Ralph glanced over at her, but the computer-synthesised image of her face gave nothing away.
• • •
Chapman Adkinson was getting mighty tired of the continual stream of datavises he was receiving from flight control. Worried,
too. He wasn’t dealing with civil flight control at Atherstone anymore; they’d gone off-line eight minutes ago. Military protocols
were being enforced now, the whole planet’s traffic control being routed through the Royal Navy operations centre on Guyana.
And they were none too sympathetic to his condition.
Esparta was rolling by below the plane, one of the lush national parks which surrounded the capital. A jungle scarred only
by the occasional Roman-straight motorway and dachas belonging to the aristocracy. The ocean was five minutes behind them.
His neural nanonics were accessing the external sensors, but the visual image was only being analysed in secondary mode, mainly
to back up the inertial guidance system which he no longer wholly trusted. He was concentrating on schematics of the plane’s
systems. Twenty per cent of the onboard processors were suffering from random dropouts. Some had come back on-line after a
few seconds, others remained dead. The diagnostic programs he ran simply couldn’t pinpoint the problem. And, even more disturbing,
in the last fifteen minutes he’d been experiencing spikes and reductions in the power circuits.
That was what had made him argue with the military controllers. Processor glitches were an acceptable menace; there was so
much redundancy built into the plane’s electronic architecture it could survive an almost total shutdown; but power loss was
in a different hazard category altogether. Chapman Adkinson had already decided that if they did try to force him to fly back
over the ocean he was going to ditch there and then, and to hell with the penalties they’d load into his licence. The biohazard
in Xingu couldn’t be that lethal, surely?
“Chapman, stand by for some updated landing coordinates,” Guyana’s flight controller datavised. “We’re diverting you.”
“Where to?” Chapman asked sceptically.
“Sapcoat base. They’re prepping a clean reception area for you. Looks like the passengers are going to have to stay on board
for a while once you’re down.”
“As long as we get down.”
The coordinates came through, and Chapman fed them directly into the flight computer. Twelve minutes to Sapcoat. He could
accept that. The plane banked gently to port, and began to curve away from the city which lay somewhere beyond the horizon’s
black and silver heat shimmer.
It was a signal for the glitches to quadruple. Circuits began to drop out at a frightening rate. A quarter of the system’s
schematics flicked to a daunting black, leaving only ghostly colourless outlines where functional hardware had been a moment
before. Power to the two rear starboard compressors failed completely. He could hear the high-pitched background whine deepening
as the blades slowed. The flight computer’s compensation program went primary, but too many control surfaces had shut down
for it to be truly effective.
“Mayday, mayday,” Chapman datavised. Even his primary transmitter had failed. Backup processors were activated. The fuselage
began to vibrate and judder, as if the plane were ploughing through a patch of choppy air.
His neural nanonics reported a stream of datavises from the passenger cabin, querying the shaking and sudden loss of inflight
entertainment processors. He called up a procedural file and shunted it into what was left of the plane’s entertainment circuits.
Seatback holoscreens should be playing a placebo message about clear air turbulence and the precautions their pilot was now
instigating.
“What is it?” flight control asked.
“Losing power and height. Systems failure rate increasing. Shit! I just lost the tail rudder databus.” He datavised an emergency
code into the flight computer. A silvery piston slid out of the horseshoe console in front of him, a dull chrome-red pistol
grip on the end. It reached his lap and rotated silently through ninety degrees. Chapman grabbed it. Manual control. Christ,
I’ve never used one outside of Aviation Authority simulations!
The datavise bandwidth to the flight computer started to shrink. He prioritized the schematic to display absolute essentials.
Holographic displays on the console came alive, duplicating the information.
“Find me a flat patch of land, now, damn it!” How he was going to bring the plane down in VTOL configuration with both the
starboard compressors out wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Maybe a motorway, and use it like a runway?
“Request denied.”
“What?”
“You may not land anywhere but the authorized coordinate.”
“Fuck you! We’re going to crash.”
“Sorry, Chapman, you cannot land anywhere outside Sapcoat.”
