by M S Murdock
“Let us say,” returned Ardala, “I am curious.”
“I am not sure I care to reveal it,” said Buck, fencing. He was confident Ardala was bargaining, a game her pride forced her to play to the end, but he was also glad of Huer’s electronic disguise.
“Come now. I have your face. It is only a matter of time before I find a name to go with it. Humor me. Give me what I ask for.”
“I can always give you a name. That is not to say it will be the one you seek.”
Ardala smiled, her white teeth a sharp line framed in scarlet. “Then give me a name. And if you’re going to lie, at least make it interesting.”
“All right. Hart. That is all I can tell you.”
“Heart? Isn’t that a rather delicate title for a man of such presence?”
“Make of it what you will.”
“I shall add it to my profile on you.” She chuckled wickedly. “Our interview has provided my computer with the time to do considerable research on you, Heart. Your vital statistics are safely recorded.”
“I am flattered you find me so interesting.”
“I find you possibly marketable. It is something we might discuss at a later date.”
The implication of a tete-a-tete was subtle, but the look in Ardala’s eyes was not. Buck had piqued her interest. She loved puzzles, and she meant to solve this one.
“Despite your insinuation regarding my name, I would enjoy that.” Buck smiled, letting his appreciation of Ardala’s beauty show in his eyes. “It has been an interesting interview. You exceed your reputation.”
“My reputation?” asked Ardala innocently.
“As a businesswoman,” Buck said smoothly.
“Payment will be forwarded through the channels we discussed via computer?”
“Of course.”
“I shall look forward to other negotiations,” she said.
“No more than I.”
The viewscreen flickered and went dark. Buck, frozen at attention, relaxed. “Wow,” he said.
“Wow indeed,” said Wilma. “I didn’t know you had such a talent for the theater.”
“It’s just my natural charm,” replied Buck, his tension escaping in bravado.
Wilma’s hazel eyes opened wide in imitation of Ardala’s false innocence. She made a moue. “Did you enjoy the interview?” she asked innocently.
Buck gave her an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? That was like talking to a praying mantis.” Buck paused, then added, teasingly, “She is very beautiful.”
“Very.” Wilma understood the tease.
“And very deadly,” said Huer as he popped back into focus, the holographic eye removing him from being almost on top of Buck. “Let’s not forget that she toppled at least three RAM executives to get where she is today.”
Buck slid over on the couch, making room for the shimmering image.
“But we got what we wanted,” Buck said.
“We did indeed,” said Wilma. “What was all that bargaining? I thought for a moment you were going to lose it all.”
Buck smiled at Huer. “You couldn’t see it from where you were sitting, but in the middle of things, Doc flashed some very interesting information across the screen. It seems Ardala owns something else we can use.” He took a deep breath. “We just bought the plans to Hauberk’s shields.”
Wilma was across the room in a stride. She grabbed Buck’s arms and pulled him from the couch, her eyes shining. “Say that again.”
“We just bought the plans to Hauberk’s shields,” said Buck reasonably.
“I don’t believe it!” Wilma threw her arms around Buck and squeezed him tightly.
“It is a fact,” said Huer. “She seems to have come by them rather underhandedly, but they are, nevertheless, in her possession.”
“No. Now they’re in ours,” said Buck with a grin. He accepted Wilma’s unexpected enthusiasm with a slight hug of his own.
Wilma, catching Buck’s smile, broke the embrace, embarrassed at letting herself get carried away. She straightened her uniform, cleared her throat, and said, “We’ve still got lots of work to do.”
Buck understood her apprehensions. “Yes, colonel,” he said. “Good night.”
Chapter 21
Cornelius Kane tossed the work order into the middle of his already cluttered desk. Seaforian’s missing shipment of experimental fighters had been duplicated, and a new wing was ready for delivery to Hauberk. Rather than take the chance of losing the ships again, Warhead decided to fly the craft there, using mercenary pilots under Kane’s command.
The corners of Kane’s mouth drew up as recalled his discussion with the Warhead executive who authorized the shipment. Harper Marcheson gave Kane a free hand in choosing his pilots, reserving the right of veto should one of them be unacceptable to the company. Marcheson expected Kane to research the men and submit a list for his inspection, but Kane named of twenty pilots from memory, all but one on the RAM-approved list. Moreover, he knew their whereabouts and rates of pay. The entire operation was organized in the space of twenty minutes.
