“Mais oui,” Lori said, smiling and tightening her arms. Then she said, her voice very low, “Did you record the party last night? Or my little performance, at least?”
“Certainement, everything. You would like a copy?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then you shall have one.” Pushing Lori back and holding her at arm’s length, Mme. Rothfeld said, “Tu es magnifique, ma Cherie.” And she smiled again.
Over a slow and long brunch, the group looked at one another, smiling often, talking of everything but the previous night and early morning. After, the kits led everyone down to the beach for a swim and some snorkeling. The parents played several rounds of doubles tennis, and Lori and her grandparents walked the grounds, slowing to watch the kits’ fascination with peacocks in full display. That evening, an early BBQ back at the pool lingered into sunset, and then the parents and grandparents said goodbyes, long and tender ones for Lori, with serious handshakes and more whispers for Hunter.
“We’ll see you next weekend for dinner?” Marne said to Ilene and Alan.
“Your place or ours?”
“Come into the city. A new play is opening, a comedy, we can do dinner after...”
“Just dinner?” Ilene said, to laughter.
Lori and Hunter stood arm in arm bidding the two air cars away, watching until they faded to tiny dots in the darkening blue sky, and disappeared.
“So now we have the whole place to ourselves...” Hunter said,
“And the Damai,” Lori added as they walked slowly back to the patio, well illuminated with blazing torches. The kits called from the pool, and Lori kept going that way. They swam for a while, and then sat in the warm water in the shallow end. Lori rested on Hunter’s legs.
“So tell me,” she said, leaning against him, as his hands held her breasts. “What was all the whispering about after the little sex session we all had? Complaints about their wanton daughter?”
“On the contrary, fair maiden. High compliments on the virility, stamina, and prowess of her suitor, the city squire.”
“What?”
“Yep, nice things about my, ah, equipment, and how I employed it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Mom and Dad-in-law are very pleased to see that I am fully and adequately equipped and know how to screw and please their daughter in a proper fashion. And that my supply of semen is bountiful.”
Lori smiled, pleased. “Hoping for grandkids, I guess.”
“No doubt. And their daughter?”
Lori leaned against him, smiling, and looking at the kits swimming with several small naked humans. “Yeah. Sure. Sooner or later. Whenever.” Inwardly, Lori hoped she could in fact have kids, wondering on the status and condition of her ovaries after so much youthful time in space. She added, “Well, the squire’s parents let it be know that they are very impressed with the prowess of his intended.” She gave a wry smile, holding something back. And Hunter knew.
“What else?” he asked.
“They think I’m beautiful,” she said softly.
“In that, they are absolutely correct. I do too.” Hunter said. “I think you are incredibly beautiful. Every part of you.”
So do I, she thought, but said, “I’m glad.”
“So, shall we keep up the good work, to impress the folks?”
“Sure. You up to it again tonight?”
“Doubt it. But maybe in the morning?”
“OK. Good...”
“What?”
“Only...just next time...we do it in Eagle One?”
“Again? You want to?”
“Yeah.”
“You want it to watch, to hear?”
“Yeah.” And I want to pretend you are it.
“OK with me.”
“Good. And sometime on the beach. Maybe as the moon rises. OK?”
“I am at your service, always, you wanton woman, you.”
She smiled , said, “C’mon, let’s rejoin the kits.”
Her device chimed, and Lori looked at it. She was still studying the message when Hunter returned from the pool.
He raised his eyebrows as he toweled off. “Problems?”
“Not exactly,” Lori said, putting it down. “Maybe an opportunity. Finally. But at no small risk. I should get back to New York, with the air car soon. You wanna stay here longer?”
“No,” he said, sitting on the end of the lounge. “I want to go with you.” He looked hard at her. “Especially if there’s some risk, no matter how small.”
Lori looked at him, a glow of love for this guy enveloping her. Slowly, she nodded.
