First Flight

by Claremont, Chris

  He took a long, shuddering breath, eyes flicking anywhere but at her. "The difficulty comes, Red, when you can't keep straight which 'self is really and truly yours. I look in a mirror and think I'm ugly, because I'm tall and gangly and graceless and my body isn't covered in fur. Or I think I'm crippled because I can't smell or hear or see half as well as the Halyan't'a around me. I look at you... and sometimes it takes a conscious effort to remember who you are and what you mean to me. Funny how important that is—crucial, even—you, me, us—the bind that ties. And I was the one who wanted to keep my distance."

  "It's not working, Ben. Tell Shavrin to administer the antidote!"

  "No."

  "Listen to yourself, goddamn it, you're tearing yourself apart!"

  "No!"

  "This masquerade isn't necessary. Andrei may have come up with a way out of this mess, for all of us." In a few words, she told him Andrei's plan. "By the time these assholes know what we've done, we'll be on the other side of the System, leaving an energy wake so broad and unmistakable that Space Command will be falling over itself in its haste to check us out. We'll be intercepted in no time. Tell Shavrin, see what she thinks."

  After a fast, growling exchange over the intercom, Ciari said, "It's feasible. Shavrin agrees that Range Guide should survive so brief a trip. But the drive's completely shut down. She estimates it'll take her people three or four kilosecs to cycle it up to Ignition. And there's no way that process can be hidden from external sensors. You can bet, Nicole, that the moment the raiders spot anything like that, they'll be over here with every combat trooper they can muster."

  "What about a cold start?" Andrei suggested.

  "Shavrin says she likes your style," Ciari told him, translating the Matriarch's response. "She also wouldn't want to be within a couple of mega-klicks of this ship should anything go wrong. Cold starting a Matter/Anti-Matter drive is a frighteningly delicate procedure; the slightest miscalculation could turn Range Guide into a pint-sized supernova. Wolfe's asteroid redux."

  "I am aware of the risks, Marshal. And the alternative."

  "Shavrin's engineering crew was killed, Andrei; can you handle the MAM intermix?"

  "I know the theory, Nicole, and I've run simulations. I will, however, require someone to brief me on the controls and sensor telltales."

  "I can do that," Ciari said. "But we'll have to move fast."

  "Why? What's up?"

  "We got a call from the raiders. They're sending a delegation, headed by their top people. They want to talk to Shavrin. And they'll probably insist on access to Range Guide for their scientific and security teams."

  "Can you stall 'em?"

  "What d'you think I've been doing?"

  "How long have we got?"

  "Three, four kilosecs. Maybe an hour. Enough time to show Andrei the ropes in Engineering, but that's about all."

  Hana spoke up. "Nicole, even a cold start will create a blivet on the raiders' sensors."

  "By the time we're ready to roll," she said, "those bastards will have more trouble than they'll know what to do with. That, Hana,"—her smile held neither warmth nor friendliness, and in her eyes was the fierce gleam of a predator on the prowl—"is our job."

  "Only one flaw that I can see," Hana groaned later, after she and Nicole had examined every square centimeter of the rock facing Range Guide. "Well?"

  She pointed at the holo field above the table, now showing a medium close-up of the entire asteroid, taken during the starship's final approach. "There are weaponry bunkers spaced across the whole surface, with multiple, interlocking fields of fire."

  "We've been over this, Hana. Tell me something new."

  She tapped the tabletop keyboard and the image shifted from reality to a computer-generated schematic. Hana played with the computer a few seconds more and looked up in time to see lines of brilliantly colored light streak away from the bunkers, creating an impenetrable protective cocoon around the rock. Then, she rolled the image until they were looking at a bows-on shot of Range Guide on its docking cradle. There was a visible space between the starship's hull and the bunkers' fields of fire.

  "What's the scale?" Nicole asked as she moved closer, concentration plain on her face. "How much room do we have to maneuver?"

  "A hundred meters, if we're lucky. Mind you, this just applies to energy weapons; fire and forget missiles are a whole different story."

  "Still, so long as we stay close to our cradle, those bunkers can't touch us."

  " Hai."

  The communicator beeped. Andrei, on audio link from Engineering. "Status," Nicole asked him.

