Halo: First Strike (3 page)

screamed full out as the plane's computer took command, and the

pilot's hands gripped his yoke, not guiding, just hanging on.

Gonzales's straps pulled tight as the plane tumbled and fell,

corkscrewed, looped, climbed againsmart metal fish evading fiery

harpoons.  Explosions blossomed in the dark, quick asymmetrical

bursts of flame followed immediately by hard thumping sounds and

shock waves that knocked the swing-wing as it followed its chaotic

path through the night.

Then an aircraft appeared, flaring in fire that surged around

it, its pilot in blazing outlinea stick figure with arms thrown

to the sky in the instant before pilot and aircraft disintegrated

in flame.

Their own flight went steady and level, and control returned

to the pilot's yoke.  Gonzales's shocked retinas sparkled as the

night returned to blackness.  "Collision averted," the plane's

computer said.  "Time in red zone, six point eight nine seconds."

"What the hell?" Gonzales said.  "What happened?"

"Holy Jesus motherfucker," the pilot said.

Gonzales sat gripping his seat, chilled by the blast of cold

air from the plane's air conditioner onto his sweat-soaked shirt. 

He glanced down to his lap:  no, he hadn't pissed himself. 

Really, everything happened too quickly for him to get that

scared.

A Mitsubishi-McDonnell "Loup Garou" warplane dived in front

of them and circled in slow motion.  Like the ultralights it was

cast in matte black, but with a massive fuselage.  It turned a

slow barrel roll as it circled them, lazy predator looping fat,

slow prey, then turned on brilliant floods that played across

their canopy.

The pilot and Gonzales both froze in the glare.

Then the Loup Garou's black cockpit did a reverse-fade;

behind the transparent shell Gonzales saw the mirror-visored

pilot, twin cables running from the base of his neck.  The Loup

Garou's wings slid forward into reverse-sweep, and it stood on its

tail and disappeared.

Gonzales strained against his taut harness.

"Assholes!" the pilot screamed.

"Who was that?" Gonzales asked, his voice thin and shaking. 

"What do you mean?"

"The Myanmar Air Force," the pilot said, his voice tight,

face red beneath the flight glasses' mirrors. "They set us up, the

pricks.  They used us to troll for a guerrilla flight."  The pilot

flipped up his glasses and stared with pointless intensity out the

cockpit window, as if he could see through the blackness.  "And

waited," he said.  "Waited till they had the whole flight."  The

pilot swiveled around abruptly and faced Gonzales, his features

distorted into a mad and angry caricature of the man who had

welcomed Gonzales ninety minutes before.  "Do you know how fucking

close we came?" he asked.

No, Gonzales shook his head.  No.

"Milliseconds, man.  Fucking milliseconds.  Close enough to

touch," the pilot said.  He swiveled his seat to face forward, and

Gonzales heard its locking mechanism click as he settled back into

his own seat, fear and shame spraying a wild neurochemical mix

inside his brain       

Gonzales had never felt things like this beforedeath down

his spine and up his gut, up his throat and nose, as close as his

skin; death with a bad smell  burning, burning  

2. Anything I Can Do to Help You

As the morning passed, the sun moved away from the stained

glass, and the room's interior went to gloom.  Only monitor lights

remained lit, steady rows of green above flickering columns of

numbers on the light blue face of the monitor panel.

A housekeeping robot, a pod the size of a large goose, worked

slowly across the floor, nuzzled into the room's corners, then

left the room, its motion tentacles beneath it making a sound like

wind through dry grass.

#

The cockpit display flashed as landing codes fed through the

flight computer, then the swing-wing locked into the Bangkok

landing grid and began its slide down an invisible pipe.  They

went to touchdown guided by electronic hands.

The pilot turned to Gonzales as they descended and said,

"I'll have to file a report on the attack.  But you're luckyif

we had landed in Myanmar, government investigators would have been

on you like white on rice, and you could forget about leaving for

days, maybe weeks.  You're okay now:  by the time they process the

report and ask the Thais to hold you, you'll be gone."

At the moment, the last thing Gonzales wanted to do was spend

any time in Myanmar.  "I'll get out as quickly as I can," he said.

Now that it was all over, he could feel the Fear climbing in

him like the onset of a dangerous drug.  Trying to calm himself,

he thought, really, nothing happened, except you got the shit

scared out of you, that's all.

As the swing-wing settled on the pad, Gonzales stood and went

to pick up his luggage from the open baggage hold.  The pilot sat

watching as the plane went through its shutdown procedures.

