Loralynn Kennakris 1: The Alecto Initiative (15 page)

“Yes. What about it?”

“Every engine has it own note—get to know it. If you ever
hear it off-tone—and especially if you ever hear the slightest hum or warble—abort
immediately. Those turbines throwing a blade will ruin your whole day. “

“Yes sir!”

“Good. I hope to hell you’re not tone deaf. Now another
thing”—she could hear the smile in his calm tone—“she’s not much like that
slug you flew last week. When you release brakes, she’s going to bolt. Don’t
worry. She’s kind of a high-strung girl and she just wants you to be gentle
with her. Yank the stick around and she’s liable to take offense. That will
also ruin your whole day.”

Jeezus! What did I get myself into here?
“Oh, ah—yes
sir.”

“Take it sweet and easy, and she’ll give you a very nice
ride.” He glanced over at her. “You ready?”

Kris took a deep breath. “Yes . . . sir.”

“Then let her go.”

As ready as she thought she was, Kris was not prepared for
what Huron had meant when he’d said
bolt
. The flyer shot forward with an
acceleration that squashed the air out of her chest and the end to jetway
approached faster than seemed possible. It felt like she was fighting a
hundredweight as she eased the stick back but the little craft took to the air
almost magically without a flutter.

As they screamed over the trees beyond the end of the
jetway, she pitched the nose up to 30 degrees, eased back on the throttle
and a few seconds later they broke supersonic. She was getting her breath back
and her vision had returned to normal when Huron nodded. “Not bad.”

He leaned over and punched up some data on the Nav-Tac and
her heads-up display came alive with traces. “Okay, now take her over to
two-one-niner, angels thirty, and show me what you got.”

Kris had never in her life felt so thoroughly alive. The
darling little flyer responded charmingly to her slightest pressure; the sound
of the scramjets was a song of purest joy; the dark blue dome of the sky
shading to the deepest sapphire at the zenith beckoned wantonly but she held
firmly to her promise, all the time remembering his.

She showed off the simple evolutions she’d learned in her prior
lessons and Huron talked her through a few new ones. After what seemed an age—though
it lasted maybe fifty minutes—they descended in a long smooth curve to about
ten thousand meters and she engaged the Nav-Tac to take them back home. Far to
the east was a bank of the immense lenticular clouds that often formed in
Nedaema’s lower atmosphere at these latitudes and Huron was looking at
something above them that had caught his attention. He reached over, fiddled
with the main console and looked at the HUD. “Bank right,” he said and his tone
was flat. As they came around, he pointed toward the clouds. “What the hell’s
that?”

Kris followed the line of his arm and saw a small black
speck—a speck that did not seem to be moving but
did
appear to be
creating a shock cone. She continued her turn and the speck remained on a fixed
bearing as the clouds in the background swept by. It was getting bigger and the
shock cone more obvious. Huron’s voice came, firm and clipped: “Hard roll left.
Full throttle. On my mark, throttle back and hit the airbrakes.”

Kris pushed the stick hard left as she punched the throttle.
The flyer leaped forward, the horizon spun crazily and she heard Huron counting
out loud: “. . . two, one . . . Brake!”

She deployed the airbrakes and down-throttled. The nose came
up hard as they were thrown forward into the straps with crushing force and the
flyer bucked and rocked as something rocketed by with a tearing scream, more
felt than heard but still deafening, even through their helmets.

“What the hell!” Kris yelled, her ears ringing and her
vision filled with sparks as she brought the flyer back under control. Huron,
looking behind them, snapped, “Get down on the deck. Fast!”

Kris dropped the nose. The flyer stooped as she watched the
airspeed climb at an unbelievable rate. “What the fuck was that?”

“Not now.” She’d never heard anyone’s voice so hard, so
cold. He looked forward again. “You see that lake?” He pointed at a finger of
water, the nearest of a chain of lakes running in long silver-blue gaps through
the dark endless forest rushing up at them at an appalling speed. She nodded.

“Head for it.” She eased the stick over.

Huron glanced behind again. “Max boost.”

She pushed the throttle open as far as it would go. Her
heart hammered, the flyer shuddered as it burned through the denser air. The
horizon was just a smear, the stick shook as she held it with both hands. Beads
of sweat tickled as they ran down her neck inside her suit.