Chapter 4 - Bring Hell With Me
Eagle One slipped out of the lighter, righted itself, and slowly slid off in the dimming dusk, down an overgrown laneway, over a rock wall, across a green meadow, and into a copse of trees. Lorelei sat at the controls and watched as it glided around and past the tall, stout oaks, she feeling like a will-o-the-wisp, a wraith, a ghost, a phantom, dimly seen if at all, small in comparison to the massive boles they passed, but large by human terms. They glided lower, down a slope, across a thin stream where drifts of ground fog were starting to rise, uphill again, and on across more open meadows. No one showed on the screens, everything green, just the tiny dots of sheep clustered here and there.
They crossed into a larger woods, a forest, with trees of various sizes and heights, much closer together, and Eagle One slowed and moved back and forth to avoid hitting them.
On the screen, the countdown continued, the video image from outside the cottage steady, just growing dimmer in the twilight. Time grew tighter, Hunter pointed at the display but she said nothing, just nodded.
With scarcely a dozen seconds remaining, they emerged from the woods, skimmed over the very top of the short grass in another field, and stopped at a tall stone wall. Lori could not see over the wall, but her screen showed what was there, in night false-images. Three air cars, a ground lorry, and a four-wheel ATV sat parked tightly in front of a small cottage. Roses hung in fading glory to both sides of the wooden doorway, and overflowed on the windows to either side, partly blocking the view in. Or out.
The countdown stopped, and the numbers turned positive. Still nothing changed in the cottage.
“What do we do now?” Hunter whispered in her ear.
“We wait. For a while, at least,” Lori replied, looking at the two small squares on the spy monitor, showing the inside of the cottage, the main room cozy looking in dim illumination, one person sitting before a video screen, no one else present.
Sudden movement, and words appeared on the screen, they were sending Hans out for supper. Back and forth, easy banter, kidding, then serious, about ordering food, and beer. Cold beer. German beer. Hans nodded, slung on a light jacket, and started for the door.
Lori lifted Eagle One, crossed the wall, and dropped, stopping at two meters in the middle of the old roadway, now little more than a beaten path. She breathed deeply, and flicked up the safeties on the firing studs.
The door opened, splashing the early evening with yellow light. Hans appeared, nodded once back into the room, turned and looked at the air car hovering over the road, a dozen odd meters away. He paused, looking at it, and said back over his shoulder, “Hey, there’s an air car here, you expecting anyone?”
Sudden activity inside the cottage, the video watcher jumping up, saying, “Hell, no, who is it?” He looked at a security monitor, then hurried toward the doorway, his hand going inside a shirt to pull out a small needle gun, which he carried at his side. Another person came into the room, too, a woman, and followed the video guy as he went to the door. Hans continued on to the closest air car, and climbed in as the two reached the doorway.
“Who is it?” the first called, as Hans closed up his air car, and began to lift it. “Who are you?”
Lori said nothing, just slid the canopy back. It stopped with a cool “Snick,” the only sound in the night. Hans was gone in his air car, flying low. Lori stood up, looking at
the two people standing in the doorway.
“Son of a bitch,” the woman called, pointing at Eagle One. “It’s her!”
Lori said, her voice booming across the short distance between them, “Yes, it’s me, I’m here, and I’ve brought hell with me.”
“What the fuck do you want?” the woman said.
“Your immediate surrender. You’re under arrest. The authorities have been called, and will be here soon.”
“Kill her,” a low voice said from one of the two, picked up by the spybots, relayed who knows where, and sent into her earphones. And into Eagle One’s.
Lori sat down as the needle gun rose, as the woman in the cottage reached to the side, and pulled up a long tube–a far more formidable weapon, a Pokoniry mini-plasma launcher. The needle gun flashed, and blotches of light splattered across the canopy, in line with Lori’s face.
She reached for the weapons controls, started to say, “Fi...,” and push down on the firing stud, when Eagle One fired of its own volition. A single, thin HiE lazer beamed out, into the center of the shooter’s chest, pushing him quite backward as fluids boiled and splattered around and behind him, his arms flew up, the gun continuing in an arc high over the body, which continued on, and dropped from sight.
