Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  A heavy hand pressed on Gretchen's chest and her fingers cramped on the control stick. The pressure spiked, crushing breath from her lungs and then lifted as quickly as it had come. There were two sharp flashes outside the canopy and the walls of the cargo pod flew away into a suddenly bright abyss. Gretchen felt her gut clench and the curving horizon swung past.

  An enormous expanse of ruddy desert filled her field of view, then the horizon swung up like a hammer and she saw the stars glittering in velvet. The roof of the pod blew away, then the remaining walls. Rushing air shrieked through the web of netting holding the Midge to the floor of the pallet. Gretchen choked, slammed by another massive jerk. The parafoil deployed above her, snapping out in a four hundred-k wind. A giant unseen claw snatched the pallet and the Midge skyward.

  She grayed out, head smashed back into the shockfoam. The horizon jerked from side to side, then stabilized. The parafoil—hundred-meter wingspan barely dragging in the nearly nonexistent atmosphere—and the pod dropped precipitously toward the distant surface of the planet. Panting, Gretchen came around, groping for the stick. In about five seconds she knew ...

  BANG!

  The last set of bolts blew out, flinging the metal floor of the pod away. Now Gretchen had her hands on the stick, both feet on the pedals and the Gagarin's onboard comp was awake. The aircraft plunged toward the vast desert below, but the parafoil was keening, catching a little air. Gagarin's sensors tested the air rushing past and saw the retaining harness had gone the way of the walls and floor. Accordingly, the wings stiffened and began to extend. By design, they unfolded from the core of the Midge outwards, each new section conforming to a rough lifting body. The Gagarin's plummeting descent slowed, air thickening under the parafoil with each passing kilometer.

  Gretchen watched the control panel with wide eyes. The structural integrity indicators were going wild. Wind howled through the frame of the ultralight and she could see black, jagged mountains looming up below. Only moments before they had seemed so far away, now she could pick out peaks, ravines, tumbled fields of splintered boulders.

  Caught in some unseen current of the upper air, the Midge swept across the mountains, wings deploying centimeter by centimeter. For a moment, with everything seemingly under control, Gretchen checked her navigation panel. The chipped, yellowed glassite showed her a swiftly moving terrain map. Two glowing green diamonds sped across stylized mountains and plains. The comp on Hummingbird's Midge was still responding to broadcast position requests. Good, she thought, I haven't lost him. Not yet.

  Her own comp beeped imperiously, dragging Gretchen's attention back to the ultralight. Both wings were fully extended to catch the steadily thickening air and the comp-controlled lifting surfaces were desperately trying to account for the drag generated by the cables connecting the Gagarin to the parafoil.

  "Time to fly," Gretchen said, flipping a switch beside her left hand. There was another, barely noticeable jerk as the support braces for the parafoil separated. Without the drag of the Midge's weight, the curving wing sailed off into the blue-black heavens. The ultralight plunged, yawing from side to side before the control surfaces had time to adjust. Both wing engines ignited and Gretchen felt the stick shiver alive in her hand.

  Whooo ... The Midge arced away across the mountaintops. Anderssen's eyes gravitated to the tracking display. Hummingbird was spiraling down toward the surface eighty, ninety k away to the northeast. A moment later Gagarin banked onto a new course, a tiny pale fleck poised between the dark immensity of the Ephesian sky and the splintered wasteland below.

  THE CORNUELLE

  A jerky, timelagged image flowed across Hadeishi's panel. He could make out the top of an ultralight—seen from orbit at long range, interpolated first by the sensor suite on the Palenque and then by the military-grade system aboard the Cornuelle—flying under its own power. The captain allowed himself to be impressed with the Anderssen woman's audacity. He was entirely familiar with Hummingbird's skill as a pilot, but he hadn't expected the archaeologist to hurl herself into such vigorous pursuit.

  "Deftly done," the captain mused. His earbug was filled with outraged chatter from the Marines on the Komodo-class shuttle. Fitzsimmons, in particular, was expressing himself at great length and without professional restraint. Hadeishi dialed down the channel before he overheard something which would require overt action on his part. The momentary delight he'd felt at Gretchen's survival was fading, replaced by a nagging sensation of looming trouble.