  "Splendid, assuming one is fond of speaking pidgin sign language. I shouldn't complain, though; considering the time he had, Marshal Ciari did a superb job. At least now, my Halyan't'a counterpart and I can make ourselves understood. More often than not."

  "Can you handle the cold start?"

  "Dear lady, that you never know until you try. It's not something done out of choice, and I'm told, the event never occurs precisely the same way twice."

  "Terrific. I gather Ciari's not there?"

  "Summoned to the flight deck. Evidently, the raider delegation is on its way over."

  "Here they come," Hana announced. She'd switched images in the holo field to a view of the midships transit tunnel. They were looking past two unarmed, unarmored Halyan't'a warriors, the smallest and least-assuming Nicole had seen. She wondered if that was a deliberate ploy on Shavrin's part, to make the raiders underestimate the Aliens. A small crowd of humans was approaching. Something in that crowd caught her eye and the image zoomed at her with frightening speed as Hana suddenly refined the focus.

  "Nicole," she cried, " look!"

  Filling the field was a face they'd seen before: handsome, with wheat-colored hair and emerald eyes and the smile of a rogue. He'd been drunk when last they'd seen him—or so they'd thought—but even then, Nicole had recognized the man's charisma. It was far more evident now that he was in his element. He wore a simple, unadorned shipsuit, without insignia or badges of rank, but there was no mistaking that he alone was in command.

  Major Daniel Morgan, United States Air Force, Space Command, retired. Holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Pirate.

  Nicole sprang forward, forgetting all she'd ever learned about moving in zero-gravity. Hana managed to snag hold of her legs and stop her before she did a front flip through the holo field. "Nicole," she yelled, "what the hell are you doing?!"

  "Ciari!" she roared back, fingers stabbing at the intercom. "Morgan knows him. They faced off in the Oak Room, remember? Christ, he knows us all! If he recognizes Ciari—or, just as bad, the Marshal recognizes him, and shows it—we're finished!"

  "Too late!"

  Nicole twisted in Hana's grasp, pulling the other woman into the air as she backed up the image to provide a panoramic shot of the airlock and the Halyan't'a reception committee. Ciari and Morgan were barely ten meters apart; yet, if either recognized the other, they made no sign. Ciari's face remained impassive, almost remote, as if mind and soul existed on a higher plane of reality than those around him.

  The raiders entered the airlock and stopped, Morgan stepping forward, hands outheld in friendship. His gaze swept the assemblage, pausing momentarily on Shavrin, resplendent in her own formal robes, before fixing on Ciari. Only a few seconds passed before he spoke, but to Nicole it was time without end.

  "He's spotted him," Hana said, voice breaking a little, and she clutched Nicole's arm tighter.

  Nicole shook her head. "He isn't sure."

  "Greetings, star-farers," Morgan was saying. "In the name of the people of Earth, I welcome you to the Sol

  System... "

  "Arrogant fuck!"

  "Hush up, Hana," Nicole growled. "I want to hear this."

  "I am pleased that this commercial operation was able to provide assistance in your hour of need."

  Ciari, face still expressionless, turned slightly towards Shavrin and translated Morgan's
speech. The Matriarch's speech was brief, her tone soft, almost deferential.

  "In the name of the Halyan't'a—the Chosen—greetings are returned," Ciari said, giving the words a lilt and sibilance Nicole had never heard from him before; she understood at once that he was speaking English as a true Halyan't'a might, with inflections and tonalities no human could easily match. Morgan must have realized that, too, because Ciari's speech seemed to throw him slightly off balance.

  "And thanks are given for your aid," Ciari continued, "though, in truth, such aid was unnecessary. We planned to establish electronic communications with your homeworld, and our LifeSystems were more than adequate to sustain us until planetfall."

  "Perhaps, Speaker, assuming a peaceful journey. But there are those who would view your spacecraft as no more than a valuable prize. A target, ripe for the taking."

  "Ah. You spoke in the name of the people of your world, but said nothing of the government which rules them."

  "There is no government that rules the entire planet."

  "How... anarchic. This means, therefore, you represent no political entity?"

  "As I said, we're a commercial operation. Our politics are profit."

