Thirty kilometers lower and fifteen hundred kilometers closer to the coast of the northern continent, the plasma shock began to dissipate. The rotors, glowing white at their tips, freewheeled in the high stratosphere, spinning in a bright blurring disk. Lying in an acceleration couch in the cockpit, the flight crew grappled with the problem of landing a hypersonic autogyro on an airfield with no ground control and no instrument guidance, an airfield that was quite possibly under siege by hostiles. Robard’s blood ran cold as he thought about it. Reflexively, he glanced sideways at his master: a life dedicated to looking after the Admiral had brought him to this fix, but still he looked to him for his lead, even though the old warhorse was barely conscious.
“How does he look?” Robard asked.
Dr. Hertz glanced up briefly. “As well as can be expected,” he said shortly. “Did you bring his medications with you?”
Robard winced. “Only his next doses. There are too many pill bottles—”
“Well then.” Hertz fumbled with his leather bag, withdrew a preloaded syringe. “Was he taking laudanum? I recall no such prescription, but …”
“Not to my knowledge.” Robard swallowed. “Diabetes, a dyskinesia, and his um, memory condition.
Plus his legs, of course. But he was not in pain.”
“Well, then, let’s see if we can wake him up.” Hertz held up the syringe and removed the protective cap.
“I would not normally so brutalize an old man before landing, especially one who has suffered a stroke, but under the circumstances—”
Twelve kilometers up, the autogyro dropped below Mach 2. Rotors shedding a disk of thunderous lightning, its ground track angled across the coast; where it passed, animals fled in panic. The lifeboat continued to lose altitude while Hertz administered his wake-up injection. Less than a minute later, the craft dropped to subsonic speed, and a new keening note entered the cabin. Robard glanced up instinctively.
“Just restarting the aerospikes,” Kossov mumbled. “That way we can make a powered touchdown.” The Admiral groaned something inarticulate, and Robard leaned forward. “Sir. Can you hear me?” The lifeboat flew sideways at just under half the speed of sound, a bright cylinder of fire spurting from the tips of the rotor disk that blurred around its waist. The copilot repeatedly tried to raise Imperial Traffic Control, to no avail; he exchanged worried glances with his commander. Trying to land under the missile batteries of the Skull Hill garrison, with no word on who was holding the city below, would be nerve-racking enough. To do so in a lifeboat short on fuel, with a desperately sick admiral aboard—
But there was no breath of search radar bouncing off the lifeboat’s hull. Even as it rose over the castle’s horizon, drifting in at a sedate four hundred kilometers per hour, there was no flicker of attention from the ground defense batteries. The pilot keyed his intercom switch. “The field’s still there even though nobody’s talking to us. Visual approach, stand by for a bumpy ride.” The Admiral muttered something incoherent and opened his eyes. Robard leaned back in his seat as the rotor tip aerospikes quietened their screeching roar, and the pilot fed the remaining power into the collective pitch, trading airspeed against altitude. “Urk.” Lieutenant Kossov looked green.
“Hate ’copters,” mumbled the Admiral.
The motors shut down, and the lifeboat dropped, autorotating like a fifty-ton sycamore seed. There was a brief surge of upward acceleration as the pilot flared out before touchdown, then a bone-jarring crunch from beneath the passenger compartment. A screech of torn metal told its own story; the lifeboat tilted alarmingly, then settled back drunkenly, coming to rest with the deck tilted fifteen degrees.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” asked Robard.
“Shut up and mind your business,” grated Commander Leonov. He hauled himself out of his couch and cast about. “You! Look sharp, man the airlock! You and you, break open the small-arms locker and stand by to clear the way.” He began to clamber down the short ladder to the flight deck, hanging on tight despite the fifteen-degree overhang, still barking out orders. “You, Robot or whatever your name is, get your man ready to move, don’t know how long we’ve got. Ah, Pilot-captain Wolff. I take it we’re on the field. Did you see any sign of a welcoming committee?”
The pilot waited while Leonov backed down the ladder, then followed him down to the deck. “Sir, humbly report we have arrived at Novy Petrograd emergency field, pad two. I was unable to contact traffic control or port air defense control before landing, but nobody shot at us. I didn’t see anyone standing around down there, but there are big changes to the city — it’s not like the briefing cinematograph. Regret to report that on final approach we ran a little short of fuel, hence the bad landing.”
“Acceptable under the circumstances.” Leonov turned to the airlock. “You there! Open the hatch, double quick, ground party will secure the perimeter immediately!” The Admiral seemed to be trying to sit up. Robard cranked up the back of his wheelchair, then leaned down to release the cables securing it in place. As he did so, the Admiral made a curious chuckling noise.
“What is it, sir?”
“Heh—’omit commit. Heh!”
“Absolutely, sir.” Robard straightened up. Fresh air gusted into the confines of the lifeboat; someone had tripped the override on the airlock, opening both hatches simultaneously. He could smell rain and cherry blossoms, grass and mud.
Lieutenant Kossov followed the ground party through the airlock, then ducked back inside. “Sir. Humbly report, ground party has secured the site. No sign of any locals.”
“Hah, good. Lieutenant, you and Robot can get the old man down. Follow me!” Leonov followed the last of the officers— the flight crew and a couple of lieutenant commanders Robard didn’t recognize, members of the Admiral’s staff or the bridge crew — into the airlock.
Together, Robard and Lieutenant Kossov grunted and sweated the Admiral’s wheelchair down a flimsy aluminum stepladder to the ground. Once his feet touched concrete, Robard breathed in deeply and looked around. One of the lifeboat’s three landing legs looked wrong, a shock absorber not fully extended. It gave the craft an oddly lopsided appearance, and he knew at once that it would take more than a tank-ful of fuel to get it airborne again, much less into orbit. Then his eyes took in what had happened beyond the rust-streaked concrete landing pad, and he gasped.
The landing field was less than two kilometers from the brooding walls of the garrison, on the outskirts of the scantily settled north bank of the river. South of the river, there should have been a close-packed warren of steep-roofed houses, church spires visible in the distance before a knot of municipal buildings.
But now the houses were mostly gone. A cluster of eldritch silvery ferns coiled skyward from the former location of the town hall, firefly glimmerings flickering between their fractally coiled leaves. The Ducal palace showed signs of being the worse for wear; one wall looked as if it had been smashed by a giant fist, the arrogant bombast of heavy artillery.
The Admiral slapped feebly at the arm of his chair. “’Ot right!”
“Absolutely, my lord.” Robard looked around again, this time hunting the advance landing party. They were halfway to the control tower when something that glowed painfully green slashed overhead, making the ground shake with the roar of its passage.
“Enemy planes!” shouted Kossov. “See, they’ve followed us here! We must get the Admiral to cover, fast!” He pushed Robard aside and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, nearly tipping it over in his haste.