Jian took a deep breath.
Jian grit his teeth and exhaled through his nose, hard.
The link dropped before Chao could finish his sentence. Not that he needed to. Jian knew what his father was trying to say. Just, given the circumstances, he had some trouble believing it.
Jian put the thought out of his mind. All the Buran’s engines showed green. For a bird that entered her third century decades ago, she was in excellent health. A testament to the skill and dedication of the maintenance crews who even now were probably staring slack-jawed at their displays while Jian stole all of their hard work.
Without a moment’s reflection or hesitation, Jian firewalled the throttles. With only Jian aboard and very little cargo in its hold besides the nuke and a few weeks’ worth of food and water rations, the Buran took off like a shot from a gun. Jian’s body pressed into the back of his chair at six gees, seven, eight, going from eighty kilos to more than five hundred in seconds. As it cleared the parabolic blast shield at the aft end of the Ark, Jian began another countdown.
The Ark was a massive beast of a ship. And like any beast, its teeth were housed inside its head. An array of navigational lasers, each powerful enough at full-output to burn a meter-wide hole through an iron asteroid, studded the front of the ship. For two centuries, they had been used to clear the path ahead of the ship as it barreled through deep space at five percent lightspeed. For the last eighteen years, they’d been busy clearing the space around Gaia of orbit-crossing meteors and other proto-planetary debris.
And as soon as that head spun around to face him, Jian was as good as charcoal. Unless he could blind it. The only drawback to the Ark’s immense size was its ponderous rate of movement. It would be eleven minutes from the moment the captain gave the order to burn the Buran out of the sky until it was in position to fire. This wasn’t normally a problem with asteroids they could see coming from months or even years away, but Jian wasn’t a normal problem.
Nor was his solution. After ninety-three seconds on full burn, Jian cut thrust to zero. The elephant sitting on his chest stood and wandered away. He took two deep, gasping breaths to clear the stars from his vision, then unstrapped and headed for the cargo hold.
“Crazy, Jian. This is stone fucking crazy.” He snapped his helmet visor closed as he gazed down at the nuke sitting in its transfer cradle. Jian grabbed up the remote detonator and hit the cargo bay door release. Above him, the bifold doors peeled back, exposing the black of space and the milky arm of the galaxy beyond.
Hurriedly, Jian unbuckled the tie-down straps holding the nuke fast to the deck until it floated gently a few centimeters off the plating. Five minutes twenty left. Too close, much too close, he thought as he lined up the bomb’s front with the Ark behind him. He needed the nuke’s destructive blast cone pointed squarely back at the Ark and the hell away from his shuttle. With immense care not to impart any rotational inertia, Jian gave the case a gentle push out of the cargo bay. He watched it go for five, ten, twenty seconds, until he was sure it wasn’t going to spin back around on him.
Satisfied, he hit the toggle to close the doors and returned to the fight deck where he strapped back into his chair. An external camera feed confirmed that the package was still floating in the proper orientation. Two minutes ten until his goose was cooked.
Angling the Buran’s aft slightly off-bore to keep the package out of his exhaust plume, Jian firewalled the throttles again. He needed to put space between his shuttle and the bomb. The further the better. Fifty seconds.
Jian tried to lift the detonator in his right hand, but it felt like trying to lift a shuttle by himself. Reluctantly, he backed off the throttles, down to five and a half gees. Just enough that the detonator budged. With great effort, he inched it upwards where he could punch the code into its keypad with his other hand. Why they hadn’t just linked the damned thing into his plant network was beyond his reckoning. Thirty-five.
The detonator display went green, confirming it was armed and ready to send the signal that would convert several kilos of plutonium into fire and fury.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Jian pressed the button.
Twenty-One
“Hey, Kexx,” Benson wiped at the dust from the tunnels that had accumulated on his forehead once they were alone outside again. “Where did you say Sco’Val came from on the road network?”
“Pukal. Ze was a frequent member of their trade delegation during harvest time.”
“Yeah? They make paper in Pukal?”
