Edward willett, p.11
Edward Willett, page 11
A blunt-nosed, delta-shaped craft bigger than the biggest surface ship on Marseguro roared overhead toward the harbor, so low he instinctively ducked. Flashes of light rippled along its leading edge, and explosions shook the town. Black smoke billowed up from beyond the buildings blocking his view of the bay. He looked up and down the street. On every balcony people in various stages of dishabille stood staring.
His momentary fear gave way to fierce, hot elation. They’ve come. They’ve come!
But the fear returned when another explosion shook his apartment so violently a large chunk of ceiling plaster dropped onto his recently vacated bed. They’re here, and I could get killed!
He had to get out of the house. Better still, out of the city. He had faith the Holy Warriors would not target normal humans, but they probably wouldn’t be too worried about collateral damage, either, considering the normals were mostly descendants of the traitors who had helped Victor Hansen steal a starship and escape Purification.
His hiking pack lay beside the door, where he had dumped it after he’d returned from his journey to Landing Valley. He couldn’t run out naked—though he considered it for a moment as another explosion brought more of the ceiling down—so he took a moment to pull on the clothes he’d taken off and tossed on the floor the night before. Then he headed out, down the stairs in a headlong rush, then between the buildings and up into the hills. He started at a run that quickly changed to a jog and then a brisk, panting walk as the slope steepened.
I can’t believe they’re here! He’d resigned himself to a wait of months, even years, before his message received a response. But here they were. And such a response…
At the top of the hill, he turned to survey what he had wrought.
Black smoke poured up from flame-licked buildings along the water’s edge. Half a dozen boats lay on their sides or upside down, hulls holed and smoking. He recognized one as Dr. Stanless’ SeaSkimmer, and felt a momentary pang of guilt, quickly suppressed. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, he told himself, quoting the Avatar. Chris had never eaten an omelet or seen a chicken in the feathered flesh (Marseguroite “chicken,” like “beef” and “pork”—pretty much everything but seafood—was vatmeat) but he understood the saying’s meaning well enough, and now, as he surveyed the destruction he had helped bring about, he embraced it.
The pier where the Selkies had humiliated him had been reduced to two undamaged sections joined by a long line of half-submerged rubble, awash in the unusually troubled waters of New Botany Bay. In the bay itself, several structures had been hit. One or two had collapsed entirely; others burned enthusiastically, clouds of mingled smoke and steam rising into the clear morning sky, just turning pink as the sun neared the horizon.
For a moment, he thought the attack was over, then three of the black assault craft swept back over the pier, bursting through the pall of smoke that had hidden them from him. Missiles speared down into the city on shafts of fire. Orange flame blossomed. Seconds later the dull rolling WHUMPs of the explosions thudded into Chris’ chest.
The assault craft banked, turned, came back for a second pass. This time one of the reaching missiles hit the genesculpting lab where just the day before Chris had been sequencing the new algae samples. Everything he’d worked on for the last two years disappeared in a bloom of red flame, a billow of black smoke, a rain of fragments, and a thump in his chest like a blow from a fist. Chris nodded approvingly. The more he’d listened to the Avatar, the more uncomfortable he’d become with his work in the lab. Genesculpting algae and E. coli to produce medicine and food seemed harmless enough, but it was just one short step from that to genesculpting humans and creating monstrosities like the Selkies, wasn’t it?
He’d find a new job in the new regime.
The assault craft made one more pass, the wind of their passage swirling the smoke from the burning buildings into miniature sooty tornadoes. This time, dozens of small black objects fell from them, caught themselves, and zipped away across the city like the flying insects Chris knew only from old Earth vids. After that, one assault craft accelerated with a burst of flame and in seconds vanished north up the coast. The other two slowed and settled into the Square where Chris had talked with Emily Wood just a few days before. The blast from their landing jets toppled the statue of Victor Hansen—the sight made Chris grin—and blew the water out of the fountain pool. Both flanks of each of the shuttles slammed down onto the cobblestones. Soldiers in shining dark-blue body armor swarmed out, spreading out across the Square under the cover of constantly swinging weapons turrets on the assault craft.
Chris almost laughed out loud. Of course, they had no way of knowing what he could have told them: there were almost no weapons on Marseguro. Selkies had some powerful spear-and dart-guns used to hunt or fight off some of the larger Marseguroite sea life. He had once heard that the Council kept six ancient automatic rifles—the Rivers of Babylon’s entire complement—locked up somewhere, but he’d never heard of anyone firing one. And no one had ever bothered to program a microfactory to manufacture firearms. After all, they were all one big happy family on Marseguro, and the best form of gun control, authorities and residents agreed, was no guns at all, for anyone. Even the Peaceforcers—all twelve of them—didn’t have anything except a few stunners (though they could legally gain access to the Council’s rifles if necessary), and he didn’t see any sign of them attempting to use them on the armored soldiers, which would have been useless and probably swiftly fatal.
Too bad, Chris thought. It might have been fun to watch. He’d lost all respect for Peaceforce since his mother had explained to him that it existed solely to keep the oppressed landlings in their place, allowing the Selkies to enjoy and consolidate their undisputed and undeserved place atop the pinnacle of society.
