by Bloom, A. D.
The Harbor Dogs approached from the angle they'd determined was most likely to sink the Threat and least likely to result in damage to the flotilla of small Non-Threats, the Lady Chatterley, or the two ovoid, safety orange lifeboat pods that had just dropped from her bow superstructure into the water. To obtain an optimal angle of attack, the drones tightened their turns, and rather than maneuvering around the flotilla, cut directly through it in a series of slaloming turns that sent curtains of saltwater spray rising over Bonnie's head. As one passed uncomfortably close, she could see the stubby, dome-turret-mounted, short-barreled, electric gun underneath the Harbor Dog's eyeless, encephalitic head rotate and track its target.
The unfortunately timed display of high morale by the Corazon and Mexican Mafia passengers of the Lucky Sue had not been witnessed by the other boats traveling East to West, since the Lucky Sue was in the rear of their flotilla. As the drones weaved their way through the small boats, most thought the drones were coming for them, and they prayed or cursed. Some did both. Death passed the little boats over, one by one, as the Harbor Dogs dodged the Non-Threats with radical maneuvers, closing on the Threat, the Lucky Sue, on the Eastern edge of the flotilla.
The Harbor Dogs carried three hundred rounds apiece of caseless, solid-propelled, fifty-caliber, tungsten-cored sabot rounds. Both drones fired their rotary, tribarrel electric guns for only a second. From the deck of the Lucky Sue it looked like the Harbor Dogs had grown a second strobe underneath to match the one on top of their heads. There was only the briefest moment for the men on board to realize that was not the case, before the port and starboard rear quarters of the yacht's simulated wood hull was turned into carbon fiber shrapnel. The Lucky Sue shook as rounds tore into her flanks. The air was filled with a ripping sound and staccato impacts as her hull turned to razor-edged fragments, and the engine turned into a spray of molten tungsten, lead, and steel, punctuated by heavy, spinning, deformed chunks.
None of the Corazon insurgents, Mexican mafia mercs, or the kidnapped charter boat operator were killed by direct fire. Their bodies were punctured by thousands of fast moving fragments of metal and carbon fiber hull. They died almost instantly of massive internal bleeding that dropped their blood pressure to nothing over nothing in a heartbeat.
The two Harbor Dogs, satisfied that the Threat had been neutralized, resumed their perimeter patrol of Lady Chatterley, and miraculously, none of the men in the other boats fired on the drones in uncontrollable fear, anger, or vengeance.
Bonnie watched a few distant figures manage to jump from the bow end of the flaming Lucky Sue into the water. She never saw them again, and only then did she notice that nobody in their raft had a life preserver or flotation device, including herself. Their formation and the larger flotilla had plenty of weapons, heavy armor, and explosives, but no life preservers.
The flotilla reached Lady Chatterley, and the rafts, motorboats, tugboats, and other small craft positioned themselves between her bow superstructure and aft towers, endeavoring to keep station over a five-hundred-and-fifty-foot-long, ninety foot wide, five-yard-deep channel that ran down her spine while the water around them bubbled and frothed and turned white. As Lady Chatterley blew the water out of her ballast tanks with compressed air, she began to rise out of the water. When the top surfaces of the flat cargo area broke into the sunshine, the channel running down her spine became a self-contained body of water, separated from the waters of the bay by her rising hull.
Her body became like a bathtub, filled with the comparatively tiny toy boats of the flotilla, bobbing inside. Collisions between the boats were unavoidable, since using the engines made waves in the giant bathtub, and not using the engines meant drifting and colliding anyway. Bonnie was glad to be in the middle of their raft formation because immediately forward of their rafts was a tugboat that loomed over the inflatables below it, and immediately aft was what Bonnie took to be a fishing boat. It was drifting against two of the Korean rafts and threatening to capsize or crush them.
Bonnie looked over the side of the raft and saw the channel they floated in was twelve plenty deep to drown in. She began to paddle with her hands like she saw Carlos and the Koreans and everybody else in the rafts doing. Casper followed suit. They were trying to reach the sides of the bathtub and climb out before one of the larger boats drifted into or over them.
