A cold wind whipped across the ship's stern as Corvan crossed to midfield. White spray paint had been used to divide it into squares. As a result the field looked like a huge checkerboard. Instead of checkers each square held a delta-shaped aircraft. Up above, a few fluffy clouds hurried toward the west, and the air was as clear as the ever present pollution would allow it to be.
As Corvan neared the low, delta-shaped aircraft he saw a WPO logo on its side along with the designation "A-7960."
"Your name, sir?" There were no marks of rank on his WPO-issued camos, so the petite noncom didn't know if Corvan was an officer or not, but it always pays to be careful. All you gotta do is drop one "ma'am" or "sir" to wind up with your ass in a sling.
"Corvan, Rex," the reop answered. "Authorized press. Authority code SP-4640."
The noncom found his name on her hand comp, touched it, and saw "SP-4640" flash onto the screen.
She grinned and Corvan noticed that she was pretty. "Go right aboard, sir. You're seated in the first-class cabin today, row three, seat B as in Baker."
Corvan nodded. "Thanks, Sarge. Youcomin' along for the ride?"
The noncom nodded and patted the H&K G-40 which hung at her side. "You bet, sir. Wouldn't miss it for the world. See you in the LZ."
Corvan waved and climbed aboard. He was one of the last to do so and felt something heavy fall into his stomach as the hatch swung closed with a heavy thump and the pretty sergeant dogged it down. He was scared and, all things considered, that made a lot of sense.
It felt strange to sit among all those soldiers empty-handed, with no heavy weapons or pack to weigh him down. By his own choice Corvan had limited himself to a 9-mm reusable handgun with three backup mags of fourteen rounds apiece. The pistol rested in a shoulder holster just under his left arm. That, plus a double-edged commando knife which hung hilt down from his combat webbing, formed his only armament. Hopefully it was all he'd need. After all, his role was that of reop, not soldier. As if to remind him of that fact, Kim's voice entered his mind.
"Hi there, your reopship. All systems in the green."
"Good," Corvan thought back. "We're havin' some fun now. Is everything ready?"
"Yup. We'll go live when you're about ten minutes from the LZ. In the meantime the bird's up, Martin's on-line, and we've got ninety-six-point-four percent of me nets holding for our feed. And oh, by the way, you were right. Saxon showed up. He's riding shotgun here in the studio. He wanted access to the radio intercom, but I told him to screw off."
"Good," Corvan replied silently. "We've got enough problems without Saxon monitoring everything we say. How 'bout Subido?"
"She stopped in to kiss Saxon good-bye. Very touching. All dressed up like a commando. I think she wants to nail Numalo herself. Saxon tells me she's in the first wave."
"That's a good place for her," Corvan replied. "Maybe the Immortals will do us all a favor and cancel her ticket."
"Maybe so," Kim said. "Hang in there. I've got some pre-tapes to set up. I'll be back in a while."
Two horizontal panels of green lights flashed on and off in the forward bulkhead. A recording said, "All personnel, prepare for lift off," and all around Corvan, troopers checked their gear, or did their best to look bored.
Outside, the big Pratt & Whitney engines began to scream as the pilot wound them up tight. Then the plane seemed to jump into the air, lifting off precisely sixty seconds after the ship just ahead of it so that as the aircraft gained altitude there were no other VTOLs to either side. This reduced the chance of a lateral collision and presented the sort of orderly appearance which military minds love.
Like a long snake the planes took to the sky, gradually arranging themselves into two flights of ten. With one hundred troopers on board each plane, that made a total assault force of two thousand, one thousand more than the total membership of the Immortals, but still damned few when you considered the fact that Numalo's bodyguards weren't alone.
The Immortals had all sorts of auxiliaries to help them, including the technicians who operated the numerous batteries of SAMs, the local police force, and a sympathetic population. It wouldn't be easy.
Having tilted their engines forward for level flight, the planes droned in across the African coast and in toward the city of Mandela. They flew low to avoid Numalo's radar. That, plus their nonreflective designs and composite construction, would serve as their primary defense until the aerospace fighters descended from above.
