Labyrinth of Night (8 page)

A short pause. Then Colonel Aldiss’ voice came over the comlink.
‘We copy that, Cydonia Command. Steeple Chase, code Romeo Delta two-triple-one, affirmative. We are go, repeat go, with code November Tango three-zero-nine, shall we dance?’

‘Affirmative, code November Tango three-zero-nine,’ Jessup replied, completing the chain. ‘Kick it out, Steeple Chase.’

‘Will do, Cydonia Command. Falcon Team is on the case. Over and out.’

Jessup signed off and settled down in a chair to watch a bank of TV monitors above the console. Fifteen minutes, if everything went according to plan.

Now, if only Oeljanov did not wise up before then…

You started out with The Working Blues…

That’s right. Jaime, Les and Amad, plus a couple of session people we hired for studio work on the two albums we did,
Flashpoint
and
Big House.
Good bunch of guys, great musicians.

So why did you break up the band and start playing solo?

Because I didn’t want to pay ’em. I’m cheap that way.
(Laughs.)
Naw, that isn’t it. The Working Blues was a hot ensemble and we were making money, enough to get by at least, but I just decided after a while, y’know, just to cut loose, see if I could get the blues back to…back to one guy and his guitar, just that. Not to make those guys sound bad, but I began to wonder if a backup band was necessary. It’s like, y’know, how John Mayall went for years without a drummer in his Blues-breakers ensembles because he considered a percussion section to be adding just a lot of noise. After a while, I began to wonder if we were overpowering the blues with all this extra stuff, so
(draws a finger across his throat) phfft!
I decided to get rid of the band. But I still respect and admire those guys. In fact, I’m going to be sitting in on the sessions for Jaime’s next album, so this time he gets a chance to fire me from
his
band.
(Laughs.)
I bet he does, too, just to get back.

Jaime and Amad have both claimed that your cocaine addiction caused the group to split apart. Sounds like we’ve got two different stories…

Well, no, there’s not two different stories. They’re just two parts of the same tale. Yeah, I was hooked on the stuff, there’s no denying that. It got bad enough that, when we were touring with the Cambodians, I was mainlining every time before we went onstage. First they’d hand me the syringe, then they’d give me my guitar. ‘Okay, Ben, go this way. Don’t fall over anything, now.’ And after the gig they’d put me on a couch in the dressing room and have someone check up on me to make sure I wouldn’t OD. I knew I was sick and they knew it, too, so while I was in the clinics and the halfway houses, getting clean and deciding that maybe I should try it solo, they decided that they were fed up with my bullshit. So it was a mutual parting of the ways. I don’t hold any grudges and I don’t think they do, either.

You once said, ‘Being a junkie is fun…all you need is patience and money.’

What else would you expect a junkie to say? Man, I don’t even remember when I said that.
(Pauses.)
No, it wasn’t because it was fun. I mean, nobody asks to be a junkie. I didn’t do it for thrills, ’cause there’s nothing I found thrilling about the stuff, and I can’t say it was social pressure, because those guys are clean and even blues audiences are straight these days.

So why did you start shooting coke in the first place?

That’s a mean, tough question. I guess…I think I was scared. I was looking for something, some transcendent experience that made me more of a part of the music. Just playing onstage wasn’t enough. But at the same time, I was scared of what I would find. Don’t ask me why, or what.
(Shakes his head.)
And maybe I’m still scared. I’m over the drugs, but I’m still afraid.

‘I
HOPE YOU’RE
not some scientist who wants to grab some rock samples ’cause I’m not putting ’em on board and we’re getting the hell out of here
now!’

W. J. Boggs, six feet of bowlegged Tennessee flyboy, did not wait for an answer as he lurched through the gondola’s airlock hatch and flopped into the pilot’s seat on the left side of the flight compartment. The co-pilot of the USS
Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Katsuhiko Shimoda, reached above Ben Cassidy—who was scrunched on the floor behind the seats—and flipped a switch to automatically seal the hatch while Boggs stabbed the radio button with his gauntleted thumb.

‘Cydonia Command, this is the
Burroughs,
requesting permission for emergency takeoff,’ he snapped. He did not wait for a reply. ‘Who gives a shit, anyway?’ he muttered. ‘We’re in a hurry here. Katsu, is that hatch secured?’

‘Roger that, W. J.’ Shimoda calmly flipped toggles on his flight station’s consoles. ‘Cabin pressurization cycle initiated. MPU’s at a hundred percent, check. Elevators, check. Envelope integrity is copacetic…’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Screw the checklist, let’s just get out of here.’

