

  She punched his shoulder, swatted his hands. “Tiffany Lavery,” she shouted to Agent McGee. “Is she here?”

  Parker shoved her, grabbed her arms.

  “Maybe you want the handcuffs.”

  McGee bent and peered at their tête-à-tête. “That’s her, huh?”

  His radio dished a familiar female voice. “Send them to the house.”

  Nedra. Why didn’t she warn me? Parker looked at McGee. “What’s going on?”

  McGee ignored him, acknowledged his orders, stepped back, and wav
ed them through.

  “Watch out for bodies,” he said.

  He wasn’t kidding. Two inert figures—one curled fetal, the other belly-flopped—had fallen near the smoldering barn. Another lay supine but twisted on the walkway to the house. In the yard, a body lay under a trellis, and another hugged a sycamore. No vehicles remained, but the ranch house was peppered with holes. Every window was shattered, and the entry was a Roman arch of splinters coated in powdery gypsum.

  “Tiffany?” Ms. Lavery seized Parker’s arm as they left the car. “Tiffany?” Her voice rose toward panic.

  Nedra met them at the bombed-out entry, nervous and tentative, wearing tactical coveralls and her gunslinger’s holster. She had stuffed her flaming orange hair tightly into an FBI ball cap. She nodded at Parker’s drawn pistol.

  “All clear,” she said, and to Ms. Lavery, “Your daughter’s not here, ma’am.”

  An odor of scorched hair lingered, but no smoke or flames appeared, just a wash of heat wafting in from the fields.

  Parker holstered his weapon and followed Nedra inside. Wary of her tension, of her suspicion, and of what her silence might conceal, he said nothing. The dread ticking down his spine must be dancing along hers as well.

  “I need your car,” she said, as they entered a dim, debris-strewn kitchen.

  A bald white man was duct-taped to a chair, his face and head a mass of bruises and open gashes. One eye had swollen shut, while the other blinked desperately at Parker. When Ms. Lavery joined them, the rancher managed a broken-tooth smile.

  “Sorry I’m not so pretty, ma’am.” He snorted to clear his nose. “Don’t worry, though. We gave them way more than they gave us.” He nodded in Nedra’s direction. “Her and her buddies invited the Tories to leave, so I guess I owe my life to the FBI, but I’ll be thanking them when they let me go.”

  Ms. Lavery swallowed. “Release him,” she said.

  “No, ma’am. Mr. Cardoza’s going to jail, as soon as I borrow Agent Parker’s car.” Nedra apprised Parker, “Felony possession of automatic weapons, felony construction of a man trap, felony possession of counterfeiting tools, and the county sheriff will probably want to discuss those bodies in the yard because we didn’t shoot ‘em.”