Gammalaw: Smoke on the Water

by Brian Daley

  In similar fashion, the museum's piers had been emptied of storied warships, and the Naval Academy had been consoli-dated with other maritime and oceanographic-atmospheric schools. All to feed the needs of LAW.

  Quant tugged his visor lower. "Wish I could help, Admiral." He hated the sound of it even as it came out of him.

  Quant gave Lord Nelson's turret facing a slap as he went by—an armored incline nearly seven hundred millimeters thick. It was like hitting a naked cliff face, no sound or feeling of hollowness at all. Then he made his farewells to Mak-sheyeva at the top of the proscenium steps and moved quickly toward the swank air diligence.

  Sensing their approach, the limo's cockpit and passenger compartment doors opened. Quant didn't look aside as he barked. "Driver, you're supposed to be wearing a name tag. Where is it?"

  The kid had been covertly staring at Quant and was taken off guard.

  "Central transportation pool driver Kurt Elide, sir," he labored a moment to bring forth.

  "Don't call me sir, Elide. You're a civilian." Quant slid into a passenger compartment that had the understated elegance of a VIP lounge. "I won't report you, but if you're going to wear a uniform, show some self-esteem."

  * * * *

  Kurt Elide assumed the driver's seat, a lot more curious than worried. Kurt's second cousin's severalmate was deputy chief of staff to Hierarch Dextra Haven, which was how Kurt had gotten his job. And Kurt's boss, the pool superintendent, wouldn't care a fart's worth about a name-tag complaint from some wet navy has-been.

  Yet there was something about Quant that kept Kurt from laughing in the black man's face, something about the impeccable dress whites and decorations, the impression that in Quant's world things were expected to work right and that attention to detail was a matter of pride.

  Once Kurt had lifted off, Quant asked, "You have any idea what the flap's about, Driver Elide?" He had his plugphone back in his ear but wasn't having any luck with it. There was a complete commo setup in the passenger compartment, but Quant apparently wasn't familiar with it.

  "Something's got Abraxas jumpin' through its asshole upside-down, Commander. The Public Safety people're crapping doilies. I'd've been grounded if this wasn't a priority hop. Saw flying squads of Peace Warrantors headed for the aero-port, and the army's being mobilized, but it's all being done on the QT."

  "I presume you have emergency lights and directional sirens, Driver Elide."

  "I do. But we don't have authoriza—"

  "I'm your authorization, Elide. Let's have it all."

  Kurt showed the rearview mirror a grin. "My pleasure, Commander."

  In no time the Matsya hove into view. Quant, on the edge of his seat despite the safety harness, swore softly. Elide got a good look at what was going on and pronounced softly, "A-fucking-mazing!"

  The SWATHship was making knots all right, but it was towing along a bobbing, swinging array of work booms, pontoon rafts, floats, and small barges that were being bashed through the swells as the ship gathered speed.

  "Kinda sloppy way to go cruising, isn't it, Commander?" Kurt observed.

  "Shut your gob and do your job," Quant growled. He shifted closer to the window while punching up long-range optical displays. "Of all the times to be flying in some wallowing ciwie scheissewagon," he muttered. "Elide, maybe you'd better lay to…"

  Kurt ignored the recommendation and banked so sharply for the PNS Matsya that Quant was thrown against his safety webbing.

  * * * *

  Farley had said that Mason's break from Blades Station would have to be by helipod because 'pods were the only craft accessible to the Scepter detainees, and that was only because the station authorities deemed escape by helipod impossible.

  No sooner had Farley sobered him up man she got him safely to an outlying motor pool. The station was between training cycles in high desert warfare and survival, and many of the cadre were away on furloughs, medical travel, or intercycle transfer.

  They found Hippo Nolan doing a most unauthorized field modification on a government gray helipod like Farley's.

  "Five-finger requisition," Hippo explained cheerfully when Mason asked about it. He'd fitted it with a heavy-duty power pack and raised the floor plate. "It'll either get you where you're going or blow you apart absolutely painlessly, guaranteed."

