Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  They had hours of flight to go, plenty of time for talking. He'd need that time to try to work out some of the rough spots in his team. The loan of Caliburn was the mark of Bear's trust, his faith that Holger was in control and that Holger could do what needed to be done. Holger didn't intend to fail that trust.

  In a continuing misunderstanding of his role, Juarez, the leader of Van Dieman's most loyal band of followers, sought In interpose himself between Van Dieman and Benton. Van Dieman was beginning to think that the man really was too obtuse for his position—an opinion that Benton had expressed more than once during the long trek across the world. Before Benton could restate his opinion, Van Dieman ordered Juarez to let Benton approach and relate his news.

  "Fischer reports a new contact with the pursuit," Benton icported. "They have accessed the transaction files of Suong Transport and the specification files on the Briz Bane. This is a more serious compromise of security than the San Diego encounter."

  Fischer was the head of the team they had left behind to toil pursuit, and Suong Transport's Briz Bane was the ship that had launched the Mitsubishi-Hawker Petrel™ in which they were now traveling. The security breach Benton alluded to was a clash between Fischer's team and the pursuers, shortly after Van Dieman had departed San Diego. At the time, Benton had feared that the pursuit would be awaiting them when they reached port, but red herrings had been sufficient. Now, no doubt, Benton feared that the pursuit had picked up their trail again, at a time when red herrings and misdirection could have little value because their goal was clear. But that also meant the goal was near.

  "They are too late," Van Dieman said.

  The harbinger uncoiled from the depths in which it hid, as if it could sense that they were near the end of the penultimate flight. Van Dieman looked out the window of the ver-rie. The broken ice at the sea's edge was gone now. Solid ice below. Whiteness stretched to eternity, broken only by the dark smudge ahead that was McMurdo Station. No one could catch them now. The station's airstrip control had already given them clearance to land.

  "Recommend direct flight to the destination, if possible," Benton said.

  He'd known that McMurdo was not the ultimate destination, because of Van Dieman's insistence on acquiring a more suitable craft than the Petrel. The verrie was a good craft, and well suited to its ship-to-shore role, but not as completely adapted to the rigorous Antarctic conditions as the Omni Dynamics Snowhawks™ that served McMurdo Station. The Snowhawk was a frigid-conditions variant of the rugged Skyhawk™, a milspec utility verrie and workhorse platform for most of the Northern Alliance Defense Organization and a good many other militaries as well. A Snowhawk could make the trip into the interior in weather that would ground the Petrel. And a Snowhawk would make the trip, just as soon as they commandeered one.

  And as soon as the harbinger ascertained just where they were going. It had communicated to Van Dieman the nature and importance of their destination, but lacking an understanding of maps, it could only give him vague impressions of the location. It asserted that it would know once they were on the ground. Sensing its assurance and eagerness, he believed it.

  "We proceed as planned," Van Dieman told Benton.

  Behind and above him the pitch of the engines changed. Hydraulics sighed and moaned as the craft's stubby wings began to rotate in their mounts, shifting from horizontal flight mode to vertical for the final approach to the pad below.

  The harbinger's presence touched his mind. He offered it the use of his eyes to look down at their destination. It accepted, and he felt a sense of something akin to nostalgia as their gaze drifted over the fire-wrought devastation that marred so much of the station.

  Something else stirred in the harbinger's mood. Concern.

  Something was not right.

  Van Dieman extended his senses, searching for the source of the unease he now shared with his companion. All appeared tranquil, calm, quiet, as it ought to be. As it ought to be? The harbinger thought not, and he agreed. There should have been some ground crewman awaiting them, but there was no one in sight. McMurdo Station, a facility big enough to house two thousand people at the height of summer occupancy, appeared to be deserted. No people? Though the corporate sponsors had ordered an official shutdown, that could not be so! There were crews here to work on the reconstruction. Where were theyl He saw no one, sensed nothing—but it was a curious nothing that hinted at something lying beneath it.

