Part 15 (1/2)

”None of us will make it otherwise, Gail. I'll try to talk sense to the Peacers. Do... do what you can.” What would I do in her place? What would I do in her place? His mind s.h.i.+ed away from Gail's choices. His mind s.h.i.+ed away from Gail's choices.

Parker nodded. ”I-” The picture smeared into an abstract pattern of colors. A screeching noise rose past audibility.

”Signal jammed,” said Lu.

”Della? Can you get through to the Peacers?”

Lu shrugged. ”It doesn't matter. Why do you think Parker called just then? She thinks she finally broke out of NM security. In fact, the enemy has taken over their system. Letting her through is part of a distraction.”

”Distraction?”

”One we can't ignore; he's going to start 'em killing each other. I see ballistic traffic going both ways across the Inland Sea... Someone's blocking my wideband link to Yelen.”

A section of window suddenly showed Yelen's office. Korolev was standing. ”Both sides are shooting. I've lost several autons. Both Both sides have high-tech backing, Della.” Disbelief was mixed with rage and fear. Tears glinted on her face. ”You'll have to do without my help for now; I'm going to divert my forces. I can't let my peo-I can't let these people die.” sides have high-tech backing, Della.” Disbelief was mixed with rage and fear. Tears glinted on her face. ”You'll have to do without my help for now; I'm going to divert my forces. I can't let my peo-I can't let these people die.”

”It's okay, Yelen. But get the others to help you. You can't trust your system alone.”

Korolev sat down shakily. ”Right. They've agreed to bring their forces up. I'm starting my diversion now. There was a moment of silence. Yelen stared blankly, swapped out. The silence stretched... and Yelen's eyes slowly widened. In horror. ”Oh, my G.o.d, no!” Her image vanished, and he was looking into empty sky.

Wil flinched, the motion floating him against his restraint harness. ”More jamming?”

”No. She just stopped transmitting.” There was a faint smile on Della's face. ”I guessed this might happen. To s.h.i.+ft her forces, she had to run control routines that the enemy could not start-but which he had perverted. He's finally shown himself in a big way: Yelen's forces are coming out for us. What she has in far s.p.a.ce is moving to block our exit.

”Another minute and we'll know who we've been fighting all this time. Yelen can't take me alone. The killer is going to have to stand up with his own equipment...” Her smile broadened. ”You're going to see some real shooting, Wil.”

”I can hardly wait.” He tucked his data set in the side of his acc chair.

”Oh, don't expect too much; with the naked eye, this won't be very spectacular.” And she was humming!

Please G.o.d that this insanity does not affect her performance.

The horizon jerked once again. There was no acceleration, no sound. It was like botched special effects from an old-time movie. But now they were better than a thousand kilometers up, the Inland Sea a cloud-dotted puddle. And the Earth was visibly falling away from them; they were moving at dozens of klicks per second.

Surely-even without Yelen-the others could protect the low-techs from a few ballistic missiles? Malicious fate gave him quick answer: Three bright sparks glowed on the southern coast, a third of the way from West End to the Eastern Straits. Wil groaned.

”Those were high air bursts, at Town Korolev,” said Della.

”If the Dasguptas spread your warning, there may not be too many casualties.” There was puzzlement in her voice.

”But where are Chanson and Genet and Blumenthal? Surely-”

”Surely they could prevent this?” Della finished the question. She swapped out a moment. Then: ”Oh... wow!” Her words were almost a sigh, filed with endless wonder and surprise. She was silent a moment more. Then her eyes focused on Wil. ”All this time, we were expecting to flush the killer into the open. Right? Well... we have a little problem. All the high-tech forces have turned on us.”

Like a gruesome short story Wil once read: Detective locks self in room with suspects. Detective applies definitive test to suspects. All suspects guilty... Unmarked grave for detective. Happy ending for suspects.

