“On my back!” He tilted his head back and laughed. “No, really a team climbed the two hundred and twelve meter cliff wall. Then we attached the crane’s cable to their rope, and they hauled the rope up and anchored the cable. Then the crane lifted itself up. Notice at the top, to the right about fifty meters, we can just barely see it now.”
The team looked where Sevin pointed.
“That’s where we blasted away some of the crater rim with lasers, so the crane would have enough of a slope near the top to pull at an angle and then drive out of here.”
Tad said, “You are a freakin’ genius.”
“Thank you.” Sevin patted himself on the back.
The crane, a large vehicle with six tall tires on each side, swung the cage a quarter turn and sat it on the ground. Sevin backed the skimmer out of the cage and gave the crane operator a thumbs-up gesture. Then the skimmer sped off toward Factory Seven. After twenty klicks they met a defined dirt road and followed it. The Nav system didn’t show the road, but it did show they were going the right direction.
“Contact!” Tad’s voice.
Galen squeezed off a single laser bolt and looked through the sights. The red afterglow of the laser shot was dead-on with the targeting reticule. Good. Galen glanced around for targets. Up ahead on the road a civilian vehicle approached. Galen zoomed in and saw its flat front, its cab in front of a flat bed. It had four tires and it moved too slowly to kick up much dust. As an afterthought, he looked and noticed his laser shot’s impact was about fifty meters off the road to the truck’s right. Galen had mixed feelings about that. He was glad he hadn’t destroyed the vehicle and its occupant, but at the same time he realized his instincts were a little off. He was getting rusty.
Galen yelled, “Shut up, Tad!”
“Sorry. I just sort of reacted without thinking.”
As they passed the truck, which had stopped when the laser bolt landed near it, Sevin gave the driver a slow, deliberate, not at all friendly wave with his left hand. Tad continued to look forward. Galen studied the scruffy driver and noticed the poor state of repair of the truck. Rusty in places, brown spray paint over one repaired spot, black on another. The truck must have been red when it was new but its remaining oxidized paint was a dull, fuzzy orange. The cargo bed had several empty wire mesh cages, cubic meters and smaller, strapped down on it. Galen looked back and saw the truck continue on its way.
Galen said, “How’s that for a first impression.”
“Oh, they’re impressed,” said Karen. “He’ll tell everyone we’re ten meters tall and eat babies for breakfast. It’ll be in their news.”
Sevin looked over his shoulder. “I hope so.”
Galen traded places with Koa. Seated, he was able to read a guide to planetary laws on his noteputer. When he got to the part that, if strictly interpreted, said that he had the authority to make arrests anywhere on the planet and convene tribunals to adjudicate criminal offenses in accordance with common law and EugeneX policy, he marked it for easy reference. He looked ahead and saw a mid-sized city about ten klicks away. The factory complex topped a mountain that loomed up from behind the city.
The dirt road ended where it merged into a paved road, large flat stones fitted together by some sort of grouting material in the cracks. Not that it mattered to the skimmer. Sevin decreased the height and increased the speed. Soon the barren land was replaced with farm land. Crops grew on either side of the road.
“Stop here,” said Galen.
Sevin halted the vehicle and sidled it to the right side of the road, but maintained its hover. “What’s up?”
Galen undid his lap belt. “Set us down, I want to get a closer look at these plants.”
Sevin gripped Galen’s forearm and said, “Stay in the skimmer. Let me show you a trick I learned before you were born.” Sevin used his personal communicator to take a picture of the plants, zoomed in real tight. Then a database searched to find out what they were. “That’s weed, boss. Drugs.”
Galen said, “They may be growing it for pharmaceuticals, legitimate use.”
Sevin shrugged. “Yes. And if you leave a coin under your pillow a fairy will show up. That’s a lot of dope for a city of only two hundred thousand.”
Karen said, “Okay. We really don’t want to have anything to do with these people but we would like to have their organic fuel and we’d like to get real food from them if possible. There has to be a way to keep our relationship with them strictly business.”
Sevin stifled a laugh. “Lady, that is not possible. These people will get their hooks into our troops with their teenaged psycho prostitutes and their drugs and turn our Brigade into a big, steaming pile of undisciplined thugs. I say we turn around now and make contact with the other city.”
Galen thought for a moment. “Ensure all sensors and any other recording devices are off.” He got nods from the others after they double checked everything around them. “Who, exactly, is the legitimate, ultimate, supreme authority on this planet right now?”
“You.” Sevin poked Galen’s shoulder with his right index finger.
Galen said, “We have a situation here, where we have a lot of troops that will soon get bored if we don’t have anything for them to do, and they’ll start looking for some entertainment. But we don’t like the entertainment that Factory Seven’s people will provide because it will rot away the very core of our Brigade by destroying its discipline.”
“It’s not that complicated,” said Tad. “When people you don’t like and can’t trust have something you want, just kick their asses and take it.”
“Start a war,” said Sevin, “and make it look like their fault.”
Galen took off his helmet and scratched his head. “Koa, who’s the most powerful enclave leader in that town?”
Koa consulted his noteputer and did some digging. After a couple of minutes he said, “Orange House Gang, led by the oldest son of Queen Zora. But she’s the real power. She lives in what used to be the city’s courthouse, and uses it as the headquarters of her enclave. Her group provides all the unskilled labor for the air factory and in return has control over half the byproducts.”
Galen said, “The air factory. Who runs it?”
Koa read his noteputer for a minute and then said, “A single corporation controls all of the planet’s air factories and provides the professional staff. At Factory Seven, staff members rotate out after one year tours. They live inside the factory and have very little to do with this town.”
Galen said, “So they don’t really give a crap what happens to the town, as long as they have enough unskilled labor available when they want it. Let’s go pick a fight.”
Sevin sidled the skimmer back onto the road and sped toward the city at eighty percent of top speed. Galen wasn’t sure, but it seemed like Sevin was trying very hard not to smile.
The skimmer entered the town by lifting to a height of four meters to fly over an abandoned toll gate. Galen was sure the vehicle was narrow enough to pass through the stalls.
“Sevin, what was that all bout?”
“Just showing off.” Sevin lowered the hovercraft to three centimeters, concentrating the force of the air coming out from the lower edge of the plenum chamber skirts, for the express purpose of blowing the trash on the median strip and the sidewalks away from his lane. Annoying, of course, to the occasional pedestrian or sidewalk dweller. Closer in to the city, pedestrians in the distance noticed the vehicle but decided to stand well back as it passed, shielding their faces with their hands. The nav system led them to the front entrance of the Orange House, where Sevin flew over the gate and brought the skimmer to a low hover in the yard, rotated and sidled the vehicle so Galen could dismount right at the base of the front steps. The porch roof that had covered the concrete slab at the top of the steps was gone, the base of four snapped-off support columns the only thing left.