Conquistador (85 page)

“Giovanni Fucking Colletta did,” she growled. “Sorry.”

“You've got a right to be angry,” he said. “I'm in this fight because of you, and because I don't want Giovanni Fucking Colletta in charge of the Gate. I know it's more personal for you.”

She glanced over at him; he thought she was grinning but couldn't be sure. “You know, Tom, one of the things I like about you is that you don't try to soft-soap me.”

The Mosquito banked left, turning west now that it was above the highest peaks. “We're going to get there just around dawn,” she said. “And so are they. We may not have to worry about air-to-air, goddamn it.” A moment, and then: “Ah! I'm getting broadcast.”

The voices in his ears were a chaotic babble to Tom; he didn't know the names, or the call signs, or the background; the transmissions were from everything: militia communications, domain radio stations, ham radio enthusiasts, CB transmitters.

Adrienne did know; she gave him a running summary. “Nostradamus is down,” she said. “Giovanni—”

“Fucking Colletta,” Tom finished for her.

“—broke into scheduled programming on all channels and started to announce that he'd been forced to take action by a Rolfe conspiracy and that all Settlers should remain calm and ignore ‘unlawful orders,' quote unquote. Then . . .”

She whooped, and Tom winced. “Then Grandfather came on, and said, ‘Giovanni, your father would have known better than to try and pull the wool over a Rolfe's eyes,' and the whole system went dead the next instant. He must have been working on that ever since my report—he couldn't get the Collettas out of the system, but he
could
keep them from using it.”

Tom grinned himself.
The old bastard has style, at least.

Adrienne went on: “There's fighting at the Gate complex—the Gate Security Force is split—no communications in the last hour, but a militia patrol from Rolfeston was fired on by the GSF checkpoints. . . . Rolfeston's mayor has proclaimed martial law, and called out the town's militia units to fight for ‘Our Founder and the legitimate Commission' . . . good . . . Colletta and Batyushkov militia units moving toward the Gate . . . bad . . .”

She gave another whoop.

“Adri, could you not
do
that?” Tom asked. “And what's happening?”

“Karl von Traupitz tried to declare for the Collettas and send men over the Vaca hills against the Rolfe domain,” she said. “But his son Siegfried's got control of the domain's militia HQ and is telling everyone to disregard his father's orders! They're fighting each other—the Rolfe domain's safe, and the militia's massing at Napa. . . . The Pearlmutters are sending
theirs
against Colletta Hall from the north. . . .”

“It's certainly no smooth coup,” Tom said.

“Chaos and Old Night,” Adrienne said. “But if we lose the Gate, the wheels could still come off. It's still too close.”

“They're landing them on the road,” Tom said incredulously.

There was a two-lane highway along the coastal plain; the Hercules transports were dipping down toward it, the section nearest the Gate complex. The first had already landed and run itself off the roadway and into the long grass and trees; one wing hit an oak and the plane spun sideways, but slowly. The ramp dropped, and ant-tiny figures spilled out, deploying as they ran. Darkness covered the Gate area, although the lights of Rolfeston to the north were bright. And muzzle flashes lit up the ground around the big warehouse complex, and came from within it; fires burned, and the little stick-doll figures of dead men lay amid the planters and parking lots and burning trucks.

“He must have planned on combat-lossing the transports,” Tom said half-admiringly. “He'd own a whole world if he won.”

“He's not going to,” Adrienne said. Her hand reached out and brought the ground-attack screen live. “I'll bring us in. You fire.”

“Wilco,” he said. Then:
“Jesus!”

Someone was firing at them from the ground, someone with a heavy automatic weapon; twenty millimeter at least. He felt the plane lurch as Adrienne stamped on the rudder pedals and whipped the yoke left; but he also felt the thudding shudder as the heavy rounds struck and exploded.

“Right engine's out,” he said, stabbing the control that feathered it; the prop stopped, and flames blew back into the night.

Then his right leg felt cold and hot at the same time. He looked down and saw his hand come away from it glistening wet.

“I'm hit,” he said calmly.

Adrienne looked over at him, cursed sharply and whipped her eyes back to the control panel. “We're losing hydraulics . . . fuel's dropping fast; we must be spraying like a water-bomber. . . . I'm going to have to take her down, Tom.”

“Yah,” he said mildly; it didn't seem all that important, and the world was turning gray at the edges. There was something he wanted to say, but he couldn't.

Blackness.

Adrienne Rolfe shook her head, feeling a desperate urgency she couldn't put a name to. Where was she? What was it she had to do?

Then the pain in her head reminded her. She was hanging down from the harness that held her to the pilot's seat of a Mosquito; the plane had pancaked, slid and then run into something that didn't
quite
turn it over. Bits and pieces of the landing came back to her, and why she could hear shooting. And flame-light licked through the canopy; there were slow fires in both the engines, and fuel dripping over her feet and calves.

“Got to get
out,
” she muttered.

Tom was hanging limp beside her. She hit the catches of the canopy, but nothing happened. She undid her restraints, slid, and nearly passed out as a wave of fire-shot gray swept across her vision. Tears slid down her cheeks as she sobbed in breath, brought both legs up and kicked, kicked. Every impact seemed to jar small bones loose from the inside of her skull.

