Patrol Cruiser Bortune, intrinsically camouflaged against the star-stark blackness of space in this outer rim of the Galaxy, closed rapidly on the assigned rendezvous point. That vessel’s Captain, Stallenor, a ‘reformed’ glider pilot with two hundred years of relaxing flight experience in the thermals on Fepnine, watched the approaching vessel with a certain degree of envy. From his perspective, the white dart brought back his memories of high-speed gliding competitions in one of the few hilly – almost mountainous – areas of Fepnine, as to him it was entirely silent. I should’ve waited to get motivated for a little longer, I might have had a chance to pilot one of these. He had heard that there were several other Karalk under construction. Of course, it’s nothing compared to this cruiser… it can’t dimension out, its range is limited to the inner system, I doubt it has any weaponry and it probably doesn’t have much of a Shell system, either. He shook his head, amazed at the effect this throw-back to ancient history was having on him. The possibility – which was in fact, reality – that the vessel had zero defensive Shells was inconceivable to him.
Stallenor’s heart pounded as the whiteness burst into flame along the entire length of the slender crew compartment and the vessel flipped end on end in a tenth of a semo. Just as his concern made him start to open his mouth to transmit his offer of help, he saw the flames vanish from the needle-like portion and reappear at the rear of the sculpted wing, blazing brightly as the relative velocity dropped rapidly to zero. How do they do that? He found himself speculating about the temporary thrust transfer technique, and had to put that aside to instruct his crew to prepare for the exchange. Not that we have to do much, it’s sliding right up alongside! What a pilot! What a ship! What a name[24]!
Chapter Six
Like looking for a hailstone on a glacier! Walter Konig
Richard, Kirrina and their GAF crews finished their zany roof repair job a few minutes later, landing their Aircars in the space left vacant in the centre of the hangar – and surprisingly, at least to the newcomers, not disappearing on contact with the simulated concrete floor. The last of the S.P.F.s were powered down as the remaining, smaller holes in the walls were covered, and the hangar was finally closed off to the elements once more. Several Marines immediately began to work on the mess within, collecting the snow and disposing of it down the janitorial floor drains as it began to melt in the rapidly warming air. Some of these rehabilitated fighters found their feet slipping; the bitter-cold breezes that had been flowing freely through the unintentional ventilation apertures created by their attack had created a number of icy patches across the concrete flooring.
Walt took his ‘charges’ out of his office to meet the Aircar teams, making a point of walking onto the mysterious area of the floor, so that they would have to do so, too. A lot of handshaking and backslapping occurred as the NUIT members congratulated the repair team which had worked along with the Fletchers.
“Pleased to meet you.” Baynes reached out to the tallest of the Aircar crew, finding himself dwarfed by this hulk of a man and wondering how he could have fitted into the pilot’s seats of any of the Canadian Air Force’s aerial fleet. “I’m NUIT Chief… Ed Baynes.”
“Mason Charette[25], at your service.” He took Ed’s hand in his, enveloping it with his massive fist.
“Ooh, I like the look of those craft!” Fraser greeted the more typically tall, oriental-featured man to his left. “I’m Leroy Fraser.”
“Senichi Arakaki.” The ex-USAF pilot bowed slightly. “It’s an improvement on the leased Cessna I used to fly on weekends, but I had to forgo those great bonuses from the Corporate sector when I took this job. Such is life!”
Leroy chuckled in response as he realised the benefits of working for this outfit were quite literally ‘out of this world’.
“You must be Hank.” This was ventured confidently by the ever-observant Judy as she reached out to the remaining unknown.
“Yes, ma’am. I see you have me figured!” Saxon gave one of his rare smiles, obviously impressed by what he saw.
“Oh! I’m Judy Brisson. I work for NUIT, too.”
“Warming up nicely!” Karen loosened her winter gear, revealing the almost inevitable black, scoop-necked top with starry sparkles splashed across the front. Both the air and the inter-personal relationships!