  Mason looked Hippo over. The engineer had let his weight sine-curve on Aquamarine, where corpulence was in many places a sign of status. But appetite suppressants and dieteti-cally engineered cuisine had trimmed him down by forty kilos or more.

  "Are you also a student body at the Quantum College, Nolan?" Mason asked sourly, resenting the notion that Hippo, too, had been holding out on him.

  Hippo looked surprised. "Don't be a yankwang, Claude. What it is, is that Farley's got some Rationalist pipeline among the station cadre but doesn't want to cop to it. Which is fine by me. But I don't think she should be insulting the rest of us with this QC anal gas. What counts more is that I believe the info itself. So give this caper your best lick, pretty boy."

  Mason accepted a helping hand aboard the modified helipod. Farley passed him some dupes of survey data and overview briefing materials that the team members had managed to hang on to. A few others—Franco Luong, Lewis Pine-tree, Hilario Abrego—looked on.

  "Don't tell me they want to go back to Aquamarine," Mason muttered to Farley as he belted in. He had to half squat to settle his armpits onto the rests; his quadriceps were going to feel a lot worse before they felt better.

  "Half and half," she estimated. "But they know that you want back, and this is their way of saying thanks for getting them home."

  She checked his helmet and pressed something into the palm of his right hand.

  Mason knew before looking what it was: a pair of Holy Rollers she'd nabbed on Aquamarine. An artifact of the planet's pre-Cyberplague times, the Optimant-made dice—one translucent with red pips and the other red-tinted with clear pips—were used more for purposes of divination than for games of chance.

  "For luck," Farley told him.

  As Mason carefully tucked the dice into his breast pocket, Farley reboarded her 'pod and buckled in. Hippo gave a last wave, but nobody else had anything to add. Mason and Farley throttled up, rose from the ground, leaned their weight, ascended, and accelerated into the air.

  High desert winds gusted and played with them as they raced out past the erosion-carved stone fins, vanes, and natural flying buttresses of the Blades, rolling up kilometers at a power-hungry rate. Mason's microflier with its heavier power pack was less responsive, and the steering duct fans were working harder to compensate. He and Farley were coming through a wide bank, bearing southwest, when Farley's voice sawed in his plugphone.

  "This is the point of no return for me. We're counting on you, Claude." She peeled off for a thin, bowed formation from which she would keep watch for and decoy, if possible, any pursuers.

  Mason kicked in more speed. Swinging and tilting the flying crow's nest among the eternal monoliths helped him keep his mind off what lay at land's end. He tried to shift his position to ease the strain on his thighs but couldn't move too far and still work the armrest controls. He also had to keep weight on his feet to lean and steer safely.

  The helipod's just-adequate nav system projected guidance displays onto Mason's helmet visor. In thirty-four minutes of flying time he passed from the military reservation onto the public parklands sector of the Blades.

  Park system beacons began to show on his visor. He had no difficulty picking up the correct pass and swinging south for the coast. The well-marked recreational flight path brought him down to a low traffic corridor that paralleled a surface multiway. He stayed out of centrally monitored lanes; the serf-drive corridor was almost empty, and he cranked along at nearly 150 kph with no hitches. Still, he waited for the shadow of an intercept craft to fall over him.

  Traffic thickened, passing down from the highlands. The helipod was the smallest thing in that low airspace, making for
some uncomfortable moments with hovertrucks, air cushion buses, and such. Then, ahead, gleamed the sea.

  Mason saw its pitted burnish and felt his stomach twist. He broke out in a sweat but kept himself from grounding the 'pod on the breakdown margin. Where the glacial flow of the multi-way forked, he tilted away from Abraxas's lofty starscrapers along the coastal route. There was heavy midaltitude traffic; he wished he could trade places with anybody flying above, no matter who, no matter what that person's dilemma.

  He forced himself to descend to surface-effect height and take the beach road but then passed up exit after exit. At last he faced the fact that he wasn't picking his entry point—he was avoiding it. He slowed, shifted his weight to bank, grunted at the fire in his upper legs, then eased out onto a firm, pale lavender strand forty meters wide.

