Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  "... Snowcat not to be taken as reliable," the leader was saying as she tuned in directly, "... Dali could not have e s c a p e d without CSA f o r e - k n o w l e d g e , CSA is a t t e m p t i n g t o allow Dali to escape ... " Sandy couldn't believe that. She just couldn't. And hacked quickly onto their channel...

  "This is Snowcat to all SIB and accompanying units, this is a CSA operation, SIB is not within CSA tac-net. If you proceed within the four kilometre exclusion zone about the spaceport the fire-grid will fire upon you ...

  "All SIB units are operating under Senate Security Panel authorisation Meta-Niner-Alpha, direct instruction to apprehend Dali personally. There has been no infiltration of fire-grid, SIB sources indicate otherwise ..."

  "SIB units, your sources are wrong, stand down immediately. " That was Ibrahim's voice. Ibrahim knew of the SIB's "special sources"? And who would be talking to the SIB behind everyone's backs? And could the SIB honestly be stupid enough to listen to them?

  "SIB units," she tried again, but ...

  "Listen, you little piece of shit," Vanessa cut in, "on your present flightpath you have approximately twenty seconds left to live. Worse, you're going to put them onto us. We're not going to waste breath warning you again. "

  No reply.

  "Oh shit," said Kazuma breathlessly, "I have to see this." Sounding uncharitably excited as she hastily fixed her helmet into place out of sequence, hooking up the feed and getting the visor down ... Tac-net showed the lead two SIB vehicles headed straight at the kill-zone. Sandy switched to a visual feed, clear vision of both SIB cruisers, fiveperson aircars, government issue, but hardly combat-worthy ...

  "They wouldn't?!" exclaimed Odano. Sandy watched her feed with as much incredulity as combat reflex allowed to surface. Both aircars kept going, the second perhaps naught-point-two klicks behind the first. Multiple fire-tracks registered on tac-net from the firepoints about Gordon. The lead car shattered to fragmented pieces barely a second later, exploding in flames almost as an afterthought as the combustibles ignited. The second car took wild evasive action, vis-feed tracking from an external camera ... shots ripped out to it as it plunged and twisted, shells exploding in rapid unison a hundred metres beyond as if hitting an invisible barrier. She could see it was going to make it, the fire patterns fixed in her head, the ranges from various batteries, the speed at which they adjusted, shells chasing, then detonating alongside in fiery bursts, then out and clear, trailing smoke and left-side low as the mayday call went out, and panicked, incredulous exclamations burst across the broader net. Barely two hundred metres inside the invisible kill-zone, a long, black plume of smoke rose from the thick forest like a funeral pyre.

  "That," Ari said mildly, "is possibly the silliest thing I've ever seen."

  "I wouldn't say that, personally," Sandy replied, bending to finish her final leg-adjustments, "but it definitely makes my top five."

  "You've seen four things crazier than that?" said Kazuma. No doubt about it, she looked almost cheerful in her incredulity. "Girl, you must have seen some weird shit."

  Sandy shrugged. "Mai pen rai," she said, ignoring the helmet to go instead for the light headset ...

  "Mai pen what?" said Kazuma.

  "Thai," Ari informed her, working once more on his own armour attachments with intense concentration. "Means 'whatever.' An old Thai friend once told me Tanusha was a 'mai pen rai society."' Sandy finished settling hair and headset into place, snapped up, checked, loaded and activated the Tanu-55 assault rifle with a series of rapid moves, and shoved off to mid-aisle, directly confronting Ari.

  "Okay, greenpea, what did you test in armour?"

  "Mean average eight-point-three," Ari told her, wincing as the thighplate clacked in and the whole leg assembly tightened on auto. Apparently calm, but for the brief, flickering glance of dark eyes in her direction ... worried, she reckoned, past the typical Ari Ruben deadpan. She didn't think the armour suited him. Too official. "Authority." Not a good look for an underground fringe-dweller.

  "What about you?" she asked Kazuma.

  "Eight-point-nine," Kazuma said smugly. Further progressed in her suit-up than Ari. Had more practice, Sandy reckoned. It seemed to be Kazuma's thing, and the little gunslinger seemed to enjoy it. Sandy distrusted that implicitly.