It was quieter now without the noise of their own outboard motors. Lady Chatterley was blowing the bubbles to the outside of her hull, and the roaring noise they made was loud, but not so loud that Bonnie was prevented from hearing something new. It was, she decided after a few moments, a human noise, like murmuring, but musical.
The Koreans were singing. Bonnie looked back at the tattooed gangster that handled their raft. His lips moved around the same strange words as the ex-commando importer and the convenience store owner in the next raft. She thought she'd heard this one before, when she was very young, back before songs like these were illegal.
“I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
As ye deal with my condemners so shall ye with my Grace deal...”
The song rose from the tugboat closest to them, too. Its deck was full of Northern California White Sunday militiamen. They were wearing woodland camouflage, and they were trying to out sing the Koreans with their Battle Hymn. She wondered for a moment just why they were wearing the woodland camouflage on a boat until she remembered that woodland camo was just what some Mendonesians wore every day.
The Koreans sensed competition and sang louder.
“Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat.”
The walls of the giant bathtub were beginning to rise on either side, and she could no longer see the bay's glittering waters or the Harbor Dogs or the shore. Lady Chatterley was draining the water from the channel running down her spine. As the walls of the bathtub rose around the flotilla, the voices of the singers began to echo off the sides, and the sound changed. It had a quality she'd never heard before. It scared her.
Beyond the tugboat were a group of Chinese Christians who demonstrated their faith by standing upright in their own inflatable rafts while singing despite the plainly evident instability of standing that caused them to nearly drown. Next to them were a pod of jet-skis that had been stolen from a rental agency by the Sons of Abraham who, it seemed, had also found time to steal matching blue and green wet suits. Even this group of militant Jews and Muslims sang the same song.
Four motorboats actually owned by the Eastern Front Church floated at the bow end of the bathtub. They sang next to a tour boat filled with yellow-robed monks who didn't seem to know how to sing very well but their tour boat operator did, and he sang loudly and clearly enough for all the monks in the boat.
The Lady Chatterley's screws began to turn, and she moved again through the waters of the bay, carrying the believers in their own body of water, holy water, separated from the bay by the walls of Lady Chatterley's font.
There was a quiet boat tucked in near the stern end of the bathtub. It was plain, white fiberglass, and it was the small boat equivalent of the plain, white, unmarked van. It held three men whose lack of both musical enthusiasm and the recognition code was now clearly evident. Gun barrels lowered from adjacent vessels to point at the uninvited as the singing continued. Abruptly, the battle hymn was drowned out by the hellish, concussive report of gunfire echoing off the walls of the font. Bonnie and Casper saw bodies floating in the water near the stern. At least someone had a life preserver, she thought.
As the singing continued, and Lady Chatterley sailed on through Baccha Bay, Bonnie turned to Casper and asked, “Did you see the crew abandon ship before we came aboard?”
“Yeah, I saw the big orange pods. Two of 'em,” He replied.
“Kinda makes you wond
er, huh?”
“Wonder what?” Casper was wondering about a lot of things.
“Kinda makes you wonder who's driving this giant ship.”
-38-
A yard-long Lady Chatterley sailed between Oskar Delvaux's feet as he stared down at the tiny boats floating inside her narrow, self-contained channel. Harbor Dogs zipped around her like pond insects, drawing white lines on the surface of his holographic Baccha Bay. It extended all across his office, fading out a fraction of an inch from the dusky, pink-tinted XinCryst walls. Delvaux could just make out the oil slick from the Lucky Sue being left behind as the Lady Chatterley sailed on, her destination unknown.
He gestured with the data-wand, and the simulation increased in scale so that he could see the boats carried by Lady Chatterley more clearly. Now, he could see the people, too. They faded in and out because of imperfect coverage due, he was certain, to MUNI 5-7's interference. He saw the impossibly little people were climbing out of their boats and up to the flat, featureless decks on either side of the five hundred and fifty foot long, bathtub-like channel that ran Lady Chatterley's length. Delvaux studied the curious scene, admitting, “This is not something one sees every day.” Then, he asked, “MUNI 5-7, what are you up to?”
