Aftershocks (59 page)

As usual, the little scaly devils wasted no time in responding. They
were
soldiers, and formidable soldiers at that. Three of their mechanized fighting vehicles, machines identical to the one in which Liu Han, her daughter, and Nieh Ho-T’ing had left the prison camp, rattled past her, guided toward the trouble—and toward ruination—by a couple of devil-boys. But they didn’t rattle very far. Barricades had already started going up. When the machines tried to bull them aside, the obstacles proved to have surprisingly solid cores.

Chinese rushed out from houses and storefronts to heave bottles of burning gasoline at the mechanized fighting vehicles. Liu Han had never learned why those were called Molotov cocktails, but they were. Two of the vehicles quickly caught fire. The third one sprayed death all around with its light cannon and with the scaly devils shooting from the firing ports set into the sides of the machine. Fighters fell one after another. At last, though, the third vehicle started burning, too, and the little devils inside had to bail out or be roasted. They lasted only moments outside their armored shell.

Columns of smoke began rising into the sky all over Peking. Liu Han nodded in sober satisfaction as she watched them sprout. Now the little scaly devils would really know they had an insurrection on their hands. What would they do next, now that their mechanized fighting vehicles were having trouble?
Send in the landcruisers, of course,
Liu Han thought. Landcruisers were the bludgeon they’d used to retake Peking after the last progressive uprising.

Sure enough, here came a pair of them, with infantrymales skittering along beside them spraying gunfire to keep would-be flingers of Molotov cocktails from getting close enough to harm them. Some of the little devils fighting on foot went down. The rest stayed with the landcruisers. They were brave. Liu Han wished she could have denied them that virtue—and many others.

But the landcruisers got a surprise not long after they rolled past the burnt-out hulks of the mechanized fighting vehicles and shouldered aside the barricades that had stalled the lesser machines. Spewing tails of fire, antilandcruiser missiles manufactured by the
Reich
slammed into their relatively thin side armor. They brewed up, flame belching from their turrets.

“See how you like that!” Liu Han shouted. The Russians wouldn’t give rockets they made themselves, but they were willing to supply plenty of these.

And, when a helicopter thuttered by overhead, another missile swatted it out of the sky. Liu Han whooped again. If the little scaly devils thought they were going to keep China forever, if they thought they could get away with ruling over a people who yearned to rule themselves, some reeducation for them was in order. The People’s Liberation Army would provide it.

“I give you the option of declining this flight, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the female in the monitor told Nesseref. “Missiles have been fired at shuttlecraft attempting to land in the subregion known as China. Shuttlecraft have been damaged. Two, I am sorry to report, have been destroyed.”

Nesseref wondered how much truth that held. If the dispatcher admitted two shuttlecraft destroyed, how many more had gone down in flaming ruin? Nevertheless, she said, “Superior female, I will accept the mission. I have seen the aftermath of fighting here in Poland. We must maintain control of the areas of Tosev 3 where we presently rule.”

“I thank you for your display of public spirit,” the dispatcher said. “Many from the colonization fleet in particular have seemed reluctant to accept any personal risk in maintaining our position on Tosev 3.”

“I find that unfortunate,” Nesseref said. “It lends truth to the disparaging comments certain males of the conquest fleet have been known to make about us colonists. Tosev 3 is now our world, too.”

“Exactly so.” The other female made the affirmative gesture, then turned one eye turret toward a monitor other than the one in which she was speaking with Nesseref. “Report to your shuttlecraft port at once. The male you are transporting to China will be waiting there for you.”

“It shall be done,” Nesseref said, and broke the connection. She didn’t leave her apartment quite
at once.
First, she made sure Orbit had enough food and water to last him till her expected return, and for some little while after that, too. “Behave yourself while I am gone,” she told the tsiongi. He yawned in lordly disdain, as if to say she had no business telling him what to do.

She couldn’t wait for the regularly scheduled transport to the shuttlecraft port. That meant she had to hire a Big Ugly to drive her there. In her experience, Tosevites in motorcars were more dangerous than members of the Race in shuttlecraft, but she survived the journey and gave her driver enough of the metal disks the locals used as currency to keep him happy.

