Fortress of Lies mda-8

by J. Steven York

  A Black Hawk was a powerful ’Mech, but if a thirty-five-hundredton DropShip landed on top of it, it would still splatter like a bug.

  Whatever primal part of his brain the neurohelmet tapped into was ahead of his conscious mind. The gyros whined as the Black Hawk tumbled forward. He aimed his crosshairs in the direction of the reef, then hit the jump jets.

  His stomach did a flip as the ’Mech went from free-fall to three Gs in an instant. It didn’t help that the angle of acceleration was nearly at a right angle to the surface of the gulf that was rapidly coming up to meet them. He realized he was looking down into a huge circular shadow on the water below, a reminder that, although he could no longer see the DropShip, it was very close behind him.

  He watched the heat indicator climbing, and a cluster of yellow lights appeared on the jump jet status panel. It was fortunate, he thought, that he valued mobility on the battlefield so highly. He’d used much of his money and influence to have the Black Hawk fitted with experimental jets that increased power and firing duration by about sixty percent, but he was going to need to push them well past their limits today.

  It helped that the ’Mech was running light, with no missiles in its ammo bays, but Aaron had no idea if that would be enough.

  He heard Deena grunt and gasp as she tried to find a less painful position, and he reached up to swat her hand as it strayed too close to the yellow-and-black striped ejection handle over his head. It occurred to him he could probably survive by ejecting right now, but the ejection would kill Deena, and Paxton would fall to his death.

  He reached over and flipped the command couch breaker toOFF . There would be no accidents.

  She spoke. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  “That remains to be seen.” Aaron glanced out at the water below. He saw his ’Mech’s shadow now, well separated from that of the DropShip.

  Wind whistled past the cockpit. This would have to be far enough. If he waited any longer, they’d never survive the landing.

  The Black Hawk rolled back again as he pushed the jump jets into overload. Red lights began to flash on his panel. Burning insulation stung his nose and eyes. The cockpit started to feel like a furnace, but that would be the least of their problems when they were in the water.

  “Hold on,” he heard himself say.

  Aaron had gone skydiving in his younger days, and his instructor had warned him not to trust his eyes when it came to opening his chute. “Your eyes will fool you until it’s much too late, and then I’ll have to pour your high-blood out of your boots.” He knew that things would look fine, and suddenly he’d realize how close the ground was, and it would come up to smack him.

  That’s exactly what happened, except it was shallow water coming up far too fast. He moved the stick just a little, aiming for the deep water just past the reef. “Ulysses!” he yelled into the mike. “Hold your breath!”

  Then they hit.

  Deena yelped with pain as she was slammed down in her narrow refuge, metal digging into her body in a dozen places. There was a roar, like a waterfall turned inside out and backward. For a moment they were actually looking up at the sky from a hole they’d made in the water.

  The gulf slammed in around them, and there was a grinding crunch as they slammed into the coral-covered bottom. The legs howled in protest, folding until every joint slammed against its stops.

  Then they were still: green water surrounding the canopy, metal moaning and shrieking from the pressure and sudden cooling, bubbles from the heat sinks and red-hot jump jets making it impossible to see anything—even which way was up.

  He didn’t need to see.

  MechWarriors called it situational awareness. He’d oriented himself coming in. He knew where the reef was. He knew how far it was. He knew that Ulysses might have only seconds to live if he didn’t get up there.

  He pushed the throttles and pulled the stick over hard. The legs moaned and hesitated. Then they were standing, moving, running across the bottom, up an underwater slope.

  It grew brighter above his head, changing from green to wavering blue. His cockpit breached the surface, water streaming down the armorglass.

  He raised the arm to where Paxton was hidden and opened the missile exhaust chutes loading hatch, hoping that any water that had gotten inside would quickly flow out. So much water was running off the ’Mech, it was impossible to tell how successful this was.

  “Ulysses, are you with us?”

  Nothing.

  “Ulysses!”

  There was a choking cough in his headset. “Still here, Lord Governor.”

