Polian said, “No, sir, you don’t. And thank you.” But what he thought of was what the interrogator had said before the abortive attempt to torture Born, the killer. A job ninety percent finished was only half done.
It occurred to Polian that the interrogator had probably interrogated dozens of imposters who had been unmasked as Illegals, then executed. No warrant was required to subject any Yavi to interrogation, just like the interrogation that had been conducted on the woman, so long as the crime under investigation was serious. No crime was more serious than unauthorized birth. Technically speaking, Polian was duty-bound to follow up his suspicions about Gill. He had the authority. He had the means. He certainly had reasonable suspicion. It was the right thing to do. After all, Polian’s father had spent his life tracking down suspect Illegals.
Yet the suspect had recently been more a father to Polian than his own had ever been.
As it had during Polian’s long journey back from the Arctic, the profane notion that a man should be judged by what he made of himself, rather than how he had been made, abraded the edge of Polian’s conscience.
Gill’s hand lay on Polian’s shoulder armor. “I’ll take care of things. The downshuttle’s on schedule to land tomorrow, take on cargo, and take off within an hour. I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble.”
Eighty-six
We thundered north in our peculiar Trojan horse of a train all night. Nobody came out and waved at us. But then nobody came out and shot at us, either. Maybe that was because nobody on Tressel had ever seen a horse.
More likely it was because a half hour after dark it began to rain buckets big enough to drown Troy. In these, the good old days of warfare, before Doppler radar and satellites, weather wasn’t a planning element, it was a blind date.
Kit and I stood, swaying, side by side on the troop car’s back platform, clutching the railing in front of us, as rain rumbled off the platform’s steel roof.
A lightning flash lit the rain-slicked sailcloth covering the two tanks on the flatcars behind us. The thunder rumble came two beats later, and another flash cracked down before the first rumble died.
It was eight a.m. Tressia time, though the storm made it look like midnight. The train was two hours away from our objective.
Kit snugged her oilskin jacket around her throat, leaned toward me, and shouted in my ear. “This is great, if it holds!”
I nodded.
Historians of warfare hold that awful weather favors the defender. They hold this even as they write about all the complacent defenders who got creamed when they were attacked under cover of awful weather.
Kit pounded my shoulder and pointed at the sky to our left. A wedge-shaped shadow tipped by winking red navigation lights slid down through the cloud ceiling and was immediately backlit by lightning. The shadow flashed across our path, showed two dots of orange engine exhaust for a blink, then vanished again, in the direction of the landing strip outside Tressia. It left behind a roar nearly as loud as the storm itself.
Kit said, “Shuttle.”
I shouted back, “So when Lockheed says all-weather, they mean all-weather? Maybe they won’t be able to take off with the stones and we can all go home.”
She shook her head. “Landing in this crap is the hard part, not taking off. I’ve gotten one of those old heaps off the ground in worse than this, and the Rand can fly circles around me. ’Course what a pilot can do if she has to and what she will do if she’s prudent are different. Like they say, old pilots, bold pilots. But no old, bold pilots.”
“Game on, then.”
One hour and fifty minutes later our engineer shut the train off. Ten minutes later the train coasted slowly, and as silently as two hundred tons of steel can roll, through the unabated storm and came to rest with just a pinch of brake squeal alongside a house row two hundred yards longer than the train, that blocked us from line of sight from the shuttle strip.
No curious faces appeared at the windows of the houses. No Tressen or Iridian outpost sentries marched the walks in front of the modest homes. The row was deserted.
The weather was good luck. The empty house row was good planning.
From the handle of every door on the row hung a drenched red quarantine ribbon. Our good friend the physician had, at the request of the rebellion and at great personal risk, quarantined and cleared the house row on the grounds that it was a deadly cesspool of influenza. It was even money that he wasn’t lying.
We stripped the tarps off the tanks within three minutes. Then my crew and I clambered aboard tank one while tank two’s crew did the same.
