Trial by Fire - eARC (35 page)

Downing turned and looked back out the window, saw a hint of fire growing at the nexus of a three-car collision two intersections away and noticed a few flakes of snow starting to drift down.
I hope it’s not a cold winter. But either way, it’s going to be the coldest
you’ve
ever lived through, Sunshine.

Downing went to the door, got his coat while the staff stood gaping down the street and into the darkness around them. At least it wasn’t going to take too long to get to San Diego by secure government train now.

Because, for the next few days at least, there wasn’t going to be a lot of rail traffic in the way.

CoDevCo security compound, Jakarta, Earth

Beyond the closed bathroom door, Djoko could hear the
bule
Riordan groaning faintly.
Shit, I get all the lousiest jobs.
He turned and looked at his fellow guard. The Arat Kur—or Roach, as people were calling them—rotated his eyes in his head to look back up at Djoko.
Disgusting.
He banged on the door. “Hurry up! We’ve got to—”

All the lights went out. The steady hum of the air-conditioners faded.

Shit.

From far down the corridor—the men’s room had been quite a walk—Djoko heard his sergeant yell. “Hey, get a move on!”

“I can’t! The
bule
is still in there.”

“Well, make him come out. We’re going outside. Can’t see to put the batteries back in our palmcomps. Hurry up!”

“I’m hurrying!” Djoko yelled back, and then muttered, “
Anda keparat.
”

Beyond the door, the toilet flushed and then the tap started running. Djoko was grateful that both of them still functioned. He had been unsure if any of the running water in the high-tech complex would work without electricity.
Well, any minute now, the
bule
will come out and we can—

Beyond the door, the
bule
ambassador cried out: a yell of inarticulate pain.

The Roach’s eyes rotated up swiftly toward Djoko. “Human needs help?” came out of its translator, accompanied by the faint chittering of its natural “voice.”

Djoko felt himself start to sweat, probably more from nerves than the subtly rising heat and humidity in the dark hallway. What was he supposed to do? No one had given him any orders about what steps to take if—

The toilet flushed again and the
bule
was now either choking or coughing. Then he groaned hoarsely. “I think—I need help. I’m bleeding—I need—” There was no further speech, but a moment later, Djoko heard a heavy, limp thud beyond the door.

The Roach started, its eyes rotating toward Djoko. “You help!”

“I don’t know—”

“You help,” it chittered/spoke again. “I notify leaders.” The oversized bug spun about and skittered quickly back down the corridor.

Djoko looked after it for a second, annoyed to take orders from an alien cockroach, then listened. Still no sound—but the water, which was still running, had started to seep out from under the door.
Ah, shit—
He did not know what he could do to help, but his sergeant would flay him skinless if he stood outside and did nothing. He pushed open the door.

Almost complete darkness, except for a tiny spindle of light coming from higher up on the far wall, just above his head. He approached, feeling for the
bule
ambassador with his feet, wondered what the light was coming from. “Ambassdur?” he asked in uncertain English—just as he discovered what the light was.

The
bule
had removed the grate covering the air duct into the room. Two screws lay just inside the exposed ventilation shaft. An escape? Except, now that Djoko looked carefully, the duct was too small for even him to fit into, much less a
bule
that was easily six foot tall—

To his credit, Djoko, figured out that the grate removal was a ruse the same instant he felt a sharp, hard-edged blow along the side of his head. In the dark, he scrabbled at the sink to remain upright—just before a hand grabbed his hair and slammed his forehead straight down into the edge of the sink.

* * *

Caine felt the small soldier’s body go limp. But in the dark, uncertain of how badly injured the man was, or whether he was actually stunned or feigning it, Riordan took no chances. Dropping the blood-slick grate, Caine once again slammed the poor fellow’s forehead into the sink before letting the body sink to the wet, water-running floor.

Not much time for stumbling around in the dark. First, grab his rifle. Damn, he must have slung it while waiting and, didn’t unsling it before coming in. And the sling is tangled around his—damn, what sort of contorted position did he fall into? Shit! Let’s see, if I move his arm—no, that’s a leg—out of the way—

Caine reared up.
No time. You’ve got to run. Finding a way out will be hard enough. And a gun won’t be that helpful. But wasting time trying to untangle it could get you caught. So get the hell out of here. Now.
Caine was out the door before the thought was finished.

