Thanks Sam, ED, Brezo and Tikatu. Edits soon to come.
21: Escalation
Washington, D.C., in a grey limousine en route to an underground bomb shelter-
Indira Chatterjee's image betrayed clear signs of agitation. Although she strove to conceal her emotion, the defense minister's pupils were very wide; black pits in the rich brown field of her irises. Genovese had looked much the same, over the emergency link he'd had 'Shr3ddr' concoct.
"He has grown dangerous," she said. "More than that, obviously insane."
Vargas answered nothing, drawing further revelations from the WorldGov turncoat.
"I believe in the vision of Red Path, do not mistake me… but I cannot countenance the total extinction of our species, a possibility that your master dismisses with a shrug. Mr. Black, something must be done. I believe that it is time for new blood in the upper echelons."
She spoke sedition, this regal woman with her gold-decked purple sari and serpent's whisper. Vargas should have ended transmission there and then. Instead, because the image she conjured was a pleasing one, he listened further.
"Would not the Red Path be better served by a leader with less fervor and more… practicality, shall we say?"
"You speak of betrayal and murder."
Vicente Vargas was an unflinchingly straightforward man. He never lied to himself about his own motives, or those of others. He was also loyal… to a point.
"You are suggesting that I have the leader killed, and then step into his role, myself."
There were problems with this scenario, chiefest among them being his own lack of political power, but Madame Chatterjee seemed not to care.
"Indeed, Mr. Black… I do suggest it, for the good of Red Path; that something may be salvaged from this travesty. We cannot keep the deliberate nature of this plague a secret for much longer. These wretched doctors and their International Rescue informants are far too inquisitive to let the matter rest. Your leader's solution is simply to end all opposition… and alliance… through world-wide pestilence. But tell me, Mr. Black…"
Chatterjee leaned forward, bringing her outraged face (its golden nose ring quivering) very close to the screen.
"…Who will be left to celebrate victory among the bones and ashes? When all that remains are rotting corpses, who will be king?"
In this way, she polished the apple and offered it.
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The utility shuttle 'Goliath', shortly before takeoff-
The ore carrier's flight path was preprogrammed, or her pilot would not have risked a launch. Other than a single, televised link, the station's comm systems had grown wildly unreliable, making space flight a risky proposition. One for which Jim Tanner expected to be well paid.
He, like the Red Path med techs and doctors, was a hired gun; willing to ferry anything, anywhere, no questions asked. Usually, he and Goliath carried ore. Sometimes, guns and contraband. Today, passengers.
They'd entered through the pilots lounge boarding tube, a slim, shapely woman and her vacant-seeming companion. (Or prisoner. Tanner didn't need or want to find out.) He kept to the grimy cockpit while they arranged themselves in Goliath's crew quarters, probably getting 'space flu' germs all over the damn place.
'Have to fumigate, afterward,' Tanner thought, disgustedly. 'Probably change registration again, too.'
Once the mysterious couple was settled in, Tanner flashed his running lights, signaling a team of space-suited roustabouts to manually retract the boarding tube. Thanks to the work of a stupid damn hacker, everything had to be done by hand, or mechanically, with ratchets, robots and sweat.
Fortunately, there were no giant doors to open, for the utility launch site was roofless. All Tanner had to do, once the pad was clear and Goliath free of her shackles was to lift off.
The ore carrier's three engines had been warming up for twenty minutes. Like the pilot, they were more than ready to go. Tanner's face and wiry body tensed expectantly as he triggered a full burn, launching Goliath directly into that cold, black sky. The universe shook. A bomb-like roar drowned out the sounds of his racing heart and labored breathing, while the overhead instrument panel blossomed, as always, with warning lights.
She was an old ship and full of complaints, liking the launch pad much better than open space, these days. Still pretty fast, though.
Beneath him, the Moon dropped rapidly away, pocked and dented as Goliath's hull. Gravity fell off almost immediately, allowing Tanner to unstrap from his couch. He flashed his lights once as a sort of 'good bye'. Old habit of an even older pilot, he supposed, shrugging a little.
