Bramly, the chief engineer on the St. Malo, keys in. “Sir, I would think that the designers would have protected the brain from such a possibility.…”
“Do you know? demands de Soya.
“No, sir,” says Bramly after a moment.
“But that AI is totally organic?” persists de Soya.
“Yes,” comes Captain Hearn’s voice on tightbeam. “Except for the electronic and bubble-memory interfaces, a ship’s AI of that era would have been cross-helix-structured DNA held in suspension with …”
“All right,” says de Soya on multiple tightbeams to all ships. “Hold your positions. Do not … repeat … do not let the girl’s ship change course or attempt spinup to C-plus. If it attempts this, merge and stun.”
Acknowledgment lights flicker from MAGI and the outer ships.
“… so please don’t create this disaster,” comes the end of Aenea’s broadcast. “We are only trying to land on Renaissance Vector.”
Father Captain de Soya opens his tightbeam to her ship. “Aenea,” he says, his voice gentle, “let us board and we’ll take you to the planet.”
“I guess I’d rather land there myself,” says the girl. De Soya thinks that he can hear a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Renaissance Vector is a big world,” says de Soya, watching the tactical readout as he speaks. They are ten minutes from entering atmosphere. “Where do you want to land?”
Silence for a full minute. Then Aenea’s voice. “The Leonardo Spaceport in DaVinci would be all right.”
“That spaceport has been closed for more than two hundred years,” says de Soya. “Aren’t your ship’s memory banks more recent than that?”
Only silence on the com channels.
“There is a Pax Mercantilus spaceport at the western quadrant of DaVinci,” he says. “Will that do?”
“Yes,” says Aenea.
“You will have to change direction, enter orbit, and land under space traffic control,” tightbeams de Soya. “I will download the delta-v changes now.”
“No!” says the girl. “My ship will land us.”
De Soya sighs and looks at Captain Wu and Father Brown. Commander Barnes-Avne says, “My Marines can board within two minutes.”
“Her ship will be entering atmosphere in … seven minutes,” de Soya says. “At her velocity, even the slightest miscalculation will be fatal.” He keys the tightbeam. “Aenea, there is too much space and aircraft traffic over DaVinci for you to try a landing like this. Please instruct your ship to obey the orbital insertion parameters I’ve just transmitted and—”
“I’m sorry, Father Captain,” says the girl, “but we’re going to land now. If you want the spaceport traffic control to send up approach data, that would help. If I talk to you again, it’ll be when we’re all on the ground. This is … me … out.”
“Damn!” says de Soya. He keys Pax Mercantilus Traffic Control. “Did you copy that, Control?”
“Sending approach data … now,” comes the controller’s voice.
“Hearn, Stone, Boulez,” snaps de Soya. “You copy?”
“Acknowledged,” says Mother Captain Stone. “We’re going to have to break off in … three minutes ten seconds.”
De Soya flicks into tactical long enough to see the hub and wheel breaking up as the torchships initiate their delta-v’s to achieve braking orbits. The ships were never designed for atmosphere. The St. Malo has been in orbit around the planet and now lies almost in the path of the girl’s ship as it brakes wildly before entering atmosphere. “Prepare my dropship,” commands de Soya.
“CAP?” he says over the planetary com channel.
“Here, sir,” comes Flight Commander Klaus’s acknowledgment. She and forty-six other Scorpions are waiting in combat air patrol high above DaVinci.
“Are you tracking?”
“Good plots, sir,” says Klaus.
“I remind you that no shots will be fired except under my direct command, Flight Commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The St. Malo will be launching … ah … seventeen fighters, which will follow the target ship down,” says de Soya. “My dropship will make the number eighteen. Our transponders will be set to oh-five-nine.”
“Affirmative,” says Klaus. “Beacons to oh-five-niner. Target ship and eighteen friendlies.”
“De Soya out,” he says, and unplugs his umbilicals to the Combat Control Center panels. Tactical space disappears. Captain Wu, Father Brown, Commander Barnes-Avne, Sergeant Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig follow him to the dropship. The dropship pilot, a lieutenant named Karyn Norris Cook, is waiting with all systems ready. It takes less than a minute for them to buckle in and launch from the St. Malo’s flight tube. They have rehearsed this many times.
