Earthweb

by Marc Stiegler

  But CJ was leaping in the air even as the closer minitank swung its blade. The minitank was fast, but CJ was faster. The blade missed her leg by a fraction of an inch as she tucked, spun, and landed behind the robots. She snapped the spike into its sheath on her armor frame while she unholstered her pellet pistol.

  The robot that had swung at her was out of position and vulnerable, its back to her. CJ pointed the pistol at the floor behind the tank and pulled the trigger for a short burst. Three pellets hit the floor, ricocheted underneath the tank, and struck the robot in its unarmored belly. The minitank's four legs collapsed suddenly, its pair of arms waving in the air.

  The other minitank had already turned on her, and its blade-arm hissed through the air as it rushed her. CJ jumped back, but this time she was not quite fast enough. The blade struck her frame. A real Shiva blade would have shattered the frame and removed her leg, but this was a trainer, not an enemy, and the frame responded to the strike by bending CJ's leg at the knee. The frame locked her leg in this awkward position, simulating the loss.

  The minitank swung for another strike, but Akira was already firing his pellet gun, and this minitank stopped as suddenly as its brother had moments earlier.

  Morgan spoke, "Akira, lead. Double-time. Left wall."

  CJ once more swapped her gun for her staff, but this time she used the staff as a crutch. She trailed behind. Her exertion started to take a toll; soon her lungs felt like bursting. She hobbled along faster.

  Even with a one-tenth scale mockup the distance from the middle-ring to the ship core was four miles. Everyone had their suits set to carry only the weight of the frame to save power—everyone except CJ, who had to pump up the suit amplification, just to keep up. She watched the pressure gauges on her compressed air cylinders fall with alarming speed. A sinking suspicion took root that she would not make it. She, like all Angels before her, found herself wishing desperately that she could carry a real power pack and a full-sized fuel cell or two to drive electrical motors for the suit. But all the stealth technology in the world couldn't protect Argo from detection if the ship had even small chunks of ferrous metal on board. Electric motors were simply out of the question.

  Finally the arch of the Gate came into view. Three minitanks and four roboguards patiently awaited their arrival.

  "Lars, pellets, roboguards," Morgan said. Lars stepped to the center of the hall, lifted his pellet rifle, and started firing as CJ hopped passed him. Using the rifle against mere roboguards seemed profligate to CJ, but they only had to get past this one squad to win. MacBride undoubtedly knew what he was doing.

  "Lars, cease fire. Catch up. Akira, sweep right. Axel, left. CJ, pellets as the tanks turn."

  As MacBride predicted, one tank turned toward Akira and another toward Axel. The angle wasn't great, but CJ got a pellet into the belly of the one attacking Akira. Axel's left arm snapped up in a locked position as the minitank got in a blow. Akira popped Axel's assailant with pellet fire. And the third minitank swept its blade in a killing blow that CJ could not dodge.

  But instead of catching CJ in the abdomen, the blade ran into Lars' spike. The spike shattered, but Lars grabbed the robot's arm and with brute strength lifted the thing bodily into the air. Its legs flicked out to kick Lars a crushing blow to the ribcage, but missed as Lars slammed it onto its back. CJ brought her spike down into the thing's guts. It lay silent.

  "Axel, the acid."

  Axel dug out his gear with his remaining hand and sprayed the edges of the door with the blue canister. Lars trotted up with the extra explosives, which Axel applied with precise care. For a minute they stood watching for more enemies. The acid did its job, and then the explosives did theirs. Lars put his shoulder to the door and it went down with hardly an argument. CJ hobbled through the Gate into the control room, pulled out the air-fuel bomb designed just for Shiva control rooms, and pulled the pin. "Ta daaa!" she warbled.

  "Congratulations." Morgan rarely let his voice sound anything but level, but CJ thought she could hear a bit of satisfaction even from him.

  * * *

  Paolo sat down in the breakfast nook protruding from the kitchen. Actually, he considered the terms "breakfast" and "nook" a bit over the top. Was it really still breakfast if you sat down at the table at eleven a.m.? And could you really consider it a "nook" when it was a six-meter-wide room with a curve of glass constituting two of the walls? Well, his wife Sofia certainly considered it to be so.

  The nook was on the second floor and the windows overlooked the Yucatan jungle. Sipping his hot chocolate, he reached for one of the pan dulces naranjas thoughtfully put out by Rosa as a breakfast appetizer and scanned the surroundings. It was a beautiful day, and in the distance, it was a beautiful view. As his gaze traveled back to the landscape just beneath him, however, a frown formed on his lean, sharp features.

  A flurry of motion came up behind him. It could only mean one thing. Paolo held steady as the flurry kissed him on the cheek and said, " Hi, Daddy!"

  Paolo looked up at his daughter, trying to keep his adoration from showing. "Princessa, you still say 'Daddy' the same way you did when you were six years old."

  The Princessa, known to people other than her father as Mercedes Ossa y Pirelli, slid into the seat to his left. "Of course I do. It makes you so . . . malleable." She gazed at him with limpid innocence.