“Why yes, some of the finest. Their craftsmen have mastered the pressing process, and the wetlands surrounding their village grow ideal plants that fail to take root everywhere else they’re planted. No one knows why, but their paper is highly sought after for scrolls and the like. How did you know that?”
“Just a hunch. I–”
High above them to the east, a bright flash in the evening sky shone like the birth of a new star. Everyone froze and looked up at the sight.
“What the fuck was that?” Korolev asked.
“Nuke,” Theresa answered. “Had to be. A meteorite would streak through the atmosphere, and nothing else would be powerful enough to be seen from orbit like that.”
“That was the Ark,” Korolev said, not even trying to hide the fear in his voice.
Benson shared it. For a Gaia-shattering moment, Benson thought someone had finally accomplished what David Kimura had tried to do almost twenty years earlier. A quake went through his knees at the thought. His head swam, and he thought he might be sick.
A call broke through Benson’s plant without ringing.
Benson looked past the young man’s face suddenly floating in his vision and to his wife, who wore a similarly perplexed look.
“Are you seeing this, too?” he asked. Theresa nodded, as did Korolev. It was a mass announcement, then.
Feng’s boy continued.
Jian’s image paused and ran a hand through his raven hair before resuming. cape by temporarily blinding the Ark’s targeting sensors with its EM pulse and fallout. This will, hopefully, buy me enough time to get clear of the Ark’s navigational lasers before they incinerate my shuttle. Don’t worry, the Ark herself is undamaged. I have also taken steps to prevent anyone else from completing this mission either, not until Varr’s orbit brings it back within the range of our shuttles in several weeks.
As Chao’s son finished his pirate broadcast, Benson knew in the pit of his stomach that in the coming years, everyone would look back at this as the moment all hell broke loose. Theresa and Korolev’s faces wore the same exasperated, slack-jawed expression Benson felt as they stood around the entrance to the Atlantians’ secret tunnel network.
So, he hadn’t hallucinated it. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better.
“Oh, fuck…” Theresa’s voice trailed off as her hand covered her mouth.
“Seconded,” Korolev said.
“Do you suppose that went up on the local network screens, too?” Benson asked.
“I think we have to assume it did if he managed to rig it into the entire plant network. That’s a clever hack job.”
“Then word’s going to get out among the Atlantians pretty quick.” Korolev tightened his grip on his rifle. “We shouldn’t stick around here for long.”
“What is the matter?” Kexx asked on behalf of zerself and Sakiko, who was also without a plant. “The three of you went blank for a while. Well, more blank than usual.”
Benson decided to give zer the condensed version. “Chao Feng’s kid just hacked our network and publicly announced he’d been ordered to drop a nuke on Varr without an OK from your people.”
“That is… problematic,” Kexx added, in what would likely turn out to be the understatement of the decade.
“No shit. He said he’s refused the order and stolen the shuttle to keep it from happening until everyone can sit down and talk about it. That flash was the nuke. He blew it up to cover his tracks.”
Sakiko laughed. “Of course he did.”
“Why do you say that, Sakiko?” Theresa asked.
“I know Jian. He hates his old man. Something like this was bound to happen eventually.”
Benson’s teeth ground against each other. Here he stood cut off on the surface, smack in the middle of a powder keg of terrorists, restlessly aggrieved natives, and his own missing child, and the Gods decided to throw a match on it in the form of a nuclear-tipped father/son dick-measuring contest in high orbit.
Could this week get any better?
“Honey, I think you should activate your reserves,” Benson said.
“How many of them?” Theresa said after a moment’s composure.
“All of them.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“Are we sure that’s wise?” Kexx broke in. “We’ve just heard from the Bearer with No Name, and zer biggest concern was too many human constables patrolling the Native Quarter. If you send fullhands more deadski…” Kexx caught zerself before finishing the epitaph. “Forgive me, friends. I don’t know where that came from.”
Benson slapped zer on the shoulder. “It’s fine, cuttlefish. You were about to say that sending even more deadskin constables out in force is just as likely to trigger a riot as prevent one.”