“This building certainly has character now!” Leroy commented with his usual flair for understatement, nodding and smiling at the lovely face which he recently had the pleasure of kissing, instead of looking around at the black Hybralloy beams and panels joining the old structure to the new, like some kind of mechanical imitation of ivy overgrowth.
Kirrina grinned back, dimples briefly appearing, as she caught his thought on the absurdity of their initial ‘introduction’. “As do you!” This was said very quietly, and boosted a little by her mental ‘touch’, so that only he would hear.
“It’s a way of life for us,” Richard responded to the evaluation of their emergency repairs, thinking of how Citadel and Patrol Craft One had been merged, and the contrast that existed between the upper hanger and the lower chamber, a location unknown as yet to their newly acquired comrades. He ignored the banter between his wife and the tough and tall Illinoisan, but would catch up on it as they reviewed their day, later, as they always did before sleeping.
“We were convinced that you…” Ed began, but then stopped, suddenly aware that there was nothing he could say that would be of value on that subject. “I have a favour to ask,” he continued hesitantly, knowing that he was hardly in a position to bargain for anything.
“Don’t worry, Major,” Kirrina replied with great solemnity, “we don’t hold grudges in our line of work.”
Baynes recalled from his first confrontation with her in Redcliff, Maine that she knew his ‘old’ rank. Shot, bleeding, controlling a squad as well as me, and still she almost fried my brains so I wouldn’t even know my own name, let alone my rank! I have to admit she really is something!
Karen continued without any hint of the animosity she had displayed at their earlier confrontations, giving a nod of acknowledgement to him for his mental response, though she was now only skirting his thoughts. “Those we thought to be eternal enemies may turn out to be our greatest allies, sometimes.”
“We will prove that… We’ll do all we can to sort this out…” Baynes found himself trying to do what he had moments before admitted to be pointless. He stopped himself again, appreciating her comment about enemies, but of course he did not comprehend the deeper meaning she had veiled in it. After this self-imposed pause, he had to press on, blurting out the awful truth of his second point, though this one was not a world-wide concern, but merely a very local, personal one. “We have a team member out there, somewhere. Mission objectives meant that we could not prioritise a search for him without compromising our plan to perform a surprise attack… here.” Ed grimaced as he conceded the ironic fact that his team had been easily the more surprised. “We think he’s nearby. He drove up from Providence on the third, and must’ve been caught by the storm a few minutes before he would’ve got to our camp.”
“Over four days!” Walt exclaimed. “Some people in the houses in town didn’t last twenty-four hours!”
“But this is Eric Kirouac we’re talking about; he is one of the best! He’d survive a lot more than this arctic weather.” Leroy sounded defensive, almost angry at the seemingly casual speculation by his new aviator acquaintance. “He’ll walk here if he has to, but I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy out in this, let alone a close friend. Besides, this latest storm looks like it might be even worse than the earlier ones.”
“Give me the coordinates – some idea where he might be.” Walt held his hands out in an unconscious gesture to placate the obviously irate Fraser.
Baynes passed over a rather crumpled map and Konig looked it over, refreshing his mind on the location of the roads, as they had been buried for as long as Eric had been missing. “If he’s alive, we’ll find him. Tony!�
� He called over to the short lad who was helping secure the S.P.F.G.s for transport back down into the ‘basement’. “Get yourself into your winter kit; I need you to operate one of those short range sensor modules as I fly along the road back to Providence.”
The mousy-haired lad, dressed as usual in his favourite blue jeans and dark brown sweatshirt, grabbed up his thick coat and ran over. His hazel eyes looked a little scared, but his grin showed he trusted the ‘Chairman of the Board’ at least as much in the air as he did in the office.
“Which one are we going to take?” His voice was light, pale almost, and seemed to the worried NUIT team members to match his diminutive nature precisely.
“Use Seagull, there’s room for both of you and your marooned military man in her, and she handles much better than our ‘blocky friend’s’ Magic Wagon in this kind of storm.” Kirrina advised, avoiding any more specific reference to her blood-brother the Narlav, almost painfully aware that his presence would have to be explained most carefully to their new allies.