  "I see."

  "You have nothing to fear from us, Speaker." Ciari merely smiled.

  "We've transmitted a full report of our encounter to our central office," Morgan went on, "who have by now, I am sure, informed the requisite authorities. Until we hear from them, however, it might be better for all concerned if you and your Captain"—he indicated Shavrin—"were to join me on the asteroid as my guests. Suitable accommodations have been prepared; you'll lack for nothing."

  "Save freedom?"

  "This is for your protection, Speaker. I must also insist on access to your spacecraft for my scientific and security personnel."

  "Could we keep them out, even if we wished to?"

  "Our relations thus far have been amicable; I'd like to keep them so."

  After a brief conference with Shavrin and her senior officers, Ciari faced Morgan once more. Both men were matched physically, but suddenly Ciari seemed much taller, imbued with an inner strength that dwarfed those around him. There and then, he was the force to be reckoned with, not Shavrin, nor the unseen Halyan't'a warriors, nor even the starship itself. Morgan recognized that reality and tried to match it, but couldn't even come close. He wasn't pleased, and didn't care if it showed.

  "It is agreeable," Ciari said.

  "If you'll follow my people..." Morgan held out a hand and Ciari followed Shavrin down the tunnel and into the asteroid. Immediately, a squad of raiders moved towards the airlock. The Halyan't'a let them troop aboard.

  Inside the briefing room, Hana was hunched over the computer keyboard, trying to refine audio and video focus on the holo field as it responded to a tight-beam broadcast from within the asteroid. The image that finally appeared was upside-down, and showed mostly a vast expanse of deck plating. Hana compensated as best she could, and slowly, in the distance, two men came into view. One was Morgan.

  "It worked," she announced in cheery triumph, giving Nicole a thumbs-up, "Ciari planted a 'bug.' "

  "Morgan," they heard the smaller man say, his voice crackling slightly, the picture breaking up, forcing the two women to strain for every word, "what the hell is wrong? Regardless of how this turns out, we've pulled off the coup of the century, possibly the millennium!"

  "Have we?"

  "I thought so, until you stepped off that ramp looking like you'd seen a ghost."

  "I had."

  "Make sense, man!"

  "Lal, that man—the Speaker, the Alien translator—the moment I laid eyes on him, I'd have taken any odds he was no more Alien than I am. He's the near twin of a Federal Marshal named Ciari that I met at Da Vinci."

  "So?"

  "He was assigned as Law Officer to the DSV Wanderer."

  "Oh."

  " 'Oh,'" Morgan mimicked viciously, mocking the Indian's accent. "I love your sense of understatement, Rajmansoor."

  "You believe the Speaker to be a human man?"

  "Off a vessel I thought I destroyed weeks ago. I truly do not know. I don't know what I believe about him anymore. But can we afford to take that chance?"

  "I don't see where it matters, really, since we have no intention of releasing them."

  "If that is Ciari, others could have survived, and that could jeopardize my cover." Lal nodded agreement. "I want the Speaker run through a complete medical exam. Check everything, right down to basic chromosome and DNA structure. Then cross-reference the results with Ciari's file."

  "It will take time to procure those records."

  "The Halyan't'a aren't going anywhere."

  "This could be coincidence."

  "Perhaps."

  "It is your own damned fault, Morgan! The problem would not exist were it not for your obsession for vengeance!"

  "You don't understand, Lal."

  "No, I do not! You jeopardize a multi-billion dollar operation, simply to destroy a NASA space vessel that was on a training flight, for mercy's sake!"

  "It wasn't the flight—or the ship—it was the woman commanding it! Cat Garcia. We went through hell together. Sixty-one people, in a lifeboat designed to hold twenty. I sailed it across the face of the Solar System, Lal, I brought fifty-three home alive. I was a hero. The finest officer the Air Force had ever seen! But they retired me! Retired me! Medically unfit, they said. Even Canfield, the bitch. Who the hell is she to talk, with most of her body made of plasteel! I had no idea how much I could hate, until I heard the Review Board's findings.

  "I was dumped. Cat wasn't. I asked her to come with me, to stand by me. To remain as true as she had in the boat. But she didn't.

