CHAPTER 38: TAKE-OFF
‘We. He said ‘we’, he must have La Mar!’ cried Dedrin. ‘Rhone is holding position.’
Break off, damn you Rhone! demanded Bethane in her mind, knowing it wouldn’t happen.
‘Give me a speed on the Grey.’ She checked her screens.
‘Thirty five kilometres an hour, but accelerating.’
Bethane calculated in her head. That much weight, one pack. He will have to manoeuvre, and then decelerate to land. They won’t make it. ‘Clear the ramp,’ she ordered.
The control room went quiet. She looked up to find all eyes on her. She met their distressed glances with an impassive stare. This is battle. She turned back to her screens, her calmness almost serene. The count ran in her head as she calculated orbits and velocities.
To the last second. I will give them that, thought Bethane as she laid her hand on the ramp controls.
Time. She pressed the button. Her attention went back to her screens for the take off.
‘Hold! Stop the ramp! You’ll cut him in half!’ came a cry over the comm.
Bethane hit the ramp control. ‘Explain!’
‘One of the guards slipped off the head of the ramp. He’s caught in between.’
He. That is Gati, thought Bethane. Her hand went back to the button anyway. ‘Closing,’ she stated.
‘I see them!’ screamed Dedrin.
Bethane swung round with the rest of them at that, abandoning her screens. Dedrin threw the image up on the overhead monitor, so everyone could see.
Two suited figures, one almost straight out parallel the ground, rockets flat out, the other held under the armpits, hanging freely below. He is not using the controls. That would slow them down, realised Bethane. He is using his body to guide them. She admired his skill as she calculated their arrival. She wondered at his perseverance. He would know the count as well as I. That they are too late to slow and board. Why does he come on? La Mar! She must be in a bad way!
Bethane spun back to her controls. ‘Everyone hold on. He means to pitch her in.’ She eased power across, lifted then tilted the whole craft to reduce the angle of the ramp. Even in a suit she may hit too hard, she worried. She leaned her head back to check the monitor. They’re too high and too fast. Unbelieving, she saw Trahern shut down and jettison the rocket pack as he went into an arcing arm-length spin with La Mar. It was instantly familiar. Not out of control. He has purpose. Like in the zero G chamber.
She tipped the lander up further. It took all her skill and concentration to hold the craft in that ungainly position only metres off the ground.
The call ‘They’re on!’ came with a thump she felt through her seat. She hit the ramp button with one hand and drove the power on with the other. She had to corkscrew to keep the ramp end up. Full power, almost upside down. When the ramp finally closed, she levelled out. Probably the best flying of my life, thought Bethane. Ugly, but the best. She wasn’t done yet. The satellite would be on them in seconds. ‘Secure yourselves. This will get rough.’
‘Find the position on the ground where La Mar was first attacked and stay between that and the satellite. Fly directly at the satellite.’ Trahern’s voice was calm. ‘Don’t get hit.’
A sense of humour? Him? Now? wondered Bethane. She had already decided to go straight at the satellite. Hard to face but this approach gave the best chance of evasion. It made targeting more difficult. Also the high convergence speeds would limit the ability of smart missiles to adjust. If she was good enough to slip them at the last millisecond, that is.
Dedrin sent the position and trajectory data across to Bethane’s screens. Bethane swung the lander onto the new path, orienting the craft to offer the smallest silhouette.
This is going to be fun.
CHAPTER 39: COUNTING THE LOSSES
‘Your Bethane is good. That was some of the best flying in atmosphere that I have ever seen.’ After that comment, Trahern went quiet again, unaware that his fingers were braiding the wires from the monitors, the bed control cable and her drip tube together. ‘Commands well also. Calm. Steady over the comm.’
The Grey sat beside her bed. Sian lounged against the wall opposite.
‘If you weave my catheter tube into that mess, we’re both going to be in big trouble soon,’ said La Mar.