The Holy Warriors had formed a perimeter around the Square. Two strange black vehicles shaped like stubby cylinders, with fins and bumps in odd places, rolled out of the assault craft on multiple wheels. The assault craft promptly lifted off again. One headed toward the harbor and settled there, but intervening buildings and thickening smoke prevented Chris from seeing any details. The other lit its jets and roared south.
He turned his attention back to the Square in time to see a group of soldiers disappear into Government House. One of the wheeled vehicles remained in front while its mate, accompanied by a couple of dozen troops, rolled off down a side street and out of Chris’ view. The remaining Holy Warriors appeared to be searching the buildings around the Square. Chris suspected all except Government House and possibly Town Hall were empty this time of morning. Neither would have more than one or two people in it, and probably no one of any importance.
Aside from the symbolic value, why would they want to seize Government House? he thought, then answered his own question: Planetary Communications. They have a message to get out.
And I can help them do it.
He’d come up the hill intending to hide out in the interior until things settled down, but now he scrambled to his feet and headed down into the city again, a man with a new mission.
They need someone to help them take firm control. They need a native guide.
He squeezed between two buildings and emerged onto the main road to find that, out of his sight, the streets had filled with people, some running, though from where to where he couldn’t guess, some standing in groups shouting at each other, some pushing carts of belongings, some supporting wounded friends or family. A father with a tear-streaked face went by, cradling a little boy in his arms, dead or alive, Chris couldn’t tell. For the second time that morning, an unexpected pang of guilt stabbed at Chris’ heart. Couldn’t they have been more careful? Why had they hurt normals?
Eggs, he reminded himself. Omelets. And the sooner their liberators established firm control over the city—over the whole planet—the sooner the death and destruction would end.
Well, for normals, anyway.
He hurried on, against the tide of people streaming inland. He had almost reached the Square when someone grabbed his arm from behind.
He yelped and spun to find Dr. Stanless. The geneticist wore only torn and dirty pajama bottoms, and a nasty looking gash on his left shoulder had streaked one side of his body with blood. His right eye blazed at Chris; his left was black and swollen closed. “Chris!” he yelled. “Don’t go down there! We’ve been invaded!”
As if on cue, four soldiers in dark blue body armor burst out of the doorway of the building to their left. Two seized Dr. Stanless, who struggled uselessly in their iron grip. Two seized Chris, who didn’t resist at all. “Yes, Dr. Stanless, I know,” he said, and smiled. He couldn’t resist adding, “I called them.” Dr. Stanless’ face went slack with shock as the Holy Warriors hauled him away.
The two holding Chris tightened their grip on his arms. He grinned at them. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” They exchanged looks. “Well, then, don’t you think you’d better take me to whomever is in charge?”
They did, but to his indignation, they weren’t gentle about it.
Richard watched the assault from the bridge of Sanctification, having been told in no uncertain terms by Grand Deacon Ellers that civilians were neither wanted nor permitted in the assault craft. After it became clear—as it did within minutes—that no organized resistance existed on Marseguro, he began to chafe under that restriction.
Not that he lacked information. The bridge’s vidscreens displayed a constantly changing kaleidoscope of carnage, with feeds from cams on the assault craft, the armored personnel carriers, the helmets of the Holy Warriors, hovering reconbots and even the noses of smart missiles all vying for attention. But there were too many images, and too many voices, and vid, no matter how vivid, couldn’t substitute for personal experience. Richard desperately wanted to go down on the ground and smell, hear, taste, and feel what was happening for himself. The desire was so strong it was almost a compulsion.
He put it down to his need to see for himself the long-delayed Purification of his grandfather’s pet planet—and the long-delayed polishing of his own unfairly tarnished reputation.
He knew that the second wave of ships descending to the planet’s surface would be supply shuttles. He’d heard they were a rough way to get through the atmosphere, but he was seriously beginning to wonder how he could talk his way onto one when he discovered he didn’t have to.
He didn’t pick out the message from Grand Deacon Ellers from the muted cacophony of voices all around. The first he knew of it was when a young man, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed and with the painfully erect bearing of a newly minted Holy Warrior, trotted around the second-level walkway that surrounded the main pit of the circular bridge and saluted. Richard felt his hand twitch in response but managed not to salute back. After weeks on Sanctification, he had to keep reminding himself he was a civilian observer, not a Holy Warrior. “Yes?”
“Grand Deacon Ellers’ compliments, sir, and he requests your presence on the ground.”
At last! Richard thought, but he maintained a studied calm. “Did he say why?”
“No, sir. Just that if you will take the next supply shuttle down, he’ll provide an escort to take you to Government House.”
“Government House?”
“That’s what the moddies and traitors call it,” the young man said. “Some kind of tribal headquarters.”
“Very well,” Richard said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sir!” The young man saluted again, obviously having taken to heart the advice given the lowest-ranking members of any military that to be safe one should salute anything on two legs. He trotted back around the bridge to his original post.