  "Seven officers sat on that Board. I've killed three. And now Cat. I'm saving Canfield for last."

  Lal was visibly unnerved by Morgan's outburst and he spoke with a faint tremor. "Suppose, when we've compared bio-stats between Ciari and the Speaker, some readings match and others don't?"

  "If I'm to err, it'll be on the side of caution. We know who was in the Command Module, we start looking for them. Hard. And pass a contract through the System, shoot on sight."

  "That's messy. And far from foolproof. Our employers will not approve."

  "Would they rather see this"—Morgan waved an arm to encompass the rock around them—"shut down?" The other man's silence was the reply he'd expected. "Hurry up on the file, Lal. The longer the delay, the greater the possibility of something going wrong."

  The two men went their separate ways and, after staring at the empty corridor junction for a long time, Nicole finally snapped off the holo field.

  "Fucking bastard!" Hana screamed, blinking back tears of mingled grief and rage. Nicole tried to comfort her, but was waved away. For now, Hana wanted, needed, to be alone with her pain. Nicole understood, but stayed close at hand, ready to respond if needed.

  She called Andrei on a secure intercom channel.

  "Big trouble," she told him. "Can you be ready to Ignite on a moment's notice?"

  She heard Andrei take a deep breath and wiped her own face with a sleeve while waiting for his reply. It was, "Perhaps."

  "No good," she said wearily. "Do it."

  She closed the channel.

  "What was that all about?" Hana asked.

  "You heard. The longer we wait, the worse our chances become. So we strike now. We free Ciari and Shavrin, and we take Morgan—to stand trial for piracy and murder—and we skip."

  "Tall order."

  Nicole smiled. There was death in her eyes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There were seven, all told, in the party they were after: three armored troopers and four technicians. The raiders moved easily through the starship—troopers cocksure of their ability to crush any resistance, technos confident of the troopers' ability to protect them.

  Nicole, lying prone on the deck just around the corner, about fifteen meters ahead of them, with a Halyan't'a warrior
crouched above her, felt a faint tingling as a sensor web swept over them. Nothing happened, though; a Halyan't'a electronic "cloak" kept them hidden from its prying beams. Other Halyan't'a warriors were spaced along the maintenance crawlway above the corridor ceiling, ready to drop through the panels on command.

  Hana was by herself, in one of the locked compartments lining the passage. She would spring their trap.

  Nicole whispered into her boom microphone: "On your mark, Hana—they're moving past—get ready, set, go!"

  There was the faint hiss of a door sliding open, then Hana cheerfully saying, "Hiya, fellas, how's tricks?" The plan was for Hana to literally pop out of her compartment, wearing a Halyan't'a shipsuit and lugging a respectable load of files and tape cassettes, looking as normal as could be. She greeted the raiders and then moved casually, briskly on her way.

  "Hold it, Miss," a trooper barked, and his partner, in a harsher tone, ordered, " Halt!"

  "Hit 'em!" Nicole roared, and she kicked off the wall, Halyan't'a crossbow cocked and ready to fire. Their ruse had worked perfectly; all raider eyes were on a very startled, very confused-looking Hana. Nicole sighted on the back of the nearest trooper and, possessed by a preternatural, icy calm, pulled the trigger. Beside her, the Halyan't'a did the same. In that same moment, Hana hurled the clutter in her arms at the unarmored technos before diving headlong into their midst, flailing in every direction with hands and feet. And the rest of the assault team struck from above.

  In barely a dozen seconds, it was over. Of the seven raiders, the three troopers and one of the technicians were dead, the rest unconscious. Neither humans nor Halyan't'a had pulled their punches and Nicole thought the surviving raiders should consider themselves lucky to be alive. She looked at the man who'd taken her first bolt, sprawled against the bulkhead where the arrow's impact had thrown him, and then her eyes fell to the crossbow nestled in the crook of her aim.

  "You okay?" Hana asked. Her eyes were strangely bright, wide with mingled excitement and stark terror, and faint tremors shook the surface of her skin as her adrenaline rush began to fade.

  Nicole slowly shook her head. "What's scary is how easy it is. Bang—he's dead. No hesitation. No second thoughts."