The Prodigal Sun (8 page)

“The thrusters are about to be cut,” it said loudly, employing more than enough volume to gain attention over the background noise of the burn.

Roche glanced at Cane, then at the others. Cane’s eyebrows had risen sharply when the voice of the Box broke the relative silence of the cabin, but he quickly regained his composure. Veden looked completely relaxed, his eyes focused somewhere ahead of him. He gave no indication that he was even listening,

“We will be entering the atmosphere of Sciacca’s World within minutes,” the Box went on, sounding more like a tour guide than the present arbiter of their destinies. “It will be a hot and bumpy descent. Further maneuvers will be necessary once we’re able to deploy our glide foils, so please remain in your harnesses. I will inform you when it is safe to release them.”

Maii’s tone was sharp. AIs, Roche remembered, were regularly used to counteract reaves, unable as the latter were to read electronic thoughts.

“It knows,” Roche said aloud, but with an uncertainty that mirrored the Surin’s own feelings. Then the burn died, and suddenly they were weightless again.

She looked toward Cane, found him watching her impassively. “That was the Box?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “It sounds very... Human.”

Something struck the hull of the lander with a short but decisive bang, and Roche jumped in her seat. “Box?”

replied the AI, in her ears only.

Roche closed her eyes and tried to relax, hard though it was with the lander hurtling straight down into an unknown situation. Two minutes passed, then three, and no one in the cockpit made a sound. Then:

She groaned.

Roche blinked. She had never heard the Box admit anything but omniscience before.

Roche could hardly believe what she was hearing. She knew that independent Boxes could be unpredictable—unlike their rigidly controlled, and therefore less flexible, counterparts in the COE Armada—but they simply didn’t
say
things like that.

she said, with a growing disquiet,

The thrusters burned again, bringing the lander into a less steep descent.

“Not the word I would have used,” she said quietly. Then, shouting over the noise to the others in the cockpit: “We can’t afford to trust anyone on the ground. The government here is corrupt. If we fall into their hands, they’ll turn us over to the Dato Bloc. The Box’s strategy is to let them think we’re coming straight in—that we know none of this. We’ll change course as late as possible and look for other hands to fall into. Everyone happy with that?”

On the monitors she saw Cane cock an eyebrow and give the faintest of shrugs. At the same time she heard Maii mind-whisper: Roche saw Veden grin at this.

Roche could appreciate the irony of his situation. The Dato were after Roche and the Box, not the transportees. Perhaps Veden had expected to be turned over to the authorities in Port Parvati as soon as the lander made planetfall. Had that indeed been Roche’s intention—and she’d had very little time to consider her plans for him and the Surin—then the discovery of treachery on the planet rendered it unlikely. From Veden’s point of view, as long as he pleaded ignorance, the betrayal of Port Parvati’s wardens was good news, not bad.

Accordingly, it was Veden who spoke next:

“Your Box should know that outlaw forces are currently operating on Sciacca’s World.”

“I hear you, Veden,” the Box said through the com. “Elaborate, please.”

“There’s a group operating in the mountainous area to the north of Port Parvati. They may be able to assist us.”

“I have relief maps on file. Can you provide coordinates?”

“They’re a mobile group. That’s how they survive.”

“Then your information has little value.” A viewtank winked into life on the pilot’s display, showing an expanded view of Sciacca’s World. The main continental mass zoomed close; Port Parvati was in the center of a large but relatively featureless desert with a forbidding range of mountains to the immediate north. A cursor traced a wide arc along the southernmost peaks. “We must assume that our hypothetical allies exist somewhere in this region. The range known as Behzad’s Wall offers sufficient cover not too far from the port for any number of resistance operations.”

“Take us along the spine of the range, then,” said Veden. “There’s a plateau containing an old strip mine and an abandoned town. Land us as close us possible to that location. They’ll find us, if they want to.”

“Understood.”

Both the Box and Veden fell silent. Roche turned to look at the old man. “Just who are these people?”

“Commander, you belong to COE Intelligence. As such, you’re the last person I should discuss this information with.”

Roche felt mounting exasperation. “But if the Port Parvati authorities are corrupt, then COE Intelligence needs to be informed. If your friends have formed some sort of resistance, then they should be making every attempt to communicate with us. We can help them.”

Veden frowned. “COE Intelligence is an arm of the Commonwealth, just as the Enforcers in Port Parvati are. Why should one arm act against another?”

Roche stared at him, unable to believe that her government could be so distrusted. But Veden went on before she could protest.

“Anyway, they are not my friends. They are merely clients. I was coming here to do a job. Why they have done or not done certain things is not my concern.”

“But you’re a transportee,” Roche said. “How could you—?” She stopped in mid-sentence. There could be only one answer, the one Maii had provided earlier.

Veden confirmed it. “As a transportee, I could be moved here without arousing suspicion. All I needed was a conviction and a life sentence.”

Easy
, Roche thought, although not without skepticism. “You’re being well paid for this, I take it?”

“Perhaps.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“That, Commander, is a matter safeguarded by professional confidentiality. I’m in business, after all, not an agent of COE Intelligence.”

