Pyro Canyon

by Robert Appleton

  “Kiss my ass, ma’am.”

  She snickered—luckily, miraculously. Christ, had he just said that? It was a hunch, yes, but also an out-and-out gamble that she’d assume her old Condor persona. “And there it is. Max Trillion—word perfect. Now that we’re properly acquainted, do you mind telling me what you’ve found out, and what the fuck you want me to do about it?”

  Way to go, genius. Lost before we’ve even pitched.

  Seeing as he’d blown any chance of easing her into it, being forthright and even a little brusque now seemed the only way to proceed. Hell, he’d been a fighter once, like her, and they were both wearing masks they weren’t entirely comfortable in. He might not know how to talk around Congresswoman Acton, but he did know how to talk to Cardie.

  “We’ve uncovered evidence of a growing Sheiker threat close to the 100z border.” He looked at L.B., who gave an approving pout but nodded gravely. She sneaked the pearl flexi-screen out of her cloak and readied it for Gus’s prompt.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Perihelion was a spark drizzle compared to what’s coming.” He paused for emphasis. “You don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe this.”

  Cardie snatched the tautened flexi-screen from L.B. without even looking at it, her glance instead ricocheting wildly over the prosaic trappings of her office. Then at length she scrutinized the evidence. Heavy. Breathless. Her two personas now one wide-open floodgate—one way or the other, a torrent was about to pass through.

  Gus limped a step back, trying his best to ignore the either very timely or grossly inopportune reprise of “Starward Bound” over the podnet audio.

  He suddenly felt like the biggest amateur hack in the galaxy. For chrissakes, if propaganda was about delivering one’s side of an argument by any necessary means, none of it meant a whole helluva lot if you had no real conception of what you were arguing against. Shit, he’d been premature in even coming here without conducting a full investigation into his mark. Her mysterious motivations. Time was against them, yes, but had he blown his chance with Cardie by rushing into it like this?

  Or maybe no amount of manipulation could move a character as strong as hers? Perhaps this decision was untouchable, airtight, bulletproof like the legendary flier in her cockpit, and all his tricks and bluster would have no more effect on her than a star’s twinkle in her rearview.

  “I see. Well, thank you for bringing this to my attention. It’s an ISPA matter, and I’m sure they’re taking every precaution.” Exit Cardie, enter the veneered politician. “If you’d like me to sign a recommendation for recruitment for my constituents, I can certainly do that. Ireton Four will be more than happy to put the call out.”

  “Um, ma’am, that isn’t quite what we had in—”

  Gus interrupted L.B. before she took it to the next level. Quit while we’re ahead for now. Her mind’s open to helping, at least—we’ll let her mull the situation over until we’ve tried Brink. “That’s very kind, Madam Congresswoman. We knew you’d do all you could. Miss Baltacha and I just have one more stop to make—” Another deliberate pause, to let the idea sink in. Give her one guess who they were going to visit. “Then we’ll be in touch about issuing a red-alert recruitment drive.” She knows better than anyone what red alert means. “And anything else you can think of.”

  “That’s fine. Good luck to you, Corporal Trillion, Miss Baltacha. And thank you very much for your visit.” She handed the flexi-screen back to a frowning L.B.

  “Ma’am.”

  Gus followed L.B. out, but just before the door magnoed shut behind them, he glimpsed two middle-aged women entering the office by a well-disguised door in the wall paneling. They wore skintight glider jumpsuits and were both stunningly attractive. They handed Cardie a jumpsuit of her own.

  * * *

  Most of the time, her political veil was a prison. Now and again it was a godsend. As Cardie quick-walked down the corridor, eager to get inside her glider and twist some serious gees, to squeeze out the neuroses of her last meeting, she couldn’t decide which veil it had been today. The prison, or the godsend.

  Fifteen years is a long time to hide in plain sight.

  “Jane, if ever there was a time to glide, it’s now, hon.” Although Lenore’s irrepressible sunshininess was an acquired taste for most people, Cardie liked how naive it made her sound. A forty-odd-year-old schoolgirl, Lenore was silly in a lot of ways—her sense of humor, her inability to grasp politics, and her religious obedience to cosmic fashion were the most obvious—but there was also a sly perceptiveness that peeked out now and then. It usually took one’s breath away. “Ride the thermals, let it calm you. Don’t go carrying the weight of the galaxy on your shoulders. That’s all behind you now.”

