"Nice going, Lieutenant, ma'am," I said.
"My pleasure, Chief Superintendent, sir. I suppose it's too much to hope that one of these birds might be the coveted Ollie."
"Sorry. We're not that lucky. Could be we nabbed some of the small-fry fugitives, though. I'll check 'em out in a few minutes. I really need this caffeine."
She got up with a smile. "Well, what I need is to visit a decent-sized ladies' room." She went aft.
I glanced idly about the ulterior of the Vorlon. God, it was great to be in a ship designed for humans again! This one was a beaut, armed and armored and equipped with an oversized powerplant. I wondered how many more 1 OXAs were stashed in the facility's underground hangar. Outside, the sun shone brightly on the bloodred wall of Corkscrew. The smoke was diminishing.
A muffled groan came from one of the figures lying on the deck. I rose and went over to them, pulling the little e-book from my jumpsuit pocket. It contained mug shots and dossiers of Oliver Schneider and the four ExSec officers who had fled with him from Seriphos. Except for Ollie himself, I didn't know any of them by sight.
I began comparing faces. Nobody matched.
"Rats," I muttered.
Ildiko reappeared. "No joy?"
"Not in this bunch. It looks like we'll have to break into the facility after all. There must be a tunnel connecting it to the underground hangar."
One of the men opened his eyes and mumbled something incomprehensible. He lay on his side, hands fastened behind his back, a massive young tough with dark brows, a potato nose, and a prim rosebud mouth that he'd tried to hide beneath a soup-strainer moustache. He eyed me woozily and whispered, "Wha'?"
"Gag the others," I told Ildiko. "This beauty will do for interrogation."
I went to my pack's med kit and got a couple of penverol dosers, not nearly as effective as psychotronic machines but much more portable. Turning his head, I pulled open the captive's collar, laid the tiny purple pillows on either side of his larynx, X side down, and pressed them firmly with my thumb and index finger. Microexplosions injected the drug into his carotid arteries. His eyes rolled and the preposterously dainty mouth sagged open.
"What's your name?" I asked after a few minutes had passed.
He stared at me in pained puzzlement. "Mmm... mmm."
"Name," I repeated.
He spoke in a slow, affectless voice. "Mmm. Darrel ... Ridenour."
"Are you employed by Galapharma AC, Darrel?"
"Ye-es."
"What is your position?"
"Ex-external s-security agent... fourth grade."
"What is the nature of the facility where you're stationed?"
"It's... a genen clinic. S-S-Secret."
"Are Haluk being processed in there?"
"No .. . yes! Ahhh! No! ... Yes!" The drug was working, but a person with exceptionally strong willpower would be able to resist it. I hoped that Darrel wasn't one of those.
"Who's in charge of the facility?"
He really didn't want to answer that one. His eyes darted wildly, a grating moan welled up from his throat, and he thrashed and strained against the plastic cuffs that imprisoned his wrists and ankles. Ildiko held him down. I repeated the question twice before he replied.
"Deputy Security Chief Erik Skogstad... in charge. Duty Officer... Jim Matsukawa."
Skogstad was the Gala agent who'd been unable to supervise my assassination due to the press of other urgent business. Garth Wing Lee had told me that Skogstad was responsible for Ollie Schneider.
"Is Skogstad inside the facility?" Was there a chance we might nab a primo Gala spook as well as a Rampart turncoat?
"Yes... aaah! No! No! He's... offworld."
So much for catching two fish in one net. "Where is he? On what planet?"
Once again Ridenour balked, but finally: "Artiuk... meeting with the Servant of Servants of Luk."
That was a shocker. The SSL was the paramount leader of the Haluk race. "What's this meeting about?"
"Rumor... Big Seven Concern executives came out from Earth."
In anticipation of Rampart's capitulation to Galapharma?
"What are the Concern execs talking to the Servant about, Darrel?"
This time his denial was agonized. "Don't know! Don't know! It hurts ... Make it stop!" He screamed and fell back, mumbling.
I said, "Rats."