“I—uh!” The lander suddenly shifted, jolting Roche violently against her harness. She saw Veden’s face twist in pain, felt Maii’s desperation as she quickly tried to regain control over the old man’s autonomous systems. “Box! What the hell is going on?”

“We are about to strike the ionosphere.” The Box’s voice came loudly over the com. “Most of our reentry velocity will be shed by aerobraking, during which time I will maintain a standard approach to Port Parvati. At the last moment, however, we will overfly the landing area and proceed north at roughly treetop level. Somewhere in the mountains I shall attempt to simulate a crash.”

“‘Attempt’...?” Roche gaped. Landing in a gravity well was the most difficult maneuver a pilot could be asked to perform; she knew it would be all too easy to
genuinely
crash, no matter what the Box’s intentions were.

But the Box had obviously anticipated her misgivings. In her ear only, it said:

Over the com, the Box continued its spiel. “I will attempt to land as close to Veden’s target as possible. Once down, there will be very little time to get clear before the engines overload.”

“How long exactly?” said Roche.

“That I cannot predict. It depends on the severity of damage sustained as a result of the impact. Regardless, a hasty departure will certainly be in order.”

“Will we have time to gather supplies?”

“Perhaps. We will have to see what happens.”

The retros ceased their noisy burn. A few seconds of weightless glide followed; then the atmosphere touched the hull, feather-light at first but with a steadily increasing force. The lander began to bump and slew, the series of jolts gradually building in violence. As friction tore at the pockmarked nose of the vessel, the temperature inside the cockpit began to rise, and Roche began to feel decidedly uncomfortable.

In her ear, the Box’s emotionless voice whispered:

The lurching descent continued, and the temperature continued to rise. Roche heard a mental curse from Maii, but the girl sounded in control—which meant that Veden was all right also. And she knew that Cane would be coping as easily as he seemed to cope with everything else.

She tried to push the mounting heat aside, but her mind refused to settle. There were too many unknowns swirling about her: Veden with his connections to whatever waited on the surface, Maii’s connection with him and her ability to know anything and everything Roche herself knew, and a Box that was trying its best to cook them all.

Not quite. Just when she felt she could stand it no longer, the temperature began to fall again. The wild ride was finally easing.

“Box?”

“Extending glide foils in thirty seconds. Lining up on the landing area.”

The cabin jolted again as the airfoils extended and the lander began to maneuver in clear air. Moments later, the ride became relatively smooth.

“Accelerating again in twelve seconds,” the Box announced. “Brace yourselves.”

Roche counted down the seconds, clutched the arms of the couch tightly to steady herself, but was slapped back into the cushions anyway. The lander slewed violently to the left, and the wild ride began afresh.

In her ear:

Over the com: “Hard landing in approximately one minute. The cargo doors will be open. Be ready to disembark. Try to put as much distance as possible between yourselves and the lander. That or some large objects.”

And again in her ear:

“Twenty seconds to impact,” it said over the com.

Roche braced herself yet again. The lander swayed extravagantly, but she noticed that the vertical component of the glide remained smooth. The Box had full control. Still, she was glad there was no viewing portal. Better not to see what was happening outside.

Then came a frightening few seconds of silence—no slewing, no whining of the airfoils, just waiting for impact. She didn’t know what was worse.

the Box said to her.

Then they hit.

Roche was thrown against her harness with such force that it felt as if the couch would tear loose from its mountings. A long, terrible scream of ripping metal shrieked through the cabin; smoke suddenly filled the air. Anything not secured ricocheted around the cockpit.

Something clipped the side of Roche’s skull, making her head ring. She closed her eyes and tried not to scream.

Cane called out something, but his words were lost in the noise.

The lander bounced once, twice, then careened violently to the right. Another lurch—this time upward, giving the impression that the craft was about to tip end over end. Sparks and blue flame erupted about them as the control panels and monitors exploded simultaneously. A series of small slews and lurches, a long dull grinding noise—

Then nothing but smoke.

“Evacuate immediately,” the Box said into the ringing silence. Roche wasn’t sure whether it was in her ear or over the com, but she needed no further prompting.

“Okay,” she gasped, slipping the clasps on her harness. “Let’s get out of here.”

Cane reached across her and freed her rear clasps. Before she could move, he was doing the same for a badly dazed Veden. Roche couldn’t help but marvel at him. He had been out of his harness almost instantly; with no sense of undue rush, he was moving faster than she could manage with all her Armada training.

“Help him out of here,” she ordered as Veden stumbled, disoriented. Cane put an arm around the Eckandi’s shoulders and guided him to the airlock.

Roche tucked the Box under her left arm, slid off the couch, and helped Maii to her feet. The Surin shrugged her hand away; the smoke in the air made her cough, but otherwise she was unharmed.

Maii whispered in her mind,

Roche smiled to herself. “That way,” she said, and started the girl forward. “Just keep moving. I won’t be far behind.”

Cane and Veden had already vanished. It was hard to tell through the thickening smoke exactly where she was. Something exploded with a
crump
beyond a bulkhead, showering her with sparks and temporarily blinding her. She had to rely on her hands to guide her along. At the storeroom, she stopped and tried the door.