Drifter

by William C. Dietz

  The ship shuddered and bucked down through the atmosphere, making Wendy's already queasy stomach feel even worse, and claiming all of Lando's attention.

  The equatorial zone came up to meet them, a vast strip of cratered wasteland, stretching like a belt around the planet's waist. It glowed as light rippled over hundreds of water-filled craters and glittered off shiny metal.

  Lando took the ship even lower until it was barely skimming over the land, rising slightly to top low-lying hills, or swinging left and right to avoid jagged peaks.

  Then, as the NAVCOMP announced that the rendezvous point was coming up, Lando cut power, dropped the flaps, and fired the ship's repellors. The Tink hovered in midair.

  It started to rain, and big fat drops of water turned to steam as they hit the ship's force field. Lando approved. Rain meant clouds, and clouds meant that the Mega-Metals' surveillance satellites would have a harder time spotting them.

  Two short peaks blocked the way, their flanks heavily scarred by meteor impacts, and worn by the effects of erosion.

  Orange smoke billowed up, Lars Schmidt stepped out from behind a rock and waved. Lando rocked the ship slightly in acknowledgment. The geologist backpedaled and motioned for Lando to follow.

  The smuggler eased his ship over broken ground, danced around the side of a reddish-orange rock, and spotted a large black hole towards the base of the left-hand peak. The cave was just as the geologist had described it. Large enough to hide The Tink but not so large as to attract attention in and of itself.

  Schmidt backed into the cave and Lando followed. Dust billowed up and away from The Tink's repellors. It was difficult to see things located to port or starboard.

  The ground rose a bit, forced the ship to rise with it, and slanted down into the cave. Lando liked that. The slight lip would make it even harder to see inside. Schmidt had stumbled across the underground cavern during one of his many field trips.

  The landing lights came on. Lando saw something up ahead. It was a big boxy shape that quickly resolved itself into a six-wheeled truck. It had a cab, a connective tube made of pleated duraplast, and a large trailer. The vehicle had a sizable collection of dents, scrapes, and scratches. Many of these were overlaid with pea-sized meteorite craters. A little reminder of life in the E-zone.

  The smuggler turned The Tink so that the external cargo hatch was positioned as close to the truck's tailgate as possible. The landing jacks touched down with a gentle thump. Lando waited for the ship to sag. It didn't. Lucky Lou's robo-techs had located the problem and "fixed" it. Lando shook his head in amazement. Now he'd have to hire someone to unfix it.

  Wendy released her harness and headed for the main lock. Lando autosequenced the shutdown procedures.

  Schmidt was waiting when the hatch whirred open. He saw Wendy and smiled. She jumped to the ground and gave him a hug. The geologist was surprised but pleased. He hugged her back.

  The two of them appeared on the port security monitor. Lando tried to ignore them but found that he couldn't. Seeing Wendy with someone else hurt a lot more than he thought it would.

  Lorenzo Pal was furious and Corvo knew it. She tried to appear calm but found that hard to do.

  What if Pal blamed the screw-up on her? What if he broke her down to pit-boss? Or put her back on the line? Corvo had enemies… enemies that she'd made following Pal's orders… and they'd love the chance to take a shot at her.

  A lot of things could happen out on the job. Your power plant could brew-up for no apparent reason, a boulder could fall out of the sky, or you could simply disappear. They never had found Petey Wilson. There were rumors that he'd been shredded and sent to Terra in a shipment of ore. Corvo bit her lower lip and hoped Air Six would arrive soon. Maybe the boss would relax when he had something to do… like find the smuggler and kill him.

  Of course that might be easier said than done. Lando had done pretty well so far. He'd greased one shuttle, outrun the rest, evaded the company's radar, and vanished into thin air. The spy sats were searching for him but hadn't found a trace. Angel's halo was absolutely packed with metallic particles and they made a wonderful shield against most forms of detection.

  As for the settlements, well, Pal had security teams in place in case the smuggler showed up there. Security teams that reported an unusual amount of activity. It was as though the sod-busters knew something that the company didn't and were preparing to deal with it.

