Labyrinth of Night (9 page)

‘Lucky you. I hope you make out better than the last guy who was down there.’

Cassidy forgot about the vapor trails for a moment. He looked sideways at Boggs. ‘The last guy? What about him?’

‘They brought him out of there in a bag…what little they could find of him, that is.’ Boggs stopped and looked back at Cassidy. ‘You mean to say that nobody told you what happened to Hal?’

‘Aeroshell jettison on my mark,’ Spike D’Agostino said into the darkness as he curled his gloved hand around a lever next to his left thigh. ‘Three…two…one…’

He yanked the lever upward. There was a sudden lurch, a loud bang, and the aeroshell which had enclosed D’Agostino’s tiny spacecraft broke apart like a clamshell. Harsh red-pink light exploded through the canopy of his cockpit, causing him to blink furiously despite the helmet monocle that was fitted over his right eye.
‘Woooo-wee!’
Hoffman’s voice shouted through his headset.
‘This baby bucks like a Texas bronc!’

D’Agostino ignored him. The F-210 Hornet was plummeting toward the ground some fifty thousand feet below; if he didn’t do anything in the next five seconds, atmospheric drag on the craft’s stub wings would put him into an irreversible flat spin. Grabbing the yoke between his legs with his right hand, he reached up with his left hand to the engine control panel above his head and ignited the engines. The LED lamps on the engine status panel switched to green; D’Agostino shoved forward the throttle and gently pulled back on the yoke.

The five Pratt & Whitney oxygen/carbon monoxide engines, mounted below and behind the Hornet’s sleek fuselage, roared to life, catching the STS fighter from its deadly freefall and clutching it in the sky. The fuselage shook as the digital airspeed indicator rolled back to Mach One and the black-white ball of the artificial horizon steadied on the Y-axis. Spike breathed a short sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to be splattered all over Mars after all.

‘Falcon One
to
Falcon Two,’
he said. ‘How’ya doing there with that horse of yours?’

‘Copacetic,
Falcon One.
All stations green and we’re flying. Was it good for you too?’

‘Just lovely,
Falcon Two.’
The eight-ball was rising a little too far into the white; now that its airspeed had been cut, the Hornet was beginning to ascend rather than descend. D’Agostino gently pushed the forward yoke; the port and starboard engines gimbaled back to supply aft thrust, punching the STS fighter forward.

He glanced to his left. Several hundred yards away at nine o’clock, the other Hornet was slicing through the thin atmosphere, leaving a white vapor trail behind it. Falcon Two looked all right; he knew that Hoffman was in turn giving Falcon One a quick visual inspection. D’Agostino had to hold tight to the yoke to counter the violent twists and lurches of the Martian stratosphere, but otherwise it was much the same as he had experienced in the simulators. All that was missing was a flight instructor chewing his ass off about slow reaction time…

Fuck it. This was the real-deal now. ‘Okay,’ D’Agostino said. ‘Lock in weapons systems.’

‘Roger that, Falcon One. Lock and load.’

D’Agostino flipped more switches with his left hand. The dashboard fire control panel lit up, showing him in green letters that the two air-to-ground smart missiles below each wing and the 30mm cannon mounted beneath the cockpit were armed and ready. The ECM panel showed that radar and infra-red jamming were in operation; radar was tracking no incoming bogies, so the RWR screen was blank. A tiny crosshairs had appeared in his helmet’s right-eye monocle; he tracked his eyes left and right, and the crosshairs followed the sweep of his vision. The heads-up display within his helmet visor copied the info shown on the dashboard multifunction display.

‘Falcon Two, we’re A-OK and on the beam,’ he said.

‘Roger that, Falcon One. I take it back. She’s a sweet lil’ pony, fresh out of the manger…’

‘We copy.’ Foal or wild mustang, this was a nice little ship he was piloting, and D’Agostino was all too willing to kick mongo ass with it. He grinned and pushed the yoke forward. Falcon One pitched its blunt nose forward and the red horizon rose through the canopy windows. ‘Okay, let it roll.’

‘You got it, Falcon One. Let’s go hunt some bear…’

Arthur Johnson found Richard Jessup in the command module; he didn’t look away from the bank of TV monitors he had been closely watching when the astrophysicist pushed the hatch open. Johnson was about to say something—exactly what, he didn’t know, except that he was still pissed off and only too willing to let Jessup know it—until he reached Jessup’s side and saw what was on the screens.