“That is the thrust of my spear point, yes.”
“Well, I don’t know that you’re wrong, but what else can we do? Not showing up will be seen as a sign of weakness and will invite a riot just as surely. Unless you have a few dozen trained Atlantians hiding in your, er, pockets?”
Kexx grimaced. “That’s just the thing. I could have, but I turned down Kuul’s offer to send zer personal fullhands of warriors along with Sakiko and me. Now, I really wish I hadn’t.”
“So do we all,” Korolev broke in. “But let’s express our regrets on the move, OK? Less talky, more walky.” His posture righted. “Sirs,” he said, remembering himself.
Benson shrugged his shoulders. “He’s not wrong. Let’s de-ass the area with the quickness.”
“What about the bomb?” Theresa asked.
“Oh, shit, I forgot.”
“You forgot about the bomb?” Theresa scolded. “How does a man who’s been blown up twice forget about a bomb?”
“It’s been a long couple of days, OK honey? Somebody just set off a nuke. I was distracted. How quick before the bomb techs get here?”
Theresa’s eyes unfocused for a moment as she consulted her plant. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe more if they start running into resistance.”
“We have to wait, then, and secure an egress for them.”
“Call up a quadcopter,” Korolev said. “Just fly the damned thing out once they’ve disarmed it instead of trying to walk it out of here under guard. Take it straight to the station house. Put it down right on the roof.”
“That’s a good idea, Pavel,” Theresa said. “I’m calling up the airfield now.”
Benson found his eyes tracing along the narrow alleyway, checking the angles, looking for heads peeking around corners, hanging laundry fluttering, drapes being pulled back in windows, anything that would give away impending danger. They’d been down in the tunnels for more than an hour. Benson knew how tight knit neighborhoods like this one could be. Even without plants, he’d bet a real meat dinner that everyone within five blocks knew they were here, that there were only five of them including Kexx, and that there was only one rifle between them.
If there was ever a perfect time and place for a mob to overrun them, it would be then and there. Benson hated himself for thinking about the Atlantians in his city, their city, in such a way, especially with his dear friend Kexx standing not a meter away from him. But things had been evolving in Shambhala for years already. Looking around at the grime, the weeds, and the foundations of buildings already cracking from being built too high and too cheaply, Benson knew they’d failed to manage that evolution. They’d ignored the Native Quarter, told themselves comfortable lies about the Atlantians knowing how to fend for themselves while ignoring the compounding squalor. It was their world, after all. Nevermind that they were an ocean away from everything they’d ever known, and had been asked to live under rules written for humans.
If this news from the Ark brought things to a head, Benson wouldn’t even blame them for it. He just wanted to get his weird little family clear before the carnage really got underway.
The bomb techs arrived without incident, either because word about the proposed violation of Varr hadn’t penetrated as far and as fast as Benson had feared, or because the Bearer with No Name had made it known that it was in everyone’s best interest to grant them safe passage until the bomb was disarmed and removed. Personally, Benson figured it was even money.
They made short work of the bomb, which was not an assessment against its maker, only the limitations placed on them by available materials.
&nbs
p;
The tech nodded.
Benson looked at Theresa and smiled.
She nodded.
A sudden rush of air came from overhead as one of the city’s electric quadcopters swooped into position just above the residential towers. The cockpit bubble was empty, being flown as it was by remote, both to save weight and to keep a pilot out of danger while it hauled the device. A Rescue & Recovery winch hung from beneath the central fuselage and quickly played out some thirty meters of cable and dangling orange harness straps.
They had the device winched up in a couple of minutes and ready to lift away. Theresa gave the controller back at the airfield the green light to dust off. Their care package would be waiting on the roof of the Station House under armed guard by the time they got back.
Getting back was the more immediate problem. The quadcopter’s arrival and sudden departure had brought out the curious. Within moments the streets filled up with dozens of Atlantian onlookers. Then hundreds. Some of them held improvised clubs, rocks, or even crude cooking knives in their hands.
Children of the Divide Page 26