Authors: Grant Hallman
“Bring him,” she ordered two of the
Marines. “Anyone who troubles us further, shoot them in the knees, ten percent
power. We should have a regen tank working in another couple of months, they
can wait their turn.” She switched unconsciously back to Talamae.
“Captain Og’drai, translate to
these prisoners, anyone who does not obey will have their knees broken. Tell
them to prepare to leave in a
takka
. They will be escorted to their own
border, on foot. They may carry food and cooking utensils only. No horses, no
weapon, no armor, not even a small knife. No tents - everything else stays
here. If one of our healers says they are too injured to walk, we will provide
a ride on one of our steamships in a few days. Tell them if their King allies
with me, in two years they will be rich.”
The Marine guards half-carried the
sobbing Prince toward the shuttle and hustled him into the field hospital tent,
where he was quickly treated for a minor but embarrassing knife wound. His
anonymous blond servant followed, hovering anxiously, but was stopped at the
tent flap by Marine guards. When the last of twenty wounded O’dai were loaded
and secured in reclining seats, Kirrah’s party, including the bandaged Paedako,
boarded and settled themselves into place.
Kirrah had to politely ask Peetha
to sit in the passenger compartment so she could occupy one of the two
jumpseats behind the pilot, Captain Og’drai’s presence as local guide and
navigator in the other seat being essential. The pilot and engineer ran through
the ritualized duet of their checklist with swift, practiced efficiency, a
shortened version of the one they had meticulously gone through thirty minutes
earlier on the far side of the river:
“FB-1 on-line, check”
“Confirm, hot’n’green.”
“FB-2 standby.”
“One per, nominal.”
“Propellant main
full
, aux
one through four
full
, feed one and four, pressure green.”
“Check”
“Guns?”
“On line an’ warm, Marg,” a different voice, from the gunnery control officer
in the cramped lower deck.
“Mac, you ready?”
“Green to go, Marg,” another voice,
poised, no doubt, over the temporary sensor suite in the aft compartment that
was the covert reason for their flight. Kirrah appreciated the casual way the
crew was protecting her from ‘knowing’ about it in the official voice log.
“Sensor feed
On
, remote
latch
Standby
, outside
clear
, confirm.”
“Confirm area clear,” from the
gunnery position with its wraparound sensor view.
“V-thrust, ignition.” A pump whined
somewhere beneath Kirrah’s feet, and something made a soft
whuff
-sound
as a thin stream of water sprayed into the ignition chambers of the four belly
thrusters. A wash of dense plasma from Fusion Bottle One raced down four
magnetic conduits and flashed the water into steam, then atoms, then plasma,
then kicked the plasma temperature through a million degrees Kelvin. The
violated fragments of atoms were gripped by powerful magnetic fields and
channeled out the exhaust nozzles at speeds measured in hundreds of kilometers
per second. A low rushing-wind sound penetrated into the cabin.
“
Argosy
, Shuttle One, Ensign
Margaret Piersall commanding, departing Roehl One for Oh-die city, VFR,
note-only.”
“Shuttle One,
Argosy
,
acknowledge.
Visual Flight Rules?
Margie, you cowboy!” The raging-wind
sound built rapidly to a muted roar. Outside, Kirrah could see bits of soil and
debris flying out from under the craft. The pilot continued her banter as the
eighty-tonne craft lifted smoothly into the sky. Gasps of fear and wonder from
both O’dai and Talamae came through from the passenger compartment behind them.
“Hey, gimme a break, Bobby! We
don’t know exactly where we’re going, it’s an eyeball approach! T-thrust,
ignition. Gear up.” Nimble fingers stroked another set of switches. Another
pair of soft explosions and a building roar from aft, deeper and more muted
than the belly thrusters. A servo sang as the heavy landing gear cycled up into
the belly of the shuttle; another, higher note as the outer doors closed over
the wheel wells. A series of solid clacks as various clamps locked home. Three
small lights on Margaret’s console changed from green to yellow to blue.
“Shuttle One,
Argosy
,
confirm sensor feed, confirm remote latch. Switch to one-three-alpha.
I
think you just like to fly low, cowboy!” said the controller’s voice from three
hundred kilometers straight up. To Kirrah, he sounded as young and brash as
Margaret. They began to build up forward speed, moving out over the river and
gaining altitude.