  Not trouble today—both ultralights were under power, on course and far beyond his power by any measure—but trouble in the future. He frowned, eyes narrowing in thought, quick mind leaping ahead to the presumed reactions of higher authorities. How to report this? And why is she following him?

  The scientist had a perfect right to use Company equipment, so there was neither theft nor malfeasance in her use of the shuttle or the ultralight. There were no local traffic control restrictions, so her near-orbital insertion and flight were entirely allowable. Unfortunately, Hadeishi was sure the nauallis had logged a directive to place the planet off-limits as well as ordering the civilians to depart. The captain doubted the nauallis would fail to notice another ultralight following him—his panel made Anderssen's course perfectly clear—and the old Náhuatl was bound to react explosively to her disrespect.

  Does that matter? A quiet voice much like his father's intruded on his thoughts. Will the judge return to the land of living men? If he does not raise his voice to trouble the mighty, no harm will come to her. If you say nothing, then nothing will have happened. If the planet takes them both, who will know she disobeyed his orders?

  Hadeishi felt rising discomfort at the prospect. Hummingbird's departure—with only a single aircraft and minimal supplies—was rash and Anderssen's pursuit rasher still. Uncomfortable at the thought of leaving them both to die, the chu-sa tapped up the archaeologist's service record. He skimmed through the educational certificates, notes from the Mirror about her political reliability, reports from her various supervisors. After a moment he grunted, lost in thought. She is not without experience in such a place, Hadeishi allowed. Anderssen, in fact, had logged more hours in z-suits, in hostile environments, than the judge had. Hummingbird will be surprised.

  The thought filled Hadeishi with bleak amusement and his mood lifted. That would be a fine tale to hear, he chuckled to himself, should either of them live to relate the particulars.

  "Sho-sa Koshō?" The exec looked up. The end of the duty watch was fast approaching and Thai-i Gemmu had joined her at the secondary command station, preparing for changeover. Susan's face had a familiar pinched expression. Gemmu—though he was a loyal and dutiful officer—did not quite match the exec's rigorous expectations.

  "Sir?"

  "Shut down the comm feed from the Palenque and dump all transmission logs—raw and processed—to my station."

  Koshō stared at the captain for a long moment—even a fraction longer than was polite—then abruptly nodded her head, fingers moving on her panel. Hadeishi saw the transmission begin and tapped in his own series of commands, dispatching a horde of system dorei to scrub all records of the transmissions from the Palenque, the voice and video log of bridge chatter and any other accumulated telemetry from the Cornuelle's memory. This required more than one override and Hadeishi became acutely aware of Koshō's continuing and entirely impolite stare as he worked.

  After a moment there was a soft chime in his earbug, indicating a private channel had been opened from the exec's station to his.

  "Yes?" Hadeishi kept his tone light, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

  "Kyo—" Koshō stopped, unable to bring herself to voice a question. Hadeishi smiled inwardly. Aboard an Imperial warship—even more so than among the rival navies of Anáhuac in the centuries before unification—the commander held absolute and unmitigated power. A captain's orders simply were not questioned by his subordinates. Hadeishi was keenly aware of this tradition�
�constantly reinforced from the highest levels of the Fleet—often led to tyranny and abuse, but in this tight instant of time he was glad for the shield.

  "Nothing, sir." Koshō shut down the channel. Hadeishi did not look at her, knowing the usually proper officer would be struggling to contain embarrassment and chagrin. Showing any awareness of her near-insubordination would only make matters worse.

  Hadeishi's panel made a polite chiming sound, indicating the dorei had finished scrubbing the logs. The chu-sa felt a little uneasy for a moment, but then put the entire matter from his mind. Long experience with such unpleasant events allowed him to shut his own memories away into a quiet, discreet box.

  "Duty watch reporting," Gemmu announced to the bridge. Hadeishi nodded, looking up at last. Koshō was already gone and the second watch officers were taking their stations.

  "Thank you, Gemmu-san." Hadeishi said, shockchair unfolding as he stood up. "You have the bridge. Hold current course, thrust and emissions control level."