Goliath gained altitude and the stars flowered around her, burning like fireworks. The Sun's white disk had yet to emerge, being low on the horizon at this time of year, but Earth was there; nightside-dark and dusted with lights. You could stare forever at a view like that… until time for the first course correction, anyway.
Far enough from the south pole Moon Station to do no harm, Tanner gimbaled his rocket engines and cut on Goliath's ion drive. Course B, this time; straight down the Shackleton cargo lane to Baltimore West.
"We're on our way," he called back, unnecessarily. The change in his ship's vibration and engine noise would have given her flight status away, even had he not said a word. Besides… one of his passengers was a NASA astronaut, if Tanner's quick glimpse and guesswork were at all accurate. Might have wondered why a returning explorer had been made prisoner by the Red Path, if he hadn't been very well paid to mind his own business and fly. At this point, curiosity was not just unhealthy, but bad for business.
Back in the dimly-lit crew quarters, Penelope Creighton-Ward was too preoccupied to hear, much less respond to, their pilot's needless remarks.
'Remove his ID chip', she'd been told; a singularly worrisome request. There were simpler ways to blank a chip and hide a valuable hostage. Destroying the thing utterly, rather than overloading or wiping it, seemed a prelude to quick, secret murder.
Once the engines cut off and that tooth-rattling jolting ceased, Penny unstrapped herself and pushed away from her stained and sagging couch.
"Not even business class," she muttered. "I've been reduced to wretched, bloody freight."
It always depressed her, how the other half lived. Silently renewing her vow to never, ever, join the squalid ranks of the less-fortunate, Penelope drifted across the cabin to John's couch. He seemed restless; half-asleep and fighting it.
"Darling," she whispered, caressing his blond hair, "this may sting a bit, but it will help us seem to be complying."
He'd got to have his left gauntlet removed, first, a process involving some rather complex zero-G gymnastics. Then, once the jointed glove was free and floating off, Penny set up her 'operating theatre'. She pulled from her coverall a packet of iodine swabs and a gauze pad. No needle, this time, but a slim little knife with a bright-honed blade, instead.
"I promise to be quick," she told him, though of course, he didn't respond. Or… almost didn't. Oddly, when she took John's left hand to begin cutting, he very slowly and weakly clasped hers. Mere reflex, no doubt. An infant would have done the same. Yet…
"All will be well, dearest. Please trust that I know precisely what I am doing."
If she'd expected another squeeze, Penelope was disappointed. John simply hung between straps and couch, nearly insensate, while Goliath sped onward and Penny prepared to cut. Three quick swipes of strong-smelling brown iodine, first. Then, a brief probing hunt with her right forefinger, to ascertain the exact location of his ID chip.
"Damn it all," she snapped, quite aggrieved. "The wretched thing's buried in connective tissue."
Nothing for it but to hunt further. A few minutes later, thinking that she'd found one end of the deeply wedged chip, Penny brought the knife close, hesitated, and then began to cut. She'd wielded blades before (once in a desperate rooftop battle with a fleeing spy) but never against John, who'd saved her life that night, and several times since.
Human flesh did not cut smoothly. It was dense, somewhat stretchy, and pulled at her knife blade. Blood formed quick, dark bubbles at the gash, several of them drifting away before Penny could catch and absorb them. Worse, John's arm and hand muscles clenched spasmodically, driving the chip deeper.
"Darling, relax!"
She did not wish to drug him further, having need of an alert and conscious partner, some forty-five minutes after landing. Thirty, if their Red Path driver faced little traffic.
"I shan't be able to retrieve a damned thing if you refuse to cooperate. There's a good lad…"
But her second attempt was no more successful than the first, third or fourth. Although John could not have been willfully doing so, each time that her knife blade neared the raw wound, his muscles tensed. Forced to choose between defeat and butchery, she opted use IR's method for blanking ID and cease attempting the impossible. Of course, by that time, there was a swirling constellation of blood droplets filling the air and Penny had a mess to tidy.