Two of the screens showed scenes from cameras mounted outside the habitat. On each, a Bushmaster was quickly striding across the rocky terrain between the habitat and the City; in the background of each screen one or the other of the autotanks could be seen. They seemed to be taking up positions alongside each other.

The third screen displayed a ceiling view of the interior of Module One, the vehicle garage and airlock. Its double-doors were shut; centered in the screen was Maksim Oeljanov, The CIS Army major was encased in a Russian CAS; the carapace lid of the armor was open and they could see his head protruding through the suit’s thick inner lining. Oeljanov was wearing a white cotton Snoopy helmet. As they watched, his lips moved silently.

‘Look at that,’ Jessup said quietly, for the first time acknowledging Johnson’s entrance. He pointed at the other two screens. The upper turrets of the two Bushmasters rotated forty-five degrees, their guns both pointing east and tilting upwards towards the sky.

‘Bastard.’ Jessup’s voice was an awed near-whisper. ‘He’s figured it out and got the Bushies slaved to voice-only command. I tried to squirrel into their AI system interface, but they locked me out.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe the Hornets can ECM the signals, but I doubt it because…’

Johnson didn’t wait to hear the rest. He yanked his beltphone from his hip, switched to Channel One, the common band for base operations, and raised the phone to his face. ‘Major Oeljanov, this is Dr. Johnson,’ he said. ‘Do you hear me? Over.’

Oeljanov’s head cocked upwards, apparently responding to Johnson’s voice. Jessup turned and made an effort to take the phone away from Johnson, but the scientist stepped back, pushing Jessup out of the way. ‘Maksim, this is stupid,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Jessup was planning, but if you go ahead with what you’re doing, you’ll be endangering the whole project. Just…’

‘Art, don’t try to…’

‘Shaddup, Dick,’ he said. ‘Look, Maksim…get out of that thing and come back in here and we can talk it over. Okay? We don’t have to go through with this nonsense.’

Oeljanov clumsily turned around in the heavy armor and peered straight up at the camera lens. A sardonic smile appeared on his face before the lid of the CAS slowly dropped on its pneumatic hinge. Then Oeljanov raised his right arm—the one which ended in the ugly, stubby maw of a laser-sighted machine gun—toward the camera. There was a microsecond-brief flash from the barrel of the gun; the screen fuzzed out and went blank. A second later the computer replaced the TV image with a line of type:
CAMERA 1.01 INOPERATIVE / 1838:32:45/6-18-30 / TOTAL FAILURE

‘I don’t believe it,’ Johnson murmured. ‘He shot out the…’ At that instant there was a sharp
bang!
from somewhere nearby; alarms began to go off within the habitat. Johnson whirled around and checked the flatscreen readout on the environmental control station:
DECOMPRESSION MODULE 1 / AIRLOCK INOPERATIVE / INNER HATCHES SEALED / INTERNAL PRESSURE STABLE MODULES 2-9 / 1838:33:01/6-18-30

‘Goddamn!’ he shouted. ‘Blowout in Module One! He blew a hole right though the skin!’

‘Will that keep him from opening the garage door?’

‘No. He can still get out by using the manual override…’

‘Damn.’ Jessup remained calm. ‘And now the TV camera’s gone. If you hadn’t done that, we might have been able to watch what he was doing.’

‘Hell with that!’ Johnson snapped. ‘Now no one can cycle through the main airlock! I’ve got people trapped out there…!’

‘Calm down. If they want to get in, they can still use the auxiliary airlock in Module Ten.’ Jessup reached past Johnson to switch off the decompression alarms, then turned back to the two screens which were still operational. ‘I’m in charge now, Art. Don’t do anything like that again or we’re going to have problems.’

‘Problems?’
Johnson let the beltphone dangle from his hand; a profound sense of unreality was settling upon him. ‘You call this a
problem?
What the hell are you…?’

Unable to articulate his rage and confusion, he floundered wordlessly. Jessup’s eyes didn’t waver from the screens. ‘If you still want to help,’ he said, ‘you can tell everyone to take cover where they can. There’s going to be a space-to-surface airstrike on the base within the next five minutes. Think you can do that?’

Arthur Johnson stared at the back of Jessup’s head. There was a fire extinguisher bracketed to the wall behind them; maybe, with one good stroke, he could use it to bash in the brains of his old frat brother…

But instead, he lifted the beltphone again and pecked out the digits for Channel One with a numbed forefinger.

