by Ben Bova
"Speaker Niles…" He turned to the other. Although Adela knew he favored the Westlander's cause, Montero's voice and manner of speaking remained the same as when he had addressed Salera. "You want only to bring the two halves of your world together, united in a common goal. I grant you your wish, as well."
A puzzled expression washed over the Westland Speaker's face. "But… but how?" Niles asked plaintively. Montero didn't mute him.
"Because," he replied, his voice taking on a deadly serious tone, "we feel that your forces are far superior to those of Eastland's. Officer Kyovska?"
"Sir." The Weapons Master stood, hands clasped at the small of his back, and addressed Niles. "Because of the effectiveness of their first strike against you, and because they now control a major portion of the pressure-tap network, the Eastland Guard has a tremendous advantage over your forces. However, during our brief period of cooperation, we were able to determine the full extent of your own Congressional Guard and find you to have a number of advantages. Westland's greater size and population, for example, have enabled you to draw from a greater pool of personnel for the Guard. Your industrial facilities received more severe damage during your big quake than did those of the opposition, but were rebuilt with higher technological standards than the older, existing facilities in the east. Further, your troops are greater in number and better trained than those we've monitored in the east. We've run several hundred simulations based on the statistical strength and tactics exhibited by the opposing forces, and have found that Westland will ultimately achieve victory."
"Thank you, Master Kyovska." The officer retook his seat and Montero regarded the two Speakers again. "Please understand that the loss of life in this conflict will be tremendous, far exceeding anything Pallatin has experienced as a result of all its natural disasters combined."
Salera raised a hand to speak. A nod from Montero and the muting for his transmission was canceled. "I don't accept your projections," he said, keeping his voice low and controlled. "Nor do I believe you'll merely 'wait around' in orbit until such time as we've defeated the Westland forces."
"Speaker Salera," Montero shot back, "at this point, I don't much care what you believe."
The room fell into a deep, stunned silence.
Adela felt her stomach twisting in knots. The idea of a quarantine had been hers, but Montero was eager to put it into effect as a perfect compromise to using force to bring the frontier world into line with the Empire. But the idea was hers, and the full realization at the implications, the potential destruction and loss of life, weighed heavily upon her.
"Please understand something." Adela spoke softly, but in the sudden quiet following Montero's words her voice reverberated in the room, and she felt sure of herself as she spoke to the two men. "Our project will take centuries, and will impact the lives of more people than could fill a hundred Pallatins…" Her eyes met Niles', and she quickly looked away. "I regret this, all of this, but we'll wait it out. I'm sorry."
Niles sat stolidly and gripped the armrests of his chair so hard that his knuckles went white. Someone appeared fuzzily at the edge of the image and he attempted to wave him away. There was an audible whispering too far out of his system's pickup range to be understood. "Not now!" he barked, then thumbed his audio off as he dealt with the interruption. He spoke for several moments, then restored his audio.
"I'm sorry, too, Doctor." He stood up wearily and regarded Montero. "I guess there isn't much more to say, then, is there?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I've just been informed that tremors have been reported near the Taw encampment. There may be injuries. Excuse me."
He reached a shaking hand to the control stud on the armrest, and his image winked out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"Can I help you with that?"
Amasee Niles had difficulty hearing the young soldier as he called from the front seat. He stopped fumbling with the restraining harness and adjusted the volume on his helmet comm, all the while trying to ignore the weight of the ungainly thing on his head.
"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you," he shouted unnecessarily into the curved mouthpiece, then returned to the tangled mess of straps crossing his chest.
The soldier from the front section, his shoulders hunched over to negotiate the restrictive cabin of the four-man supply hopper, came back to his seat. The Guard Corporal was a mere boy, surely no older than his son Clint.
"Let me help you with that, sir." The Corporal deftly pulled the harness across Niles' chest, clacking the catches and pulling the loose ends of the straps taut for him. "How's that, sir? Too tight?"
"No, it's fine. Thank you."
He smiled and climbed back into the copilot's position, and Niles heard the sound of the boy's own harness being secured.
Niles leaned back, making himself as comfortable as he could in the cramped cabin. The craft had been designed mainly for short-range transport of shipping crates and supplies for commercial purposes, and the four seats forward of the cargo compartment—two crew positions and two passenger—felt as if they'd been added as an afterthought. At least, the two passenger seats did. In truth, the original cabin had been stripped and reoutfitted with smaller accommodations to allow for additional equipment when the craft had been adapted for military use. The rear seats were redesigned as gunner's positions, but all weaponry had—on his personal order—been hastily stripped from the hopper for this trip. Niles absently fingered the mounting holes left behind when the starboard gun was unbolted from its spot below the glassless window.
Except for an occasional word or two between the pilots, the cabin was quiet; the constant vibration of the engines, on standby while they waited, was the only sound. Although the two soldiers in the pilots' positions were volunteers, they were clearly nervous about this flight, and chose not to talk. The cabin seemed empty without the usual chatter Niles had grown accustomed to when being shuttled on congressional business.
