Mech

Eight

“What I don’t quite understand, General,” said Mai Lee, her eyes narrowed in a habitual expression of suspicion. “Is exactly what you are doing at the spaceport.”

“A hunch, your Excellency. Call it the intuition of an experienced militia officer,” Ari answered crisply. “I’ve been studying this man carefully, and I predicted his return to the spaceport. Stationed here is the largest organization of forces loyal to the Nexus that he could draw on for support.”

“But why didn’t you bring your tactical squad with you?”

“They’re on the way here now. I didn’t want to remove them from their alert status at the militia headquarters until I was sure. Besides, your instructions were to locate him and call for your aid,” Ari said, again with convincing certainty. He had anticipated these questions, but hoped that she didn’t probe any further into his motivations concerning coming to the spaceport. It was time to deflect her onto another course. “So, now that we’ve got him here and he has holed himself up, how do you wish to handle the situation?”

“Your effectiveness in this instance astounds me. It isn’t like you to take to the field yourself, General.”

“This is a most serious matter, Empress. Both of our futures are at stake and I felt I couldn’t afford to trust the matter to my operatives. Although I have great faith in them,” he added hastily. The itching sensation of erupting sweat grew in his armpits.

“If you want something done, you have to do it yourself, eh? Very well. While you’re waiting for your tactical squad to come and destroy them, I want you to go in and parlay. Tell Governor Droad that you’re on his side. You could be useful as a mole.”

“Begging your Excellency’s pardon, but are you serious? Why not simply bring in the militia and kill them? We could even hit the entire spaceport, reduce it to rubble with attack lifters and mortar fire if necessary.”

“We will not level the spaceport without need, General. You will enter and lull the Governor, perhaps you can even coax him out of his lair. My forces are fast moving into position, even as we speak,” she said, her ancient eyes boring into his head. “No one is going to escape the planet from that spaceport, let me assure you, General.”

Halfheartedly, Ari tried a few more arguments to avoid the dangerous task that Mai Lee had in mind for him, but she was adamant. It was clear that she suspected his loyalty, even suspected that he had been about to flee Garm. Her command to parlay with Droad was clearly a test. The problem was that Ari suddenly seemed out of options. He could wait for his tactical team, the majority of which were at the rayball arena for the afternoon, not at militia headquarters, but Mai Lee’s palace guard might arrive first.

Thinking hard, Ari took his satchel over to a rack of rentable lockers next to the restrooms, popped a two-credit piece into one of them, deposited the satchel and pocketed the key. Heading back down the escalators, he joined Drick and his ragtag army behind their laughable barricade.

“I think we could take them out,” said the General conversationally. “We have the manpower, I could use my security card to bypass the locks. We would have the advantage of surprise.”

“Yeah?” snorted Sergeant Manstein. “You first, General.”

“If I order it, you will obey!” shouted Ari, losing his composure under the pressure of the moment. A tremendous headache throbbed at his temples now.

Major Lee looked dubious, but Manstein exhibited nothing but contempt. “Look, General. I was in the regular infantry once, but even then, I wasn’t fool enough to assault a steel door with a crack squad of giants behind it. Especially not when they’ve got heavy weapons and we’ve got pea-shooters.”

Ari glared at the Sergeant, but held his tongue. Mentally, he weighed his chances at sending in the security detail against Droad and his giants. Although he had little doubt that the giants, who were obviously professionals, would win the confrontation, the possibility remained that Droad would get killed or at least injured in the fighting. He rubbed his chin in deep thought.

No, it wouldn’t work. Mostly because of the abject cowardice of the security personnel. If they had been a bit more willing to risk their lives, the attack might have a chance of success. Unfortunately, the only way he could think of to get them to go in hard would be with him going in with them, and that of course was out of the question.

His thoughts were interrupted by the spaceport’s public address system, which had apparently been taken over by Droad and his giants. “Loyal soldiers of the Nexus. It is time that I explain this aggression against your base. I am Lucas Droad, the newly appointed Governor of Garm,” said Droad, his face flashing up on public holo-plates throughout the spaceport. Ari and the security detail stared at the holo-plates, fixated.