Michael Rosenfeld of Missouri, Committee Chairman
: The Committee still hasn’t heard, Mr Betano, why NASA and the White House felt it was necessary not to inform Congress that a secret military mission was sent to Mars.

Elliot B. Betano, Chief Administrator, NASA:
For the same reason that many people within NASA, the Pentagon, and…persons directly involved with the mission were not informed, Senator. We felt that Steeple Chase’s covert nature, its sensitivity, precluded the public’s right to know. We did not want word leaked to the Russians. I was under direct orders from the President not to reveal Steeple Chase to anyone who did not have Top Secret clearance from the FBI and the State Department.

Mr Rosenfeld:
I have such clearance, Mr Betano, and I was not informed.

Mr Betano:
I was not aware of that, Senator. I’m sorry.

Mr Rosenfeld:
Yes, I’ll just bet you are. The Chair recognizes Ms. Crouse.

Margaret Crouse of California:
As I understand, the strike was carried out using a new type of spacecraft, the…ah, F-210 Mars STS. I think they’re called the, um…

Mr Betano:
Hornets, ma’am. The F-210 Hornet, Mars Space-to-Surface. A very efficient, effective fighting craft, as Operation Steeple Chase has proved.

Ms. Crouse:
With certain reservations, I agree. But as I understand, this fighter was specially designed and built for use on Mars. The Committee has heard testimony from another witness who tells us that the Hornet is too aerodynamic to be used on the Moon and too flimsy and underpowered for effective use on Earth. The only place it can be effectively used for a combat operation was on Mars. In fact, it was specifically designed for the Martian environment. My question, Mr Betano, is whether the F-210 was conceived, designed and built before a need for it existed.

Mr Betano:
Well, the…I mean, funding for the Hornet was approved by the Joint Armed Services Committee in FY 27 as a new-start program, with the possibility in mind that the plane would be needed sometime in the near term. It was approved in the DOD black budget by both houses and was…could you repeat the question, please, Senator?

Ms. Crouse:
Are you deaf, Mr Betano, or do you just assume that I’m dumb?

Mr Rosenfeld:
The Chair recognizes Senator Leakey.

William Leakey of Ohio:
I believe what Senator Crouse is asking, Mr Betano, is whether the Hornet was designed specifically for this sort of mission.

Mr Betano:
I don’t understand what you’re asking me, sir.

Mr Leakey:
The F-210 seems to have been designed as a combat craft. I have the specifications here and I see where the armament includes a 30mm cannon and two solid-stage smart missiles. So the Hornet was designed not just for powered flight in the Martian atmosphere, but apparently for attacking enemy forces on the Martian surface. Even then, its limited range, because of its fuel capacity, made it capable of only short-duration missions. Once it touched down, it was effectively grounded. That’s a correct assessment, isn’t it?

Mr Betano:
That’s correct, sir, yes, but I still don’t…

Mr Leakey:
What puzzles me, Mr Betano, is why NASA and the Pentagon felt it was necessary four years ago to build a Mars STS fighter and hide it within the DOD black budget when the US and the CIS have been in a completely peaceful stance with each other for the past three decades, particularly in space exploration. The kind of mission for which the Hornet was intended, the circumstances for which it was built, did not exist at the time. Both countries were engaging in cooperative exploration of Mars. The Russians had not deployed any weapons on Mars in 2026, nor did they have a reason, in their minds, to do so at that time.

Mr Betano:
I don’t understand what you’re implying, Senator.

Mr Leakey:
No sir, I think you do. Someone was spoiling for a fight.

T
HE HATCH TO MODULE
Eleven, the unpressurised Ambient Environment Lab, was covered with a poster of Marvin the Martian from the old Loony Tunes cartoons; Marvin was pointing a ray-gun at the unwary visitor, his eyes narrowed menacingly beneath his Roman centurion helmet. A sign below him read in English:

FOOLISH EARTHLING! IF YOU’RE NOT WEARING A SKINSUIT, GO PUT ONE ON RIGHT NOW!

(and press the buzzer if you want to come in!)

Miho Sasaki was wearing a skinsuit—the sign was redundant, since the hatch couldn’t be opened unless the adjacent Module Ten auxiliary airlock was depressurized—but she had already pressed the buzzer a half-dozen times without any response. Now she was reduced to pounding on the hatch with her fists, giving Marvin worse punishment than he had ever experienced from Bugs Bunny.