by V. B. Larson
In the stunned silence that followed, Lucas got himself a cup of hot caf. While he poured, he demanded a report of the current status of the spaceport.
“Well sir, there was a slight security breach just about half an hour ago,” replied Lieutenant Harrison, breaking the shocked pause.
“What kind of security breach?” said Lucas, focusing on the lieutenant.
“It was nothing, we filed a routine report,” snapped Drick, glowering at the lieutenant, who averted his eyes. He wheeled to face the intruders, his hands behind his back. “We can’t accept the data of one probably tampered with terminal as proof of your identity, sir. In any case, even if you are who you say you are, until you are properly inaugurated and recognized, you have no authority here. Now, I suggest you leave the premises and turn yourself in to the militia authorities, who will sort all this out. We have work to do here.”
“What security breach?” Lucas repeated, more sharply. He completely ignored Major Lee.
The lieutenant flicked his eyes back and forth between Major Lee and Lucas, clearly ambivalent.
“If you would please leave,” repeated Major Lee, his teeth clenched.
“Major, you’re relieved of your duties. Jarmo, escort this civilian to the security doors and remove all of his identification passes,” ordered Lucas, taking a drink from his hot caf. The staff all watched wide-eyed as the heatedly protesting Major Lee was half-carried to the doors by the hulking, scowling giant. “Now, who is next in command?”
“I am,” said the lieutenant. He stood at attention. “Sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Harrington, sir.”
“Good. You are now acting commissioner of this spaceport. Deliver your report concerning the security breach,” he said, stirring his drink. “No carload of criminal types was involved?”
“Sir?” said Harrington, blinking.
“Nothing like the little assassination crew that shot up the Renaldo hotel yesterday?”
“Oh no, sir. It was a smuggler sighting sir, two of them dropped out of the Yeti during her descent. They dropped out early, and we were able to detect them.”
“Good work. Naturally you activated the SAM batteries and shot them down,” said the Governor, feeling relieved. His enemies hadn’t gotten here ahead of him. His hot caf was a bit too hot and he slurped it noisily.
“Ah no, we didn’t shoot them down,” said Harrington uncomfortably. “Captain Dorman took up two Stormbringers in pursuit. He forced one down and I believe he is about to engage the other now.”
When Major Drick Lee was tossed staggering out of the security door, which immediately snicked shut behind him, there was a general shout of alarm. The spaceport security squads had gathered about the locked door in response to Drick’s calls for aid. Believing that a terrorist action was in progress, they had begun clearing the spaceport and setting up barricades made of planters, benches and even cartloads of unclaimed baggage. Surprised by Drick’s appearance, they mistook him for one of the terrorists and opened fire. Only the fact that Drick had pitched forward on his face saved him from the storm of small arms fire that crackled and spanged off the steel security door.
“Hold your fire! Stop shooting, idiots!” screamed Drick, sprawling with his arms wrapped around his head. Eventually, someone recognized his uniform and called a cease-fire. Many of them stopped simply because they had run out of ammunition.
Miraculously uninjured, Drick made his way to the nearest overturned planter, fear giving way to rage. The security people looked sheepish and avoided his gaze. “Fools! I’m not a terrorist!” he screamed at them.
“Well, how were we supposed to know that?” questioned a man behind the barricade, summing up all of their feelings. Major Lee was not the most popular Nexus officer at the spaceport.
Shaking off his experience, the Major realized that he was standing in the open in front of the security door, while everyone else was on the other side of their flimsy barricade. With as much dignity as he could muster, he scrambled over a pair of overturned benches and crouched beside the duty Sergeant. “Have you evacuated everyone?”
“Down here at arrivals the place is empty, but we haven’t had time to clear everyone out of departures,” said Sergeant Manstein, a balding man with deep-set eyes and large hands. “The militia say they’re on their way.”
“Why haven’t you cleared the spaceport?” demanded Drick, fury creeping back into his voice. “Can’t you people follow a single regulation today?”