  And then he knew. The nothing and the no one were wrong. The as it ought to be was a lie. They were landing in the jaws of a trap!

  Holger watched the slowing Petrel with trepidation. Electronic communication with the verrie had been perfunctory, just the minimum. Hagen's patch into the base's net allowed them to control that communication, feeding the incoming flight an artificial rendering of the station's air traffic controller. There had been no indication that their substitution had raised their suspicion. So why was the Petrel hanging there? Why was the pilot hesitating?

  "He knows we're here," John Reddy said.

  How?

  The Petrel started to tilt, her nose shifting to the east. She was refusing to land.

  "Is he running?"

  Spae answered him, "He's bypassing us. All that work for nothing."

  With the verrie headed away from the prepared landing spot, the binding they had laid out to hold the harbinger would be wasted.

  "You said he'd have to land here and switch craft," Kun said.

  She shrugged. "Maybe he isn't intending to go as far inland as we thought. We'll have to chase him."

  The Petrel had almost cleared the base perimeter. The craft was gaining altitude, presumably preparing to shift to horizontal flight mode.

  "Fighting on his ground is not advisable."

  "Well, we're not going to catch him here," Spae pointed out unnecessarily.

  She was right; the catch option had closed. The Petrel's engines were tilting. She was gathering speed.

  "Corey, Nasham, hard spill," Holger ordered through the radio link.

  The two dwarves popped the tops on their concealment shelters at the eastern edge of the base perimeter. They emerged, folding out the sighting mechanisms of their Gen-dyne Hunter II™ shoulder launchers as they ran to take up firing positions. The Hunters were the same model that the dwarves had used in their attempt to take down Van Dieman's aircraft in Boston. One had nearly gotten Van Dieman and his monster then. Two should be more than sufficient. Almost in unison the rockets screamed away from the launchers, trailing billowing tails of exhaust through the chill Antarctic air.

  John knew what had tipped off their enemy, because he'd felt Van Dieman pressing against his spell of illusion cloaking the ambushers. That nonphysical touch had felt slimy, somehow, but assured and competent. John was sure that the mage had seen through the spell and warned his companions about it. Kun's solution was blunt and direct: a pair of surface-to-air missiles.

  John watched the contrails stretching out toward the fleeing Petrel. The fluffy white lines looked innocuous, but they were tipped with death. Those tips grew closer together, converging on the dark shape of the Petrel.

  The contrails rippled, as if the missiles at their heads were flying through rough air. One went corkscrewing away, reaching for the upper atmosphere, no longer a threat to the Petrel. The other missile began to arc to the left, curving back to the spot from which it had come.

  John and his companions stared in disbelief.

  The missile screamed over their heads and disappeared behind the bulk of the station, hitting a second later in an explosion that threw ice and rock and snow in a geyser taller than any of McMurdo's buildings.

  "That was no conventional missile defense," Kun said. "If he can do that, how did they manage to down his craft in Boston?"

  "Maybe they caught him by surprise. Maybe he's improved his spells. Maybe he's just more powerful now," Dr. Spae said. "It doesn't really matter how. We've got a serious problem."

  "Can't you use one o
f the Snowhawks to shoot him down?" John asked.

  "No armament," Kun reminded him.

  Antarctica was still demilitarized, all heavy weapons prohibited. The antiaircraft missiles they'd used were among the proscribed armaments.

  "Looks like we chase him after all," Dr. Spae said.

  Having felt Van Dieman's touch, John preferred the idea of taking him down from a distance. "But you said that the closer he gets to his destination, the stronger the harbinger will become. It would be better to stop him now. Maybe if we fire all four launchers at once, he won't be able to stop them ail."

  "Don't be so sure," Dr. Spae said.

  "I'm open to suggestions," Kun said. "Is there no spell you can apply?"

  "I thought you wanted the magic passive until we cornered him?" John asked

  "No point in that anymore," Kun said. "If he recognized the camouflage illusion, he knows we've got at least one specialist."

  "Agreed." Dr. Spae looked unhappy. "He'll be ready to counter any magic directed at him."

