by Kate Elliott
Landfall hung, a brilliant blue against the void of space. At her first sight of it, Lily had wondered if it had any land at all, but it rotated to reveal two irregular masses that seemed-scarcely larger than islands, isolated in so much water. Even after living on Arcadia, where she had in any case seen no larger body of water than a lake, she still could not imagine an ocean, much less a planet whose surface was over ninety-five percent water. Callioux had mentioned that there was land besides the two land masses optimistically called continents, but they were a scattering of islands strewn across the vast sea.
Lily shuddered. She studied the vaguely rectangular continent on which the city named—aptly, she thought—Scarce had grown and presumably flourished. As she turned away from this view, the tac officer’s voice came alive in her wrist-com, calling the countdown to strike. At least Scarce was not on the coast, but on a plateau in the center of the continent.
She met the others in the shuttle bay. In the space between two shuttles, Jenny stood arguing with Yehoshua. Gregori, tears bright on his face under the glare of harsh light, clutched at his mother’s waist as if he meant never to let go of her.
“—we don’t have enough people,” Yehoshua was saying as Lily walked up to them. Behind Jenny, Aliasing sat on a crate, dressed in Jehanish whites that looked too harsh for her slight frame. “In any case,” Yehoshua continued, turning to include Lily, “if you could use your own comm-man on your shuttle, instead of having him go down with me because of—” A hesitation as he glanced toward the distant figure of Kyosti, who spoke to Pinto on the shuttle’s ramp. Lily, looking that way, could read from Kyosti’s posture that he was listening while trying to look otherwise engaged. “Because of that, you wouldn’t need a second comm. Aliasing’s all we’ve got. So she has to go.”
“I can’t leave my son alone on this ship for Void knows how long—” Jenny broke off. Her expression was taut with worry, and she frowned and laid a hand on her son’s startlingly golden hair as the full implications of her interrupted comment hit her.
“Take him with us,” said Lily softly. “There are extra seats, and he’ll be with Lia the entire time.”
Jenny turned on Lily, angry now. “Take him into fire? Are you insane?”
“Jenny—” Lily began.
Jenny sighed and shut her eyes, sinking to her knees and hugging the boy with a tenderness that seemed uncharacteristic in a mercenary of her background. “Oh, Gregori,” she murmured as the boy hugged her with one arm and wiped his face with the other, “what a life I’ve made for you.”
Yehoshua moved away.
“I can help Lia,” said Gregori in a high, quiet voice, an echo of Aliasing’s. “I know that comm pretty good.”
“Pretty well,” said Jenny automatically. She glanced over at Aliasing, who simply sat looking frightened, but determined. “I forget that you’ve never done anything like this either, Lia.”
Aliasing said nothing, as if to say; I am not daunted.
Lily rested a hand gently on Jenny’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jenny.”
Jenny shook her head roughly, shaking off Lily’s pity. “What choice do we have?” she asked, not really with bitterness. “We’re better off together whatever happens—by this time at least. I can’t protect them forever.” She gave Gregori a brusque kiss on the forehead and stood up, pushing him firmly toward Lia. “It’s just,” she said in a low voice to Lily as he went obediently to stand next to Aliasing, “that I’d like for him to have a chance to grow up. And then I wonder, what kind of life would he have anyway? It’s a hard world for children like him.”
Lily let her hand rest on Jenny’s shoulder a moment longer, then lifted it and gave the other woman a light slap on the shoulder. “Isn’t that one of the things we’re fighting about? Let’s board.”
Lily had taken on two Ridani soldiers, named Cursive and Diamond, to fill out her fighting ten. With Finch and Swann doing comm-duty on the other two shuttles on their team, it left her only Pinto and Aliasing to cover the shuttle controls once the ground party was left off. She brought up the city grid on her computer screen as she waited for their disengage, studying the map and the emplacements they were to hit. In the seat in front of her, Aliasing fiddled nervously with the knobs on the comm-board as Franklin’s Cairn comm talked to Landfall Station.
“—request permission to dock at oh five hundred system standard.”
