Voyage Across the Stars (67 page)

A wave of vehicles swept toward the tanks across the previously forbidden area. The three hovercraft holding the
Swift’
s
personnel were in the lead. Lissea spoke into her commo helmet’s internal microphone.

Ned walked over to pick up his own helmet. His legs were unsteady for the first few steps.

The jeep Ned and Lissea had ridden smoldered in a tiny knot that couldn’t have contained more than a tenth of the mass the vehicle had had in the instant before the tank weapon had hit it. But all’s well that ends well. . . .

Yazov’s truck and the jeep carrying Tadziki and Toll Warson pulled up beside the tanks. Scores of vehicles filled with Pancahtan civilians rocked along behind them.

Deke Warson waved from the cab of the other one-tonne without taking his eyes off the terrain in front of him. He kept going toward the lakeside buildings. The hovercraft was moving fast for the conditions, but Ned noted Deke made constant minute corrections to his vehicle’s course and speed. He was driving with ten-tenths concentration, not simply barreling straight ahead.

Lon Del Vore and most of his troops advanced only to the ridge marking the area which the tanks had interdicted. Ayven, however, in company with another two-place aircar and a pair of the larger vehicles loaded with six of the Treasurer’s Guards apiece, sailed along fifty meters up and that far behind Deke’s truck.

Though the aircars could easily have passed the air-cushion vehicle, Ayven and his troops instead matched speed. They followed like a pack of hunting dogs running down an antelope.

The four mercenaries in the back of Deke’s truck eyed their escort with a deceptive nonchalance. Each man rode with a hand on the grip of his weapon and the muzzle cradled in the crook of the opposite arm. If trouble started, the sky would rain powered armor and bits of blasted aircars in a fraction of a second.

Lon’s silver-armored son certainly knew that, so he wasn’t planning to start trouble.

Toll skidded to a halt. Tadziki lifted himself from the jeep one-handed before the skirts had braked to a complete halt. With his boot-soles as fulcrum, the adjutant used momentum to swing his body upright from the carefully chosen angle at which he’d left the vehicle. Whatever Tadziki’s claims to have been strictly a noncombatant, the guy who performed that maneuver without falling on his ass had made more than his share of hot insertions.

“Slade, are you all right?” he demanded. “What happened to your helmet?”

The ground shook, though not as fiercely as some of the shocks Ned had already felt on Pancahte. The tanks jiggled, grinding the rock beneath them into gravel of a smaller size. The trembling impacts sounded like heavy machinery working—as, in a manner of speaking, it was.

“I took it off,” Ned said. “It’s like wearing a glove inside those things.”

He stepped toward the back of Yazov’s truck. Josie Paetz reached down to help him board.

“Tadziki, Warson,” Lissea said brusquely, “go on with Yazov. Slade, we’ll take the jeep.”

Toll rose from the driver’s seat as though he’d expected the order. Maybe he had; Ned certainly hadn’t.

Half the civilian spectators followed Ayven at a respectful distance. The others were circling or had parked near the tanks.

Carron broke through the pack and drove straight to where Lissea stood. His one-man hovercraft had a narrow footprint and a proportionately high center of gravity with a man aboard. It wasn’t a good choice for terrain so rough. Plant juices staining Carron’s cheek and right sleeve suggested that he’d managed to low-side when the little vehicle went over.

“Lissea!” he said. “Remember your promise. You’re going to take me along?”

Toll Warson withdrew his head from the hatch of the nearer tank. “Sure doesn’t look like much,” he said. Ned looked at him sharply.

“If you’re going to come,” Lissea said, “then
get
moving. We’re heading for the lake.”

She took the Old Race artifact from her wrist and tossed it to Carron as she got into the jeep. He squawked and caught it.

The sensor suite bulged from the luggage trough and added nearly fifty kilos to the jeep’s burden. If the loaded vehicle could carry the two big mercenaries, it ought to manage one man and a small woman, though.

“Bloody hell, Slade, drive!” she said. “Do you need an engraved invitation?”

Ned fumbled clumsily with the controls for a further instant before he got them sorted out. Toll had feathered the fans as he cut power, while Ned always left the blade angle coarse. The fans sang as Ned pushed the throttle forward, but it wasn’t until he changed the unexpected setting that the jeep lurched ahead.