‘Burroughs, this is Cydonia Command. You are cleared for emergency takeoff.’

‘We copy, Command,’ Boggs replied. He glanced over his shoulder at Cassidy. ‘Hang on there, pal, this is going to be rough. Okay, Katsu, ropes off!’

Shimoda flipped two toggles which severed the airship’s tethers. The 120-foot airship bobbed in the stiff breeze which had kicked up as the sun began to set on the western horizon. On either side of the gondola, red dust was blown up from the ground by the idling VTOL turbofans; through the crimson haze the skinsuited ground crew were running from beneath the long, ovoid shadow of the blimp.

‘Elevators trimmed for vertical ascent!’ Boggs called out. ‘Port and starboard fans gimbaled to ninety and up to full throttle! Hang on, here we go!’

Boggs jammed the two engine throttles forward with his right hand and the
Burroughs
pitched back on its stern as it bolted skyward, its 800-horsepower turbofans howling as they clawed for loft in the tenuous Martian atmosphere. A ballpoint pen which had been left loose on the dashboard skittered down the surface and plummeted to the floor to continue its noisy descent to the rear of the cabin.

‘Oh, hell,’ Boggs murmured. ‘I was afraid of this.’ The pilot eyed his altimeter suspiciously, then glanced back again at Cassidy. ‘Can you fly?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Cassidy asked weakly. It seemed as if the airship was standing on its tail. He had already been sick once today; it wasn’t fair to make him go through this kind of ordeal again, less than an hour after reaching firm ground. He managed to look up from the few inches of deck between his knees. ‘This thing?’

‘No. I mean, if we have to throw you out the hatch, can you flap your arms and make it to the ground on your own? We’re overloaded and this ship isn’t made to take three people.’

‘Uhh…’

‘Damn.’ Boggs turned back to his controls. ‘Katsu, we’ve got a passenger here dumb enough to think he can flap his arms and fly. Hey, keep an eye on the radar, willya?’

Shimoda looked back at Cassidy. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s always cranky when he has to rush somewhere.’ He checked his gauges. ‘Cabin pressurization normal. We can remove our helmets.’

He unsnapped the collar of his skinsuit and removed his helmet, then reached over to take off Boggs’ helmet since the pilot had his hands occupied with the airship’s yoke. Cassidy fumbled with his own helmet, finally getting the thing to detach from his skinsuit; Shimoda helpfully reached back to push the switch on Cassidy’s chest unit which turned off the internal air supply. The Japanese co-pilot placed a headset over his own ears, then pulled a spare out of a locker to toss to the musician. Boggs managed, with one hand steadying the yoke against the buffeting of the wind, to yank a George Dickel baseball cap out from under his seat and pull it over his head, securing a headset over it. The foam-padded headsets barely muffled the engine roar, but the mikes made it a little easier for them to hear each other.

‘I’m sorry we had to leave your parcel behind,’ Shimoda apologized. ‘Our cargo capacity is limited, as W. J. explained, and we’re forcing matters by putting you aboard. What was it, anyway?’

‘My guitar.’

‘A
guitar?’
Boggs yelled again. ‘Are you that musician we’re supposed to be sent?’

‘Yeah, that’s me. I’m the musician. That’s my guitar you left at the base. What are you in such a hurry for?’

Boggs peered at him closely, squinting the sunburn-wrinkled corners of his eyes. ‘You were just up there. You tell me. All I know is, I just got high-priority orders to get us the fuck outta here
mucho pronto.
Something’s about to happen back there and I was told not to have my vessel at risk.’ He returned his attention to the controls. ‘If there’s anything you need to tell us, son,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘now’s the time, ’cause I’m righteously p.o.’d…and I ain’t half-kidding about those flying lessons.’

‘Well, ah…’ Cassidy remembered Jessup’s warning to him, back on the
Shinseiki,
to keep his mouth shut. Screw it. Something nasty was about to come down, and he was only slightly more informed than these two characters. ‘There’s some Marines up there on the
Shinseiki,’
he said, and both men darted glances toward him. ‘Space Infantry,’ he added. ‘They’re planning something called Steeple Chase, but I don’t know what…’

‘Do they have landers?’ Boggs snapped. ‘STS craft?’

‘What’s an STS craft?’ Cassidy shrugged, feeling stupid; he was quickly getting used to the emotion. ‘I mean, if you know what’s going on here…’

‘Oh, I know. I know, all right.’ Boggs stared at Shimoda; the co-pilot nodded his head gravely. ‘Gotta be STS fighters. I’ll be a sheep-dipped son of a…’ He suddenly grinned at Shimoda, who merely smiled back and shook his head, then he glanced over his shoulder again at Cassidy. ‘So you’re the guitar player. That’s funny.’

