Orion Arm

by Julian May

  Direct interconnection of genetic donor and recipient was necessary only for the demiclone procedure, which took much longer and was more complex.

  This is the way it worked:

  First, capture your human. Then place him or her into dystasis. Using PD32:C2 as a vector, insert selected nonallomor-phic Haluk DNA into the human subject, in order to preclude rejection syndrome in the alien recipient during the demiclone procedure. About twelve weeks later your demiclone template is ready. As a reversible side effect, the human donor has acquired the superficial appearance of a gracile Haluk—as had happened to Eve, albeit incompletely.

  Next, take one nonallomorphic Haluk and place him or her into a tank adjacent to the donor. Transfer an enormous amount of DNA from the modified human to the Haluk recipient, again using the PD32:C2 genen vector. In another twelve weeks or so the Haluk will have become a human-appearing replica of the donor, physically differentiated only by a small redundant gene sequence in the nucleus of each fake-human body cell: a marker programmed into the demicloning process by Emily Konigsberg of Galapharma, unbeknownst to the Haluk.

  The big Concern, being justifiably suspicious of the demi-clone scheme but forced to accede to it, had made damn sure it could identify the fakes. It had also extracted firm promises from the alien leaders that only a few demiclones would be made, and installed its own security personnel at all of the Haluk genen facilities to ensure that the promises were kept.

  Maybe they had been, in some places. But not on Cravat.

  And not here on Dagasatt, either.

  I knew it was impossible for me and my tiny force to rescue any of the halukoid human donors. Disconnecting a dystasis subject was a delicate medical procedure that took time and special expertise, and we had neither. Later on, if Matt Gre-goire managed to convince Zone Patrol to raid Dagasatt for cause, or if Rampart ExSec was granted permission to do so by CHW, the floating prisoners might be freed and restored to their original human form.

  Or maybe not, if the Haluk got there first and carried the luckless donors off to another genen facility elsewhere.

  As for the demiclones, those rapers of human identity. . .

  When Ollie Schneider had said, "Do 'em," he was begging me to give his four friends a merciful death. I didn't have the right to do that. But at that moment I believed I did have the right to do something else, in retaliation for what had been done to the original Darrel Ridenour, to the other innocent human DNA-donors in this damned place, and to my sister Eve, who'd almost joined them.

  So I drew my Kagi pistol and went up and down the rows of tanks, first in the GE1 laboratory wing and then in the two others. If the floater looked Haluk, I let it be; but if it seemed human, or almost human, I shot it in the head.

  When I was finished I took an antigrav tote that I'd found in one of the storerooms and went back to retrieve Jim Matsukawa—whoever and whatever he was.

  We reached the entrance of the facility just as the Qastt gunships began their bombardment.

  The first strike was a small one, in some far-distant wing. I had just reached the outer lobby with my prisoner when the building shook. My helmet sensors barely picked up the ensuing sound—but an instant later the facility's computer warning system began telling me what I already knew.

  Air attack alert. Air attack alert. GE2 integrity has been compromised by blaster fire.

  GE2 was the west wing, the one I had visited last of all before retrieving Jim Matsukawa. More hits made the floor tremble. Since there was no longer any need for communication secrecy, I called Ildiko on the regular helmet intercom.

  "Ildy, what's happening? Is it the Qastt?"

  "Affirm," came her level reply. "Three small gunships armed with medium-power blasters. Looks to me like they're trying to destroy the facility. Not a whole lot of firepower going, though, and the building is apparently well-armored. The prize and I are okay. What's your status?"

  "In the lobby with one prisoner. Any chance you can take the ships with grenades?"

  "Not a prayer. They're keeping their distance, hovering just below the smoke deck, altitude niner-three-three." A larger tremor shook the place and the computer announcement abruptly choked off in mid-cry. "Uh-oh! Looks like the west wing roof just breached, Helly. They're pounding the rubble."

  Doing 'em...

  I hopped over the bodies in the airlock and took a peek outside. The air was swirling with smoke and dust. Green photon blasts meteored down at a near-vertical angle, pulverizing the ruins. It was definitely a demolition derby. The Haluk had sent their allies to wipe out evidence of demicloning on Dagasatt. Even though the Squeaker cannons appeared to be only a third as powerful as the Harveys on the Vorlon hoppers, given enough time, they'd do the job.