  The sandy stretch posted for public sex was back toward Abraxas; here it was for sports enthusiasts. There were people occupied with wave wings, surface-effect SErfboards, and such. Many were simply splashing around or lying in the sun.

  Mason grounded the helipod and raised his visor. Taking note of his pale face and anxious stare, several bystanders gave him curious looks. He moaned, stretching his legs, transfixed by the dark and malevolent waters, feeling the paralyzing horror he'd carried since that day at the Styx Strait.

  Don't tell me that Beast didn't fuck with my neurowares! he screamed to himself.

  It was what he hadn't been able to confront back at the Blades, and here at last there was no avoiding it. He closed his eyes, bit down hard on his lip, and thought about his wife and child.

  He brought up the throttle, lifted off, and leaned forward to put the 'pod on a course straight for the breaking surf. He gathered speed little by little, then hit the throttle and whooshed out over the sea with a yell—

  No. He hadn't, he discovered. He had instead reversed course, slewing around and nearly crashing the almost idiot-proof helipod. Some of the beach buffs stopped what they were doing to gaze at the man in the institutional gray microfüer, draped on the 'pit rests, weeping as though his heart would burst.

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Quant looked down at his ship and heard echoes of Spanish in his head: Grande nao, gran cuidado, indeed.

  The Matsya was dragging behind her a flotilla of rafts and barges. Rigged for stationary use by the ship's nonmilitary technical and research contingent—called by all hands the Science Side—the towed craft were hampering the Matsya and imperiling her and one another like a bevy of drunken powerboaters. Along with her usual navigational and landing deck lights, she was flashing and strobing emergency beacons, flying warning flags, and Quant had no doubt, sounding Klaxons and other alarms to proclaim a hazardous landing situation. Crash equipment and personnel were deploying on her vest-pocket oceangoing runway.

  The tows had always vexed Quant: The SWATHship was merely serving as a test-bed tugboat for 'wares, configurations, and equipment that would go aboard bona fide research vessels.

  Yet Quant's heart leapt to see how cleanly she cut the waves. SWATH/SST was an acronym for Small Waterplane-Area, Tri-hulled, SemiSubmerged Trimaran. By design, shock waves created by its bulbous bow were damped by funneling wave trains at opposite angles between the main hull and the two outrigger sponsons hulls, canceling hydrodynamic energy that otherwise would have buffeted the vessel, increased drag, and cut into the efficiency of the actuator disk propellers.

  "Whatever they're expecting, it's not us," Kurt Elide murmured as he brought the airlimo around for an approach on the flight deck's round-down aft end.

  Quant hollered into the intercom. "Damn you, Elide, shear off! She's declared aircraft emergency. We can't foul her flight deck!" At the same time he scanned the sky wildly for the imperiled and imperiling inbound plane. Setting aside the question of why an aircraft in trouble hadn't been routed to one of the far-better-equipped military or civilian runways in the greater Abraxas area, he tried to get the passenger compartment commo to switch to Matsya's air ops freq.

  Kurt Elide shook his head without taking his eyes off the SWATHship. "My pool super just relayed a twix from your captain, Commander. He wants you back on board right now, so I'll try to ease us in through that big open door at the back. No problem with this sled."

  The door he was talking about was in reality the hangar deck rocket-jet engine test area at the stern, under the round-down. Captain Hall, currently manning the conn, was evidently so rattled that he was pumping ship in his skivvies, authorizing a landing like that. It meant that Quant had to get aboard ASAP.

  He considered telling Elide to try for the aircraft elevator doorway in the portside sponson, but the crosswind would have made that approach even more risky. "Very well, but take it slowly and mind the pitch and roll of the deck" he advised. There were no engines currently in the test area, and a vehicle with the dexterity of the aircar should have been able to negotiate it handily. "And patch the air control push back here, Elide!"

  All at once Kurt's smooth, confident approach became rocky as he decelerated urgently. Quant felt the limo shudder as if it, not the driver, were debating breaking off the run.

  Kurt called back, "Something blocking that stern doorway!"

