“Good. Then that’s gone by the book.” They reached the front door and Theo let them out.
“Catlin is talking with Chloe in Admin,” Florian said, and then pressed the com into his ear, intent on something for an instant. He suddenly stopped walking–and nothing distracted Florian. She stopped, there in the hall, among the paintings.
“Sera,” he said, “there’s a plane requesting a landing.”
Her heart leapt up in hope.
“It’s Defense, sera.” Florian was still listening. “General Awei, Klaus Awei, requesting permission to land, courier jet. Air Traffic Control requests Admin advice.”
“Permission granted,” she said. There was little else they could do; let automated defenses kick in and start something, or let that plane land. Military courier. If it landed instead of shooting, Defense was talking, and talking–that, she could do something with, even if it delivered a threat. “How far off?”
“How far off?” Florian asked ATC, having relayed her prior instruction; and he reported: “Fifteen minutes, sera.”
“Get a bus.”
“Sera, it’s dangerous.”
“The airport has tunnels, if they’re lying.” Her pulse had kicked up, a level of aggression she had to watch in herself, and question her own decisions. “If they’re going to talk, I’ll talk to them.”
“Yes, sera,” he said, and started relaying that information to Catlin and then to the Transport Office, which ran the buses.
BOOK THREE Section 6 Chapter v
SEPTEMBER 8, 2424
0932H
The bus had gotten to the Wing One doors by the time they met Catlin there–Catlin carrying a rifle/launcher and Florian with only a small pistol. The two exchanged nods, a signal of some kind, the bus door opened, and Ari started to board. Florian interposed an arm between her and the door, saying, “The plane is coming in now, sera. Wait a moment.”
She stopped, and stood beside the bus, looking where Florian and Catlin looked. In a moment she saw a black dot in the east, across the river, coming in on the course most planes from Novgorod used.
“Landing to the north,” Catlin said as it banked, and it followed that route, rapidly becoming a distinct, swept‑winged shape.
“Gear down,” Florian noted in some relief, and leapt up to the bus deck in two strides. Ari climbed up, Catlin behind her.
“Field gate,” Ari said before she’d done more than grasp a seat back for support. “Onto the field to meet it. Go!”
The driver said, “Yes, sera,” and the bus hummed forward and gathered speed down the drive.
They veered onto the airport road, and Ari didn’t bother sitting down; neither did Catlin or Florian, and the bus wasted no time, heading down to the airport road, past where the crater in the lawn had been…work crews had righted the damaged lamp, earthmovers and bots had restored the area and put back sod, so there was very little but the seams in the new sod to say where the missile had been. The warehouses nearby, which had taken some damage, were getting new facing; those panels were a little brighter than the rest. Reseune didn’t admit its wounds. It fixed things, fast, all back to normal…on her orders, for morale. On principle.
And if Khalid had something to say, and sent some messenger to deliver threats, she’d hear what he had to say. The media could hear it, as far as she was concerned. And it could equally well hear her answer.
“The media can come out to the landing area if they want to,” she said. “This isn’t going to be off the record, whatever it is. We’re not playing that game.”
“Sera,” Catlin said, “you know this bus is no cover against what they have.”
“Reseune itself isn’t cover against what they have.” If they killed her, if they meant to kill her, it was for one reason; to get a new Reseune administration in charge of a new infant Ari–she sincerely believed it; and to get that, if it was war, Khalid would peel back layers of Reseune until they got what they wanted, with missile after missile, with a landing on that broad, bot‑defended shore, and killing anybody in their path.
She couldn’t win a war only on defense. Not against all the hardware Defense commanded.
She got one com call from Councillor deFranco as the bus was passing the gate–likely the landing was being carried on Reseune’s operations channel, not kept secret from the population; and she had someone else simultaneously trying to call her, probably Chavez or Harad. Either Florian or Catlin could have taken that call, but it wasn’t the moment to distract them from their contact with ReseuneSec.
“It’s a General Klaus Awei,” she said to deFranco.
“ Awei” DeFranco sounded surprised. “He hasn’t been Khalid’s.”
In a bleak landscape, thatwas interesting information. “I’m there.” she said, because the plane was stopped, and opening up, and their bus was pulling into its vicinity. “Call the others, sera. Tell them follow this on the news. I’m there. Got to go.”
She thumbed off, pocketed the com, grabbed the seat back for balance as the bus braked. Florian and Catlin were right with her as she handed her way to the bus steps, with the black, foreign shape of the military craft in the right side windows.
At the same moment she stepped down onto the ground, someone was exiting the still pinging plane, one man, then a second, both in plain flight gear. She walked ahead, closing the gap, taking a look at Marine General Awei–white‑haired man in the lead, to judge by the collar, lean and not looking like a desk‑sitter. He probably had piloted his way in. The man behind him was of lesser rank, carrying nothing but a sidearm and, a good sign, not touching that. Florian and Catlin were right behind her.
Meanwhile the media had exited the flat‑roofed terminal, a moderate distance away–she was conscious of that onrushing and disorderly humanity in the tail of her eye, but her attention was all for the general, his face, his expressions. His body language exuded dignity, reserve, assessing her, assessing Florian and Catlin…not sure, possibly, exactly who she was–or maybe not sure there weren’t snipers on the terminal roof.
She walked up and held out her hand with absolute assurance. “Ariane Emory,” she said. “General Awei, is it?”
“Sera Emory.” A reciprocal gesture, a large, calloused hand that enveloped hers. The man towered over her, over Florian andCatlin. He was like a living wall, and his hand was warm and strong, force matching her force, no more than that, a sign of basic good sense. “I’m here for the three branches of the service that don’tsupport Admiral Khalid.”
Several things immediately occurred to her; that the Fleet had run Defense since the founding of Union; that Fleet leadership had produced Azov, Gorodin, Jacques, Spurlin, and Khalid, none of whom had been straightforward in their dealings with Science; and that if another branch of the armed services should seize power in that Bureau, it might upend every entrenched structure inside Defense‑as‑it‑was. A veritable earthquake.
Thathad value.
Disorder, however, and professional revenge‑taking posed another kind of hazard.
“General,” she said warmly and by now the media had gotten close, and cameras were going. “You’re certainly welcome. We just had a missile come close to our hospital.”
“No more of those,” Awei said. “A force is in Svetlansk as we speak.”
That could be good news. Or not. “Admiral Khalid has taken Planys Labs,” she said bluntly, “as of this hour.”
“And he’s there,” Awei fired right back. “And not in Novgorod. My service holds the port, the airport, the broadcast stations, andthe power grid in the capital.”