  I said to Ildy, "Have you tried to contact Chispa?"

  "Affirm, every five minutes until the Qastt snowed up. No reply. All this crap floating in the air is weakening the lasercom HUV beam and Joe might not be able to read me. Or perhaps he's still escorting the privateer and out of range."

  "Can you take shelter down inside the elevator shaft?"

  "Negative. There's a lot of unstable-looking wreckage blocking the way. I didn't want to risk checking it out alone and leave Schneider unprotected. Maybe the two of us can figure something when you get over here. I've got a rap-pelling cable."

  "Right. I'll be making my break in a minute or two."

  The Qastt had left off firing on GE2, which was now completely flattened, and began to pound the facility's north wing. My visor had adjusted automatically to compensate for the murky air and I could see the hopper pad clearly. Would the gunners notice me making a break for it, towing my prisoner behind? They'd certainly have IR scanners, but the glow from nearby semimolten debris would tend to futz the blips made by me and Jim Matsukawa. I fervently wished I still had the camouflaging filo poncho I'd wrapped around Ollie Schneider.

  The antigrav tote with Matsukawa strapped to it floated over the airlock casualties with ease. Then I took off, and it was a matter of broken-field running through smoke and gouts of green flame while Ildy cheered me on.

  I nearly made it home safe. But less than a dozen meters from the pad I tripped over a jagged piece of hopper wreckage, slashing my right shin savagely and taking a header. I was unable to get up again and filled the helmet intercom with agonized curses.

  "Hang on. I'm coming," Ildy said.

  And she did—just as one of the Qastt gunships tardily noticed ground activity and took a shot at us with some sort of small actinic weapon. A white blast hit the ground three meters to my left. Another zorched the sand just behind Ildy. The Squeak could certainly see us with the ship's infrared scanner, but he seemed to be using an optical sight, not an auto-targeter, and the range was extreme.

  Ildy arrived and hauled me into a sitting position. Another shot, another miss. "Take him, dammit!" I indicated Matsukawa. "Never mind me."

  She said, "Oh, shut the fuck up."

  A moment later she'd rolled me onto the hovering tote. Draped sideways over Jim's body, hands and feet dragging on the ground, I made the rest of the trip dodging ingloriously through fireworks. The Qastt gunner got off one last wild shot before we reached the shelter of the makeshift bunker and dropped off his scanner. The demolition of Hopfrog Three had cracked the elevator piston near its base, tipping the circular platform sideways as well as angling it skyward almost thirty degrees. The elevator deck was about twenty-five meters in diameter, shielding us fairly well from the bombardment of the facility.

  "Thanks one more time,yet" I gasped.

  Ildy said, "Brace yourself, cowboy. Time to dismount."

  She lowered the tote and carefully rolled me off. The pain in my shin was excruciating and the leg of my armored jumpsuit was sodden with blood. Hauling myself into a sitting position, I fumbled for the first-aid supplies in my belt pouch. Ildy used a special blade to cut open the pants leg and inspected the wound. Oliver Schneider's half-visible filo-shrouded form lay close by, al
ong with her grenade launcher. I'd lost mine somewhere along the way.

  After a momentary respite, the Qastt gunship was once again firing on us. But it hadn't changed its position and the actinic bursts were still being fired perpendicularly, sending melted blobs of ceramalloy arcing in all directions off the battered elevator platform. Realizing the futility of his attack, the lone gunman broke off. Meanwhile, photon cannons hammered the devastated facility's east wing. The Squeaks would smash Central next. Then they'd move off for a clear shot under our umbrella with their mean greens, and we'd be toast.

  Ildy announced, "You're slashed wide-open and this shin-bone's either busted or cracked right through. At least the broken ends are together and the leg's straight. Hand me some dressings and wide tape."

  "Never mind that. You still got your filo poncho?"

  She was taken aback. "Of course ... You think we'd do better making a run for it, rather than trying to get down the shaft?"

