Starbound (24 page)

We were escorted from the New Hofburg Palace at 2230 hours for the trip to the Leopoldsdorf spaceport. We had a convoy of three armored military utility vehicles at our disposal. Lena and I sat in the back of the second one in line as our journey began, taking mostly dark and empty roads. The city of New Vienna was under a 2200 hours curfew during what the news reports called “extremely sensitive negotiations” between the two government factions.

Lena had several coughing spasms in the first few minutes of our trip. “Nervous, Colonel?” I asked. She shook her head.

“I think I've picked up a native virus, sir. Something I'd forgotten about New Vee winters,” she replied.

“Thank the Gods I appear to be immune,” I said. She smiled a bit.

“Of course you are. What virus would dare attack a royal such as yourself?”

“Hmm.” I let things lie for a few minutes as we cruised along the roads at a moderate pace, then asked a question. “Lena, are you all right with my refusing to let you go with Dobrina?”

She shrugged before replying. “The captain and I aren't that close. I've fenced with her once or twice, and taken her measure on the squash court a few times, but socially, we've never mixed. I think she always thought of me as a soldier, not a navy officer. I was surprised when I heard the offer. I supposed she wanted a familiar face around and I was conveniently here. But I made my decision to serve in the Union Navy years ago. I have no desire to change that,” she said.

I took her answer as sincere. We were quiet from then on. I looked at my watch at five minutes to the hour.

Our convoy took a turn off of the main roadway and down past a row of low set warehouse buildings. I assumed they were for military overflow and storage. Suddenly the lead MUV in front of us accelerated and pulled away at a rapid pace.

“Is there a problem?” I asked our driver, a Carinthian private.

“I don't know, sir. Should I—”

“Step on it!” I shouted. A second later a rocket-propelled grenade exploded a few meters behind us, shrapnel pinging against our rear armor plating like the sound of hail hitting a metal roof. A second RPG round hit just in front of our trailing escort and the MUV spun and rolled over, crashing into a row of metal bins stacked against a warehouse wall. I turned and saw four Carinthian soldiers scrambling for cover behind the bins, their vehicle on fire.

“Vat should I do, sir?” asked the driver. Ahead of us lay the building where the RPG fire came from. I didn't hesitate.

“Turn us around!”

“Vat?”

“Go back! We have to help those men!” I ordered. The private quickly turned our vehicle and spun us around, weaving his way back to the second MUV and the sparse safety of the bins. We pulled up, using our vehicle as additional cover, then we all jumped out and hit the ground. The four soldiers from our escort stepped up and began firing at the roof of another warehouse building across the road. Their fire was returned.

Our driver, armed with only a coil pistol, joined in the fray. Babayan and I took cover behind the bins, as both of us were unarmed. I felt useless. The firefight went on for a solid two minutes before another RPG hit our vehicle dead on. Our driver was killed instantly, his coil pistol skidding across cold concrete to within a few feet of me.

“Stay here!” I said to Babayan and scrambled for the pistol.

“Sir! You can't!” she yelled at me.

“Stay down!” I ordered her, then zigzagged to the remaining soldiers' position. One of them was wounded badly, his left arm dangling at his side. He was trying to return fire with his coil rifle, but they were heavy and it was hard with only one arm. I quickly swapped weapons with him, handing him the easier to handle pistol. Then I took cover and started returning fire.

“How many?” I asked the soldiers, but they just looked at me, confused. Apparently none of them spoke Standard. After a few more precious seconds of exchanging fire with the snipers, who were ensconced on the roof of the warehouse across the street and forward of our position, I determined that there were two of them. The coil rifle volleys came in pairs, then would drop to a single shooter for several seconds right before an RPG volley would come in. Our rifles had tracker fire on them, and we were lucky to intercept several RPG rounds before they hit our position. But when the next volley came, we weren't so lucky. The RPG exploded against the overturned MUV and sent metal pieces flying in the air. We were all able to duck except the wounded soldier. He took a piece of MUV armor right in the head,
killing him instantly. I ran over and grabbed his pistol as we hunkered down behind our burning vehicle, almost our only protection now.

“Lena!” I called, then raised up and sent out three volleys of suppressing fire. She came running and I tossed her my rifle, taking the pistol for myself. I checked the mix chamber: barely ten percent left. I held up my pistol to the nearest soldier, showing him my mix reserve. He made a gesture, holding his index finger and thumb millimeters apart. The other two both nodded agreement.

We were running out of ammo.

“What are we going to do?” asked Babayan. We were pinned down here.

“There's nothing to do. We hold out here as long as we can and pray for help to arrive,” I said. “Can you tell them to start rotating their fire, to save as much of our ammo as we can?” I asked her. She shot off a short sentence in guttural German and they all nodded, then started taking turns sending out single volleys. The enemy returned fire with multiple sniper rounds at every turn.

“They haven't fired an RPG in a while,” Babayan said. I nodded.

“If I'm right in my count, they have three left. RPGs come in packs of six. Any more is too heavy for a single man to carry. If this is an assassination squad of two they will be traveling light. They're trying to get us to use up our energy weapons. Then they'll zero in and finish us with the RPGs,” I said. I gave a cutoff signal then and we all stopped shooting. The dual coil fire continued for about ten seconds, then it reduced to a single volley. A second after that an RPG round hit our MUV. It went up in flames and we had to scramble back to the metal bins to find cover. We were down to our last line of defense.