  “So you both heard everything?”

  Allegra curled her arm around Cardie’s back, massaged the tattoo on her upper arm. “Kind of hard not to. He did tell you to kiss his ass—tell me, as a politician, how often do you get to hear those words? Quite the reversal, I’d say.”

  Hmm, but not for Allegra, who was as caustic and cynical as Lenore was sunny. How the two of them had ever hooked up on Earth in the first place, let alone gotten married, remained one of those inexplicable, beautiful mysteries love had long since cornered the market in.

  Just not for Cardie.

  They were soul mates, no question. As happy now as they had been decades ago. And in a galaxy as vast and volatile as this, a bond like that was rarer than pyrofluvium.

  Not unique, but rare…

  Cardie’s suit seemed to tighten everywhere all at once, constricting her blood and air flows like the panic echo of a dangerous negative-g maneuver. She knew the sensation well. Hardly a day had passed in fifteen years without suffering it. But the pain and the gasps and the burning regret never diminished. She shrugged out of Allegra’s hold. The gesture choked her into sudden, bitter remembrance.

  For God’s sake, Scott, don’t let go…

  Even now, she could practically taste the fumes. The rugged corbo-iron plate under her feet, as unforgiving a surface as she’d ever walked on, spat and coughed thick pinkish-white vapor through vents and crevasses of every shape and size. Impossible to see more than a few meters ahead. The beams of their torches, each other, little else. She and Scott had crossed acres of metal hell away from their ships, dreading what they’d find here. What they’d lose. What they had wrought in these god-awful fumes of Pyro Canyon.

  The gravity was low, at least, and the gases weren’t corrosive to their suits. That heat, though, was immense. It steamed up her helmet and collected sweat by the pint in the chambers of her suit. Too much to purge. Repairing her ship might take days—hell, the one thing they couldn’t do was signal for help—they’d be court-martialed and washed out overnight. No, she’d just have use the re-bibe later, convert her urine and sweat into rubbery-tasting drinking water.

  The extra liquid weight sloshing around in the layers of her suit, together with the constricting heat, made her feel twice as heavy and half as strong. She looked down to check the two cryo-vials were safely fastened inside her belt pouch. She tripped, pulling Scott down with her.

  He thumped the ground, then sprang to his feet, almost hurling her up after him. Livid. Like everything else here. But he pulled her close instead, made sure the cryo-vials were undamaged, then ran the knuckle of his glove down her visor, a gesture that almost made her cry. Her biggest rival, best friend, hell, the love of her life. They’d been untouchable in their cockpits, trading taunts and quips during an hour or more of the most hair-raising flying she’d ever done a few weeks back. Low-level, low-vis, high-stakes insanity, the very essence of Pyro Canyon to all Condor fliers. But no one had ever expected this.

  A discovery like nothing else.

  They held each other tight for the rest of the way, taking short, cautious bou
nds, never looking back, not really looking forward. Only looking down at the vicious terrain that sizzled and groaned and never seemed to end. Just the two of them alone in the universe.

  It was like taking a honeymoon on a hotplate the size of the Grand Canyon. Whatever happened, things would never be the same again afterward.

  And not in a good way…

  “Cardie, you with us?” Lenore flashed her impeccable radiant smile up close.

  “Huh?”

  “You zoned out there, hon.” She opened the shutter doors to the building’s private glider hangar—Cardie’s own—and laughed when Allegra bolted to get first choice of the four sleek, colorful fliers.

  “I’m good. Just a sudden case of the willies.”

  “Like I said, try not to dwell on that IPR guy. He must be ambitious as hell to even think about coming here, trying to recruit you like that. Let ISPA do what ISPA does best—chase its own tail and whine at the rest of us. You’ve put in your time. You’re out of that now, and this is all yours.”

  Despite Lenore’s dramatic wave across the orange sky that filled the hangar when Allegra opened the outer doors, Cardie heard only empty words. Her sunny friend, God bless her, knew next to nothing about Fifth Condor Squadron, her torrid love affair with Scott or their long, slow, inexorable parting after Perihelion, and she knew nothing at all about Pyro Canyon.