  "You'll do what I tell you." Gazing firmly at Kazuma. Half expecting a smartarse remark.

  "Yessir," Kazuma said smartly, meeting her gaze with total honesty. Unwaveringly loyal. She didn't trust that either.

  "Sandy," said Ari, re-catching her attention. "No hard feelings? I couldn't tell you what Sal Va had, Ibrahim put me onto it personally, straight from Neiland ... when it's connected to the President like that, I just couldn't tell you, you're not cleared for that information. It'd be political suicide for her if people found out you'd been told

  "I understand perfectly," Sandy told him calmly. Just when did you start picking sides and protecting politicians, Ari? she wanted to ask him. Just when did you decide that something mattered enough for you to get involved? But she didn't have the time. "You're also going to do what I tell you. Everyone on this flyer is in the rear, SWAT Four gets the serious work, you get that?"

  "No argument here."

  "There's a chance we'll get some space to make a flanking manoeuvre up the left. If that happens I'll go first and you'll cover me. That's all you'll do. Everyone belt in tight, approach should get a little rough." She shouldered the rifle and hand-over-handed her way up the narrow aisle, past equipment, supports and waiting armoured agents, and stopped in the open space behind the cockpit ...

  "Sandy, where's the damn missiles?"

  "Two minutes, Ricey, I'll get you a countdown in thirty."

  Gordon continued to function, net traffic was alarmed. She could see security lights in places, crash trucks on the tarmac, some gatherings of people who'd come out to stare in horror at the plume of smoke from beyond the forest perimeter, some who were just standing stunned, shocked by the sight and sound of the fire-grid in operation, rapid staccato thumps from out on the perimeter followed by the angry, buzzing rush of projectile fire overhead. And she added "civil panic" to the list of probable circumstances she'd have to contend with, and hoped like hell the local security had removed all civilians from the north wing ... tac-net wasn't clear on that, local security were evidently in a state, there were no clear reports available.

  There was a new shuttle in Berth 14, however, right alongside the FIA's craft ... the schedule showed it was new, only having docked twenty minutes ago. There were no records of disembarkation. Neither was there a name, or a registration.

  "HQ, I want full details on the shuttle in Berth 14, I'm getting nothing on it."

  "Roger, Snowcat. "

  She was in no mood for further surprises. It wasn't leaving again immediately if it had only just gotten in-shuttles took a few hours at least to turn around. But the proximity and the blacked-out ID were too much coincidence for her liking.

  "I don't like that one, Sandy," came Vanessa, reading her mind. "I

  think I might blow the access early, keep them inside. "

  "Could do, let's see ..." And saw tac-net highlight red as someone else broke the perimeter, accompanied by alarmed calls of "Someone's in!," and "Who the fuck is it?"

  A fast mental zoom-and-highlight ... "Media cruiser," she announced. "Broadcasting civilian press ID on every frequency, don't talk to it, you could trigger an attack, it's too late now."

  Aghast silence from on the net. They'd completed nearly a half-circuit of the complex now, and Sandy stared out the right-side windows. She had a broad, clear view back across the crisscrossing of runways, terminal and building complexes, to the looming towers of Tanusha beyond ... and a small, lonely dot that grew as she magnified it, wandering out into that lethal space above the spaceport.

  "What in the prophet's good name are they doing?" muttered the pilot.

  "Trying to win "journalist of the year." And betting the FIA won't fire on med
ia." So far it was working. Another minute and the OMS would take out the emplacements. There was a shuttle coming in for landing too-that was safe, she'd discovered on a separate scan, firegrid couldn't fire on civilian shuttles, visual verification was hardwired and wouldn't allow it-and thank God for the common-sense genius who'd written that protocol into the software. Another was circling. Worse news, three were on the tarmac awaiting take-off, one just now lining up ... traffic control were under supervision from CSA HQ, they knew what was going on, she had to hope they'd stay rational. "SWAT Four, change course, reverse circuit, we might need to come in from different angles."

  And watched the SWAT flyer comply, banking completely around to head back the other way along the kill-zone perimeter ... and then she saw something moving by one of the fire-grid emplacements. Zoom-and-focus on tac-net, an overwhelming rush of data ... and found a vehicle, grounds maintenance, zooming out along a service way toward the low, squat, ferrocrete bunker that housed the cannon mount ...

