Chapter Thirty-Five
Great Western Ocean, R’Bak
The shuttle’s pilot turned away from her instruments long enough to shout, “An open window is confirmed; no surveyor satellites in line of sight. We’re heading down fast . . . and no promises for a smooth ride.” As she turned away, she grumbled. “I hate flying these winged barges: about as responsive as a rock.”
Bo Moorefield swallowed back the urge to recommend that Captain Hadraysa might want to consider projecting a calmer—or at least more reassuring—command presence. Instead, he began a final recheck of his gear.
Before he could move on from the snorkel and rebreather, the shuttle banked sharply. Flung forward against the five-point restraint, his surprised grunt came out so forcefully that it was almost a gasp.
“Apologies, Major,” Hadraysa shouted from the cockpit. “Randomized radar sweep from an offshore surveyor ship.”
“Is that typical? Were we illuminated?”
“‘Yes’ to the first, ‘no’ to the second. The surveyors keep many freighters in storage between Searings, mostly for gathering the Harvests. But they also equip some of them with high-power radars to run unscheduled sensor sweeps, particularly along the approaches to R’Bak Island.” She banked again, cursed under her breath. “They’re usually not this far out, but they may be noticing the increased maritime traffic up north. There are more seaplanes in local hands than they’re accustomed to.”
As the shuttle leveled off, Bo finished checking his flight suit. “Damn, I expected these things would be more comfortable.”
Hadraysa’s chuckle became a dark mutter. “Looks can be deceiving, Major. But other than putting you in a vac suit, that was the only reasonable option for this mission.”
Bo nodded, although neither she nor the other two persons in the craft—the copilot and the crew chief near the fuselage door—were looking at him; they were too busy with their own tasks. “How long, now?” Moorefield shouted forward. He’d never admitted to or mentioned his misgivings regarding the mission profile, but as they dropped lower, he discovered he was occasionally wiping beads of sweat away from his temples.
“No more than fifteen minutes,” she called back. The glow that had crept up along the edges of the cockpit glass faded rapidly; its nose was dropping out of its positive-pitch reentry angle. The sky darkened ahead.
“Heading into clouds?” Bo asked.
“No,” Hadraysa replied. “We are moving across the terminator. Descending into the dark.” As she spoke, the cockpit lights dimmed to one-third intensity and the nose of the craft disappeared against the black into which it was flying. Painted a charcoal-blue slate, it was reasonably camouflaged for any but the brightest of ocean conditions.
Bo had just become accustomed to the steadiness of the deceleration and new vector when his inner ear alerted him to a very faint bank to the right.
“Coming around slowly,” the captain called into the comparative quiet. Then, turning toward her copilot: “Tilt nacelles: lowest thrust.”
“Not zero burn?” he asked.
“There could be more surprises. I don’t want to rely on lateral mode reignition. So, no: keep the nacelles hot.”
Once again, Moorefield began to relax; the faint banking of their slow turn remained consistent and slow. He had almost begun to smile at his own anxiety when reality gave him an immediate and abrupt reason not to.
“Vent me!” the copilot shouted. “Satellite contact! Polar vector one-two-seven true.”
Hadraysa emitted several now-familiar RockHound curses and rolled hard, flaring back the other direction with a quick pulse of the thrusters.
“You’re dropping us out of the profile,” the copilot warned.
“I must,” she snapped. “If that platform lights up an active array . . . ”
As if summoned by her trepidation, two red lights flashed on the sensor console; a rippling klaxon filled both the cockpit and the rear compartment.
The laconic crew chief’s question was as sharp as a dog’s bark. “Do they see us?”
“Working on it,” Hadraysa snarled back. Two tense moments passed, then: “No; its active sensors just happened to switch on while it passed overhead. We managed to get outside the downlook footprint. Barely.”
“I thought there weren’t any satellites in line of sight,” Bo said quietly.
The copilot answered. “There weren’t forty-eight hours ago, but the surveyors have been getting nervous ever since our warships appeared. They must have directed the satellite into a new orbit when it was on the other side of the planet.”
Hadraysa nodded tightly. “Yes. Still, I’m surprised the Dornaani microsats didn’t pick it up.”
“They can’t be everyplace at the same time,” said the crew chief. “Think it was luck or the surveyors detected the microsats?”
The captain shook her head. “It would be a minor miracle or a curse of the Death Fathers for them to even spot one of those little birds. And I don’t know if they’d be willing to give away having learned of their presence simply to illuminate a shuttle that’s now at least six hours away from R’Bak Island. They’d save that surprise for something more decisive.” She half turned toward the payload bay. “Are you all right, Major?”
“Never better,” Bo lied. At least the craft had straightened out again, but it was diving at a steeper angle than before—far more than the mission profile specified. “Why the hurry if the surveyor platform didn’t see us?” he asked in as casual a voice as he could muster.
“There’s no reason to suspect it did, but the only way I could be sure is if I had been staring over its operator’s shoulder. So I’m following the fast-descent contingency, just in case they know but intend to keep us unsuspecting as they scramble assets into our area.”
“Which means . . . ?”
“Which means we are going to complete this mission immediately. Chief Hrekul, help the major.”
“I’m sure I can manag—”
“Help the major now, Hrekul!” Hadraysa shouted.
The crew chief almost leaped from one side of the fuselage to the other. “Major Moorefield,” he said loudly, reaching for Bo’s arm, “we were going to complete your insertion after several minutes of level flight. We do not have that luxury anymore.