“Come on Major, give us a break,” said the Sergeant, his eyes dark and unfriendly. “We aren’t prepared to handle this kind of thing.”
“I’ll do it myself then,” said Drick, standing and waving for two of the guards to follow him. Together they headed for the escalators. With each rapid step they took away from the security door, Drick relaxed a bit inside. He didn’t want to admit it, but between the rough handling of the giants and being shot at he had had quite a bad scare. He felt an urgent need to visit the restroom, but forced himself to wait.
It was when they reached the departure lounge and began herding people toward the exits that Drick got his first big break of the day. He saw a man wearing a close-fitting hat and a pair of auto-shades set curiously dark for the interior of a building. He was at the ticket counter, arguing with an attendant and holding a handsome leather satchel with both hands. He squinted at this man, sure that he had seen his likeness before… and then he had it. That satchel, that sharp-pointed chin, it could only be General Ari Steinbach, whom he recognized from the militia’s bimonthly security inspections.
The General represented everything he wanted just now, which was absolution of responsibility for the entire affair. Unable to believe his luck, he rushed up to the man, who pulled his satchel up in a defensive gesture. Drick reached out his hand, grinning broadly. When the General hesitatingly took his hand, he pumped it and rapidly described the situation.
“And I hereby turn the matter over to the militia, sir. We have no way of handling this sort of thing here with just our security team,” he said. He gave the Sergeant at his side a wry glance.
When the two Stormbringers managed to overhaul the second craft, they were over the steaming jungles of southern New Chad, almost down to the borders of Amazonia. A thousand miles farther south loomed the rocky cliffs that separated the jungles from the barren Desolation.
Dropping out of orbit, they descended rapidly toward the target, a darting black speck that skimmed so low over the treetops that it seemed to almost fly between the monstrous leafy horkwoods. Swooping down on the craft, they punched through the cloud layer and screamed toward the uneven green surface of leaves. Captain Dorman netted in his position and waited for acknowledgment from the spaceport.
“Captain Dorman, this is Lucas Droad, duly appointed Planetary Governor of Garm. I want to commend you on downing that last smuggler, and I order you to disable the craft you are pursuing now,” said a new voice, interrupting the traffic controllers.
Dorman raised his eyebrows and grunted at this unexpected turn of events. “So, the Nexus sent out an early replacement. About time.”
“Thank you for your support, Captain,” said the new voice, sounding amused.
Dorman didn’t hesitate to exercise his new orders. To his surprise however, the craft didn’t attempt evasive action, but instead rose up from the treetops, coming up aggressively to meet them. “The target is turning to attack,” reported Dorman, shocked. Nothing in the system could stand up to the Stormbringers in atmospheric combat. The pilot had to be insane.
“Missile incoming!” squawked his wingman. That was all he managed before being engulfed in a fireball. Seeing the red burst that had been his wingman’s Stormbringer out of the corner of his eye, Dorman thumbed the emergency kill switch, releasing all the warship’s offensive capacity to the computers. On full automatic, the Stormbringer rolled over and did a streaking dive toward the surface. Close to blacking out, Dorman
felt the ship shudder as a dozen missiles were loosed to speed toward the target. The cannons were all firing now, the controls working themselves furiously to evade incoming fire that was beyond human capacity for response.
There was an explosion the next second and the starboard wing disintegrated into flaming debris. The ship went into a spin, and Captain Dorman lost consciousness as the computers ejected his crash-seat through the bottom skin of the craft.
He came to again less than a thousand feet above the surface. Locked in a sitting position in his crash-seat, he floated down into the green treetops. Blinking away the haze that clung to his vision, he righted his head and saw three black plumes of smoke rising up from the jungle. All three of the combatants had been destroyed.
“Least we got him,” Dorman muttered before the blood pressure in his brain ebbed and he lost consciousness again.
“Uh, yes of course,” stumbled Ari. Inwardly he groaned. He had hoped his auto-shades would be enough of a disguise.