A few bright blips winked in the doorway, the spybots recalled, racing out of the cottage. The woman dropped to the side, crouching behind the doorway, grabbing the plasma launcher and moving it to bear on Eagle One. But a bright sphere flew from Eagle One and into and through the open doorway, Eagle One immediately jumping backwards and up, then down again behind the wall as an impossibly bright light outlined the doorway, the dark launcher, the arm of the shooter, before it grew and enveloped the entire cottage in a searing, white-hot explosion, which lifted the roof completely away, and blew out the windows in hot geysers. The roses flashed and burned.
Their arms yanked up, then back down by Eagle One’s sudden acceleration, Lori and Hunter grunted in surprise, and some pain, but Eagle One swung to the left as it accelerated away back across the field, now grey with tendrils of mist, returning the way it came not moments before. It slowed only when it reached the first forest, then went on at a more sedate pace.
“You OK?” Lori asked Hunter, as she watched the screens slowly returning to a heavily shielded view, after a white-out caused by the explosion. Behind them, a growing glow on the horizon, then a series of small explosions, lit the sky.
“Yeah, fine. Man. Nice shooting, Eagle One.”
“Defensive only,” it said. Still moving along quickly, it added, its words cold, “We are avenged.”
Lori looked over to Hunter, her face dismayed, and a little worried.
“Was that your intention?” Hunter said quickly. “Here, tonight, I mean.”
Eagle One said, “No. But that is the result. Lorelei brought hell to them, they invited it in, and I turned it loose. I would not let the one discharge the plasma gun at Lorelei. That is all.”
“Well, I gave them an option, and they rejected it, so what did...” Lori started to say.
Looking back, Hunter said, “Man, that does look like hell, what is burning...?” He’d scarcely said the word when a larger explosion further lit the sky, a growing bubble arc of hot, incandescent fire, that turned orange, red, orange again, then shot through with black, and faded. “Holy shit,” he added, as a yellow light lit the night.
“Atomics?” Lori said, worry in her voice.
“No, radiation is absent,” Eagle One said. “It is the mini-Hellburner, of the bigboys. It will burn for 37 minutes.”
“Anything on the screens?” Hunter asked.
“No, just the sheep, rousted from their sleep,” and she pointed at the tiny specks, up and moving away from the light on the horizon.
The air car paused at the last of the open areas, then slid out into the meadow again, into another layer of fog, now truly a wraith, a grey orb in a grey cloud, which parted and closed behind it. Soon a dark blob slipped along over the grass in the midst of early night, hidden from the glow over the trees by their height. The air car jumped the walls, turned slightly vertical, and slid back into the dark interior of the lighter. Behind them, the doors closed, and red lights came on.
Major Morales’ grinning face peered in at them, as Lori unbuckled the safety harness. “Nice shooting,” he said, “Very nice shooting.” Other voices murmured assent, while Lori and Hunter hurried out and forward, to the main bank of screens.
“Eagle One did it, I never moved a finger, it was faster, and didn’t hesitate. They had the plasma gun out in a flash...”
“We know.”
“You watched it?” Hunter asked.
“Yeah, everything.”
“So, OK, how’s it look locally? Were we spotted?” Hunter asked.
“No, not so far. Half the air cars overhead reported the initial fire, and started toward it, fortunately none were near when the Hellburner touched off, and the local constables, and fire brigade is keeping them all away now.
“What’s the news say?” Lori said, arms over her chest, looking at the display screens. Someone offered her a cup of coffee, and she unfolded one arm, to take it.
A voice said, as the screen flicked to four panels, most showing the same scene, from an air car high overhead, of a still burning crater in the earth, “Calling it an unexplained explosion, or series of explosions. Nothing much more now.”
“It’s burning pretty good, now.” A close up view showed a number of fire engines pouring thin streams of water onto the inferno, to little apparent effect.
