Caine smiled. “Let me guess. The old leadership objected to ‘air traffic’ from the Arat Kur fleet. Specifically, troop landers.”
Urzueth bobbed. “Yes, now you understand.”
Caine looked out the window at the smoke- and fire-scarred patchwork quilt that comprised the coastal flats of Java. “Oh yes, I understand perfectly. And I have also learned another quirky difference between our languages, Esteemed Urzueth.”
“And what is that?”
“Those whom you call ‘renegade rebels,’ we call ‘resistance fighters.’”
The CoDevCo shuttle, engaging its VTOL thrusters as it glided smoothly over the dingy, cockeyed checkerboard of Jakarta’s rooftops, dropped suddenly lower.
The civilians in the craft—Urzueth and Eimi Singh—grasped at the seat-backs in front of them as if to arrest their fall. The military types—the Arat Kur guards and the Hkh’Rkh “security advisors”—simply swayed in their seats. Caine discovered that he now fell into the latter category: he reflexively distinguished the quick drop as a maneuver, not a loss of control.
“What is the problem?” Eimi almost stammered into her collarcom.
The pilot’s answer came over the cabin PA. “Apologies to all. We’ve just been told we are not cleared to land at CoDevCo’s rooftop vertipads. We’re going to have to wait until we can be a assured of a safe approach to the ground pads.”
“Why?” Eimi asked her collarcom. Whatever answer she got was sent privately to her earbud. Caine leaned over, raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“A disturbance down in the city,” she explained with an apologetic smile. “It seems the rebels have sent professional agitators into the streets and have managed to stir up some of the people against the government. That makes it harder for our associates’ airborne surveillance assets”—she smiled quickly at Urzueth—“to detect threats in advance.”
“What kind of threats?”
“Well,” she said, her reply punctuated by a nervous flutter of her eyelids, “some of the rebels are said to have rockets.”
Caine pointed at a crowd-filling square not far below them, near some kind of railway station. “Down there, you mean?”
“No,” corrected Eimi. “That’s just one of the riots stirred up by the agitators. The actual rebels are much fewer in number. But some of them are engaged with our forces north of here. So we shall stay low, where they cannot detect and target us.”
Caine hoped Eimi and the pilot were right about that assumption. If these “rebels” had laid hold of any reasonably modern AA systems, they would be capable of both designating targets and launching missiles from non-line-of-sight vantage points. He looked north. Tilt rotor VTOLs the size of small cars—and of distinctly nonhuman design—darted and weaved over the ramshackle roofscape. Smoke rose from the street. AA rockets went skyward between the billowing black plumes, vectoring toward the VTOLs. All but one of the rockets exploded in midair, apparently intercepted by active counterfire systems onboard the ROVs or possibly from some rear area support position. However, one rocket did find its mark. It clipped the side of a dodging VTOL, the blast taking out one of the rotors. The crippled alien craft faltered down toward the street, another rotor now wobbling.
The shuttle’s main engines cut out, ending its forward movement. But in the moment of comparative silence as its vertical thrusters rose to full power, Caine heard an uneven susurration almost directly below. Looking down, he discovered that the source of the ragged murmur was the rioting crowd, its distant roar now drowned out by the whine of the shuttle’s VTOL turbofans.
At the west end of the square in which the crowd had gathered, lines of troops began to emerge from an old squat stone building: probably a bank or armory or museum before being converted into fortified barracks. The troops came out the front door in two perfect lines, quickly forming a dull gray bulwark along the western edge of the square. As they grew in number, filling in from the back and pushing forward, the crowd shoved back, becoming more agitated. Their previously stationary placards were now waving and shaking like battle flags. A number of the more agile protestors had shinnied up lampposts, clambered onto kiosks, some shouting slogans with the aid of bullhorns and portable sound systems.
The gray ranks facing them were eerily uniform: each soldier was of identical height, wearing identical equipment. None had donned riot gear. Their rifles were at the ready, stocks tucked against their hips, barrels slightly raised.
The protestors reacted to these unresponsive serried ranks with even greater agitation. The crowd seemed to surge and pulsate like a distempered unicellular organism, uncertain of its next action. Then, two almost invisible objects—bricks, possibly, from their angular outlines—crossed the gap from the restless social amoeba and disappeared into the ranks of the motionless, identical soldiers.
Their response was immediate. The muzzles of the lead rank came up and sparkled. Caine heard what sounded like a distant ripping of cardboard. As if being melted away by acid, the facing side of the social amoeba began to evaporate, leaving an irregular stain of heaped bodies to mark the prior limit of its outer membrane.
At the other end of the wounded organism, the cytoplasmic crowd started bleeding out into every street and alley that led away from the square, the body of protest deflating and ultimately disappearing—
Except for those heaped corpses whose own blood had begun to paint the streets of Jakarta with a black-red stain. Which—even if today’s late-afternoon rainstorm washed it away—promised to live on in the memory of those hundreds who had been there, and those thousands to whom they told their tale.
As Caine watched, a small, stick-thin figure—maybe a young teen, maybe an elderly person—crawled out of the tangle of bodies, dragging useless legs.
The shuttle rose slightly and resumed its forward progress. “Final approach,” announced Eimi buoyantly.
Caine watched the faltering stick-figure pulling itself away on weakening arms until he couldn’t see it anymore.
Chapter Nineteen
An immaculately dressed and groomed human male of youthful middle age strolled down the ramp of the CoDevCo high speed VTOL even before the dust of its hurried landing had settled. “Allow me to welcome you to Indonesia’s Gunung Sawal mass driver. I hope you will forgive the inconvenience of flying here directly, today. However, there are still minor disturbances in Jakarta, and we did not want to take any chances with such important guests. We will try to make your stopover as comfortable as possible.”
Darzhee Kut was on the tarmac, keenly aware of the bright, wide, swallowing sky overhead. He bobbed acknowledgment of the human’s oddly mellifluous greeting, and began edging toward the nearest building. First Voice followed lazily. If he had heard the human’s greeting, he gave no sign. Graagkhruud and the rest of the Hkh’Rkh contingent followed their leader’s example. Yaargraukh turned to the human as they walked on either side of Darzhee Kut, “Take care that First Voice does not think you are addressing him directly. Your life would be forfeit.”
“I see. But I may address you?”
Darzhee Kut saw Yaargraukh’s earflaps flatten: a sign of distaste. “Yes. You may.”
The human either didn’t notice the disapproving response or didn’t care. As they reached and entered the open-fronted building, he bent over slightly to look down at Darzhee, who was grateful for the roof over his head. “And I am informed that you are Speaker to Nestless Darzhee Kut?”