“Going to one-three-alpha, aye. Eat
your heart out, spaceman!
I’m
a pilot, so
I
can do that!
You
can go fly a
sim!
LAS-1, by. Great day for flying, ma’am.” It took
Kirrah a moment to register that, out of the patter flowing from Margaret’s
multitasking mind, the last words were directed at her. Outside the generous
flight deck windows, the Geera River was shrinking and sliding past under them.
In the low morning sunlight, the endless plains of
not-grass
looked soft
and lush. Each bush and occasional tree cast a long crisp shadow westward. A
market cart and a few pedestrians could be made out along the road paralleling
the Geera’s north bank. Ahead, three of Kirrah’s semaphore towers were visible.
“So it is, Margaret. Beautiful day!
Mmm, by the way, what’s ‘Roehl One’?” Below her feet, the rumble of the
belly-thrusters slowed and died as the hybrid craft transitioned seamlessly
from hovering rocket to winged atmospheric flight.
“V-thrust
off
, confirm. Oh,
that’s how we designated the original LZ, ma’am. Over by the city wall, where
Attilla’s
shuttle is parked, that’s Roehl Two.” Kirrah could feel a tiny thread of panic
rising:
Gods, now the
Regnum’s
naming things after me
. The
shuttle continued to climb in the calm morning air, speeding westward.
“How would you like us to approach
the Oh-die city, ma’am?” asked Ensign Piersall.
“Let’s follow the Geera, that river
just to the right, all the way to the big lake. Then let Captain Og’drai here
guide you right down the shipping channel. No rush, say four hundred meters
AGL, about three fifty kph.” Kirrah looked over the woman’s shoulder to the
flight instruments, noted their position and speed. “And by the way, could you
take us a little higher for a minute, let my friend see the big lake ahead of
us?”
If his eyes don’t pop right out of his head first, that is
…
“Yes, ma’am!” the young pilot
replied with a grin. She slid the dual main throttle levers forward another
quarter and eased back on the control stick in her left hand. Behind them the
low roar of the aft rockets deepened, their chairbacks pushed a little harder,
and the craft’s nose lifted thirty degrees, forty. Beneath them the world
seemed to fall away and the horizon grew larger. They quickly ascended past a
few widely scattered early clouds, small puffy things floating over the plains.
After half a minute, she eased back on the throttles and began smoothly to
level off. The suddenly distant horizon ahead had turned from green to a
glittery blue.
“There, that’s three thousand
meters, should just about do it…” Captain Og’drai was staring awestruck out the
front windshield.
“Is that the Sea of the Sun? Kirrah
Warmaster! We have been travelling no more than a
bhrakka
, and I can see
it! It’s a three day journey!” Kirrah smiled and said:
“Margaret, could you swing us to
port so he can see the city we just left?” Obediently the thirty-two meter
craft banked left and carved an arc to the south over the plains Kirrah had
camped on months before, after their first victory on the Geera. Captain
Og’drai looked back out the left side window, where the city walls of
Talameths'cha made a small line across the plains at the junction of four
sparkling blue-green ribbons. He looked back to their right, took in the lake
in the distance.
“So small!” he said in an awestruck
voice. “My life has plied up and down this river, and across that sea, so many
days’ travel, and in three
bhrakka
you have shown me the span of it from
one end to the other! And there, beyond the city, the WhiteCap Mountains!
Another five days’ ride to the east!”
“Just wait,” Kirrah replied, “until
you see your entire world shrink behind you so it looks no larger than a
glatha
-fruit
held in the palm of your hand. And beyond that, to a point of light lost among
thousands of stars. And then another whole world, ahead of your bow. You will
see this, my friend. I promise. Margaret, could you take us through that small
cloud to the west? Straight down-sun?”
The pilot nodded, smiled and swung
the craft’s nose to the right, taking dead aim on a small cloud a few
kilometers away and a few hundred meters across, slightly lower than their
height. With the sun directly behind them, in a moment their shadow appeared, a
tiny fuzzy dark spot on the white cloud.
“Watch that cloud,” Kirrah said.