"Perhaps he's hypersensitive to the drug," Ildiko said. "Ease up, Helly. I'll give him a calmative."
She fetched another doser and did the injection. In a few minutes Ridenour relaxed. He asked for water and she put a canteen to his lips. When he seemed to have recovered, I continued the questioning.
"How many humans in your security force?"
"T-Twelve."
"How many Haluk guards?"
"Thirty-two."
"Do only the human guards carry blasters?"
He gave a barely perceptible nod. On Cravat it had been the same. The alien security forces were armed only with stun-guns. "How about noncombatant personnel inside the facility? What do they do?"
Two humans were genetic engineers. There were also three human hopper pilots. Twenty Haluk cooks, bottlewashers, and all-around domestics took care of the scut work.
"Very good, Darrel. Now I'm going to show you a picture." I held up Schneider's mug shot. "Look at this carefully. Have you ever seen this man?"
He squinted at the e-book screen. "Looks like ... that human motherfucker, John Green."
"Is Green inside your facility?" I held my breath in suppressed excitement. "Does he work there?"
"Stays in the administration block... plays computer games. Reads. Drinks. Doesn't work."
I tried to get more information about "John Green," but Darrel seemed genuinely not to know.
"How about these men?" I showed Ridenour the other four Rampart ExSec traitors.
He burst into hysterical laughter. "They're working! Oh, yes! They're really working."
"What are you talking about? What do they do?"
"In the dystasis tanks ... sharing their DNA." He was cackling like a madman, eyes squeezed tightly shut. "DNA!" he howled. "Sharing their DNA!"
"Sweet Jesus," Ildiko whispered.
I said to her, "I figured Ollie might have kept back incriminating data that made Galapharma handle him with care. I guess his buddies weren't included in the deal."
Her face was full of horror. "Can we get the poor bastards out of there?"
"Our job is to get Schneider out," I said, "and don't forget our people waiting back at the privateer crash site. Maybe we can convince Zone Patrol to raid the place later. There'll be other humans imprisoned there besides Ollie's quintet. The genengineers use them for tissue-culture donors."
I resumed my interrogation of Darrel Ridenour. His hysterical laughter had ceased. The new medication rendered him apathetic and almost docile. He readily revealed the internal layout of the facility, the nature and position of its defenses, and the deployment of human and Haluk forces inside. The three antiaircraft blaster turrets on the roof were operated from a fire control center in the administration module. There were two other ESC-10XA hoppers in the underground hangar. One was inoperative, undergoing routine engine maintenance.
I was drafting a map of the target's interior and discussing assault tactics with Ildy when the cockpit com unit sounded off.
"Hopfrog Two, base. You copy? Frog Two, give a status report. Come back, Frog Two."
Ridenour began to shriek at the top of his lungs. I told Ildy to gag him and went to the command seat.
The base operator said, "Come back, Frog Two. What the hell you guys doing out there? Roasting friggin' marshmallows?"
I did a rat-a-tat on the com pad at the same time that I mouthed broken gibberish.
"Say again, Two? You're breaking up."
I repeated the maneuver.
"Frog Two, go to backup com system. Primary has a glitch. I say, go to backup com, Two. Do you copy?"
One more time on the gar
ble.
A different voice, full of no-nonsense authority, rang from the speaker. "Hopfrog Two, return to base immediately! Duty Officer Matsukawa here. Return to base. Do you copy, Hop-frog Two?"
I did a very brief garble response, shut off the communicator, and sat there thinking. Ildiko was wrapping the five prisoners in a big cargo net and hooking the squirming bundle to the deck tie-downs.
I said, "You ever played gunny on one of these aircraft, babe?"
"On a better one. ESC-15XB. Had twin cannons and a TND torpedo launcher besides the Kagi blue-rays. Pretty much the same targeting setup as the 10XA, though. You got apian?"
I told her what it was. "What do you think? Tell me straight. You're the assault expert."