  Pal figured that the smuggler had put his ship down somewhere in the E-zone and Corvo agreed.

  First came the robo-spy. It should have reported in by now. Destroyed? And if so, by whom? Its last known position was very close to where the computers thought Lando had touched down.

  And what about the radio signal that had originated from that same quadrant of the zone? A long and two shorts. The signal was on a little-used frequency and no one had noticed it until Lando forced them to turn the computers inside out.

  But why? Why land in the middle of a Class A disaster area? To hide something, that's why. But what? What were The Chosen up to, anyway?

  That's what Pal wanted to know and Corvo couldn't blame him. She had a feeling about this. A feeling that something big was about to happen but didn't know why. The whole thing was weird as hell.

  Pal strode back and forth across the reception area with his face locked in a semipermanent frown.

  "Where the hell is that lifter? It should've been here by now."

  Corvo heard the roar of engines and the mighty whup, whup, whup of giant helicopter blades. She rushed to the window. "The lifter's here, boss… right on time."

  Pal ignored Corvo's comment as he strode towards the door. "Can't anyone be on time? Make a note of the pilot's name. I'll dock her pay a hundred credits for every minute that she holds us up."

  Corvo sighed. She knew the pilot and liked her. She'd ignore Pal's order on the chance that he'd forget to check up on it.

  Corvo followed her boss outside. She was from Terra, and the helicopter reminded her of a dragonfly, its huge rotors beating like wings, pushing air against the ground below. Dust billowed up as a clutch of cables jerked down towards the crawler.

  The crawler was large, big enough to rival a tank, and equipped with two crablike arms. The company used the crawler, and others like it, to recover surface metals from their half of the E-zone. And, if the truth were known, they took metals from the other half as well.

  The machine was so heavily armored that it could withstand a hit from anything up to an egg-sized meteorite. It had been bright orange at one time, emphasizing the similarity to a crab, but hard use had worn a lot of the paint away and left large sections of the hull to rust.

  A black number "8" had been stenciled on the crawler's side, to which its driver had added a circle of white, and an even larger circle of black. The hand-painted letters right below it read "Eight-Ball."

  The fact that the name glowed with freshly applied paint said something about the vehicle's driver. He was a small man, smaller than Pal, and stood on the vehicle's front deck.

  His name was Sato, and he'd been pushing heavy metal for a long time, so long that he'd become a sort of father figure to many of the younger drivers. He had black hair streaked with white, weather-beaten skin, and quick brown eyes. He wore light armor, a billed cap, and wireless headset.

  Sato squinted upwards, watching the cluster of cable-mounted hooks that bobbed and swayed just over his head.

  Corvo saw the driver's lips move and knew that he was talking to the pilot, coaching the cable down, sweet-talking it into his hands.

  Sato's actions were a testament to his trust in the pilot's skill. One little error, one wrong move, and the hooks would take his head off. The cable dropped and steadied.

  Corvo watched Sato jump, grab one of the hooks, and pull it towards the front left-hand corner of his massive vehicle. There was a heavy-duty eye bolt mounted in that location, and the hook snapped into place as if it was designed to go there, which it definitely was.
The rest went quickly.

  Sato took a quick look around, motioned for Corvo and Pal to climb aboard, and dropped through an open hatch.

  Pal had spent very little time on the company's heavy equipment, so he made use of the ladder welded to the crawler's side.

  Corvo climbed the way tool-pushers do, using the tracks, drive wheels, and guide arms as steps. She arrived first and had a secure grip on a handhold before the helicopter took off.

  She enjoyed the look of fear on Pal's face as the crawler swayed into the air. The corpo scrambled up the last few rungs of the ladder, stumbled as the deck tilted to port, and threw his arms around a metal support.

  Corvo made a mental note to dock the helicopter pilot's pay, after all. Pal would remember all right. There was no doubt about that.

  Lando did his best to hang on as Honey roared her way to the top of a ridge, teetered for a moment, and half slid down the other side. The trailer was fully loaded with cylinders and heavy as hell.