“I was about to publicly announce my arrival, but certain factions in your government, opposing my appointment, attempted to take matters into their own hands,” said Droad. Then the image switched to a scene of the Renaldo hotel, apparently videoed by Droad’s giants during the action. Seen from outside the hotel, the assassins chased Droad into the hotel, firing as they ran. Inside more firing erupted as three men ran into the hotel after Droad. The hulking figure of Sergeant Borshe lumbered through the doors, his Wu hand-cannons making their unmistakable barking noises. Apparently at that point the giants got their weapons out and the glass doors vaporized. The camera, jostling and lurching sickeningly at Jarmo’s hip, ran with the bodyguards into the ruined lobby.

It was the talkative Sergeant Manstein who said, “Hey, isn’t that big thug a militia man?”

Ari rose quietly from his place at the barricade and walked quickly for the nearest exit. One look at the expressions of the security people told him where their loyalties were going to fall after this damning video had run its course. If there was one aspect of conflict that Ari had mastered, it was the strategic withdrawal.

“Where are you going, General?” came a booming voice from behind him.

Ari made a dismissive gesture with one hand, not bothering to turn around or slow down. In fact, he walked even faster. “The tactical squad is arriving out front,” he lied glibly. “I’m going to meet them.”

His back burning with the anticipation of a bullet, his ears straining to catch the sounds of pursuit, Ari reached the doors-and froze.

His eyes squeezed shut and his teeth clenched in a grimace of sudden indecision. He had left his satchel in the lockers near the restrooms. His eyes slid that way, and he wavered for an instant, his fear of the Nexus-loyal security people almost outweighed by his anxiety about the satchel. Then there was a shout behind him, a guttural sound without words, the sound of a Gopus lynch-mob that has just caught up with a reed-rustler in the deep swamps. The sound raised the hair on his neck and lifted the heels of his boots, goading him through the door and out onto the sidewalk. He stepped out of their sight and broke into an all out run for the parking lot.

“There’s no militia van out there,” spoke up a security woman. There was deep suspicion in her voice. She, like all the spaceport personnel, was loyal to the Nexus first, rather than the militia and the colonial Senate.

Manstein’s eyes followed hers to the General’s retreating back. “Right you are,” he said, rising up from his crouched position behind the barricade. He dusted off his pants as the others stood with him. “He’s running out on us. Remember that crash that killed the last governor that the Nexus sent out? I recall Steinbach getting promoted from Colonel to General right after that.”

“Well, let’s demote him this time,” suggested another man, waving his pistol at the ceiling.

Manstein raised his big hands, quelling their urge to chase the General down. “Let’s have a vote right now.”

That got their attention. The tape of the failed assassination tape ended and Droad’s ID shots came up, proving his claim to the governor’s seat. The simple silver star and black background, the seal of the Nexus, glittered under his serious face.

“Our new governor has gotten himself in a jam. If we join him, we could be killed by those personal armies out in the Slipape Counties, or even the militia themselves. This could even mean civil war. So the question is, do we play it safe and slink home like the General, or do we stand by the Nexus?”

There was a brief moment of hesitation, but only a brief one. Unanimously, they voted to join Governor Droad.

When Sarah and Bili came floating down into the horkwoods, Sarah had at first been crazy with worry that Bili would be hurt. After finally extricating themselves from their harnesses and finding one another in the deep shade beneath the green canopy, she began to feel despair. They had lost everything.

“We can’t let them catch us, Bili,” she told her boy, gathering their survival kits from their crash-seats and heading uphill, deeper into the forests.

“I know. If they put you in jail, Mudface and Daddy will kill you now for sure,” Bili finished for her gloomily.

“We have to head away from the wreck. If we go deeper into the mountains, we might get away from the search lifters,” she told him. Silently, she added to herself the fact that going uphill should take them farther from the landsharks which infested the wet valleys of this region.

“I hope they blast that other pirate,” said Bili darkly. “I hope he goes down with his ship, too.”

Sarah said nothing. She couldn’t approve of her son’s wishing someone dead, but she felt the same way herself. Blind chance had reached out and dealt her family another bad hand. Bad luck seemed to follow the Engstroms. It seemed to shadow their lives. Right after they had gotten married, her husband Daniel had lost an eye in a pressure accident. The injury hadn’t kept him from working, but had put his commercial piloting days behind him. She had gotten pregnant soon after the accident, and although she loved Bili more than anything in the world, he had not made life any easier. When they had finally gotten things together and seemed to be making some headway, the second accident had come. With her husband dead and her son injured, finding the credit to make ends meet had become a daily struggle. Now, here they were in the cold mountains of Grunstein with nothing, chased by the law and soon the criminals as well.

