Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (53 page)

 
          
Somewhere
in the South China Sea

 
          
Time
and date unknown

 
          
She
was the rain, soaking them. She was the wind sheering through their skulls. She
was the tumult of the ocean, heaving her chest to plunge them into the black,
salty hell, then lifting them up into the pure gray clouds. Again and again she
twirled them back and forth, lashing them in every direction until she became
them all, and they became her.

 
          
When
Breanna Stockard pulled the handle on the ejection seat, time and space had
merged. She now occupied all possible times and all possible places—the moment
of the ejection seat exploding beneath her, the storm reaching down to take her
from the plane, the universe roaring at her pointlessness.

 
          
She
could see the canopy of the parachute. She could see the ocean collapsing
around her. She could feel her helmet slamming against the slipstream; she
could smell the rose water of a long-ago bath.

 
          
Somehow,
the raft had inflated.

 
          
Stoner
had saved her with his strong arms, pulling against the chute that wouldn’t
release, but that finally, under his tugging, did release. Breanna had pulled
at Ferris, who bobbed helmetless before her, but it had been Stoner who grabbed
her. It was Stoner who disappeared.

 
          
She
was the roll of the ocean and the explosion that sent them from the airplane.
She was the storm soaking them all.

 
          
Stoner
felt his fingers slipping again. They wouldn’t close. The best he could manage
was to punch his hands on the raft, shifting his weight slightly as the wave
swelled up. It threw him sideways and, whether because of good luck, or God, or
just coincidence, the momentum of the raft and the swell threw him back into
the small float, on top of the two pilots. Water surged up his nostrils; he
shook his head violently, but the salt burned into his chest and lungs.
Fortunately, he didn’t have anything left to puke.

 
          
The
sea pushed him sideways and his body slipped downward. An arm grabbed his just
as he went into the water. In the tumult, it wasn’t clear whether he pulled his
rescuer into the sea or whether he’d been hooked and saved; lightening flashed
and he realized he was on his back, lying across the other two, the man and the
woman.

 
          
“Lash
ourselves together,” he told them, the rain exploding into his face. “Keep
ourselves together until the storm ends.”

 
          
The
others moved, but not in reaction to what he said. they were gripping on to the
boat, holding again as the waves pitched them upward.

 
          
“We
can make it,” he said. “We’ll lash ourselves together.”

 
          
He
reached for his knife at his leg, thinking he would use it to cut his pants leg
into a rope. As he did, he touched bare skin on his leg.

 
          
They’d
already tied themselves together. Somehow, in the nightmare, he’d forgotten.

 
          
Aboard the Dragon Ship in the South China
Sea

 
          
August
29, 1997, 0800

 
          
The
message was not entirely unexpected, but it nonetheless pained Chen Lo
Fann
greatly. In language bereft of polite formulas and its
usual ambiguity, the government demanded an explanation for the activities of
the past few days that “led to this dangerous instability.”

 
          
Dangerous
instability. An interesting phrase.

 
          
Obviously,
the Americans were making the presence felt. Peace was in the American
interest, not theirs; true Chinese prayed for the day of return, the
instatement of the proper government throughout all of the provinces of China.
Inevitably, this war would lead to the destruction of the Communists.

 
          
The
angry gods of the sea had thrown a typhoon against the two fleets, halting
their battle after a few opening salvos. In the interim, the Americans, the
British, and the UN had all stepped up their efforts to negotiate peace.

 
          
Surely
that would fail. The Communists had lost an aircraft carrier and countless men.
The storm would multiply the damage done to their ships. They would want
revenge.

 
          
The
Indians too would fight. They understood this battle was about their survival.
If the Chinese and their Islamic allies were not stopped, the Hindus would be
crushed.

 
          
Chen
Lo
Fann
stood on the bridge as the storm lashed
against the lass and rocked the long boat mercilessly. He had always understood
that, as necessary as they were, the Americans were not, at heart, their
brothers. When their interests did not coincide, they would betray his country—as
Nixon had shown a generation earlier, bringing the criminals into the UN.

 
          
Lao
Tze
had spoken of this.

 
          
The
god of heaven and earth show no pity. Straw dogs are forever trampled.

 
          
Now,
his government was making him the straw dog. He needed leverage.

 
          
The
American Megafortress had been shot down; undoubtedly its crew was dead.
Americans were charmingly emotional about remains; a body or two, handled with
the proper military honors. Even an arm or leg. Such could be found and
prepared if the authentic article were not available.