The ground trembled again, without violence but continuing over a thirty-second interval. Ned wondered whether the crust of Pancahte was setting up for a major displacement. Worse come to worst, open country like this was as good a place as any in which to ride out an earthquake.

“But Lissea?” Carron called.

Pancahtan aircars marked the position of the leading truck like vultures following a dying horse. Yazov put his boot to the firewall as soon as Lissea implied he was clear to follow Deke’s truck. Tadziki and Toll Warson boarded the 1-tonne on the fly, drawn onto the bed by the men already there.

Ned slid the jeep’s throttle to the stop also. He could adjust his speed by tweaking blade pitch and the angle of his fan nacelles, lifting high enough that the skirts spilled air when he needed to slow. The battery temperature gauge began to rise with the constant high-rate discharge, but that was nothing to worry about.

Some of the hurry was justified. Lissea was in command, so she ought to be present when her personnel reached the capsule. Less creditably, a part of Ned had no intention of losing a race to Yazov in a locally built truck.

Least creditable of all, Ned wanted to leave Carron Del Vore as far behind as possible. That was petty, but Ned didn’t claim to be perfect

On smooth stretches, the 1-tonne might have had a speed advantage, but on this terrain the jeep’s agility put it ahead early and kept it there. A bulge in a spreading leaf might be no more than a kink of growth, but it might as easily conceal a boulder big enough to rip the skirts off a hovercraft. The two mercenary-driven vehicles skidded and wove about the potential hazards.

Pancahtans took chances in an attempt to keep up with the
Swift’
s
experts. Some of the locals flew up, flailing as their vehicles cartwheeled and scattered bits of bodywork across the landscape.

The peninsula was nearly three hundred meters long. Some of the civilian craft had stopped or were idling at the near end. Because all the Pancahtans were looking in the other direction, dicing between the vehicles brought shouts of anger and surprise. When the jeep’s skirts brushed an enclosed sedan, the civilian driver reached out to shake his fist—

And almost lost it when the 1-tonne blasted by, thirty meters behind. Several men in the box of Yazov’s truck kept their weapons pointed while Josie Paetz jeered and pumped his right index finger through his left fist.

On both sides of the peninsula, Hammerhead Lake danced in vertical spikes. The jeep’s air cushion and the howl of its fans masked the vibrations agitating the water. Ned wished he’d learned more about the amplitude of the quakes to be expected on Pancahte.

The buildings and vehicles at the end of the peninsula were fifty meters ahead. “Hang on!” he ordered.

The nacelles were in the full-aft position to provide maximum forward thrust. Rather than reverse their angle with the wand on the left side of the control column, Ned spun his yoke to pivot the jeep at the same time he dumped the plenum chamber.

The combination of active and passive braking slowed the vehicle from seventy kilometers per hour to a dead stop in less than twenty meters—excellent performance for a hovercraft. Besides, deceleration stresses pushed Ned and his passenger comfortably into their seatbacks instead of trying to bounce them off the dashboard.

Ned added a bit of tricky reverse steering to fishtail the jeep between the big Pancahtan aircars. Guards with their face-shields raised gaped at the exhibition.

Ned hadn’t thought about Lissea since he had got the jeep under weigh. His attention had been limited to the potential threats and potential obstacles in all directions of his vehicle. Now he looked at his commander in sudden trepidation—
the sedan their skirts had brushed, that was on Lissea’s side.

She was smiling and relaxed. “Not bad,” she said as she scissored her legs over the sidepanel. “Not bad at all.”

Via, they’d both been tight as cocked pistols when they got into the jeep. The fast ride had let out tensions. The business with the tanks was more like waiting for the guillotine to drop.

Deke Warson knelt beside the circular door of the nearest building. “Knelt” was the operative word: the opening was only a meter-fifty in diameter, and the wall from soil to roof was less than two meters high. A sunken floor could explain the outside height, but the door was presumably sized to its builders.

Who were unlikely to have been human—though the Old Race tanks had to be crewed by beings the size and shape of men. As Ned had said, the tank fit him like a glove.

Three Pancahtan soldiers stood in line abreast on either side of Ayven in his silver armor. They watched the mercenaries involved with the building five meters in front of them.