  The plan was to haul them north to a point just south of the main settlement, where a team of scientists were preparing various methods of dispersal, including some custom-designed aerosol bombs, robotic ground crawlers, and short-range missiles. Technology hard at work destroying itself. Lando thought it was ironic, but his companions didn't seem to agree.

  Time was of the essence. If the corpos caught them on the ground, with the organisms still inside the cylinders, the war would be over before it even started.

  Lando, riding in back, leaned forward to speak to Schmidt. He had to yell in order to be heard over the noise of the truck's engines. "How much longer?"

  Schmidt kept his eyes up ahead. The E-zone looked like a battlefield of overlapping holes and craters. The rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

  "Oh, eight or nine hours maybe. Honey's doing the best she can… but those cylinders are pretty darned heavy."

  Wendy, seated next to Schmidt, didn't say anything but thought she knew what Lando was thinking. Yes, time was critical, but there was something more as well. The job was over and so was their relationship. The smuggler wanted to lift, head for parts unknown, recoup his losses. And Wendy had little doubt that Lando could fight his way off-planet if he chose to.

  But something had caused him to stay and see it through. His sense of honor? Stubborn pride? Affection for her? It made little difference. Whatever the reason, he had stayed.

  Wendy watched the two men out of the corner of her eye. Schmidt and Lando. Lars and Pik. Scientist and smuggler. So different, yet so alike. Both competent, both strong, both honest in their own ways.

  She liked Lars, and found him physically attractive if somewhat boring. But he believed the way that she believed, saw the future the way that she saw it, and was willing to work towards it. That was worth more than mere excitement, wasn't it? Wendy assured herself that it was.

  It was uncomfortably close inside the crawler. Even with the air conditioning running at full blast, the control room was still too warm.

  Not only that, but a long line of tool pushers had sweated through more than forty thousand hours inside the enclosed space, and the smell of their perspiration had found its way into every nook and cranny of the machine's interior.

  The result was a rich funky smell that no amount of deodorant would ever erase. Fresh air came from the open hatch but wasn't enough.

  Sato sat like a king within his cocoonlike command chair, eyes constantly flicking this way and that, watching the video-feed from the helicopter and his own vid cameras.

  The tool pusher had twelve different screens to watch, and those, plus a multitude of colored indicator lights, lit the space with a greenish glow. Things looked different from three hundred feet in the air and Sato liked that.

  Pal was a good deal less comfortable. The fold-down jump seat was located behind the command chair and over to one side. It was intended for emergencies and check-rides. Because of that the seat offered very little in the way of padding and absolutely no back support.

  Pal wanted to commandeer Sato's chair but was afraid to do so. What he knew about operating crawlers could be laser-inscribed on the head of a pin. What if he made a mistake? Screwed something up? Sato would tell the others and they'd laugh at him. No, that would never do.

  So, unable to get comfortable, and unable to do anything about it, Pal turned his thoughts to revenge. He'd make the Wendeen bitch pay like she'd never paid before. Just the thought of it caused a familiar stirring between his legs. The corpo smiled.

  But if Pal was uncomfortable, then Corvo was even more so, since she'd been forced to stand half-bent over in the small alcove that provided access to the tiny head, and next to that, an even smaller galley.

  But it was either that or an unprotected ride in the cargo bay which took up the rear part of the crawler, and Corvo knew better than to try that.

  She imagined what it would be like to be sealed inside a cold metal box, unable to see or hear, helpless until someone decided to let you out. She shivered. Uncomfortable though it was, the control room was better than that.

  The pilot's voice was loud in Sato's ears. He had routed all incoming transmissions through his headset. "Knowledge is power." He'd read that somewhere and it was true.

  "Air Six to Eight-Ball. Are you awake?"

  Sato grinned. "Of course I'm awake. I was sipping some wine and listening to Movari's Fifth."

  The pilot made a rude noise. "You might be sipping some wine, especially if it's cheap, but you wouldn't recognize Movari's Fifth if it was memprinted on what's left of your brain. The LZ's coming up. Five to dirt."