Time dragged by, and Corvan decided that the strategy must be working, since the aircraft maintained a steady course and no missiles came racing up to blow them out of the air. In fact, it got downright boring, so that his mind drifted. Kim's thought jerked him awake.
"Rex?"
"Yeah?"
"You ready?"
"Are we that close?"
"About sixteen out."
"Yeah, I'm ready. How 'bout you? Can you handle Saxon?"
Her thought was grim. "I'll handle him."
"Okay," Corvan replied silently, wishing he could be in two places at once. "The world's in for quite a shock."
"Ain't that the truth," Kim agreed. "Give 'em hell. And one more thing ..."
Â
"Yeah?"
Â
"I love you."
Corvan started to think something in reply, but the pilot jerked the ship to the right, popped a flare to decoy any heat-seeking missiles which might come their way, and activated the intercom. "Welcome to Africa, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to our low altitude, low profile, and low IQs, we made it most of the way without taking any heat." The ship jinked violently left.
"Now, however, people on the ground are taking violent exception to our presence and trying to shoot us down. Help is on the way, but until it arrives, I suggest that you sit back and enjoy the rest of our flight."
"Fifteen from air," Kim said, and Corvan used the remaining seconds to collect his thoughts. Not only was this the most important live feed he'd ever do, it was quite possibly the last, since the chances were fairly good that the Immortals would kill him during the assault. And just in case they missed, chances were that either the WPO or the Exodus Society would pick up where they left off. Especially since Corvan was about to double-cross both organizations.
Corvan felt the robo cam leave his shoulder as Kim ordered it into the air. The countdown ended and Corvan began. The robo cam placed him frame right with the main aisle and the rest of the aircraft's interior stretching away behind him.
"This is Rex Corvan. Welcome to WPO aircraft A-7960. At least, those are the numbers painted on the side of this plane, but they don't tell you much about the people inside, or the assault which is about to begin.
"A mixed force of two thousand WPO troopers, Exodus Society volunteers, and African nationals are about to attack Leader for Life Numalo's stronghold on the outskirts of Mandela, Unified Africa. Numalo's headquarters are defended by a thousand of the so-called Immortals and hundreds of auxiliary personnel."
The robo cam moved in for a tight shot, and Corvan looked directly into its lens. "Why, you ask? Well, the answers are as fantastic as the assault itself. It's hard to say which came first: the conspiracy to take over the world or the unbridled ambition which spawned it."
As Corvan spoke, his picture and voice were relayed to a U.S. government satellite and from there all over the world. At WPO headquarters in New York, men and women jumped to their feet, their faces pulled into expressions of outrage as Corvan departed from the approved script, shouting at their subordinates to intervene.
In Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, enraged Exodus Society officials fought over comsets and scrambled to use their considerable power.
Com calls raced through the nets. Orders were given, buttons were punched, but the feed remained on-air. All around the world engineers cursed and swore doing their best to dump the broadcast which had the suits so upset. But try as they might, the engineers found there was nothing they could do. Somebody named Martin was relaying Corvan's feed via three of the government's top-secret government satellites, and when they called to complain, the Pentagon seemed just as confused as they were.
Meanwhile Saxon screamed, turned toward Kim, and jerked a handgun out from under his left arm. She'd been waiting for this moment, dreading it, and hoping that he'd react some other way. Saxon's face was a tangle of hate as he brought the gun toward her. The plastic grips felt warm and smooth as Kim pulled the gun out from under the console. She fired twice, just as Corvan had instructed her to do, aiming for the chest rather than the head. The down side to this strategy was the possibility that Saxon wore body armor underneath his clothes, but Corvan said it was worth the risk, because head shots are harder to make. And the gamble paid off because the first slug ripped right through Saxon's right lung and the second punctured his heart.
As Saxon died, so did the interface between his brain and his boxlike wheelchair. Freed from all control, the chair's servos made a screaming noise as it raced her way. Aiming low, Kim squeezed the trigger and sent a stream of steel-jacketed slugs into the black box. It swerved, hit a bulkhead, and keeled over. The room smelled of gunpowder as she turned back to the board. Kim lit a fag and watched her monitors.