 
          
Two
of his ships were in the area. As soon as the storm abated, they would begin
the search. After a short interval, they would find what they were looking for,
one way or another.

 
          
Meanwhile,
he would sail for Taiwan, as ordered.

 
          
Or
perhaps not.

 
          
Aboard Iowa

 
          
August
29, 1997, 1036 local (August 28, 1997, 1936 Dreamland)

 
          
“Not
there, Jen,” Zen told her.

 
          
“I’m
working on it.”

 
          
Jennifer
jammed the function keys on her IBM laptop, trying to get the requested program
data to reload, Zen tapped anxiously on the small ledge below his flight
controls. He was usually very good at corralling his frustration—to survive as
a test pilot you had to—but today he was starting to fray.

 
          
Of
course he was. If it was Tecumseh instead of Breanna down there, she’d be
twenty times worse.

 
          
This
ought to work—the program simply needed to know what frequency to try, that was
all it needed, and she had it right on the screen.

 
          
It
had accepted the array—she knew it had because when she looked at her dump of
the variables, they were all filled.

 
          
So
what the hell was the
screwup
?

 
          
Shit
damn fuck and shit again.

 
          
“Dreamland
Command—hey, Ray,” she said, banging her mile button on. “What the hell could
be locking me out?”

 
          
“The
list is exhaustive,” replied the scientist.

 
          
“Yeah,
but what the hell could be locking me out?”

 
          
“You’re
not being locked out,” he said. “The connection gets made. The handoff just
isn’t completed.”

 
          
She
picked up one of the two small laptops from the floor of the plane, sitting it
over the big
IMBer
in her lap. It was wired into the
circuit and set to show the results of the coding inquiries. Data was
definitely flowing back and forth; something was keeping it from feeding into
the Flighthawk control system.

 
          
The
security protocols of C³ maybe? The system had a whole series of protocols and
traps to keep out invaders. Even though the UMB plug-ins were being recognized
as “native,” it was possible that, somewhere along the way, they weren’t
kicking over the right flag.

 
          
She’d
put them in after C³ was up. Maybe if she started from scratch.

 
          
Right?

 
          
Maybe.

 
          
But,
God, that would take forever.

 
          
Kill
the Flighthawk. They wouldn’t use it anyway, right?

 
          
That
would save shitloads of time.

 
          
“Jeff,
I’m going to try something, but to do it, I have to knock the Flighthawks
off-line. You won’t be able to launch it.”

 
          
“Do
it.”

 
          
“I
guess I should check with Major Alou in case, you
knot
,
it interferes with her mission.”

 
          
“Just
do it.”

 
          
She
guessed he’d be angry, but she went ahead and talked to Alou anyway.

 
          
“We
won’t need the Flighthawk,” Alou told her. “Go ahead.”

 
          
“We’re
doing an adequate job from here,” said Rubeo when she told him what she had in
mind. “We’re already over the Pacific.”

 
          
“I
think this might work.”

 
          
“You
still have to take the computer off-line, enter new code, then reboot it.
Twenty minutes from now, you’ll still be in diagnostic mode.”

 
          
“I’ll
skip the test.”

 
          
“How
will you know you load right?”

 
          
“It’ll
work or it won’t. If it doesn’t, what have I lost?”

 
          
She
found an error in one of the vector lines before taking the system down. She
fixed it, then began the lengthy-procedure.

 
          
“Want
a soda?” Zen asked, pulling his helmet.

 
          
“Love
one, but—”

 
          
“I
got it,” he said. He undid his restraints, pulled over his wheelchair—it was
custom-strapped nearby—and then maneuvered himself into it. She’d seen him do
this before, but never in the air. He looked awkward, vulnerable.

 
          
Would
she have the guts to do that if she’d been paralyzed?

 
          
“We
got Pepsi, Pepsi, and more Pepsi. All diet. Which do you want? Asked Zen.

 
          
“Pepsi.”

 
          
“Good
choice.”

 
          
Ten
minute later, C³ gave her a series of beeps—at one point she’d wanted the
program in “Yankee Doodle” as the “I’m up” signal, but Rubeo had insisted—and
then filled the screens with its wake-up test pattern.

 
          
Two
minutes later, Zen shouted so loud she didn’t need the interphone.

 
          
“I’m
in. I’m there. I have a view.” He worked the keyboard in front of the joystick.
“Wow. All right. This is going to work. I can select the still camera, and I
have a synthesized radar. At least that’s what it says.”

 
          
She
glanced over and saw his hand working the joystick. “Woo—this is good.”