by Mark Wandrey
Nina’s grandmother made another appearance, this time with a man of similar age with skin the texture of tree bark, testimony of untold hours in the harsh middle latitude’s sun.
“They waste a lot of money on social programs,” Rick said, half to himself. In the United States, the government had set up a chain of stores whose sole purpose was distributing free consumer goods to anyone who lived there, paid for by the taxes on mercenary income. Those same taxes had become so egregious, the Winged Hussars, his last outfit, had vowed never to come back.
“These sorts of cures aren’t expensive,” Dakkar continued.
“Priorities can get skewed when politics are involved,” Sato said, catching the conversation.
The grandmother pointed at Dakkar and said, “Santo del Mar.” The man, likely her husband, nodded and moved into the room.
“I beg forgiveness for intruding,” he said. “I wanted to come see the miracle giver myself, and to thank him, or it, for helping my Nina.” He looked at Dakkar with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. “Everyone thinks you are some kind of saint,” he said, then pointed at Rick, “while that is a divine manifestation. My son and his wife, Nina’s parents, said you saved them from an alien machine, and they think you’re an angel.”
“What do you think?” Rick asked him.
The man’s face grew a wry smile. “I think it’s an alien, though I don’t know what kind. I’ve heard of one in Houston who can put computers in your brain. It was described as a glowing octopus.” He glanced at Dakkar. “I see a glowing octopus. You,” he said to Sato, “are its guide, or something. This other person is your protector. It is not a CASPer; they are much bulkier. Is there a man inside?”
“There is,” Rick confirmed.
“Your observations are very astute.”
“I’ve run businesses all my life, starting as a farmer, then a mechanic, and moved on to logistics. You meet aliens and see alien technology. But this is a small town, and when many see such wonders, our Catholic upbringing kicks in. The Spanish, they made us Christian, but we kept much of our older beliefs covered in the new beliefs. Gods, saints, goddesses, spirits…” He shrugged. “We see what we want to see.”
He put a hand lovingly on Nina’s head. “When she was two, she fell from the porch and hit her head. At first the doctors said her vision would come back, but it didn’t. By the time I was able to take her to a hospital, they said the damage was done. They don’t want to use the miniature machines, nanites, on her because she’s only five years old now. Yet in the same voice, they say the longer it goes, the harder it is to cure. I’ve been putting away money to pay someone in a startown to do it anyway.” He held out a handful of credits, Rick guessed over a thousand. Quite a fortune for such a small town. “You take it.”
“We really don’t need your credits,” Sato said.
“But we appreciate the gesture,” Rick added quickly as the man’s face began to harden.
“Then what can I do for you? Don Gutierrez is a man of his word, and you have given me a gift beyond measure.”
“Unless you can somehow get us out of here without the other drones flying around finding us?” Sato shrugged, and Rick grimaced.
“You are wanted?”
“Yes,” Sato again answered immediately.
But Don Gutierrez nodded and made a noise. “I see.” He glanced at his son. “The truck outside is yours?” Sato kept quiet for a time. “Obviously it is, and that explains why Hector’s truck was attacked. Same model. Where do you have to be?”
“Anywhere in America,” Rick said, breaking his own rule. He’d suddenly gotten the feeling the dice were rolling in their favor for a change.
The man gave the same nod and turned to the crowd. In a flash he was pointing at men and giving orders. “Victor, get their truck out of here. Head along the main highway. Drive fast, make it obvious. When they stop you, say you stole it. I’ll take care of the federales. Chico, go get another truck. Make it as new as possible, with enough room for our friends here. The rest of you, go be lookouts. We cannot appear to be a crowd. These punta will be here soon if we don’t cause a distraction.”
He turned to Sato and Rick. “As soon as the other truck arrives, we’ll take you to my place. I’ll get you to America if it’s the last thing I do.”
Sato turned to Rick and gave him a shit-eating grin. Rick sighed. There’ll be no living with him now.
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
Sato was blown away at the speed of Don Gutierrez and his arrangements. He, Rick, and Dakkar were in the back of a covered pickup truck inside 15 minutes. He didn’t see them drive their truck away, or the locals acting as lookouts while the three made good their escape. The only problem was, inside the bed of the truck, he had no idea where they were going. The ride took longer than arranging it had—half an hour. During the intermittently bumpy ride, Sato had plenty of time to wonder what came next. Gutierrez seemed to have a lot of friends and respect in the community, but how would that equate to getting them to the United States?
He imagined riding a thousand kilometers in the back of the same truck, or in a cattle car, split up in the trunks of three rusty old cars, or even in a horse-drawn wagon. The image of the latter made him quietly chuckle.
The truck rumbled to a stop, and the rear doors to the bed were opened. A pair of young men looked in on them with as much curiosity as they looked out. Sato could see they were parked next to a large building he thought was a barn. The young men reached in and helped him out. Once he was standing on the gravel next to the truck, he realized it wasn’t a barn. It was a hangar.
He tried to find Don Gutierrez. There was no sign of him. “Is this an airport?” Sato asked one of the young men. The man didn’t respond, instead pointing to the nearest door of the hangar. He checked his pinplants’ navigational information and, to his surprise, found he couldn’t pin himself.