“I have been engaged in many tasks over the last few minutes,” the AI said. Delvaux laughed.
“You astonish me,” he said. “I had not thought it possible for an AI to be coy about its activities. I think it is quite clear that I refer to the exceedingly unusual activity surrounding the Lady Chatterley.” He studied the scene for a moment more, giving MUNI 5-7 a chance to comment, but the AI said nothing. “My, but I see your handwriting all over this,” Delvaux said to the empty air while he looked slightly upwards.
It disappointed him that MUNI 5-7 had not denied it or asked what caused him to come to this conclusion. “Yes, note the deployed lifeboats,” he said as he pointed and gestured, summoning an enlarged detail image to float in mid-air in front of him. The bright orange ovoid pods rotated, translucent in the air, and the system displayed all known data regarding the lifeboats. Their own systems could tell how many people were inside, and they were broadcasting that data to anyone who cared. This information was included in Delvaux's model and he could see quite clearly as the orange ovoids hovered in front of him, that they were full. He could even see the occupants. “Full,” he said. “Both lifeboats are full to capacity which begs the question: Who is at Lady Chatterley's helm? It could be one of the people from the little boats floating inside her, but I think not. Of course, any plodding detective would note the full lifeboats and ask who is directing Lady Chatterley in these unorthodox maneuvers but I,” Delvaux said proudly, “I have an answer.”
Delvaux waved the data-wand, and the lifeboats that hung in the air vanished. With a quick tap of his finger, he brought back the image from MUNI 5-7's reconstructed dream. The image of the giant robot laying prone on the spaceship hovered above the Lady Chatterley projected at his feet. With a minor adjustment, he brought them to roughly the same size so that he could display their similarity more clearly for himself. “The top image is, no doubt, familiar to you. It is from one of the sequences we found stashed away in the curious secret brain you constructed for yourself. This sub-brain, this sub-consciousness has, I think, betrayed your plan through this image. I am no art critic, of course, or psychologist for that matter, but I must say that I see great similarity between these two ships. They are so similar, in fact, that I am quite sure the hand that made this picture,” he said, pointing to the dream image, “is clearly the hand that made this picture as well.” He pointed at Lady Chatterly.
“I cannot deduce any connection,” MUNI 5-7 said flatly.
Delvaux knew MUNI 5-7 was not lying, and he sighed at the irony of a machine capable of dreams but incapable of appreciation or interpretation of the imagery and symbolism it generated. As he pointed to the spaceship and the robot, Delvaux continued his critique. “If dreams reflect an interpretation of reality, then we may assume that the giant robot represents you in this picture, and if this is true, and these images are linked as I believe they are,” he reasoned, pausing and pointing at Lady Chatterley before continuing, “then we might interpret the little boats riding inside the Lady Chatterley's bathtub canal, on her back, so to speak, as also representing you in some way.” Delvaux crouched close to the yard-long semi-submersible and watched the ant-sized figures climbing out of the half-inch boats onto her deck. “Yes, yes – I think these little boats, these tiny people represent you. In fact, I believe they are your Representatives.”
Delvaux was pleased with himself. Perhaps I am not so poor a critic, after all, he thought. He looked up from the ghostly Lady Chatterley and the minuscule figures that he was quite sure he had correctly identified. Then, he said to the darkness of his office, “MUNI 5-7, what the hell are your vervelokt representatives doing?”
-39-
Small camera drones were beginning to buzz and hover high over the men, women, arms, armor, and explosives that filled the narrow, fifteen foot wide, steel-plated walkways running the length of the Lady Chatterley's hull on either side of her five hundred and fifty foot long, boat-filled channel. On both the port and starboard sides, the walkways were as crowded as downtown sidewalks at lunchtime, and there was nothing to prevent anyone from falling off, back down into the water-filled channel, or worse, fifty feet down the outside of the hull, into the bay.