”We are now outgunned, Wil. This is going to be very interesting.” The smile was almost gone from her face, replaced by a look of intense concentration. Sudden light and shadow flickered across the cabin. Wil looked up, saw a pattern of point lights glowing, fading in the blackness. ”They have a lot of stuff at the Lagrange zones. They're bringing it down on us-while their ground-based stuff comes up. No way we can get to my quarters just now.”

And they were back at low alt.i.tude, the horizon spread flat around them, the Indonesian Alps drifting by below. His restraint harness stiffened and the flier surged forward at multiple g's, then slammed to the side. Wil's consciousness faded into red dimness. Somewhere he heard Della say, ”... lose realtime every time I nuke out. Can't afford it now.” They were in free fall for almost a second, then more crus.h.i.+ng acceleration, then free fall again. Brightness flashed all around them, lighting sea and clouds with extra suns. More acceleration. Things don't get this exciting when they're going right. Things don't get this exciting when they're going right.

The horizon jerked, and acceleration reversed. Jerk, jerk. Now each translation of the outside world was accompanied by changed acceleration, the agrav being used in concert with the nukes. Della's words came in broken gasps. ”b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.” Around them the horizon rose, kilometers per second. Acceleration was heavy, s.p.a.cewards. ”They're past my defenders.” Jerk. They were lower, hurtling parallel to the vast wall that was the Earth. ”They're zeroed on me.” Jerk. ”Seven direct hits in-” jerk. jerk.

Jerk. Free fall again. This last had taken them high over the Pacific. All was blue and ocean clouds below. ”We've got about a minute's breather. I regrouped my low forces and nuked into the middle of them. The enemy's breaking through right now.” To the west, point suns flashed brighter and brighter. In the sky below, weirdness: five contrails, a dozen. The clouds grew like quick crystal, around threads of fire. Directed energy weapons? ”We're the king piece; they're trying to force us out of this era.”

Somewhere, Wil found his voice. Even more, it sounded calm. ”No way, Della.”

”Yeah... I didn't come this far to fade.” Pause. ”Okay. There's another way to protect the king piece. A bit risky, but-”

Wil's chair suddenly came alive. The sides swung inward, bringing his arms across his middle. The footrest moved up, forcing his knees to near chest level. At the same time, the entire a.s.sembly rotated sideways, to face a similarly trussed Della Lu. The contraption tightened painfully, squeezing the two of them into a round bundle. And then-

TWENTY-FOUR.

There was an instant of falling. The acceleration spiked, then stabilized at one g.

The chair relaxed its grip.

The sunlight was gone. The air was hot, dry. They were no longer in the flier They were no longer in the flier! The ”one-g field” was the Earth's. They were sitting on the ground.

Della was already on her feet, dismantling part of her chair. ”Nice sunset, huh?” She nodded toward the horizon.

Sunset or sunrise. He had no sense of direction, but the heat in the air made him guess they were at the end of a day. The sun was squashed and reddish, its light coming sickly across a level plain. He suddenly felt sick himself. Was that disk reddened by its closeness to the horizon, or was the sun itself itself redder? ”Della, just-just how long did we jump?” redder? ”Della, just-just how long did we jump?”

She looked up from her rummaging. ”About forty-five minutes. If we can live another five, we may be okay.” She pulled a meter-long pole from the back of her chair, clipped a strap to it, and slung it over her shoulder. He noticed s.h.i.+ny metal where the bobble had cut the chairs away from Della's flier. That bobble had been scarcely more than a meter wide. No wonder he had been cramped. ”We need to get out of sight. Help me drag this stuff over there.” She pointed at a k.n.o.blike hill a hundred meters off.

They were standing in a shallow crater of dirt and freshly cracked rock. Wil took a chair in each hand and pulled; he backed quickly out of the crater, onto gra.s.s. Della motioned him to stop. She grabbed one of the chairs and tipped it over. ”Drag it on the smooth side. I don't want them to see a trail.” She leaned back against the load, dragging it quickly away across the short gra.s.s. Wil followed, pulling his with a one-handed grasp.

