Pillars of light and fir.., p.40
PILLARS OF LIGHT AND FIRE: THE COMPLETE SERIES, page 40
“This will activate your kill switch. The code is already keyed.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telegraphing your move,” Arthur said.
“Just wanted you to know before you go. What happened to you?”
“You ask me that now?”
“Not really. It’s more of a rhetorically dramatic question.” Slam thumbed the send button. Popping firecracker sounds went off in the room. Arthur threw the pouch of expended kill switches onto the desk.
“Colonel Marks wanted these implanted, right? Instead, I had neural shunts installed that allow my team to close our own interlocks and manifest at will. Nice try, though.”
Slam laughed. “Clever sonuvabitch. Proud to be outmatched by someone like you.”
“You think I’m going to kill you?”
“Of course. I’m not going to stop hunting—”
Caliburn sliced his head off cleanly. Blood fountained everywhere and Slam’s body fell backward.
“You’re right.” Arthur reached under Maven’s desk and depressed a button. A latch clicked and he opened the side of the desk. To his surprise, Maven’s silver-tipped ebony cane sat inside the compartment. He picked it up. He grabbed the small notebook and tucked it into his n-suit. He hissed at the pain in his side. He pulled on his cowl, activated the echo suit, and manifested to maximum. He hoped the hole in the suit did not compromise its ability, but he would have to take the chance.
Just Shooter, Jocko, Slick, Birdie, and Crisco remained, unless T. S. had taken one or more of them. He took two steps back and then ran three steps forward and leapt through the blown-in window. He hit the ground and rolled forward. Bullets hit his KE field but he kept running. He ran past Jocko and Birdie, dead from high-density twenty-millimeter rounds. He was impressed with T. S.’s accuracy. He kept to the dark shadows around the buildings, his infrared signature made invisible by the suit.
* * *
Isolde looked down at the burning farmhouse. Even the barn was on fire. Horses galloped away from the flames. T. S. had taken off in the Raven under stealth mode to evade any missile attack. She was loaded for bear and the deployed broadband jammer had been blown away with a home-on-jam missile from the Raven. T. S. had then used Raven’s weapons systems to take out Jocko and Birdie, who had not anticipated the Raven’s being armed, then Slick and Crisco, who’d managed to fire a wild rocket into the side of the farmhouse.
The Raven continued to gain altitude and disappeared into the inky night sky, hovering high over the firefight. With most of the Raven’s helicopter pilots spread to the four winds, it had sat dormant in the hangar.
Isolde was plugged into the data feed of the Raven’s sophisticated communications suite.
“How am I looking down here?” Arthur asked.
She keyed the mike. “Vitals good. No alerts on the military channels, though reports of the fire are going into local fire companies and police.”
“I’m missing one person, any movement?”
“Radar’s only picking up the horses and debris. Looking on infrared.”
“I’ll scout around for a bit.”
“They left one man behind?” T. S. asked.
“This is Lerna. If one gets out, we’re in trouble.”
Isolde pressed her lips together. “Satellite coverage is coming back in two mikes.”
“I’ll meet you at the clearing for dust-off. I need to take care of Tintagel.”
The Raven banked and dropped altitude. A rocket streaked out of the night and struck it. It exploded in a spectacular burst of flame and fire.
* * *
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—
Jeri stood outside the trailer, staring at the shape of the Archimedes. She could not sacrifice her career on some gung-ho crap. She was this close to going into space. If she did this, she’d never get onto the space shuttle or onto the International Space Station. It was not logical or sane.
She pressed her palms together and focused on herself. She did the math. It was likely NASA would not make a manned mission to Mars by 2020. It required a lot of lifting and preparation. Either it would be a one-way mission or there would be a lot of prepared hardware sent months or years in advance of the first human arrival. Would she be too old by then? She doubted it. Astronauts worked until their fifties before retiring from active service. She had enough time to make it then.
Was she seduced by the Archimedes’s promise so easily? She had doubted it for months while at Telemachus, keeping her skills up-to-date and her résumé polished for reentry into the NASA pipeline. Despite Jim’s promises, it would not be as easy as dropping her in a mission commander role. She needed to make a call.