  John had an idea. "What if he's busy doing something else?"

  "The missiles?" Kun asked.

  "It might work," Dr. Spae said thoughtfully.

  The missiles were only part of John's idea. "More than that. What if instead of trying to do something to him, we went after the verrie?"

  "He'll be watching for arcane attacks. If an attack is directed anywhere in his vicinity, he'll counter. Overt hostile magics are almost as easy to block as they are to detect."

  John had anticipated that response. "But what if rather than trying to make something happen, we made something not happen?"

  "What are you suggesting?" Dr. Spae asked.

  John explained.

  "It may be the best chance we have," she said.

  "Very well," Kun said. "We'll try it."

  While John and Dr. Spae riffled through the doctor's tools and supplies, quickly gathering whatever they could find to ritually enhance their spell, Kun arranged the mundane aspects of the plan. There wasn't much time before the fleeing verrie was out of sight.

  Fortunately, Hagen had already ordered the two missile-armed dwarves on the western perimeter up to firing positions that commanded the eastern horizon. When John and Dr. Spae signaled that they were ready—they weren't, but they were as close as they were going to get in the time they had—Kun gave the order to fire and four missiles arched into the sky.

  Coincident with the rising smoke and flame of the missiles, John and Dr. Spae launched their astral essences. Dr. Spae, more experienced at projection, led the way. Their speed was that of thought, and they closed the distance faster than the rocket-powered missiles. They slipped past the roiling energies with which Van Dieman battered the incoming missiles, and skirted the darkness coiling around the fuselage of the Petrel. John was glad that they weren't going to do their magic any closer. They approached the starboard engine heedless of what would have been dangerous for physical forms, for neither the whirling rotor nor the churning vortex it created had power to affect their immaterial presences. They alighted on the great cylindrical housing that covered the throbbing power plant driving the rotor.

  John touched the engine and felt the heat of the fire inside. It was the fire he had come to deal with. He spoke to it, addressing it by the names he had learned in the otherworld. He told the fire of the frigid air all around it, and of the ice below, and of the cold. He especially told the fire of the deep, deep, deadening cold.

  Benton thought they were cooked when he heard the pilot's bleating report of two antiaircraft missiles coming for them. The man was a hireling and had no combat experience. Benton was down the aisle and into the cockpit doorway before the pilot started evasive maneuvering. One glance at the radar screen told Benton that the man's effort's were worthless. The missiles were too close.

  Then the threat was gone—one missile heading for orbit and the other back the way it had come. Unnatural. Benton looked to the nearest source of unnatural happenings. Van Dieman was sitting in his seat, eyes closed. To the casual eye he might look asleep, but Benton's was not the casual eye. Van Dieman's temperature was elevated, his blood flow more consistent with serious physical activity than with sleep. A dark, smoky haze hung about his body, but there was no scent of anything burning. Weird. The very sort of thing that Van Dieman had once hired Benton to observe and bring back to him.

  Unlike some of his teachers, Benton believed in cause and effect. He'd seen the effect, the redirection of the incoming missiles, but he could see no connection to a cause. Just a suspect. Benton couldn't prove it, but he felt certain that Van Dieman had been responsible for their salvation. In the world Benton understood, such a feat should have taken some very fancy electronics. However Van Dieman had done it, he hadn't done it with electronics.

  Still, one had to accept what was, and Benton was happy to accept a save from missiles that would have blown their aircraft to component parts—even if it did leave him feeling unsure about the nature of his employer.

  He ordered the pilot to shift to level flight. The faster they were away from McMurdo, the better. Taking the Petrel inland wasn't a good solution, but it beat landing in enemy-occupied territory. Benton had no idea of Van Dieman's limits, but he doubted they were infinite, and where there two missiles, there could be more. The airspace around McMurdo Station was not healthy for them.

  When nothing immediately rose to challenge their flight, Benton breathed a little easier. He watched with satisfaction as the base crawled closer to the edge of the map screen. A warning buzzer killed his hopes of an easy escape as four incoming targets appeared on the Petrel's radar screen.

