by Baen Books
Legislation being legislation, the new protection laws didn’t protect jack shit. And especially didn’t protect the few who had already been modified and would remain young for a millennium. Those few the Millennial laws indeed bit in the ass.
The laws outlawed the technology going forward, ostensibly because it hadn’t been proven safe, but really because screwing over the few was easier than vaguely annoying the many. The laws also established a legal name, “Millennials,” for the few. To be fair, that was less pejorative than the common-usage name it replaced, “jerk billionaires who we wish were dead.”
The laws additionally posited that a thousand years was plenty long enough for any bloodline to enjoy a fortune. So when Millennials died their fortunes escheated to the government of the place where they died.
Except for a twenty percent finder’s fee payable to the individual who presented proof of death. Which finder was shielded by a rebuttable presumption that said Millennial had died of natural causes. Because, after all, the outlawed technology was presumed unsafe. In practice, the presumption proved pretty much irrebuttable, the likely rebuttor being dead.
Millennials nimble enough to survive The Trouble, as they came to call the first worldwide simultaneous natural death pandemic, had converted their fortunes to cash and high-value collectibles and hidden ever since. Those few who had no fortunes to convert just hid.
Before the laws, “millennials” referred to a generation of perceived whiners born a few years before or after the twentieth millennium turned to the twenty-first millennium. Since the laws, “Millennials” described a tiny cabal of paranoid Methuselahs worth more dead than alive.
Pete spun a finger at the surrounding landscape and frowned. “This location, and the fence, and your, uh, cover stories. Are those the only security this place has?”
Patel shook his head as he jerked a thumb upward at the ranch house’s roof. “The chimney cap’s a turret. There’s a sensor-directed automated mini-gun up there. And homing antipersonnel mines patrol the fences and the grounds. If a rabbit hops toward you, retreat. I’ve had more problems out here with coyotes than with bounty hunters.” Patel stood and pointed at the barn. “Ready to meet your fiancée?”
They crossed the ranch yard, and the barn doors, high and wide enough to pass an Osprey, hissed open at Patel’s approach.
When the doors had closed behind Patel and his guest, the lights came up and Pete whistled.
The hundred-forty-year old CV-22 squatted under flood lights like a black insect, fifty-seven feet nose to tail and forty-six feet wingtip to wingtip. The swiveling proprotors in the nacelles at each wingtip, and the airfoil itself, were folded across the insect’s back in the jumbled jigsaw of the Osprey’s compact storage configuration.
Pete walked to the aircraft, stroked its chin, and his whisper echoed through the vast barn. “Christ. She’s brand new.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. This one was originally built for the Indian border patrol. Whether India ran out of money or out of enthusiasm is unclear, but when Bell Boeing couldn’t resell it they donated it to the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum mothballed it, waiting to find display space, until I bought it six years ago. They found the spares last month. I acquired the whole package for a song.”
“Not 'The Surrey With The Fringe on Top,' I hope.”
Patel cocked his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Never mind.”
The Osprey indeed had hardly been flown. The museum’s business was preserving old machinery, and Patel’s barn was in fact a hangar fitted out as an automated aircraft maintenance facility that any contemporary air force would have been proud of.
Nonetheless, decades in storage had ravaged the Osprey’s soft spots.
The small stuff—rotted cloth streamers, attached to metal pins, that had once announced “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT”—Pete ignored. Soft goods like seat cushions he replaced. Avionics that could be replaced with contemporary machine intelligence technology half the weight and twice the functionality he just ripped out and chucked. The CV-22 was a special ops variant of the V-22, with extra fuel tanks that provided additional range. Those Pete kept.
As updated, Pete alone, with minimal help from Patel, would be able fly an aircraft designed to require a crew of three or four. But even replacing perished flexible seals and landing gear tires took Pete a month. Then the ship had to be tested and retested, system by system, tip to tip and nose to tail.