  The Black Hawk continued up the bank until they were on top of the reef. The water there was no more than a meter deep—barely enough to cover the ’Mech’s feet.

  Aaron set the throttle at one quarter and started a slow trot toward the island, watching for dark water ahead that might require him to leap from one colony of coral to another. There was no telling what sort of environmental damage he was doing, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Deena pushed her face close to the canopy.

  “My Lord!”

  He wasn’t sure if she was calling for his attention, or for her savior. He followed her gaze, just in time to see the crippled DropShip plunge into the gulf. White-hot metal met warm tropical water with explosive results. Fusion reactors detonated, spewing plasma, causing a rapid cascade of secondary explosions as the magazines went off.

  The hull of the ship, what part they could still see of it, shattered like a dropped Christmas ball, and a ghostly hemisphere of shock wave moved out from the crash. It washed over them, shuddering the ’Mech with its force.

  But that was only the beginning. Even as the broken bulk of the DropShip vanished into the gulf, a huge, white wall of water rose up, towering higher than the ’Mech’s cockpit. Aaron bit his lip. The jump jets were fried. The wave roared toward them, and there was no avoiding it.

  And as it swallowed them, ripping the ’Mech off its feet like a toy, he remembered Deena’s question, and his answer:

  That remains to be seen.

  The entry bell on Erik’s cabin door rang, followed by an urgent pounding. He groaned, threw back the covers, and squinted at the holoclock display hovering over his bed. The floating green numbers told him he’d been asleep for two hours.

  More pounding, followed by a woman’s muffled voice. “Commander! There’s been a flash-news report from New Canton, regarding the Duke!”

  He considered ignoring the voice, but realized he was already awake. He reached over, clicked on the reading light, and pushed the hidden button that released the door’s security lock. “Come.”

  The door slid open, and he recognized the uniformed woman standing there as Captain Malvern, the watch intelligence officer. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Commander, but we’ve just received a report that I knew you’d want to hear immediately.”

  He asked skeptically, “A flash-news report? Do you people actually read that stuff?” Since the breakdown of the HPG, reliable news of distant events usually traveled no faster than a JumpShip could traverse the same distance, taking weeks or months to cross any substantial part of The Republic.

  Even though jump travel was in itself instantaneous, logistics limited the speed of any physical object traveling between star systems. JumpShips had to recharge, people and cargo had to load and unload, DropShips had to undock from one JumpShip and transfer to another, or fly between jump points and the planets themselves.

  In theory, information suffered no such limitations. The limiting factors for information travel were the speed of sound or data, in-system light-speed delays as the information was passed along from ship to ship, and the availability of the next charged ship which would leave the system to pass the information on to the next.

  Occasionally, by random chance, a long chain of such rapid transfers would take place, information traveling rapidly from one arriving JumpShip to a departing one, and so on, system by system. By this method, news
could travel across a Prefecture in days or hours instead of weeks, flashing over like an electric arc crossing a gap.

  The problem was that information travel was completely unpredictable and notoriously unreliable. Information was almost certain to travel via an indirect and circuitous route, through an unknown number of relay stations of unknown reliability. Even in the best of times, the information tended to “drift” and change as it was passed along, and the potential for malicious manipulation was unlimited. Some in the communications and intelligence community had started calling the phenomenon of rapid information transfer “flash-news,” but still others called it the “new HPG,” which in this case stood for “Hyper-Pap Generator.”

  Even if the random tidbit was of potential interest, Erik didn’t see how it could be trustworthy. Yet Captain Malvern seemed sincerely to believe that this flash-news was important. He couldn’t see her face clearly while she was back-lit from the hallway, but she looked grave.

  He sat up in bed, suddenly feeling wide awake. “Out with it.”

  “The report said that Duke Aaron Sandoval’s DropShip had an accidental thruster explosion and crashed into the Gulf of Emeralds shortly after takeoff from the Capital Spaceport.”

  “Survivors?”