Compared to a modern tank, an old crawler interior’s a regular concert hall. Even a Trueborn-tall type like me can almost stand up in most of it, and the biggest usurper of open space is the engine. It’s bigger than an upright pipe organ and sits smack in the middle of the main compartment, as if the organist were about to take center stage and play a solo.
Starting a hovertank, or even a 2000s vintage crawler, is easier than starting a family four-place. Switch on, push a button, and the turbine sings.
Starting a Mark V or a Thunderer, however, was more like playing chamber music with sledgehammers. My staff sergeant began the process by priming each engine cylinder with local kerosene. Then he and three other crew members stood, grimacing like a row of galley slaves in a synchronized dead-lift contest, rotating a long crank like they were twisting the engine’s tail. As tank commander, I switched the magneto on and off while they cranked, and exhorted them to greater efforts. This division of labor normally continued until the engine finally fired. Sometimes command isn’t such a burden.
After two minutes of unrequited cranking, my staff sergeant shook his head and panted. “ ’S no good in the wet, sir.”
Plan B in case of high humidity involved wrapping a pinch of gun cotton, which was a low-grade explosive, in a kerosene-soaked rag, then lighting the rag with a match. The burning wad was then thrust inside one of the cylinders in the hope that the engine caught before the uniform and hair of the person who did the thrusting burst into flames.
This job fell to the tank commander. We were under way in no time, and I only lost an eyebrow.
I took up my position in an iron box top-center, while my staff sergeant drove from a position in another armored box that stuck up above the tank’s nose. Four of the crew operated the two side cannon and four machine guns while two more worked the gears and engine.
Outward visibility was through slits left at various spots around the tank. On clear days visibility was abysmal. In that day’s driving rain, it was worse.
Once we got both tanks started, off the flatcars, and idling nose to tail alongside the train, I waddled forward, then hand-signaled—they didn’t call it the Thunderer for nothing; interior conversation was impossible when the tank was running—my sergeant that I was going outside for a final meeting with the leader of the infantry platoon that our tank would lead into battle.
Kit and her platoon had formed up behind my idling tank. Celline’s platoon would follow behind tank two.
I pulled Kit by the elbow away from my tank’s bellowing exhaust, then pulled her close and yelled, while rain sheeted down, “Remember, keep it closed up behind us.”
She nodded. “No bad guys on your back, no machine-gun fire on our front.”
“Okay. Let’s do this.” I nodded and turned.
But she caught my arm and spun me back to face her. “After this, don’t look back for me, Parker.”
“I know. I have a job to do.”
“No. Because if you did look back, I might be afraid to do my job. Too afraid I’d lose you again.” She grabbed me by the webbing straps that ran from my shoulders to my belt, pulled me close. Then she kissed me as though it was the first and last time, while rain cascaded over us and peals of thunder shook the ground. It sounds erotic, but between the ammunition pouches, first-aid packs, trench knives, and pistols we were each wearing, I couldn’t even tell if she had b
oobs.
Then she was gone, back to her platoon.
Despite instructions, I watched her walk away. Then I ducked back through one of the tank’s side hatches, in the rear of the left sponson, weaseled past the engine on my right and the six-pounder cannon’s breechblock and its cannoneer on my left, and twisted myself into the commander’s seat.
I peered out through my forward peephole and jerked a cord that I had tied to my seat frame. It ran the ten feet forward that separated me from my driver and was tied around his bicep. He glanced back over his shoulder when he felt the tug. I signaled, and Thunderer One lurched forward into the storm.
Eighty-seven
Polian stood, wearing Tressen battle dress uniform and a belt-holstered needler, in the vast, rolled-back doorway of the shuttle hangar. He stood, one leg angled to accommodate his new walking cast, and stared out past the parked shuttle and into the rain beyond.