"Depends on whether you've evaluated the target correctly, Helly. And whether Darrel told us the truth about its defenses. Given a thumbs-up on both points, I'd say go for it. We've still got the advantage of surprise. But once we start pounding, there's no way we can prevent them sending a sub-space call for help—short of taking out the facility's central module and maybe losing your prize, Schneider, in the rubble. If there's a hostile cruiser within striking range, we could end up screwed even if the ground action succeeds."
"I'll check that with Joe right now. You take the right-hand seat. Light the engines and do a run-up on the weaponry. Back in a short."
I clapped on my helmet, hurried outside, and called Chispa Dos on the lasercom, praying that the big rock pinnacle wasn't blocking my hat-beam to the orbiting starship.
To my relief, Joe responded.
"I need you to get on the high-resolution scanner," I said, "and do a full-sky search for starships incoming this solar system—especially anything that smells like a Haluk or Galapharma express cruiser."
"I'm ahead of you, Helly. Been combing the ether since we parked. This Bodascon prototype of yours has a really righteous ship-sniffer. Wait one. Gotta resort the swarm—whoa! That's new."
"What?"
"A possible bandit just coming into range at sixty lights, bopping right along at sixty-three ross. What do you know: fuel signature indicates a Haluk vessel."
"Goddammit to fuckin' hell!" I wondered if Eric Skog-stad was returning early with a fresh load of Haluk genen subjects.
"She's ex Artiuk. That's their principal Spur colony. Jeez! I never knew the Haluk flew anything that hot."
It was no surprise to me. I'd barely escaped being creamed by a similarly speedy Haluk starship on the way to Cravat. I suspected that the colossal flagship of the Servant of Servants, which had nearly been the death of me at Helly's Comet, was even faster. "You confirm a Dagasatt system vector for the bandit?"
"That's an affirm."
"Okay, listen up, Joe. You'll have to go out and kill it. We've got no choice. O'Toole's dead, but Ildy and 1 have grabbed an armed Vorlon hopper on the QT and we're ready to attack. The opposition is bound to put out a subspace squawk when we initiate. If that Haluk boat catches the call, it'll come charging in, loaded for bear. It might even notify the local yokels and we'll have Squeaker gunships up the wazoo."
"You have any idea of the Haluk's shipscan range?"
"Less than yours. Maybe thirty, forty lights."
"If you can delay your assault for about half an hour, I'll be able to nab the bandit with his pants down."
"We'll do our best to oblige. Happy trails, pardner. I'm gone."
I hurried back inside the aircraft, slapped the hatch closure control, and popped off my helmet. "There's a fast Haluk starship coming," I told Ildiko. "Joe will play exterminator. Let's try to stall the attack for at least half an hour so he can—"
"Helly," she said calmly, "a second hostile hopper just came up on the lift out there. Sit down and fly this crate. It's party time."
Chapter 10
We stayed put while a black Vorlon aircraft identical to ours lofted off the pad and approached at a low altitude. It called itself Hopfrog One and tried continuously to make contact with us.
"Uh . .. Hopfrog Two? Is your position hazardous? Is it safe for us to land? Come back to One, Frog Two."
Circling slowly above our position, observers inside the other ship rubbernecked the smokes and us, assessing the situation. The crew of Hopfrog One knew that our engines were powered up. I'd engaged the wave-bender shield, so they couldn't tell how many live people were inside our aircraft. They could see footprints and body dragmarks in the sand around us. I hoped they wouldn't interpret the spoor correctly.
"Frog Two, do you have casualties? Can you exit the aircraft and signal manually? Frog Two, if you copy, exit your aircraft."
Ildy and I waited.
"Hopfrog Two, Frog One is surveilling the terrain and then coming in for a touch."
The aircraft's circular flight path widened, taking it behind Corkscrew Pinnacle and momentarily beyond the sight line of the Haluk facility. That was what Ildiko had been waiting for.
She had disabled the Harvey's electronic targeter to avoid alerting her prey. Using the backup optical reticle to track it like a duck in flight, she blew Hopfrog One out of the sky with our HA-5 actinic cannon, vaporizing the top of the rock formation along with it.