A severe shock—the first Ned had noticed during this spasm—rocked the site. One of the armored men fell down. He jumped upright again and backed into his proper space. Hammerhead Lake was beginning to boil.

“Got it!” Deke shouted, oblivious to external events while he concentrated on the lock. A kit of delicate electronic tools lay open beside his right boot. The circular doorpanel rotated outward and up from a hinge concealed at the two-o’clock position.

Harlow and Raff jumped onto the roof from the inner courtyard. “No problem!” Harlow called. “We can just lift it over.”

Lissea slipped between Pancahtan guards. Ned followed a pace behind her. As a reflex, he put his hand on one man’s shoulder.

That was a waste of effort. The fellow didn’t feel the contact. When he lurched, startled by Lissea’s sudden appearance before him, he knocked Ned into his fellow. It was like jumping between moving buses: nothing an unaided human did was going to affect his mechanical neighbors.

“Like hell we’re going to lift the sucker!” Deke called as he squatted in the low entrance with his 2-cm weapon pointing forward. “We’re going to take it right through this door I got open!”

“Shut up, Deke,” Tadziki ordered. “We’re going to do exactly what the lady behind you says we’re going to do. Now, get out of her way!”

Deke glanced over his shoulder in surprise. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he muttered.

He hunched quickly through the opening instead of hopping aside. Lissea followed. Ned gestured Tadziki to go through behind her, then gripped the roof’s coping with both hands. Harlow reached down to help. Ned got his boot over the edge unaided and straightened again on top.

Ned wasn’t claustrophobic. After his moment of fear in the Old Race tank though, he didn’t feel an immediate need to enter another strait enclosure.

Like the Old Race bunker, this building appeared to have been cast in one piece. The roof was unmarked by antennas, ventilators, or support devices of any sort.

The walls of the inner court were pentagonal and parallel to those of the exterior. The enclosed area was about five meters wide. Flanked by Harlow and Raff, Ned reached the inner edge just as Deke Warson led Lissea into the courtyard on her hands and knees.

Raff spun twice, aiming his rocket gun at what turned out to be nothing—smoke or the brightwork of a civilian vehicle catching the late sun. His disquiet bothered Ned. The Racontid generally seemed as imperturable as a rock.

“See, it’s just a little thing,” Deke said. “We’ll get it through the doors easy.” He gestured to the capsule as though it was his sole gift to Lissea.

The ground shook again, violently. The building moved as a piece, but Ned noticed the ancient structure fifty meters away was dancing to a slightly different rhythm. He bent to rest the tips of his left fingers on the roof to keep from falling.

A crevice opened beneath a Pancahtan hovercraft, then slammed shut again to pinch the flexible skirt. The occupants bailed out, bawling in surprise. This couldn’t be a common occurrence, even for Pancahte.

Hammerhead Lake shuddered. Great bubbles of steam burst in a warm haze that drifted over the buildings.

Carron Del Vore was in the courtyard with Lissea and six of the mercenaries. Toll Warson waited at the outside entrance, his weapon held across his chest as if idly.

Several of Ayven’s companions had fallen because of the most recent shock. The Treasurer’s son remained upright. The primary washed the left side of his powered armor blood red.

“Lissea?” Ned called. “Better move it out. I don’t like the look of the lake.”

He gestured. She couldn’t see the lake’s surface, but the plume of steam must by now be visible from the courtyard.

“What do you figure’s going on, Master Slade?” Harlow muttered. He was as nervous as Raff, or he wouldn’t have asked the question in a fashion that tacitly granted Ned officer status.

Lissea gave a curt order and pointed at the capsule.

“Lava must’ve entered the water channel feeding the lake,” Ned said. “We’re going to have a geyser or worse any minute now.”

The capsule rested on an integral ring base. Four of the mercenaries gripped the ovoid and tilted it end-on so that they could manhandle it through the doors. It was heavy but not too heavy to carry.

Carron reached between two of the men. He touched what must have been a latch because the whole upper surface of the capsule pivoted upward. Deke Warson cursed and bobbed his head as the top opened toward him.

Inside the capsule was the wizened yellow mummy of a man. They’d found not only Lendell Doormann’s capsule, but the desiccated remains of Lendell Doormann as well.

“All right, let’s get it moving,” Lissea ordered. She slammed the capsule closed again. “We can look at all that later.”