Major Lee, too pleased to notice the General’s unenthusiastic response, led the way back toward the security door. “Perhaps you would like to take stock of the situation? Or do you want to call in your tactical squad immediately, sir?”
Ari balked, refusing to move from his spot near the ticket counters. He gave the flight-departure gates a wistful glance, then flicked his eyes nervously over the security video pick-ups hidden about the spaceport. Mai Lee could be watching even now. “Who exactly is this terrorist group?”
“A madman, sir. He has a gang of giants, either they’re rayball players, or just hired killers. The man claimed to be the new Governor, of all the crazy things. Imagine that!”
Ari jumped involuntarily. “Giants with him, you say?” he asked, his tongue wetting his lips. He took up his satchel with both hands, pulling it close against his chest.
“Yes sir,” replied Major Lee, frowning at the General’s odd manner.
Ari eyed the security door in concern. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed in speculation. “The situation has possibilities.” he muttered aloud.
“Sir?”
“I’ll handle this, Major. You and your men just take up positions around the center. Clear the building, I have some phone calls to make.”
Beaming, Major Lee jogged off with his men and began shouting. Ari frowned after him, envying him his newfound freedom from responsibility. He turned to eye the departure gates again. The elevator up to the orbital platform was so close. He could even take the flitter that went up every fifteen minutes, that would be faster. Before he could move, however, the clerks began to close the ticket counters and the loudspeakers announced that all flights were canceled due to an unspecified emergency. With a sigh, Ari turned toward the line-up of public paylinks. He had left his own unit at his office to make himself harder to trace. He dropped a credit coin into the first paylink he found that was operable.
Eight
“What I don’t quite understand, General,” said Mai Lee, her eyes narrowed in a habitual expression of suspicion. “Is exactly what you are doing at the spaceport.”
“A hunch, your Excellency. Call it the intuition of an experienced militia officer,” Ari answered crisply. “I’ve been studying this man carefully, and I predicted his return to the spaceport. Stationed here is the largest organization of forces loyal to the Nexus that he could draw on for support.”
“But why didn’t you bring your tactical squad with you?”
“They’re on the way here now. I didn’t want to remove them from their alert status at the militia headquarters until I was sure. Besides, your instructions were to locate him and call for your aid,” Ari said, again with convincing certainty. He had anticipated these questions, but hoped that she didn’t probe any further into his motivations concerning coming to the spaceport. It was time to deflect her onto another course. “So, now that we’ve got him here and he has holed himself up, how do you wish to handle the situation?”
“Your effectiveness in this instance astounds me. It isn’t like you to take to the field yourself, General.”
“This is a most serious matter, Empress. Both of our futures are at stake and I felt I couldn’t afford to trust the matter to my operatives. Although I have great faith in them,” he added hastily. The itching sensation of erupting sweat grew in his armpits.
“If you want something done, you have to do it yourself, eh? Very well. While you’re waiting for your tactical squad to come and destroy them, I want you to go in and parlay. Tell Governor Droad that you’re on his side. You could be useful as a mole.”
“Begging your Excellency’s pardon, but are you serious? Why not simply bring in the militia and kill them? We could even hit the entire spaceport, reduce it to rubble with attack lifters and mortar fire if necessary.”
“We will not level the spaceport without need, General. You will enter and lull the Governor, perhaps you can even coax him out of his lair. My forces are fast moving into position, even as we speak,” she said, her ancient eyes boring into his head. “No one is going to escape the planet from that spaceport, let me assure you, General.”
Halfheartedly, Ari tried a few more arguments to avoid the dangerous task that Mai Lee had in mind for him, but she was adamant. It was clear that she suspected his loyalty, even suspected that he had been about to flee Garm. Her command to parlay with Droad was clearly a test. The problem was that Ari suddenly seemed out of options. He could wait for his tactical team, the majority of which were at the rayball arena for the afternoon, not at militia headquarters, but Mai Lee’s palace guard might arrive first.