“How’d we do?” Lori said, sipping the coffee.
“All the spybots, cambots, and relays are accounted for, and most back in storage,” a tech said. “None were intercepted, and all are silent now...ah, here’s the last of the lot.”
Lori took a deep breath. Maybe they’d pulled it off, after all. “OK, so now, we wait, see what happens. Then we leave in the morning?”
“That’s our schedule. All’s quiet hereabouts,” Morales said.
Lori looked at him. “Thank you,” she said. Glancing around, she added, “Thank you all. Eagle One said we are avenged. And we are. And it’s thanks to you all. I will always remember that.” Morales offered his hand, and Lori shook it, then Hunter did. They worked the small area, shaking the half a dozen hands offered.
“Where’s Hans?” Hunter said.
“Oh, he’s caught in the explosion, or at least that’s what the transponder of his air car will say, he’ll be added to the casualty list, even if there’ll be little to show for the remains after that Hellburner is done with them. Did we know about that? No? But very helpful. He’s well enough known in town, ordered food, and when he doesn’t show up to claim it, well, the locals will no doubt report him missing. He had those false teeth to leave in his bed, they might survive the fire. Maybe it’ll be enough. We’ll soon know.” Morales grinned, a small smile on his face, otherwise impassive in the red light. “Well, how about a little supper? We ordered out, too, just to establish our whereabouts when hell came to visit the cottage.”
“All of you?” Lori said, perplexed.
“Ah, just those of us officially here,” the tech said, smiling. She held up an insulated container, and opened it. A wonderful aroma arose, wisps of steam rising. “Fish and chips?” she said. “There’s enough for all.”
“Let’s eat by firelight,” Morales said, flicking the video image to the largest screen, as people sat down to watch hell burn over the horizon.
A coded message arrived, the recorder beeping a pattern. Morales accessed it, decoded it, and read it. He looked up at Lori. “Hans, ah, the ah, late Hans, now Friedrich, reported in, on schedule. Ditched the air car as planned, it’s back where it started, with a shave and a hair cut, him, I mean, you’d never recognize him. He has the computer records, everything you wanted, the contact said.”
Lori smiled. “Good. That’ll get to Scotland Yard?”
“Yes. Han...ah, Freddie took
the payment, and is now outbound for Montreal Station, in transit to, well, we all know. He’ll wash the money there, it’ll be untraceable by morning.”
“Sure we can trust him?” Hunter asked.
Morales shrugged. “Who ever can? We did explore with him the idea of working for us again sometime, but he was quite emphatic this was the last job. He’s well set for life, unless he drinks, gambles, or screws it all away. And that’s always possible. But he knows we know him, and will be watching. I think he’ll get on with his life, and keep quiet.”
“He’s not much of a drinker or gambler, is he?” Lori said.
“Well, he gambled on this job, that’s for sure. And he drank enough with the bad guys. Maybe he was just setting us up, playing both sides.”
“I hardly think the other side will be very forgiving if they find out what really happened.”
“Which is...?” a tech said.
“The TV is already calling it a munitions or gas explosion. I think the subsequent investigation will establish the presence of a quantity of illegal and strictly prohibited ordinance, some from off world. The bigboys will be loath to admit the loss of one of their Hellburners, but that’s the only thing that could stoke that fire,” Morales said, pointing to the image on the screen, scarcely smaller after all this time. “Be some little commotion locally, I fear. Be nice to be well gone tomorrow.”
“If they let us.”
“No reason to keep us, nothing we’ve done.”
“They know we’re here, don’t they?” Lori said.
“Who?”
“The British police–Scotland Yard, their M Section, whatever?”
“Perhaps,” Morales said.
“We’ll know in the morning, when the detain us. Or not.” The tech pilot shrugged.
“That will be a mess.”
“Don’t worry about it unless and until it happens. We’ll deal with it then, if we have to,” Morales said. He pulled out a game board. “Anyone want a game of Scrabble?”
T-47 Book II (Saxon Saga 6) Page 7