The sun was nearly overhead, and he sweltered in the confines of the tiny space. Once under way the rush of air through the cabin would cool it sufficiently, but for now the scant breeze left sweat trickling down his scalp beneath the helmet. His back, securely harnessed against the plastic of the seat, was soaked through.
"Sir?" The pilot, a young Sergeant with the name "Ponde" stenciled on his helmet, had twisted around in his seat. "The truck's here."
Niles turned in the indicated direction and saw the supply truck speeding toward them over the concrete. It slowed as it neared and looped around so it could back up to the hopper's opened and waiting cargo bay. The truck pulled to a halt a few meters from the hopper and two uniformed men jumped out of the cab. They opened the rear doors of the truck and climbed in, then directed the driver the rest of the way to the open hold. Over the soft humming of the standbys he could hear them moving about in the hold as they unloaded the truck. There wasn't much to transfer, he knew, and the hold was sealed quickly, with the truck pulling away after only a few moments.
As the truck disappeared across the concrete, Amasee said, "Anytime, Sergeant."
Sergeant Ponde gave him a thumbs-up, then nodded a silent "Good luck" to his copilot. He spoke a few words to the base controller, and they were on their way.
The hopper lifted quickly, smoothly, with the engines making little more sound than they had on standby. They flew in an exit pattern to the takeoff lane of the facility, then held position a hundred meters over the concrete, the hopper facing due east. From this height, the foothills lining Arroyo were easily visible several kilometers away, although the fault itself was still too far to be seen. Both Ponde and the copilot turned to him expectantly.
"The course is in?" Niles asked. A nod of confirmation. "All right, then. Let's go."
The engine whine climbed to a higher pitch and he felt himself being pressed back into the gunner's seat. His eyes stung, and he pulled the helmet's tinted visor down to shield his face from the wind now rushing into the cabin. With armaments stripped and minimal ca
rgo, Niles realized, the hopper would reach top speed in only a few moments.
He reached for the small case on the seat next to him and set it on his knees, balancing it there as he flipped the latches open. He fingered the control pad of the portable comm set inside, activating the small system. "Sergeant, I'm cutting the internal two-way." The pilot nodded over his shoulder and Niles flipped a switch, cutting the static-filled signal he'd been listening to for the last half hour. Touching a few more buttons brought a quiet, breathy carrier signal into his headphones. Tied in now to the main communications station at Newcastle, he tapped in a short sequence of numbers and a voice quickly came on the line.
"We're ready, Speaker."
This is it, then, he thought, staring out the window at the landscape passing rapidly underneath. He let his eyes scan the eastern horizon, where Arroyo was just now coming into view.
"Put the call through."
"Something's happening down there," Montero said.
Adela and Woorunmarra, called to the Commander's office moments earlier, sat wordlessly and waited for him to continue.
"We've been tracking a Westland aircraft—a small shuttle or supply hopper—since it crossed Arroyo about a half hour ago. As far as we can tell, it appears to be on an approach pattern to the Joint Dominion Capitol."
"A sneak-in of some kind?" Woorunmarra asked.
"Doubtful. Anything fissionable would be scanned immediately, and it's too small to be carrying much of any other kind of threat. It could be carrying biologicals, but that's unlikely. It would be easier and more effective to launch something like that ballistically."
"How far into Eastland is it now?"
Montero glanced once at his terminal screen. "About a hundred fifty kilometers."
Woorunmarra sat straighter in his chair. "But… why haven't they been shot down? Are they flyin' too bloody low to be detected, or shielded somehow from ground-based monitors?"
Montero shook his head. "No. In fact, they seem to be purposely flying an easily detectable course. They're holding at a steady altitude and flying on a direct heading with no deviation at all. Whatever they're up to, they seem to want to be seen."
"Have you attempted to contact Speaker Niles?" Adela asked. "Or has he been in touch with you about this?"
"I've tried to reach him, but he is 'unavailable at this time.' Whatever it is he's doing, I'm not entirely sure his full staff is aware of it." Montero pivoted his chair away from the terminal, pulling at his moustache with thumb and forefinger. "We have intercepted a communication from the aircraft; it's on a coded signal, however, routed to Eastland through Newcastle."
"Coded?" Adela said, puzzled. "We should be able to break most of the military codes by now. What does linguistics make of it?"
"That's just it." Montero reached for the terminal and spun it around so the two of them could see the screen. "It's not a military code at all."
"Wait a minute…" Billy leaned forward, peering intently into the screen at the gibberish scrolling across its surface. He raised a questioning eyebrow and Montero nodded. The Lieutenent crossed to the desk and tapped a fingertip against the screen, causing a sequence of numbers to enlarge and redisplay themselves in a window at the bottom. "Look at the prefixes. That's a diplomatic code sequence." He stared at the screen a few moments longer, then tapped once more on the glass, freezing a second set of numbers which also reappeared in the window. He retook his seat, nodding in apparent understanding.