  She lowered her head. “All hands were said to be lost.”

  “It could just be a rumor,” he said, “even misinformation planted by the Cappies.” But even as he said it, he sensed there was at least some truth to the report.

  Erik felt his body turn to ice. The Duke is dead? What should I do now?

  He wasn’t sure what bothered him more: that the report might be true, or that grief was only the third or fourth emotion he felt upon hearing it.

  4

  It is with deep regret that the Government of Prefecture VI reports the tragic death of Duke Aaron Sandoval, Lord Governor of Prefecture IV, in the crash of his DropShip shortly after departing the capital of New Canton.

  Early analysis indicates that a faulty fuel pump may have exploded. The Duke inexplicably walked out on negotiations with high officials on New Canton, and prepared to launch in haste. It’s possible that he may have bypassed preflight inspections that would have identified the problem before launch. In addition to the Duke, all passengers and crew on the ship perished.

  The Lord Governor sends his deepest regrets to the survivors, the people of Tikonov, and of Prefecture IV. “It is hoped that after an orderly transfer of power is completed, another representative will be dispatched from Tikonov to continue negotiations, assuming the rapid advance of House Liao forces through Prefecture V does not render such negotiations redundant.

  “As always, the bond and respect we share with Prefecture IV, its worlds, and its people, is undiminished.”

  —Official release from the palace on New Canton, 9 October 3134

  Barosa Island Spaceport

  Barosa Island, New Canton

  Prefecture VI, The Republic

  9 October 3134

  Every radio in the Barosa Island Spaceport had been tuned to the emergency frequency, listening to the desperate distress calls from the Duke’s DropShip. Captain Gus Clancy was hearing it, and watching it, magnified on the viewscreen on the bridge of the Excalibur–class spherical DropShip Tyrannos Rex.

  He leaned back in his chair, hearing its familiar squeak—the worn leather of the armrests soft under his calloused fingers, and looked around the bridge. His navigator, helmsmen, and flight engineer sat quietly at their respective stations, eyes locked on the doomed ship. He knew they were with the other crew in spirit, and when it crashed, part of them would die with it, too.

  That was the bond all spacefarers shared. Clancy also felt it, more so perhaps, since he’d spent much of his childhood on a Union–class DropShip much like the one he was watching now.

  The bridge of Clancy’s vessel towered more than a hundred meters above the launch apron. He could see clearly out into the gulf, see the Union’s thrusters as they failed one by one, watch the captain try desperately to keep the craft under control. It was a DropShip captain’s worst nightmare, a ship that could neither fly nor land, stuck deep in the maw of the bitch called gravity.

  The Union’s captain had made a good show of it, Clancy thought, tried every trick that Clancy could think of. But it wasn’t enough, and in the end time and gravity had to win.

  The crash was a terrible thing. The resulting wave swamped miles of shoreline, sweeping away blue-collar vacation homes, fishermen’s shacks, and low-rent hotels as though with a great broom. He could only imagine the public outcry, the calls for new flight patterns, increased launch safety, or maybe even absurd suggestions that the cargo spaceport be closed.

  It didn’t matter to him, though. Very shortly, Captain Clancy and the Tyrannos Rex were leaving New Canton, cargo holds empty. Pockets, too. He didn’t expect ever to be back.

  The voyage had turned into a bitter disappointment—one that might cost him his ship. The government had declared his scheduled cargo of manufacturing tools “war materiel,” impounded it, and given him twenty-four hours to leave the planet.

  A huge cloud of steam boiled off the gulf, exposing pieces of wreckage that dotted the water. The waves were receding, and he could see the flashing lights of rescue vehicles winking as they drove toward the stricken coastline, emergency helicopters swarming like mosquitoes.

  He should leave. The ship was fueled and ready to lift. His twenty-four hours were almost up. Logic said there was nothing to be gained by staying here. Clancy’s gut told him something else.