  Quant was getting passenger compartment feeds of pilot instrumentation, including an optical of the engine test opening. Someone from Science Side had parked an external helo package there. It poked into the test area opening somewhat but left nearly as much room as the limo would have had anyway.

  "Gotta abort," Kurt announced shakily.

  "Steady on, boy," Quant bade him with kindly reassurance. "You're doing fine."

  "There isn't enough leeway—"

  "You committed yourself to something, Elide. Now you see it through or I'll punch your yellow heart out the back of your rib cage and play handball with it."

  The level, declarative way in which Quant stated it jarred Elide into action. Bucking the crosswind and finessing through air turbulence stirred by the Matsya, he adjusted the speed and angle of descent with a skill Quant found surprising. Elide, matching the pitch and roll of the vessel, slipped through the engine test opening and into the hangar deck with room to spare on all sides.

  "Soft as a mother's kiss," Quant commented.

  * * * *

  While filling in Burning and the others on what lay ahead, Dextra had a private moment of serf-congratulation for having worn a fashionable fieldsuit that was crisis-worthy. Because it vented moisture vapor but was liquid H2O-impermeable, it kept the Exts from seeing that her bladder had let her down during the bloodshed in the passageway.

  It made her consider in passing what secrets the battlesuits around her might be protecting.

  General Delecado—Daddy D—had the flight crew thoroughly persuaded to cooperate. The Sword of Damocles's captain and the Aero Forces authorities knew how dangerous it was to risk violence in and around a docked shuttle. Moreover, a Hierarch and another Hierarch's daughter were hostage's or at least at risk. For the time being everyone aboard was on the same side.

  Lock details released the docking tackle manually as LAWs stood by and let it happen. The shuttle cast off from Damocles and applied power.

  There weren't enough deck rings for the hundreds of Exts in the cargo bay. Some were hooked up to others who were snapped down. Cargo webbing and safety lines had been used improvisationally: the space looked like a sea vine-tangled school of dark, warlike merpeople. With Flowstate deftness, most coped with micro-g. Parameds tending the wounded had missed some of the floating globules of blood with their aerogel wads, and a fine pink mist had begun to propagate.

  Nike Lightner and her troupe sat silently, taking up most of the few jumpseats and watching the events in something of a daze. Lazlo-Lazlo was weeping openly. His camera had been smashed in the fighting, and he had no way to record what was to come.

  When Daddy D returned to the cockpit, Dextra allowed Burning to lead her into the semiprivacy of an engineering station cubby, where he
took his mike off-line and whispered, "Why did you do this?"

  She gave him an abbreviated version of the anonymous warning, withholding the fact that the message had purportedly come from the Quantum College. She explained her sense of responsibility as a Rationalist for the Exts' predicament but kept to herself the fact that Nike Lightner's father probably was involved in the plot to eliminate them and thereby bring political ruination down on her.

  Burning grew impatient with the story. "We have to land soon. What then?"

  "We set down in a place where we can present your group to the media and through them to Periapt—in a favorable light, of course."

  "So the Periapt public'll forgive us for feeding those Manips some silverware?"

  "No. No!" Dextra said. "If we don't mention the violence, the opposition isn't likely to, either. An independent investigation could blow up in their faces. If we succeed in spinning you a positive image, you'll be ten times harder to move against. You'll have the protection of the spotlight."

  He looked skeptical. "This shuttle can't just set down anywhere, no matter how many knives we hold to the pilot's neck."

  Dextra smiled inwardly. The Allgrave had some quick neural 'wares under that battle helmet. For all its size, the shuttle could land STOL, but the hitch was that it required sophisticated on-site guidance equipment and telemetry. While there were a few facilities on Periapt that could handle that, the Preservationist faction, along with LAW, would be moving quickly to seal off the aerospace fields, bar the press, and try to dispose of the Exts, hostages or no.

  "That's been taken into account," she said after a moment, giving him a campaign portrait smile. "Will you trust me for now?"

  "Why should we?"

  "Because I trusted you when you tucked me under your arm like a stuffed bunny. You impress me as a man who usually asks before he takes any real liberties, Burning."