‘It’s better than getting another boring scientist,’ Shimoda remarked.

‘Keep your eyes peeled on the radar, pal. Angels one-two and leveling off, course thirty-two north by four-zero-four east.’ Boggs pushed the yoke out of his lap and the airship’s nose eased back to a more horizontal position. Cassidy decided it was safe to look up again; he raised his eyes and gazed out the port window.

A thousand feet below him was the rocky, wind-scored terrain of the Martian low plains. The blimp’s tiny shadow passed over an endless red desert, falling into valleys and ancient crumbling riverbeds, passing over small hills and the eroded escarpment of an old impact crater. It was the first time he had gotten a chance to look at Mars; he hadn’t seen the landscape during the lander’s descent, and he had been bustled aboard the
Burroughs
before he had more than a few fleeting seconds to accustom himself to the one-third normal gravity, let alone the red-tinted landscape.

So this was Mars. It looked like…no, not like hell. He had been in hell, and it looked nothing like this. Like limbo, maybe. Purgatory. Kansas on a really bad day. The way your head feels after a hard summer night in a seamy bar in downtown Memphis when the crowd has been apathetic and the summer heat has sucked the cold out of your next beer before the barmaid manages to bring it to the stage, but you put down ten bottles anyway while you dumbfuck your way through Willie Dixon’s greatest hits. Just like that: desolation of the mind and soul. Mars was a planet suffering from God’s own hangover…

‘Okay, we’re outta the shit and we’ve got some safe distance,’ Boggs said. ‘How’s the envelope, Katsu?’ Shimoda silently cocked a thumb upward. ‘Fine. Fifteen miles downrange should be enough room. Let’s heave-to here and watch the show. Anything on the scope yet?’

‘Negative,’ Shimoda said, eyeing the radar screen.

‘That’s
negatory,
dammit! We speak English on this ship!’ He feigned a swat at the top of Shimoda’s crew-cut head, which the co-pilot easily ducked. ‘One would think you were still hauling kangaroo meat up from Australia on Shin-Nippon, the way you talk.’

‘Beef,’ Shimoda corrected. ‘I was hauling beef, not…ah! Radar contact. Two objects entering the atmosphere at fifty thousand feet at Mach Two, forty-two degrees north by thirty- five degrees west…faint third and fourth objects dropping away from them just now, off the scope.’

‘That’s the aeroshells breaking loose,’ Boggs said. ‘Five bucks says they’ve developed STS fighters since we’ve been gone.’ He glanced back at Cassidy again. ‘You were up there. Ain’t that right?’

‘I dunno.’ Cassidy was still transfixed by the scene outside the gondola windows. ‘Where’s the Face?’

‘Left it way back there. Shoulda been looking. What was aboard the
Shinseiki
?’

‘There were a couple of Marines aboard when…’

‘A couple? Only two?’

‘Three. I meant three.’ Cassidy thought about it a moment. ‘Three from the First Space, but they didn’t let me in on anything, so I don’t know what…’

‘Hell, no, but I do!’ Boggs cackled and slapped his right palm against the yoke. ‘See, Katsu? Told you so.’ He looked back at Cassidy. ‘Musician, huh? No kidding. I’m named after a musician myself. Waylon Jennings. From Nashville, Tennessee. My hometown.’

‘I think that’s wonderful.’ Cassidy burped and felt a little bit better for it. His guts were no longer in knots; there was nothing left in them to vomit anyway. ‘Now will somebody give me a straight answer and tell me what’s going on?’

Boggs laughed. ‘What’s happening is that Major Oeljanov and his robots are about to get smeared by the United States-fuck almighty-Marines Corps, and if you watch out this window you can see the whole show.’ He motioned to the triple-paned window next to Shimoda’s seat. ‘They’ve been asking for it and now…’

‘Two o’clock high,’ Shimoda said, pointing out his window. ‘Two vapor trails.’

‘There we go.’ Boggs leaned over to stare across Shimoda’s shoulders. Two thin white streaks were lancing across the dark purple stratosphere. ‘So,’ he added absently, ‘you’re the guy who’s going down into the Labyrinth?’

‘Yeah.’ Cassidy clumsily tried to rise and balance himself on his knees, fighting the constant motion of the deck. ‘I guess I’m the person.’