“No! Sir, get down!” Gerard paid no attention, but his pilot, younger and faster, tackled him just short of the grass verge. He hit the ground hard, furious . . . the snarling whine overhead much louder now, coming at him. Fear soured his mouth; he covered his head with his hands, realizing how useless that was.
His implant threw up visuals of the things—windowless, short-winged, unmanned—just before the flash of light, the noise, the blow of rushing air and debris that rolled him over and over on the tarmac, then the second flash, the second boom and roar much fainter.
He blinked, rolled to his knees. Gaspard gripped his shoulders; the pilot, already on his feet, was pale as cheese curds. Ahead, the office building was a mass of flames and roiling black smoke. And beyond, to the right, where the house, the comfortable home had stood—a column of flame and smoke.
“Myris!” he said. “San!” He wrenched free of Gaspard and ran to the office first because it was closer. He was aware of Gaspard running beside him, though he could not hear his footsteps through the roaring in his ears and the clamor of the flames.
Someone staggered out, ahead of him, and Gerard slowed to look. One of the clerks, white-rimmed eyes staring out of a smoke-blackened face. “What—?”
“Take care of her,” Gerard said to his pilot. “Call—” But emergency services for this end of the island were housed in the other end of the building. If they had survived they’d already be at work. “Call back to the town. Medical. Call the city—warn Stav—” Two more figures staggered out, one half carrying the other; Gerard moved toward them.
“You have the skullphone,” Gaspard yelled to him.
He blinked against the stinging smoke. Yes. He did. Mental fingers fumbling with the shock, he called his brother.
“Gerry?” Stavros answered. “What’s wrong—aren’t you coming in this afternoon?”
“Evacuate the building,” Gerard said.
“What?”
“Someone’s just dropped bombs on us here on Corleigh,” Gerard said. “Some kind of drone plane thing. Clear headquarters—they’ll hit there next.”
“I just got an ansible call about some trouble on Allway,” Stavros said. “Connections?”
A burning cinder landed on Gerard’s hand; he flicked it off. “Certainly. Clear the building, damn it.”
“I’ve already hit the alarm, Gerry. They’re going. It takes time, you know.”
They didn’t have time. He knew that, even as he closed on the fiery maelstrom and tried to steel himself to go in and help survivors.
“Put out an allsystems warning. Let our people know . . .”
“Right. On it. Are you all right?”
“I’m alive. I’ve got to get in there and see if San—”
“Gerry—don’t. Let the rescue squad—”
“It’s gone,” Gerard said. As the afternoon breeze pushed the column of smoke to one side, he could see that the bomb had hit on that end of the office building.
“Myris?”
“The house was hit. I don’t know. She was going out to swim after lunch; I pray she did.” If even the pool would be enough protection. And that still meant the household staff, cleaning up after lunch. He squeezed his eyes shut a moment, and said a short, fervent prayer. “Stav—I heard what you said. They’re leaving. You leave, too. Get in the bunker.”
“I will,” Stavros said. “When I’m through. I’m sending out the all systems warning now . . . all right. I’m leaving it to a volunteer, I’m moving.”
It was too hot, the flames burning his face meters from the fire itself. He had just remembered the fuel storage tanks for the emergency vehicles when the next explosion threw him off his feet, onto something sharp and hard, and the next three tossed more of the building his way, debris as effective as any other form of shrapnel.
He was just waking up when Gaspard and old George dug him out of the pile. His left side hurt with every breath. A rib, he suspected, or two. He coughed, and the pain stabbed deep. Smoke still billowed from the wreckage, but most of the flames had blown out . . . stubs of walls, spikes of unidentifiable framing members. With the survivors—pitifully few—he stared at the ruin. Somewhere in there was San, his only son onplanet. Surely dead . . . he turned away, unwilling to look anymore.
