The elder Cirilo was so preoccupied with escape he didn’t hear or didn’t understand—until he stepped into the kill zone. The expression on their faces must have communicated what their voices didn’t. His stride faltered as the sentry gun’s low-power warning shot vaporized the mud in front of him. He tried to stop; inertia and slick clay carried him ahead, into the depression, and he sprawled forward. Energy beams ravaged his body, sublimating flesh and bone as Tamara wailed in horrified anguish.
The Minzoku soldiers stopped, mouths agape at the smoking ruin that a moment earlier had been one of the all-powerful Onjin. The abrupt finality of it made Hal sick to his stomach. He shook off the feeling, jammed his thumb on the fob control that opened the hatch. The fire-finder was a deterrent and a remedy; it couldn’t do anything about the actual projectile once it was fired and Hal didn’t trust that some over-excited or suicidal Minzoku wouldn’t take another shot at them.
Hal scooped Tamara up by the shoulders; McKeon got her legs and they hauled her up the steps. Dayuki peered into the shuttle’s small commons cautiously; Hal motioned her out of sight. Their circumstances were tenuous enough without her sudden resurrection to explain. They lowered the now unconscious Onjin woman to the floor. Hal pulled the emergency medkit out of its nook.
“This won’t help,” McKeon panted. “She needs the hospital!”
“It’s the best we’ve got right now,” Hal shot back irritably. McKeon was right, though: the medical facilities aboard the shuttle were several steps above first aid but they couldn’t handle an injury as complicated as a gunshot wound over the long-term. They might get her stabilized and still lose her to a blood clot or systemic failure.
Dayuki appeared behind McKeon again. Her eyebrows rose questioningly; she pointed a finger at the coldsleep pod. Thank God somebody’s still got her head on straight! The procedure was hard on healthy bodies and a last resort for the sick and injured. It would take a state of the art facility to pull her out again but at least it gave him time to get her to one.
“Prep her for coldsleep,” Hal ordered. They went to work on her with I.V.s and patches. The standard prep time for short-notice coldsleep was twenty-four hours, the minimum time required to saturate tissues with antifreeze. Suppressive drugs followed and the body was doped with super-oxygenated blood to keep the brain and organs alive through the process of hypothermia and subsequent revival.
In Tammy’s case he had to weigh the urgency of shutting her systems down before they failed on their own against the risk of necrosis due to insufficient oxygenation or antifreeze in the tissues. The pod’s diagnostic function did its best to advise him based on what he and the sensors told it, but medical emergencies were, by their nature, highly variable. The best the diagnostic could do was offer recommended options; it fell to Hal to choose from them.
The shuttle’s com signaled several times; Hal ignored it until everything humanly possible had been done for Tamara and she was sealed in the coldsleep pod under the ministrations of the automated systems. Only then did he enter the cockpit to answer it. The video signal coming in originated in one of the administrative offices on the second tier of the command post but it was weak and colorless. The image froze and pixilated every few seconds. Whoever made the call was long gone; Hal was about to cut the circuit when hands thrust a dirty, bedraggled figure into the seat before the pick-up.
McKeon whispered in his ear: “Wade McAuley, one of the junior admin assistants.”
“Wade,” Hal said soberly, “how are things going over there?”
“N-not too good, sir.” The young man was trembling; his face was clean enough to see darkening bruises. The rest of him was covered with dirt and mud, as McKeon and Hal were. One of his captors grew impatient and slapped him on the back of the head. “The mainframe took a power hit before the auxiliaries cut over,” McAuley went on quickly. “Everything crashed. The satellites are down. They want us to reboot the network but there’s nobody left who knows the passwords!” He lost his composure then, face contorting as he fought back tears. “Th-they shot Phyllis Mu when she wouldn’t say. They told me to get it or—or—”
“It’s all right, Wade,” Hal said softly. “I understand; it’s not your fault.” A bug in the satellite program put the processors on standby if they lost handshake with the system at the Fort. The failsafe wasn’t meant to be impervious; the techs on Alpha would get them going again in a few hours and when they did they’d receive unedited data.
