“Perhaps. See that your prejudice on this matter doesn’t lead you down false trails,” Sasaki said. “As to this incident, what prospect is there for locating the ‘hands’ responsible?”
Dryke shook his head, frowning. “I hesitate to promise. They work very clean. But they can’t be everywhere without leaving footprints. They’ve been forced to use more and more hardware. We’ll go back along that path and try to find out where it’s coming from.”
“That seems to be where they are most vulnerable.”
“Yeah. Except they know that, too. It’s going to be an inch at a time, with no help from outside. We took a hit. We’ll take another, and another, and another, like as not. But one of these times I’m going to get there first. I promise you that, Hiroko. One of these days I’ll bring you Jeremiah’s head.”
CHAPTER 2
—GUA—
“… for the Homeworld.”
The ESA Pelican Silesia sat at the top of the ramp at the west end of Johnson Field’s runway 1E like an overladen and aging beast of burden. Its twenty-four massive tires were spread wide by their million-pound burden, the delta wings and fat fuselage streaked and stained from five hundred previous missions. Four trunklike umbilicals extended up into Silesia’s underbelly from the ramp, as though the freight shuttle belonged in a hospital ward rather than on the flight line.
The notion that in a few minutes it would be in orbit was as ludicrous as the prospect that a corpulent, comatose man might leap out of bed to perform a breathtaking pas de bourrée. Yet that was exactly what was to happen. Like its namesake, the Pelican was a different bird in the air than on the ground. Aloft, it was stable and tireless, even graceful, equal to both the leap of faith and the leap to space.
In the shuttle’s cabin, the three-man crew laughed and joked among themselves as the autopilot counted down through the preflight checklist. Flight controllers in the tower warned all air traffic away from the field and from Silesia’s flight path with the call “LTO red, LTO red, five-mile interdiction now in effect.” Around the perimeter of the field, suppression teams checked their screens and weapons one last time.
A half mile from where the Pelican waited, Dola Martinez waited patiently on the observation platform for the launch. Nearly a dozen waited with her, watching the runway for the first sign. When a puff of white gas appeared under the shuttle’s wing and quickly dissipated in the hot breeze, there was a muted cheer. With binoculars, televiewers, or merely squinting with eyes sun-shielded by a hat brim, they watched as Silesia’s umbilicals detached themselves one by one and retracted below ground.
But three late arrivals to the platform showed only cursory interest in the shuttle. Dola had noticed them, two men and a girl, none older than twenty, and marked them as virgins—idle curious, drawn there by what they thought was chance. The two men took seats high on the bleachers; the girl lingered near the entry, looking back down the platform toward the tramway, as though she were expecting someone. Just like virgins to keep themselves apart, uncomfortable with the camaraderie of the regulars.
Dola remembered her first time, thirty-eight years ago in Florida, at the then-verdant Cape. Dragged there by the family to visit the museums, and remaining at her father’s insistence that they witness a fortuitously scheduled launch. It was the most inconsequential flight possible, a robot heavy-lift full of specialty metals bound for Horizon, then under construction. And yet, watching it—no, feeling it—roar into the cloud-dotted sky on a triple column of fire, she truly grasped for the first time where it was bound, and understood what that meant.
“It’s rolling!” someone cried, and Dola forgot the virgins. The stay cables had been released, and the Pelican lumbered down the ramp, gravity providing the initial acceleration. At the foot of the ramp, the idling transonic engines came to life, the boiling schlieren in the transparent exhaust the first clue, a thunderous roar the confirmation.
There was applause, there were tears. Dola felt her own heart soaring as the Pelican rumbled ever faster down the runway, half bouncing and half floating as it teetered at the balance between lift and gravity. She lowered her binoculars and watched with naked eyes as Silesia rose and the ground fell away, ten meters, a hundred, the massive landing gear vanishing swiftly to trim the shuttle’s ungainly profile.
It was at that moment that someone seized the strap of her binoculars where it rested on her neck and yanked violently. The hard-shelled glasses flew out of her hands and smashed against her face, the pain as sharp as it was unexpected. Dola cried out, her nose and mouth bloodied, as she ducked and twisted to escape. A moment later the binoculars vanished, torn away as she collapsed to her knees.
“Take them,” she pleaded blindly. “I don’t care.”
Her vision clearing, she looked up and saw one of the virgins standing atop the first row of the bleachers, whirling the binoculars over his head like bolas, his face a grim and twisted mask of hate. A few feet away, his companion shoved Archie, harmless little Archie, facedown on the concrete platform and then trampled him underfoot in pursuit of Eleanor. She quickly went down under a hail of punches.
“Fucking starheads,” the youth with the binoculars snarled, and leaped forward. “Fucking starheads.”
Dola ducked away from the whirling weapon and started to scramble toward the tram platform. It was then that she saw the girl standing in the exit, blocking the way with the aid of the black-tipped scrambler in her right hand. Her eyes were glowing with excitement, challenging, daring Dola to try to flee.
Then a kick exploded in Dola’s midsection, and she sprawled flat on the platform. The binoculars whistled through the air and came down on the back of her skull, driving her face down hard against the concrete. The snap of breaking teeth and the pop of shattered cartilage blended with the screaming, animal and angry, that filled the observation deck.
As Dola’s attacker looked for other prey, blood began to puddle beneath her, running freely from her torn and battered face. A sick, queasy chill raced through her, sucking the strength from her muscles, the spirit from her heart. She tried to raise her head once, a foolish, futile effort. Then, vision graying, she let go, escaping into unconsciousness, only realizing at the last that the most wrenching screams had been her own.
Mikhail Dryke stood rigid, arms wrapped across his chest, body vibrating with barely contained fury, as he watched the transit medics roll the last of the injured past him to the waiting flyer. The bloody parade had included four women, three middle-aged men, a handicapped teen, all battered and bewildered.
“What did we do?” one woman had asked beseeching as she was led away. “Why did they hate us so much?”
Because you still have dreams, Dryke had thought impulsively. The medic attending her did not attempt an answer. His soothing words were empty balm, and, in that, were doubtless kinder.
Jim Francis stood silent and uncomfortable beside Dryke, vacillating between empathy for the victims and concern for himself. The report had come in from the north gate as he and Dryke were reviewing system security. On his own, Francis would have merely acknowledged it and carried on. His office was his domain; the gates and fences belonged to those who worked for him.
But Dryke had insisted on responding, and Francis had been obliged to trail along. The moment they were close enough to read the streaky red lettering smeared across the observation deck’s plex, Dryke’s countenance darkened. When they mounted the platform, hard behind the first medics, and saw the litter of bodies, he had gone white.