Gaspard stayed with him as he staggered toward the house. Here nothing was left but a hole in the ground; the gardens were covered with debris; a single flowering spray of luchis orchids curled up from beneath a window frame, still unwilted. They made their way around to the back, where parts of the roof had breached the garden wall. A mat of debris floated on the water of the big pool . . . shards of wood, sheets of paper, bits of cloth, fronds of jabla still pink with bloom, and wide leaves of the haricond like rafts, each with its own burden of grit and unidentifiable pieces. Some sank as he watched, as the wind ruffled the surface.
He was on his knees on the edge of the pool, mouth stuffed with fear and anguish, unable to call her name, unable to see. Someone was crying, someone was saying her name, someone’s hands were wet, the water stinging the burns. Someone was pulling at her shoulder, struggling to get her face out of the water, ignoring the red streaks turning pink in the dirty water.
And then he was lying back against someone, someone talking to him, and he could see her lying in the sun as it dimmed and brightened with the whirls of smoke blowing past. Water pooled under her, water stained red, and she did not turn her head to him, did not cry out, did not ask what happened.
Someone put a flask to his lips. He smelled the sharp edge of whiskey he didn’t want, but he sipped because his throat was dry and then nearly choked because it was raw, pain almost as sharp as that in his heart. He smelled clean earth and onions, and saw that the hands of the person he lay against were crusted with earth and a shred of green. A gardener. His mind seemed to float, slowly noticing, slowly combining what it noticed.
Then it all came together. Attacks. Explosions. The house and his wife gone. The office and his son gone. He had warned Stavros. He had to—he tried to sit up, and his ribs stabbed him again. The hands behind him helped, lifted.
“They’re dead,” he heard himself say. His ears still rang; his voice sounded tinny. “They’re all—who’s alive?”
Gaspard had the list. Soler, Tina, Vindy from the clerk’s section. Bonas, who had been in the toilets on the end not directly hit. Gaspard. Old George. All three gardeners. Little Ric, who had been sweeping the front porch and drive, and been blown into the ornamental grove of palms and jablas that the drive circled.
Everyone was watching the sky; he had to do something, start sorting things out.
“Water,” he heard old George say. “Gotta get some water first.”
“I’ll check the tanks,” said the gardener who’d been supporting him. “If you can stand, sir?”
He could stand; he had to stand; he still had people depending on him. “Go on,” he said. “Check the tanks. Thank you.”
Water. Shelter. Food. Protection from whoever had done this. Transportation. Medical care. He prodded his sluggish mind. Decisions to be made. Make them.
By the time the island’s town-based emergency evacuation system arrived, one of the survivors had already died. Gerard struggled to talk to the officials who arrived with the rescue squad. His ears still rang; he could barely stand, and they were asking him why the attack came, as if he knew. As if it were his fault. Why didn’t the fire/rescue service respond? Why were they housed in the office building anyway? Why had they put the reserve fuel storage underneath? Why, why, why?
His implant offered no answers, either. Who had done this? How had they done it? More aircraft arrived, full of law enforcement investigators, some he knew and some he’d never seen before. Someone brought a scorched chair, blown from the office, for him to sit in. Aircraft departed, taking away his injured employees. The afternoon passed; the hill’s shadow stretched across the airfield. Someone looked him over, advised hospitalization; he refused. His mind felt nu
mb, smoke-blurred, but he could not leave, not yet.
Then the parrot-squawk of a voice he knew penetrated the blur. “Get him out of here, you idiots. He’s a target.” The voice came nearer. “Gerry—Gerry look at me. Focus.”
She looked no less dotty than she had looked for the past twenty—thirty—years, her graying hair unruly in the late-afternoon breeze, her print silk dress, her strings of beads and jangling bracelets, but her eyes were bright.
“Gracie,” he mumbled.
“You look horrible,” she said. “Gerry, get up.”
“I don’t know if I—” But he was on his feet, supported again by someone’s shoulder under his arm, following the quick clatter of Gracie’s incongruous high heels across the tarmac. Pain stabbed his side with every step. “I can’t leave,” he said to her back. “Myris—San—the others—”
“They’re dead,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re alive. You need to stay that way. We need you, Gerry.”