“I can’t
reach
Sapcoat.” His datavised control linkage to the flight computer began to fail. The pistol grip shifted slightly in his hand,
and he felt the plane tilt in tandem.
Careful! he told himself. A firm pressure on the grip, and the nose began to edge back. The holographic horizon graphic showed
he was still in a shallow dive. More pressure, and the descent rate slowed.
The door into the cockpit slid open. Chapman Adkinson was wired too tight to care. It was supposed to be codelocked, but the
way hardware was crashing…
“Why have you altered course?”
Chapman shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The guy was dressed in a cheap suit, five years out-of-date. He wasn’t just
calm, he was serene. Incredible! He must feel the plane’s buffeting.
“Technical problem,” Chapman managed to gasp. “We’re putting down at the nearest landing pad that can handle an emergency.”
The pistol grip was fighting his every movement. And now the holographic displays were wobbling. He wasn’t sure if he could
trust them anymore. “Get back into your seat now, fella.”
The man simply walked up behind the pilot’s chair and slid his head over Chapman’s shoulder, peering out of the narrow curving
windscreen. “Where is Atherstone?”
“Look, pal—” Pain lanced deep into his thigh. Chapman grunted roughly at the shock of it. The man’s left index finger was
resting lightly on his leg, a small circle of his uniform’s trouser fabric was burning around it.
Chapman swatted at the small blue flames, eyes blinking away sudden tears. His thigh muscle was smarting abominably.
“Where is Atherstone?” the man repeated. “I have to go there.”
Chapman found his calmness more unnerving than the plane’s failure. “Listen, I wasn’t joking when I said we had technical
problems. We’re going to be lucky if we make it over this sodding jungle. Forget about Atherstone.”
“I will hurt you again, harder this time. And I will keep on hurting you until you take me to Atherstone.”
I’m being hijacked! The realization was as staggering as it was improbable. Chapman gagged at the man. “You have got to be
kidding!”
“No joke, Captain. If you do not land in the capital, I will see to it you don’t land anywhere.”
“Holy Christ.”
“Atherstone. Now where is it?”
“To the west somewhere. Christ, I’m not sure where. Inertial guidance has packed up.”
A mirthless smile appeared on the man’s face. “Then head west. It is a big city. I’m confident we’ll see it from this height.”
Chapman did nothing. Then winced as the man reached past him. He put his hand on the windscreen, palm flat. Horrifyingly deep
white cracks splintered outward.
“Atherstone.” It was an order.
“Okay. Just take your goddamn hand off that.” The windscreen was artificial sapphire for God’s sake. You couldn’t crack it
by
leaning
on it. A neural nanonics status check showed him half his synaptic augmentation had crashed, and virtually all the memory
cells had shut down. But there was enough capacity for a datavise. “Code F emergency,” he shot at the flight computer. Followed
by a small prayer that it hadn’t glitched completely yet.
“ISA duty officer,” came the response. “What’s happening?”
Chapman used the last of his neural nanonics’ capacity to issue a metabolic override, keeping his face perfectly composed.
He must not betray the silent conversation by a twitch of emotion. “Attempted hijacking. And the plane’s falling apart around
me.”
“How many hijackers?”
“Just one, I think. Can’t access the cabin cameras.”
“What does he want?”
“He says he wants to go to Atherstone.”
“What sort of weapon is he using?”
“Not sure. Nothing visible. Some kind of implant. Maybe a thermal induction field generator. He burnt my leg and damaged the
windscreen.”
“Thank you. Hold please.”
Like I can do something else, Chapman thought acidly. He flicked a curious glance at the man who was still standing to one
side of the chair. His face was as emotionless as Chapman’s.
The plane rocked alarmingly. Chapman tried to damp it down by swaying the pistol grip to compensate for the erratic motion.
On a plane with fully responsive control surfaces it might have worked, here it just slewed the tail around. He noticed the
nose had dropped a couple of degrees again.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s so bloody important in Atherstone that you’ve got to pull this crazy stunt?”
“People,” the man said blandly.
