April 2: Down to Earth (38 page)

Kyrah looked back at April with an expectant face.

"I suspect you know the answer to that, from recording my entry at airport security and customs and you must reject it. But I'll answer for the audience. We conquered you. You surrendered. The only objection you have to violence, is we use it better than you. You certainly use it against your own people more than we do. And then, when you asked us to wear the silly cards we thought it made you look so much worse than anything we could have thought of, we did it as a courtesy, like you'd take your shoes off to enter a person's home if it was their custom, even if you owned it and rented it to them. To me, it was as offensive as having Jews wear a star in the third Reich. But we still did it, until your man tried to tell me the gesture just neutralized all the reality of your defeat and surrender. As if the landlord I alluded to taking his shoes off, lost title to the home by his politeness. So I took it off and burned it into the floor and we won't be wearing them again. Have your people been refusing to pass citizens of Home through security on New Las Vegas, or the International Space Station II, without wearing a black card?"

"The Earthside territory of North America is a different case than orbital structures Miss Lewis. We have a far deeper interest in our safety and security, on the planetary surface."

"Well I know we could take the orbital territory away from you. And we could probably occupy them with our small population, since a lot of the residents already identify themselves more as spacers than North Americans, so they'd cooperate and our taxes are
way
lower and
voluntary.
We don't extract taxes with the violence you say we are so fond of. But we really don't have any designs on them. We just don't think that way. But it seems not a good idea to soften your claim to them, as inferior to Earthside, because it may encourage
them
to consider independence like we did," she suggested.

"This sort of provocative speech is what I meant about your visit being a propaganda mission. Do you deny that?"

"No."

"No? You acknowledge it?"

"Sure. We wanted to remind you we have rights to pass your territory and be treated by our law. You seemed to be forgetting it quickly, if we only exercise it above the atmosphere. You forget something about propaganda. The word does
not
in any sense mean such information is a falsehood. It just means it serves the purposes of the people issuing it. It just got that bad reputation because politicians lie as easy as they breathe."

"And you are not political and we know what you say is truth?" He said, with a smug smirk on his face April just wanted to step on.

"Last time Kyrah interviewed me, I invited her to run my statements through verifying software. As long as she discloses the full numbers and what she ran them through, she was welcome to make them public. I know your law makes it illegal to force that on a person, but I voluntarily waived my right. I haven't withdrawn that at all. So I may be delusional. I may believe things you can't, but at least you will know I'm not talking out both sides of my mouth to you."

April saw the look of deep shock on his face.

"Ha, you saw a ghost didn't you? From your face, I'd say Ms. Armstrong forgot to mention that little change in the game I made. She won't
lie
to you either, but she sometimes forgets to mention things, such as the way she was listening in on me before this interview, as I talked with her assistant in the dressing room. She was chatting me up for information and not telling me Kyrah was listening in. Those not-a-lie omissions, can come back and bite you on the butt, if you don't catch them."

"Tell you what Simon. I got a million EuroMarks right here on my pad account, I can beam to you. I bet you even money you can't go the full interview like we intended and go toe to toe with me, letting the software compare how deeply we believe what we are saying and come off as truthful. If you told that much truth at one sitting your political career would be ruined."

"This interview is terminated," Harrison told Kyrah. "All copies of it will be seized and classified for public security. If you divulge the contents of it, you will be subject to the severest punishments of the Federal government. Do I make myself clear?" He was ugly.

"You make yourself perfectly clear. However the interview is not in the can to seize. One of those little details April admires my skill at forgetting to mention, is that we are streaming it out live. So you just made yourself perfectly clear. Alarmingly transparent, if I may say so, to about fifty million viewers any number of whom in various countries, probably have it cached to share with their friends and relatives tonight. So I'm afraid the genie is already out of the bottle in that regard, Mr. Harrison."