“You do not know how relieved my mind is with you in charge, Kane. Report directly to me. Once you have delivered the ships, you are a free agent, as far as Warhead is concerned. This contract should not infringe upon your arrangements with Seaforian,” Marcheson said.
“You may expect to hear from me within hours,” Kane replied.
“I have authorized payment for the pilots,” Marcheson glanced at his computer terminal. “All are now confirmed. They will meet you at the launch site in one-half hour.”
“Your company is a marvel of efficiency,” Kane said, bestowing a strategic compliment.
“We have excellent work standards, Kane. That is why we chose you.”
The challenge in Marcheson’s words was plain, but it did not daunt Kane. He left Marcheson with a high heart. Kane now stood in his cluttered office on Mars, anticipating the pleasure of flying the best ships in the system. Moreover, he was to be paid twice. This contract with Warhead was an unexpected bonus to his agreement with Seaforian to act as trainer for Hauberk’s pilots.
He picked up his flight gloves and slapped them against his hand. Beneath his elation ran a subliminal current of curiosity. The first shipment of fighters had not yet surfaced. Neither the black market nor computer security had unearthed them. It was Kane’s opinion someone very clever now possessed them.
He dismissed the prospect of NEO. He knew the organization intimately. In all his time with it, NEO never had pulled off a major action against RAM. No. the theft-mud theft he knew it was-had the ear marks of a renegade. That meant a private operator a pirate such as Black Barney, or a really daring black-market trader.
The possibilities were niggling thoughts that disturbed his complacency. He pushed them aside and called up navigational charts. He identified Warhead’s position on its private spaceport off Phobos, then entered his destination. The computer absorbed the input, cogitated for a moment, and began to paint thin yellow lines across the dark reaches of space.
Kane studied the three possible trajectories his computer presented and chose one, instructing the computer to download the information onto a microdisk. Disks were obsolete, but they were isolated banks of data, not accessible to a computer bank unless they were deliberately fed into it. The computer popped a scarlet plastic disk into the coding slot, and Kane retrieved it. He punched it back into the system, saw the file read out, recalled it, and escaped the system. Once the disk was safely in his hand, he erased his work. No one would know his route, not even the pilots who followed him, until he entered the information into the fighter’s onboard computers. He was taking no chances.
OOOOO
Huer reposed in the NEO computer network, reduced to the abstract units of a program. His prime directive was to help Buck. He was both Buck’s safeguard and his Achilles’ heel in the computer dominated world of the twenty-fifth century. He could use his abilities to block whatever program was
trying to find his charge, but, by his very existence, he acted as a weather vane pointing the way to him. He was finding paradox to be the essence of human existence, and, frankly, he would have turned it over for the logic of facts. Had he not a full genetic core programmed unto his personality complex, recent events would have caused him to retreat to them.
He had been making discreet attempts to trace the malevolent presence he knew searched for him. Several times he thought he was close to it, but was forced to retreat or be identified. He was at a loss. To index the presence meant discovery, and discovery meant danger for Buck. On the other hand, he thought he had enough data to detect the feel of the thing, and thereby warn Buck. It was a decision he did not yet have the data to make, even though delay might jeopardize Buck’s plans, not to mention his life. Huer shivered, an electronic fluctuation that reminded him uncomfortably of the evil bloodhound on his trail. There was chaos surrounding the assassin, a chaos that left disturbed circuits and static in its wake.
OOOOO
Masterlink lounged in the uneasy bowels of RAM main, sorting the myriad reports its searchers were collecting. It tossed off main’s virus hunters, over powering them with wild electronic chaff that scrambled their directives and sent them against each other. In time, main would realize the presence infecting it could not be exorcised by such simple methods, but by then it would be too late. Masterlink would have consolidated enough power to ensure survival. This thought flashed subliminally through its mind as it mulled over the latest intelligence.
The left side of its deranged brain caught it up. “TEND TO BUSINESS,” chided Karkov sternly. “WE’VE GOT A BLOCK ON MAIN THAT WILL GIVE US MORE THAN ENOUGH TIME TO PROCESS THESE REPORTS BEFORE WE HAVE TO RETRENCH. THAT IS, IF WE DON’T WASTE ANY OF IT!”