We all huddled together as the coil volleys cut holes in our protection, tearing pieces off the slim metal bin with every shot. Another minute of this and they'd probably have us.

“What do we do?” asked Lena. I had no idea.

“Pray,” I said.

At that moment the coil volleys fell silent. I could hear the sound of mechanized gears turning and something like the hum of a motor. I motioned everyone to the ground, then stuck my head around the bin to look down the road just as a motorized armored vehicle came around the corner and on to our road. Immediately the coil fire resumed, aimed at the MAV. The MAV had a prominent gun mount of a design I hadn't seen before. It quickly raised up, pointing at the rooftop we'd been taking fire from. In rapid succession an immense volley of ordinance, rockets no doubt, battered the top of the warehouse. It exploded in a burst of flame and sparks and smoke. When the volley ended I looked across and down the long road. As the smoke cleared I could see that the top quarter of the warehouse had been sheared off. I gave the All Clear and our group stood up, walking out into the open as a squad of about a dozen Carinthian Regulars came rushing toward us, much to the relief of our comrades. Lena came up and stood next to me, watching the warehouse burn.

“Well, so much for questioning them,” she deadpanned. I tossed my pistol to the ground as the soldiers came running up to us.

“I can't wait to leave this planet,” I said.

We were at the airfield a few minutes later. I thanked the soldiers who had fought with us and the ones who had rescued us, then Lena and I made our way into a waiting room, flopping down on the couch. Lena grabbed us each a bottle of water and we sat silently together, contemplating another near brush with death. After a few minutes of this I stood and looked out over the massive base. I could see many ships that were eager to depart and the crowded tarmac was buzzing with activity, even at this late hour. It seemed obvious the merchants here were all getting off-world as fast as they could in case something went wrong with the peace negotiations. After a few minutes we were
escorted to another building by soldiers. Once inside the gritty terminal an attendant with Harrington's flag seal on his winter coveralls led us down a ramp and out into the night.

“Wait here,” he said, then went off to talk to some port maintenance workers. I pulled my uniform coat tighter around me against the brisk winter chill. The sky above the spaceport was a dull gray, with just a hint of stars beyond broken clouds. I looked at our transport as it was being fueled and loaded. It was functional enough. It looked like a great whale with a flat head and stubby wings. There was no doubting the twin hydrazine plasma engines could do their work, though. Besides the cargo hold itself they were the largest feature of the ship. The front featured a cockpit and three tiny portholes, which probably indicated the passenger compartment. Absently I wondered how I would get up there. It was a good three stories up.

The rear of the transport was opened upward and large cargo containers were being loaded into her belly, though this looked like far from a full trip. My guess was that it would be less than twenty-five percent full.

As I watched three longshoremen finished loading the cargo hold, then set the cargo door in motion to seal it up for our flight. The attendant from the terminal came over then and motioned Lena and me into the hold through a side access door, which he shut behind us. As we entered the transport the great metal cargo doors closed and locked, finishing with a resounding clang. We were directed by one of the workers up an open metal ladder to get from the cargo bay to the passenger compartment while the crew mingled around the deck securing their loads for air and space transport.

Harrington hadn't been kidding about the accommodations. I took an acceleration couch in the back row among a group of six, clustered in two rows of three, near one of the portholes. Lena strapped in next to me. The cabin had a single lav with only a sink and loo for in-flight service. A small galley completed the ensemble. Ahead
of us two pilots were busy in the cockpit making final checks for the flight. At precisely two minutes to the hour they fired up the engines and after a brief check-in via radio in German, the pilots rolled us away. They seemed to have no interest in me, and I frankly had none in them. I laid back in my seat and closed my eyes, trying to rest.

“You should try to sleep,” I said to Babayan.

“I can never sleep on takeoff, sir, and sometimes not even in transit. Gets me too wound up,” she said. I opened one eye.

“Control freak,” I said.

“Guilty. I'm a pilot,” she said, smiling. I shut my eye again and tried to relax.

A shuffling of boots on the metal floor a few minutes later roused me. The three workers from the loading dock strapped in in the row in front us as we taxied down the tarmac. I gave them hardly a second thought as the giant transport roared down the runway and into the air, modest turbulence shuffling us around in the cabin.

It took twenty minutes for us to clear the atmosphere of Carinthia, and I looked down on her blue-green globe without a bit of remorse at leaving, privately wishing I never had to go back, though I knew that was probably impractical. The space propulsion system clicked on then and I felt the tug of the plasma engines kick in for spaceflight. I closed my eyes tight, trying to block it all out. I was dog tired.

“Are you awake yet, Peter?” came a feminine voice. I stirred, thinking in my mind that it must be Lena. But it didn't sound like Lena. I had no idea how long I'd been dozing. Then I opened my eyes and looked in the direction of the voice, to the row of safety couches in front of me. The Princess Karina Feilberg looked back at me. The longshoremen were gone and Lena was asleep.