  "HQ, I have a civilian vehicle at grid-point three, please remove them immediately." Impact ETA thirty seconds. "SWAT Four, gridpoint three may survive impact, project fireshadow ..." And whacked her own pilot on the shoulder. His hands moved, the horizon banking sharply and Gs shoved down hard ... dammit, grid-point three was due north, they were presently west-headed-north in their circuit of the spaceport, now they had to get ninety degrees back south to give them a covered approach from that firepoint. Still the civilian vehicle approached. A hundred metres ... too close, it'd singe their eyebrows. Stopped at fifty metres, just beyond the ground perimeter fencing.

  "Snowcat, this is HQ, vehicle is not responding, must be a bad com. "

  "Fuck it," she said, and mentally sent the termination signal. A bright flash high, high above ... she barely looked, she'd done it all before too many times to remember. Fire-grid control panicked, rapid projectile fire ripping from five consecutive points, converging in an apex of shredding tracer above the spaceport's east wing ... the media car disintegrated like tissue paper in a hailstorm, pieces spinning to earth in violently random directions.

  "No `journalist of the year' for you," muttered the pilot, throttle wide open, engines howling at the flyer's maximum, the treetops rushing ever closer as they lost altitude. The other four target points were clear. She gave the missiles a final OK ... final safeties went red, warheads primed, and she spared herself a brief, upward glance. Thin white contrails in the clear blue sky. Headed in and downward at incredible velocity.

  Th-th-th-thud, four rapid impacts, fireballs climbing skyward from four widely spread locations across the broad expanse of spaceport grounds, laden with debris.

  "We're in," said Vanessa, SWAT Four already in nearly perfect position south of the spaceport and banking hard inward, barely ten metres off the treetops.

  "Four strikes," Sandy said calmly, watching the fireballs rise as yet more confusion unfurled across the tac-net schematic of Gordon, emergency calls, com traffic and general chaos-"Live fire from north of Gordon is still imminent, SWAT Four is inbound, Snowcat is inbound in ..." Rush of schematic data, topography calculations showing the fire-blindspots and calcing that with their present trajectory. "... fifteen seconds when we acquire fireshadow, everyone stay low and keep the chatter down." And flicked channels. "Vanessa, you've got no angle on the north wing with that firepoint still active, I want you to get down behind north wing, check tac-net V-18Q, disperse and secure the building with two shooters high, I'm coming in at V-15R for rearguard, you right flank secure through to main baggage, we hold and pivot, you push, establish contact and hold, then I'll push the left flank and trap them." With mental illustrations across the tac-net display of the spaceport schematic, visual backup to the verbal shorthand.

  "Gotcha, Snowcat," came Vanessa's laconic drawl.

  The pilot banked hard left-again the Gs shoved down, Sandy holding position comfortably, braced and standing behind the cockpit seats with a good view out the front ...

  "Under fire!" the co-pilot yelped as the north grid-point flared ...

  "Hold steady," Sandy said loudly, "they can't hit us ..." Even as fire ripped perhaps twenty metres over them with snarling, angry velocity. "... we're in the west wing shadow, they're trying to scare us." Pause in fire, greenery rushing by below, then an abrupt break into open ground. Barely a kilometre to their left, thick, black smoke roiled skyward, bits of debris raining down, pieces of what had formerly been a very expensive, very efficient defensive gun emplacement. Sandy found time to wonder wryly if some fool on the Senate Security Panel would try and bill her for damages. "Five metres lower, we've got a brief gap coming up."

  The flyer edged lower ... damn slow machine, turbine-propelled and labouring at barely seven hundred and fifty kph, but at ten metres off the deck it looked plenty fast enough. The north-west to south-east runway was two Ks ahead, access roads, drainage runoffs and observation posts shot past below ... fire from the emplacement and "CLIMB!" she yelled, the Gs smacking them down as the ground fell away, and the burst of fire through the fireshadow gap between west wing and main terminal buildings ripped past below instead of hitting them ... "Down down down, back on the deck." And the nose plunged once more, fire re-targeting their new position, gathering from the full eight kilometres of the spaceport's far north end in glowing, ponderous clusters, then snapping by overhead at blurring velocity.

