BANG!
The last set of bolts blew out, flinging the metal floor of the pod away. Now Gretchen had her hands on the stick, both feet on the pedals and the Gagarin's onboard comp was awake. The aircraft plunged toward the vast desert below, but the parafoil was keening, catching a little air. Gagarin's sensors tested the air rushing past and saw the retaining harness had gone the way of the walls and floor. Accordingly, the wings stiffened and began to extend. By design, they unfolded from the core of the Midge outwards, each new section conforming to a rough lifting body. The Gagarin's plummeting descent slowed, air thickening under the parafoil with each passing kilometer.
Gretchen watched the control panel with wide eyes. The structural integrity indicators were going wild. Wind howled through the frame of the ultralight and she could see black, jagged mountains looming up below. Only moments before they had seemed so far away, now she could pick out peaks, ravines, tumbled fields of splintered boulders.
Caught in some unseen current of the upper air, the Midge swept across the mountains, wings deploying centimeter by centimeter. For a moment, with everything seemingly under control, Gretchen checked her navigation panel. The chipped, yellowed glassite showed her a swiftly moving terrain map. Two glowing green diamonds sped across stylized mountains and plains. The comp on Hummingbird's Midge was still responding to broadcast position requests. Good, she thought, I haven't lost him. Not yet.
Her own comp beeped imperiously, dragging Gretchen's attention back to the ultralight. Both wings were fully extended to catch the steadily thickening air and the comp-controlled lifting surfaces were desperately trying to account for the drag generated by the cables connecting the Gagarin to the parafoil.
"Time to fly," Gretchen said, flipping a switch beside her left hand. There was another, barely noticeable jerk as the support braces for the parafoil separated. Without the drag of the Midge's weight, the curving wing sailed off into the blue-black heavens. The ultralight plunged, yawing from side to side before the control surfaces had time to adjust. Both wing engines ignited and Gretchen felt the stick shiver alive in her hand.
Whooo…The Midge arced away across the mountaintops. Anderssen's eyes gravitated to the tracking display. Hummingbird was spiraling down toward the surface eighty, ninety k away to the northeast. A moment later Gagarin banked onto a new course, a tiny pale fleck poised between the dark immensity of the Ephesian sky and the splintered wasteland below.
The Cornuelle
A jerky, timelagged image flowed across Hadeishi's panel. He could make out the top of an ultralight — seen from orbit at long range, interpolated first by the sensor suite on the Palenque and then by the military-grade system aboard the Cornuelle — flying under its own power. The captain allowed himself to be impressed with the Anderssen woman's audacity. He was entirely familiar with Hummingbird's skill as a pilot, but he hadn't expected the archaeologist to hurl herself into such vigorous pursuit.
"Deftly done," the captain mused. His earbug was filled with outraged chatter from the Marines on the Komodo-class shuttle. Fitzsimmons, in particular, was expressing himself at great length and without professional restraint. Hadeishi dialed down the channel before he overheard something which would require overt action on his part. The momentary delight he'd felt at Gretchen's survival was fading, replaced by a nagging sensation of looming trouble.
Not trouble today — both ultralights were under power, on course and far beyond his power by any measure — but trouble in the future. He frowned, eyes narrowing in thought, quick mind leaping ahead to the presumed reactions of higher authorities. How to report this? And why is she following him?
The scientist had a perfect right to use Company equipment, so there was neither theft nor malfeasance in her use of the shuttle or the ultralight. There were no local traffic control restrictions, so her near-orbital insertion and flight were entirely allowable. Unfortunately, Hadeishi was sure the nauallis had logged a directive to place the planet off-limits as well as ordering the civilians to depart. The captain doubted the nauallis would fail to notice another ultralight following him — his panel made Anderssen's course perfectly clear — and the old Nбhuatl was bound to react explosively to her disrespect.
Does that matter? A quiet voice much like his father's intruded on his thoughts. Will the judge return to the land of living men? If he does not raise his voice to trouble the mighty, no harm will come to her. If you say nothing, then nothing will have happened. If the planet takes them both, who will know she disobeyed his orders?
Hadeishi felt rising discomfort at the prospect. Hummingbird's departure — with only a single aircraft and minimal supplies — was rash and Anderssen's pursuit rasher still. Uncomfortable at the thought of leaving them both to die, the chu-sa tapped up the archaeologist's service record. He skimmed through the educational certificates, notes from the Mirror about her political reliability, reports from her various supervisors. After a moment he grunted, lost in thought. She is not without experience in such a place, Hadeishi allowed. Anderssen, in fact, had logged more hours in z-suits, in hostile environments, than the judge had. Hummingbird will be surprised.
The thought filled Hadeishi with bleak amusement and his mood lifted. That would be a fine tale to hear, he chuckled to himself, should either of them live to relate the particulars.
"Sho-sa Kosho?" The exec looked up. The end of the duty watch was fast approaching and Thai-i Gemmu had joined her at the secondary command station, preparing for changeover. Susan's face had a familiar pinched expression. Gemmu — though he was a loyal and dutiful officer — did not quite match the exec's rigorous expectations.
"Sir?"
"Shut down the comm feed from the Palenque and dump all transmission logs — raw and processed — to my station."
Kosho stared at the captain for a long moment — even a fraction longer than was polite — then abruptly nodded her head, fingers moving on her panel. Hadeishi saw the transmission begin and tapped in his own series of commands, dispatching a horde of system dorei to scrub all records of the transmissions from the Palenque, the voice and video log of bridge chatter and any other accumulated telemetry from the Cornuelle's memory. This required more than one override and Hadeishi became acutely aware of Kosho's continuing and entirely impolite stare as he worked.
After a moment there was a soft chime in his earbug, indicating a private channel had been opened from the exec's station to his.
"Yes?" Hadeishi kept his tone light, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
"Kyo — " Kosho stopped, unable to bring herself to voice a question. Hadeishi smiled inwardly. Aboard an Imperial warship — even more so than among the rival navies of Anбhuac in the centuries before unification — the commander held absolute and unmitigated power. A captain's orders simply were not questioned by his subordinates. Hadeishi was keenly aware of this tradition — constantly reinforced from the highest levels of the Fleet — often led to tyranny and abuse, but in this tight instant of time he was glad for the shield.