It was the bike-trooper, screaming, “Sonofabitch, the shuttle—watch out guys, on your left—” a hot wash of static, and “—oh holy fuckin’ shit—” Then a silence, filled only with the hum of an empty channel.
He keyed frantically for a readout, any readout at all, from her helmet. The locator still functioned, plotting her on the ground between two buildings in back of the play-court where the shuttle was parked. Her medical readouts were flatline blanks. Dead? Surely not, there should at least still be blood chemistry … the static, empty view being transmitted, upward at an angle into the night fog, at last found him. Phillipi had lost her helmet. What else she’d lost, he couldn’t tell.
Thorne called the shuttle pilot, over and over, alternated with the outer-guards; no replies. It swore. “You try.”
He found empty channels too. The other two perimeter Dendarii re tied up in an exchange of fire with the Bharaputran heavy-weapons squad to the south that the bike-trooper had reported earlier. “We gotta reconnoiter,” snarled Thorne under its breath. “Sergeant Taura, take over here, get these kids ready to march. You—” This is to his address, apparently; why did Thorne no longer call him Admiral, or Miles? “Come with me. Trooper Sumner, cover us.” Thorne departed at a flat-out run; he cursed his short legs as he fell steadily farther behind. Down the lift-tube, out the still-hot front doors, around one dark building, between two others. He caught up with the hermaphrodite, who was flattened against a corner of the building at the edge of the playing-court.
The shuttle was still there, apparently undamaged—surely no hand-weapon could penetrate its combat-hardened shell. The ramp was drawn up, the door closed. A dark shape—downed Dendarii, or enemy?—slumped in the shadow beneath its wing-flanges. Thorne, whispering curses, jabbed codes into a computer control plate bound to its left forearm. The hatch slid aside, and the ramp tongued outward with a whine of servos. Still no human response. “I’m going in,” said Thorne.
“Captain, standard procedure says that’s my job,” said the trooper Thorne had detailed to cover them, from his vantage behind a large concrete tree-tub.
“Not this time,” said Thorne grimly. Not continuing the argument, dashed forward in a zigzag, then straight up the ramp, hurtling aside, plasma arc drawn. After a moment its voice came over the mm. “Now, Sumner.”
Uninvited, he followed Trooper Sumner. The shuttle’s interior was pitch-dark. They all turned on their helmet lights, white fingers darting and touching. Nothing inside appeared disturbed, but the door to the pilot’s compartment was sealed.
Silently, Thorne motioned the trooper to take up a firing stance opposite him, bracketing the door in the bulkhead between fuselage and flight-deck. He stood behind Thorne. Thorne punched another code into its arm control-pad. The door slid open with a tortured groan, then shuddered and jammed.
A wave of heat boiled out like the breath of a blast furnace. A soft orange explosion followed, as enough oxygen rushed into the steering compartment to re-ignite any flammables that were left. The trooper fastened his emergency oxygen mask, grabbed a chemical fire-extinguisher from a clamp on the wall, and aimed it into the flight deck. After a moment they followed in his wake.
Everything was slagged and burned. The controls were melted, communications equipment charred. The compartment stank, chokingly, of toxic oxidation products from all the synthetic materials. And one organic odor. Carbonized meat. What was left of the pilot—he turned his head, and swallowed. “Bharaputra doesn’t have—isn’t supposed to have heavy weapons on-site!”
Thorne hissed, beyond swearing. It pointed. “They threw a couple of our own thermal mines in here, closed the door, and ran. Pilot had to have been stunned first. One smart goddamn Bharaputran son-of-a-bitch … didn’t have heavy weapons, so they just used ours. Drew off or ganged up on my guards, got in, and grounded us. Didn’t even stick around to ambush us … they can do that at their leisure, now. This beast won’t fly again.” Thorne’s face looked like a chiseled skull-mask in the white light from their helmets.
Panic clogged his throat. “What do we do now, Bel?”
“Fall back to the building. Set a perimeter. Use our hostages to negotiate some kind of surrender.”
“No!”
“You got a better idea— Miles?” Thorne’s teeth gritted. “I thought not.”
The shocked trooper stared at Thorne. “Captain—” he glanced back and forth between them, “the Admiral will pull us through. We’ve been in tighter spots than this.”
“Not this time.” Thorne straightened, voice drawn with agony. “My fault—take full responsibility… . That’s not the Admiral. That’s his clone-brother, Mark. He set us up, but I’ve known for days. Tumbled to him before we dropped, before we ever made Jacksonian locals pace. I thought I could bring this off, and not get caught.”
“Eh?” The trooper’s brows wavered, disbelieving. A clone, going under anesthetic, might have that same stunned look on his face.
“We can’t—we can’t betray those children back into Bharaputra’s hands,” Mark grated. Begged.
Thorne dug its bare hand into the carbonized blob glued to what used to be the pilot’s station chair. “Who is betrayed?” It lifted its hand, rubbed a black crumbling smear across his face from cheek to chin. “Who is betrayed?” Thorne whispered. “Do you have. A better. Idea.”
He was shaking, his mind a white-out blank. The hot carbon on his face felt like a scar.
“Fall back to the building,” said Thorne. “On my command.”
Chapter Six
“No subordinates,” said Miles firmly. “I want to talk to the head an, once and done. And then get out of here.” “I’ll keep trying,” said Quinn. She turned back to her comconsole the Peregrine’s tac room, which was presently transmitting the face of a high-ranking Bharaputran security officer, and began the argument again.
Miles sat back in his station chair, his boots flat to the deck, his hands held deliberately still along the control-studded armrests. Calm and control. That was the strategy. That was, at this point, the only strategy left to him. If only he’d been nine hours sooner … he’d methodically cursed every delay of the past five days, in four languages, till he’d run out of invective. They’d wasted fuel, profligately, pushing the Peregrine at max accelerations, and had nearly made up the Ariel’s lead. Nearly. The delays had given Mark just enough time to take a bad idea, and turn it into a disaster. But not Mark alone. Miles was no longer a proponent of the hero-theory of disaster. A mess this complete required the full cooperation of a cast of dozens. He very much wanted to talk privately with Bel Thorne, and very, very soon. He had not counted on Bel proving as much of a loose cannon as Mark himself.
He glanced around the tac room, taking in the latest information from the vid displays. The Ariel was out of it, fled under fire to dock at Fell Station under Thorne’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Hart, ’hey were now blockaded by half a dozen Bharaputran security vessels, lurking outside Fell’s zone. Two more Bharaputran ships presently escorted the Peregrine in orbit. A token force, so far; the Peregrine outgunned them. That balance of power would shift when all their Bharaputran brethren arrived topside. Unless he could convince Baron Bharaputra it wasn’t necessary.
He called up a view of the downside situation on his vid display, insofar as it was presently understood by the Peregrine’s battle computers. The exterior layout of the Bharaputran medical complex was plain even from orbit, but he lacked the details of the interiors he’d have liked if he were planning a clever attack. No clever attack. Negotiation, and bribery … he winced in anticipation of the upcoming costs. Bel Thorne, Mark, Green Squad, and fifty or so Bharaputran hostages were presently pinned down in a single building, separated from their damaged shuttle, and had been for the last eight hours. The shuttle pilot dead, three troopers injured. That would cost Bel its command, Miles swore to himself.