Trahern released the braid and straightened in his chair. Sian came forward to squat beside the bed and untangle the tube and wires. La Mar noted that working almost in Trahern’s lap and against her own side did not faze the girl. She put her hand on Sian’s shoulder and got a quick smile in return. This one needs more physical contact. I must remember to tell Bethane. She tipped her head and hitched her eyebrow toward the door. It was time to talk between commanders. There would be some hard things to say.
She had a stray thought as Sian slipped to the door. ‘Sian, ask Gati to bring some wire to keep his cadreman’s hands out of my equipment.’ Maybe I can get my ornament. That would be something positive from this day.
‘Another good one,’ said Trahern after Sian left. ‘Not just quick on her feet. She thinks fast too. If she hadn’t pulled down that cargo net, we would have gone through and hit the wall.’
Bethane had given her the details of their return, as had most of her other visitors. The Amazons had kept someone in the room with her since she woke up. All of them delighted in the telling of her dramatic arrival. Poor Bethane. Sounds like she has done the flying of her life and everyone wants to talk about this acrobatic entry instead. Maybe later, when they realise how close to death they all were and who flew them free, then they will be more appreciative.
She, herself, didn’t remember anything past the plaza. A shame. She would have loved to have experienced that last flying leap, if you could call it that. ‘Like in the zero G chamber’ Bethane had commented. Well, I’m glad somebody remembered. And she didn’t mean Bethane.
‘How did she get past the satellite?’ she asked.
Trahern knew whom she meant. ‘Corkscrewed and flicked, but very tight, stayed on the direct approach. A rough ride. Small end on, we were never in the same place long. The lasers couldn’t bite. The bigger stuff, she slipped.’ He paused. ‘They only caught us high up. The seconds you and I lost, she saved with that take off.’ He paused again. ‘They didn’t allow the satellite to fire for long. What missed us, hit the installation they’d been trying to hide.’
And a fair bit of the country around it, she knew. She turned her head to the side.
Trahern misinterpreted her action. ‘Rhone was alive when we left the atmosphere. We had her telemetry until then,’ he said.
‘Rhone is Rhone,’ she told the wall. ‘Bethane told me you both gave her the opportunity to disengage.’
‘I tried to keep her back,’ said Trahern. ‘You know how she fires up. They must have thought it was the ride of the valkyries, the way she went at them. Do you know she had mag pen weapons on both suit arms, with lasers slung underneath? Used them all too. Probably what kept her alive, she was bouncing around the sky so much.’
‘Bethane says that they will hurt her,’ said La Mar.
They both went silent. Trahern did not try to contradict her.
They couldn’t go back. The satellite had been slowed. It was in a geostationary orbit now, constantly above that side of the planet. They couldn’t go under it. Rhone might not be there anyway. Without her marker they had no way of locating her.
‘It is for the politicians for the time being,’ said Trahern echoing her thoughts. ‘Your sensors picked up enough on their installation. Maybe they will trade her for leniency.’
‘If this is part of something bigger?’ La Mar started.
‘Doesn’t matter. Quartermaine won’t leave her. And if we make a mess of our own House problems, you’ll have nothing to lose by going back yourselves.’
He is a hard man, thought La Mar. He sees further than I, but then again I’m not at my best right now. She rolled her head back to stare at the ceiling. ‘You thin
k I should put Bethane in command?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ She knew he would tell her, what she saw in the wet eyes of her cadre.
‘You are badly hurt. You may yet die. Lasers, some very fine. Your suit was not much good at the end.’
And I thought this day might get better.
She heard a quick knock and someone enter the room but she did not look around. ‘Here. I brought this to keep you busy. She has enough wires and tubes coming out of her without you adding more.’ Gati’s cheerful voice faded. ‘Pardone me, maestra.’ Something rattled on the tray table and he was gone.
‘I thought guard duty would keep him out of trouble, out of the way,’ said Trahern. After a moment’s pause, he continued. ‘I checked the control room tapes. Bethane was going to close the ramp on him.’
‘You will have to talk to him, explain,’ advised La Mar.
‘And tell him what?’ Trahern objected. ‘That she was right. Her command was excellent.’