Somewhere down the lightless corridor from which he had come, there were distant sounds of surprised, loud conversation.

Stooping slightly, feeling along the near wall with one hand, Caine ran the opposite direction into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Three

U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Earth

The wind was coming straight up the Chesapeake. Although it was slightly warm for the season, the breeze made the tattered dockside flags snap straight out. Trevor looked up at the Stars and Stripes and Navy ensign, remembered the first time he had seen them here. Wide-eyed beside his father, he watched those flags flying free in a fresh wind, bringing vibrant life to the memorial foremast which had been salvaged from the USS
Maine
. Then, on his own Induction Day, he had seen those flags again, saw them as living symbols of the duty and honor, orders and oath, that were the seamlessly interwoven sinews of his new life of service.

He chinned down into his old, cedar-scented deck coat. That was all long ago and far away. He was only eighteen years older than he was the day he took his oath of service at Tecumseh Court, hardly more than half a kilometer behind him. But if time was measured by what you’ve done, seen, and lost, and if distance was a factor not of where you stand, but how far you’ve traveled to arrive there, then those free-flying flags of his youth were farther away than the few surviving scraps of the hull he had lost at Barnard’s Star.
My only command: a module half-dead in space, briefly surrendered to assist the enemy with his communications, before scuttling. A brilliant career at the conn.
At least it had also been mercifully brief.

Not that there had ever been much chance he’d be posted to the Fleet, not after he had entered the Teams. The SEALs like their recruits brawny and Trevor’s athletic background hadn’t hurt. And since that was a rare combination with the cognitive aptitudes and tactical instincts he had already displayed, his course was set: a fast launch up through the officer ranks and JSOC assignments. Always busy, often exciting, sometimes challenging—but never what he had envisioned. Or maybe, it was simply not what Dad had envisioned for him.
Face it, Trevor, he was looking for himself in you—and he didn’t find it. Dad was a good soldier and a great skipper, but more than anything else, he was an outstanding strategist, the kind that comes along two or three times in a generation. Maybe.

Trevor squinted against a snowy gust, could just make out the approaching lights of the scheduled naval auxiliary.
Dad was all about people, plans, and politics. Me? I’m just a glorified, high-end grunt, specializing in machines and mayhem.
But maybe, right at this moment, grunts were exactly what was needed. All the plans in this world would not save it, not without enough boots on the ground to do the dirty work
. Then again, there’s some work that’s too dirty to do, if you want to remain human, if you want to be able to live with yourself. Pity you don’t get that, Uncle Richard.

The auxiliary—a tug-become-day-ship that had been pressed into service as a freight and passenger packet in the ad hoc coastal feeder system—loomed quickly out of the mist that had rolled in just ahead of it. Trevor heard the reassuring, steady sputter of an ancient diesel engine go into double-time reverse just before she lightly bumped the stanchions’ improvised fenders. A preteen girl—lanky and in a grease-stained goose-down jacket—hopped over the gunwale and hooked the bowline over a bollard. The voice that came from the upper level of the pilot house drew Trevor’s attention to a salt-and pepper beard and a seamed face that poked over the bridge deck’s railing. “You’re it? No more?”

“I’m it. Not a great day—well, night, for boating.”

“True ’nuff. So why are you here? Suicidal?”

Trevor wondered for a moment. “Maybe,” he admitted.

The Old Man of the Sea stuck his face farther out. “A man who takes that long to answer is giving the question some serious thought. I carry legitimate passengers, not walking death-wishes.”

Trevor smiled, reached down and hauled up his footlocker in a single grab. “Oh, I’m legit. But I think I might be heading into a worse storm than this one.”

“Oh? And where’s that one brewing?”

“Java, if the weather reports are right.”

The gruff act was abruptly over. “Long journey just to satisfy a death wish.”

“Longer than you’d guess. My route is via the Caribbean.”

