Miller shook his head, and replied just as softly, with a teasing glint in his eye, "It's winter over there, right? They might not want to ruin their perfect hair by sweating on the ramp for the massive three minutes until they can board."
"Oh, good point." She turned back, and smiled at the men, who were now ignoring her and Miller. "Well, here comes the first bus, so the they can go be someone else's problem." As the first man hit the bottom of the jet stairs, she raised her voice. "Please line up here, and wait, just like preboarding.”
"Yes, ma'am." He replied, looking right past her and Miller to eye the baggage handlers, and then focus on the incoming bus, and snarl, "Why's there only one?"
"Because we may have been waiting for an incoming plane, but terminal buses are doing their usual rounds, so we have to wait for them to get from whatever parking lot they were in, to get here." She said it with the patience of the fortieth repetition. "You're not a scheduled flight, are you? They're trying to arrive together for the scheduled flights, but unscheduled arrivals can't expect us to just have buses waiting all the time. We're not a big airport like Anueterriza, we're mainly a cargo port."
The Fed security looked like they wanted to laugh at her calling Anueterriza big, and they certainly dismissed her as some backwards provincial ramp rat now. But they also quit bitching, and the first class pax started emerging from the ballistic, interspersed with yet more security. As the bus drew closer, she pulled out her wands to guide it in. The driver was… She barely recognized the chief mechanic, as he was wearing a neon orange flower print silk shirt she could see from a hundred yards away. He brought the bus to a stop at her signal. As he opened the door, she walked around and stuck her head in. "Hey, Sanford!"
"Darling!" He'd completed the outlandish shirt with baggy shorts, spiking his white hair and adding a gold earring dangling from his right ear. "You can ride me anywhere!" He wiggled his eyebrows as he said it, and she laughed.
"Not me, just pax!" Still laughing, she waved the passengers on board. The security completely ignored her and Sanford, and the latter, she thought, was the bigger mistake. As they herded their passengers on board, they weren't paying sufficient attention to the way there were more and different ramp rats, now, carrying ramp-checked coats and bags to put near the moving line of passengers for claiming.
"Twenty-nine, thirty, and we're full!" Sanford called out, standing up to wave off the next pax in line. "Please wait by the cone, the one colored just like me, so you can can catch the very first spot on the very next bus!"
"Wait, then, I need to give up my place." A man headed to the entrance, clearly intending to trade places with the security head who'd been directing people to line up or go.
In the confusion as the queue backed up and sorted itself out, Sanford reached under the dash, and pulled something, then jumped off the bus. "Oh, Amber!"
"What?" She turned, in time to be tackled in a hug, the soft silk shirt hiding hard plates of body armor that crushed her ribs. Before she could draw a breath, the world exploded.
Her inskin cut out all sound, so she saw the plexi windows flying out of the bus in complete silence, accompanied by the teams drawing rifles out of unzipped luggage and underneath checked coats, pointing them at the bus and jet stairs. The team raced up the jetstairs, knocking people aside and completely off, falling to crumple on the tarmac below. Beside her, Miller drew his gun, and snapped off two shots. She turned, and saw the Fed’s security lead who'd been directing the others fall like a dropped sack of concrete, half-drawn pistol shining as Miller kicked it away. It flashed in the sunlight as it skittered back toward the men now pouring out of the cargo pods with rifles up and aimed as they surrounded the bus and plane.
The last shocked her back to remembering her part, and she locked the pilot out of the system, and the other five people who'd been monitoring. Her throat felt dry as dust, but she kept a calm voice, and broadcast on every speaker in the airplane - cabin, cockpit, upper and lower deck. "Nobody move! Any resistance will result in your death! I say again, nobody move! Any resistance will result in your death!"
Miller grabbed her wrist, and she fed the cameras to him as fast as she could; a plane full of shocked people, frozen, staring at the ceiling where her announcement had come from, at the armed men now pounding down the main aisle of the upper deck, splitting off to cover cockpit and lower deck. She continued, reading off an inskin checklist the hurriedly-cobbled-together script Miller and the Ambassador had agreed on, "You are under arrest by order of the Independent Government of Nueva Terra. You will be taken into custody for interrogation. The innocent among you will be released as soon as possible."