  "You'll do the running, hauling the prisoners. I'm going nowhere. Get Schneider loaded onto the tote on top of my guy. Cut up my poncho, wrap 'em as well as you can, and make tracks for the tuqo."

  "But—"

  "That's an order, Lieutenant!"

  "The tote will carry three people," she protested.

  "One poncho can't possibly conceal us all!" I bawled furiously. "Now move your goddamn ass! The Squeaks will turn their big guns on this platform as soon as they finish trashing the building."

  Insubordinate mutterings, which I ignored. She began bundling up Schneider and Matsukawa head to feet, with the healthier duty officer relegated to mattress status. I concentrated on bandaging my shin wound, for all the good it was going to do me, gave myself several doses of antibiotic and painkiller, and splinted my entire leg with the useless grenade launcher.

  "Give me a hand," I asked Ildy when I'd finished. "I'm gonna try hobbling off into the sunset at an angle from you guys. To hell with sitting here waiting for it."

  She complied. "I'll give another shout to Chispa on the lasercom when I'm in the clear. And I want to say it's been a real honor to serve with you ... even if you are a cowboy asshole."

  "Feeling's mutual, bull-dagger babe. Now move out!"

  She took up the tote handle and turned to go, just as a blast of coherent emerald light struck the platform. The canted structure gave a hideous squall and slowly began to topple.

  I hardly knew what hit me. Then I realized it was Ildiko, virtually invisible in her poncho, whisking around and delivering a vicious double stiff-arm to my middle back. I keeled over on top of the shimmering, packaged prisoners. Bits of junk rained down as two more cannon shots hit the platform with thunderclap detonations. It went skreeeaawrooom!

  We moved. I clung to Ollie Schneider's hooded head, past caring whether the bastard's neck got broken in the process. Lying on my stomach, my vision impeded by the helmet, I wasn't expecting the final stunning crash of collapsed cera-malloy, punctuated by a cannonade of green flame.

  The concussion knocked Ildiko off her feet. At least, I saw her boots go flying. The tote had enough residual momentum to bang into her before stopping in midair, causing me to release my grip on Ollie and flop onto the hard hopper pad. The crumpling platform had missed us by less than three meters, and we were enveloped in smoke and dust.

  I heard Ildy's voice murmuring something in rapid Hungarian that sounded like a prayer. My own final words were going to be more profane. Flat on my back, I looked at the sky through the power visor and cussed out the three klutzy looking little alien gunships, still hanging high above us like a trio of malformed vultures. What were they waiting for? One more blast would finish us.

  Instead there were three bright flashes, one after the other. Three monstrous explosions reached us an instant later. The Qastt were gone, obliterated.

  "Look!" Ildy said in an awed voice. She was on her knees with her hood pushed back. "Here comes the gig."

  But she was wrong about the identity of our rescuer. Descending serenely through murky chaos came the elegant, dangerous shape of Chispa Dos herself.

  Chapter 11

  "Cut it a little fine, didn't you?" I groused to Mimo.

  He helped me up the ramp into the starship. My leg was numb and well-braced and I could stump along on it fairly well. I felt weird and woozy. Ildy had already gone aboard under her own steam after Ivor Jenkins took charge of the two prisoners.

  Mimo said, "Sorry we took so long. It was necessary for us to dispose of a rather large Haluk cruiser before arranging your deliverance. I handled the guns myself. It was a nasty surprise. The bandit appeared unexpectedly as we were escorting Ba-Karkar's privateer through the outer reaches of the Dagasatt solar system."

  "Is the little pipsqueak okay?" I asked anxiously.

  "Don't worry. He's fine. We sent all of the pirates and the captured Qastt search-and-rescue team to Cravat in the privateer. They were shepherded by a Rampart Fleet Security cutter that arrived too late to join in the fight against the Haluk."

  The hatch rolled shut behind us and I felt the vibration of liftoff underfoot.

  "Mimo, wait! We should search the rubble of the facility. Some important evidence might still be intact."

  "No, amigo, we can't stay. A foolhardy Qastt corvette also challenged us as we approached the planet. Fortunately, it recognized that Chispa was too formidable an opponent and backed off—but not before warning us that more armed Haluk starships are on the way here from Artiuk and Orukavuk. Their mission is to ensure that all putrid untranslatable human invaders are expelled from Dagasatt."