‘Of course it was,’ La Mar said brusquely. ‘No. He knows that. But she showed him that he is not the most important thing in her life. That will be hard for him.’ And for her. It will be between them forever, she knew. ‘Explain how it is for us. In time, he will be the same. For now though, he is different. He is your Rhone. He will give you as much trouble as she does me.’ The Grey had no answer for that.
That is almost all of it. Perhaps he will leave now. She turned her head back to the wall.
They stayed that way. Long enough for her to identify the low susurrations and hums of the individual machines keeping her alive. I am more machine than woman.
‘It is not Rhone, and it is not your death that is bothering you,’ said Trahern with almost more curiosity than concern. ‘What is it La Mar?’
She was long in answering. ‘The children.’
‘Children? There are no children.’
‘I saw children. I stopped to watch them … to watch them play. In the fields next to the building.’ She wanted to wipe her eyes but couldn’t lift her hands that far. ‘I didn’t know that the building was significant. I wasn’t checking my sensors. I wasn’t aware of them. I was lost in a dream.’
Boys and girls, laughing, running, mock fighting, playing in small groups and organised games, some walking quietly together, the inevitable few left out on the fringes. Even now her soul drank in the vision.
‘They must have become alarmed because you hung above them so long,’ said the Grey.
His ‘they’ were the men in the bunker, the armoury or whatever the building had turned out to be. Poor Trahern. No dreams of children for him.
‘Tollen’s luck, the marines call that,’ he continued. ‘Good and bad at the same time.’
‘Innocents. And we put them in harms way,’ said La Mar. She knew they were talking at cross purposes but the words had to be said.
‘Innocents? There are no innocents,’ said Trahern. ‘They chose to cloak their deceit in children. Do you think they stopped the satellite firing because they were hitting the children or because they were hitting their installation?’
His tone made his choice of answer clear. He is probably right as to that decision, thought La Mar, but he is wrong about children. She felt immensely tired. She turned her head to catch the Grey’s eyes. ‘They are innocents.’ With that self-condemnation she was able to close her eyes and rest.
*
Bethane found them both asleep, although Trahern’s eyes opened as soon as she entered the room. ‘We are close to the Inner Passages,’ she told him quietly. ‘We will have her back at Base before the day is out.’ There was no need to check the monitors. She had them patched into her screen in the control room. La Mar was stable. Her heart and lungs were fine. That was the best news. Life support was carrying most of the function of the rest of her internal organs. There is where the concerns lay. Back at Base they would find out how much damage the fine deep laser penetration had done.
Trahern rose from the chair and stretched. Not quite with the languid grace of Sian but somehow leaving her with the same intimation of power and speed. What is this man capable of? Bethane wondered. Or to put it better, what is he not capable of? She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had not yet seen him at his utmost, neither in the flying they had done together, nor in La Mar’s rescue. Instinctively, she knew his extremes would be accompanied by destruction, devastation. A sense of dread filled her. What are we heading toward that we need someone like him?
Trahern caught her staring. Bethane averted her head and walked around him to La Mar’s bedside. He left without speaking.
On the tray table next to the bed she found his latest work. It was larger and more complex than any of the others, almost the size of an outstretched hand. Densely woven at the centre, open near the edges. Copper, silver, a jet black from some fine carbon fibre, clear threads of optical cable, strands of translucent dark red resin and the dull glint of gold. She lost herself following its intricate patterns.
A groan from La Mar brought her out of her reverie. Bethane went around to the monitors. A click from the drip line told her more medication was being delivered. The best we can do for her here. At Base there is hope.
Bethane looked down to find that she still held the weaving in her hand. La Mar won’t be happy with this, she thought. It is beautiful but it is too big to go in her hair. On her front it would look like a breastplate. Not a good look for the Commander. You couldn’t cut it up for a pin or brooch. It is too complete … too correct as it is. She carefully replaced it on the tray.