The lower decks were filled with junior ministers, secretaries, assistants, and undersecretaries, all dragged along to do the paperwork and day to day of the government; they looked relieved at the assurance that they were too small fry to matter. But the upper deck… She repeated, "Any resistance will be punished by death! Remain in your seats until ordered to leave them by an arresting officer."
She didn't have cabin audio, but she could see two men starting to rise, to pull out weapons - there was a brief set of flashes, a drift of smoke in the air, and their brains painted the nearby seats and pax to the screams of the survivors. All over the cabin, hands were rising in the air, as people tried to signal surrender.
Beside her, Miller was drawing down her feed and reports, issuing orders that she couldn't hear, but she could clearly see the effect. Sanford waited until half the bus had disembarked at gun point, then jauntily stepped on board with a few Empire security to guard, and cheerfully drove the bus off to the terminal, where the Ambassador, his team, and turnover negotiations awaited.
She shivered, despite the days heat, as the bus pulled away. "We got them."
"We did. It's all cleanup, now. Don't relax your guard yet; we need to take a lot of guns away from people and detain them. On the other hand, we have their principals. There's no point in them dying for a mission they can't complete anymore, and most of them are professional enough to realize that." Miller looked one of the Fed security in the eye as he said that, and the man nodded, keeping his hands steady on top of his head as he did.
She kept shivering, in sheer adrenaline and nerves, and kept feeding him updates from inside the cabin as he directed the teams to clean up, bring folks out to sit on the tarmac, and eventually board the buses that had been waiting on the outcome. It was like any other emergency; just because the engine wasn't on fire anymore didn't mean she could quit flying the airplane and not bring it in for a safe landing. In this case, just because they had the puppet government didn't mean that Miller and the teams didn't have a lot more work to do.
So she stood out on the tarmac as the sun slid into the ocean in a spectacular display of pinks and peaches limned with gold on the high cirrus clouds of the west, and the sky overhead shaded down to the dark purple of approaching night. The land breeze was dying with the day, the scent of hot, dusty greenery and baked concrete no longer flowing fast enough to sweep away the coppery blood and shit stink of the dead men, overriding the comforting and familiar smells of hot oil and spilled fuel from the machinery, waiting for the last pax to be gone and to button up the plane.
When this was finished, Michelle told herself, she was done. It didn't matter where; she wanted well away from the war. She just had to see the job through to the end, for her own sake. But afterward? Maybe she could quit flying.
Out on the runway, a small plane came in from wherever it'd been hiding out during the shelling, and she smiled in appreciation at the neat, no-fuss flare and gentle squeaker of a landing. She loved making the landing as gentle as possible, surprising people who were still waiting for her to thump it on the runway when they heard the thrust reversers kick in… okay, maybe she wasn't done flying yet.
35
It was well after dark, and Michelle was standing facing away from the all-too-bright landing lights, her long shadow streaking out into the inky nig
ht by the time the last busloads were processed out and she could button up the plane and turn it over to a true crew of rampers from Coastal.
"Hey, girl." Rock emerged from the Coastal group, and waved her towards a tug, its high-vis yellow a ghostly light-colored smear in the dark. "Time to head out. You're done."
"Thank God." She sighed, and took him up on his offer. Despite doing not much more than standing around, she was still shaky, sore, and drained. They sat in silence for a while, with only the cooling night and the whining of the motor, puttering its way back by the beam of two low headlights.
Rock finally stirred as they joined the yellow stripe of the main taxiway, and said, "You done good."
"I didn't do that much." She shook her head, hugging her elbows to her ribs.
"If I'd had internal cams on my troops last time, I wouldn't have let them walk into that trap." He was silent a long time, and she didn't know what to say to that. "May not seem like a lot to you, girl, but with your eyes to guide us and fast reflexes on locking them out, none of our people died today. That's a hell of a thing."