“My thoughts exactly!” Richard grinned a little. “Although M.W. is a breeze compared to Morse!”
“Get going, you two!” Kirrina urged, a slight smile showing how much she appreciated Richard’s qualifying remark. “Take some of those self-warming blankets with you. In fact, take quite a few, you may find more survivors than you expect.”
Walt turned as he began to leave, and looked at Kirrina, trying to read her expression, but she remained inscrutable. She sure could play a mean game of poker! He took his coat from the willing hands of Penny-Lee, and Patricia ran over with a stack of the fabled and fabulous blankets as he opened the door to enter Seagull.
“Thanks, girls. Do you know how the Hawks are doing?”
Both girls nodded, and Pat graciously gestured for Penny-Lee to provide the answer, knowing the exuberance that her friend invariably emanated.
“All good!” The former cheerleader bounced into an athletic celebratory pose, arms and legs outstretched. “They’re chillin’ out together in P.C. Eight.” She smiled and bounced away, breaking into a run and adding some cartwheels to her impromptu performance as she went past some very appreciative Marines.
Tony slipped in beside the veteran rescue pilot as the door began to swing into place, its slick motion initiated by several helping hands. Seagull rose a meagre two feet into the air and flowed smoothly off towards the big doors, where a few more Marines were waiting to provide an ‘exit window’ and attempt to minimise the amount of snow that would enter during the exercise. All watched as the doors parted. Leroy was quickly proved right: the wind was more powerful than before, though the amount of snow coming down was possibly a little less. In any case, the temperature in the hangar dropped over twenty degrees in a few seconds and three inches of the white stuff could be seen in mini drifts just inside the opening by the time the edges of the doors were brought together again.
Outside, Seagull cruised forwards, rising gradually, steadily under Konig’s expert hand, despite the gale-force conditions, until he was maintaining about twenty feet of space between the Aircar and the endless swells of snowdrifts.
“We are looking for any signs of life.” Walt glanced across at the young, diminutive, but very willing young man seated beside him. “Remember that family we found in the Sports Center.”
Tony nodded, and thought up the relevant scanner display. An infrared image of the forward view appeared in front of him, and he adjusted it to cover the area from directly below their Aircar forwards, for about a hundred metres.
“Almost entirely uniform at this point.” Holt glanced at the numerals below the display. “I’ve ratcheted up the sensitivity to maximum, and can see variations as small as a half a degree. It’s all coming in over about a three degree spread, with the high around minus twenty seven.”
Walt had been moving them forwards fairly slowly, his hand constantly shifting around in an apparently random pattern that eventually sketched out a sphere about a centimetre across, conjuring up an almost perfectly straight course into the eddies and gusts. The snow got heavier, making the forward view vary between five and fifty metres from one second to the next.
“I’m going to move a little quicker,” Konig announced as he pushed forwards on the football-like Drive control sphere. The Aircar seemed to develop a more stable flight pattern as the forward velocity was increased. “You should still be able to detect anything alive, I think.”
“Yes sir!” Tony agreed, unconsciously using the military honorific in deference to the veteran pilot’s long-past war experiences. “I’ve got the auto-announce set for temperatures above zero, so I’ll be able to spot any survivors quite easily, as long as they aren’t behind a really thick snow-bank, a wall, or a combination of the two.”
Walt grinned at this and shook his head, as he considered that the likelihood of these limitations curtailing the effectiveness of their search was much more than the chance of finding someone out in the blizzard conditions. Like looking for a hailstone on a glacier! He limited their forward motion to a speed appropriate for car-cruising side streets – in dry sunny weather – and continued in the direction of the road from Providence. “If they are inside some makeshift shelter, you may need all that sensitivity and more!”