De Soya is getting tactical feed through the dropship net as they enter atmosphere.
“The girl’s ship has wings,” says the pilot, using the ancient phrase. For millennia, “feet dry” has meant an aircraft crossing over land, “feet wet” signifies crossing over water, and “has wings” means translation from space to atmospheric travel.
A visual of the ship shows that this is not literally true. While data on the old ship suggests that it has some morphing capability, it has not actually grown wings in this case. Cameras from the defense pickets clearly show the girl’s ship entering the atmosphere stern-first, balancing on a tail of fusion flame.
Captain Wu leans close to de Soya. “Cardinal Lourdusamy said that this child is a threat to the Pax,” she whispers so that the others cannot hear.
Father Captain de Soya nods tersely.
“What if he meant that she could be a threat to millions of people on Renaissance V.?” Wu whispers. “That fusion drive alone is a terrible weapon. A thermonuclear explosion above the city …”
De Soya feels his insides clamping with the chill of those words, but he has thought this out. “No,” he whispers back. “If she turns the fusion tail on anything, we stun the ship, shoot out its engines, and let it fall.”
“The girl …,” begins Captain Wu.
“We can only hope she’ll survive the crash,” says de Soya. “We won’t let thousands … or millions … of Pax citizens die.” He leans back in his acceleration couch and keys the spaceport, knowing that the tightbeam has to punch through the layer of ionization around the screeching dropship. Glancing at the external video, he sees that they are crossing the terminator: it will be dark at the spaceport.
“Spaceport Control,” acknowledges the Pax traffic director. “The target ship is decelerating on our directed flight path. Delta-v is high … illegal … but acceptable. All aircraft traffic cleared for a thousand-kilometer radius. Time to landing … four minutes thirty-five seconds.”
“Spaceport secured,” chimes in Commander Barnes-Avne on the same net.
De Soya knows that there are several thousand Pax troops in and around the spaceport. Once the girl’s ship is down, it will never be allowed to take off again. He looks at the live video: the lights of DaVinci gleam from horizon to horizon. The girl’s ship has its navigation lights on, red and green beacons flashing. The powerful landing lights flick on and stab downward through clouds.
“On path,” comes the traffic controller’s calm voice. “Deceleration nominal.”
“We have a visual!” cries CAP commander Klaus over the net.
“Keep your distance,” tightbeams de Soya. The Scorpions can sting from several hundred klicks out. He does not want them crowding the descending ship.
“Affirmative.”
“On path, ILS reports nominal descent, three minutes to touchdown,” the controller calls up to the girl’s ship. “Unidentified ship, you are cleared to land.”
Silence from Aenea.
De Soya blinks in tactical. The girl’s ship is a red ember now, almost hovering ten thousand meters above the Pax spaceport. De Soya’s dropship and the fighters are a klick higher, circling like angry insects. Or vultures, thinks the father-captain. The Llan
o Estacado had vultures, although why the seed-ship colonists had imported them, no one knew. The staked plains—the stakes being the atmosphere generators set in a grid every thirty klicks—had been dry and windy enough to reduce any corpse to a mummy within hours.
De Soya shakes his head to clear it.
“One minute to landing,” reports the controller. “Unidentified ship, you are approaching zero descent rate. Please modify delta-v to continue descent along designated flight path. Unidentified ship, please acknowledge.…”
“Damn,” whispers Captain Wu.
“Sirs,” says Pilot Karyn Cook, “the ship has stopped descending. It’s hanging there about two thousand meters above the spaceport.”
“We see it, Lieutenant,” says de Soya. The ship’s red and green lights are flashing. The landing lights on the rear fins are bright enough to illuminate the spaceport tarmac more than a mile and a half below them. Other spacecraft at the port are dark; most have been pulled into hangars or onto secondary taxiways. The circling aircraft, including his own dropship, show no lights. On the multiple tightbeam he says, “All ships and aircraft, keep your distance, hold your fire.”