The Old Man of the Sea leaned into the snow-spitting air. “I can get you down as far as Norfolk. That’s the connecting terminal between the northern and southern halves of the emergency coastal feeder system. You can get a bigger ship out of there. Coast Guard hull, probably. All the way down to Jacksonville or Miami, usually. Beyond that, I can’t tell you.”

Trevor judged the height of the gunwale, decided to use the gangway. “There are usually some inter-force packets running Commonwealth exchanges throughout the Bahamas, and then down into the Leeward Islands. The Brits have commissioned some civvies to serve that route, I hear.”

“Hope the civvies are still running after tonight’s little surprise.”

“Yeah.” Trevor swung his locker through the hatchway into passenger’s section, just aft of the pilot house. “Did the EMP bursts give you any trouble?”

“What do you think? I was dead in the water. But I was never so glad to have an old bucket like this one. She’s such a simpleminded cow, that my little grease monkey there”—he nodded in the direction of the girl, who was already casting off—“had the diesel hand-fired in an hour. Radar’s shot, though.”

Greasemonkey thumped past gracelessly. “Yeah, but you know every light, every, buoy, even every house, from here to Newport News. The radar only makes you double-guess yourself.”

As she rambled aft, he sent a scowl at her—and behind it, Trevor saw a poignant, even painful love for which the Old Man doubtless had no words. Trevor suddenly missed his own father so much that he wasn’t entirely sure if the salt he tasted was from the heavy, sea-churned mist. “How much do I owe you?” he asked quietly.

“Just give me name, rank, serial. I’ll submit to the government for credit. DC is supposed to pay us back, and they had damn well better do so, after mobilizing us all for national service the moment all the aircraft were grounded.” He eased the throttle forward, kept the engine unengaged.

“Lines away.” Greasemonkey’s shout was high-pitched and bored.

Old Man put the shafts in gear and heeled gently to port, bringing the sagging hull into a half-circle that would take her straight between the first pair of new, solar-juiced biolume buoys and into the waterway.

Trevor turned, looked back toward the Academy, at the foremast of the Maine that marked where the Yard met the Bay, briefly saw the flags before the mist closed over again, and wondered,
Why does this feel like the last time I’m ever going to see them?

West-Central Jakarta, Earth

Caine didn’t mind the dark, or the tight crawlways, or even the smells of stagnant water and much-rotted mold. However, the rats—large and ominously curious—were somewhat worrisome. But there had been little choice regarding an escape route from the bank complex that CoDevCo had commandeered as its headquarters.

As he fled, Caine reasoned that, judging from the hasty landing field provisions, vehicle barriers, and the curtain walls fronting the plaza, the megacorporations had not had time to turn the complex into a fully self-sufficient fortress, sealed off from the outside world, both above and below ground. And there would have been little enough reason to do so immediately. It wasn’t as if foreign commandos would soon be infiltrating the warren of conduits, pipes, and localized sewer subsystems that made up a subterranean sprawl even more confusing than the street-level chaos of Jakarta.

So Caine had kept going deeper into the building, until, in the subbasement, he found what he was looking for, framed in emergency lights: a workman’s access shaft into service crawlways that joined the banking complex to the essential services and resources of the outside world.

The worst aspect of Caine’s subterranean journey was the inability to measure direction or even distance. He held as straight a course as he could, and philosophically allowed that he’d never have found side-branching passages in this Stygian darkness anyhow.

Ultimately, it was Caine’s ears that provided him with the only navigational data he received during his long crawl alongside the PVC tubing that housed the power and data lines for the banking complex. After what seemed like several hours, he heard what he first believed to be the harbinger of his demise: a siren. But a moment’s reflection made him revise that assessment. Any pursuers would be underground, too. Not exactly the environment where sirens were used or needed. And if it was above ground, it was unlikely the siren was being used by anyone pursuing
him
.

Another minute of crawling and listening provided further information. The siren was not sequencing through a variety of different alarm modes, as was the case with most emergency vehicles. It was a steady, repetitive sound, more like a car or a building alarm. That meant he had to be getting close to the surface, and to some opening that let in sounds from the street level. Caine felt a surge of renewed energy, and doubled the rate at which he wriggled toward the next corner.