  "That's a roger, Air Six."

  Sato stuck his hands inside the control gauntlets and flexed the middle finger of his right hand just so. His command chair whirred to the left. "Hang on, folks… we're five to ground."

  Pal scowled. "It's about time."

  Corvo smiled encouragingly. "Thanks for letting us know."

  Sato nodded, sent both of them a mental "screw you," and turned back to his controls.

  The ground came up fast. The helicopter pilot had chosen the center of an ancient crater as her landing point. It was flat and relatively clear of debris.

  Sato experienced the tight-gut feeling that always went with a drop into the equatorial zone. Had the odds piled up against him? Would this be the trip when some nameless chunk of hot metal came screaming out of the sky to take his life? Was it his turn to punch out?

  He wanted to stretch, to ease tight muscles, but couldn't remove his hands from the gloves. Instead, he recited the prayer his mother had taught him. His eyes scanned the screens, which gave him twelve different views of the outside world. All of them wobbled and drifted to the right as the pilot made a last-minute correction.

  "Ten seconds to dirt." The pilot's voice was flat and unemotional. Sato knew it would stay that way no matter what. He yelled to the others.

  "Ten seconds to touchdown… Hang on!"

  The landing was gentle by normal standards but worse than Corvo had expected. The crawler hit hard, sending a solid shock up through her slightly flexed knees, and throwing her against a durasteel bulkhead. She swore accordingly.

  Pal was a little better off, but not much, and said some unpleasant things about the pilot. He was still at it when Sato popped the top hatch and crawled outside.

  The helicopter threw a thick, dark shadow across the crater and blasted the entire area with grit. Pal popped his head out of the hatch, caught a face full of wind-driven dirt, and disappeared.

  Sato released the cable hooks one at a time. "Okay… hooks one, two, three, and four are released. Thanks for the ride, Air Six."

  The words were barely out of Sato's mouth before the hooks swayed upwards. "That's a roger, Eight-Ball… Have a nice trip. Air Six out."

  Sato doubted that was possible, but kept the thought to himself. He dropped through the hatch into the command chair, slipped his hands into the control gauntlets, and pointed with his right index finger. A holo-p
rojected heads-up display appeared in front of his eyes as the crawler jerked into motion. There was a pretty good-sized hill up ahead. He'd head for the top and take a look around.

  Pal was peering over the tool pusher's shoulder and asking stupid questions when the transmission came in.

  "Air Six to Eight-Ball."

  "I read you, Air Six. Go ahead."

  "You've got company, Eight-Ball. A truck of some sort. Sod-busters from the look of them. About eight miles due south and closing."

  "That's a rog, Air Six. Eight and closing. How bout a look-see?"

  "Roger that, Eight-Ball. One look-see comin' up."

  Pal stabbed Sato's shoulder with a stiffened finger. "What? What did they say?"

  Sato didn't like the feel of Pal's finger. He shifted his weight to escape it. "There's a truck eight miles to the south. Not one of ours. Coming this way."

  Pal brought a fist down on his open palm. "It's them! It has to be! But why? What's the truck for? Full speed ahead, Sato… The fun has just begun."

  17

  Progress was painfully slow. There was no such thing as a straight line. Honey twisted and turned as Schmidt guided her around water-filled impact craters, over miniature mountain ranges, and through a maze of broken rock.

  Lando didn't like it. He didn't like the situation, the E-zone, or riding in the back. He was used to being in control, to making his own decisions, to sitting in the driver's seat.

  Honey leaned sideways as Schmidt pushed her through a narrow corridor. The passageway had been created hundreds of years before when a good-sized meteorite had hit the top of a ridge, plowed its way through, and sprayed the landscape with chunks of hot metal.

  Lando was forced to hang on tight as the corridor narrowed and Schmidt put the right set of wheels up onto the bank. There was a clanking sound as two of the cylinders rolled together. Another couple of degrees and Honey would roll over.

  But the gorge opened up, the bank disappeared, and the wheels hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud. That's when Lando saw the flashing red light and heard the buzzer.