"To understand this assault," Corvan continued, "you need to know that President Hawkins has been dead for quite some time now. Yes, you've seen him on television, but what you saw was false. What
looked
like the president, what
sounded
like the president, was actually an electronic likeness generated by a machine called the video matrix generator."
All over the world, men, women, and children looked up from what they were doing and started to pay attention. Wasn't that Rex Corvan, the reop who had supposedly murdered someone but had an alibi? And what was this stuff about the president?
Samuel Numalo was an island of calm in a sea of turmoil. Outside his office, combat boots pounded down the hall as the Immortals prepared to defend his headquarters. Most, if not all of them, would die. Numalo knew that, but made no effort to intervene. To surrender without a fight would never do. He and his Immortals would fight back. The cruise ship was a clever idea, but a vulnerable one, as his attackers would soon find out. Rising from his desk, Numalo made his way over to the louvered doors. Spreading them wide, he stepped out onto the veranda. A camo-clad officer moved to chase him back inside, but stopped after he saw the Leader for Life's expression.
Ignoring the men who hurried to set up a light machine gun on the veranda, Numalo looked upward. Contrails crisscrossed the blue sky where aerospace fighters patrolled, swatting his planes and missiles out of the air like flies, preparing the way for the troop transports which droned in from the west.
Funny, deep inside he'd always known that trouble would come from the west rather than the east, as if the knowledge were printed inside his bones. It was why he'd lived there, taken his education there, and made his first aggressive move there. Maybe it was the Zulu in him, the ancient warrior who had fought the white man and won, only to live on as their slave.
The planes made two lines, one just above the other, gaps snowing where three of their number had been hit. Three columns of black smoke marked their graves. Numalo smiled in grim satisfaction and called for his personal weapons. When the planes landed, he'd be there to meet them.
"Yes," Corvan said as the plane's engines tilted upward and it began to descend. "It's hard to believe. But there was a witness to the president's assassination, a witness no one thought to remove, a witness whom you can choose to believe or ignore. Some of you may doubt his word because the witness is a computerâthe
president's computer,
a sentient device named Martin that helped Hawkins with the administrative part of his job and was present when the murder occurred.
"But regardless of your bias I suggest that you listen to what Martin has to say. And while you listen, I want you to look at some footage created by a video matrix generator in Washington, D. C, just three days ago while this assault was being prepared. The footage which shows Carla Subido, Hawkins' chief of staff, assassinating the president. Remember that this footage isn't real, but it
looks
real, and that's how a small group of people managed to seize control of the United States government and run it for the last two or three weeks."
Kim smiled and mentally released Martin's prerecorded interview. They'd considered going live, but what with the importance of Martin's current duties, they'd decided not to. This way Martin could dedicate all of his processing capacity to making sure that the satellite feed worked as it should.
And no matter what the public thought about Martin, the fake footage would either convince them of Subido's guilt or cause them to believe in the VMG. Either way, it would move them a step closer to the truth.
Kim's world suddenly shook. She heard a muffled explosion followed by a host of alarms. A voice came over the intercom, a real voice this time, tight with fear.
"We've taken a missile strike in the forward quarter of the main hull. Automatic systems and damage-control parties are working to assess and control the damage. The ship is in no immediate danger of sinking. As a safety precaution, however, we would ask all non-crew members to assemble on the main decks. If you're not sure of which assembly area to report to, check the key card for your cabin; it's the same color as the wall graphic in your assembly area." The voice went on, but Kim ignored it. She had work to do.
Corvan ignored Martin's sound bite, knowing the words by heart, and being a lot more concerned about the .50-caliber slugs which had just stitched a line of blue dots across the top curve of the fuselage.
The landing gear hit with a hard thump, and the copilot hit one of two red buttons. On the starboard side of the plane, the side away from hostile fire, a thirty-foot section of fuselage dropped outward to form a curved ramp. The troopers wasted no time bailing out. No matter how bad it might be outside the aircraft, conditions inside would soon be worse. The plane made one helluva target.