The driver turned down a different street at the same breakneck speed. There was no traffic. Apparently, the word had gone out that there was some sort of unrest and that people were to stay off the streets. The man who had been talking on the comm spoke quickly to the driver in what sounded like Arabic. The driver nodded quickly and made another turn.
“We are instructed to return you to the air base, where you will be protected by the base garrison until the emir’s troops are captured or killed, at which point ‘Mr. Wortham-Biggs,’ ” Max and the doctor could almost hear the amused quotation marks around the name, “will be transported to the base where he can meet with you under secure conditions. Is that acceptable?”
“Of cour—” Max started to say.
“No. It is not,” the doctor interrupted, in a peremptory tone that Max had never heard Sahin use outside of the Casualty Station. “I’m sorry, Captain, but this information changes things. The written instructions given to me by Admiral Hornmeyer contain information that puts what the emir is doing in a different light. The emir’s action means that it is urgent the meeting take place immediately. Within the hour is preferable. Two or three hours from now may be too late, with consequences that make words like ‘disaster’ and ‘catastrophe’ seem like bland understatements. I believe that the emir may be the least of our problems.”
The driver shook his head. “I don’t see how that would be possible. We’re now several minutes away from the ministry. Even if we turned around and went back in that direction, the emir’s troops—who are quite proficient—have the building surrounded and the streets blocked. Yes, there are troops at the base that could be used to break the cordon, but it could not be done in the time frame you describe.
“By design, there are no armored or artillery units, or armored fighting vehicles, in or near the capital. We couldn’t mount any kind of air strike against such small targets in a crowded city without causing unacceptable civilian casualties. That leaves cracking the perimeter by conventional infantry assault without prior bombardment.”
He shook his head at the prospect, obviously an experienced combat soldier evaluating how the engagement would proceed. “We would have a numerical advantage, but the airbase troops are mere garrison soldiers. Their boots are very shiny and their bayonets exceptionally bright, but I doubt any of them have ever made a ground attack without air or artillery support against a prepared defensive position. The emir’s troops, on the other hand, are an elite, space mobile, special operations unit, veterans of many battles. I’m afraid we cannot get the ambassador through the emir’s lines in time.”
The doctor looked at his feet dejectedly. Max, however, smiled broadly and slapped the driver on the back. “Just get us to the airbase, my man, and I will deliver the ambassador to the meeting.”
The doctor looked at him sourly. “And just how do you expect to do that? Didn’t you hear this gentleman, who apparently possesses considerable expertise in this area, state that getting me through the lines is impossible?”
“Of course I heard him. Not only that, I believe him and agree with him 100 percent. We can’t get you through the lines in time.”
“Max,” Sahin said with exasperation, “you’re not making any sense. How can you say you’re going to get me to the meeting but that you know you can’t get through the lines?”
“Easy. We’re not going through. We’re going over.”
* * *
CHAPTER 4
* * *
18:23Z Hours, 19 March 2315
“I thought your convoluted and exceptionally hazardous plan back at Mengis VI was the epitome of foolhardiness,” said Sahin, his voice inching across the boundary that separated the merely high-pitched and tense from the truly shrill and panicked. “Little did I know that you had vast—truly, truly vast—untapped resources of foolhardiness, the magnitude of which could scarcely be imagined, much less articulated.”
“What we’re doing isn’t as dangerous as what we both think is going to happen if I don’t get you to that meeting.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“Let’s say that, although I never saw your written instructions from the admiral, I spent enough time in the Intel back room of enough warships to have a good idea what’s going on with the emir and—”
“MAX!” the doctor interrupted, this time his voice definitely reaching the level that can only be described as a terrified scream. “You almost hit that building!”
“No, I didn’t. I must have cleared it by seventy-five centimeters—maybe even a whole meter. Relax. I know what I’m doing.”
What Max was doing was flying a single-engine, pusher propeller–driven, high-wing monoplane trainer aircraft he had “borrowed” from the airbase. It was a Beechcraft T-96 Skylark, an 85-year-old trainer design manufactured by license on Rashid V A. The Skylark was not particularly fast, but it was stable, highly maneuverable, known to be extremely forgiving, and possessed enormous flaps, enabling it to make very short takeoffs and landings. Max had done his first atmosphere pilot training in an almost identical plane and always loved flying it.
Dr. Sahin was able to talk the reluctant base commander into allowing Max to use the plane, based on the doctor’s representations of the diplomatic urgency of the situation. The doctor had no problem with riding in a small aircraft, but he did have a problem riding in a small aircraft flying barely fifteen meters off the ground, dodging utility poles and trees, missing obstacles by millimeters, all the while keeping lower than the tops of the surrounding buildings so that the plane could not be picked off in the same manner as the ill-fated helicopter, unless it happened to fly right over the missile launcher. At one point the left wheel of the fixed tricycle landing gear had actually struck the top of a palm tree, causing one of the fronds to tear off and become entangled in the gear strut. It was now flapping madly in the 110 kph slip stream, making a sound somewhere between tearing cloth and machine gun fire, and looking absurdly like some sort of poorly applied vegetative camouflage.
