by Ginger Booth
They hustled through, and he relocked the pass-through door. He repeated the procedure, apartment to apartment, for a couple more, until he ducked into a bedroom. A discreet back door let them out into a corridor behind the bank of apartments from the one they arrived through.
Diplomat row maintained a back door to flee. Hakone likely knew about it. If they didn’t block the doors, probably Hakone ambassadors trusted to a similar escape route in Oslo, Pontiac, and Samara.
With Melkor in the lead, through hushed halls in midnight Hakone, they slipped away and boarded a dark shuttle. Melkor took the pilot seat himself.
Sass didn’t ask permission. She belted herself in as copilot.
“You can’t fly a League machine without implants,” Melkor objected. “And I’m not much of a pilot.”
Well that sucked.
35
Mars was settled to become Planet B, humanity’s escape when Earth collapsed. But the planet had little to offer over Luna. Its population reached 50,000, but only to build the vast colony ships that carried the original Diaspora.
“Why aren’t we moving?” Sass demanded, as the diplomat-turned-pilot failed to start the dark shuttle. They were still sealed to the corridor in the Hakone foreigner’s district. Her hands itched to take the controls, which looked fairly ordinary. To the extent she could see them in the gloom.
Her questing fingers found the toggle to bring up the low instrument lights. Melkor immediately cut them again.
“It’s begun,” he murmured. “The Tyrant is dead in Pontiac. Now we wait for chaos to break out.”
“But not long enough for Hakone to wake and stop us,” Sass urged.
Melkor nodded slowly. “The timing could be tight.” He paused. “I need to concentrate, please.”
“What you need is to unlock us from the hallway!” Sass insisted. Until he did that, they were not free to scram.
He granted her that. The door in the hold chuffed closed, with the universal blue tell-tale above advising a pressure seal. Then a clunking shudder through the vehicle spoke as the clamps retracted.
Sass let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She’d begun to wonder if he’d staged all this as some elaborate ruse to get her talking. “And bring up the engines.” He winced at that suggestion, barely visible in the cockpit. “Melkor, the shuttle took three minutes to warm from a cold start at Yokohama. I’m a pilot. I noticed.”
He sighed and poised a finger over the ignition, but didn’t flick it yet. “Patience. They’re finding the Tyrant now. He died alone in his office.” He tilted his head. “The assassin had to flee first. She had no business there.”
Sass imagined that the scene playing out in his mind – possibly in full color audio with live surveillance – was downright fascinating, and the death profoundly satisfying to a man who’d lived under this Tyrant for years. But they needed to move. She’d bet her acreage of useless regolith that in the paranoid hidey-hole of Hakone, shuttles did not detach without consent from a control room. Her toe began to tap the floor impatiently.
He lay a webbed hand on her knee. “Stop that. Or move to the back. Only a few more minutes.” His finger hesitated again over the engine toggle. Then at some cue visible only to himself, he finally flicked it on. A countdown timer lit for the startup sequence, slightly less than three minutes.
Sass clicked on the panel lighting again. This time he didn’t argue. “Oh, Fidget. If only you could act as implant for me to interface with this thing.”
The mink levered her face away from Sass’s neck to stare her in the eye. Her comical little expression, one brow raised, was priceless. The captain kissed her on the nose. Then she realized she had another priority here – to communicate with her crew. And hopefully give little Fidget a chance to run backups of her life. “Are we out of Hakone’s jamming field?”
Fidget sighed and retreated her head toward her ear again.
Melkor naturally thought the question was directed at him. “No. We can’t contact your ship until we’re out of Japanese territorial waters. In another plane.”
“Another plane?” Sass’s voice rose incredulously. “What, you plan to land in Yokohama and transfer?”
“We have to. The range on these shuttles is only 400 kilometers. It’s a lot farther than that to American territory.”
“I thought we were going for boat people! They’re all over Yokohama!”