One of the males in charge of maintaining shuttlecraft hurried up to her. He pointed to the machine waiting on the concrete. “You are fully fueled, and your oxygen supply is also full. We have thoroughly checked the shuttlecraft. I assure you, everything is as it should be.”

“I thank you for your care.” As always, Nesseref would make her own checks before she let her fingerclaw press the launch control. She asked, “Is my passenger ready? He had better be, seeing how urgently I was sent here.”

“Here he comes now,” the technician answered, pointing with his tongue toward the blockhouse by the broad concrete expanse of the landing area. And, sure enough, another male hurried up to the technician and Nesseref.

“I greet you, superior sir,” Nesseref told him, for his body paint was a good deal more ornate than hers.

“And I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” he answered. “I am Relhost. I have considerable experience in fighting Big Uglies, both in full-scale combat against organized forces and in battle against irregulars. I am given to understand the situation in China combines elements of both combat modes.”

“All right, superior sir.” Nesseref didn’t need to know anything about Relhost’s expertise. She assumed he had it; if not, he wouldn’t have been sent to China. She started for the shuttlecraft. Relhost followed. She climbed the mounting ladder and took her place in the pilot’s seat. Relhost strapped himself into the passenger’s seat with a familiarity that showed he’d flown in a shuttlecraft a good many times before.

“Must we give the SSSR notice that we will be flying over its territory?” Relhost asked.

“I am afraid so, superior sir,” Nesseref answered. “Permission is routine, but the Big Uglies are touchy about being informed of our flights. And we are required to treat their independent not-empires as if they were our equals.”

“I understand,” Reihost said with a sigh. “But the SSSR shares an ideology with the Chinese Big Uglies. The rebels will thus learn of our flight as soon as we launch, if they do not already know of it. They may well be waiting for us on our arrival.”

“Nothing to be done about that, superior sir,” Nesseref said. She radioed the blockhouse: “Are we cleared for launch?”

“You are, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” came the reply. Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled, checking all the gauges one last time. Everything was as it should have been. She would have been astonished were it otherwise, but she did not want astonishment of that sort. Her fingerclaw stabbed at the launch control. The motor roared to life beneath her. Acceleration shoved her back in her seat.

It was, of course, only a suborbital hop, perhaps a quarter of the way around Tosev 3. After the motor cut off—precisely on schedule—they had a brief stretch of weightlessness before Nesseref would have to begin preparations for landing.

Relhost sighed. “Now to see what new horrible tricks the Big Uglies have devised to drive us mad. I commanded the attack on Chicago, over on the lesser continental mass, back during the first winter of the fighting. The conditions were terrible, and the American Big Uglies struck hard at our flanks. They threw us back. It was then that we really knew what a desperate struggle we would have before we could make this world our own.”

“We still have not made it our own.” Nesseref was perhaps less diplomatic than she might have been.

“No, we have not,” Rethost agreed. “But whatever else we do, we cannot allow a rebellious area to break away from our control. That would be an open invitation to Tosevites all over the planet to try to break away from us.”

“That is probably a truth.” Nesseref corrected herself before her high-ranking passenger could correct her: “No, that is certainly a truth.”

A Tosevite voice came from the radio receiver: “Shuttlecraft of the Race, this is Akmolinsk Control. Your trajectory is acceptable. You are warned not to maneuver over the territory of the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, or we shall be forced to respond vigorously to your aggression.”

“Acknowledged, Akmolinsk Control,” Nesseref said, and then turned off the transmitter with quite unnecessary violence. To Relhost, she added, “I grow very tired of the arrogance the Big Uglies display.”

“As do we all, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the officer answered. “And they display less than they feel—in Akmolinsk, our name is cursed, as it is over much of the planet. They truly do believe they are our equals, as you said. Reeducating them will require generations: like their preposterous superstitions, their political ideologies have taken deep root among them. Sooner or later, though, we shall succeed.”

“May it be so,” Nesseref said. “And now, superior sir, if you will excuse me . . .” She examined the plot of the actual trajectory as measured against the planned one, and authorized the computer to make the small burns necessary to bring the one into conformity with the other. “We should be landing soon.”