Some of the man’s calmness was infiltrating Chapman’s own mind. He pulled back on the pistol grip, easing the nose up until
they were level again. Nothing to it. At least there were no more systems dropping out, the malfunctions appeared to have
plateaued. But landing would be a bitch.
“Chapman,” the ISA duty officer datavised. “Please try and give us a visual of the hijacker. It’s very important.”
“I’m down to about two kilometres altitude, here. Seventy per cent of my systems have failed, and all you want is to see what
he
looks
like?”
“It will help us evaluate the situation.”
Chapman gave the man a sideways glance, loading the image into one of his remaining three functional memory cells. His datavise
bit rate was now so low it took an entire second to relay the file.
Ralph Hiltch watched the pixels slowly clot together above the bubble room’s table. “Savion Kerwin,” he said, unsurprised.
“Without a doubt,” Admiral Farquar acknowledged.
“That plane left Pasto ninety minutes after their spaceplane landed,” Jannike Dermot said. “They obviously intend to spread
the virus as wide as possible.”
“As I’ve been telling you,” Roche Skark said. “Ralph, do you think he’s infected anyone else on the plane?”
“Quite possibly, sir. The flight computer and Chapman’s neural nanonics are obviously being assaulted by a very powerful electronic
warfare field. It might be several of them acting in unison, or it could just be Savion Kerwin’s proximity to the electronic
systems, after all the flight computer is housed below the cockpit decking. But we really can’t take the chance.”
“Agreed,” Admiral Farquar said.
Chapman Adkinson waited for fifteen seconds after he’d datavised the visual file. The crippled flight computer reported the
communications channel was being maintained. Nothing happened, there was no update from the ISA officer.
A Royal Kulu Navy reserve officer himself, Chapman knew of the response procedures for civil emergencies. Rule of thumb: the
longer it took to come to a decision, the higher up the command structure the problem was being bumped. This one must be going
right to the top. To the people authorized to make life or death decisions.
Intuition or just a crushing sense of doom, Chapman Adkinson started laughing gleefully.
The man turned to give him a strange look. “What?”
“You’ll see, fella, soon enough. Tell me, are you the biohazard?”
“Am I a—”
The X-ray laser struck the plane while it was still eighty kilometres away from Atherstone. Ombey’s low-orbit SD platform
weapons could hit combat wasps while they were still two and a half thousand kilometres distant. The plane was a mere three
hundred kilometres beneath the platform which Deborah Unwin activated. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the lower atmosphere simply
cracked into their sub-atomic constituents as the X ray punched through the air, a searing purple lightning bolt eighty kilometres
long. At its tip, the plane detonated into an ionized fog which billowed out like a miniature neon cyclone. Scraps of flaming,
highly radioactive wreckage rained down on the pristine jungle below.
He was actually born in the United States of America, though few people ever liked to admit that particular fact, then or
afterwards. His parents were from Naples; and Southern Italians were universally looked down on and despised even by other
poor immigrant groups, let alone the superior intellectuals of the time who openly stated their hatred of such an inferior
breed of humans. As a consequence, few biographers and historians ever admitted the simple truth. He was, above all, a bona
fide made in America monster.
His birthplace was Brooklyn, on the chilly winter’s day of January 17, 1899, the fourth son of Gabriele and Teresina. At that
time the district was home to a seething mass of such burgeoning immigrant families trying to build fresh lives for themselves
in this new land of promise. Work was hard, labour cheap, the infamous city political machine strong, and the street gangs
and racketeers prominent. But among all these difficulties his father managed to earn enough to support his family. And as
a barber he did so independently and honestly, rare enough in that time and place.
Gabriele’s son never followed that route; there were just too many odds stacked against him. The whole Brooklyn environment
seemed designed to turn its young male population from the good.
After being expelled from school at fourteen for fighting with his (female) teacher he began running errands for the local
Association chief. He was one of the lowest of the low. But he learned: of men’s vices and what they would do to obtain them,
of the money to be made, of loyalty to his own, and most of all what people gave the Association’s leader: respect. Respect
was the key to the world, a commodity no one ever showed him or his father. A man who was respected had everything, a prince
among men.