The sudden appearance of towns, villages and roads on Beta was too big for the gaijin Secret Service to cover up; the EPF would launch an all-out assault to wipe out evidence of collusion. Hal didn’t give a damn for the Minzoku, but there was still Family in the Fort.
“There’s a circuit breaker in the server room that trips if the power fluctuates too fast—protects them from multiple power hits. You have to reset it manually. Once you do that the system will boot itself. I’ve got remote access from here; I’ll make sure everything comes up. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, but—sir they want access to our network. They want the passwords!”
“Tell them I’m very sorry, but that’s not possible.”
Someone cuffed McAuley on the side of the head again, shouting. The young man’s frightened eyes fixed on something beyond the camera. “It’s not my fault,” he insisted, “I tried! You heard me! I can’t make him—No! Please! Don’t—“
The back of his head exploded, spattering the wall behind him with blood, bone and tissue. His body folded sideways, out of the chair. A struggle ensued, jostling the camera as they forced a crying middle-aged woman into view.
Hal cut the connection.
“There are two hundred more just like them,” McKeon said emotionlessly. “Can you stand that much blood on your hands?”
“It’s not Family blood,” Hal replied. Murdering hostages was an unsophisticated tactic that played on emotions but served no purpose. When push came to shove everyone in the Fort was expendable—including Family. The living might be coerced to reveal what they knew, but not the dead.
“You’re a cold bastard,” McKeon told him, “but it makes this easier.” The hint of rage in the man’s voice didn’t register until the business end of a pistol—the barrel still warm—pressed against the back of Hal’s neck, nestling into the indentation where skull and spinal cord met, where one shot would separate his brain from the rest of his nervous system. McKeon reached over and pulled Hal’s needle-beamer from beneath his arm. “Stand up.” Hal obeyed, lacking an immediate alternative. The weapon maintained contact as if glued to his body.
“Stan, what are you doing?”
“Walk backward, slowly, one step at a time,” McKeon ordered. “Raise your hands, turn your palms toward me.” Hal backed out of the cockpit into the commons guided by the firm, steady pressure of McKeon’s hand on his collar. “Two steps to the right. Spread your legs; lean forward and rest your head against the wall. Put your hands behind your back; interlace your fingers.” McKeon let go of his collar and grabbed the ring and middle finger of Hal’s left hand, squeezing them together to lock the large joints of the corresponding digits on his right hand between them. The hold was as effective as handcuffs as long as McKeon maintained his grip.
“This is ridiculous,” Hal said. “I’m not going to take any action against you, if that’s what this is about. It’s not your fault; Den Tun must have prepared for this years ago. We can sit down and talk it over.”
“Nothing to talk about. Do what I tell you, you’ll live through it. Resist and I’ll blow your head off. Where’s the fob?”
“Right pocket,” Hal told him, mystified by the question. The fob was useless unless they went outside—outside, where the tiny transceiver protected the bearer from the sentry guns. Where Hal was at the mercy of whoever had it. There was only one reason to go outside.
“You warned them!” Hal exclaimed incredulously. “My God, Stan, why?”
“Why the fuck do you th
ink?” McKeon hissed, blood rising from his collar.
“I don’t know, Stan.”
“Because you didn’t leave me any other choice! Because I gave the Family twenty years of loyal service and the one time you could have repaid me with something that mattered you chose to fuck me instead!”
McKeon’s body trembled with pent-up emotion but the gun barrel never left the back of Hal’s neck. Hal prayed that Dayuki would bide her time, wait for an opportunity. It was up to Hal to create one.
“Stan, it embarrasses me to say this, but I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You people are so fucking dense,” McKeon said with a strangled laugh. “Haruna and Chiharu. My wives! My Minzoku wives!”
A numbing chill rolled down Hal’s spine at the realization, a conflict of interest so obvious, so terribly ironic, that he wanted to beat his head against the wall. There was no negotiating the issue; how could there be? But he might be able to bluff his way through.