”When you've got a minute, I'd like to know what we're up to.”

”Sure. Soon as we get these under cover.” She turned, took the load on her shoulders, and all but trotted toward the stony hill. It took several minutes to reach it; the hill was larger and farther away than he thought. It rose over the gra.s.s and scrub like some ominous guardian. Except for the birds that rattled out as they approached, it seemed lifeless.

The ground around it was bare, grooved. The rock bulged over its base, leaving shallow caves along the perimeter. There was a smell of death. He saw bones in the shadows. Della saw them too. She slid her chair in over the bones and waved for Wil to do the same. ”I don't like this, but we've got other hunters to worry about first.” Once the equipment was hidden, she scrambled up the rock face to a small cave about four meters up. Wil followed, more awkwardly.

He looked around before sitting beside her. The indentation barely qualified as a cave. Nothing would surprise them from behind, though something had used it for dining; there were more well-gnawed bones. The cave was hidden from most of the sky, yet they had a good view of the ground, almost to the base of the rock.

He sat down, impatient for explanations-and suddenly was struck by the silence. All day the tension had grown, reaching a crescendo of violence these last few minutes. Now every sign of that struggle was gone. One hundred meters away, birds flocked around a stunted tree, their cries and flapping wings clear and tiny in the larger silence. Only a sliver of the sun's disk still glowed at the horizon. By that light, the prairie was reddish gold, broken here and there by the dark scrub. The breeze was a slow thing, still warm from the day. It brought perfume and putrescence, and left the sweat dry on his face.

He looked at Della Lu. Dark hair had fallen across her cheek. She didn't seem to notice. ”Della?” he said quietly. ”Did we lose?”

”Unh?” She looked at him, awareness coming back to her eyes. ”Not yet. Maybe not at all if this works... They were concentrating everything on you and me. The only way we could stay in this era and still survive was to disappear. I brought my whole inner guard toward our flier. We exploded almost all our nukes at the same time, and vanished as thousands of meter-sized bobbles. One of those bobbles contained you and me; seventy of them are from the cairn. They're scattered all over now-Earth surface, Earth orbit, solar orbit. Most of the surface ones were timed to burst minutes after impact.”

”So we're lost in the turmoil.”

Her smile was a ghost of earlier enthusiasm. ”Right. They haven't got us yet: I think we brought it off. Given a few hours they could do a thorough search, but I'm not giving them the time. My midguard has come down, and is giving them plenty of other things to worry about.

”We, here, are totally defenseless, Wil. I don't even have a bobbler. The other side could take us out with a five-millimeter pistol-if only they knew where to do the shooting. I had to destroy my inner guard to get away. What's left is outnumbered two to one. Yet... yet I think I can win. Fifty seconds out of every minute, I have tight beam comm with my fleet.” She patted the meter-long pole that lay on the ground between them. One end consisted of a ten-centimeter sphere. She had laid the pole so that the ball was at the cave's entrance. Wil looked at it more closely, saw iridescence glow and waver. It was some kind of coherent transmitter. Her own forces knew where they were hidden, and needed to keep only one unit in line of sight for Lu to run the battle.

Della's voice was distant, almost indifferent. ”Whoever they are, they know how to pervert systems, but not so much about combat I've fought through centuries of realtime, with bobblers and suppressors, nukes and lasers. I have programs you just couldn't buy in civilization. Even without me, my system fights smarter than the other side's...” A chuckle. ”The high-orbit stuff is dead just now. We're playing 'peek and shoot': 'peek' around the shoulder of the Earth, 'shoot' at anything with its head stuck up. Boys and girls running round and round their home, killing each other... I'm winning, Wil, I really am. But we're burning it all. Poor Yelen. So worried that our systems might not last long enough to reestablish civilization. One afternoon we're destroying all we've acc.u.mulated.”