“Ease off to point eight. I’m going to give you a three-count
to pull out. The control surfaces are going to be heavy but pull smooth The
dampers will take about eighty gees—the wings will come off at around a
hundred. So no matter how heavy it feels,
don’t
jerk it.”

“What altitude?” A whisper because she could no longer
breath.

“We need to skim the surface at about ten meters.”

Her breath froze in her throat. Ten
meters
? At this
velocity? Her eyes were locked on the narrow lake, growing in her vision faster
than anything possibly could and her heartbeats were all she could hear,
booming long and slow. There were only two before Huron put his gloved hand
over both of hers and she heard him distantly: “Ready, two one—Now!”

Lake water was all she could see, the ripples frozen in time
across its surface, but before she heard the last syllable, his hand pressed
gently and she was tugging the stick back with both hands. The horizon swooped
down; the sky appeared like a great azure eye suddenly opening. Her vision
grayed out, there was a stabbing pain in her ears and something slapped them
hugely from behind.

She felt pressure on her hands and followed it, easing off
stick and throttle and her chest convulsed with a huge tearing sob as she
gulped oxygen. Her ears were ringing and there was a terrible pain behind her forehead
and her vision was coming back all blurred and smeared with red.

“Wha—what . . .” She struggled to breathe; moving her head
was agony. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and willed them open clear. They
did—not entirely, but better. Huron’s hand left hers. “You okay?” His voice
sounded breathy but almost human.

“Yeah,” she gasped. “Yes.”

“Good.” He was tapping a series of commands on the console.
“Let’s keep it down on the deck. I don’t fancy another one of those.”

They flew back on autopilot programmed for nap-of-the-earth
and it took a good long time for Kris’s shoulders to stop shaking. By the time
they picked up the landing beacon, she had her breath under control and, except
for the occasional sharp violent shudder, the rest of her. As the approach lit
up on the HUD, Huron appraised her and asked, “Can you take her in?”

Kris nodded. “Yes sir.”

He eased back in his seat. “Never doubted it.”

His confidence was not misplaced, though she did feather
it a bit early and dropped them jarringly from almost two meters up when she
cut power. Neither of them said anything as the flyer came to a stop and she
switched off. She broke her helmet seals and opened the canopy. A rush of air
chilling the sweat on her neck and brow made her shiver as she took the helmet
off and put it in her lap.

“Now,” she said, getting a grip on her frayed nerves. “Now
tell me what the hell happened.”

Huron also had his helmet off and was fiddling with the
console, scrolling reams of data down the display while he tapped out messages
on the xel he held in one hand. “Off hand, I’d say that was some sort of
stealth drone with—fortunately for us—a non-adaptive proximity fuse.”

“
What
?”

“Yep,” Huron said, biting the syllable off as he touched a
blinking red icon on his xel and rapped out another message.

“Someone just tried to
kill
us?” Kris was staring at
him, her eyes huge and her mouth agape.

“That’s my guess.” He reached over and released her straps.

“But
why
?”

Huron slid out of his straps with practiced ease. “That, I couldn’t
say.” He climbed out on the wing root and gave her a hand. “But I’m arranging a
ride home for you.” She nodded. “And I’d be a little careful about who I talked
to for the next few days.”

After Kris was bundled into an anonymous groundcar driven
by a marine in mufti who took his instructions from Huron very seriously and
without saying a word, Huron waited in the hanger for his own transport. He’d
sent his groundcar back by an appropriately circuitous route and had arranged
for another, much more difficult to trace. It was unlikely whoever was behind
the attack would try again so soon, but there was no point in taking chances.
Trying to kill someone with a stealth drone was far beyond the run-of-the-mill
assassination attempt.

As he waited, he heard footsteps and a moment later, Fred
poked his head around the corner. “So how’d she do?”

“I’ve got no complaints,” Huron answered as he scanned the
last few replies from CEF HQ.

“Bit rough there on the landing, I thought, though.”

Huron’s lips tugged left in his trademark half-smile. “Well,
you know. She’s learning.”

