April 2: Down to Earth (39 page)

A technician wearing a headset came up, with a dazed expression and an empty fire extinguisher in his hand. "I don't think we have any fire that will spread," he told them both, "but all the crew is leaving the building and going home. The phones are all jammed and we can't call the fire department or EMS. Whatever wiped the cops and aircars off the roof came down through the top two floors, before it went out the East side of the building. Most of one of the aircars is lying out in the street, upside down burning. Whatever went through them and the edge of the building, dug a couple big craters in the other side of the street and sidewalk. My producer is out there now describing it to me," he said, touching the headset. "He's getting in his car and leaving like the rest of us, after he shoots some video. I don't think anybody is missing, but a couple of the big executive's offices on the East side are just gone."

"They were kinetic energy weapons from orbit," April told him. "A tank killer weapon, that doesn't carry an explosive warhead. Preston Harrison was going to arrest me and haul me off with his Homeland Security goons, so I called down fire from orbit and took his cars and his muscle out. Didn't you hear the interview?"

"No, I'm a mixer tech from the shoot in Studio Four and just came over and put the fire out when the wall burned through. You had Harrison here? Isn't he a big wheel in Homeland Security?" he asked.

"Not anymore," Kyrah informed him and just pointed at the upturned sofa, with its bottom and legs towards them. There was a single foot in a brown oxford still sticking up, hooked over the edge. The techie finally dropped the extinguisher with a hollow clang and took a few steps in the dim light to lean over the love seat with both hands and look at what was behind it. Then in death, Harrison had the final indignity of the technician vomiting on him.

April got up and announced, "I'm out of here too." Nobody tried to stop her.

Chapter 35

The parking lot was just fine. In fact, walking back there was not much damage, except for some broken windows. The shock wave came all the way from across the bay. That separation helped and the ground penetrator wouldn't have much of an air wave. However she could see an angry plume of black smoke rising in the distant West, blowing away from her, but all the buildings cut her view off from the base of that smoke. Probably aircraft burning, she figured.

She kept expecting the local cops to pull up and try to detain her. If Harrison hadn't come by air, there would have probably been a bunch of local cops at the studio. The attendant was freaked out when she got back to the lot and asked if she knew what was going on. She declined to discuss it and was happy to see her ride safe and untouched. She headed not for her place, but to Adzusa's because she needed her ribs looked at, but didn't trust going to an emergency room and telling who she was.

Once she was in her vehicle and away a bit she, terminated her control on militia resources and let Jon know she was OK. She admitted to stopping a shot with her vest but minimized it. She told them again to look at the statements Harrison had made about destroying Home and consider if his party was still a danger, even though he was gone and was anxious to sign off. A few emergency vehicles passed, running with lights and siren on, so she probably would have to wait for treatment at a hospital anyway. The areas right on the edge of the Coastie Station probably had casualties, but April couldn't find a lot of sympathy for them.

If Harrison had the cooperation of forces at the base, they were a danger to her. These people seemed incapable of understanding they couldn't just snatch anyone they pleased and do whatever they wanted with them. This was the price for trying. She wasn't sure some other righteous nut case, still wouldn't try to arrest her. Traffic was very light going up country out of town. Apparently, people hunkered down and stayed put, when things were uncertain. She rolled in and Li met her in the driveway. "Would you sweep it for bugs and park it inside out of sight?" she requested. He nodded, seeming at ease.

When she went in they took her to a small bedroom downstairs she'd never seen. Once her vest was off and they peeled up her blouse, there was an angry circle of red already starting to turn blotchy purple on her ribs about as big across as a tennis ball and swollen out in a low bump. They called Lin in and she examined her with some force, that made April gasp in pain, but she declared there was not any rib fracture. She put a cold pack on it and gave April a pain killer and an anti-inflammatory, by mouth.

Finally, after her immediate need was taken care of Adzusa asked, "Who did this to you? We were watching and you had just told Harrison you wouldn't submit to arrest and there was a boom and the transmission ended."

"And that was it?" April asked. "The transmission didn't come back on, when the power came back on again?"

"No, we have no idea what happened. We heard on other channels, there were explosions and  heavy damage to the West out at Barber's Point, but they didn't say if that had anything to do with you or not."

"Yeah, that was Jon acting for me. Let's go out by the pool and I'll lay back on a chaise lounge sucking down lemonade and show you what happened off my public eye," April offered. "It will explain what happened at the studio and the airport both."