  That DropShip had belonged to Duke Aaron Sandoval, Lord Governor of Prefecture IV, and one of the richest men in The Republic. Clancy had heard the scuttlebutt: he had been ejected by the Lord Governor of New Canton, and there was a falling out. It was the same political shift that had probably cost Clancy his cargo—and now the Duke was dead.

  Most likely.

  Clancy wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen something separate from the DropShip before it made its death plunge. A small separate plasma flare had descended into the gulf.

  Clancy thought it was a ’Mech, and if so, it might have survived. Whoever was in it was likely loyal to the Duke and would want to get away from New Canton as quickly as possible. They’d head for the spaceport, where Clancy just happened to be sitting with an Excalibur–class DropShip and three empty cargo bays, ready to launch.

  He had nothing. Nothing but an idea, and a hope, and the guts to try and pull things off if his idea turned out to be the truth. He stood and grabbed his neurohelmet.

  “Stand by to lift on my order, but open bay one, and have LoaderMech Alpha ready when I get there.” He stepped into the lift that would take him down through the core of the ship, then hesitated. “Keep watch on the spaceport perimeter in the direction of the crash. You see anything unusual at all, you call me right away, you hear?”

  He ran the lift at emergency speed, descending so fast he had to hold onto the rail to keep his feet on the floor, then flex his knees to absorb the sudden deceleration at the bottom.

  The yellow LoaderMech’s diesel engine was already clattering as he climbed up the support gantry. Lieutenant McComb, the ship’s loadmaster and the ’Mech’s regular pilot, was standing by the open cockpit. Clancy jumped into the seat, donned his neurohelmet and plugged it in, gave McComb a thumbs-up, and then slipped both hands into the waldos that controlled the manipulator arms. The LoaderMech was a prototype that Clancy had picked up in a card game a couple of stops back, and he was still getting the feel for it. Its drive controls were all designed to be operated by the pilot’s feet and knees, freeing the hands for other work. It was an unusual setup, tricky to learn, but allowed for fast and precise loading. It also meant that the ’Mech was flexible enough to do many things it was never designed for.

  He tapped the throttle-up toggle with one knee, heard the diesel engine roar, and guided the machine clear of its gantry using the steering pedals. He flexed the fingers on the
ends of the manipulator arms through the waldos—each finger equipped with an extendible “fingernail” blade like the tine of a forklift.

  He activated the com. “Bridge, this is Clancy, what do you see?”

  “Cap’n”—it was Sanchez, the engineer—“there are two spaceport security ’Mechs headed toward the south perimeter, moving fast.”

  “What are they headed for?”

  “I don’t see—I—Damn!”

  “What?”

  “A ’Mech just ripped through the south security fence, three police helicopters in pursuit, lasers blazing, and I’ll swear it’s wearing half the seaweed in the gulf!”

  Duke Aaron Sandoval felt as though he were in a ground car with no springs and no brakes, running down a washboard road that never ended. The ’Mech cockpit was hot as blazes, and the Black Hawk seemed to be trying to tear itself apart with every step. But he didn’t back off the throttle. He couldn’t.

  He’d figured out by now he was a dead man walking—an embarrassing corpse that had crawled out of the ocean and had to be buried before anyone beyond New Canton noticed. He was certain his DropShip hadn’t gone down by accident, and his survival was an inconvenience that somebody was going to try to cover up as soon as possible.

  He guessed that the two light ’Mechs headed his way were there to finish the job.

  Behind him, he could hear Deena muttering to herself. “Ulysses, I think Deena is praying. You are welcome to join her if you have nothing better to do.”

  He was answered with fatigued laughter. Ulysses’ voice was slurred and uneven. “I’m too busy, my Lord, bleeding out into my bruises and trying to put my teeth back into their sockets. Will this hellish ride be over soon?”

  “The good news is that one way or the other, it will be.”

  Ordinarily the Black Hawk would have been a good match for its opponents, but damaged, lacking missiles or jump jets, and already carrying too much heat, the situation didn’t look good. There was only one thing left to do: Negotiate.