We bounced in the shock wave. The columns of oily smoke flattened and coalesced and swirled around the surface of the ground like a mass of tangled inky fabric. A split second later I had us airborne, heading straight for the target, flying through smoke at an altitude of less than two meters.
Abandoning the controls of the too-powerful Harvey cannon, Ildy used the twin BRB-200 blue-beamers to behead the facility's tower. The larger antennas controlling the PHBA sensors and the GBD generator went tumbling down. The dissimulator umbrella winked out. As the upper parts of the surrounding formations lost their fuzziness, drifting smoke began to obscure the ground around the facility itself.
Someone inside pulled his shit together and the small Kagi guns in the defensive ring began peppering us with blue blazes. Our ship's armor held firm against the relatively weak antipersonnel lasers.
A console alarm light began flashing. The ship's computer said: Alert. Alert. TG-383 target acquisition field seeking this aircraft.
"The roof turrets!" I yelled.
Three fat white beams sizzled through the smoke above our hopper.
"Easy does it," Ildy murmured. "Their guns can't depress far enough to acquire us." She drilled the east- and west-wing emplacements without significant harm to the building beneath, just as we'd planned. The third turret continued to fire. "Go around so I can take it out."
I sent our Vorlon on a screaming turn barely above the surface of the lake so she could get a clear shot at the north wing. Gouts of futile Kagi photons bathed us like the dew covers Dixie. The blaster in the undamaged turret continued to discharge, exploding great chunks out of the red mountain behind us until Ildy's precision bursts with the BRB-200s melted its firing mechanism.
Rockfalls thundered down from the battered Jukebox formation and splashed into the lake. By now the entire basin was hazy with smoke from the petroleum fires. I had no doubt that observers inside the facility could still see us.
I zoomed straight up to an altitude of fifty meters. Ildy ticked off the small Kagis in the inner perimeter defense one by one, as though playing a video game.
"Atta gal!" I exulted.
She grinned. "Want a job done, hire a pro."
We were hovering directly above the central module of the target. There was no visible activity down below. None of the avalanche material from the butte had reached the facility walls.
It seemed likely that we'd effectively disarmed them. The weaponry left inside had to be light stuff. In a facility like this, the windows were almost certainly bulletproof, impossible to shoot through with portable weaponry—from either side. I didn't think the opposition would be stupid enough to open a window and shoot a homing missile or a magnum HE grenade at us, but I was taking no chances.
I activated the com unit's low-band emergency channel. They'd rec
eive that even with the tower antennas dead.
"Hello, the base! Stand down! Stand down! Do not fire through the windows. If you fire through the windows we'll destroy you with our cannon. You copy that?"
No reply.
"Base, we want to talk to D.O. Jim Matsukawa. Come back, Jim."
Silence.
"Whack the rest of Corkscrew Pinnacle," I told Ildy. "Get their attention."
She took the HA-5 and blasted the broken red-rock column to plasma. A single huge mushroom of scarlet-painted black smoke belched skyward from the abruptly enlarged petro pit at the formation's base, sucking the ground-hugging haze along with it.
"Yeow!" said Ildy.
I called, "Hello, down there! Anybody copy in the base? You in there, Jim? I sure hope you weren't aboard Hopfrog One, oF buddy. It's gone to the last roundup—along with a bunch of blaster turrets and perimeter guns and that upstanding piece of local real estate just south of your place."
"A duty officer would stay at his post," Ildiko whispered. "He's there."
I knew that. "Jimbo? Naughty, naughty! I know what you're doing, my man. You're sending a subspace shout to that Haluk starship vectoring in from Artiuk. But he'll never get here in time to save your ass. Neither will any of your Squeaky pals. You'll have to negotiate with us if you want you and your people to survive this little faceoff. How about it?"
Nada from the facility. He was a stubborn one.
"You're disappointing me, Jim. Do I have to destroy one of the wings of your installation and kill a bunch of innocent Haluk floaters? I don't want to hit you again. Not unless I have to. Talk to me. Save lives. You listening? I'm going to count to three, then take out your north wing. One—"
"Matsukawa here," said that voice full of no-nonsense authority. "Who are you?"