  “Okay, shall we?” All she wanted was to disappear in the thermal currents, touch her happier memories for an hour or two, and then find the next distraction in what had become a lifetime of distractions.

  But something told her today’s flight was not going to pass so smoothly.

  Trillion, you son of a bitch—this is all your fault.

  Chapter Six

  After hours in the Martian Theme Park, when the dome lights dimmed and the cleaner bots finished their circuits and returned to their garage, was the gloomiest time of the day. The absence of people, of life, always hit hardest at the end of a busy shift, and today—all week, in fact—had seen queues doubled up around every ride. Brink donned his overalls, affixed the structural imaging rig to the front of his maintenance car on the roller-coaster track, and climbed in.

  After such a packed week, anniversary week for the first manned Martian landing over two centuries ago, his own ride, Gemini Sparks, would probably need several patch-ups. She was an old attraction, God bless her, but the kids loved her impossible jumps and sudden drops, some of the most thrilling sensations in the entire park. The best was the simulated ejector leap, which made you feel like you’d just punched out of a cockpit at high speed. He’d never sell her. Not if he had to spend every clip he’d earned keeping her up to regulation standard.

  The track’s grav-lev stabilizers were point-seven percent out of alignment at the third turn. An easy enough fix, remotely on the rig’s display. Trickier was the slight wobble in the grav field guiding the car through its first jump. There was no real danger yet, but if he didn’t run a diagnostic on the field projectors now, repeated wonky landings might lead to structural problems in the cars themselves later on, or even a warping of the track, which would shut the ride down for days.

  The car hummed to a halt on the grav-lev, then its wheels clinked on the metal track beneath as Brink shut off the Gemini Sparks’s power. He clipped the safety cord to his belt harness and then lowered himself over the side, enjoying the sensation of dangling like a worm on a hook over dozens of imitation Martian craters over a hundred feet below.

  “Hey, Brink. Whatcha doin’ up there?”

  “Just a little spit ’n’ polish. How’s tricks, Barani? Where is everyone?” The youngster had won a fortnight’s pass as part of an exchange program from an outer colony orphanage…or something. Smart kid, way smarter than he pretended to be. Actually a cutis nova. Tried to hide it, of course, like they all did away from their home world, but Brink had flown with a few and knew their tells—sudden silences, deep breathing to control their emotions, extreme charisma. The tips of the ears were the first to betray them, turning the same color as their clothing or surroundings. And an adolescent like Barani wasn’t fooling anyone. He’d probably only just discovered his skin-changing ability.

  But who’d sent him?

  Sure, he got on well enough with the neighborhood kids, especially Sand-down and Pernice from the Tyco Hostel. The three of them had beaten him at Barsoom boomerang last night, and Barani had almost reached the outer atmosphere with his throw. The way he kept probing about Perihelion, though, was not normal. Even the children he hung out with every day in the park had given up after one or two tries. Perihelion was a subject off-limits, and their blatant hero-worship wonderings were easy enough to deflect.

  But Barani’s questions were sly, persistent—they had purpose. “What was it like when nothing except dead wreckage showed up on your radar screen? What did it feel like to be the only ones to return home alive? Have you ever been back to Perihelion? Did Cardie ever tell you why she quit ISPA?”

  He liked the lad well enough—Barani listened eagerly, had a dry sense of humor and genuinely enjoyed his time in the park, especially the ejector leap—but the more Brink thought about those questions, the more certain he was that his new young friend had a sponsored agenda.

  “What’s happening in the galaxy, Barani? Afraid it’s all work, work for me these days. Any news from the outside?”

  “Only that the 100z border’s about to be overrun,” the lad shouted up. “Eight colonies this time. Three hundred and seventy thousand dead.”

  He’s angling. “Sure, that’s what they say.”

  “Who?”

  “ISPA and the rakers.”

  “But what if it collapses?

  “Listen, lad, if I had a clip for every time they claimed they were being overrun—”

  “Mr. Brinkman?” A woman’s piercing voice almost made him drop his field-projection regulator. When he looked down, Barani had disappeared. In his place, a cloaked woman and a shabbily dressed man gazed up.

  “Depends on what you’re selling, strangers.”

