Homefall

by Chris Bunch

  "I have them," Boursier reported, her aksai banking high above the capital's center. "Landing on the roof of a high-rise. Looks like an apartment building. They're carrying a bundle, and there's somebody waiting for them.

  "They're inside. The guard's still on the roof, though."

  "Maintain patrol," came the orders. "There's a civ-vie lifter on the way with the alert team in it, blue-white, open top, who'll get close and case things."

  The ship's compartment was packed with I&R troops.

  "All right," Garvin said. "We'll keep this short. Somebody… I don't know if it's the same somebody who tried to ice Fili or not… has just grabbed Njangu. We've got a location, will have details in a moment, and we're going after him, right now."

  He looked around the room.

  "For starters I want you, Ben, Monique, not you, Alikhan… no, wait, I do want you on this, Jill—we might need a medic." He hesitated, seeing Darod's eyes on him, didn't want to, but knew better:

  "You, Montagna, you're in. And me. As for—"

  A speaker crackled.

  "Boss, I've got that lifter with the alert team patched through."

  "Go ahead."

  The lifter went noisily down the street, well below roofline. Faces stared out from the apartment building as the drunks inside yahooed and toasted anyone in sight.

  "Got Njangu," one of the drunks, part of the normal standby I&R team, in the lifter reported. "Or his locator, anyway. The building's sixty stories high, he's down five from the top. Stationary, so I'd guess that's where they want him to stay for a while."

  "Received," Big Bertha't com center sent back. "Take it up to five-zero, stand by for further orders. Chaka, if anyone from outside tries to interfere, take them out. Repeat, anyone."

  The mike clicked twice, and the lifter climbed away, toward the orbiting Nana boat.

  * * *

  " 'Kay," Garvin said. "He's close to the top of the building, and there's a sentry. We'll have to land on the roof, take that guard out, plus anyone who's with him, and then—"

  "Excuse me," a polite voice said, and Garvin wondered who the hell let Jiang Yuan Fong, a civilian, into the compartment.

  "I've been listening, and if Mr. Yoshitaro is being held in a high-rise, as that transmission indicates, and you evidently plan to rescue him, rather than possibly alert that sentry on the roof, would it not be wiser to make the initial entry through, perhaps, one of the windows on the side of the building with someone who has certain acrobatic skills? Such as me, and perhaps one of the ra'felanl"

  Garvin thought for an instant, then nodded.

  "Good. Have you ever used a gun, Mr. Fong?"

  "A few times I have found it necessary to defend my family, so yes."

  "Fine. Somebody issue him a blaster, and somebody grab the nearest octopus. We'll deploy from one of our cargo lifters. Let's move!"

  The last elephant trumpeted out the Back Door, and the lights came up.

  "All out and over," Penwyth shouted, "and it's a wonderful evening, and we've never had a better audience."

  The band was playing for the blowoff, and all the remaining butchers were working the crowd hard.

  A little girl's mother stopped an usher.

  "Excuse?"

  "Yeh," the man said, then remembered his manners. "Sorry, I meant yes, ma'am?"

  "One of your salesmen left Mara with her entire tray of sweetmeats, and told her to take whatever she wanted. But we can't do that, and the woman never came back.

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  "Why," the usher said, "you've just been gifted with the entire tray." He forced a smile down at the girl. "Remember our circus always."

  "Oh, thank you," the woman said. "You're wonderful, all of you. I hope nobody was hurt in that accident."

  "No, ma'am," the usher said. "Everyone's fine."

  The girl, eyes wider than any ra'felan's, was borne away, and the security man, one hand close to the gun under his jacket, went back to watching the crowd.

  The cargo lifter's hatch was open, and the team climbed inside. The huge ra'f elan swung in easily, found a seat next to Alikhan. The alien wore the Musth combat harness.

  Garvin, buckling his fighting belt on, climbed in front.

  "Haul it on out," he ordered, and Running Bear nodded. The hatches closed, the upper hatch on Big Bertha opened, and the lifter sped toward the capital.

  "The game might be getting interesting," Chaka reported. "Another lifter, this one a posh sort of lim, came in on the roof, and the same guard greeted them.