She pulled out her phone and turned it on. She had kept it off during dinner. The phone pinged.
Follow your dream. I’ll be waiting for you, from Millicent. Jeri checked the timestamp. It had been sent right around the time Maven’s plane had taken off—while they were at the restaurant.
Grief threatened to overwhelm Jeri again, but she pushed it away. She did not want to grieve. It dug at her though. Could she do it? What did the Archimedes mean to her?
The door banged open. Kai ran past her to their portable quarters in a nearby trailer. She was off to get her astro n-suit on. Jeri watched her, saw the determination in her gait. She was not thinking about the future. She was thinking about now.
“Well?” Indiana said behind her.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you coming?” Indiana asked, pointing not at the rocket, but into the heavens.
Tom stepped out and put a hand on her shoulder.
Indiana hesitated only for a moment, then she put her hand on Jeri’s shoulder as well. Arondight flashed in the starlight.
“What about the space shuttle?” Jeri asked.
Tom smiled. “I called Nik. He would smooth over any problems with Jim, and since the shuttle work is written into our contracts, there’s no reason why we can’t conduct an early ‘test’ of Archimedes.” Tom made finger-quoting motions.
“Huh, I think you’re lying.”
“Well, I got a spot on STS-137. You’ll be lucky to get anything after that, because I’ll be so damn good at it.”
“You’re the one in love with the Archimedes—its design, its system—”
“You’re too hardheaded. You stay, I’ll go.” Tom made to walk to the trailers.
Jeri grabbed his arm. “Marla would be pissed.”
“And Millie wouldn’t be?” Indiana said.
Jeri held onto Tom, but Indiana held onto Jeri. Jeri looked at Indiana’s face. The dark sadness and hope in her eyes. What did the future really hold? Go, she told herself, and Millicent echoed the thought in her head.
She squeezed Tom’s hand and smiled.
“That’s my girl,” he said, turned, and walked back into the trailer.
“Let’s go,” Jeri said to Indiana.
* * *
TINTAGEL, PA—
Cornwall Marks did not regain consciousness so much as his brain stopped randomly firing neurons enough for his normal thought processes to return. His skin was on fire and every muscle ached like he had gone fifteen rounds with young Muhammad Ali. He pushed down the throbbing pain and remembered where he was. He got to his hands and knees. The emergency lights were on. He checked the time on the luminous dial of his watch, but his eyes had trouble focusing. Eight, maybe nine minutes had passed?
His sidearm was gone. He felt hard pebbles under his palm. They were bullets, warped from the heat of being fired but undistorted by impact. MacGabran had manifested after his kill switch was activated. And why did he not see the halo? He had tested the devices himself—they were not faulty, so what had MacGabran done? Cornwall concluded Arthur must have figured out the workaround Brightwork had used in Geneva. Cornwall’s face was wet, and his nose throbbed. He must have hit it on the floor in a convulsive fit. Goddamn MacGabran! He remembered Isolde and Lerna. The kill squad should have been there by now. He hoped she was safe but knew he had to find out himself. He had to get to the surface. He stumbled to the emergency stairwell. He pushed the thoughts about his son away. Arthur had Isolde now. His daughter had been taken!
The air crackled with energy and the hair on his arms and neck stood on end. What the hell was going on? He put his head down like a charging boar and barreled up the stairs. The stairwell shook with a muffled boom. Cornwall grabbed the rail to keep from being thrown back down. There was another incredible explosion from below. Was it from the lab or the storage level? Were these explosive charges? The air smelled of ozone and the stairwell flashed with light. Another explosion and all the access doors blew out below, deafening him with the concussive force. He stumbled and sprinted up the stairs as fast as he could. The stairs bucked like a hammer from god was pounding the earth. Was the farmhouse intact?
A chain of explosions hit, and the stairs under him collapsed with a screeching and rending of metal. He jumped for the next stairwell landing reflexively. The concussions blew out his eardrums, and the stairs below the landing ripped away. That was neither mortar nor missile. He reeled for a moment and then looked up and saw the cellar door—the emergency exit!