“Is your navigation messed up?” Rick asked.
“Yes,” Sato confirmed. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Not with tech you’d find in southern Mexico,” Rick said.
Sato began to suspect there was more to Don Gutierrez than met the eye.
The two young men unloaded Dakkar’s support tank, joined by three older men on a forklift, who loaded the tank onto a cargo pallet—a pallet of a design Sato found familiar.
Don Gutierrez appeared in the hangar doorway, smiling and bidding them to come in. Sato glanced at Rick, who shrugged. As usual, his armored bodyguard wasn’t overly concerned. He followed Rick’s lead once more.
“Welcome, my friends. Come inside, please. I’m certain the alien drones are distracted, but I don’t know for how long.” They did as he asked, passing through the doors and finding themselves in a building more modern than they’d been expecting. In fact, two women sat at desks with modern slates projecting Tri-V spreadsheets.
“Don Gutierrez, what business are you in?” Sato asked.
“Shipping,” the man said with a serious expression.
“Your facility looks quite old and worn,” Sato said. “Plus you’re jamming the Republic’s GPS system, which is supposed to be impossible.”
“Impossible, of course,” Gutierrez said, the look on his face never faltering. “If you would both sit and enjoy some refreshments, I need to complete your travel arrangements.”
Sato sat, amazed at the man’s presentation. He felt like he was waiting to board a commercial flight, instead of a hidden modern hangar in remote rural Mexico. Even so, they both sat in two of several comfortable chairs scattered along one wall of the office.
“What about our…friend?” Rick asked.
“The container is in the hangar waiting for loading. Is the Santo del Mar okay for a few hours?”
“Yes,” Sato confirmed. “How long before we join him on your plane?”
“Not long,�
�� Don Gutierrez said and smiled. “Trust me, you are safe here.” Without further explanation, he left through another door.
“You know he’s a smuggler or something,” Rick said. He spoke quietly but didn’t use their pinplant link.
“Or something,” Sato agreed. He was experiencing a growing feeling of déjà vu, but unlike a few times before, the feelings weren’t accompanied by memories, not even fractured and confusing ones. My mind is really a mess. It was becoming plain just how bad since Nemo installed the new pinplants. “I guess we just wait.”
Rick nodded and took one of the seats. The plush leather armchair gave a slight creak as Rick settled into it. The Æsir armor wasn’t incredibly heavy, but it weighed twice as much as an adult man by itself. “Comfy,” Rick quipped as he sank deeply into the chair.
Sato gave a little chuckle and passed the time looking around.
“Why don’t we get the bud, I mean Dakkar, pinplants?” Rick asked.
“You can’t until they’re mature enough. They’re a perfect copy of the original, but with fewer neural links. Takes time for it to grow to full size and the capacity to accept the hardware.” Rick nodded in understanding, and Sato wondered how he knew the information without thinking about it.
The sea was as blue as it was possible to imagine the color, with tiny whitecaps whipping across the bay, and a sailing ship slicing through the water only a kilometer offshore. He looked down at the support unit to see the Wrogul slithering out of the surf and up over the unit’s tracks. Clinging to it was a tiny version of itself, identical in every way.
“You’ve budded,” Sato said.
“I have. Thank you for waiting.”
“Not a problem.” He looked at the bud. “Welcome to Azure,” he said, triggering his pinplants to send the visual color flashes, because the bud didn’t have its parent’s pinplants.
“Thank you, Taiki.”
Sato blinked in the dim office lights. The startlingly blue waters had been so real, he could still feel them lapping up on his feet. When he looked down at his shoes, he was surprised to see them dry.
“If you would follow me, please?” A woman holding a slate gestured to them from a door on the far side of the office. Nobody else at their desks took any notice of them as they got up and walked to the indicated door. Sato had to struggle to pay attention to his footsteps as he fought off the memory and tried to center himself back in the now.
They walked down a short hallway, past several doors, to a heavy steel door that looked almost like a pressure door on a starship. The woman slipped her hand into an alcove, and the door clicked and rotated inward for her.
Sato nodded. He couldn’t see enough to be sure; it could be an imbedded microchip in the woman’s hand, advanced biometrics, or she’d entered a code on a hidden keypad. There was no way to be sure. Besides, he wasn’t as interested when he saw the interior of the hangar. “Holy crap,” he said.
“Is that a Phoenix-class dropship?” Rick asked.
“Exactly,” Sato agreed.
“I thought they were out of service.”
“Not entirely,” Sato said. “They made thousands of them, so a lot of poor merc units have been using them. I think a few governments own them for military and civilian search and rescue. Obviously some were sold privately as well.”
The Phoenix was built around an aerodynamic central fuselage, not unlike old-fashioned airplanes. Instead of wings, it had four hybrid jet/rocket pods mounted two fore and two aft. These could swivel, allowing the Phoenix both VTOL and STOL capabilities. In cargo mode, it could carry enough fuel for two trips to LEO and back, though usually it was intended for single trips.