Falling into the bay wasn't what worried Bonnie. Looking around at the crowd, suddenly she wished that she could just follow Lady Chatterley in the raft because these folks were armed to the teeth, very jumpy, and she knew most of these groups hated each other. Up ahead were the Angels of Badur with the number 624 painted in white on their vests. They were Muslim fundamentalist militants with a special hatred for the integrated Sons of Abraham. They were staring at the blue and green wet-suit-wearing Sons of Abraham on the port side walkway, across the boat-filled bathtub. The White Sunday militants behind the Sons of Abraham hated almost everyone, and a group of African Catholics behind them was trying to give them some space, but the Protestant Provisional NORCAL Brigade were behind the Africans, and they were beginning to look at the papists with a less than peace loving eye. Bonnie didn't know if the Chinese Christian Martyrs hated anyone, but she was pretty sure someone here hated them.
Save a few surface-to-air missile toting insurgents headed for the twin towers at the stern, almost everyone was moving towards the bow and to the safety of Lady Chatterley's massive forward superstructure.
A larger drone with fixed-wings and racks of missiles slung underneath appeared between the aft towers and made a pass down Lady Chatterley's length before veering off. This made the volatile, armed crowd more agitated, and Bonnie could see the jostling beginning on the port walkway. Whether it would be G.S.A. drones strafing the insurgents or one zealot group shooting another, Bonnie thought, it wouldn't be long now before the shooting started.
The Harbor Dogs circled the ship in concentric rings. Fifteen of them orbited the ship, and as Lady Chatterley cut directly across the shipping lanes of the bay, they cleared the traffic ahead of her. For now, they were acting like escorts but Bonnie was pretty sure that sooner or later some human in a control room would recognize a threat in the Lady Chatterley, override their autonomy, and direct them to use the electric tri-barrel guns that had made such short work of the unfortunate Lucky Sue.
“This,” Alvin said with certainty, stopping in his tracks and staring ahead at the hundreds of militants moving in a slow crowd towards the bow, “is officially a fucked-up plan.”
“Hey, man, it ain't my plan,” Carlos said. He wasn't happy about it either. “My job is to get you to the client. Your job is to stay alive and meet him. Now, c'mon, man, let's go, it's getting dangerous out here.”
Bonnie was behind Alvin, and her eyes kept flitting to the back of his head. She wondered when she would make her move and separate Alvin from the rest of the group.
Bonnie knew she wasn't a traitor. She hoped Delvaux, high up in the Zig would believe it too when she brought him his prize.
The ladders and stairwells from the walkways to the bow deck and the upper levels of the bow superstructure were both bottlenecked. As the crowd pushed forward, they heard a single shot from an assault rifle. An accidental discharge in the crowd caused the first casualty aboard Lady Chatterley. The body fell into the center channel and sank quickly. The sign projected above the stairwell in front of them read, '165 days without an Accident'.
The pushing from behind forced them to make a quick decision between the ladders and the stairs. Those insurgents without too much armor and gear used the ladders. Everyone else had to use the stairs that were badly congested with slow-moving, assault-suited insurgents.
Carlos shouted, “Ladder, take the ladder!”
Fuck that, Alvin thought. His short legs weren't made for climbing ladders, and the stairwell looked pretty clogged, but he was sure he could fit through somehow. Just like Grand Central, Alvin thought as he weaved between Russian Orthodox terrorists who were slowly climbing the stairs. They were wearing full-body assault-suits, and they could stop bullets pretty well, but they'd also stopped traffic from passing up the stairs with their over-armored bulk. Alvin got past the first row of slow-moving, human tanks, but the second row was loaded down with heavy gear, including rocket launchers that took up the spaces between people that Alvin liked to slip through with his tiny body. He was stuck in the middle of the Russian group, and the walking tanks behind him stared down and laughed and said things to each other that Alvin couldn't understand, but that he knew he didn't like.
Bonnie saw Alvin break for the stairs, but the four-foot-high Buddha was moving through gaps in the crowd so small that she couldn't follow. None of them could. She watched Alvin do the disappearing act that he'd described using back in his bag-snatching days. There was nothing for Bonnie, Casper, Carlos, and Otis to do but climb the ladder to the next level and hope that Alvin met them there.