Bethane shook her head. No time for ornaments. With La Mar down, she was in command. She must have the Amazons ready for whatever would come next. Quartermaine might not let them come back for Rhone. Not something that the Amazons could accomplish on their own and the rest of the Guard was busy. No, the Amazons would be added to one of the other missions.
Probably not the sweep of the Gap Quadrant. PlanCon would be too far out and Colda had half the fleet already. He should not need more. There was no real threat of conflict. Quartermaine wouldn’t have sent him if there was. Only an exercise. Maybe the few Ships that the Group would encounter would scare Colda enough to dissuade him from trying to take control of the Guard. There was that.
The patrol of the Arm. That was most likely. Rotate into the search. That would be nice, as long as Visco left them as one unit. She could work on the Amazons’ formation flying, trial it in action.
There was one more possibility. One that she didn’t want to think about. ‘What would we have done?’ she had asked La Mar at the time. ‘We would go, of course, and do a better job,’ her commander had answered. But there was only one end up there. Oulte and the Far Rangers would know that by now. The Rim was not meant to be flown.
CHAPTER 40: ON THE RIM, AT THE BLOODY PASS
Mike inched his left hand out through the loose rock, probing for something solid. His left foot was jammed on an up-thrust boulder but that was his only sound point of contact. He was slowly rotating around it, his body shifting with the rubble as it made its way to the edge. The pounding of mag cannon and the rain of fragments from above kept his stony bed alive. Above! The blast that hit him must have knocked him into one of the talus slides. Who knows how far down the slope he had gone? Not to the bottom anyway, not yet.
They had met the enemy where two long parallel valleys were joined by a low pass, after marching for more than twenty-four hours straight. A day and a night back on Base, but here, one long period of darkness. The dim light that passed for day on the Rim had just started to filter through the dust when they made the top of the southern ridge. The enemy was already in the pass coming across from the northern valley.
‘Don’t hesitate. Read the battle and react.’ The Armourer’s advice. ‘They fight to plan. They need orders to change. Take advantage of that.’ As much advantage as the paring from a knife scraping steel, thought Mike but he used it when he could.
It had gone well at
first. He had set his men along the ridgetop overlooking the southern valley. The sky was low and close above them, a dark mass of near opaque turbulence grumbling and howling just over their heads. So close that waves of static lifted the hair inside their suits. Erratic fields, gravity and electro-magnetic, tugged at bodies and weapons.
The slope in front was gradual and broken for about thirty metres offering some cover before it lipped and fell away steeply, bare and exposed, down to the valley floor. Easy to defend, no way up except for a narrow spine that ran below the lip to the mouth of the pass opposite them.
‘Tane’s and Wojo’s squads with me to the front slope, Delaney and the Good Squad in reserve. The rest on the ridgetop, spaced by five. Don’t let them turn us. Scouts away now.’ He had not said that they must hold the enemy, deny them the valley. This is what they had been doing for weeks. Constantly flanking and holding. Only to move again. A few marines less each time.
‘They mean to use their numbers to contain us, to drive us to some place of their choosing for our elimination. Our strategy is the same, only it depends on skill, not numbers. Both sides must move. That is the nature of the Rim. Whoever controls the movement will win.’ Those were the Armourer’s words. Simple. All the blood and sweat and strain came down to that, to a time like this.
It had gone well until the enemy brought the cannons forward. He must have been caught on the edge of a blast. A direct hit would have made mud out of him.
A hand came over the top edge of the boulder from below. Gloved fingers inched sideways to find a grip, the black gauntlet scuttling toward his foot like a spider. Mike lifted his right boot and stomped it. Gone. No cry, not even the sound of rocks falling. At least for a few seconds. Then the boulder shifted and stones ran like water. Mike kicked the boulder again as they both went over the edge, trying to separate their paths. He slammed and rattled down the steep slope until the rubble covered him, entraining him in its flow and damping all sounds. The dull rumble continued after he came to rest, finally finishing with a nearby thud. His friend, the boulder, or another like it. At least it told him which way was out. He could move, a slow swimming motion using all of the suit’s power.
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