"In that case it doesn't matter if it is going out or not. You are under arrest Ms. Armstrong, for knowingly aiding a hostile foreign power. The public will be well instructed by seeing what punishment such behavior brings, regardless of their opinion of me. And fear is far more telling than opinion Ms. Armstrong. As for Miss Lewis, I have my transport of two fan platforms waiting on the roof, that have
loyal
men of both Immigration and Homeland Security. When I leave she will accompany me under arrest, back to the Coast Guard Station at the old Barber's Point – Kalaeloa airport and be transported to the mainland for detention. Something else I hope is instructive to your public. That was decided before I even came here today."

April did not wait to hear the rest of his spiel. She used her spex to lay designator cross hairs on both the fan lifter aircars her sat coverage showed on the roof and told the next sat in line to put a kinetic energy weapon through each of them, at an angle. She was careful to tell it
not
to put one down at a sharp angle, because she was pretty much straight down from them and it might penetrate deep in the building. The program told her they would be here in less than four minutes. She lucked out – that was about the minimum transit to be expected. They weren't taking her anywhere in
those
cars.

April saw that her program was displaying the flashing warning: Network Link Down. She didn't know if that had happened before or after she released the weapons on the aircars. It didn't matter, because her display also showed: Direct Connection Up. She was about to deal with this base they wanted to take her to, when Jon inquired in text on her spex: "Kill Harrison's transport at base?"

"Yes," she replied aloud. Jon could decide how and allow her to deal with her situation here, which she intended to do. She was deeply angry Harrison tried to cut her off and arrest her. Unfortunately for him all he could see was a young girl, who must be thoroughly cowed, since she didn't shout out any objections, or even rise from her seat. He couldn't conceive of the young girl before him as a threat,, or a combat veteran. Disaster was already falling around his ears and he was clueless.

"Believe me, besides dealing with
you
," he went on, not even wondering what her spoken yes meant, "one of the first things I'll do in my Presidency, is to wipe that rebellious scum from the sky that you are so proud of. I'll bend the full power of North America to destroying Home, as should have already been done. If we suffer casualties, it won't be the first time our country has had to sacrifice, to preserve its Manifest Destiny. God will help us again, if we act decisively." When he got into it, the creepy fanaticism just took over his face.

"You tried to disconnect me from networking with Home," April interrupted him, voice accusingly softer than before. The different tone slid right past Harrison, but the question on Kyrah's face said her professional interviewer's ear caught it.

"Yes, you are jammed," he sneered smugly. "So much for your casual threats."

"No you
tried,
" she repeated calmly. "I just targeted the aircars on the roof. My friends are acting to neutralize the Air Station you spoke of. You failed. I will not submit to your arrest. Your life is forfeit, for threatening my family and my nation."

Before Harrison could say anything there was a deep double that shook the building to the foundations. The lights went out and several pieces of equipment fell over noisily in the dark. April switched her spex to dark combat mode and cleared the extra map and menu from her field of vision, leaving the rear view. The outer lens darkened, to keep the light projected on her face from giving her away.

She decided the place to be, was
not
where she had been sitting when the lights went out. So she slide off the love seat and rolled away as quietly as she could, ending laying belly down, flat on the floor a couple meters away. In her spex the agent behind Harrison pulled his gun out in the dark, easing towards where she had been. That's the way she figured it would go now. It sealed his fate. She could have popped him, but while she had the dark working for her but she wanted to locate as many targets as she could. Her new reflexes, recently bought, would serve her well once she started shooting.

She sighted the one behind her in her rear view and the one by the door was already a couple steps closer to them with a gun in his hand too, but uncertain, the other hand out front, feeling in the dark. That still left one missing, but she looked both ways and could not see him, so she drew to deal with what she had. Then the emergency lights came on and she felt rushed. She filled the room with far more light than the emergency lights gave, with a solid shot to the agent's chest behind Harrison. The orange flash of vaporized meat added to the backscatter illumination and she rolled away from her location and shot the agent by the door while she was still facing that way, even though the man behind her was closer.

