"Hurry!" she yelled. "Move it! Emergency!"
Seeing them speed up, she turned back to the limousine; and by the time they reached the vehicle its doors were open, the engine was running, and a comm channel was being piped through to the rear compartment's speakers.
"—not return the way you came," a voice was saying. "We're working out the fastest way to get an escort to you, but get moving right now! Go north, and then take the first east you come to. By that time we'll have instructions for you."
"I've got it," their driver said. She looked back at her passengers through the now-open privacy window that usually screened off the rear compartment.
"Secure yourselves," she said; and almost immediately a burst of acceleration blew them up above the roadway and down it in the direction they had been facing, the initial cloud of dust their fans threw up quickly dying down behind them as they rose to greater height.
"Driver, what is it?" Bleys asked. He put into his question all the authority he could muster, not wanting to let her take total control of the situation.
"Your convoy was attacked," the driver said, keeping her attention on the forward windscreen. "A bomb blew up the front of the Hotel Monaco as your convoy drove up. The government's sending an escort to take you to a safe place."
"Is there any word on casualties?" Toni asked.
"No one told me anything about that," the driver said. "Hang on—turn coming up!"
She took the turn at speed and managed to keep control even though they slid far enough off the roadway to bounce off the fence on their left side.
"Carl," Bleys heard Henry's voice say from beyond Toni, "what is your situation?" After a few seconds Henry's second-in-command answered:
"Henry, we're all right," Carl said. "A few bumps and bruises, but the blast occurred before we had fully pulled up, and we were partly shielded by a local delivery van ... there were a number of casualties among the locals."
"God be with them," Henry said. "We need a rendezvous. I understand—"
"Get off the air now!" a new voice interrupted them. "This is Area Command, New Francisco, ordering you to stand down and maintain radio silence!"
Bleys gestured Henry to silence even as he leaned across Toni's front to grasp his uncle's left wrist and lift it before his own face.
"This is Bleys Ahrens," he said, using his authoritative voice, "First Elder of the United Sects of Harmony and Association. We are here—" He was cut off.
"We understand, First Elder," the voice replied. "An armed escort is on its way to you now, and we request that your—" The voice paused for the briefest of moments. "—staff please avoid interfering with military operations."
Henry reached over to silence the comm link.
"They mean it," he said. "They've been embarrassed."
"So what should we do?" Bleys asked.
"Nothing," Henry replied. "Carl can't beat the military to us, so we might as well cooperate." "Do you need to tell Carl that?"
"No," Henry said. "He'll understand what to do—interactions with the military are always included in our contingency planning."
"So he'll just wait for the military to reunite us?" Bleys asked.
Henry touched the control that closed the window into the driver's compartment, then reached under his seat for the traveling case in which he carried a variety of useful items. He quickly pulled out a monitor and scanned for listening devices, then activated its inhibiting field, just in case; he had scanned the vehicle before they entered it, but they all understood he was determined to take no further chances.
Next to him, Dahno reached into a pocket and pulled out a small silver device. He held it out before the rest of them, looking a question at them.
"No," said Bleys. "Not here and now. It's not really meant for a confined space like this."
Bleys was referring to a device they had obtained on Newton, some time back. Activated, it would generate a force-bubble preventing anyone from overhearing their words.
"Yes and no," Henry said a moment later, responding to Bleys' question. "Carl and a number of the Soldiers will likely stay visible enough to let the locals think they've got them under control; but he'll probably send some of them undercover—perhaps with the aid of some of the people from Favored of God, who of course are not known to be with us—and put them to monitoring our situation at a distance. And he'll already have alerted the people we left in Ceta City."
"All right," Bleys said.
"Can we trust these military people?" Dahno asked.
"No," Henry said. "Not in everything. But chances are very good that whoever planted that bomb had no backup attack ready to go. It will have taken them some time just to learn they didn't get you, in any case—and they won't know where you are unless they have ears in the military."
"Which they might," Dahno said.
"Which they might," Henry agreed. "But until we return to an urban area and some independent transportation, we have no better option."
"We need to figure out who would have done this," Dahno said. "Yes," Bleys added. "And we need to think about changing our plans."
"Security is what we need above all," Henry said. "I have a few ideas...."
They spent the next twenty minutes comparing ideas and making plans, breaking off when the driver signaled for their attention.
"You probably can't hear it because of the soundproofing back there," she said over the intercom, "but we've got two helicopters overhead. Our escort is here."
"Are you sure they're with our escort?" Dahno asked.
"It's confirmed by Area Command," the driver replied. "They tell me the armored cars will be coming into sight in a moment." After a moment's pause she spoke again.
"They're serious," she said. "I mean, there aren't very many helicopters on the whole planet. They're just too expensive and too vulnerable. ..."
"I know," Bleys said, hoping to forestall a lecture on the shortage of metals on the Younger Worlds. "Are we going to stop here?"
