By Blood Alone (42 page)

A voice came from out in the hall. “Jen? You in there? I heard shots. Did you nail the bastard?”

The bounty hunter hit the door with his shoulder, burst into the room, and took two slugs in the head. And a good thing too—since military-grade body armor protected his chest.

Kenny knelt on the back porch roof, peeked through the window, and wriggled back in. And why not? Government troops would have surrounded the place by now, and there was no sign of a backup. None except for Jenny ... who floated face up. Damn. What a waste.

He retrieved the new clothes, switched weapons with the bounty hunter, and left the 9mm clutched in the other man’s hand. Just a little entertainment for Pardo’s police force.

That accomplished, the resistance fighter went out the window, found his boots, and jumped to the ground. Once there, it was a simple matter to run down the alley, duck behind a garage, and pull the clothes on. They felt stiff and scratchy.

A siren could be heard in the distance as Kenny took his bearings, waited for a cop car to pass over his head, and strolled away. A dog barked—but no one cared.

 

The command car circumnavigated the bomb crater, lurched through a drainage ditch, and growled onto the much-abused highway. A lizard raised its head, took exception to what it saw, and scuttled away.

Admiral Angie Tyspin felt her butt leave the seat and was grateful for the lap belt.

Colonel Bill Booly glanced in her direction and grinned. “Nice one-point landing, Admiral.... Sorry about the road.”

“The name is Angie ... and I’ll settle for any kind of landing that I get to walk away from.”

“So noted,” Booly said cheerfully. “Now hang on—the road gets worse before it gets better.”

The legionnaire’s words proved prophetic. The vehicle topped a rise, granted a glimpse of blue, and plunged into a gully. It took the better part of twenty minutes to fight their way through a dry riverbed, up a series of ancient switchbacks, and along the side of a heavily eroded cliff. Tool marks left more than two hundred years before could still be seen.

But then, just as Tyspin was starting to regret the trip, they passed between a pair of graffiti marked boulders and out onto a gently winding road
. The Gulf of Tadjoura shimmered below. The water was blue, the sun danced over the waves, and palms beckoned from the shore.

“That’s where we’re going,” Booly announced. “Are you ready for a beer?”

Tyspin wiped the sweat off her forehead, decided that she was, and waited while the other officer climbed out of the rig, went to the back, and opened a cooler. There were two dozen cans nestled in the ice, along with a bottle of wine and a carefully packed lunch.

Someone—Fykes seemed the most likely suspect—had thrown a couple of assault weapons into the back. His way of nagging without actually being there. Booly grinned and left the weapons where they were.

Tyspin watched the infantry officer swing behind the wheel, thought how handsome he looked, and accepted the ice-cold beer. It hissed as she flipped the tab up and out of the way. The liquid was cold and tart. It soothed her heat-parched throat.

So, Tyspin thought to herself, should I keep it platonic? Or take a fling? Assuming he wants one. He’s not in my chain of command, which certainly helps, but he is junior. Unless they jerk my star ... which would leave us as peers.

The naval officer found the concept to be comforting, reminded herself that there was no need to solve nonexistent problems, and decided to focus on the moment. Something, she wasn’t sure what, said, “Good idea,” and faded away.

The road descended through some nicely engineered curves, passed a long-abandoned resort, and ended by the sea.

Booly drove the command car under the palms, turned the tailgate into a shelf, and opened a duffle bag. “Ready for a swim? There’s three or four masks in here ... see if one of them fits.”

Tyspin wore a two-piece bathing suit under her shirt and shorts. She stripped down, examined the gear, and made her choices.

Booly, clad only in trunks, nodded toward the water. “Ready?”

Tyspin nodded and followed him across the sand. She’d been aware of the fur, but had never really seen it before. The silvery mane began at the base of his skull, flowed the length of his spine, and ended just above the waistband of his trunks.

Curious about her reaction, the naval officer checked, found that she rather liked it, and followed Booly into the water.

Protected as it was by the point west of Arta, the inner gulf was relatively calm and nonthreatening. Fine white sand shifted under Tyspin’s feet, waves lapped at her ankles, and soon rose to slap against her waist.

Tyspin lay on her back, pulled the fins on, and adjusted her mask. Booly waved, and she followed him out. The bottom was mostly bare. The current pushed the sand into delicate ridges, bounced tiny bits of coral along the bottom, and tugged at the tiny, almost transparent fish.

Then, as the water grew slightly colder and the waves became more pronounced, the bottom fell away. Booly touched her arm and pointed downward. Tyspin pulled plastic-tainted air down through the snorkel, stored it in her lungs, and kicked with her fins.

Booly felt cool water close over the top of his head and checked to ensure that Tyspin was okay. She had a lean, almost boyish body. Her legs moved with the rhythmic surety of someone who had dived before.

Though she was not exactly beautiful, Tyspin exuded something the legionnaire liked. Intelligence, confidence, and competence. All sexy in their own way.

Rosy-orange coral heads rose to greet them, a school of blue chromis wheeled away, and a garden of sea anemones bloomed beyond.

Then, after what seemed like seconds but was actually minutes, the officer’s lungs began to protest. Booly checked to ensure that Tyspin was aware of him, jerked a thumb toward the surface, and kicked his feet. The sky arched above.

 

The water, which was deep and blue, harbored many mysteries, including ancient wrecks, little-known life-forms, and volcanic vents.

The machine intelligence was aware of such things, but perceived them as variables, none of which meant anything in and of themselves.