Water poured in pencil-thick cascades through a thousand leaks in the hangar’s vast dome roof and wound in ankle-deep rivers across the stone floor. A puddle had formed at the base of the cargo-loading ramp that angled down beneath the great shuttle craft’s upturned tail assembly. The storm was apparently so hard and so general along the continent’s eastern seaboard that it had knocked out the telegraph lines that the Tressens used to communicate with the occupation forces in Iridia, even though those lines ran underground, in the railroad’s roadbed.
A figure strode down the shuttle’s ramp. The shuttle’s pilot wore a characteristic Rand full beard and black coveralls that stretched across broad shoulders. The man reached the ramp’s base, leapt the puddle, and walked to Polian. “We’re loaded and fueled. ’Puter forecasts a weather break in an hour. And an orbital matching window from right now ’til noon.”
“You’ll take off in an hour, then?”
“We’ll take off when it’s safe. That may be in an hour. It may be at midnight. Is there a hurry, mister?”
“Major.”
The pilot waved his arm at the open hangar door, at the distant revetment and barbed-wire perimeter barely visible through the rain. “We’ve never had this circus here before.”
“The Iridian rebels have become more active recently. I think you’d be well advised to take off as soon as possible. Our cargo could be in jeopardy.”
“Mister, I care about your cargo. It’s my job to care, and I really do. But I care more about my ship. The Iridian rebels may be a myth. Wind shear out past the end of this runway is no myth.”
“You’re saying you can’t take off?”
“I’m saying that my ship’s safer here at the moment”—the pilot pointed at the clouds—“than up there. The moment that changes, I’ll be off this rock before you can tap dance on that cast of yours.”
Gill walked up to the two of them, hands clasped behind his back and smiling. “Captain Berger! Wet enough for you?”
The pilot shrugged, half smiled at Gill. “We’ll see.”
“Sir!” A Tressen private ran to Polian, stopped in front of him, and saluted. He held out a handtalk. “Something going on beyond the perimeter.”
Polian frowned, snatched the receiver, and held it near his ear. Gill stood close and listened. Polian spoke. “This is Base One.”
“Outpost Six reports. The machine shows something inbound.”
Polian rolled his eyes. The “machine”? Outpost Six was manned by Tressens. There weren’t half enough Yavi to go around. “Be more specific, man!”
“There’s two of them. Tractors or trucks or something. They’re barely moving.”
“Range?”
“Twelve hundred yards.”
“They’re tanks!” Another voice, this one with a Yavi accent, broke in.
Polian recognized the voice. “Mazzen? Are you looking at a sensor display, or do you have visual?”
“Both, sir. They’re old crawlers, but their turrets have been removed. We’ve got indicators of a platoon-sized infantry unit tucked in behind each of them.”
“Infantry? Is anyone shooting?”
“Uh. No, sir.”
Polian touched his chin. A Tressen farm tractor resembled a tank without a turret. “It could be locals demonstrating for influenza vaccine. There’s a quarantine site out beyond OP Six.”
Polian rather hoped it was a demonstration. Skimmers and needlers were designed to control unruly civilians. Though neither Yavet nor Tressen had spawned much in the way of civil disobedience over the last few decades.
Gill whispered, “Ruberd, I gave you this show, and it’s yours to run. But do you think you should send a pair of skimmers out past the wire to probe them? Just in case?”
Polian realized that the normal skimmer patrols out beyond the wire had been suspended after one crashed into a sensor array in the rain. He called over the soldier who had fetched him the handtalk. Polian pointed to the hangar’s far wall, where twenty skimmers were parked, two in ready-reserve status with crews strapped in place and side-mount needlers loaded. “Corporal, tell the two ready-reserve skimmers to slide out to OP Six and challenge some inbounds the post has identified.”
Ping.
The Rand pilot thumbed his ’puter. “What’cha got, Mr. Sciefel?”
The pilot’s ’puter squawked back at him. “Hole in the weather, sir. For the next twenty minutes. After that, we’re socked for four hours, guaranteed.”
The pilot scratched his beard, then turned to Polian. “Is there any chance these things your people are seeing may endanger my ship?”