  "Two people out, went inside."

  Garvin turned down the lift's speaker.

  "You heard what the man said. That's got to be either an interrogation team, or else they're pickup for Njangu. So we'll have to get in quick."

  "Three minutes out," Running Bear said.

  The cargo lifter orbited the high building below.

  " 'Kay," Chaka reported. "Stand by for transmit of what I've got on the building to your screen."

  "Got it," Garvin said.

  "Two lifters on the roof. Two drivers per vehicle, plus the sentry. Our man's in the fourth apartment in—there's a gap between units you can make out from here."

  " 'Kay."

  "Your plan, sir?"

  Garvin saw, on one side of the building, through heavy glass that ran the height of the structure, emergency stairs.

  "You stand by and take out the lifters and their crew when I give you the word. We'll go in from the side, a story high so any noise we make doesn't carry."

  "Yessir."

  Garvin leaned over to Running Bear.

  "Can you put it right next to that wall with the emergency exit, fifty-sixth floor, with our doors open?"

  "One-handed," Running Bear said, "picking my nose. Depending on the updrafts."

  "Use both hands, and take us in now."

  The Amerind nodded, and the lifter dropped to a hover, its doors clamshelling up.

  Garvin took a small tube from his belt pack, tore it open, and unrolled it. It was a thin, small, flat, shaped charge, about fifteen centimeters on a die.

  "Mr. Fong, can you get across to that window and hang there long enough to stick this right in the middle of that window? It's self-adhesive."

  "I can do that."

  Garvin gave hasty orders as the lifter closed on the building, rocking as the rising night currents sent it swaying.

  "Closer." Garvin said, and Running Bear, teeth gnawing lower lip, obeyed.

  Fong braced on the lifter's hatch sill.

  "Now!"

  Fong sailed across, landed on the tiny window ledge, slipped, knelt, had a hold with his free hand, and was steady. The patch went on the window center. Fong looked over his shoulder at the lifter, readied, and pushed off.

  He missed the lifter, but a tentacle was waiting and swooped him back aboard.

  "Do not tell my wife that happened," he said, taking a deep breath. "I need more rehearsal time, it is evident."

  Garvin, breathing harder than the acrobat, touched the charge's detonator, and it blew with a muffled thud. Glass cascaded in a silver shower down toward the street.

  "Go!" Garvin ordered the ra'felan. The alien swung out; keeping a firm hold on the lifter, he had the shattered window ledge in two others, a sentient grapnel, then reached with his other two legs for the team members, passing them into the stairwell.

  Dill and Alikhan, not waiting for the full team, went down one flight. The door was locked, but only for an instant as Dill grabbed the knob and tore it away. He muttered, fingers inside the slot, then the door came open.

  By then, the others were around him, and they went down the corridor.

  "Still out," the distinguished-looking man in the gray coat said. Njangu Yoshitaro lay on the lavish apartment's couch, eyes closed, breathing easily, a gentle smile on his face.

  "He'll be waking up any second," the woman who headed the kidnap team said. "I know my dosages. We do this for a living, you know, and co
rpses don't generally pay ransoms."

  "We'll wait until he comes to, if you don't mind." He took a thick leather envelope from under his arm. Guns were in his, and his companion's, hand.

  The woman's two partners moved to the side, their hands motionless, but near their pockets.

  "You can count the money while we wait," the distinguished man said.

  "We'll do that," the woman said. "And you can put the artillery away. We're not people who go back on—"

  The outer door crashed open, and horror was in the room, a furred monster bigger than a man, head sweeping back and forth, eyes red, a strange-looking pistol in one hand. It fired, and a huge bullet took the distinguished man in the center of his chest, blowing a head-size hole in it, the edges around the hole moving as strange gray insects swarmed, eating, in the wound.

  Behind the monster came a woman wearing tights, a blaster in her arms. She fired, and the man's companion spun, went down. She fired again, and the woman's head was missing.

  One of her partners turned to run, but there was nowhere to go, and a huge, balding man, growling rage, had him by the back of his clothes and hurled him against the wall, headfirst. There was a crack, and he fell, lay still.

  The last man in the kidnap team had his hands up, babbling surrender. Garvin shot him twice in the chest.