“Okay, Bram, we’re about a kill away from the ministry. The troops on the ground are likely to take some shots, so be sure to sit on the spare vest those fly boys gave us and keep your head down.” The Air Force base commander had provided them both with body armor vests, two apiece, one to wear, and one to sit on to stop rounds fired from below, as the trainer was unarmored.
Rather than putting his head down, Sahin sat absurdly and improvidently upright, craning his neck for a look at the ministry compound as bullets started to fly past the small plane, some of them making distinctly audible whirring and buzzing sounds. “I don’t see the landing strip,” he said.
“There isn’t one,” Max said blandly.
“No landing strip! Did you notice before getting into this machine that it is an airplane and not a rotorcraft? I distinctly remember observing that the noisy spinning thing is on the rear pushing us rather than on the top holding us up. I am a keen observer and rarely miss such things. Where, pray tell, do you intend to land if there is no landing strip?”
“The courtyard.”
“But that’s only—”
“I know its dimensions. Now, be quiet and get down before I knock you upside the head and shove you down myself.”
The doctor complied just as a burst of three assault rifle rounds stitched their way through the door of the aircraft and exited through the roof of the plane, transecting the intervening airspace occupied less than a second before by the doctor’s head. Another rifle round shattered Max’s window, showering the left side of his face with shards of Visi-Plex and slicing open his cheek, which immediately began to bleed profusely. He didn’t even notice the blood until a bit got in his eye. He wiped it away absently and kept flying.
About two hundred meters before reaching the hasty fortifications erected by the emir’s men, Max pulled up hard on the yoke and advanced the throttle, pushing
the small plane into a steep climb that reached its apex right over the emir’s lines. At that point, Max chopped the throttle, extended the tiny plane’s huge flaps and held it just on the far side of a stall. With the wing tilted to so high an angle, the formerly smooth laminar flow of air over its surface broke down into a chaotic collection of vortices causing it to lose lift. The plane fell from the air, still carried forward slowly by inertia and with its descent slowed by the aerodynamic drag of its broad wings, which, divested of their former role as airfoils generating lift, were now charged with a function not unlike that of a parachute. Max skillfully managed the throttle, the flaps, and the yoke to steer the plane in a wobbling, sliding path, sometimes almost balancing atop the thrust generated by its propeller, directly toward what looked like a forty meter–by–forty meter decorative garden surrounded by the two-story ministry building: the ministry’s courtyard, enclosed from all sides and shielded by the building from gunfire.
Like a perfectly tossed horseshoe dropping directly onto the spike, the airplane, maintained by Max in a precisely controlled and deftly steered stall, dropped in a nearly vertical descent right into the center of the courtyard. It came to earth, noisily smashing through the lovely and delicate white trellis donated by the Benevolent Order of Rashidian Diamond and Precious Gemstone Traders, knocking over and irreparably shattering two fountains personally selected for the courtyard by the king’s much-revered and exceptionally pious late grandmother; snapping off two of the plane’s three landing gear struts; and turning its propeller into something that looked like it belonged in a Salvador Dali painting.
Just as the plane’s engine sputtered to a stop from a snapped fuel line, a second-floor awning loosened by a wingtip tore loose from its supports and tumbled into the ministry rose garden, crushing the roses that had been selected and meticulously tended by the minister himself, ruining them utterly. The plane’s left wing, severely jarred by the impact with the ground, chose that moment to break in half, the outboard section falling with a metallic clatter, smashing a third fountain, which until that moment had been undamaged.
Amid this chaos, Max managed to shoulder his door open and climb out of the aircraft, said door falling off its hinges and crushing a small cluster of ornamental ferns—a gift from the Prime Minister of New Formosa, lovingly transplanted from his personal garden 973.8 light years away. Just as Max got his feet planted on terra firma, a dozen of the king’s troops, led by a full major general, his sword drawn and blood in his eyes, burst into the courtyard and leveled their assault rifles at the unexpected arrivals.
“Surrender immediately or you will be shot!” the general shouted.
The absurdity of his situation not lost on him at all, and knowing no quick and accurate way to explain the situation to the general, Max fell back on the most basic military definition of the situation: he was a lieutenant commander newly arrived in the presence of a general officer. There was only one thing to do.
Max pulled himself to attention, gave the general his best salute, and announced in a booming parade-ground voice “Sir. Lieutenant Commander Maxime Robichaux, Union Space Navy, along with the Acting Union Ambassador, Dr. Ibrahim Sahin, here for our appointment with Mr. Wortham-Biggs. I believe we’re expected.”
“I must say, Captain Robichaux, that you do have a flair for the dramatic,” Ellington Wortham-Biggs observed. “You should remember, however, that such predilections are not always appropriate. You could very easily have gotten yourself and the doctor killed, not to mention severely damaging the ministry building, if not burning it to the ground. I am officially required to convey the extreme displeasure of my government with the means by which you chose to arrive at this meeting. My government reserves the right to seek reparations from yours for the rather expensive damage caused by this little adventure.”