“I HAVE BUSINESS FIRMLY IN HAND,” replied Masterlink. “ROMANOV CANNOT PINPOINT ROGERS’S WHEREABOUTS WITHIN NEO, THOUGH IT HAS CAUGHT ELUSIVE REFERENCES. WHEN IT TRIED TO BACKTRACK THEM, IT WAS MET WITH A MAZE OF CONFLICTING GATES THAT LED NOWHERE.”
“NEO’S SYSTEM WAS NOT AS DIFFICULT TO PENETRATE AS RAM’S. HOW CAN IT FOIL A CLASS A SEARCHER?” asked Karkov.
Masterlink ran through the data Romanov had transmitted. “ROMANOV IS OF THE OPINION THE GATES ARE NOT THE WORK OF THE NEO SYSTEM, BUT OF AN AUTONOMOUS PROGRAM WITHIN THAT SYSTEM,” it said.
“A RENEGADE?”
“NOT FROM THE REPORTS. IT SEEMS TO BE OPERATING WITH NEO’S SANCTION.”
“HMM.” Karkov ruminated on the information, viewing it from every angle his warped logic could conceive. “CAPTAIN ROGERS MAY HAVE A BODYGUARD,” he said.
Masterlink chuckled, sending an aureole of static into main’s circuits. “IT WON’T LAST LONG.”
“NOT WITH ROMANOV ON ITS TRAIL. I AM OF THE OPINION WE COMMAND CONSIDERABLY MORE POWER THAN NEO.”
“TIE ROMANOV INTO RAM MAIN,” said Masterlink. “IT’LL FRY THE UPSTART.”
“DON’T GET OUT OF HAND. WE HAVE BETTER USES FOR MAIN.” Karkov’s rebuke made Masterlink pulse with static.
Karkov ignored his alter ego and concentrated on the flow of information being transmitted by its searchers. The transmissions were coded in a hodgepodge of half-forgotten military codes from the twentieth century, rearranged in Masterlink’s image. “ULIANOV REPORTS A THEFT,” Karkov said.
“ULIANOV? FROM HAUBERK?”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
“OF WHAT INTEREST IS A THIEF?” Masterlink asked.
“IT IS UNUSUAL, AND THEREFORE WORTH INVESTIGATING. A TOP-SECRETSHIPMENT DESTINED FOR HAUBERK SEEMS TO HAVE GONE ASTRAY.”
Masterlink looked the material over. “A LARGE SHIPMENT,” it said slowly. “LIKE THE ONE WE WERE BLAMED FOR. I DON’T SUPPOSE YOUR WONDER-CHILD HAPPENED TO DISCOVER THE NATURE OF IT.”
“NO.” Karkov was correlating data.
“COULD THE MATERIAL BE GENUINELY LOST?”
“NOT LIKELY,” replied Karkov. “TOP-SECURITY SHIP. MENTS ARE UNDER TOO MUCH SCRUTINY FROM THE HIGHLY PLACED. TOO MANY FINGERS ARE IN THE PIE.”
“IT FEELS LIKE NEO,” said Masterlink.
“NEO HAS NEVER ATTEMPTED ANY OPERATION OF THIS SIZE-NOT IN ITS ENTIRE HISTORY.”
“YOU FORGET ROGERS,” Masterlink stated.
“NEVER?”
“YOU FORGET OPERATION PITTER-PAT.”
“WHEN HE RELEASED THAT BOMBER PILOT HOSTAGE?”
“THERE HAD NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT EITHER,” said Masterlink.
“HE CARRIED THAT ONE OFF ON NERVE,” defended Karkov.
“YES, BUT HE CARRIED IT OFF,” said Masterlink.
Karkov paused, considering. “I SHALL INFORM ULIANOV TO KEEP TRACK OF EVENTS CONCERNING THE THEFT.”
“IS THAT ALL IT REPORTS?” asked Masterlink.
“ALL THAT IS EXTRAORDINARY. OTHERWISE, HAUBERK IS FUNCTIONING AS PROGRAMMED.”
“I COULD SNIFF OUT ROGERS IN A MINUTE,” Masterlink said.
Karkov was quick to pick up the implications of Masterlink’s words. “NO! WE HAVE DISCUSSED THIS BEFORE! WE WILL NOT SPLIT UP. WE CANNOT HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH OUR PURPOSE SEPARATELY. LET IT BE. ULIANOV WILL NOTIFY US IMMEDIATELY AT THE SLIGHTEST SIGN OF ROGERS’S PRESENCE.”