The dropships’ main design purpose was to carry Human mercs into combat, burning into an atmosphere at high speed, utilizing a novel low-powered nose energy shield in combination with FICS, fluid injective cooling, on the nose. With these working together, a Phoenix could perform a hot drop unequalled by any other dropship in the galaxy. The problem was, the systems weren’t terribly reliable, so the Phoenix had been phased out 20 years ago.
The ship was painted sky blue on its belly, and jet black on the fuselage and engine pods. The cockpit accommodated two crew, a pilot and a navigator/gunner who sat behind the pilot, above and to the left. On the nose, just under the cockpit, was painted the name “Chupacabra.”
“You like my ship?” Don Gutierrez asked as he came around the nose, patting it affectionately.
“Where did you get it?” Sato asked.
Don Gutierrez smiled hugely. “Colombia bought seven of them from Cartwright’s Cavaliers when they were retired. Four served in the military, two on border interdiction, and one as Colombia’s official government orbital shuttle.”
“They ride like a cattle car,” Sato observed. One of the results of the ship’s utility was a terrible atmospheric interface experience. The crews often joked the ship got its name from passengers never knowing if they were going down in flames.
“Yes, yes,” he said and laughed. “El Presidente’s first trip was his last. Since the military didn’t want another, and neither did border patrol, it went up for auction.” His smile doubled. “I had contacts in the Colombian procurement office, so I knew how much to bid.”
“Why did you want something like this?” Rick asked. “I hear they’re expensive to maintain.”
“It depends on how you fly it. If you stay in atmosphere, not so much. There are a lot of parts on the secondary market. Besides…” He looked at the craft with obvious affection. “I used to fly this one.”
“You were a Cavalier?” Rick asked.
Don Gutierrez nodded. “I was Major Hargrave’s personal pilot for 11 years, until I retired 25 years ago.”
“So you knew Thaddeus Cartwright.”
“Every Cavalier knew him and loved him. It broke my heart when I heard he’d been killed. Broke again when his bitch wife wrecked the Cavaliers. I never met his son, though I hear he’s a good man.”
Rick shook his head, and Sato turned to look at him in concern.
“I won’t explain the details of my business dealings to you,” the man said, his face becoming impassive. “And I’ll forgive your disrespect, considering the favor you did my granddaughter.”
“No disrespect intended,” Rick said quickly. “I was only confused.”
“Very well, please board.” A trio of men were bringing Dakkar’s tank and their bags up the rear loading ramp. The side personnel ladder was down, and they were being led toward it.
As they walked, Sato noticed some more movement by the rear cargo ramp. Parked by the huge hangar door were a dozen black SUVs, hydrogen-powered behemoths common for government officials or executives. Only, neither of those types stood nearby. Instead, the men all wore vests bulging with ammunition magazines, and one had a cartridge belt draped over his shoulders like an old army movie. The men carried various older automatic rifles. One of them, easily seven feet tall, had a laser rifle that had to have belonged to an Oogar. It looked big even in his arms.
The one with the laser rifle watched Rick and Sato with narrowed eyes. Like all the others, he was dark skinned, his ancestry speaking of possibly native South American descent. He looked as hard as carbon fiber reinforced armor. Sato saw that Rick had singled him out as well and never took his glowing blue eyes off of him.
t of waiting.
The interior of the dropship was configured for passengers and cargo. Don Gutierrez was speaking with someone at the cockpit door, who looked up at Rick and Sato as they entered, then went back to his hushed conversation. Another crewman, maybe a loadmaster, was securing Dakkar’s container on one side of the fuselage. The other was taken up by dozens of shipping cases the size of small suitcases. They were stacked on pallets, a dozen or so to each one, and wrapped with heavy camouflage cargo netting, then secured to the floor with polybands, each having a ratchet to ensure a tight fit.
“Looks like a professional loadout,” Sato noted. Rick only nodded. The cargo master came over and greeted them.
“Please take these seats up front. You’re the only passengers,” he said in Spanish.
“What’s the other cargo?” Sato asked. The man ignored the question.
“Have either of you been on a dropship?”
“Many times,” Rick answered. The man seemed to look at him for the first time and did a double take.
“Oh, okay. Please buckle in and prepare for a STOL.”
“Roger that,” Rick said and sat in the proffered seat, which creaked slightly. Sato sat next to him, and both began buckling in. By the time they were done, Don Gutierrez had come back to them.
“Takeoff is in five minutes,” he explained. “I’ve instructed Toppo to drop you off in San Antonio, his first stop.”
“Did you plan to go into drug running when you retired from Cartwright’s Cavaliers?” Rick asked.
Sato gasped out loud and glared at Rick, shocked that the man would make such an accusation. Then he thought about the tough characters and their strange cargo. The pieces fell into place seconds after Rick had put it together.
Don Gutierrez narrowed his eyes at Rick, then laughed uproariously. He looked at Rick and shook his head. “No. If you really must know, I was recruited by the Golden Horde for this job. Safe travels, and I wish you luck.” Don Gutierrez went down the loading ramp, and it closed behind him. Seconds later the Phoenix’s engines were spinning up, and they were taxiing out of the hangar.