  Mimo urged me aft, toward the ship's well-equipped sick bay. I caught a glimpse of the sky outside the ports, which darkened almost instantly. Joe Betancourt had Chispa outward bound at illegal exit velocity, no doubt shattering the tranquillity of the Great Bitumen Desert with a horrific sonic boom. In an instant the ports shone with a weirdly rippling curtain of dazzling red and green. I cringed. Joe had accelerated to maximum sublight drive while we were still in the upper atmosphere and set off an ionic conflagration.

  Dagasatt was going to pay a price for having harbored a clandestine demiclone facility: our electromagnetic pulse had just fried most of the high-tech circuitry on the planet. I wondered if the Qastt would send the Haluk a bill.

  Mimo continued. "There's nothing more we can do here. Chispa will be on Cravat in less than an hour. Zone Patrol will deal with the hostile Haluk starships if they dare to follow us, but I think there's small danger of that."

  Dagasatt's sun was shrinking to a golden spark. I staggered, momentarily blinded as we made the ultraluminal crossover. When my vision cleared, Dagasatt was lost among the stretched stars.

  I said, "Nothing more to do."

  My eyes unaccountably filled with burning tears. When I lifted a hand to wipe them away I encountered the hard, slick visor of my combat helmet. A growling sob came from my throat and echoed in my headphones. I drew away from Mimo's supporting arm and stood in the middle of the corridor, swaying. With a violent motion I pulled the helmet off and let it fall to the deck with a muted clang.

  An overwhelming surge of irrational anger suddenly engulfed me and I wallowed in it, uttering incoherent obscenities at the same time that I realized I must be spacing out from battle fatigue, delayed shock, and the slew of drugs I'd taken.

  "Helly, it's all right! Operation Q is over. A success. It's time to move on." Mimo tried to put his guiding arm around me again, but I stumbled away. He took something from his pocket and spoke into it.

  "Damn straight Operation Q is over." My voice was even but too loud. "A great success—if you don't count Zorik O'Toole, who got burned alive, and the two hundred anonymous human demiclone donors who were blown to bits, to say nothing of a crowd of opposition noncombatants that I killed in cold blood, right or wrong. But why worry about them? Hell—we got Ollie Schneider, we got a second witness who might be even more valuable, and we got away! Success! I should be ready to move on."

  "Helly—
"

  "But moving on means I have to start fighting all over again. In the Orion Arm, on the planet Earth, in Simon's turf. And I'm so goddamned tired, Mimo."

  The old man's grip barely kept me from falling. "Of course you're tired, and suffering from post-traumatic stress as well. You must rest and heal before thinking about what to do next. Meanwhile, trust your friends to carry on your fight."

  "Friends. .. ?"

  "I'll take him," Ivor Jenkins said. I felt myself lifted in herculean arms, an oddly familiar thing, and carried away.

  So tired. Pop.

  Time for bed, little buckaroo.

  "Leave everything to us," the fading voice said. "Matt Gre-goire is waiting on Cravat with portable psychotronic equipment. She was so confident you'd succeed on Dagasatt that she left Seriphos a day after we did, so no time would be wasted."

  "Confident?" I forced my leaden eyelids open again. "But I thought she'd washed her hands of me and Operation Q."

  Ivor said, "Matt's coming to Earth with us, Helly. She's a witness for the prosecution, too."

  "Well, what d'you know..."

  No morejabberin 'now, boy. Good night.

  Goodnight, Pop.

  My eyes closed and I slept.

  Calm. Competence. Courage.

  The message had been all the more terrifying for its banality—an ordinary vidphone call to his Rampart Tower office in Toronto, fielded by his secretary and duly transmitted to his desk: The concierge of the Arizona Biltmore informs Citizen Frost that "the meeting" will take place at 1630 hours, local time, in the Lobby Lounge of the resort.

  Only one person would dare to summon him in such a cavalier fashion. So off he goes again in supine response to his master's command-—only this time traveling in the opposite direction—at a loss to know why Alistair Drummond requires another vis-a-vis meeting immediately. And in Phoenix, Arizona, of all places.