  "Hai, Chu-sa!" The junior officer's response was crisp. "Have a good evening, sir."

  NEAR THE STONESPIKE MASSIF, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. EPHESUS III

  Choppy wind gusted across a basin striped with long, low dunes. Veils of dust and sand streamed toward the west, casting watery shadows on the floor of the valley. Gretchen felt the Midge shake and rattle as she banked into a landing approach. The engines whined as the ultralight angled into the wind Through cloudy, pitted glassite, Gretchen could just make out the long scar left by the shuttle crash. Most of the skid—which had seemed so sharp and dark in Magdalena's video—was gone, wiped away by blown sand. A few bits of scattered metal remained, glinting in fading sunlight. The main bulk of the wreck was visible off to her left.

  The Midge labored through the turn, coming into the wind, and her airspeed sank like a stone. Gretchen blinked sweat out of her eyes, gritting her teeth as she lined up for a landing. Ahead on the windswept plain, she could see the shining gray shape of Hummingbird's ultralight and a dark speck beside the aircraft. Yeah, a single thought burned, I'm coming to visit, old crow.

  Gagarin wobbled down, battered by the gusty wind, and Gretchen tried to keep her hand from clenching tight on the stick. Flight comp was burning cycles at a ferocious rate, trying to keep the nose up, the wings aligned, and the overheated engines from shutting down. The busy little processors didn't need her trying to wingover into the deck and smash them all to tiny bits. A rumpled red quilt of thumb-sized pea-sand rushed up. Gretchen felt nauseated, her eyes glued to the altimeter. Numbers spun down to single digits. She tweaked the stick forward, popping the nose up, and there was a screeching jolt as the tires hit the ground.

  The Midge shuddered, bouncing twice, then three times. A gust caught the ultralight from the side, slewing the back wheel around. Gretchen corrected, nearly blinded by sudden sweat, her hand moving in molasses. Dust plumed behind the aircraft and she feathered the brakes. Terrible high-pitched squeals answered, but the ultralight jounced and quivered to a standstill. Anderssen exhaled, staring at the looming mass of torn and blackened metal filling her field of view.

  A figure in a z-suit emerged from the shadow of the broken shuttle, wind snapping dun-colored robes tight against a stocky, compact body. Gretchen let both engines wind down and the Gagarin settled into loose sand. Her arm trembling, she reached down to unlatch the door. As she did, the Midge shook in a fresh gust of wind, lifted a meter, then slammed violently down again. Anderssen gasped, breath knocked from her lungs, and put differential power to the engines. Obediently, Gagarin spun in place, nosing back into the wind. Gretchen locked the brakes, then waited, fingers light on the stick.

  Another gust rolled across the sand, rushed over the ultralight and the whole airframe shook, lifting off again. The Midge jounced back five, ten meters.

  "Oh, Mother of God!" Gretchen cursed, feeling queasy. Bile bit at her throat. "We're too light!"

  She shot a glance outside and saw the suited figure squatting in the minimal shade of the other aircraft, which was tied down in a pentagonal pattern with sand anchors.

  "How the hell did he—" The Midge bounced again, caught in a fiercer blast. Sand rattled on the canopy and a string of warning lights flared on. Number two engine had just taken a shot of grit right into the intake. "Sister, help me!" How did he land and have time to put out anchors with positive buoyancy? Wait—ah, idiot, idiot, idiot!

  Gretchen slapped the lifting surface controls. Two hydrogen pumps woke up with a gurgle and began to evacuate the wing tanks. As gas compressed into pressure tanks behind the seat, Anderssen turned on the motors to retract the wings. Despite her best efforts, the Gagarin continued to bounce backward, leaving her a hundred meters from the crash by the time the wings were locked back into storage position, and the Midge was no longer so excellently airworthy.

  Grunting under the weight of two sand anchors, Gretchen clambered down out of the pilot's chair, her goggles on, suit zipped up, one end of a heavy tan and white djellaba across her face. The footing was poor on such heavy gravel, but she paid no mind. Her muscles remembered what to do, how to walk, how to lean just so into the gusting wind. She labored toward the wreck, twin monofil lines spooling out behind her.