The stairwell filled with smoke and dust, and earth rained down from above. Everything vibrated and shook. He clung to the railing as the stairs bucked. The cellar door was twenty feet above him, blown open by the blasts. The stairs hung down at a steep angle, held fast by mounts near the cellar door entrance. He snarled like an animal and climbed the remains of the staircase. The entire facility shuddered as more hammer blows came. Everything was bathed in light. The entire stairwell collapsed or fell or was pulled downward. Dirt, rock, and cement beat him to the ground. He climbed toward the cellar door and it felt like he was crawling at an ever steeper angle upward. The earth was sucking everything down, eating Tintagel. A chunk of concrete knocked him senseless and a mountain of dirt buried him alive. “Isolde!” he gasped.
42
Delta-V
Shooter observed from a long distance. He had lost radio comms with the entire team. The reportedly weaponless Raven had just lit up Jocko and Birdie not five minutes ago, then flattened Slick and Crisco in their position. Shooter waited for the helicopter to come low and close. The light show going on behind the stealth gunship gave him a perfect silhouette to fire at, and he did. The Raven, protected from most means of attack through deception and countermeasure systems, was still vulnerable to plain old line of sight.
The Raven crashed into the ground, the rotor blades flying everywhere. Parts slammed into the remains of the farmhouse, which was engulfed in some weird collapsing, exploding sinkhole. A pillar of light flashed up briefly into the sky, then winked out, leaving behind the fiery wreckage of the barn and a huge hole in the ground with concentric rings of broken earth around it. The flaming wreckage of the Raven set the forest around it on fire. Shooter watched through his scope for ten minutes, packed up, and then pulled out his encrypted satellite phone and dialed.
“Lerna Four. All team members are down. Repeat, Lerna One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight are dead. Target eliminated. Request immediate evac and cleanup crew for all personnel. Yes. What went wrong? You didn’t tell us the stealth gunship actually had guns on it. Activating personal ID beacon for pickup. The general? Probably dead. Who the fuck cares? He never left the compound, and it was destroyed.”
He hung up. He could not believe his entire squad had been wiped out within ten minutes. Commander Walters had thought of all the plans, but MacGabran was a SEAL, combat trained and now augmented—that alone was enough to make things go sideways. This was a textbook case of bad intel. Slam had gotten overconfident and thought he knew MacGabran. Still the kid killed him.
His radio crackled to life in his ear. “Squad report condition.” He nearly thumbed his microphone. “This is General Marks!” the voice yelled into the radio. Shooter rolled onto his stomach and inspected the farm with his scope. Someone knelt next to Jocko’s body. “Answer, goddamn it!”
Shooter thumbed his mike. “This is Lerna Four. Read you loud and clear, General. SITREP?”
“Say again!” Cornwall repeated. The man was nearly deaf. Shooter repeated himself. “Fucking place is blown to hell. I need immediate medical attention.”
“Inbound evac in one five mikes. Cleanup crew inbound.”
“What about the goddamn police? There’s no way people wouldn’t hear this and call the local authorities.”
“The cleanup crew will contain as much as they can.”
“They better get here soon,” the general coughed.
“All squad members carry a small med kit. There are syringes of adrenaline and morphine if you need them.”
“I need a doctor. Where are you?”
“Safe distance, sir.”
There was a curious beating in the air. Shooter rolled onto his back. A black silhouette floated overhead, directly above him. “Holy shit.”
* * *
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—
Indiana yanked open the door to the crew locker room. They were so small that there were only two rooms—one for the women and one for Tom.
Kai had already stripped and was pulling on her n-suit undergarment.
Jeri followed Indiana. Indiana stripped as Jeri stared down Kai.
“You can’t pilot Archimedes,” Jeri said, peeling her tank top off in one smooth motion.
“Who says I can’t?” Kai said.
“Says my goddamn job title. Pilot,” Jeri replied.
“My pep talk worked.” Kai shrugged.
Jeri smiled at Indiana, who grinned. “I wouldn’t say that . . .”
