“I am,” said the lieutenant. He stood at attention. “Sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Harrington, sir.”
“Good. You are now acting commissioner of this spaceport. Deliver your report concerning the security breach,” he said, stirring his drink. “No carload of criminal types was involved?”
“Sir?” said Harrington, blinking.
“Nothing like the little assassination crew that shot up the Renaldo hotel yesterday?”
“Oh no, sir. It was a smuggler sighting sir, two of them dropped out of the Yeti during her descent. They dropped out early, and we were able to detect them.”
“Good work. Naturally you activated the SAM batteries and shot them down,” said the Governor, feeling relieved. His enemies hadn’t gotten here ahead of him. His hot caf was a bit too hot and he slurped it noisily.
“Ah no, we didn’t shoot them down,” said Harrington uncomfortably. “Captain Dorman took up two Stormbringers in pursuit. He forced one down and I believe he is about to engage the other now.”
When Major Drick Lee was tossed staggering out of the security door, which immediately snicked shut behind him, there was a general shout of alarm. The spaceport security squads had gathered about the locked door in response to Drick’s calls for aid. Believing that a terrorist action was in progress, they had begun clearing the spaceport and setting up barricades made of planters, benches and even cartloads of unclaimed baggage. Surprised by Drick’s appearance, they mistook him for one of the terrorists and opened fire. Only the fact that Drick had pitched forward on his face saved him from the storm of small arms fire that crackled and spanged off the steel security door.
“Hold your fire! Stop shooting, idiots!” screamed Drick, sprawling with his arms wrapped around his head. Eventually, someone recognized his uniform and called a cease-fire. Many of them stopped simply because they had run out of ammunition.
Miraculously uninjured, Drick made his way to the nearest overturned planter, fear giving way to rage. The security people looked sheepish and avoided his gaze. “Fools! I’m not a terrorist!” he screamed at them.
“Well, how were we supposed to know that?” questioned a man behind the barricade, summing up all of their feelings. Major Lee was not the most popular Nexus officer at the spaceport.
Shaking off his experience, the Major realized that he was standing in the open in front of the security door, while everyone else was on the other side of their flimsy barricade. With as much dignity as he could muster, he scrambled over a pair of overturned benches and crouched beside the duty Sergeant. “Have you evacuated everyone?”
“Down here at arrivals the place is empty, but we haven’t had time to clear everyone out of departures,” said Sergeant Manstein, a balding man with deep-set eyes and large hands. “The militia say they’re on their way.”
“Why haven’t you cleared the spaceport?” demanded Drick, fury creeping back into his voice. “Can’t you people follow a single regulation today?”
“Come on Major, give us a break,” said the Sergeant, his eyes dark and unfriendly. “We aren’t prepared to handle this kind of thing.”
“I’ll do it myself then,” said Drick, standing and waving for two of the guards to follow him. Together they headed for the escalators. With each rapid step they took away from the security door, Drick relaxed a bit inside. He didn’t want to admit it, but between the rough handling of the giants and being shot at he had had quite a bad scare. He felt an urgent need to visit the restroom, but forced himself to wait.
It was when they reached the departure lounge and began herding people toward the exits that Drick got his first big break of the day. He saw a man wearing a close-fitting hat and a pair of auto-shades set curiously dark for the interior of a building. He was at the ticket counter, arguing with an attendant and holding a handsome leather satchel with both hands. He squinted at this man, sure that he had seen his likeness before… and then he had it. That satchel, that sharp-pointed chin, it could only be General Ari Steinbach, whom he recognized from the militia’s bimonthly security inspections.
The General represented everything he wanted just now, which was absolution of responsibility for the entire affair. Unable to believe his luck, he rushed up to the man, who pulled his satchel up in a defensive gesture. Drick reached out his hand, grinning broadly. When the General hesitatingly took his hand, he pumped it and rapidly described the situation.
“And I hereby turn the matter over to the militia, sir. We have no way of handling this sort of thing here with just our security team,” he said. He gave the Sergeant at his side a wry glance.
When the two Stormbringers managed to overhaul the second craft, they were over the steaming jungles of southern New Chad, almost down to the borders of Amazonia. A thousand miles farther south loomed the rocky cliffs that separated the jungles from the barren Desolation.
Dropping out of orbit, they descended rapidly toward the target, a darting black speck that skimmed so low over the treetops that it seemed to almost fly between the monstrous leafy horkwoods. Swooping down on the craft, they punched through the cloud layer and screamed toward the uneven green surface of leaves. Captain Dorman netted in his position and waited for acknowledgment from the spaceport.
“Captain Dorman, this is Lucas Droad, duly appointed Planetary Governor of Garm. I want to commend you on downing that last smuggler, and I order you to disable the craft you are pursuing now,” said a new voice, interrupting the traffic controllers.
Dorman raised his eyebrows and grunted at this unexpected turn of events. “So, the Nexus sent out an early replacement. About time.”
“Thank you for your support, Captain,” said the new voice, sounding amused.
Dorman didn’t hesitate to exercise his new orders. To his surprise however, the craft didn’t attempt evasive action, but instead rose up from the treetops, coming up aggressively to meet them. “The target is turning to attack,” reported Dorman, shocked. Nothing in the system could stand up to the Stormbringers in atmospheric combat. The pilot had to be insane.
“Missile incoming!” squawked his wingman. That was all he managed before being engulfed in a fireball. Seeing the red burst that had been his wingman’s Stormbringer out of the corner of his eye, Dorman thumbed the emergency kill switch, releasing all the warship’s offensive capacity to the computers. On full automatic, the Stormbringer rolled over and did a streaking dive toward the surface. Close to blacking out, Dorman felt the ship shudder as a dozen missiles were loosed to speed toward the target. The cannons were all firing now, the controls working themselves furiously to evade incoming fire that was beyond human capacity for response.
There was an explosion the next second and the starboard wing disintegrated into flaming debris. The ship went into a spin, and Captain Dorman lost consciousness as the computers ejected his crash-seat through the bottom skin of the craft.
He came to again less than a thousand feet above the surface. Locked in a sitting position in his crash-seat, he floated down into the green treetops. Blinking away the haze that clung to his vision, he righted his head and saw three black plumes of smoke rising up from the jungle. All three of the combatants had been destroyed.
“Least we got him,” Dorman muttered before the blood pressure in his brain ebbed and he lost consciousness again.
“Uh, yes of course,” stumbled Ari. Inwardly he groaned. He had hoped his auto-shades would be enough of a disguise.
Major Lee, too pleased to notice the General’s unenthusiastic response, led the way back toward the security door. “Perhaps you would like to take stock of the situation? Or do you want to call in your tactical squad immediately, sir?”