"I recognize those two sequences." He pointed at the terminal. "I should; I've used them enough times in setting up calls to Niles and Salera. I haven't a clue as to the rest of what's there, but this is a direct line they've set up between them. A 'hot line.' "
"My God," Adela breathed. "It's him. He's on board the craft himself."
Montero sat quietly, considering this for several moments, then swung the terminal around and jabbed at the keys, saying, "I want a class-three combat shuttle prepared immediately."
Adela glanced at Woorunmarra and, seeing that he was as stunned by what the Commander had requested as she, jumped to her feet. "But we can't," she almost pleaded. "A military strike would be a violation of our own quarantine."
The Commander stood, fastening the top button of his uniform, and crossed purposefully toward the door. It slid open at his approach. "Don't worry, Doctor," he said, turning back. "I don't intend to violate anything or anyone. We're going down as observers only, fully shielded. They possess no weaponry that can breach the shielding on a class three, at least none that can safely be used in the vicinity of the Capitol."
He exited the room, then stopped in the corridor and turned back. "Well, are you two coming or not?"
"Have us scanned again, then!" Amasee yelled into the helmet comm over the rushing wind, and stared out the window at his elbow.
They had an escort now.
Two fully armed fixed-wing aircraft had appeared from the south and now rode along at a discreet distance from the starboard side. A larger hopper, easily three times their size, shadowed them on the other. He couldn't see it, but he knew there was another craft somewhere above, and behind, them.
The two pilots watched the aircraft that boxed them in but remained calm, concentrating their efforts on flying the hopper and staying on course without alarming the escort in any way.
"I have," Salera responded finally. His voice was incongruously low and measured in his headphones; but then, he was sitting in an office or command post, and not flying squarely within the targeting sights of four armed aircraft. "But what does that tell me? You're carrying no weapons-grade fissionable material, and judging from your speed and power output you seem to be flying empty, or nearly so. Why should I trust you?"
The Westland Speaker turned at a sudden sound. Another aircraft, a fifth, passed noisily over them and took position several hundred meters in front of the hopper. Its guns, he saw, had been rotated to bear on them, and a sudden high-pitched beeping from the command console told him that yet another missile had been locked on them.
"Why shouldn't you?" was his response. "What possible threat do I pose?"
There was a long silence. "Stay on your present heading until you reach sector…" He paused, then, "… two-two-nine. Your escort will conduct you then to the military base at—"
"No! I'm landing at the facilities at the parkade!" He caught himself, forcing his emotions back down. "We have to meet at the Capitol. What I have to say is official state business and will not be conducted at an airstrip."
Salera waited a full minute before replying. "All right, then. I've just given an order for the landing area to be cleared. Follow your escort down and land where they indicate."
"Thanks, Kip."
The other's response was immediate. "Do not deviate from the flight pattern. If so much as a stray gust of wind moves you a meter off course, you'll be incinerated before you know what happened."
Niles looked to the two pilots in front of him. He had patched the private communications channel into their comm panel when the first of the Eastland aircraft had appeared, allowing them to hear what was being said. He owed them that much. Ponde turned to him and nodded, a reassuring smile on his face.
"Do you understand, Niles?"
"Yes. I understand."
The combat shuttle Kestrel fell out of the sky unchallenged by Eastland forces and landed to one side of the circular parkade in front of the Capitol. Immediately upon touchdown, the shield was modified to a dome that securely covered the shuttle while it rested on the surface. Montero had informed Speaker Salera personally of his intentions to observe whatever was about to happen, and had requested a landing spot be cleared for them. Salera had balked, of course, but relented when convinced that he had little choice in the matter.
Adela and Woorunmarra rode out the landing in the Commander's post, and watched what was happening on the several viewscreens whose cameras had been trained on the parkade.
The area looked considerably different, s
he noticed, from when she and Billy had attended that final session of the Joint Dominion. The parkade had been a virtual garden then, but bore little resemblance now to the splendor it had once possessed. Where before stood row after row of flowering trees and rolling green lawns, a military encampment had sprung up. Temporary housing and headquarters had been placed in the area surrounding the landing field now occupying the largest part of what had once been an enormous park and gathering area centered in the roadway that circled in front of the Capitol building itself. A landing surface that extended for several hundred meters in each direction had been put down and little, if any, plant life remained.
"Here he comes."
Montero's words brought her out of her reflection and she turned to the screen he was watching. The Westland hopper was coming in, slowly and carefully, flanked on either side by Eastland craft. The three ships settled on the landing surface at the same time, kicking up clouds of dust.
"I want to go outside," Adela said forcefully, prepared for an argument. The Commander surprised her, however, when he nodded and rose, leading the two of them down the shuttle corridor to the embarkation ramp located on the lower level. He selected two armed guards for each of them and gave the order for the ramp to be lowered.
The dome of the shielding was nonpermeable, allowing no breeze to penetrate it, and a wall of heat met them as they descended the ramp. She looked at the sun hanging in the late afternoon sky and was grateful they'd changed into their hot-weathers before leaving the Levant. She walked to the edge of the shield, accompanied by Montero and Billy, and stood quietly as the scene unfolded not far from them.