Hung on the wall were their astro n-suit shells. Even asleep, Indiana could put the outer shell on with her eyes closed. With her eyes open, she was even faster.
Jeri pulled on her n-suit, paused at her pile of clothes, then pulled out Millie’s green sash and tied it around her waist. She smiled at Indiana when their eyes met, and Indiana gave her a nod of approval.
A thought struck Indiana. “How’re we going to launch? The Archimedes is sitting on top of an empty rocket.” Indiana checked the systems and reeled in the power thread particular to her payload specialist suit.
Kai, still naked except for her turtledove necklace, looked leaner without clothes. She pulled out a sidearm and laid it on her bunk as she got suited up. “You can fly it without the rocket. We’ll detonate the first stage when you hit full thrust.”
Jeri nodded. “It can work.”
“If not, it’ll be a real short trip. The Archimedes will fall off the rocket. Sixty-foot drop?.” Indiana snapped on her boots and gloves. The suit vacuum sealed itself, nanofibers conforming to the shape of her body. She grabbed the helmet and Janny, which she plugged into her suit and placed in the compartment on her torso.
Jeri handed Indiana a pistol.
She handed it back. “One, how do you people ever get past TSA? Two, I don’t do guns. I stop bullets and swing swords, remember?”
They left their quarters and got into one of the transport trucks, driving out to the launchpad. Indiana pushed her earpiece into her ear and pulled on her cowl.
“Hey, Janny baby,” Indiana breathed.
“Hi, Indy. System test is complete. Except for the helmet your suit is ready.”
“Okay, bring me on our comm channel.”
“Connecting.”
Tom spoke over the comm channel. “Hello, ladies. Now that you’ve checked in, let’s go over a couple of things. First, all clear so far. Things are quiet on the gantry. Second, I’ve initiated remote power-up of Archimedes’s systems. Her grid is online and all interlocks are shut for both of you. You might need it.”
Indiana clenched her fist. The Archimedes loomed, a bulbous black shape sitting on top of the Atlas V rocket, and the gantry was a thick black rectangle lit with tiny lights. The closer they got, the more impossibly large it seemed. Indiana felt the field and embraced the surge of power when the truck got close to the platform. Air force security guards at the base of the gantry awaited them. They were young and wore serious expressions.
Indiana handed her helmet to Kai. “Wouldn’t someone just lock the door to the gantry and leave?” Indiana complained.
“Shh,” Kai said as they pulled up.
“Well, someone forgot to tell these two.” Indiana hopped out and walked up to the guards ahead of Jeri and Kai.
“Security passes—ahhh!” the guard screamed as Indiana lanced phased Arondight and Secace into both sentries.
Indiana sliced open the locks and walked onto the elevator. Kai tossed Indiana both helmets. Kai and Jeri dragged the guards’ bodies onto the gantry elevator with them.
Jeri snapped the lever and it went up. It could not take them all the way to the top, since this was just a maintenance elevator for unmanned rockets. At the top was a makeshift gantry with a winching mechanism that rotated a bridge to the shroud before launch. Now it was stowed as an added security measure and to maintain the impression that the ship was an unmanned rocket. The elevator clanged to a stop. Kai manifested Sardayáwë and lanced the elevator gantry controls.
Kai shrugged. “You never know if it would actually work.”
Jeri and Indiana operated the winch and swung over the gantry bridge to the hatch opening of the shell. Jeri and Kai climbed up first, Indiana following them. Jeri unlocked and opened the shroud. Inside was a second hatch into the shuttle’s cabin.
“Stand by,” Tom said, and the outer hatch to the Archimedes opened after a moment.
Kai climbed into the Archimedes.
Indiana snapped her fingers.
“You won’t need your gun in space,” Jeri said when Indiana pointed to the gun tucked into Kai’s side pocket.
Jeri handed her helmet to Indiana.
Kai handed the pistol butt-first to Jeri, who flung it over the railing out of sight with her own sidearm. Then they climbed in, where internal steps led up to the flight deck seating. Indiana handed each her helmet after she climbed in after them.