“I THINK IT HAS MISSED THE FIRST ONE.” Sneered Masterlink.
OOOOO
George Washington sat in a dim corner of Salvation III’s deserted lounge, nursing the end of a drink. His blue eyes were shadowed as he stared into the liquid in his glass.
“You seem troubled, Captain.”
Washington looked up, directly into Wilma Deering’s face. “No, Colonel,” he said, beginning to rise, “thoughtful.”
“Sit down, Pappy.”
The nickname, on Wilma’s tongue, surprised him. It was his by right as well as tradition, for he was the oldest member of the wing-excluding Rogers’s five centuries, but Wilma was not often familiar. “What can I do for you, Colonel?” he asked, raising his glass. He studied her impassive loveliness over the rim.
“You might tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“I might.”
Wilma returned Washington’s scrutiny. “I think you were rushing the future.”
“Maybe. Maybe wondering whether you’ll come back from a skirmish is a jinx. I don’t know.”
“You were the most positive voice in the wing.”
Washington’s crooked smile had the charm of a small boy’s. “I know. And I meant every word. I believe we can do it. I just don’t know if we can.”
“Washington, I can’t have you at less than one hundred percent. The wing turns on you, and you know it.”
Washington swirled the drink. “That’s why I’m indulging my doubts now. There won’t be time once we lift off.”
Wilma sat down and propped her elbows on the Table. She briefly wondered if America’s famous general ever felt as her captain felt now. For a split second her eyes were vulnerable, and Washington could see the naked relief in them.
“I don’t see what you’re worried about,” he said. “Rogers has the wing in the palm of his hand.”
“He’s caught their imagination, all right, but, legend or no, to them he’s unproven. They haven’t flown combat with him.”
“What about the Tharsian Plateau?”
“That’s not the same as aerial combat, and you know it. In a crisis, they’ll look to you. Hauberk will be the biggest action NEO has ever undertaken. I could say I’ve put myself on the line for this one-it’s true-but that’s the least of it. If we lose, we lose big. NEO may not recover for a hundred years.”
“And if we win?” asked Washington, a dancing light of challenge in his eyes.
“You know the answer to that.”
“Colonel, if it’ll set your mind at ease, I don’t mind admitting I am looking forward to this. In spite of the fact it’s crazy-in spite of the fact it’s impossible-you couldn’t keep me out of this one.”
Wilma stared past his shoulder, a faraway look in her eyes. “Somehow, I get the feeling we have a chance. In
my mind’s eye, I see Earth free and flourishing as it was in Buck’s time. Dreams don’t come true, Washington. It’s a fact of this life.”
“Maybe it’s time we changed the facts-in our favor.”
“It’s worth a try.”
Washington leaned forward and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I don’t intend to die, Colonel. I intend to win.”
“Get some rest, Captain,” she said. “And don’t take your persona too much to heart.”
Washington finished his drink, his eyes smiling at her as he swallowed the last of it. “I’m kinda fond of it,” he said.
OOOOO
Buck Rogers slept fitfully. His body was supine, but it was not at rest. He tossed and turned, scrabbling the bedclothes to a knot. The computer’s security eye recorded his movements impersonally, unaware of the dreams racing through his mind.
He stood on the top of a high hill outside the town in which he was born. A paper airplane rose on the afternoon breeze, a triangle of white against the flat cerulean, cloudless sky. The plane made a loop, then continued on its soaring flight.
He sat in the open cockpit of an ancient aircraft. Its propeller whipped against the wind, speeding up as the engine caught with a roar. He could see the back of the pilot’s head encased in its leather flight cap. Clouds scudded by.
He grasped the controls of a flight simulator, his knuckles white. The plane was going down. The stupid simulator was programmed for it, and there was nothing he could do. He knew it. He wrenched the controls back, trying to lift the nose of a nonexistent plane, but the simulator still registered a nose dive. A swift glance across the instrument panel confirmed his position. He turned the simulator off.
Snatches of other experiences in the air slipped in and out of his mind. They had one thing in common: not one of them came from the twenty-fifth century. They were from his own time, reminders of a less desperate civilization. He skipped over them, disturbed enough to thrash, but not disturbed enough to wake up. Around the edges of every dream lurked the specter of the Krait, a hazy cylindrical shape. It hovered on the edge of his subconscious, not taking form. He made no attempt to reach out to it.