Do something, Gonzales said to himself, feeling panic mount. 

He pulled the memex's case out of the hold and said, "I want a

copy of your flight records."

"I can't do that."

"You can.  I'm working with Internal Affairs, and I was

almost killed while flying in your aircraft."

"So was I, man."

"Indeed.  But I need this data.  Later, IA will go the full

official route and pick everything up, but I need it now.  A quick

dump into my machine here, that's all it will take.  I'll give you

authorization and receipt."  Gonzales waited, keeping the pressure

on by his insistent gaze and posture.

The pilot said, "Okay, that ought to cover my ass."

Gonzales slid the shock-case next to the pilot's seat,

kneeled and opened the lid.  "Are you recording?" he asked the

pilot.

The man nodded and said, "Always."

"That's what I thought.  All right, then:  for the record,

this is Mikhail Mikhailovitch Gonzales, senior employee of

Internal Affairs Division, SenTrax.  I am acquiring flight records

of this aircraft to assist in my investigation of certain events

that occurred during its most recent flight."  He looked at the

pilot.  "That should do it," he said.

He pulled out a data lead from the case and snapped it into

the access plug on the instrument panel.  Lights flashed across

the panel as data began to spool into the quiescent memex.  The

panel gonged softly to signal transfer was complete, and Gonzales

unplugged the lead and closed the case.  "Thanks," he said to the

pilot, who sat staring out the cockpit bubble.

Gonzales stood and patted the case and thought to himself,

hey, memex, got a surprise for you when you wake up.  He felt much

better.

#

A carry-slide hauled Gonzales a mile or so through a

brightly-lit tunnel with baby blue plastic and plaster walls

marked with signs in half a dozen languages promising swift

retribution for vandalism.  Red and green virus graffiti smeared

everything, signs included, and as Gonzales watched, messages in

Thai and Burmese transmuted, and new stick figures emerged with

dialogue balloons saying god knows what.  A lone phrase in red

paint read in English, HEROIN ALPHA DEVIL FLOWER.  Shattered

boxes of black fibroid or coarse sprays of multi-wire cable marked

where surveillance cameras had been.

Grey floor-to-ceiling steel shutters blocked the narrow

portal to International Arrivals and Departures.  Faceless

holoscan robotsdark, wheeled cubes with carbon-fiber armor and

tentacles and spiked sensor antennasworked the crowd, antennas

swiveling.

All around were Asian travelers, dark-suited men and women: 

Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Thai.  They spread out

from Asia's "dragons," world centers of research and

manufacturing, taking their low margins and hard sell to Europe

and the Americas, where consumption had become a way of life. 

Everywhere Gonzales traveled, it seemed, he found them:  cadres

armed with technical and scientific prowess and fueled by

persistent ambition.

They formed the steel core of much of the world's prosperity. 

The United States and the dragons lived in uneasy symbiosis:  the

Asians had a hundred ways of making sure the American economy

didn't just roll over and die and take the prime North American

consumer market with it.  Whether Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese,

Hong Kong Chinese-Canadiansthey bought some corporations and

merged with others, and Americans ended up working for General

Motors Fanuc, Chrysler Mitsubishi, or Daewoo-DEC, and with their

paychecks they bought Japanese memexes, Korean autos, Malaysian

robotics.

Shutter blades cranked open with a quick scream of metal, and

Gonzales stepped inside.  An Egyptian guard in a white headdress,

blue-and-white checked headband, and gray U.N. drag cross-checked

his i.d., gave a quick, meaningless smileteeth white and perfect

under a black moustacheand waved him on.

Southeast Asian Faction Customs waited in the form of a small

Thai woman in a brown uniform with indecipherable scrawls across

yellow badges.  Her features were pleasant and impassive; she wore

her black hair pulled tightly back and held with a clear plastic

comb.  She stood behind a gray metal table; on the floor next to

it was a two-meter high general purpose scanner, its controls,

screens, and read-outs hidden under a black cloth hood.  Dirty

green walls wore erratically-spaced signs in a dozen languages,

detailing in small type the many categories of contraband.

The woman motioned for him to sit in the upright chair in

front of the table, then for him to put his clothes bag and cases

on the table.

She spoke, and the translator box at her waist echoed in

clear, neuter machine English:  "Your person has been scanned and

cleared."  She put the soft brown bag into the mouth of the

scanner, and the machine vetted the bag with a quiet beep.  The