“They were never in any danger, Stan!”
“BULLSHIT!” McKeon fairly screamed, spraying spittle onto Hal’s bare neck. “That’s fucking bullshit! You turned that bug loose in town and never said a word to me about them! I saw their names on the list right along with Dayuki’s, and I saw what you did to her!”
“Dayuki is alive, Stan.”
McKeon jammed the gun barrel against his neck even harder. “Lie to me again and I swear I’ll kill you where you stand!”
“Dayuki,” Hal called softly, “come out here, please.”
“Yes, Hal-san.” The pressure behind the gun barrel vanished at the sound of her voice. The hand holding Hal’s fingers released its grip. Hal turned his head cautiously to find McKeon staring at the Minzoku girl with dumb amazement.
“I-I-but I saw…”
“You saw me kill a half-breed Minzoku girl,” Hal said, “but it wasn’t Dayuki. Now give me the gun.”
McKeon recoiled from Hal’s outstretched hand, wound tight as a spring. “Oh, no,” he whispered hoarsely. “No, no no no…”
“I’m very disappointed, Stan. You should have talked to me,” Hal said. “Trusted me.”
McKeon’s eyes flicked to Hal, his face gone white. “I’m sorry, I thought you—she—” His mind was starting to work again; another few moments and he would realize that his only way out lay on the path he’d already started down.
“You betrayed our trust,” Hal told him. “Sergio is dead—a member of the Family you swore to protect is dead—because of you.”
That got him. McKeon’s eyes turned hopeless. He put the barrel of his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Hal raised a hand at the last moment to shield his face from the splatter.
“He chose honor,” Dayuki said.
“No,” Hal replied, “he just saved me the trouble of killing him later.”
TWENTY-TWO
Nivia: 2710:07:31 Standard
Minzoku soldiers streamed out of the sally port and surrounded the shuttle during the brief confrontation with McKeon. They remained outside the sentry gun’s perimeter and none of them carried weapons capable of damaging the shuttle.
Dayuki helped him bundle McKeon’s body in a blanket and wrestle the dead weight into the airlock. The com signaled for attention every few minutes but Hal didn’t answer it until the shuttle’s flight systems performed their self-tests.
A Minzoku military officer appeared on-screen. “You will please to surrender your persons quickly,” he ordered brokenly.
“I’ve seen how you treat your prisoners,” Hal replied. “Forgive me if I decline.”
The Minzoku officer appeared to miss his meaning and tilted his head toward someone off-screen, then nodded. “Bad officer have got dead,” he explained gravely, extending his thumb and index finger to elaborate. “Pow-pow. You come out.”
“You and your forces will leave the Fort immediately,” Hal demanded. “You will deliver Den Tun and his senior staff to my custody.”
“Den Tun no here,” the officer scowled. “You come here, fix—“ he waved one hand skyward, evidently referring to the satellites. “Else gaijin come here pow-pow. You no do we…Ahg!” Frustrated with his lack of vocabulary, the officer moved out of sight. One of the command post staff, dirty and bedraggled, replaced him.
“Good morning, sir,” he said with a gravelly voice. “I’m Mark Finney. The officer you just spoke to is General Cha’Cain. I understand he is one of the senior Minzoku military staff. He asked me to express his deep regret and sorrow for the loss of life and inexcusable murders of Wade McCauley and Phyllis Mu. The General summarily executed the officer who committed those murders.
“I’ll vouch for that,” Finney added. General Cha’Cain said something else. “I’m translating verbatim now: ‘In the interest of good faith, we will free one of your own medical staff to assist you if you require treatment.’”
“That won’t be necessary,” Hal said. “The situation is under control. I repeat my demand that you and your forces withdraw from the Fort immediately.”
“Of course that is not possible,” Cha’Cain said through Finney. “Your anti-detection system has failed. You must provide the information necessary to reactivate it before the gaijin discover our presence. The Onjin under our control are in no less danger than the Minzoku.”