Wortham-Biggs stirred his coffee with deliberate precision, his accent more perfectly British than that of any true Englishman. He took a sip, poorly concealing his disapproval of the taste. “As I said, the disapproval is official. Given your rather inventive solutions to prior problems, on the other hand, I was actually expecting something…what is the expression? Oh, yes, ‘out of the box.’ ”
He treated the idiom the way a fussy butler would handle a soiled diaper. “I do regret extremely, however, the incidents that forced you to engage in this adventurous behavior. You may be assured that the individuals responsible, including the emir, will pay a heavy penalty.”
Profoundly unconcerned with the emir’s fate, Max and Sahin sipped their subpar coffee. The three men were in one of the ministry’s many conference rooms, originally designed for trade negotiations. They were seated around a table for eight, roughly five times as long as it was wide, with places for three on each of the long sides and one more at each of the ends. Max and the doctor sat together on one side of the table, and Wortham-Biggs sat at the near end rather than opposite them as they’d expected.
Sahin had tended Max’s injury quickly, using the medical kit he had brought with him in his duffel. His ministrations had left Max’s face spotted in several locations with liquid wound dressing and bearing a 75-millimeter bandage on his cheek. For some reason, the injury seemed to have deadened Max’s sense of taste, or maybe the topical anesthetic in the wound dressing was seeping into his system and deadening his taste buds. In either event, the coffee seemed flavorless to Max.
Between the injury and the ebbing of the adrenalin from his borderline-insane piloting stunt, he was finding it hard to pay attention. He found himself wanting a donut. Or maybe a candy bar. Something full of sugar and utterly devoid of any known nutritional value. Max looked at his colleague, as if to give him a signal to get down to business. The clock was ticking. The doctor got the hint.
“Mr. Wortham-Biggs, as you can surmise, we received your ingeniously conceived message and have come, as quickly as we were able, in answer to it. When we last met, you did me the very great favor of speaking in a manner marked by directness and honesty. It was my pleasure to reciprocate in that regard. Given what my friend and I have just been through, and in light of the exigency of events, might I suggest that we consider our previous meeting a precedent and that we conduct our discussions here today in a similar manner?”
“My thoughts precisely,” Wortham-Biggs said. “Perhaps the most efficient use of our time would be for me to provide you with a brief summary of the relevant aspects of the political and dynastic situation in the Kingdom, and then present to you the precise proposal that we believe needs to be communicated by the most expeditious means to your government.” He inclined his head in inquiry. The doctor nodded his approval.
Wortham-Biggs smiled in gratitude. As though collecting his thoughts, he removed his gold pocket watch from his vest and unhooked the chain. Max could see that it was not, as he had expected, a “fancy” dress pocket watch of the kind carried by many gentlemen of the day. Such watches were like the pocket watches of old in appearance only: an antique-style gold case fitted with a laser-regulated, wireless network synchronized quantum chronometer that was never more than a few thousandths of a second fast or slow, moving old-fashioned watch hands in digitally calculated nudges around a “retro design” analog face.
This watch was not antique style but antique. It was an open-faced model, with each hour marked by an Arabic numeral, clear minute marks around the circumference of the dial, and a second hand that swept a small circle near the bottom of the face rather than the entire watch. The maker’s name, “Hamilton,” was printed clearly on the dial. The words “railroad watch” came to Max’s mind, for this was an Earth artifact made sometime in the last few decades of the nineteenth century or the first few of the twentieth. Max could not begin to imagine how much it would cost to purchase a four-hundred-year-old mechanical timepiece in working order and in such beautiful condition.
The man quietly wound the watch by turning a knob on the stem between his thumb and h
is forefinger, storing mechanical energy in a coiled metal mainspring inside the mechanism, to be released in tiny increments by the interaction of the escapement and balance wheel, precisely repeating the steps of their exquisite mechanical duet exactly five times a second.
Because Commodore Middleton had collected antique timepieces and talked about them endlessly, Max knew that railroad watches were meticulously tested and certified to be accurate to within thirty seconds a week, meaning that they measured the passage of time to an accuracy of one part in 20,133, without electronics or external regulation of any kind, and with no source of power other than a human thumb and forefinger supplying torsion to a delicate spiral of metal. It was the equivalent of measuring something a meter long to an accuracy of a twentieth of a millimeter, a few times the width of a human hair. As though recognizing the level of engineering achievement such a device represented when it was made, Wortham-Biggs placed it gently, almost reverently, on the table, face up.
“To summarize then. At the risk of sounding like a guidebook, I remind you that the Kingdom was settled by the Pan Arab Alliance shortly after the construction of Earth’s first jump drive ships, even before the Earth was fully unified. Our fifteen star systems with their twenty-five inhabited planets and moons, all packed into an irregular egg-shaped area less than ten light years across, formed a natural political and economic unit from the very beginning. We have always had a cultural and economic identity distinct from the rest of Human Space and, but for a few decades as members of the Confederation, have not been part of the great political systems that have ruled most of humanity over the centuries. Our current relations with the Union are friendly, but we are not allies with you in your war against the Krag or otherwise.
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 9