Or just outside of Yokohama, she supposed. Where exactly the city on floating garbage heaps turned into boat people seas, she had no idea. But the island’s whole coastline was tiled deck-to-deck. She couldn’t imagine what they did for safety when a cyclone or tsunami took aim at them. Just the thought made her queasy with incipient sea-sickness. But doubtless they had their ways.
“Those aren’t my people! They don’t talk to my people, either. Captain, please, trust me. The Pacific is huge. The folk here would kill me on sight. And you can’t speak their language, so you wouldn’t last long either.” He reconsidered. “No, you they’d sell back to the League. Probably fetch a good price.”
Well, that was a relief. “Melkor, how are we going to switch to a League plane?”
“Not a League plane. I do have contacts. They’re readying the plane now. Sass – may I call you Sass? Please shut up.”
Her foot started tapping again. He gave her a light karate-chop to the knee this time. And she worried her lip in silence. If he really was an amateur pilot, the last thing she should do was undermine his confidence. She kicked herself. She was an experienced senior captain. She’d trained half the pilots in the Corps, including Ben. Though due to the anti-magic of the bad old warp, she was now less experienced than he was. There were useful times for her bad old Earth persona to assert itself. This wasn’t one of them.
“Have you completed your pre-launch flight checks?” she reminded him. Less than a minute remained.
That fish guise sure limited his facial range. But she’d read his current expression as utter exasperation. “Feel free, copilot.” He scowled when he realized she didn’t have access to a checklist. He made a glowing list appear on the windshield before her.
Unfamiliar with the console, she struggled to figure out where to find each item’s corresponding readout. She made it to item five – of twelve – when he said, “Now!”
The shuttle rose straight up a few stories, then he hit the gas, accelerating toward the coast. Due to the early morning hour, with heavy overcast, the landscape was dark, and so were the mountains.
“Too low!” Sass hissed urgently. “We’re surrounded by mountains.”
“I know what I’m doing here.” Though after a moment for second thoughts, Melkor started adding a little more altitude. “We aren’t headed for Yokohama. There’s a joint base south of there. Assets scrambling to return to Pontiac to back up the current claimant. Or counter-claimant.”
“Nice blood bath developing back home?” Sass encouraged. Though on second thought, the man had children in Pontiac. She wondered what would become of them. She quelled the urge to ask.
“A few dozen dead so far,” Melkor agreed. “Should be thousands more to come. The Ambassador is probably high on the list. I regret that. My mentor. He was one of the better ones.” He froze a moment. “Ah. He’s dead already. Forgot he was in Tunis today.”
An alarm started shrilling from the dashboard. Sass looked down at a old-style 3D threat display. “Bandits at seven and four o’clock low, six on the beam, and two angels.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“Weapons lock on our tail. Evade! Up, down, right, left. Give me joystick control!”
“Uh, try it.”
She grabbed the stick, vastly relieved to find it responded to her. She immediately dove to the left and down, then righted herself in a steep climb trying to reach the ‘angels,’ her two tormentors above. But they easily adjusted higher. And a shuttle was not nimble enough to evade jets.
“What do they want us to do?”
she demanded.
“Return to Hakone. Hey! I didn’t mean you should do it!”
“Melkor, tell them we are complying. We are a diplomat and two prisoners, non-combatants.”
Silently he did that, while she continued her leisurely banking curve. Which continued curving all the way around to their previous heading, then dove toward the coast. That shook three of her tail. They’d sped up to return to base, which meant it would take them a few minutes to loop around to bother her. “How far to the ocean?”
“Twenty klicks.” He bit his lip worriedly. “Next two jets rising from the coast are friendlies. Head lower as far as you dare.”
How far Sass dared was far indeed, provided she had the controls instead of him. The topographic tank was beginning to make sense to her. Not that the terrain was too difficult. At this point, Japan flowed strictly down-mountain into a good-sized ocean. And her tours on Denali gave plenty of training at mountain-dodging.
She suddenly jogged left. OK, so she hadn’t read the map correctly on that particular outcrop.