  “My name’s Lyssa Baltacha. I’m a freelance reporter. This is Corporal—” the stabilizer pinged, and he missed the name, “—of the 65z IPR. We’re here against orders, and we’ve brought something vitally important to show you. Millions of lives may be at stake, sir. All it would take is a few minutes of your time.”

  Crap. The urge to uncouple this section of the track directly onto their putrid, trespassing—

  Who am I kidding? They’ll always turn up sooner or later. They took away everything I used to be—now they’ve come back for the rest. Hmm, let ’em try.

  “Mr. Brinkman?”

  “On my way.” Yeah, just let ’em try. “I’ll meet you in my shack in a couple of minutes. Pour yourselves a drink, but don’t touch anything else. Anything else.”

  “Understood. And thank you.”

  Don’t thank me yet, sweetheart. You’ve come a long way to hear the word never.

  * * *

  Gus hadn’t expected procuring an audience with a living legend to be so easy. The secretaries and forwarded calls and other administrative buffers protecting Cardie on Ireton Four had been much more trying. But Brink had stripped himself of all rank and celebrity status, it seemed—in his overalls and old work boots, he resembled any other tool-push one might expect to find tinkering with machinery after-hours in the Martian Theme Park.

  The security gate to his cabin was unlocked. They crept inside. A centuries-old tune played on a string instrument greeted them—it came from a single dusty speaker the size of a house brick standing on a scratched metal shelf. Bare, aluminum-coated walls, an oval ceiling discolored by years of smoke, and a spotless trophy cabinet given pride of place beside a wonky old holographic TV table were about as far removed from Cardie’s political office as humanly pos
sible.

  “You sure this is the right guy?” L.B. gathered the tails of her cloak to prevent them from touching anything. “Maybe the real Brink pays this slob to double for him—you know, to weed out the weirdos. Like you.” She winked.

  “I must admit…I expected someone a little more…distinguished?”

  “You wanted a space-rocking raider and you got a janitor instead, huh?” The legend himself spat out a wad of something icky as he kicked the red dust off his boots outside, before peeling off the top half of his scruffy overall, revealing an oil-stained T-shirt with a logo that said Condors Aren’t Fed! We Take Our Own…butties. “It’s okay, folks, you need to speak your mind in here. Not like I haven’t heard it all before. I am who I am, and you’re only welcome in here if you are who you are with me here and now. I can sniff out IPR bullshit a zee away. Same with raker double-talk. Soon as I get a whiff of either, we’re done. Get me?”

  “Got you.” L.B. reluctantly accepted his greasy handshake, then introduced herself again. “And this is—”

  “Either a Trillion or I’m a suck-bait son of a bitch.” Brink’s severe crew cut and receding hairline blended into one slick bristling dome as he ran his hand over it, spreading the grime and sweat onto the tips of a thousand graying follicles. His warm, squinting brown eyes and softly handsome face belonged to the favorite uncle who cracked wise and gave cool tech presents at birthdays. After a few moments he said, “I get it now. The cyborg thing, right? Max Trillion and I both volunteered for that. An extra fortnight’s leave in exchange for a day’s worth of virtual casting. Bored the hell out of us, but I see it finally came in handy. I did hear a rumor a while back. You are him, right—Max’s kid?”

  “Corporal Gus Trillion.” It seemed surreal to throw his rank in there as well, but for some reason he wanted Brink to know he’d followed in his father’s footsteps professionally, at least to Kappa rank.

  “Damn glad to meet you, son.” They shook hands. “Max Trillion ran me close for squadron leader more times than I like to admit. Hated my flying, really choked on the idea of it—thought I was a slave to my gut instinct. More of a sim jockey himself, liked to fly by the manual. Got me busted for reckless endangerment on a few occasions—me and you-know-who both. Even took us on in a brawl once, in the rec room, claimed we’d deliberately missed our rendezvous and left him low on fuel. Ha-ha! She socked him on the jaw, then the next thing I knew, he’d thrown her over the smart-chart onto a waste bot that was cleaning up. Man, she reeked for a week after that, slithered about all over the rec room. Pretty funny afterwards. Not at the time, though. Me and him got into a serious punch-up and made quite a mess of each other. But he’d do anything for you if he thought you were on his side. You-know-who always agreed with me that Trillion was a helluva guy, and I think it’s important that you know that. He never compromised, not ever, right into Perihelion.”