At last the side of the canopy gave a protesting squeal and the flap came up; a Mosquito had two, one by each seat. Noise flooded in from the outside; gunfire mostly, the boom of a heavier weapon now and then, explosions, screams, and the crackle of fire. Not far away a Catamount armored car lay on its side, the long auto-cannon bent like a pretzel.

“This is going to be tricky,” she said, and winced at the croak that came out, and what it did to her throat. Her brain felt like hot sand had been stuffed up her nose until the whole front of her head was heavy with it; a touch showed that the nose was broken, swollen . . . and possibly something else there too.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” she gasped, waiting as the wave of pain in her face receded . . . a little.

When she unbuckled Tom, he was going to drop straight down into the front of the cockpit. There was only one thing to do; the problem was she didn't know if she could do it.

I have to do it. Therefore I can, right? Right. I'm a
Rolfe,
God damn it. We can do anything! Pocahontas forever!

She pulled the first-aid kit out from its container and threw it out into the night first. Then she turned and backed until she was underneath Tom, with her buttocks braced against the side of the cockpit to his right and her right hand bent back over her own neck to grab him by the front of his tunic. Her left scrabbled with the release of his restraints.

Two hundred and twenty pounds of man and another ten of equipment fell on her back and side; she bent and pulled, and the front of her face rapped sharply against the control column. She did scream then, long and shrill. She didn't let go of her grip, pulling and shifting with her shoulders until the big man's weight rested across her upper back.

“And . . . out . . . you . . . go!” she wheezed, straightening. “I've . . . lifted . . . more!”

Not when she was in this shape, though. Her thighs trembled, tensed, straightened an inch more. The small of Tom's back touched the side of the open canopy door. She straightened an inch more, twisting and pushing at his stomach with her left hand. He toppled forward, his boots and legs going out and dragging the rest of him around, and fell to the ground below with a thud. She might just have broken his neck . . . but that was better than burning to death.

“Don't you die on me, you great goddamned Scanahoovian lump, don't you
dare,
” she wheezed, and crawled out herself.

Dragging Tom's weight took so much concentration she almost went past the aid kit. That was far enough from the dying aircraft that he wouldn't be hurt if it went up, particularly as a chunk of concrete provided a little shelter. She pulled the knife out of her boot and slit his sopping trouser leg. Blood was flowing but not spurting . . . but flowing fast . . .

She held the edges of the wound together, sprayed and strapped and sealed, her hands wet and slippery. His pulse was rapid and thready, but it didn't seem to be getting any worse, and the bleeding was under control . . . and she didn't have a clue about any other injuries. A injection of painkiller relaxed him and helped to fight shock.

Another hypodermic, this time for her: she stripped off the cover and jabbed it into the meat of her thigh, pressing the plunger with her thumb. A wave of heat seemed to flow from it, driving back the grayness from the edges of her vision. Unfortunately, as things became clearer, so did the pain—the great throbbing mass of pain that was the front of her face, and a dozen others. One was the little finger of her left hand, sticking out almost at a right angle—
Toni Bosco, you are avenged
—she thought half-hysterically, and then she grabbed it and straightened it with a single swift wrench.

“Oh,
shit,
” she gasped, as she bound it to the one next to it with tape from the kit.

Dry-swallowing a couple of painkillers was all she could do for the rest of it; and not too many, or it would fight the stimulant that made it possible for her to move. Now she could look around her. . . .

The nearest wall of the Gate complex was blown out, its sheet metal tattered. She could see that quite well. . . .

Because two Hercules were burning on the coastal highway, not three hundred yards from where she lay. Others were wheeled off the roadway, their ramps down, but two had definitely been destroyed as they landed.

Tully,
she thought, after a moment when her brain simply spun in place.
Roy Tully, you little gargoyle, you are worthy of Sandy, and I hope you both live through this. And Henry Villers, and Jim Simmons, and Kolo too.

She looked down at Tom; the square rugged face was relaxed in unconsciousness, looking younger than his years for a change. You could see what he'd been as a fresh-faced farm boy just out of high school and waiting for the bus that would take him to boot camp.

“And I
order
you not to die,” she whispered.

The fighting seemed to be mostly
out
from the Gate complex, a U of combat noises and muzzle flashes ringing the buildings. That meant that the Collettas and Batyushkovs in the GSF had some sort of control of the Gate itself, or there would be more shooting from inside the building. Their men and the reinforcements were trying to hold a perimeter, staving off the growing weight of the Commission forces loyal to the Rolfes. Which meant . . .

“They expect help through the Gate,” she muttered, unable to frame the thought without speaking it. “Oh joy, oh bliss, oh rapture. They could still pull this off. I'll have to set the self-destruct mechanism going.”

Let them get a firm control on the Gate and the area around it, and let the other Families and their Settlers realize that their contacts with FirstSide now depended on the Collettas, and support for the Rolfes might yet evaporate. At the very least, the Collettas and Batyushkovs might escape unpunished, the weight of opinion in the committee forcing amnesty to get the Gate back intact.