“Unidentified ship,” says the Pax controller, “you are drifting off path. Please resume nominal descent rate at once. Unidentified ship, you are leaving controlled airspace. Please resume controlled descent at once.…”
“Shit,” whispers Barnes-Avne. Her troopers wait in concentric circles around the spaceport, but the girl’s ship is no longer above the spaceport—it drifts over the center of DaVinci. The ship’s landing lights wink off.
“The ship’s fusion drive shows no signs of coming on,” de Soya says to Captain Wu. “Note that it’s on repulsors alone.”
Wu nods but is obviously not satisfied. A fusion-drive ship hovering above an urban center is like a guillotine blade over an exposed neck.
“CAP,” calls de Soya, “I’m moving within five hundred meters. Please close with me.” He nods to the pilot, who brings the dropship down and around in a predatory swoop. In their rear couches Gregorius and the other two troopers sit stiffly in full combat armor.
“What the hell is she up to?” whispers Commander Barnes-Avne. On his tactical band de Soya can see that the commander has authorized a hundred or so troopers to rise on reaction paks to follow the drifting ship. To the external cameras the troopers are invisible.
De Soya remembers the small aircraft or flying pak that had plucked the girl from the Valley of the Time Tombs. He keys ground control and the orbital pickets. “Sensors? Are you watching for small objects leaving the target ship?”
The acknowledgment is from the primary picket ship. “Yessir … don’t worry, sir, nothin’ bigger’n a microbe’s gonna get out of that ship without us trackin’ it, sir.”
“Very good,” says de Soya. What have I forgotten? Aenea’s ship continues floating slowly over DaVinci, heading north-northwest at about twenty-five klicks per hour—a slow, vertical dirigible drifting on the wind. Above the ship swirl the fighters that have entered atmosphere with de Soya’s dropship. Around the ship, like the rotating walls of a hurricane around the eye, are the CAP Scorpions. Beneath, flitting just above city buildings and bridges, tracking proceedings on their own suit-visor infrared sensors and tracking feeds, fly the spaceport Marines and troopers.
The girl’s ship floats on silent EM repulsore over the skyscrapers and industrial areas of DaVinci on Renaissance Vector. The city is ablaze with highway lights, building lights, the green swaths of playing fields, and the brightly lit rectangles of parking areas. Tens of thousands of groundcars creep along ribbons of elevated highways, their headlights adding to the city light show.
“It’s rotating, sirs,” reports the pilot. “Still on repulsors.”
On video as well as tactical, de Soya can see Aenea’s ship slowly turning from the vertical to the horizontal. No wings appear. This attitude would be strange for the passengers, but makes no practical difference—the internal fields must still be controlling “up” and “down.” The ship, looking more than ever like a silver dirigible drifting with the soft breezes, floats over the river and railyards of northwest DaVinci. Traffic control demands a response, but the com channels remain silent.
What have I forgotten? wonders Father Captain de Soya.
WHEN AENEA ASKED THE SHIP TO ROTATE TO THE horizontal, I admit that I almost lost my composure for a moment.
The sense of losing one’s balance was all but overwhelming. All three of us had been standing near the edge of the circular room, looking down through the clear hull as if peering over a cliffs edge. Now we tipped over toward those lights a thousand meters below. A. Bettik and I took several involuntary steps back toward the center of the room—I actually flailed my arms to keep my balance—but Aenea remained at the edge of the room, watching the ground tip up and become a wall of city buildings and lights.
I almost sat down on the couch, but I managed to remain standing and control my vertigo by seeing the ground as a giant wall we were flying past. Streets and the rectangular grid of city blocks moved by as we drifted forward. I turned in a complete circle, seeing the few brightest stars through the city glare behind me. The clouds reflected back the orange lights of the city.
“What are we looking for now?” I asked. At intervals the ship reported the presence of the circling aircraft and the number of sensors probing us. We had ordered the ship to shut off the insistent demands of spaceport traffic control.