With an effort, she pushed aside such depressing thoughts and tried to come up with an escape plan. It was Bili, however, who gave them the direction they needed.

“Mom, look over there,” he said, pointing into the forest.

Following his gesture, Sarah frowned at a path cut into the trees. Perhaps a dozen of the great trees in a row seemed to be down, their thick trunks lying like tumbled matchsticks. They stepped closer, cautiously.

“Looks like they just went down today,” said Bili, looking up and down an open alleyway in the forest that had been cut by some mysterious force. A ruler-straight clearing had been slashed through the trees. Murky light fell down upon the dank recesses of the forest, touching plants that had perhaps not been struck by such radiation in centuries. Examining the scene more closely, they could see that the trees had indeed been recently knocked down. The leaves of the giant horkwoods were still green and fresh-looking. The exposed dirt craters around their roots were fresh wounds in the black ground, like the bleeding gums of pulled teeth.

“I know what it is!” said Bili out loud, and at the same moment Sarah knew too.

“The other ship dropped its payload,” she said, finishing Bili’s sentence for him. She understood it all now, the other smuggler had dropped his goods out as soon as he came out of the Yeti. This made the fact that he had jumped out so early more reasonable. After a slanting fall of perhaps ten miles or more, the payload had landed here, cutting a swath through the forest and probably burying itself in the hillside.

She was just considering the idea of pilfering the payload, and the counter idea that someone would soon be along to pick it up, when she thought she heard a sound. It was more of a vibration really, beneath her feet.

With a premonition of great fear, Sarah grabbed Bili by the shoulders before he could step out under the open sky. She hunkered down with him, hiding in the undergrowth. Bili glanced over his shoulder at her as if she was crazy, but at the look in her eyes he was silent. Together they watched the strange clearing closely; breathing through their open mouths so their nostrils would make no whistling noises.

Then, just as Sarah was beginning to think she had gone mad, there was another sound. It was an odd, scraping sound, muffled somewhat as if someone didn’t want to be overheard. The scraping sound continued for a time, then stopped. Hardly daring to breathe, Sarah pulled the pistol out of her survival kit with fantastic care.

As she thumbed off the safety, making a tiny click, a new sound erupted. It was the sound of dirt being tossed about. It grew in intensity, and suddenly a large creature nosed its way out of the ground at the far end of the clearing. Together, Sarah and Bili put their hands to their mouths to stifle an involuntary scream. The creature was huge and hideous. With a streamlined snout and a rippled, leathery surface, it swam through the black forest dirt like a fish in water. Dozens of curved claws protruded from its walrus-shaped body. As they watched these claws scooped and churned at the dirt, tossing a hail of debris behind the monster. In essence it swam through the dirt, tearing and splashing through the ground like thick black liquid. Heavy clods with green crusts sailed about the clearing.

It churned around in a circle, showing itself to be over thirty feet in length and perhaps eight feet thick. Then the gigantic walrus-like monster finally dove back into the ground, disappearing from sight. Sarah and Bili took this opportunity to run from the scene, back into the cool gloom of the forest.

What kept them running a long time, despite their great fatigue, was the certainty that the creature they had seen was not natural to Garm. The Engstroms were nothing if not well-traveled, and they had never encountered or even heard of such a monster before. Nowhere in the great forests of Grunstein, nor down south in the steamy jungles of Amazonia and New Chad, nor even on the remote archipelago of the skalds did such a creature exist.

Sarah and Bili emerged from the horkwoods as evening fell. They had reached a small jax-raising farm outside of Hofstetten. After negotiating the electrified landshark fences, they met up with a boy about Bili’s age.

“Hi, I’m Jimmy Herkart,” he said, as if this was enough to explain anything and everything to two total strangers.

Bili did most of the talking. In an act of diplomacy far beyond his years, he gave his father’s spacers watch to Jimmy. They approached the farmhouse and safety with only occasional glances back to the dark edge of the forest.