“Give me control over the engines. To stall and resume them.”
“I can’t. Why?”
“Then you’ll do it when I tell you to. Off, and on. Got it?”
The scene before her suddenly flashed bright. Instinct made her pull up before the shockwave hit them. The new friendlies had arrived head-on. That explosion took out her one remaining tailing jet. But the angel above shot back and took him out, the clouds flashing bright yellow with flame again.
She pulled back hard to gain altitude, turning toward the left.
“Why isn’t anyone shooting at us?” she inquired.
Melkor scratched his gills. “They keep promising to. Maybe they want us alive?”
To a point, Sass allowed. In practice, someone else wanted them alive, while fighter pilots preferred to survive the night. And the angel was dropping back to get her in his sights.
“OFF!” she yelled.
The falling elevator-down lurch hit her as she dropped 900 meters, all the altitude she could spare. A missile streamed above them to confirm her instincts.
“ON!” Terror made him quick to comply, and she shot forward again.
“Melkor, next time keep the inertial dampeners on. Only engines off.”
His voice squeaked upward. “Next time?”
Sass sighed. The diplomat dreamed a brave game. But executing under fire took a kind of guts no one developed in genteel conference rooms. “Where am I landing?” Though her belief in this plane connection remained low and sinking fast.
“I need to take us in on a beam. Um, it was back there.”
By now the shuttle was over the Pacific. Or more precisely, over a broad flotilla of boat people. The jets Sass had left behind were coming back around. “Is the beam still on?”
“Um. No.”
Sass turned hard left, seeking open ocean and climbing steeply again. And another missile found their second friendly, turning him into a fireball. “Does this shuttle –?” Why was she asking him? “Clay! Find breathing gear. Wrap it in your shirt if you have to!”
“Please God, don’t,” Clay begged.
“Don’t what?” Melkor asked in alarm.
“This shuttle can’t make it to friendlies, right?” Sass kept a weather eye on the jets behind. On her six, eight, three, plus one coming into angels, dammit. She didn’t have the speed to shake them, and nowhere else to go.
“No. I mean yes! We could –”
“Too late,” Sass judged. “OFF!”
Fortunately, the diplomat still followed instructions. Two missiles screamed overhead this time. Yeah, the fighter jocks were done with that keep-alive directive. This time, no elevator drop sensation accompanied them as they dropped like a stone.
“You hold on tight, Fidget,” Sass crooned. “Backup would be nice. ON!”
“There is no more backup!” Melkor screeched.
But Sass had steerage again, with barely ten meters clearance above massive three-meter waves on the open ocean, in a frisky 30-knot gale, over 50 kph. She rapped her altimeter sharply for lying to her. Thrive used to do that to her, report altitude from the average height of waves. She didn’t need the average.
Would it work to dodge between the waves? Would that keep them out of their pursuers’ radar? She thought it through lightning-fast, and concluded no, they followed a beacon embedded in the shuttle. Well that sucked.
But a jet plane could not stop. And putting together a rough-water search team would take time. Not enough time. Yeah, there was no alternative. Best do it quick.
“Clay, ready?” She glanced back. He stood at a closet in back, stuffing gear into his shirt. He already wore a breath mask. Good man! She should marry that guy sometime. “You need to belt in!”
“You can’t!” Melkor objected. “We can surrender! Head back to Hakone!”
“Go!” Clay yelled, diving into the nearest seat.
Sass dropped the nose of the shuttle and accelerated straight into the biggest wave at hand.
“BRACE!”
She reached over and shoved Melkor’s face down. She modeled good behavior by tucking her chin and clutching one arm over her eyes and the other around her mink stole.
36
The workers who built the colony ships stayed behind.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, nothing changed. The shuttle’s inertial dampeners bequeathed a smooth-as-silk ride through the gale, smack into the mountainous pyramid of a midnight wave.