No, what counted was the mission, the purpose to which the construct was presently dedicated. Its rather mindless gestalt was both a weakness, and, given the nature of the machine’s assignment, a significant strength.

The machine
knew
it had limitations, just as it knew the enemy was sentient, and more than that, capable of sensing what bio bods thought and felt.

Not
machines, though, which was why the three-hundred-seventy-foot-long attack submarine had been sent halfway around the world to intercept an even larger submersible, and then, as the people aboard screamed in pain, the artificial intelligence would assassinate the being that came to their aid.

It was a clever plan, far
too
clever for the attack sub to appreciate, not that it mattered.

Sound rumbled up ahead, the kind of sound made by twin screws, churning through the sea.

The attack sub checked to ensure that the sounds matched the correct computer profiles, loaded six AS-8 acoustic homing torpedos into its tubes, and prepared to fire.

Sola’s extremities covered hundreds of square miles of ocean and, that being the case, could feast on nearly limitless sunlight. Wonderful, delicious sunlight, which was different from that available on her native planet had its own unique bouquet.

It was a dreamy existence for the most part, drifting with the currents, pursuing whatever thoughts happened along, and keeping the world at bay.

Well,
almost
at bay, since there was no way to ignore the surface vessels that did occasional damage to her delicate limbs, or the minds, thousands upon thousands of which planned, schemed, and plotted until the ethers were filled with the mental equivalent of static.

But there were others as well. Minds lost in deep meditation, surfing waves of creativity, or simply bubbling with joy.

Some of those, her favorites in fact, belonged to the dolphin people, who, though primitive in ways, had their own kind of intelligence, and lived in the ever-present now.

It was through them, while hitchhiking in their minds, that Sola had first experienced how wonderful if felt to slide along the crest of a wave, to dive for elusive prey, and to mate in the shimmery blue.

They called to Sola, begged her to come, and she went.

 

Designed to support the Cynthia Harmon Center for Undersea Research as well as similar facilities, the
Leonid
displaced nineteen thousand tons submerged, was five hundred seventy feet long, had a forty-five-foot beam, and was powered by two Norgo fusion reactors, each capable of developing forty thousand horsepower, and, when operating in tandem, of propelling the submarine through the depths at speeds in excess of thirty knots.

The sub contained two holds crammed with supplies, two hundred resistance fighters, and a crew of sixty, some of whom were in it for the money, and some, like Captain Mike Finn, who were true members of the Resistance.

Finn was a big man,
too
big according to his physician, and not all that tall. He had black hair, a matching beard, and a quick smile. His clothes, which were always the same, consisted of an excruciatingly loud shirt worn over immaculate white pants.

It was Finn’s way of simplifying life, of reducing the number of variables one had to deal with, and generating peace of mind. Something he sought but wasn’t likely to get. Not with a sub loaded with contraband, an ocean full of enemies, and a bad case of heartburn. The voice boomed through his earplug.

“I have a contact, skipper. She’s dead astern, and closing fast. An attack sub, from the sound of her.”

Finn swore, launched himself down the corridor, and exploded into the con center. He scanned the screens, confirmed the sonar operator’s report, and chose a course of action. The
Leonid
had never been a warship, which meant she had no offensive weapons. “Prepare to launch acoustic decoys.... Launch.”

“Prepare for silent running.... Execute.”

“Sound the collision alarm.... Man damage-control stations.”

The orders were executed quickly and efficiently. Evasive maneuvers were a possibility if the acoustic torps failed, but there wasn’t much more that Finn could do. Nothing but pray. More than two hundred souls stared at the steel bulkheads and waited to learn their fates.

 

Sola was in the midst of a vicarious dive, rejoicing in the way that the water flowed across her supersmooth dolphin skin, when the fear jerked her back.

It took less than a second to locate the source, access a collection of minds, and define the problem: A submarine, loaded with volunteers, was under attack.

But how? Assuming that the humans were right, and there was no reason to think they weren’t, a vessel was in the process of stalking them.

Yet how could that be? Especially since the Say’lynt was unable to locate the minds that such a vessel implied.

Then it came to her,
the fact that there were no minds
, that the enemy had devised a way to counter her abilities.

Sola wasted no more than a tenth of a second on self-recrimination before launching her intelligence outward. She found thousands of life-forms.

Most had very little intelligence, but that didn’t make any difference to Sola, who was more interested in what they
felt
. The challenge was to sort through countless impressions, discard those with little or no value, and identify those that mattered.

A thirty-foot oarfish saw something considerably larger than itself but was too stupid to glean any meaning from it.

A lantern fish felt the backwash from the submarine’s wake and dove to escape.

A shark sensed the presence of a large electric field, decided it was
too
large to be edible, and continued its search. And there were more,
many
more, all contributing tidbits of information.

Three seconds elapsed while the Say’lynt built what amounted to a sensory mosaic from the input she received, compared it to the information the
Leonid
had gathered, and knew where the attack sub was. Not
exactly . . .
but within a hundred feet.

That being the case, Sola shoved some instructions into Finn’s brain, sent a summons down into the deep, and started to mourn.

 

The attack sub sensed the decoys, knew what they were, and stayed locked on its target.

Then, just as the computer was about to launch, the other submarine dove.

The defensive move made absolutely no difference. The AS-8s would follow. The attack sub fired.

 

Three bluish-gray Byde’s whales all developed a desire to look for squid in the same place at the same time. They converged from different directions.