  Four surface-to-air missiles.

  Van Dieman had dealt with two. Could he deal with four? He'd better be able to, the Petrel didn't have the juice to do anything.

  "Forget the evasion," he told the pilot. "Go for speed."

  It wasn't much of a hope.

  He knew it was no hope at all when one of the engines coughed.

  Had they been hit? No, there had been no shock of impact. The radar screen showed the incoming missiles wobbling in their flight. One was already diving back toward the ground.

  Then what had happened?

  The starboard engine coughed again and died. The Petrel tilted. The pilot fought to compensate for the loss of lift and thrust on that side. If they had been in vertical flight mode, they'd be spinning to destruction. What difference did it make? They were going to be easy prey for the missiles now.

  Benton checked the radar just in time to see two of the missiles collide. The Petrel shuddered from the shock of their self-immolating explosion. The last missile veered off course. They were safe.

  The port engine emitted a stuttering series of coughs and died as completely as its partner.

  Safe?

  Whatever had gotten them had gotten them good. They were going down. The idiot pilot was fighting the controls, his copilot trying for a restart. Benton shoved the pilot out of the way and reached down to hit the emergency releases on the tilt hydraulics. The Petrel shuddered and bucked as the massive engines made an inertia shift into vertical flight position. Benton waited anxiously for the vibration that would indicate that the housing had completed the arc and the locks had engaged.

  The Petrel was still dropping. Unsecured, Benton was tossed against the cockpit door frame. The craft yawed and he was thrown to the floor. The Petrel leveled out. The locks must have engaged, allowing the rotors to catch air. His ploy had worked! The blades were free-rotating, cushioning the verrie's fall. The landing would be hard but it wouldn't be devastating.

  Van Dieman was not surprised when his enemies sent more missiles after him. Indeed, after he had disposed of the first two, he had expected them to send more at once in the vain hope that their first failure had been a fluke. Their delay had puzzled him—until he heard the first sputtering of the Petrel's engines and realized that he had been made a dupe. The second missile attack had been only a diversion. Whi
le he had been disposing of the missiles, the enemy mage had been engaged in a subtle but devastating attack.

  They were too close to the ground for him to draw upon the harbinger's power to arrest the Petrel's fall. The craft hit hard. A spike of jagged rock tore through the verrie's belly, demolishing all in its path, including one of Benton's men. The Petrel's nose tilted down. The fuselage strained against its impalement, twisted, and, with a rending screech shredded. Frigid Antarctic air whipped into the cabin as the shattered verrie heeled over. The port engine housing jammed against the unyielding ground. The overstressed structural members in the stubby wing snapped and sent lethal shrapnel whirring through the wreckage.

  Pain chewed its way into Van Dieman's back and left leg. He screamed in agony and outrage at the darkness seeking to suck him down. He fought against it. In a haze of flashing stars, he tore out the sharp fragment of aircraft composite that had embedded itself in his knee. The lacerations he incurred in his hand were nothing next to the fires that lit his

  insides.

  "Heal me," he ordered the harbinger.

  You are broken. Energy is needed for more important things, the creature replied distantly. The harbinger's dark, serpentine image floated above him, but its attention was elsewhere, longing for their now seemingly unattainable destination.

  More important? How dare the creature imply he was not worth its effort! " You have the power to heal my injuries. Do

  so."

  No reward for the useless.

  "Useless!" The creature's temerity went beyond all bounds. The fire of Van Dieman's anger overwhelmed the pain. The harbinger needed a lesson. He could whip it down, teach it its place—but this was not the time to engage in a dominance battle with a servant chafing at its bonds. The harbinger was right on one point: energy was needed for more important things. Once they were free from these am-bushers, however... "1 could compel you by the terms of your binding, but I am magnanimous. I will merely point out that your goal—our goal!—is still unachieved. You need me, for you have no hands to carry the telesmon to its appointed place. You still need me."