“Accepted. We require a full identification string before clearance can be allowed. Acknowledge.”
“Accepted. String to follow—”
Aliasing toggled the switch and caught the end of a ship-to-ship transmission, on a tight channel.
“—we are reading a far higher activity quotient here than expected.”
“From our vantage, Commander Callioux, we still see a low activity rate on the military hub, with only two ships in docking. What are your further instructions?”
“Maintain orbit as long as possible, comrade, and keep your vantage on strict distance until our approach order is finalized. We expect a six-hour lag for our teams to reach the surface. Move only once we have commenced firing.”
“Accepted, Commander. We are holding.”
Aliasing flipped back to the main comm-channel, but it was still running the blur of the identification string to Station central.
Pinto moved abruptly, chin lifting, hands shifting on the controls. “Power ready,” he announced. “We will be swinging into Station blindside in two minutes. Prepare for disengage.” He turned his head to look behind. “You are strapped in? We’re going to drop hard downside—fast entry.” His gaze flicked past Lily to Gregori, but the boy’s dark face showed no more emotion than his mother’s, seated behind him.
The string played out, and the comm-channel lapsed for tangible moments into the crackle and spit of dead air.
After an ominously long pause, Station’s voice came back on.
“We have received you, Franklin’s Cairn. Docking clearance and approach will be transmitted on your next pass. Please remain in your present orbit while blindside. Acknowledge.”
The Cairn’s “Accepted” was lost to sudden static as the ship passed blindside. The shuttle rang with the disengage, shook and jarred, and abruptly Pinto cleared his view windows and they could see the wall of the Cairn receding as they dropped away from it.
Aliasing fumbled with the head harness that would allow her to communicate with the rest of the team shuttles. In the back, behind the last rank of seats, the Mule and Kyosti had begun the final check and assembly of their equipment.
The wall of the Cairn, receding, resolved into the rotund, utilitarian lines of a merchanter. All signs of its military refitting had, at least to Lily’s eyes, been cleverly hidden.
“Power up,” announced Pinto. “Prepare for entry. One last warning.” He did not look up from his controls. “We’ll be dropping fast—”
The engines came to life, filling the cabin with their low undertone, and Franklin’s Cairn lifted abruptly away from them. Somehow, even with the pressure, the Mule and Kyosti managed to keep working.
“All teams clear,” said Aliasing, so softly that only Lily and Pinto could hear her.
They hit the atmosphere hard, bucketing, headed down and straight rather than in the more leisurely curve, but they were gauged for time, not comfort.
“What’s our count, Pinto?” Lily asked quietly.
He tapped a few keys, bringing figures up on his console. “Five hours, thirty-eight minutes.” She nodded, turned her head to survey her team. “I suggest you rest while you can. I’ll give you four hours.”
Behind her, Jenny was already dozing. Lily shut her eyes, hoping she could sleep. Next to her, Gregori had settled his com-screen on his lap and was doing calculations, talking to himself in a whisper as he attempted to master the intricacies of elementary bissterlas. His light voice lulled her.
She woke to the crackle of the comm. Aliasing, trying to pull in Station comm, had turned up the volume.<
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“Count?” Lily asked, shifting in her seat.
Pinto checked. “On schedule. One fleet hour, twenty-two minutes. Groups One and Two are at point and left.”
“Any sightings?”
He shook his head. In the window all they could see was cloud.
Aliasing turned down the static, glancing back at Lily apprehensively. “Nothing on any channel. Tight beam with One and Two confirms that we’re on course as scheduled. Well land four hours after sunset. But the Cairn hasn’t come back into Station sightside yet.”
“Keep it monitored.” Lily unstrapped and rose gingerly, testing the shake of the shuttle for balance. She moved back, waking each person individually. Kyosti, in the back, had cleared all the lockers. She did not ask him if he had slept. They ate quickly, strapped into equipment. She went once more briefly over the mission: a communications node, flanked by a military port that warehoused about twenty shuttles, mostly transports.