  The squatting figure under the other Midge did not stir, watching with interest as she drew even with him and fired both anchors into the sand. Five minutes later, the winch on the Gagarin was in operation and the ultralight approached at a walking pace, bouncing and hopping across the rough ground. Gretchen squatted herself, her back to the wind, the control for the winch cupped in one gloved hand.

  Gretchen secured the last of the tie-downs and stood up, feeling her back creak. No substitute for planetside exercise, she thought with a groan. Both aircraft lay in the lee of the broken shuttle, cowering in a tiny space protected from the constant wind. Anderssen turned, hands busy rewrapping the heavy scarf around her face and shoulders to protect her breather mask and the relatively sensitive gaskets and equipment around her neck.

  The suited figure stood as well, face hidden by goggles and mask. Gretchen could see the suit was a little worn, the shine of newness long gone, and there was a suitable array of tools strapped onto the man's body. She guessed he'd put in plenty of hours in hostile environments, but the drape of his djellaba and kaffiyeh was poor.

  "Well," she said, clicking open the groundside channel, "thanks for helping me tie down."

  "Were we on ship," the voice had a little buzz around the edges, as if his comm gear were already suffering from dust, "I would have you incarcerated, or shot, for disobeying a direct order."

  "You might," Gretchen said, her voice brittle with fatigue and too much adrenaline, "but I'm not an Imperial officer. I'm a civilian. I even have a permit to be on this planet. I checked—you didn't have time to file the proper forms and paperwork to revoke our exploration rights."

  "Amusing," Hummingbird replied and she could hear an edge of weariness in his voice. "But I will not argue the point. You were foolish to come down here. What did you hope to achieve by following me?"

  "You," Gretchen said sharply, "have something of mine. I want it back."

  Hummingbird turned fully toward her. "What do you mean?"

  "The cylinder. You had Fitzsimmons and Deckard take the artifact from number three airlock and stow it in your quarters. That object," her voice rose, "is Company property and my personal salvage. I'll be expecting you to return it to the lawful owner—me!—upon our return to the Palenque."

  There was a moment of silence, then the nauallis laughed softly, a breathy, echoing sound on the comm link. "You . .. you came down here to beard me about a chunk of shale?"

  "Limestone," she replied. "Compressed limestone strata containing a verifiable First Sun artifact—a knowledge storage device, in fact—which—praise the Son—is duly and legally logged as the evidence and dig-claim of xenoarch Anderssen, Gretchen Elizabeth, company employee number 337G4. My property. Not yours. Not the Imperial government's."<
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  "I see." Hummingbird rubbed one hand across the back of his head. "You have me—and this is rare, Anderssen-tzin—at a complete loss." His hand came back into view with a small, snub-nosed pistol which steadied in such a way as to provide Gretchen with a fine view of the muzzle. "But I believe you are suffering from a psychotic reaction due to the overuse of stimulants, excessive fatigue and the psychological effects of exposure to said First Sun artifact. Now—turn around and clasp your hands behind your head."

  "I am not psychotic," Gretchen said, remaining entirely still. "I suggest you consider the fuel capacity of your aircraft, your stated mission, and put the clever little gun away."

  Hummingbird's aim did not waver, which showed commendable strength to Gretchen's mind. She could barely stand, her arms and legs cramping from the physical stress of landing. "My mission," he said, after a moment, "is none of your concern. Indeed, your presence here makes an already precarious situation even less tenable."

  "I don't agree," she said. "And I'm going to sit down."

  The gun moved as she did and Gretchen sighed with relief to be squatting. Her arms were shaking inside the suit and the three-times-cursed medband was still locked out. Stupid, stupid machine.

  "So," she said, cocking an eye at the eastern sky, which was noticeably darkening. "You haven't shot me yet, which I'd have expected from a flint-hard Imperial judge. I am a little surprised."

  "If you expected to be shot, why did you follow?" Hummingbird squatted himself, the gun having already disappeared into some pocket or holster hidden on his suit. "I doubt the Palenque's bigeye is sharp enough to pick us out down here. I could make your body and the aircraft disappear very quickly. No one would ever know."