"No," said the driver. "I've been told to just keep going, and they'll fit the escort in around us as we go."
As she spoke, the ground component of their escort came into sight ahead of them; and by activating the video screen that gave them a forward view, those in the passenger compartment were able to watch as the first four armored cars pulled off the roadway, leaving a lane up which their limousine could proceed without slowing. Ahead of them, the last four armored cars in the group could be seen spinning end for end, to take up station preceding them and accelerate.
CHAPTER 8
The escort sent by the New Franciscan government led them to a small town about seventy kilometers from the burial site, where they stopped in a public park that was bordered on two sides by the town's tiny commercial district. As their escort's weapons menaced the nearby buildings, it was strongly suggested they abandon their limousine and proceed, riding inside the armored cars, to the security of a government facility.
Bleys' initial refusal raised enough consternation among the New Franciscans that no one noticed when Henry slipped away; in fact, Bleys, Toni and Dahno went on to make such a production out of agreeing to be split up for the trip, and then of agreeing on a destination, that Henry was not missed when they all loaded up and left town.
As they drove away Bleys could see their limousine being left behind, its driver casually lounging on a small bench nearby. She had removed her dark green tunic, perhaps because of the warmth of the sunlight, and her white shirt gleamed in the brightness, startling above her green livery trousers.
Too casual, he thought.
On their arrival at the border with Andrade, a neighboring state, they were met by officials of the governments of both Getan states, as well as by people from the nearest Friendly consulate. No one seemed to know who had carried out the bombing, and it was not even considered certain that it had in fact been intended for Bleys and his party. But the assembled officialdom agreed it would be the wisest course for Bleys to wi
thdraw from his itinerary and return to the safety of Ceta City.
Bleys, however, insisted that his visits to the troops would go on; and at last, as a concession, he agreed to alter the originally scheduled order of the visits, and to accept the military escorts that would be provided by the governments of every state they entered.
"The last thing I want is for these people to hover over me," he told Toni. "I still have work, to do here."
Bleys' bodyguards could be brought along, they were told, if they agreed to be disarmed. Bleys declined the offer, pointing out that unarmed bodyguards were of little value. However, he requested that at least two of his staff people, along with his personal medician, Kaj Menowsky, be allowed to join them; but that request had been anticipated, and three of the staff arrived even as they prepared to leave.
Kaj Menowsky, the staff reported, had been concussed in the bombing, and had been hospitalized. Such medical care as Bleys and his party might need, the locals informed him, would be immediately provided by their hosts.
Unwilling to explain about his unusual medical condition, Bleys decided not to press the issue.
Early the next morning they were placed aboard a shuttle that took them more than a third of the way around the planet, arriving late in the day at a sizable, and well-guarded, encampment of Friendly Militia. This visit was kept out of the Cetan media, but was recorded for later broadcast; and thereafter they spent the night in the secure, if less than luxurious, midst of the troops.
In the morning they moved on in a couple of civilian vehicles, again surrounded by an escort provided by the local government.
It was only after they had left the Friendly unit some distance behind that trouble arose once again.
The Cetan state they had spent the night in, the Solomon Hills Republic, although an independent entity, had been part of an alliance during the recent war; and since the allied states had acted together in hiring the Friendly troops that had bolstered their own military establishments, units of those Friendly forces were deployed in a number of locations. But the escort the Cetans insisted on providing was made up of local troops; no one, Dahno suggested wryly, wanted armed Friendly troops moving freely about the countryside, for all that they were supposed to be on the same side and there was a truce in place.
They were roughly halfway to the unit they were to visit next when their escort, a full company from the best mechanized infantry division among the Solomoni forces—or so they had been told—came to a halt, pulling off the wide, paved trafficway to park in a lushly green field, one of the few flat spots in a region of low, rolling hills. Bleys, Toni and Dahno climbed out of their limousine, hoping to learn why they had stopped.
In a few moments they were approached by the captain in charge of their escort, an older man who had largely ignored his charges up to this point. Now he seemed pleased to report there had been a flare-up in the fighting nearby; he was, he said, taking his unit off in pursuit of a party of raiders that had just attacked a small outpost behind the line of truce. For the protection of Bleys and his party, he was leaving them two armored cars—and also sending the two civilian limousines back; Bleys and his people were to continue the trip inside two armored troop carriers.
The company had formed itself, and the two limousines were vanishing down the road, when the captain returned to speak to them one last time, a nasty grin on his face.
"I didn't trust those people from the beginning," he said. "And now they're gone I'll tell you your escort is going to change its route, too. You're going off the road and directly cross-country toward your destination. These ducted-fan vehicles don't need the road, so while it'll be a little uncomfortable, you'll be safe."
He turned away, ignoring attempts to engage him in a dialogue, and strode aggressively over to his command vehicle. Ducking inside it, he immediately popped out of the hatch in its topside, giving a hand signal that started the unit in motion.