“This isn’t meant to be fancy,” Lily finished. “It’s demolition. One and Two will be, respectively, striking at emplacements five and twelve kilometers away. We’ll take separate courses off-planet and rendezvous with Franklin’s Cairn beyond Landfalls orbital track. Farther if we have to. Pinto assures me this shuttle can coast to system’s edge if necessary.” She smiled wryly. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out if he’s right.”
“Lily—” Aliasing’s voice, startled but hesitant. “Comrade Heredes. I’ve got Station comm, but—”
The explosion drowned out her exclamation. The shuttle veered abruptly left, banking sharply. Lily was thrown into a seat. She scrambled up as Pinto righted the shuttle and then dropped it as suddenly into a steep dive. She slid down to her seat, hurriedly strapped herself in.
“Status?” Her voice rang sharp.
“Someone is shooting at us—” he began but was cut off by Aliasing.
“Two’s been hit! But they’re still—”
A second explosion. The shuttle jerked as if it had been hit. Pinto banked a sharp left, then right, but the shuttle dropped swiftly, shuddering, until at last he pulled it up.
“Damn,” he murmured. “I’ve lost stabilization in my right wing.”
“You’d think,” said Jenny in a low voice, “that Jehane would have provided these shuttles with guns.” Her gaze rested on her son, who sat staring wide-eyed out the front.
“Who fights in the atmosphere?” Lily asked grimly. “Pinto, who’s on us?”
“It’s ground fire. They must be tracking us from the com node.”
Another explosion. This time the entire shuttle rocked with the violence of the hit. A thin stream of smoke began to leak out from the back into the cabin.
“I’m not going to make it to that field,” said Pinto, in a colorless voice. “I’ve lost one engine.”
“Can you pull up?”
He was too focused on beginning a zigzag path and consulting his map grid of the surface to even shake his head. “I wouldn’t risk it.”
“Then land safely. First priority.” Somehow Lily kept her voice even, though her legs were trembling with tension. “Veer off from the target. Find us a safe harbor. Once we’re on the ground, we’ll work from there. Lia.” She snapped her head around, was amazed to see tears streaming down Aliasing’s face. “Lia! Tell the Cairn we’re changing to prolonged ground action. Then get me Yehoshua.”
“They’re not there.” Aliasing’s voice shook. She gulped, trying to speak coherently. “I can’t raise Franklin’s Cairn, and all I get on the channel is Landfall Station talking about firing on target and some government military receiving. They’re not there.”
“Get me Yehoshua!” Lily snapped.
The shuttle shuddered violently. A high, ominous whine lanced above the noise of the engines.
“I’m losing number two engine,” said Pinto. “There’s some kind of open strip at thirty degrees, and I’m taking it for landing.”
“Strap in,” Lily ordered, not looking around.
They came out of the clouds into night lit by distant city lights, almost on top of a dark sprawl of derelict warehouses ringed by a long stretch of black roadway.
“I think there’s something wrong with my console,” said Aliasing desperately. She flipped switches frantically. “I can’t—”
“—Three. This is One. Can you”—it faded again—“Cairn is hit. We are receiving no communication at—losing altitude—must assume that we are on our own without—”
Static replaced the faint, cool voice of Yehoshua.
Pinto said something under his breath, and they touched down. The shuttle rocked and bumped along the strip of road, shaken by ruts and fissures in the roadbed. They slowed and Pinto turned them toward the shadowy bulk of the warehouses.
“With your permission, comrade,” he said quietly, “I’ll head for cover.”
“Granted.” Lily unstrapped herself and moved to stand behind him, craning forward to get the best possible view of the sky. Clouds obscured one corner of the horizon—the way they had come—but most of the vault bloomed with stars, clear and bright, echoed by the distant lights of the city, by an occasional lamp beyond the dark warehouses.
“What’s that?” asked Gregori, a child’s surprise.
Above, far above, color and light blossomed into a great blaze, a flash illuminating the night sky, like fireworks, or the announcement of a ship’s death.