Polian shook his head. “None. We’re a thousand strong. This demonstration, or whatever it is, involves a hundred people. You’re one hundred percent safe in here.”
The Rand pilot spoke into his ’puter. “Heat ’em up, Mr. Sciefel. No time to wait on a tug. We’ll power out.”
He spun on his heel, but Polian caught his arm. “Captain, if…if these so-called tanks with no turrets do turn out to be a threat, that runway is in the line of fire. You’re safer in here for a few minutes.”
“I’m sure you know your job, Major. But I know mine, too. I intend to have my ship gone, out of harm’s way, long before your ‘if’ turns to ‘when.’ ” He strode away from Polian, up the ramp, and disappeared.
Whuummm.
Polian turned toward the sound that echoed in the hangar so loudly it was audible above the rain’s rumble. It was the two ready skinks. They had just popped off the stone floor, and now wobbled while their drivers trimmed them. He caught the eye of the lead driver and waved him to slide the skink over. The second followed en echelon.
Polian motioned the trooper in the right-hand seat of the lead ready skimmer to dismount, and took his place. Polian had to lift his cast leg up and over the flank armor, but then he was in.
“Ruberd?”
Polian turned and realized that Gill still stood there and had reached out and touched the younger man’s sleeve.
“Yes, General?”
“You know, if this is enemy armor, it could present a meaningful threat.”
“Sir, with respect, I doubt it. But that’s why I’m going out there to see for myself.” Polian nodded to his driver, and the skink slid out toward the rain.
Booom. Booom.
Polian jumped a fraction of an inch in his seat. Ahead of the skimmer the great bells of the shuttle’s engines glowed orange and shuddered as the big ship came to life. The engines’ thunder half drowned the hydraulic whine as the shuttle’s loading ramp rose and sealed the shuttle’s belly.
Polian smiled, a witness to history. The magical stones, now hidden throughout the cargo in the space plane’s hold, were about to embark on the next leg of their journey to free Yavet from Trueborn domination.
The second skink slid alongside them, and Polian’s eyes widened when he saw a flash of silver gray in the right-hand seat. The old moustache was coming, too. Was it because he didn’t trust Polian? Polian frowned when he realized that the mistrust in the relationship now ran precisely the other way. Polia
n had concluded that the slight old man who had befriended him would have to be killed, on suspicion of the crime of having been born.
Polian reached up and snapped his goggles down over his eyes, just in time, as the open skink slid out from beneath the great protective umbrella of the hangar’s dome roof and a torrent of rain blinded him.
Eighty-eight
For the first three-fourths of a mile after Thunderer One and Thunderer Two clanked out from behind the cover provided by the quarantined row houses, I kept waiting to be slammed by a cannon round, or at least to run across a patrol, either on foot or in a Yavi skimmer. But it didn’t happen. I supposed it was possible that we did run across a patrol but passed in the downpour without seeing or hearing or smelling one another. Most likely, though, the Tressens and the Yavi had suspended patrols due to the weather.
For us inside Thunderer One, it seemed that no one else could miss us. We couldn’t see much through our slits, but we were wider than a mag-lev and nearly as long. The engine roar and vibration that left us deaf and battered surely outshouted the unabated thunder. Also, the mixture of one-hundred-twenty-degree internal temperature, unvented carbon monoxide, kerosene exhaust fumes, and the vomit that the combination of the above had already provoked from the right-side cannoneer, would alert anyone who got within sniffing distance to our presence.
As unpleasant and dangerous as it was to be route-marching behind us in a chill maelstrom, I would have preferred to be out there in the downpour with Kit.
Ping-ping-ping-ping.
At two hundred yards out from the perimeter wire, even though we couldn’t see the perimeter emplacements that were four hundred yards from us, we began taking fire.
At first the needler rounds just sounded like tinnier rain against the hull. But even after we recognized them for what they were, and as we came close enough that they became an incessant hail against our forward plating, they were as ineffectual as pelting us with handfuls of jelly beans.
Undercurrents Page 25