They swept swiftly closer, their shadow, expanding slowly at first, held
centered on the white nebulosity by Margaret’s casual skill. Suddenly Captain
Og’drai gasped in wonderment as a perfect circular rainbow appeared on the
cloud’s outer edge, and seemed to contract inward across its white face. Then
another - two concentric circles of brilliant colors, like two target rings
converging on their rapidly expanding shadow at the very center. Then a third,
fainter rainbow appeared outside the first two, and they swiftly plunged
through the center of the rainbows, into the cloud and a tiny bump of
turbulence, and in two heartbeats, out the other side and back into the fresh
blue morning sky and brilliant sunlight.
“Hey, how’d you
do
that?”
asked PO Thornlea from the engineering station.
“
Very
old pilot trick,
Lorraine,” answered Margaret. “Not many spacers remember it. Never had a chance
to try it, myself.”
Kirrah replied, “I spent… some time
on Longsummer, Margaret, when I was growing up. I had temporary access to a
Mannheim P-11, um, that’s a single-seat powered glider. That one term I spent
every spare hour in the air, just for the fun of it. Captain Og’drai here has
been so helpful showing me
his
world, I just wanted him to get a glimpse
of mine. Sorry, back to our course.”
“Kirrah Warmaster is most
generous,” the stocky Talamae Captain said. “I have seen more marvels since she
arrived than I ever thought to see in my life! Thank you.”
The shuttle swung slightly left, to
due west. They descended gradually, leveling off at four hundred meters, and in
ten minutes swept over the coastline and out above the Sea of the Sun. The
freshwater lake was some six hundred kilometers wide and a thousand
north-to-south. They were crossing midway down its eastern shore, and ahead of
them a long point of land stretched from the opposite shore across two thirds
of the breadth of the lake, dividing it into two watery lobes. Og’drai pointed
down to the north side of that peninsula and said:
“Ale’appa was
there
. Before
the O’dai came, I carried Talam’s oil and returned with Ale’appa’s fish and
spiced wine and hides.” He sighed. “They made the best raingear, too. All
O’dai, now.” He nodded and Margaret turned their nose south toward O'dakai,
capital of O’dai.
Ok, maybe this
is
kind of
fun
, Kirrah said to herself thirty minutes later. They had passed half a
dozen sailing vessels, all O’dai according to Captain Schmado’s expert opinion,
and were just coming up on the south shore of the lake, at the center of the
O’dai capital.
But now to business
… Captain Schmado joined them in the
cockpit at her request, replacing Captain Og’drai at the jumpseat. The O’dai
Admiral’s status was still somewhat ambiguous. He showed no desire to return
with the other prisoners, and had behaved himself like a model guest, or
prisoner, depending on one’s interpretation of his continued presence among the
Talamae. He had seemed genuinely appalled at the ‘curse-of-heaven’ attack.
“
Argosy
, LAS-1 descending to
two hundred. No threats. Mac, activate.”
“Confirm recording, Marg,” came the
voice from the aft compartment, on intercom. At barely three times the heights
of the masts in the harbor, the shuttle rumbled across the waterfront and over
the city itself. The teeming city streets seemed to subtly change color as they
passed overhead, probably, Kirrah realized, as every person in the crowd turned
his or her face to the sky.
They continued straight south up
the river that bisected the city.
Two cities
, Kirrah corrected a moment
later. The city that wrapped around the harbor extended five or six kilometers
inshore, faded into fields, and then south of that an even larger city sprawled
some four or five kilometers to either side of the river.
“Where is the center of O’dai
government, Captain Schmado?” Kirrah asked.
“Farther up-river, Warmaster. You
see, there ahead of us, just west of the river, that largest building is the
palace. The one with all the gardens around it, then the double walls and the
barracks between.” Indeed the only large patch of green among the
brown-and-orange roofs below them was a square some four by six hundred meters
surrounding a one by two hundred meter structure of white and orange stone that
was probably the height of O’dai architecture, if one’s taste ran to shoeboxes
stacked in a rectangle. The green patch was in turn surrounded by an inner and
outer wall, between which buildings of all descriptions shared space with open
areas probably used for drills and parades. Beyond the outer wall was a broad
avenue, and beyond that what looked, to judge by the size of the buildings,
like the rich part of town.