And abruptly, the last gasp of Lia’s console, the voice of Landfall Station, or one of its military adjuncts, came on with brief clarity:
“Accepted. We have destroyed the vessel Franklins Cairn.”
12 Little Boy Blue
“IT BE YA SURE I can’t fix them, or ya comm,” said Paisley, “and I be studying nothing but ya tech, ’cept ya basic combat, all ya time we be on—” She broke off, rubbed a grease-stained hand across a smear left previously on her face, unwilling to say the name of the ship. “Sore luck pass me by,” she muttered, and made a brief gesture that was echoed by all of the Ridanis except Pinto.
For a moment no one spoke as they surveyed the crippled shuttle, stowed now in the temporary haven of a derelict, empty warehouse. Then, as if with a common thought, they all turned to look at Lily.
She felt a moment of hideous self-doubt as they regarded her expectantly, faces pale with worry or bleak with grief for comrades presumably dead or obliterated in the Cairn’s final doom. Kyosti alone had a slight smile on his face, as if he was amused at her predicament.
“Rainbow.” She chose action as her refuge. “You and Diamond will secure the area: I want a constant patrol on the roof and an emplaced gunner set to cover the main door. To be relieved at intervals by Cursive and Pinto and Paisley.” She paused, considered Paisley for a few moments, remembering their run on Unruli Station through back alleys and forgotten corridors. “No, I’ll want Paisley on reconnaissance. We’ll set up sweep patrols to recce this area. We need to know what the nearest habitations are. Pinto, I’ll need your estimate of where we are in relation to the military target. We’ll go in pairs: Jenny with the Mule, Hawk and Lia—”
“Hold on,” said Jenny. “Lia is hardly—”
“Comrade.” Lily’s tone silenced Jenny’s protest. “We don’t have enough people as it is, and the Ridanis will probably show up like blast storms if Landfall has the same restrictions most other planets have. Until we find out otherwise, Aliasing patrols. I’ll trust Paisley to patrol in this area because I know she has experience in not being seen.”
Paisley beamed at this compliment, wiping a third streak of grease over the bright pattern of her face.
“Paisley will sweep with Bach and me. Gregori.” She turned to the boy, who held tightly to Aliasing’s tunic. “I want you to stay on the shuttle and listen on the comm—in case we get a message from one of the other teams.”
The boy nodded solemnly.
“Now.” She swept her gaze across all their faces, checking each in turn, measuring their resolve. “We need to find
Jehanish sympathizers—people here who would be willing to help us. We need to repair the engines, and the comm. If we can also strike and destroy our original target, once we have a clear escape route, so much the better. Jenny and Hawk, take your teams out first. Use your best judgment if you run across any natives. Paisley—I want you to go out solo as far as you can—find me the nearest habitation and get an estimate of how many people, how it’s linked to the city itself, and what conditions they live under.”
When she stopped speaking, the silence left by the absence of her words seemed to impose a paralysis on her listeners.
“Well?” she demanded, impatient at their hesitation, as if in itself this lack of action might cause her doubts to resurface. “Get moving.”
They moved.
In the wake left by the sudden departure of her audience, she sat on the lip of the shuttle’s ramp and beckoned Bach closer. The robot floated over to her, lights blinking to the rhythm of the soft chorale he sung
Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnauben,
So gib, dass wir im festen Glauben
Nach deiner Macht und Hülfe sehn!
Wir wollen dir allein vertrauen,
So können wir den scharfen Klauen
Des Feindes unversehrt entgehen.
Lord, if proud enemies rage,
let us then in steadfast faith
look to Thy might and help.
We will put our trust in Thee alone,
so may we withstand unharmed
the talons of the fiend.
She allowed herself the chorale’s length just to sit, to let her mind follow the music without dwelling on the task before her. But as Bach closed the final cadence, she sighed deeply, shaking loose her reverie, and rubbed a hand over her eyes as if thereby she could clear them to enable herself to see lucidly enough to get them out of this disaster.
Footsteps rang softly on the ramp as she stood up. Pinto appeared, holding a screen in one hand. Bringing it over to her, he displayed it so that she could see the map grid.