This brief illusion shattered like a melon, just like the windscreen did. Inertia failed abruptly, ramming Sass forward, as her harness belts cut into her shoulders. Fidget screamed in her ear. The mink probably wasn’t as loud as the screaming terror of Melkor, but her high-pitched proximity to Sass’s eardrum won the yelling contest hands-down.
Everyone shut up briefly as ice cold salt water smacked her. Or Sass didn’t hear them underwater. Great dark gurgling and creaking surrounded her. Streamers of bubbles and unknown scary bits skittered across her skin. The North Pacific was rego cold in November! The water bobbed her head every which way as the shuttle bounced and wallowed. She kept her eyes closed and panted out, blowing tiny bubbles, praying real air would return soon. It should. Shouldn’t it?
It did! The shuttle leapt up and rocked. The water receded to splash around her thighs. She spit out the rest of her air, and gulped in hard to fill her lungs again.
Clay yelled out from the cabin behind. “WOOT! That was fun!” He laughed out loud, cracking up back there.
And Sass’s head grew light. Was she bleeding, her life pouring out to join its ancestral seas? No, the rego air wasn’t any good. “Clay! Need help breathing!”
“On my way!”
She turned to Melkor. And two wavelets slapped together and spit water in her eye. She could see almost nothing. Half of the console still glowed, and half the time it was above water. Without the windscreen, the cockpit had become one with the ocean.
“Are you alright?” she yelled over to the diplomat. His head lolled back, fishy orbs to the sky, and he gasped for air. “Clay, Melkor first!”
“Would have done that anyway,” he noted, splashing toward them. “Here.” He thrust a disorderly collection of old-fashioned deflated Mae West vests at her. These dropped into the lurching water, but he was only working his hands free.
He slipped a breath mask onto Melkor. He stroked his face, peering at him upside-down. “Melkor! Are you hurt?” He worked around to the center, crowding Sass and Fidget, to work the man’s seat belt harness free.
The diplomat finally gasped loudly. “C-c-cold.”
Sass watched this in airy fascination, through red-lighted visibility on, off, on. As unruly waters lapped her knees, then crotch, then breasts, and down again. Her luxurious mink stole was a bastion of warmth amidst stunning cold. She panted shallowly, and was slightly worried about that. But the warmth of the mink was beginning to steal down to her freezing fingers. She duc
ked her face as the gale blasted in through the window and stole her breath away. And her seat started tilting downhill.
“Clay!” she whispered in rapture. Her gorgeous man, her knight in shining red water. Why had she never asked him to marry her? The time never seemed right. In a century, so that probably –
He wrenched himself around, wedged between the pilot seats, and rummaged in his shirt. Such hunky shoulders and gorgeous pecs he had, and abs to die for. It was a privilege to –
Finally he clapped a breath mask to her face. Questing fingers yanked her hair as he clumsily tried to get the earpieces anchored.
“Ow!” She slapped his hands away to do it herself, with fingers that moved like Monday axle grease from the cold. Like molasses in winter, she recalled, was the saying on Earth. She’d never tasted molasses. Mahina’s cold Monday axle grease always did make more sense.
With oxygen restored to her brain, and her senses quickly regrouping, she finished securing her mask, then hastily unbuckled her harness. But she didn’t shrug out of it quite yet. All the wave action in here made Clay struggle to stand upright. So that step could wait.
First she explored the mask more carefully. Based on the fiddly bits sticking out of it, this was a rebreather type, with additional oxygen supplied by a tiny pressurized canister. That wasn’t much, and a rebreather wasn’t sealed. But there was also an input to attach it to a bigger oxygen feed. And there was oxygen in the surrounding air, just not enough to stay conscious for long under activity. Good to know, she allowed sadly. She sure hoped Clay stuffed some air canisters in his bulging shirt-bag. But the only part she saw from her angle featured square corners sticking out.
“Is he alright?” she yelled above howling wind and slapping water.
“Shocky. I don’t think he’s hurt.”
“He’s rego freezing, Clay. Got emergency blankets?”