  Explosions crashed from above as Chaka strafed the lifters on the roof.

  Mahim knelt over Njangu, felt for a pulse as other members of the team started rapidly searching the corpses and room.

  "He's alive. I'd guess—"

  Njangu's eyes came up.

  "Of course I'm alive," he said in a furry voice, then looked about, yawning.

  "What kind of a party are we having, anyway?"

  Chapter 10

  Garvin took Darod aside as they got out of the lifter. Dill and Alikhan carried the stretcher with Njangu on it, Mahim beside it, toward Big Bertha's dispensary.

  He'd spent much of the flight going through the documents taken from the distinguished man and his companion's corpses.

  "You said something once that you and Lir had an idea of a fiendish thingie that'd deal with matters in a rather drastic manner. Were you pulling my chain?"

  "I don't kid about things like that," Montagna said indignantly. "Lir is the one who looked everything up, with my help. I think this whole frigging planet needs a little demolition."

  "That guy who looked like he was the boss of this little caper just happened to have a membership card in the Social Democrat party."

  "Nice world, like I said," Darod said, trying to pretend she wasn't shocked. "The guys who hire us try to screw us. Very nifty."

  "Yeh," Garvin said. "You also said something about knowing where to plant said fiendish thingie and the precise date it should come to life."

  "Certainly. A piece of cake."

  "Go to it. I've had enough of these idiots. Now and forever more."

  By dawn, the midway was broken down, and all of the circus's gear was loaded. Big Bertha sat on the landing pad all that day, locks sealed, making no response to any com. All three aksai orbited ominously overhead, diving close to the two holo lifters that tried approaching.

  At midnight, a small lifter came out of the ship, and flew at speed, nap of the earth, below any radar horizon, toward the capital.

  It hovered for an instant over a great white building on a hill, and two women in black, with heavy packs, rappelled down to the roof of one of the buildings. They pried open a window and vanished inside.

  An hour later, they came back out, and the lifter came in for a pickup, flashed back to Big Bertha.

  The watchmen on the grounds of the Civic Palace never noticed a thing.

  An hour before dawn, without clearance or notifying port authorities, Big Bertha lifted clear of the ground and left the Tiborg system forever.

  Chapter 11

  Cayle/Cayle IV

  The Cayle system, once a prime Confederation shipbuilder, felt to Garvin like an abandoned factory.

  Three of the outer worlds were supposed to be mines for Cayle IV, the most habitable and the shipyard center, but Big Bertha detected activity on only one, and that slight.

  Cayle IV was a gray world, Garvin thought, corrected himself: gray-green.

  Great forests climbed snowy mountains, and the valleys were green, welcoming, in a wintry way. Most of the cities, gray stonework, were located along the planet's wide rivers.

  Landing fields on the planet were lined with finished or half-completed star craft of various Confederation types, some flecked with rust in spite of anticorro-sion coating.

  Njangu found some ancient lines coming as Big Bertha closed on the planet, didn't remember where he'd heard or read them, nor the poet's name:

  "My mother took me to the cities while I lay Inside her. And the coldness of the forests Will be with me till my dying day."

  "What're you muttering?" Garvin asked. "Poetry."

  "Didn't sound like it rhymed," Garvin said suspiciously. "Couldn't be very good."

  "Probably not."

  Big Bertha made three orbits around Cayle IV, broadcasting, on all open and approved frequencies, circus music, the roaring of the big cats, the trumpeting of elephants, and the ballyhooing of talkers, until only the deaf and reclusive didn't know that the circus was in town.

  The Nana boats swept over the main thoroughfares of the major cities, scattering broadsides in all directions. Garvin cheerfully took complaint corns from city officials, promising to pay any fines levied for pollution, preferably in free passes.

  Aksai compounded the felony, to the greater rage of politicians and the glee of children, low-flying the cities with long banners that, as the day turned into night across the planet, self-illuminated, flashing:

  Lions!! Bears!! Tigers!! Elephants!! Earth

  Horses!! Beautiful Ladies!! Strange

  Aliens!! Acrobats!! Strongmen!! Clowns!!