As if to confirm that, a member of the Race came on the radio: “Shuttlecraft, we have you on radar. Trajectory for the shuttlecraft port outside Peking is acceptable.”

“How nice,” Nesseref said, acid in her voice. “The Big Uglies in the SSSR told me exactly the same thing.”

“Be glad they did,” answered the controller at the shuttlecraft port. “They can be most difficult, even dangerous, if your trajectory varies in any way from that which is planned. You will no doubt know this for yourself. But, speaking of dangerous, I will tell you something the Big Uglies in the SSSR did not: be extremely alert in your descent. Tosevite rebels are active in the area, and are equipped with missiles homing on radar and on the heat emissions of your engine as you brake for landing.”

“And what do I do if they launch one of these missiles at me?” Nesseref asked.

“You do the best you can, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the controller answered. “In that case, you discover how good a pilot you truly are, and how well you have studied and practiced the manual overrides. Shuttlecraft computers are not programmed to operate on the assumption that something is trying to shoot them down.”

“Here on Tosev 3, they should be,” Nesseref said indignantly.

“As may be, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the controller said. “Perhaps they will be, at some time in the future. For the present, good luck. Out.”

Relhost waggled an eye turret in an ironic way. “Good luck, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

“I thank you so very much, superior sir,” Nesseref said.

Her own eye turrets went to the manual controls. Of course she’d put in endless simulator practice with them. But how seriously had she taken it? How well could she fly the shuttlecraft on her own? And, if something happened to her, who would take care of Orbit? Mordechai Anielewicz, perhaps? No. He had a beffel. The two animals wouldn’t get along. Nesseref hoped she wouldn’t have to find out the answers to any of her questions.

But, even as the computer activated the braking rocket for final descent into the shuttlecraft port, she kept an anxious eye turret on the radar screen. And so the controller’s shout of alarm in the radio was not a warning, only a distraction. “I can see it,” she snarled. “Now shut up.”

Her fingerclaw stabbed the manual override control. She didn’t adjust the burn right away, but eyed the radar and the displays around it for data on the missile’s performance. That was alarmingly good. Whatever she was going to do, she didn’t have long to do it.

Relhost said, “I suggest, Shuttlecraft Pilot, that you do not waste time.”

“You shut up, too,” Nesseref hissed, a moment later absently adding, “superior sir.”

She would have only one chance. She saw as much. If she maneuvered too soon, that cursed missile would follow and knock her down. If she maneuvered too late, she wouldn’t get the chance to maneuver at all. She checked her fuel gauge. She would worry about that later, too. Now . . .

Now her fingerclaw hit the motor control, giving her maximum thrust and, in effect, relaunching her. The missile had only begun to pull up when it burst a little below the shuttlecraft. Shrapnel fragments pattered off her ship. Some of them didn’t patter off—some pierced it. Alarm lights came on.

Nesseref gave control back to the computer. She hoped she had enough fuel to brake again. If she didn’t, the Big Uglies who’d launched the missile would win even if they hadn’t disabled her. She also hoped with all her liver that they had no more missiles to launch. She’d been lucky once—she thought she’d been lucky. She doubted she could manage it twice.

“Well done,” Relhost said.

“I hope so,” Nesseref answered. Fuel alarms weren’t hissing at top volume, so maybe she would be able to get down in one piece. She went on, “You had better help suppress these rebels, superior sir. Otherwise, I will be very disappointed in you.” She granted herself the luxury of an emphatic cough.

When David Goldfarb came into the office of the Saskatchewan River Widget Works, Ltd., he found Hal Walsh there before him. That was nothing out of the ordinary; he often thought Walsh lived at the office. The music blaring out of a
skelkwank-
disk player was a different matter. It was a song by a quartet of shaven-headed young Englishmen who called themselves, perhaps from their appearance, the Beetles.

As far as David was concerned, they made noise, not music. His boss, most of a generation younger, loved it. So did a lot of people Walsh’s age; the Beetles were, in Goldfarb’s biased opinion, much more popular than they had any business being. Walsh was singing along at the top of his lungs when Goldfarb walked in.