Michelle nodded, and bit her lips, choosing and discarding responses. The night was too dark to see his expression, and not dark enough to prevent them from opening up the raw spots to each other. The only words she could come up with sounded stupid once they were out of her mouth. "I'm sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry for." But he hugged her close, saying without words he understood what she meant to say.
They were thumping and bumping over the patched cracks near the northernmost jetways when she spoke again. "You know, I really don't want to fly pax anymore. Chief… Russ always treated me like I'm three seconds from running back to the airlines, and I thought maybe I was. But that crew today? I don't want to be them anymore."
Rock grunted, and curled his lips back. In tones of utter disgust, he spat, "Russ is an idiot, especially when it comes to women." The sheer repugnancy in his voice struck her as hysterically funny, and Rock waited until she finished laughing, and was merely back to gasping, and wiping away tears. "Ignore him. I do!"
"Ignoring him would keep me out of trouble for shooting him." Her sides still hurt from laughing, even as her mood collapsed. “Still, I can't work for him."
"Yeah. Miller pulled the CVR, so we got to hear what went down last night straight from the black box. If we hadn't needed him for the op today, I'd have shot him myself. Some shit you just don't joke about." He sighed, and a silence grew between them.
She shifted, then said, "If I'm heading out, I need to give you back your gun."
He was silent a while, then said, "It means a lot to me, but you're going to need it more. Tell you what; when you get to the Homeland, go see Kandros and have him make a new one for me."
"I don't know if I'll be able to come back here, to give it to you,” she replied, and he laughed.
"Silly girl. I can come see you. I just don't like to live there anymore; I like this place where winter means it drizzles for a few weeks and only the mountains get snow. Easier on old bones." He ruffled her hair. "I'll find you. Got any plans when you get there?"
"None at all. Blondie… Miller offered to 'vacuum my accounts?' Which I think means I'll be able to eat while I'm sending out rounds of job apps and applying for a work visa and all that joy."
Rock made a very neutral noise next to her - the last time she'd heard that, she'd started to set up the approach to smack them into the dirt by falling for an optical illusion and thinking she had an extra thousand feet.
"What?"
"You got voluntold into this op." At her agreement, Rock said, "The op being done doesn't necessarily release you."
"What in the world could a bunch of door kickers want with a pilot?"
"Transportation home, for one. Got a perfectly sweet ballistic there, and a pilot all rigged out to fly it." He chuckled at her aggravated noise. "Be a lot easier than the way they got here."
"How did they turn up at Port North, anyway?" If there’d been an explanation, she’d slept through it.
"Not my story to tell. But they didn't make it there with everyone they started with. CWO's don't command ops this size; they're execs to the officer that does. That they turned up with an odd number of guys and some holes in the teams, and no officer tells me everything I need to know." Rock was silent for a while, and finally said, "Go easy on him. He's a good man, even if you're going to have to knock a lot of rough edges off."
"He is,” she replied softly, and nodded, even if he couldn't see it.
Rock cleared his throat, and changed topics. "Pilots in the military are warrant officers. So, girl, first thing you're going to do on landing is demand two weeks of leave, and use that time to prep for warrant officer school."
She blinked, and said carefully, "Warrant officer school. That's… not what I was planning."
"It's a bunch of good information and necessary training to cover any gaps, wrapped in an assload of petty bullshit." Rock replied. "The key is to keep your temper and focus on the important things. That, and cooperate to graduate. Help your fellow students out, and you'll graduate together. If you don't organize a team, the instructors will bust you until you do, or you're out."
"I've had enough petty bullshit out of the airlines to fill a lifetime. Why would I want more? And aren't I a little too old to be starting in the military?" She couldn't quite tell him that it'd be a cold day in a theologically hot place before she joined the military, since he seemed to think she already had.
"There are age waivers. They'll give you one, for the experience you're bringing in the door."