  Death-Defying Featsi:

  Announcing their intentions on the last circumnavigation, Big Bertha orbited the capital city of Pendu three times, then, on secondary drive, slowly flew to the nearby field and settled in for a landing.

  Crowds swarmed in, and spotlights caught the monstrous ship as it grounded.

  Civilian lifts overflew the ship, to Captain Liskeard's mutterings.

  The main lock's ramp slid out, and clowns and little people tumbled out. Garvin, in white formal, accompanied by Kekri Katun, wearing a white outfit that cast flashing, multicolored lights and covered no more than absolutely necessary, came out to meet the hastily assembled dignitaries, including the planet's ruler,

  Graav Ganeel, a mournful-looking middle-aged man with a bit of a belly. Garvin thought it interesting the head honcho himself would appear, suggesting just how much interstellar travel was current these days. Njangu. on the other hand, noted Ganeel showed up with only one aide and one driver/bodyguard. Either he wasn't an autocrat, or else everything was a lot more under control than Tiborg.

  Everyone welcomed everyone, and Garvin said how thrilled they all were, and they would make sure this was an event for the ages.

  Before dawn, Erik Penwyth had rented a huge open area on Pendu's outskirts and the heavy lifters, carrying canvas, the midway booths and the flying squadron, shuttled back and forth, and roustabouts set to.

  Early risers—lot lice—began gathering, and if it was a school day—Garvin had forgotten to check—officials would have been frothing at the mouth. If, of course, they weren't lining the streets together with what seemed to be every kid on Cayle, as lifters swept back and forth, proclaiming the Parade Is Imminent.

  It was.

  Animals in their lifter cages, elephants on foot, horses prancing, with Montagna, Kwiek, and his pair of wives, not to mention a scattering of midgets, clowns afoot, in lifters, in strange, old-fashioned wheeled vehicles, tossing candy as they went, Ater-ton's band in a pair of lifters, Dill the strongman, the showgirls posing, acrobats rolling, tumbling amid the procession,
and Garvin in front, standing in an open black lim, face utterly blissful.

  In the backseat was Njangu, and, crouched out of sight, two marksmen—just in case.

  They reached the lot without incident, as the tents were being guyed out.

  Garvin stepped out of the lim as it grounded, bowed to the flatties watching, in some awe, and sniffed.

  "I love the smell of canvas in the morning," he said happily. The circus was, indeed, in town.

  By late afternoon the circus was sold out for a week, with more ticket orders avalanching in.

  "It appears as if there's nothing much to do around these parts," Njangu said, looking at numbers flash across screens in the "red wagon," actually a compartment aboard Big Bertha, but "wagon" was traditionally the name for a circus's money center.

  Sopi Midt grinned. "It looks that way, indeed. Look at all that alfalfa roll in. Damn, but I wish Jaansma would let me run my games wide open. I could really show the gilly-galloos a good time.

  "Do you know how rich we'd be?" He looked hopefully at Yoshitaro.

  "Sorry, Sopi," Njangu said. "Into each life some honesty must fall."

  "And now, our aerialists of acclaim, known gal-axywide, flyers and their strange alien companions, who train secretly on dark worlds far from Man's reign," Garvin intoned. The band played, and the flyers soared across the roof of the tent, ra'felan catching them, and the trapeze artists and cloud-swingers went back and forth as holo images flashed here and there just above the crowd.

  Garvin bowed, himself off to spray his throat, wishing he didn't get as excited as all those kids in the hastily erected cattle-guard seats in front of the general admission bleachers. A little calmness would be easier on his vocal cords.

  Darod was waiting for him outside the center ring.

  "Better stick around, Garvin," she said, handing him a jug of energy drink. "Monique's trying a new one, and it's gonna be radical. If it flies, she's gonna want an intro next time."

  "How dangerous?"

  "A lot more than it looks," Darod said.

  "Wonderful." He knew there was no stopping Lir, however. He drank deeply from the jug, put his arm around Montagna, who snuggled closer.

  The band segued into a galop, as Monique trotted into the center ring. Fleam grabbed a line that ran down from fifty meters up the center pole, another worker sledge-smashed an iron stake into the ground, and two others pulled the rope taut, hitched it to the pole.