The company was already disappearing over a thinly treed rise when an apologetic junior lieutenant appeared, to repeat that they were ordered to leave the trafficway. He shepherded them into the two troop carriers; and in moments the vehicles rose on their fans and crossed the paved road, tilting alarmingly for a moment as they slid down the embankment on the other side, before leveling out on the rock-strewn terrain that fell away unevenly from the road.
Inside one of the carriers, Bleys found himself becoming distinctly uneasy. Dahno was clearly thoroughly irritated by these events, as well as by the cramped, dusty conditions, but Toni, Bleys saw, was calm and watchful.
They shared the carrier's center compartment with six young soldiers; and all of them were reduced to perching on the small benches that lined the carrier's interior, their hands clutching straps as the vehicle, for all that its fans kept it above the rough ground, bounced and swayed in crossing the terrain at a relatively high speed.
Bleys was beginning to wish his medician had been able to join them. He could feel a headache coming on, accompanied by a sick, feverish achiness. Apparently it showed enough that Toni was concerned about him.
Bleys tried to make an unobtrusive check of his wristpad, to be sure it was continuing to emit the periodic homing signals Henry had suggested. He noticed that Dahno and Toni did the same thing.
They appeared to be making good time, but the young officer now in charge of this detachment was in one of the armored cars, and would not communicate with them beyond having a subordinate tell them they were less than an hour from the Friendly unit they had intended to visit next.
Bleys' feeling that something was wrong got all the confirmation it needed when the lead armored car exploded ahead of their own vehicle. The blast front caused their own carrier to rear like a frightened animal and then plunge down the side of a narrow gulley; they never learned whether the driver did so in order to avoid further attack, but as they went over the edge a bolt from some sort of power weapon caved in the roof above them, despite its armor.
The carrier hit bottom almost on its side, but Bleys managed to hang on to his strap, to avoid falling across the width of the vehicle's interior, while swinging out an arm to help Toni keep her seat on his left side. Across the vehicle, Dahno had been thrown back against the wall, entangled with soldiers who were thrown at the wall in the same moment.
The gyros whined, righting the carrier enough that the fans could level it out, and the vehicle began to move forward down the length of the gulley. But almost immediately a series of bolts slammed into its front, opening the driver's compartment and shredding its interior, and its crew, back to the firewall that protected the passenger compartment. All power went off, and the vehicle settled to the dirt floor of the gulley even as it nosed into the bank on their right side.
Dahno pushed a body away and lunged for the hatch's manual controls, but Bleys grabbed his shoulder, trying to hold him back.
"I don't think it's a good idea to go out there," Bleys said.
"We have to," his brother shouted. "We're sitting ducks in here!"
"At least in here we have some armor," Bleys said. He was trying to keep his voice low so as to defuse the emotions they were all feeling now.
"That won't last long," Dahno said, more quietly. "There's only one exit left here, and if it's not already covered it soon will be. Outside, we might be able to make it to some cover."
Before Bleys could respond there was a sudden burst of firing from above them. "That's coming from where we fell over the side," Toni said.
"Yes," Bleys said. "And it doesn't seem to be directed at us."
"It's the other armored car," one of the young soldiers said. He was looking out now through one of the weapons apertures from which their vehicle, although now disabled, could normally be defended. With the power off, the video screens were no longer working, but there was light both from the emergency lighting system and a narrow opening where a seam in the distorted roof had pulled apart.
As the soldier ceased speaking they could hear a rapid
series of ticking noises, like an irregular drumroll on the side of their vehicle. The soldier ducked down, turning to look for instructions, or perhaps reassurance; the corporal in charge of their detail had struck his head in the fall, and was just starting to regain consciousness.
"Cone rifle fire," Bleys said; and Dahno sat back down.
"It can't possibly penetrate our armor," Bleys said reassuringly; and at that moment they heard a renewed series of bolts from the power cannon of the armored car. The cone rifles went silent.
In a moment there came a loud rapping on the hatch of their vehicle. Bleys reached for the manual override.
"It'd better be our guys," Dahno muttered.
Bleys chose not to respond as the hatch unsealed, then popped forward in its track and slid to the side.
"Are you all right, sir?" It was the young lieutenant who had been refusing to speak with them, now looking in at them from the brightly sunlit gulley floor.
"Yes, Lieutenant, I think so," Bleys replied. "What's the situation, please?"
"We've been attacked," the young man replied. Then he blushed.
"Of course you knew that... I'm sorry." He seemed, Bleys thought, to have loosened up with the action.
"Don't be," Toni said. "We're very glad you got to us before those people managed to open us up."
"Is anyone hurt in your carrier?" the young officer asked.
"I don't know about the people up front," Bleys said, "but your soldiers were tossed around, and the corporal's just coming to—"
"I'm fine, sir," the corporal said from somewhere behind Bleys.
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 8