"And I'm neither a subject nor, heaven knows, an Imperial citizen."
"That's fine; military service is a time-honored way to earn citizenship."
"I'm not even from an allied nation! Wouldn't flying for the Fed make me a security risk?" She'd never visited the Empire, but she'd been aware of the cold war they'd been carrying on with the Fed for years.
"Are you going to bellyache all the way through the front gates, or are you going to shut up and listen?" He replied, and she finally couldn't keep it behind her teeth.
"Rock, you know me. You've flown with me. How in the wide green world could you possibly think I'd ever fit in with the military? Me! Really?" She let the bewilderment and frustration out, throwing her arms up high in a dramatic gesture never allowed in the cockpit. "Do I look like I could goosestep, salute, and sir and ma'am every other breath? I'm a little too old for that shit!"
He laughed. "I know a little more of the military than you do, girl. Who do you think flies men like the teams around?" When she was quiet, he continued, "You want to do off-airport, interesting flying? Mixed cargo and people you don't have to be polite to? You've already proved you don't panic in emergencies, or under fire, and they need people like you. Keep your head down, get through the training bullshit, make plenty of friends you'll see later all over the world, and get out in the field. You'll like it."
She was silent a long time, and then said, "I don't want to cut my hair."
"They have waivers for that, too, but you'll catch plenty of hell for it." He was silent a moment. "I'd have sworn you couldn't keep it maintained in the bunkroom, but you manage."
"I keep it braided. Tangles like hell when I have it hanging loose, like today."
"Well, you'll just have to make Miller brush it out for you." Rock chuckled, and she smacked him.
"I… you… Rock!" Her protests only made him laugh harder, as they pulled up to the base of the terminal gate and parked near the soldier guarding a crew door.
36
"Wake up, love." A hand shook her shoulder until Michelle lifted her head off the pillow, single-use sheets crackling as she moved. "It's time to fly."
"Flrgh?" She shoved up, looking around at the utterly generic airport sleeping pod, now popped open, and the haggard-looking Miller, crouching next to her. Then the words penetrated, and she groaned. There was nothing she could do then but get up; he offered a
hand, and levered her up. Around them, other pods were cracking open as team members who'd followed her lead were waking up. "Where’m I flying?"
"Anueterriza. We're going to have ourselves a little peace ceremony." He smiled, and she groaned, checking the wall clock. It read, "You are in TERCIA. Local time is 00:27, 12:27 AM, THURSDAY JULY 30, 751 After Landing." Next to it was a board for incoming and outgoing flights, all blank.
"It's just after midnight. It'll be three in the morning, maybe four, by the time we get there and get started. Can't it wait for daylight?"
"It's the middle of the night here, but it's the middle of the day for Centralia. We're not doing this show for the locals." He rapped on one pod that hadn't cracked yet. "C'mon, up and at 'em. One last round of this shit, and we'll be able to go home free." A muffled curse sounded from inside, and Miller looked at his men. "Catch up, or I'll leave you behind. We're leaving from Gate A6 soon as the prisoners are secured."
A ragged chorus of "Sir!" met his pronouncement, and he towed her out to the lobby of the hotel by her wrist.
"Wait. Coffee." There was a vending machine with canned, cold coffee, and it was far better than nothing.
"I have a combat stim for you." He replied, but she planted her feet. When he stopped rather than drag her, she headed for the coffee, and tried to tug him along about as successfully as a student pilot trying to pull a plane uphill.
"Coffee!" She stated, like it was the final word in the argument. And it was, because he shook his head with a smile, and let himself be towed to the vending machine. One prepaid crew card later, she had four bottles of water and coffee headed for the vending slot. Miller looked on with a raised eyebrow until she shoved one water and one coffee into his arms.
"You want me to carry these for you?"
"You drink. You need to, too." She ran a hand along the stubble on his cheek, trying to make her brain come up with the words for how ragged he looked. He caught her wrist, and turned his head, kissing her palm. She blinked up at him, completely at a loss for words.
Going Ballistic Page 20