*     *     *

Six hours later, Huron jogged up the steps of CEF HQ
in Nemeton. News of the attack had been all over the media since 1700. The
authorities had announced a Code 3 surveillance condition and most traffic was
at a stand: flights grounded and ports closed. Around the perimeter and on the
portico of the singularly unattractive gray HQ building the barricades were up,
though they were not terribly obvious. Nor were the additional marine guards,
except for those patrolling for show in full combat armor, and only someone
with very good sensors or a secure link to the Operations Center would have
been aware the high-altitude CAP now orbiting over the city.

None of that concerned Huron as he breezed through security
and took a lift to the seven-floor suite that served as a temporary workspace
for him and the
Arizona’s
other junior officers. He exchanged salutes
with a number of acquaintances on the way, most of whom favored him with significant
looks. What the looks might be significant of did not concern him either, and
he had in fact forgotten them by the time he arrived at his cube and found, as
he’d expected, a lieutenant with the lank build and albino coloring of a born
Belter waiting for him.

“Hey Boss,” the lieutenant greeted him, making only a
negligent motion toward saluting. “Who’d you piss off this time?”

Huron chuckled and reached out to shake the other man’s
hand. “Well, as you know, the list is long but distinguished. Thanks for
coming.” He and Geoff N’Komo had gone through the Academy together and N’Komo
had been his wingman for most of their deployments before his elevation to
Arizona’s
TAO. Lieutenant N’Komo was currently the senior SRF squadron
leader on the light carrier LSS
Calypso
, which had come in last month.
But whenever they met, regardless of their personal circumstances, he insisted
on calling Huron ‘Boss.’

“Do we have anything yet?” Huron asked, logging onto his
system and his linking his xel.

“Lotta bullshit media hype,” N’Komo replied. “And downstairs
they’re spooling through the message traffic like fiends.”

“Recover any of the wreckage?”

“Part of one fin, some of the tail section and a few bits of
the casing.”

“Interesting?”

N’Komo spread his unnaturally long hands. “Typical
gray-market stuff. Standard C-12 explosive—no particular mix. Isotopes suggest
it’s originally Bannerman manufacture but that describes about half the stuff
you’d find out there.”

Huron drummed his fingers on his desk as he watched data
flow to and fro. “Nothing else? Nothing unusual?”

“Not really, except that they think it was here for a while—couple
of months, at least.”

“How do they know that?”

“You know how those stealth coatings pick stuff up—react to
light.” Huron actually did not know but he nodded anyway. “Besides, you can’t
just smuggle in a drone. Gotta bring in the pieces and assemble it here.
Probably take more than a couple of months to pull all that off.”

“Yeah.” Huron rubbed his knuckles on his palm. “But they
didn’t take time to swap the fuse.”

“What do you mean?”

Huron sat on the edge of his desk, showed Geoff the
reconstructed trajectories. “See? It was a non-adaptive proximity fuse. That’s
why it fired on the lake’s surface.”

“Yeah. Damn nice move that.”

“If it was meant for aerial attack, why not use an adaptive
fuse? They had plenty of time.”

“Maybe they were in a hurry for some reason.”

“Okay. Why?”

N’Komo shrugged, an angular gesture. “Target of opportunity?
Who knew you were going to fly today?”

“No one.” Huron frowned. “I didn’t decide until this AM.” He
shook his head. “We’ve been down here for weeks. Why take a shot now? It
doesn’t make sense.”

They exchanged a look and shook their heads in unison. “Fuck
it,” Huron muttered. Then: “Who’d the Nedaemans put on it?”

“Their Chief Inspector. Fellow named Taliaferro. He wants to
talk to you, by the way.”

“Of course.” Huron’s brows crimped. He checked his xel. “I
guess no time like the present. Did he leave a card?”

“I think you’re sitting on it.”

“Oh.” Huron shifted his hip, found the calling card. Picking
it up, he said, “Look Geoff, I want you to do me a favor.”

“You got it, Boss.”

“I got a weird feeling about this. Find somebody to keep an
eye on that girl. Somebody good. Somebody not associated with me. You follow?”

“A-firm, Boss. You think Corporal Vasquez would do? Her
unit’s in town.”