Aenea had wanted to see the river. Now we were over it—a dark, serpentine ribbon wound through the city lights. We drifted over it toward the northwest. Occasionally a barge or pleasure boat passed underneath—although from this perspective, the lights seemed to crawl up or down the “wall” of the city we were drifting by.
Instead of answering me directly, Aenea said, “Ship, you’re sure that this used to be part of the Tethys?”
“According to my charts,” said the ship. “Of course, my memory is not …”
“There!” cried A. Bettik, pointing directly ahead down the line of dark river.
I could see nothing, but evidently Aenea did. “Get us lower,” she ordered the ship. “Quickly.”
“The safety margins have already been violated,” said the ship. “If we drop below this altitude, we may …”
“Do it!” shouted the girl. “Override. Code6 Prelude—C-Sharp.’ Do it!”
The ship lurched down and forward.
“Head for that arch,” said Aenea, pointing directly overhead along the wall of city and dark river.
“Arch?” I said. Then I saw it—a black chord, an arc of darkness against the city lights.
A. Bettik looked at the girl. “I had half expected it to be gone … torn down.”
Aenea showed her teeth. “They can’t tear it down. It would take atomic explosives.… and even those might not work. The TechnoCore directed the construction of those things … they’re built to last.”
The ship was hurtling forward now on repulsors. I could clearly see the arch of the farcaster portal like a giant hoop over the river. An industrial park had grown up around the ancient artifact, and the railyards and storage yards were empty except for cracked concrete, weeds, rusting wire, and the hulks of abandoned machines. The portal was still a kilometer away. I could see the lights of the city through it … no, now it seemed to shimmer a bit, as if a curtain of water were falling from the metal arch.
“We’re going to make it!” I said. No sooner were the words out than a violent explosion rattled the ship and we began plunging toward the river.
“THE OLD FARCASTER PORTAL!” CRIES DE SOYA. HE had seen the arch a minute earlier but had thought it another bridge. Now it sinks in. “They’re headed for the farcaster portal. This used to be part of the River Tethys!” He brings up tactical. Sure enough—the girl’s ship is accelerating toward the arch.
“Relax,” says Commander Barnes-Avne. “The portals are dead. They haven’t worked since the Fall. It can’t
—”
“Get us closer!” de Soya shouts at the pilot. The dropship accelerates, throwing them all deep into their couch cushions. There is no internal containment field in a dropship. “Get us close! Close the gap!” de Soya shouts at the lieutenant. On the wideband command channels, he says, “All aircraft, close on the target.”
“They’re going to beat us to it,” says Pilot Cook through the three-g force pressing her back into the command chair.
“CAP leader!” calls de Soya, his voice strained by the high-g load. “Fire at the target. Fire to disable engines and repulsors. Now!”
Energy beams lance through the night. The girl’s ship seems to stumble in midair, like a gutshot beast, and then falls into the river several hundred meters short of the farcaster portal. An explosion of steam mushrooms up into the night.
The dropship banks around the pillar of steam at an altitude of a thousand meters. The air is filled with circling aircraft and flying troopers. The com channels are suddenly alive with excited chatter.
“Shut up!” orders de Soya over the widebands. “CAP leader, can you see the ship?”
“Negative,” comes Klaus’s voice. “Too much steam and debris from the explosion …”
“Was there an explosion?” demands de Soya. Then, on tightbeam to the defense pickets a thousand klicks above, “Radar? Sensors?”
“The target ship is down,” comes the reply.
“I know that, you idiot,” says de Soya. “Can you scan it under the river surface?”
“Negative,” answers the picket. “Too much airborne and ground clutter. Deep radar can’t discriminate between—”
“Damn,” says de Soya. “Mother Captain Stone?”
“Yes,” comes his former exec’s voice from her torchship in orbit.
“Slag it,” orders de Soya. “The portal. The river beneath it. Slag it for a full minute. Slag it until it melts. Wait … slag it in thirty seconds.” He switches to airborne tactical bands. “Every aircraft and trooper in the vicinity … you have thirty seconds before a CPB lances this entire area. Scatter!”