Richard stepped to the nearest general information vidscreen and found that the next supply ship, carrying ammunition, food, and medical and communications equipment would launch in half an hour. That gave him just enough time to rush back to his cabin, pull out the bag he had packed the day before in the hope he’d go down to the surface, use the bathroom (it seemed a prudent precaution), and take the lift to the central core. Holy Warriors from the ship’s crew stood by at each of the three intraship transporters, platforms that slid along slots placed at equidistant intervals around the cylindrical core. Richard carefully transitioned from the spinning habitat ring to the nonspinning section, and a crewman shoved his bag into a box on the platform and strapped it in place. Richard seized one of the many handholds on the transporter, and they zipped the length of the ship in two minutes. “Thanks,” Richard said. The crewman shrugged, handed him his box, and zipped away again.
Richard took a moment to take a couple of deep breaths—the relatively rapid transit of the core had unsettled his stomach a hair—then pulled himself along the soft silvery webbing that covered every wall of the zero-G part of the ship, tugging his luggage behind him. He entered an access tunnel, emerged a moment later in the shuttle launch bay, and flinched: the shuttles were all locked down, of course, but two of them, including the one he wanted, hung overhead from his perspective, fat cargo-carrying cylinders with a much smaller crew compartment at the bow like an olive attached to the tip of a sausage.
Richard knew better than to try to simply jump across the intervening distance: the zero-G training he’d had on board Sanctification had brightly and painfully illuminated the difference between mass and weight, and the unforgiving nature of inertia, and he knew he could very easily misjudge the amount of force with which he’d hit the far wall and break an ankle—or his neck. Instead, he continued around the brightly-lit space using the webbing, and finally reached his shuttle with five minutes to spare. The pilot, a man who looked solid enough to have been hewn out of a single—and very large—block of granite, took one look at his passenger, grunted, and pointed him to…
“What’s that?” Richard said. It looked a bit like a medieval torture device, all black metal, straps, and buckles. There were six in the crew cabin, three on each side of the smallish, white-painted space.
“Is called a rack,” the pilot said, apparently confirming Richard’s impression. He had a thick Russian accent to go with his bearlike appearance. “I show. Go there.” He didn’t give Richard an opportunity to do otherwise, manhandling him into position with casual strength. “Straps go here, here—” he pointed to Richard’s shoulders, waist, and crotch. “Pull in handles, so—” He demonstrated. U-shaped, padded handles swung away from the wall on hinges and locked in front of Richard’s chest. “Helmet…” The pilot opened a locker on the other side of the small compartment and took out a dark blue crash helmet with an alarmingly battered look. It had a short bungee cord attached to the back. The pilot jammed the helmet onto Richard’s head, almost taking his ears off in the process, clipped the bungee cord onto a metal loop on the wall, and fastened the chinstrap. Then he tapped something on the side of the helmet, and built-in headphones came to life. “You hear?” the pilot said.
Richard nodded.
“You hold on,” the pilot said. “Ride rough.”
Richard nodded again.
“Ride rough” hardly covered it.
The shuttle’s launch cradle first dropped into the launch lock beneath it, then rotated so the top of the shuttle pointed toward the hull. A few moments while the lock cycled—no need to waste air in a nonemergency—three seconds of very gentle acceleration, and they had separated from the ship.
So far, so smooth. But within minutes, they plunged into the atmosphere, which announced its presence with a thin whine that soon grew to an all-encompassing roar. The supply craft bucked, pitched, yawed, did everything but flip end over end, and a couple of times Richard thought it might have done that. Richard’s stomach fought to crawl up his throat and hurl itself and its contents into the crew cabin which, in addition to vibrating to the point of blurriness, had reached a temperature that seemed more suited to slow roasting a turkey than keeping its occupants comfortable. “Why…so…rough…?” Richard called out when the turbulence slacked off just enough he thought he could get out the words without biting his tongue off.
“Some bad design,” the pilot said. From his voice, he seemed unaffected by the turbulence, although of course that might have had something to do with the fact he enjoyed the embrace of a padded motion-dampening seat while Richard hung on the wall like a side of beef. “Some bad weather. Some evasive maneuvers.”
“But…no…weapons…”
“Seems so,” the pilot said. “Don’t know for certain. Rather be all shook up and alive than calm and dead. Hold on tighter. Worst about to start.”
Richard clenched his jaw, swallowed hard, and prayed he wouldn’t embarrass himself by throwing up before they reached the ground.
Alas, as the Avatar liked to say, “All prayers are answered, but sometimes, the answer is ‘no.’”
When they were safely on the ground, in a sports field commandeered to serve as a secondary landing site away from the town square for the cargo shuttles, the pilot summoned a cleanerbot to slurp up the widely redistributed remnants of Richard’s morning toast, simbacon and near-coffee. He also provided Richard with a clean standard-issue (but insignia-free) light blue Holy Warrior one-piece to wear. Richard retrieved his bag from its locker and rather shamefacedly made his retreat out the tiny personnel hatch and down the five-step ladder to the blessedly solid ground. Bots were already unloading the contents of the fat cargo cylinder.
A fully armed and armored Holy Warrior waited at the bottom of the ladder. “Grand Deacon Ellers is expecting you,” he growled. “This way.”