On the eve of Pete’s first attempt to get Frankenplane airborne he was less nervous about the aircraft’s age than its pilot’s age. People who said the human body’s muscle memory, for learned skills like riding a bicycle, remained years later never contemplated that the “years later” might exceed one hundred. The old simulator programs he downloaded were crude toys. The new VR simulators were useless fiction concocted by dreamers who had never even seen an Osprey.
The muscles that most needed to remember their fine motor skills were in Pete’s left thumb. A loaded Osprey weighed almost twenty-four tons, but much of its maneuver capability was directed by a spring-loaded, ridged metal thumb wheel the diameter of a last century quarter-dollar coin, mounted in the Thrust Control Lever at his left hand.
Pete nudged the thumb wheel and the proprotors swung toward taxi position. He over corrected, started again. Somewhere in the nacelles something that hadn’t been stressed in over a century groaned. Through gritted teeth he hissed, “That makes two of us.”
On the second try he taxied the Osprey to a floodlit spot midway between the barn and the ranch house, then paused. In the moonless dark sky he picked out the tiny dot of his old and unattainable friend Mars, before the proprotors churned a dust storm that nearly obscured even his new friend Patel. The smaller man peered at the aircraft from the ranch house veranda, with a red bandana tied across his nose and mouth, and his eyes slitted against the dust.
Pete thumbed the nacelles to the sky, so that the airplane became a dual rotor helicopter, then revved the engines and nudged the Osprey until it hovered ten feet off the ground. It wobbled, as his muscles tried to recall motions they hadn’t performed in far too long.
The ship rolled left, and before he could blink the airframe shuddered as the port nacelle’s tail end dug into the dirt. The Osprey’s fat backside slewed around the nacelle’s buried tail.
In an instant the Osprey’s tires struck the dirt hard, and its belly scraped the ground.
By the time Pete subdued the beast and shut down the engines his hands trembled on the controls, and he gulped air in ragged gasps.
Too much fuel odor filled the fuselage. It occurred to Pete that a body that didn’t age would burn down to ash just as fine as any other body’s ash. He unfastened his harness, sprang to the starboard hatch, then dove and rolled clear of the tilted Osprey.
It took two hours for Pete and Patel, using the pickup, to drag the Osprey back into the barn.
They sat side by side on a spares crate near the open doors staring back at the crippled aircraft.
Patel swigged cognac from the bottle, passed it to Pete. “Where did it break?”
Pete drank, then shrugged. “Nowhere. The machine was up to the job. The man wasn’t.” He held up his left thumb, wriggled it. “I’m rusty.” And sore. His left hip throbbed at the same spot where it had broken the last time an Osprey sat on him.
“I mean what is now broken? And how long will it take to repair it?”
“Ruptured fuel line’s an easy fix. So are the flat tires on the port landing gear. Are we in a hurry to get somewhere?”
Patel shook his head. “I told you. We’ll discuss all that later.”
Pete slammed the bottle onto the crate between them. “I’ve been working my ass off here for months.” He stabbed a finger at the ranch yard. “I could have died out there tonight! I think you owe me more information than 'later.’”
Patel sat still, then nodded and clapped Pete on the shoulder. “Peter, your work has bee
n exceptional. You are correct about what you are owed. But life seldom pays us what we are owed. I still feel this enterprise’s future is safer if at this stage you know less rather than more.” He stood. “How about this? If you think back through what you have just said, you will find a clue to what this enterprise is about. And why it is worth your while.”
“A riddle? You’re asking me to solve a fucking riddle?”
Patel placed both hands in the small of his back, stretched then shuffled toward the ranch house. “We always find more satisfying that which we earn than that which we are given.”
Pete chucked the empty bottle in the general direction of Patel’s receding back and the bottle bounced on the ranch yard’s dirt. “You’re an asshole!”
“Conceded. Good night, my friend.”
A month, and many simulator solos, later Pete and Patel sat side by side, airborne in airplane mode in the Osprey’s cockpit, for the first time.