A cold chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with his injuries. “Stavros?”
“Later.” And to his helpers: “Get him in, get that oxygen hooked up.”
He felt himself heaved up into the plane; pain so great he almost passed out turned his whole left side to white heat. He panted in his seat, let his eyes sag shut as he felt the cool flow of oxygen under his nose.
“Breathe,” he heard Gracie say. “And keep breathing, damn it.” He felt the craft vibrate under him, engines starting, the bumping of taxiing for takeoff sending knifelike flashes of pain through his side, his shoulder, and then the lurch as they took off.
“Where?” he asked, that one word exhausting him.
“Someplace safe, I hope,” Gracie said. He heard her sigh, a little grunt as she shifted in her own seat. “If there is such a place. We thought the headquarters bunker level . . .”
“Not?” he asked.
“Just lie still, Gerry. Nothing to do now but live till we land.”
“Don’t let them . . . ,” he managed. Then some salty fluid filled his mouth; he choked, swallowed, and nearly heaved it up.
“Damn,” Gracie said again, more quietly. He felt the oxygen mask pulled aside, and something soft wiped the corner of his mouth.
“Get the implant,” he said. His mind cleared briefly. Oxygen would do that. His implant, Stavros’ implant. Whoever had done this must not get the master database. “Gracie . . . take implant. Command database.”
“I know, dear,” she said. Dear? Gracie had called him dear? The same Grace who had once told him, when they were both much younger, that he would be on his deathbed before she would praise him?
“’M hurt,” he said, loathing the weakness and confusion in his voice.
“You are,” Gracie said. “We’ll try to get a doctor to you, once we’re safe. Not a hospital, so don’t exhaust yourself explaining.” She sighed again. “Gerry, Stavros is dead. Headquarters was hit; the bunkers didn’t hold. Someone knew enough about them.” He heard a high-pitched noise, something like metal on metal. “Someone wants to destroy Vatta, Gerry. You have to hang on.”
No doubt in her voice. He could do what she said, until she doubted. He breathed in spite of the pain, in spite of the weakness that crept up from his legs, the dark cloud that tried to cover him.
Questions remained. Who? Why? How?
Gracie Lane Vatta forced herself to ignore the medical team working on Gerard, forced herself to concentrate instead on the attack, on the methods and the meanings. Unmanned drones; the airfield’s security system had produced identifiable visual and internal data scans. Military weapons, and not a type used by Slotter Key’s own planetary forces, or so they insisted. Satellite scans had revealed the origin: Bone Island, an uninhabited, barren, rocky volcanic spur 430 kilometers east of Corleigh. Someone was—or had been—on Bone Island long enough to launch the drones. One of her contacts in the government was even now going back through scans from the previous days, to see when and how they had arrived. And—though she doubted this was possible—to find out who they were.
At corporate headquarters, the attack had been different, but equally devastating. Up from the utility tunnels below the city . . . boreholes to the foundations of Vatta headquarters, boreholes around the outside of the bunkers, bunkers reinforced to withstand earthquake, storm, even attack from atop and collapse of the building atop them.
But not explosives applied directly to the bunkers, to the sides, to the floors. It would have taken, at shortest estimate, weeks to bore those holes, place those charges.
Until this, she’d thought the worst threats to Vatta were the growing menace of pirates on the tradeways and possibly an assassination attempt against Gerard’s daughter Ky in retaliation for her actions in the Sabine conflict. She had just completed a report on piracy, which she’d planned to present to Gerard and Stavros sometime in the coming week. She had, weeks ago, alerted all senior staff to the increased possibility of assassination attempts. An attack of this magnitude had not even occurred to her, and she was furious with herself for not seeing it coming.
The aircraft they were in, escorted by Slotter Key military aircraft that did not make her feel as safe as she would wish, flew not to the capital but to her private residence near Corleigh Town. She had balanced the greater protection the government already provided to the capital with the vulnerability of several hours over open water . . . with the ease of tracking aircraft from space . . . with Gerard’s condition.