“We will dive to our safety limit and will then execute a hard rotation and full thrust from the nacelles to achieve hover. You must deploy very quickly; we cannot remain at the target zone for more than twenty seconds. We will shear off on a vector that puts us behind the satellite that just went overhead and will allow us to stay beyond the sensor cone of the next one that will be on station in eighteen minutes.”
“Understood,” replied Bo, swaying up to his feet.
That was when he realized that the deck of the shuttle was actually slipping and bucking very slightly. Hadraysa was delicately tweaking the shuttle’s attitude as it cut through thermals and wind currents that, on a regular descent, it would simply have gently bellied through.
“Tell me when you have eyes on target,” Hadraysa ordered her copilot.
The crew chief made sure that Bo was standing in front of the still-sealed side door before fixing the flotation ring around his waist. “Major,” he said, “tell me what you’ve learned about deploying in this gear.”
“I hop forward. Both feet. I pull the tab on the ring with one hand while I hold the mask against my face with the other. The ring should inflate. If it does not, I activate the backup pressure canister and check the ring’s integrity. The pickup team should reach me within thirty seconds. I remain as stationary as possible. They throw a line. I attach it to the harness. They reel me in and tow me toward a reef just outside the drop zone.”
“You have it, sir,” the chief confirmed as the deck rose sharply; they were swooping up, Hadraysa lifting the nose to cut their dive.
“Objective in sight,” called the copilot. “We’re coming in a little hot, Captain.”
“I know, I know,” Hadraysa hissed impatiently. “Ready back there? Secure yourselves; there will be a sharp retro-blast.” The thrust from the nacelles almost cut out as they rotated into vertical attitude and then flared back to life.
The craft seemed to buck backward; Bo felt like he was in the head of a prizefighter rocking back on his heels after a pop to the chin.
“Ready to deploy?” called Hadraysa.
“Ready, aye,” replied the crew chief.
“Count me down,” Hadraysa shouted to her copilot over the roar of the thrusters.
“Twenty-seven meters . . . twenty meters . . . fifteen meters . . . ”
“Door open!” Hadraysa shouted back into the compartment.
Bo didn’t even hear the ten-meter altitude call. The sudden blast of the ocean winds and the throaty roar of the now vertical thruster nacelles drowned out every other sound until his ears became accustomed to the competing howls.
“Five meters!” the copilot shouted.
“Retrieval sighted?” Hadraysa yelled.
The crew chief stared into the heated vapor roiling up off the ocean swells below. “Scanning . . . scanning . . . There! Thirty meters to the southwest!”
“That’s awfully close,” Hadraysa called after a moment.
“Retrieval is at safe distance,” the chief yelled at her. “My call.”
“Acknowledged. Dipping to three meters.” Hadraysa twitched her hands across the controls. Bo saw the brightness reflected from the thrusters diminish slightly.
“Stand in the door!” the chief called. Bo did. “On my call: big jump, both feet. Hold, hold—Go! Go! Go!”
Bo jumped out, hand on his mask, realizing he had left the other on the coaming to steady himself. He snapped it over quickly to the inflation activation tab; the sudden sideways motion tipped him out of a vertical entry into the water.
He felt the float ring cinch him hard around the waist the same moment his boots hit the risers at a slight angle. The chop rolled him to that flank but the buoyancy of the ring straightened him out.
The shuttle, poised above him like a fire-breathing dragon with two mouths, angled away and then began rotating its nacelles into lateral flight mode, It sheared off, slowly building altitude.
Bo caught a small riser in his face, shook the water off his mask, squinted around, eyes still adjusting to the much darker ocean, now that the glare of the thrusters had receded.
“We like Ike!” yelled a heavily accented voice from almost directly behind him.
Trying not to laugh, he responded with his code name—“SHAEF!”—and paddled to turn himself.
An outrigger ketch was drawing up to him, a small, primitive electric motor pushing it the last few meters.
The crew tossed a line; Moorefield affixed it to his harness. The boat motored slowly around to head away from the drop point as its crew raised a small lateen-rigged mast and chocked it in place. Perhaps a kilometer away, a low, rocky mass rose above the swells. Beyond it, the silhouette of a narrow-hulled ship, crew busy with its much larger spars, was readying to set sail.
* * *
A gray smudge was just limning the eastern rim of the ocean when a call from the lookout paused the deckhands. As if in response to that cry, a sea-monster growl rose from the south.
Shortly after, a strange beast appeared above that part of the horizon, rushing toward the ship at great speed, wings spread, belly almost skimming the risers. When it finally lowered enough to touch the swells, it raised a spray that hit its whirling propellers and was flung away like an unruly cloud of steam.
The boat-bellied seaplane bumped once again, then faintly a second time before its hull settled into the water. As it motored toward the xebec, the captain turned to the tallest and fairest of his small crew. “Major, as I’ve heard Lost Soldiers say, ‘your ride is here.’” He gestured toward a waiting skiff as the hatch in the side of the seaplane opened.
“I like Ike!” called Max Messina’s voice from the black hole in its fuselage. It sounded a great deal less amusing without the incongruous accent.
“SHAEF,” Bo shouted in return. “Coming over now. Do you have an update, Moose?”
As Moorefield stepped down into the pitching skiff, the outline of Messina’s head emerged into the dove-gray light of predawn. “Two of them, sir.”
“How long to R’Bak Island?”
“Four hours to reach the boat that will take us in the last five klicks.”
“Fast sitrep?”
“No such creature exists, sir, but expect a long brief on the ride.”
Bo smiled. “Looking forward to it,” he called over the sloshing rhythm of the risers as the feeling of arrival finally rose up in him.