Whatever journey Patel had in mind, the jump-off time was now obviously rushing at them. The prior week he and Pete had driven the pickup all over the Midwest, stopping at drone aerodromes that hosted obsolete turboprops that burned the same Jet-A that the Osprey’s turboshaft engines did.
They bought for cash, in drum lots small enough to be consistent with a week’s consumption by a mid-sized farm co-op’s monitor or duster drone. After Patel’s “Vell, howdy, there, pardner,” drew a few raised eyebrows, Pete had done the talking.
In all they had laid in enough gas to travel, depending on conditions and operating parameters, seven thousand over-the-ground miles.
The CV-22’s range was over a thousand miles, give-or-take, its out-and-back operating radius less than half that. That meant Patel planned either multiple trips to somewhere, or one long one, carrying drums of Jet-A in the cargo compartment, from which fuel could be pumped to refill the tanks during ground stops. Inasmuch as purchasing fuel enroute was likely to get them shot on sight.
That evening, after Pete had landed the Osprey, then bedded it down in the barn next to the fuel drums, he returned to the ranch house and sat across the dining room table from Patel. As the house served dinner Pete said, “Let’s talk some more about where all this is leading.”
Patel raised his eyebrows. “You have solved the riddle?”
“No. But I need to know where we’re going. If the weather’s hot the ship can’t lift as much. If the ground elevation is higher the air’s thinner, and our takeoff roll is longer. Prevailing headwinds reduce our nominal range. You’ve laid in fuel for seven thousand miles. But we can only carry enough of it with us in drums to extend the range to about three thousand on a prayer.”
“Peter, have you ever been to Alaska?”
Pete slapped the tablecloth. “Stop the damn riddles!”
“It’s not a riddle. I just need to know your level of background knowledge to answer efficiently.”
“Oh. Alaska?” He shook his head. “I’ve read a lot about it. But my last trip out of the U.S. the taxpayers bought my ticket. I don’t even have a passport.”
“In those days you wouldn’t have needed one.”
Of course. Alaska had been a state then. Pete frowned at Patel as the house opened the wine. “What’s in Alaska since the Secession? Besides big bears, high unemployment, and anarchy?”
“Attu.”
“What’s Attu?”
“Mine, for starters. It’s an uninhabited island at the west end of the Aleutian chain. I bought the rights to it through a chain of shell corporations from the Alaskan central government and the West Aleutians Borough fifteen years ago.”
“Beach front property on the Bering Sea?” Pete slapped his forehead. “Of course! Location, location, location.”
Patel frowned.
Then Pete stared at the ceiling, nodded. “To visit overland you’d have to cross the international border into Canada. Then again into Alaska. Then deal with every local Borough chief between the panhandle and the Kodiak Archipelago. And their private militias.”
Patel chewed chicken Kiev, washed it down with Chablis, then nodded. “Exactly. I made the overland trip four times. Was nearly recognized and apprehended twice. Boats are slow. Flying commercial exposes one to background checks. International air charters attract even more attention than vessel charters.”
“So you bought a museum piece that nobody considered a flyable aircraft. But that could go long over water, or make short, shallow hops along the coast. It could mimic a boring drone well enough to spoof a bored air traffic control radar operator. It could outrun any Borough’s patrol helo, or a 'stat, and go to ground in a clearing in the woods anytime.”
“The Osprey would have been an ideal commuter. Except it took years to find parts and a pilot when I couldn’t advertise on the Internet.”
Pete spread his arms, palms up. “But why go there at all? And why now?”
Patel raised his index finger, smiled, and said, “I’m glad you asked—”
The house flashed its lights, turned them red, and announced, “V.J., you have a visitor breaching the east fence at milepost four point three.”
Bang!
In the distance a report like an exploding Claymore mine echoed through the night.
Patel threw his napkin on the tablecloth, his lips pressed into a tight smile. “Sounds like somebody found a rabbit.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“V.J., you have multiple visitors breaching—”
Patel waved the house silent, then turned to the gilt-framed Miro hung on the wall behind him as it slid back. A flatscreen that the painting hid lit and showed the ranch in map view.