Who had done this? Why? And why do it this way, an open declaration of war not only against Vatta, but also against Slotter Key? What was the message here? Would there be more attacks, and when, and where?
Her implant, customized for her work, laid out for her the information so far obtained, in the usual matrix. What resources were implied by the choice of weapons, the choice of launch site. What conditions were necessary for the attack to succeed, what were the pinch points in the execution where it might have been frustrated. Which known enemies of Vatta or Slotter Key had such resources.
Working through the usual routine of analysis held off, for the time being, the shock she knew was hovering just overhead. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. These things didn’t happen in real life, to ordinary people. She knew better. She had seen war before; she knew its terrible thirst for death, for the destruction of beauty.
By the time the plane landed, she knew this attack could not have occurred without help from somewhere in the Slotter Key government. Her anger spread from herself and the attackers to that as-yet-unnamed traitor. Someone had kept Spaceforce from reporting a shuttle dropping from a ship in orbit, or someone had deep-sixed the report. Someone had kept the satellite surveillance from reporting that installation on Bone Island. Someone—someone here, within her reach—had connived at the attack, had wanted to destroy her family, her life.
Gracie Lane Vatta smiled to herself, a smile that old enemies, now long dead, would have remembered. The enemy had won the initiative. The enemy had caused great damage. No doubt the enemy was dancing or laughing or in some other way enjoying the triumph. But Gracie Lane Vatta would wipe that smile off the enemy’s face, stop that dance in its tracks, stuff the laugh back down the enemy’s throat. She could not do it all by herself, and her resources at present were limited. But at least the traitor or traitors on Slotter Key . . . those she could reach and those she would take care of, whatever else happened.
CHAPTER
TWO
The voice in Gammis Turek’s earbug said what he expected to hear: “—unexpected attack on our citizens. Outrageous. Can’t be tolerated—”
But they would tolerate it. They would do nothing effective, while pouring out torrents of words, because they knew what he knew, that they could do nothing. Their fancy Spaceforce, so shiny and proud, could do nothing because they had no way to operate outside their own system. Their privateers, so hated and feared, could do nothing because they had no command structure. Slotter Key had dealt with the res
t of the sector in its own way: arrogantly. A combination of cheeseparing caution—using privateers for outsystem operations cost less than funding a real space navy—and exuberant flouting of the rules, such as they were, that governed such uses. No other planetary system would come to their aid just because one of their richest corporations had suffered a terrorist attack.
Time for turnabout. Time for reversals. Time for Slotter Key to realize that, just like Vatta Transport, it didn’t have any recourse. It might be only a side issue in a greater war, but it was a side issue that gave considerable satisfaction to some of its allies. He didn’t doubt that in five or six years, the Slotter Key Spaceforce could be a force to reckon with, but it wasn’t now, and now was all that mattered.
“You listen to me,” he growled at the voice; it stopped in midword. “You will do nothing. The time has changed, and Vatta serves us well as a warning to others. Stay away from them. Give them nothing. Anyone near Vatta will fall in the same catastrophe.”
“But they’re our—”
“They’ve supported you and your party, of course we know that. They think you owe them something. Well, it won’t be the first promise you’ve ever broken.” Gammis had a list, in case it should become useful.
“But—”
“If you move against us,” Gammis said, “we will destroy not just Vatta, but Slotter Key, as well. We have the ships. We have the weapons. Ask your Spaceforce—go ahead. They’ll tell you. We have many allies who would enjoy seeing your presidential palace a smoking hole just like Vatta headquarters, who would be delighted if your people died of plagues or starvation.” He paused; the jittering voice in his ear said nothing. He let his voice soften. “And there is, of course, something positive to be gained by freeing yourself of Vatta’s trade domination. If Vatta takes the fall, trade will not be interdicted . . . it’s just that someone else will profit from their tik plantations . . .”
Silence continued. Gammis counted seconds. They would take the bait, but how long would they think about it?
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