  Paolo laughed. The term "innocence" had very little in common with his twenty-one-year-old daughter, recently graduated from Stanford with a degree in arbitrage and a specialty in forecast specification.

  "What were you frowning at when I came in?" she asked after she took a sip of her coffee.

  He pointed down at the old driveway leading up to the house.

  "Ah," she said, immediately understanding.

  Their house had originally been built back at the turn of the millennium, when people traveled by road. The couple from whom they had bought the house had not kept the driveway up. Now the concrete was breaking apart as the philodendrons, driven by forces far beyond the powers of mere humans, slowly coerced their way back into their rightful habitat. In a couple of places Paolo could even see saplings taking root.

  Mercedes continued, "Still, I'm a bit surprised that it bothers you. Since when did you start caring about the landscaping?"

  "Oh, don't get me wrong. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. But your mother . . ."

  "Ohhh . . ." Mercedes' understanding took on new depth.

  "Indeed. Your mother is bound and determined to rip the whole thing out and replant it."

  Mercedes nodded. "It will cost a fortune, won't it?"

  Paolo threw up his hands. "You know how your mother does these things." He took a deep breath. "She's already coming up with some truly remarkable and creative landscaping ideas. It will be," he choked for a moment, "a work of art far beyond anything heretofore wrought by Man. Or Woman."

  Mercedes stared thoughtfully out the window, and bit into a sweet roll of her own as she pondered the implications. "You know, I think the driveway has a certain panache just the way it is. Don't you think it looks a lot like the ruins of the Castle of Kulkulan?" She turned her wide-eyed gaze upon her father once more. "Really, doesn't it have that same elegant, ancient look about it? Daddy, I think we need to preserve this monument for future generations."

  Paolo looked out upon the crumbling concrete with new eyes. "I think you're absolutely right, Princessa. I think it would be a shocking blow to our national heritage to remove this historic monument." The left side of his mouth screwed up in a cockeyed smile. "Umm . . . you think your mother will buy it?"

  "Not a chance."

  They laughed together.

  A high-intensity energy source flounced into the room. "Paolo!" his wife exclaimed, wrapping him in her arms and giving him a big kiss. She turned. "Mercedes!" she said, and repeated the performance with her daughter.

  Paolo watched his wife with bemused affection. Even though they were now pretty deeply into their forties, Sofi
a was an attractive eyeful. Other men might consider her platinum-blond hair a bit too much, but for Paolo it simply made a striking and beautiful contrast to her smooth copper skin. Other people might consider her too thin, but her oft-frenetic pace kept her physically fit and her shape remained well-sculpted.

  Sofia broke his reverie. "What were you two talking about when I came in?"

  Mercedes looked over at Paolo with a raised eyebrow. Paolo answered reluctantly, "We were, ah, conferring about the driveway."

  A clatter of plates announced the arrival of breakfast, carried in Rosa's devoted arms.

  "Excellent timing," Paolo told her. "Thank you."

  "Sí, Señor Ossa," Rosa replied brightly as she distributed the plates. Paolo received his traditional poached egg, Mercedes received her traditional two, and Sofia had one egg over-easy, with just a pinch of cumin and a sprig of parsley.

  Rosa departed, and Sofia muttered, "I'll have to tell that girl these eggs are somewhat overdone." She paused in her culinary examination and picked up the earlier conversation. "Anyway, the driveway just has to be cleaned up. I can't live with it any more the way it is." She looked her husband in the eye. "And it won't be very expensive, either. Besides, with Shiva coming, even if it does cost a little more than I expect, we're covered."

  Paolo felt a chill run the course of his spine. It made him a little queasy to make so much money from the Shivas. He didn't like having a reason to be happy about the arrival of a machine of pure, malevolent destruction. Was he just the twenty-first-century equivalent of the arms dealers of the twentieth century? Or did he have more in common with a pragmatic businessman who, having been given lemons, made lemonade? Surely he was the lemonade guy—but at moments like this he had to wonder.

  Paolo had grown up rich, and had been taught by his father to view his wealth as an obligation as much as a privilege. He'd studied economics, started a pair of very successful microlending operations—one in the depths of the Yucatan, one in the cities of Haiti. Then he'd won the contract to distribute the EDA palmtops south of Mexico City, part of the Earth Defense WebEveryWhere effort to upgrade the quality of its work force—namely, the whole human race.

  None of this had been wildly profitable, though, and Sofia's appetite for remarkable objects d'art like this house had imbued him with a slowly rising panic about their finances. No one in his family had had so much wealth locked up in real estate since his great-grandfather.

  The development of the forecasting markets—the " 'castpoints" as people now called them—in response to the Shivas, had changed this. He'd quickly found that forecasting was his destiny. Remarkably, it fulfilled both his desire to make a contribution to the world and his need to keep the bills paid. When Shiva came to town, the amount of money in the prizeboards and 'castpoints surged to astonishing levels, and no one made forecasts as wisely as he. So during the "Month of Shiva," as they called the twenty-odd-day period from the first Angel assault on Shiva to the second, their income always bulked up. The bad news, as his wife's comment just indicated, was that now Sofia assumed a big increase in their income, and compensated by expanding her spending plans.