“All the more reason to accept my conditions,” Hal said. “You are defenseless against the gaijin’s technology—choosing to remain defenseless in the face of an alternative violates our Covenant more egregiously than you have already. The lives of the Onjin are now your responsibility.”
“Let me be clear,” Cha’Cain said. “The Covenant is effectively moot. We will aggressively defend ourselves through the use of hostages and any other means at our disposal—including the nuclear and biological weapons you have so kindly provided.”
The open use of WMD against the gaijin would certainly catch the attention of the Commonwealth and give the authorities further provocation—as if they needed one—to strike against the Family and its interests with every available resource. In the space of an hour the Minzoku had become a de facto superpower with the Onjin’s unwitting assistance.
Every second that passed brought the Onjin and Minzoku closer to discovery and Hal doubted that even Nivia’s secret service possessed the power and influence to cover up what was plainly visible to any number of federal workers charged with monitoring the Beta continent.
“You agree,” Hal surmised, “that it is in both our interests to avoid a conflict with the gaijin at this time, do you not?”
“I do,” Cha’Cain said, “in principle.”
“I will provide the necessary instructions to restart the Fort’s network,“ Hal said. “To that end I will direct the Onjin to cooperate in making any necessary repairs. In return you will allow me to leave unmolested. I will act as intermediary between the Onjin and Minzoku to resolve these issues.”
“I agree,” Cha’Cain replied, “to these conditions and nothing more.”
“Very well. Mister Finney, pay close attention to what I am about to tell you.”
The Minzoku general, Cha’Cain, was as good as his word; the soldiers surrounding the shuttle withdrew to the Fort and made no attempt to prevent Hal from lifting off. Once free of the immediate threat, though, Hal began to wonder if his position was really that much better.
The blanking transponders used by Onjin aircraft to avoid detection by Federal monitors weren’t a perfect solution even in optimal circumstances. The signal they generated only affected centrally processed data—the shuttle would still show up on raw radar and on the scopes of individual surface vessels and air or spacecraft. The weakness wasn’t particularly significant on Beta continent where the presence of craft not controlled by the Onjin was rare, but getting to any destination on the Alpha continent required considerable coordination via systems inside the Fort that were no longer available.
Likewise, Hal couldn’t simply make a hard burn for o
rbit and the safety of his ship without being picked up and reported by other spacecraft. He began to wonder if Cha’Cain was aware of that difficulty when he agreed to Hal’s demands. Remaining anywhere on Beta continent, though, was simply not a viable option. He flew east over the coastal mountains and across open water, dropping to a few meters above the waves. That proximity to the surface required not only a lower velocity than he desired, but his constant presence at the controls.
His best chance, he decided, was to slip into a landing field under cover of darkness somewhere in the Humboldt Archipelago and file a legitimate flight plan the next morning. It meant a flight of some eight hours on minimal rest, but rest, as it turned out, would not be the trip’s most urgent issue.
“Hal-san,” Dayuki called into the cockpit when they were only halfway to the Archipelago, “something is wrong with Mistress Cirilo!”
“Hold on,” Hal replied, “I’m coming.” He lowered the shuttle’s airspeed to a point he considered safe to leave on autopilot unattended and went to the passenger compartment where he found Dayuki peering intently at the status displays on the coldsleep pod.
“These readings,” she pointed, “they are not correct!”
“It was an emergency procedure,” Hal reminded her. “The readings won’t appear normal for a while. And how do you know what’s normal, anyway?”
“I had little else to do but study,” she explained bluntly. “And the readings will never be normal if they proceed as they are.” She pointed to one. “Tissue oxygenation should have stabilized by now, but it continues to fall. Brain activity should fall, but it has not. Blood toxicity suggests that autonomic metabolic functions are not shutting down as they should.”
Hal shook his head. “She’ll be fine; the pod would alert us if coldsleep was failing.”
Embustero- Pale Boundaries Page 31