Thinking hard, Ari took his satchel over to a rack of rentable lockers next to the restrooms, popped a two-credit piece into one of them, deposited the satchel and pocketed the key. Heading back down the escalators, he joined Drick and his ragtag army behind their laughable barricade.
“I think we could take them out,” said the General conversationally. “We have the manpower, I could use my security card to bypass the locks. We would have the advantage of surprise.”
“Yeah?” snorted Sergeant Manstein. “You first, General.”
“If I order it, you will obey!” shouted Ari, losing his composure under the pressure of the moment. A tremendous headache throbbed at his temples now.
Major Lee looked dubious, but Manstein exhibited nothing but contempt. “Look, General. I was in the regular infantry once, but even then, I wasn’t fool enough to assault a steel door with a crack squad of giants behind it. Especially not when they’ve got heavy weapons and we’ve got pea-shooters.”
Ari glared at the Sergeant, but held his tongue. Mentally, he weighed his chances at sending in the security detail against Droad and his giants. Although he had little doubt that the giants, who were obviously professionals, would win the confrontation, the possibility remained that Droad would get killed or at least injured in the fighting. He rubbed his chin in deep thought.
No, it wouldn’t work. Mostly because of the abject cowardice of the security personnel. If they had been a bit more willing to risk their lives, the attack might have a chance of success. Unfortunately, the only way he could think of to get them to go in hard would be with him going in with them, and that of course was out of the question.
His thoughts were interrupted by the spaceport’s public address system, which had apparently been taken over by Droad and his giants. “Loyal soldiers of the Nexus. It is time that I explain this aggression against your base. I am Lucas Droad, the newly appointed Governor of Garm,” said Droad, his face flashing up on public holo-plates throughout the spaceport. Ari and the security detail stared at the holo-plates, fixated.
“I was about to publicly announce my arrival, but certain factions in your government, opposing my appointment, attempted to take matters into their own hands,” said Droad. Then the image switched to a scene of the Renaldo hotel, apparently videoed by Droad’s giants during the action. Seen from outside the hotel, the assassins chased Droad into the hotel, firing as th
ey ran. Inside more firing erupted as three men ran into the hotel after Droad. The hulking figure of Sergeant Borshe lumbered through the doors, his Wu hand-cannons making their unmistakable barking noises. Apparently at that point the giants got their weapons out and the glass doors vaporized. The camera, jostling and lurching sickeningly at Jarmo’s hip, ran with the bodyguards into the ruined lobby.
It was the talkative Sergeant Manstein who said, “Hey, isn’t that big thug a militia man?”
Ari rose quietly from his place at the barricade and walked quickly for the nearest exit. One look at the expressions of the security people told him where their loyalties were going to fall after this damning video had run its course. If there was one aspect of conflict that Ari had mastered, it was the strategic withdrawal.
“Where are you going, General?” came a booming voice from behind him.
Ari made a dismissive gesture with one hand, not bothering to turn around or slow down. In fact, he walked even faster. “The tactical squad is arriving out front,” he lied glibly. “I’m going to meet them.”
His back burning with the anticipation of a bullet, his ears straining to catch the sounds of pursuit, Ari reached the doors-and froze.
His eyes squeezed shut and his teeth clenched in a grimace of sudden indecision. He had left his satchel in the lockers near the restrooms. His eyes slid that way, and he wavered for an instant, his fear of the Nexus-loyal security people almost outweighed by his anxiety about the satchel. Then there was a shout behind him, a guttural sound without words, the sound of a Gopus lynch-mob that has just caught up with a reed-rustler in the deep swamps. The sound raised the hair on his neck and lifted the heels of his boots, goading him through the door and out onto the sidewalk. He stepped out of their sight and broke into an all out run for the parking lot.
“There’s no militia van out there,” spoke up a security woman. There was deep suspicion in her voice. She, like all the spaceport personnel, was loyal to the Nexus first, rather than the militia and the colonial Senate.