  Ah, well. The truth was that even Sofia could no longer really dent the family's financial position. She ruthlessly drained the household account down to empty, but that was mostly just interest on the business account. Paolo needed a lot of capital to work the 'castpoints, and he had it. Indeed, he had a rather staggering amount of capital, more than anyone, even himself, truly appreciated. So the work on the driveway was really of no consequence. Really. He shook himself, forcing himself to remember just how much difficulty even Sofia would face to really spend the family into debt, even with great creativity and insight.

  Mercedes cleared her throat. "Who's that, Daddy?" She pointed out the window.

  Paolo followed her hand. "Sofia, were you expecting anyone?"

  Sofia did not look up from buttering a biscuit. "No, dearest. Why?"

  "Because someone is landing." Paolo frowned out of the window as the dark blue car descended onto their landing pad.

  * * *

  Morgan watched the Angels as they watched the instant replays. Everyone sat quiet and still, totally focused on the screen—except for CJ. Her hands danced to a tune of their own, and her whole body periodically writhed. Morgan finally realized that this motion was part of her concentration; she was playing out the actions of the people on the screen. CJ was so supercharged that the energy poured out—like a nuclear reactor driving its generators even when unneeded, just to avoid meltdown.

  On the screen, CJ once again cut around the corner, clobbered the roboguard, and turned to the minitanks. Morgan paused the recording. "This was the first and only real surprise in the setup."

  CJ muttered, "You mean the multiple robots, or do you mean minitanks on a Shiva II mockup? I did expect more 'bots 'round that corner. But," she confessed reluctantly, "I didn't expect minitanks."

  Morgan bit back the cutting reply. Too obvious. Go straight to the point. "Never go around a corner without my directive. Unless of course it's unavoidable."

  CJ smiled wryly. "I guess I can't really plead it was unavoidable, can I?"

  Morgan grunted. "We have to accomplish several goals in these easy training runs. We must work out our mutual understanding. You need to know what it means if nothing is being said, whether you should move with speed or caution. But I also have to learn your capabilities. Each of you has remarkable talents." He watched them as they sat just a bit more proudly. "Which just makes you typical."

  He pointed a finger at CJ. "Truth be told, CJ Kinsman, you are incredibly fast." He frowned. "Impossibly fast. Since our recon triangles were all gone, that corner was a danger no matter what we did. Had I known your speed, I would have ordered you to take that corner."

  "I'm that good, huh?" CJ leered at him.

  He glared back. "I'd still expect you to get killed. But you'd make hash out of the enemy position. And that close to the control center, I'd accept the loss."

  Solomon gave her gravelly African Gray parrot-chuckle and said, "No lose CJ." She whistled a few chords from the Godspell number, "Could We Start Again Please?"

  Morgan gave the bird the same glare he had just turned to the Angel Leader. He turned back to the team. "I've got to learn to use each of you to the fullest advantage, just as you must learn to react instantly to my commands." Since coming into the room, he'd been holding a wired chunk of duodec explosive quietly in his lap. Now he tossed it to CJ. "Press the button," he ordered.

  CJ stared at the duodec, looked back at Morgan, and asked, "Really?" Her thumb rose over the button.

  Morgan frowned in dismay. "I can see we have a long way to go." He forced the frown from his face; he knew he frowned too much. He held out his hand, and CJ gingerly gave the bomb back to him.

  They played out the rest of the tape. Only Roni escaped a battering discussion of his mistakes; as recon, Roni had performed a miracle by surviving for three-quarters of the distance.

  "Not bad," Morgan summed up at the end, "but not great. You took the most effective weapons Earth Defense has devised. You faced a very old Shiva. We saw one little surprise: the minitanks near the end. Most of you handled that surprise well enough for a first try."

  Morgan noticed that he was subconsciously avoiding CJ's eyes, and he forced himself to look at her. She smiled back with that bright winning radiance that filled her, and he swore silently to himself.

  Christ, it was hard enough sending guys like himself off on this mission. Why in hell did the next assault leader have to be a woman? And a remarkable one at that.

  Thinking about her fate, seeing her die in his mind's eye, he once again felt the manic impulse to get out of the room and never come back. He squeezed the arms of his wheelchair with all his might and did not move at all—an act that took all of his formidable will to achieve.

  She still smiled at him; he continued to consider her. Truly, she had no discipline. She did not respond
to commands like Bill Whitaker. But when he got down to it, she was better than Pavel Solovyev had been when he arrived. And Solovyev had turned out pretty well. In fact, Solovyev had turned out to be great . . . but not great enough. Of course, that hadn't been Pavel's fault. It had been Morgan's.

  Morgan could feel the tension gripping his back again as he walked again amongst the tombstones in his mind. The parrot on his shoulder could feel it too; Solomon started grooming him, a futile attempt to calm him down. Morgan spoke. "Live weapons practice commences at 0200."

  Morgan rolled his chair into the corridor, wanting only to escape the pressure of his own emotions. Suddenly a shadow passed directly over his head. A gust of air announced the passing of a hurtling body, and CJ appeared before him, using the same trick she had used on the minitanks.

  Morgan laughed. "Please remind me never to play poker with you."