Tony concentrated on his display, confident that his airborne scanning platform would be maintained constantly on an even keel, despite the wind that caused snow pellets to impact on the rakishly curved frontal Transplyous panel like a sand-blaster clearing coal-fired grime from a heritage building. The reproduction of the view ahead, seen rendered in a grey monotone with only the slightest hint of red on his display… mirrored the image of the gently undulating sea of snow that Walt also viewed with an apparent absence of colour, though his view was unaided by any technological devices, and of course with eyes that no longer needed corrective lenses.
The undulations below their Aircar became uneven after a couple of minutes, as the road skirted the edge of New Leeds where an abandoned barn, semi-collapsed after years of neglect, disturbed the dune-like pattern of snow-cover. Here, Konig turned the Aircar slightly to the north to follow the hidden road surface. Tony looked across, his attention distracted by the sudden hand movement of the pilot.
“Look down there!” Walt pointed through the Transplyous windscreen.
Tony glanced out, then tried to locate the same area on his viewscreen.
“No, it won’t register.” Konig interrupted this futile attempt, as the point of interest was not human, nor anything that ever had been living, with the inherent heat signature that entailed, but only what might just be the remains of a trail. “Check the snow surface. Can you see anything?”
Holt leaned forward and the pilot tilted the craft obligingly to make the view downwards easier. The gravity field in the vehicle made it seem more like the world had been rearranged, rotated, as no sensation of the ‘nose-down’ orientation was discernible by the inner ear.
“Turn us left, please, ah, sir…” Tony spoke with some excitement as he noted the irregular streak in the otherwise storm-smoothed snow-scape. The Aircar turned towards the slightly denser spread of buildings that comprised the nominal edge of the town, and soon both of them could perceive that the effect continued in that direction, though initially the constant drifting of the snow blurred the signs almost into oblivion. Walt moved them onwards, and gradually the rougher, slightly ragged strip of snow became easier to discern. A tone from the scanner reminded Tony of his task, and he concentrated on the display once more, finding a faint red stain at the furthermost limit of the scan-field. “One hundred metres ahead, sir!”
Konig pushed the yellow and black chequered sphere firmly forwards and the streamlined Aircar surged on, slicing through the storm effortlessly. His other arm grabbed Holt’s shoulder:
“That pile of snow is moving!”
Tony’s display registered barely above zero as they neared the strange object, with the wind now squarely behind them.
“Take us beyond a bit and swing around!” Holt’s excitement stripped his communication of any polite embellishments.
As Seagull rotated around in a style reminiscent to Walt’s helicoptering techniques from years past, the infrared display registered a little higher and Walt did not need to be urged to bring the Aircar down into the path of the shambling monstrosity, for now they could see that the moving snow pile was tilted sideways and included a thinner, shaft-like protrusion on the side opposite to the inclination.
The Aircar settled almost without any further regulation from Walt and Tony released the door, filling the interior with a whirlwind of snowflakes and bitter-cold air. Both of them jumped out and ran the few paces towards the pile, and it was only then that their eyes could resolve the irregular shape into the melded reality of the walker and his burden.
Eric halted his slow-motion gait and tried to reach for his rifle, but found his arms were frozen to the body he carried, encased in a half inch or more of re-frozen snow melt. The unknown shapes approaching him became clear, no longer threatening, and he allowed the two humans – one quite large, the other comparatively small – to guide him towards a strange, domed smoothness with an abrupt, precisely contoured panel hanging overhead, blocking a little of the blizzard. He collapsed into the rear bench, managing to keep Amber from hitting the edge of the doorway. The smaller of the rescuers threw self-warming blankets around the yeti-like creature and attempted to pry the motionless form from his hands as he got in beside them.
Walt closed the door and swung the Aircar up and around, onto a direct line back to the airfield, relying this time on the display before him, as visibility had dropped to no more than four metres. “Who is he carrying?” He accelerated rapidly, no longer needing to limit his speed, and the ground flashed by, scant metres below their amazing craft, a whirlwind of synchronised snow spinning in the slipstream behind them.
Cavalry Page 6