  "That's it, well done." The pilot, she noted, was sweating profusely, a vision-shift showed her a vastly elevated respiration and body temperature ... the co-pilot wasn't much better. For SWAT pilots a hotzone approach typically meant a few smallarms-this was something they'd never trained for nor expected. "Don't look at the groundfire," she warned them both, "that's electro-mag fire, nearly five Ks a second, you look straight at it and you lose spatial perception and your flight track. Trust your flight sense, evade in future-time-realtime is too late, it's too fast."

  "I have it," murmured the pilot, breathless as the runway came closer up ahead, then abruptly shot past below ... the terminal complexes growing larger ahead by the second. "By the prophet I have it." His voice strained, breathing hard.

  "Allah is with us," Sandy said firmly. "Trust in Allah."

  "Allahu Akbar," the pilot agreed in a stronger tone, and entrusted them to a hard right bank at seven hundred and fifty as he readjusted their approach track, the right nacelle barely five metres off the hurtling ground. Sandy wondered if too much trust in Allah couldn't be a dangerous thing.

  The spaceport proper was looming up, the SWAT Four flyer already pulling into a close, decelerating hover low past the left side of south terminal ... the size of it struck her as she watched the buildings loom through the armoured windshield, the sprawling southern terminal with multiple wings and covered shuttle bays, layoutgraphics indicating a ten thousand passenger per hour rating for each of the four main terminals. That was forty thousand people per hour all up, north, south, west and east terminals adjoining to the massive central complex, where highway connections looped into multi-level avenues of departures and arrivals, and the maglev connected underground ... And she recalled with a brief flash of memory her own arrival here from Rita Prime nearly two months ago, through customs with fake ID and scant baggage, cavernous, gleaming architecture and masses of people arriving and departing, to and from all corners of the Federation ... and no clue at all of how her life would have changed when she next revisited this massive, bustling, vital juncture that connected half of Callay's population to the rest of the Federation.

  They hurtled in low past the broad viewing windows of the southern terminal, glimpses of staring faces, civilians gathered on viewing platforms and staring incredulously at the pair of armoured SWAT flyers that howled low past their heads in the aftermath of heavy weapons fire and massive artillery strikes on the perimeter ... and visual enhancement through the windows showed flaring emergency lights, and uniformed staff attempting to herd hundreds of frightened passengers into convenient directions .
.. pity the tourists who'd just arrived for their holidays to discover that all the worst stories they'd heard of the "Tanushan troubles" paled to insignificance next to the reality ...

  Past the southern terminal, then, and onto the central hub, ducking low past one towering side where automated traffic piled into immobile jams along the elevated departure zones, crowds of panicked people swarming the roads, emergency vehicles with lights flashing, staff directing frantically, parents clutching children and baggage ... it all hurtled past to their right, north terminal looming ahead, Vanessa's flyer already down and unloading atop the furthest edge of the terminal roof, behind the elevated restaurant/observation deck that her schematics had shown her created a fireshadow that the remaining firepoint could not penetrate, a faint glimpse of armoured figures pouring from the flyer's rear ...

  The pilot took them low and left, passenger avenues shooting past below through decorative trees, Sandy staring leftwards where the west terminal sprawled northwards in a long passenger wing, shuttle berths breaking the length ... that was where the crossfire would come from, Berth 15 was one of the line of berths up ahead on the west side of north terminal, completely exposed to cover-fire from the west terminal. Gordon schematic showed her passenger evacuation proceeding out of the terminals and back into central, where they would no doubt create an unholy crush. The broad tarmac appeared clear of the usual spaceport personnel and activity, empty vehicles littered across parking zones, shuttles left abandoned in their bays. Berth 11 loomed ahead, a great, cavernous shadow filled with a shuttle's thruster-heavy rear end, Berth 11 connected directly to the north terminal building, then 12 to 14 extended from there in a line along the narrow, extended north terminal wing, 15 at the far end, and 16 to 18 down the other side. The shuttle's massive trans-orbital thrusters filled the forward view as the pilot decelerated into a howling, nose-up flare, engine nacelles reangling forward and crushing all occupants down toward the deck ... roar of noise and wind as the rear doors clacked open and cold air rushed in ...