She shot out the emergency light above the second agent and rolled away again ending on her back and sat up facing back at the agent who had been behind her. He was visible silhouetted against the emergency light still behind him and he fired a shot at approximately where she had been a moment before, the boom followed by a buzzing sound of the flattened ricochet bouncing of the concrete floor, until it hit a wall somewhere. She burned him through the chest, holding her laser out double handed from a sitting position.

There was another boom and she was shoved sideways by a blow to her ribs, that the vest absorbed, but it  was like being kicked violently. It knocked her flat sideways on the floor, but it told her where the last agent was and she aimed in the general direction of the shot without even rising and walked the beam across the whole area weaving it back and forth in figure eights. It screamed in different tones as it chewed up everything to that side of the room, floor, walls and equipment. Flashes of all sorts of colors playing as the beam found wire and plastic and threw fans of molten metal droplets in the air, concrete snapping from thermal shock.

She kept firing long after she could see holes through into the adjoining rooms and serious damage from her beam. She finally rolled away again and waited a moment, but there was no return fire coming from the smoking wreckage on that side of the room. Her ribs were hurting already and she could tell they were going to be bad. It hurt to suck air in. The regular lights came back on and when she levered herself up Kyrah and Harrison were still sitting in their chairs, Kyrah looking just stunned, but Harrison looking bewildered, like he didn't understand why things weren't going by his foreordained script.

"You'll make war on my people and kill them all?" she screamed at him. "Here's your holy glorious war for you." And she brought the laser up and walked fire from his crotch up across his face, peeling him open and the explosion of pink steam blew him and the whole love seat over backwards in a stinking, charred, mess. Kyrah was staring at her wild eyed, her right side peppered with a fine red spray of gore, across her white blouse and face.

She limped back holding her elbow over her abused ribs, gasping and sat down hard on the love seat again. She slammed the laser in her holster and grabbed up the coffee cup and took a deep chug of it. The link she broke when she drew her pistol reestablished itself when it had power again. That was not at all a satisfactory design she decided. The message from Jon said: "No planes, no runway, took down ballistic defense, 2-kiloton runway buster - shock wave coming. More targets?"

"Not yet," she sent him before a sharp ground wave bounced the floor under her feet.

"Hang on Kyrah!" she managed to get out, before a an unbelievable bass rumble shook the building again, until the lights went out a second time and stayed off. The ground waves were followed by a couple more, then a huge burst of them together, like a symphony written for all timpani. By then the air blast from the first strikes were arriving.

The end was punctuated by one extraordinary shock wave, that might have made the couch leave the floor. That had to be the runway busting ground penetrator. The emergency lights came on again, minus the one she had shot out. When it was over she was just happy the building had not come down on them, since her shots at the aircars would have weakened it ahead of the bombardment. She could still smell concrete dust overpowering everything, even the burnt pork, cordite and vaporized plastic and metal smell of their battle, so the building was damaged pretty badly. The dim emergency lights stayed on though.

"What was that?" Kyrah finally got her voice back.

"That was Kalaeloa where Mr. Harrison's goons were going to take me, for their hospitality flight back to the mainland.

"You used nuclear weapons on us?"

"Not exactly. They're a little different. If you had one go off right over you the difference could be kind of lost on you, but no fallout. That big bump was a ground penetrating two kiloton weapon. I don't imagine there are any useable runways at Kalaeloa now. And any planes visible were hit like the ones on the roof. My friends did that to remove whatever resources Harrison had there, to come after me."

Kyrah sat silent and April sat and forced herself to think about the whole thing awhile, despite the pain. She made sure she was transmitting to the militia members still, but addressed Kyrah. "This Patriot Party you said he was the candidate for, I'm telling my friends on Home about it right now. We have to assume they share the same agenda to destroy us. If we find any of them they're dead men too. We'll look for their member lists, headquarters or meetings. I'm giving you the benefit of assuming you didn't know he'd try to arrest me, when we sat down, since he tried to arrest you too." Kyrah didn't try to make any reply to that, to protest her innocence.