Grumpily bandaging her semi-conscious paramour, Penelope told him,
"You are far and away the least satisfactory partner that I have ever been forced to work with!"
And yet, she loved him. With body, mind and heart, she craved a return to the past, when they'd still been together. The rest of the world could go hang if she might have John, with Parker, Elspeth, one or two others and TinTin, perhaps, for additional company.
Sighing, Penelope finished dressing the small, ugly wound. Then she freed herself from her stabilizing loops and set off to capture a hundred small bubbles of blood. She'd not collected above half, when a sharp noise and sudden movement from below sent her careening into the overhead.
Unbelievably, John had begun to wake, fighting his restraint straps and drugs with growing determination. Bad enough under ordinary circumstances, but the NASA hardsuit he wore had doubled John's strength. Two of his launch restraints ripped free before Penny could reach him.
Pushing away from the overhead, she flew to his side.
"Hush, darling! Be still, or you'll have the pilot on us."
"Pen…" he grunted, as she hastily dialed back the suit's strength level. "Head hurts."
Withdrawal migraine, but too soon. He ought to have been good for another few hours, at least. Waking now, he threatened everything.
"Shhh…! Do be still. There's a dear. I'll fetch you an aspirin and water, directly I've done with all this bloody… well, blood."
Couldn't have the nasty, quivering stuff gumming up anything vital, after all. And for once, thank Heaven, he obeyed her. Penny felt quite warm toward the confused young astronaut… until he got sick from the drug she'd given him and heaved up his breakfast. At that point, Penelope was prepared to open a hatch and space him.
"Doing this on purpose, I shouldn't wonder! Doubtless your notion of a fine joke!"
The stuff had gone flying in every direction; onto a few cabin sensors, even, prompting the pilot to call,
"What's going on, back there?"
Penny was running short of washcloths and patience.
"Nothing at all, my good man. Merely a bit of space-sickness brought on by overwrought nerves and exhaustion. Everything here is well in hand, I assure you."
Under her breath, as she flew about the cabin cleaning the bulkheads, deck and air, Penny complained,
"One has servants for this sort of thing, you know."
She'd calmed considerably by the time Penelope was able to bring her 'captive' his water and a mild sedative. Despite everything, cleaned up and subdued, he was a remarkably attractive young man. Very much worth defending.
So, at the appropriate moment, just before it would have been too late to correct Goliath's course, Penny took up certain items and went forward.
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Mid-afternoon, at the Hudson Valley Wal-Mart, in upstate New York-
Myrna Bremmerman directed her shopping cart toward the checkout pylons, her worried blue eyes darting after any TV screen that displayed a talking news-head. Things were looking grim in Europe, she learned. The English king had gone so far as to close Britain to foreign traffic, and…
"Mom… MOM!"
No matter what (on a cliff-side rookery crowded with millions of screeching chicks, even) a mother alerted to the sound of her own child. Myrna released the shopping cart and pivoted to face that frantic shout and running footsteps.
Fermat was racing full-tilt up the magazine aisle, trailing Sam Nakamura and Daniel Solomon. All three boys were wide-eyed and pale as though frightened clean out of their wits.
Holding forth his wrist comm, Myrna's asthmatic young son collapsed in the physicist's arms.
"It's… A- A- Alan, Mom! He's b… H- He and Springfield were at the s- stables, and…"
Myrna got the boy's inhaler out of her fanny pack and helped him bring the small can to his mouth. Three pumps in rapid succession, while she cupped the back of his touseled head.
"Breathe, baby. Nice and deep, now."
As Fermat drew a few deep, painful gasps, Dr. Bremmerman looked over at Sam and Daniel.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
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Given the hundreds of people now staggering into Madrid's main hospital, barely strong enough to drag themselves, it was of little consequence to anyone but his parents and sister, when Damien LeClaire ceased fighting for life. After all, the teenaged Olympian was far from the first that day, nor would he be the last.