Two dozen red dots shimmered along the inside of a green line that was the east boundary fence. Four of the dots didn’t move. The rest inched forward, well-separated and on line, toward the house. Flickering white numbers alongside each dot showed the dots were maintaining a common speed over unimproved ground of seven miles per hour, and weighed two hundred sixty pounds each. Disciplined visitors. Inbound on the run. And heavily laden with inappropriate gifts.
The house lights flashed again, this time in faster sequence.
The display shifted scale, drew back, and showed the entire perimeter. Beyond the green line inbounds showed red, their white numbers flickering as they varied speed, course and altitude. The new dots’ speed, and maneuver capability, announced Emag gunships. That meant they would either blow this house into kindling, armored walls and all, or would hover above the house and fast rope a squad down onto the roof.
“V.J., two aerial visitors are inbound and will cross the west fence boundary at an altitude of six hundred feet in twenty—”
Brrraappp. Brrraappp.
The floorboards vibrated beneath Pete’s feet as the roof mini gun thundered. Patel cringed, and clapped his hands over his ears.
The juking red dots blossomed, then disappeared from the screen. Then the sharp cracks of two crashes pricked Pete’s ringing ears, followed by secondary explosion rumbles.
Patel shook his head. “Perhaps I should have let you buy all the fuel.”
V.J. Patel was probably the most prominent, and almost certainly the wealthiest, Millennial who had not yet been cashed in. Whether he had blown his own cover last week or been betrayed by someone or something else, plenty of people wanted the payday he represented. The only real surprise about this assault was that the bad guys weren’t rolling in even heavier.
Pete said, “You have a gun locker in the basement. I saw it.”
“Go down, guns blazing?” Patel shook his head. “How fast can we get the Osprey airborne?”
The chimney mini gun may not have been as elegant or as modern a perimeter defense weapon as a directed energy laser, but it proved to be the soundest investment Patel had ever made. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for six hundred rounds per second. After the third gunship ate it, the rest, if there was any rest, withdrew.
Meantime the lead elements of the ground troops, or thugs, or whoever th
ey were, advanced to within four hundred yards of the house before they found out the hard way that the mini wasn’t just an antiaircraft defense system.
After three bursts the display on Patel’s phone, which mimicked the big display screen behind the Miro, showed four more motionless dots, their white numbers triple zeroed. But the total number of live intruders inside the wire had grown from twenty-four to fifty.
Pete nodded to himself. At the moment the bad guys had halted behind cover, probably waiting until a weapon heavy enough to silence the unexpected mini could be deployed.
During the ceasefire the turret gun had unilaterally imposed, Pete and Patel had run, crouching, to the barn. While Pete half-ass preflighted the Osprey and started the engines Patel winched fuel drums up the Osprey’s rear ramp and secured them to the rear compartment deck.
Patel flopped into the Osprey’s right-hand seat, eyes wide as he peered at red dots, now swarming his phone’s display like fire ants. He pounded a fist on his seat’s arm rest. “Go! Go!”
Pete taxied fast into the ranch yard, swiveled the proprotors, and lifted off vertical.
Patel said, “You said this climbs faster when it takes off like a plane.”
“We’d also fly right over those guys, low enough to take small arms fire.”
“Oh.”
The Osprey had helicoptered majestically to a thousand feet when Pete glimpsed a ground flash, dropped the CV-22 straight toward the deck, and something whooshed three feet over the canopy.
Patel, bug eyed, asked, “What was that?”
“Probably a shoulder-fired, dumb anti-tank rocket they intended to use on the mini. If it had been anything proximity fused or guided we’d be fajitas.” Screw helicopter mode. This time, like the last time so long before, helicopter mode was just the ground slugs’ free ticket to the shooting gallery.
Pete thumbed the aircraft toward airplane mode. He slid the Thrust Control Lever forward, acceleration pressed him against his seat back, and he pulled the cyclic back to his navel. The Osprey’s nose rotated skyward as it climbed above the intruders.