They helped her up, Lin protesting she should go lie on a bed flat. April countered that once she lay down for the night she didn't want to get back up and diverted her by asking if she would have something that would help her sleep later.

They arranged themselves around the table by the pool and Papa-san called Li and his other young man and told them to bring seats, which was unusual. April understood then they were also his security officers, so this was a bit of a council of war. What they saw might affect who could try their perimeter later. They made a quick check of the news channels, to see what was being said, then went to April's video.

The public eye could see in near dark or infrared, so when the orbital weapons went through the aircars on the roof, it switched to infrared as soon as the double thud sounded on the record and the lights went out. It switched to a false color, but with surprising detail. It was about two seconds from when it went dark, until she had slid to the floor and rolled over three times ending on her belly. She lined the laser up on the body guard behind Harrison in the dark, as he took one tentative step forward. Then the lights flickered back and the normal color returned. His eyes just started to turn to her, but he hadn't shifted his weapon and his chest disappeared in a blinding flash and a cough of exploding steam. Then as his knees started to buckle, the guard behind him suffered a similar flash and death. The emergency light above him disintegrated in a shower of molten metal.

The whole sequence, Flash-Flash-Flash took less than two seconds and the camera swept away before either man had finished falling. For a long leisurely second she rolled over twice, camera panning across ceiling and floor and sat up with the agent from behind her pointing his weapon double handed to the side, where she had been. The muzzle lit up with a long tongue of flame and climbed back in recoil, then he too disappeared behind a brilliant ball of plasma, that mercifully hide what happened behind the glare.

Then the whole scene moved sideways with a terrific jerk and rolled horizontal. The audio recorded a slapping sound, as a big slug flattened out like a coin against April's ribs and shoved her sideways and over. The scene before her lit up in that peculiar backscatter rainbow flash, that lingered on green, which was the laser cycling through its frequencies, seeking the best one to tear the target apart. She was firing to the side and the camera was pointed off, away from where she was firing. By this time almost seven seconds had elapsed.

As she sat up, turning, the side of the room where the agent who shot her had to be, came into view. Some of the tangle of theater booms and cables were still falling from her initial fire and as the beam walked in loops across that side of the room it undercut the block wall to the adjacent studio, which collapsed over on the already significant pile of junk. Where the gunman had been hidden in that mess, never did show on the record. In the edge of the view, two studio technicians scrambled on hands and knees, away from that side of the room for the exit. She didn't remember even seeing them at the time.

She seemed to remember just hosing that side of the room down forever. But watching it now, it was only about four seconds. From when the lights went out, until all four guards were dead, was somewhere between eight and eleven seconds depending on how you counted. Levering herself erect and stumbling back to the seating area seemed terribly long and slow, after the gun battle. The camera jerking with her limp.

Her screaming denunciation of Harrison sounded like some stranger's voice. His face never registered a change, as he was ripped open by a flare of light from crotch to crown and except for an explosion of red fog, the flare of light hid the work of the weapon from the camera, as he was blown back out of sight behind the overturned love seat. Only the lone foot, heel hooked on the edge remained visible. Then she sat down heavy with a thump that shook the camera and the coffee cup came up across the field of view. Her words with Kyrah seemed unimportant but she let it run through the noise from the bombardment until she said she was leaving and cut the feed.

"I wouldn't release that to anyone if I were you," Papa-san advised her grimly.

"I thought Adzusa might want something out of it," April offered.

"No. I couldn't do that to you," she said. "You don't understand what effect that would have on the public. It would be counterproductive. A lot of North Americans will look down on you for shooting Harrison, since he didn't have a weapon."

"He didn't
need
a weapon in his
hand
. Each of those agents and the guys with the cars on the roof and who knows what other assets at the Coastie Air Station were his weapons. If I'd allowed him to live, he had sworn to kill my family and nation. He had a weapon in every asset of his agency. No. Don't cover this up," she demanded. "This is exactly what the public down here needs to know. If you threaten Home we will believe you and we will remove the threat."

"That's really not how North Americans think," Adzusa insisted still. "They think you can say anything, but it's what you do that counts. Any number of them would say he was just blowing off steam." She grimaced, to think what a pun that was.

"They wouldn't say that if somebody was threatening the President, would they?"

"Well no," Adzusa admitted. "There are specific laws about threatening public officials."

"But it's fine to swear you'll blow a whole habitat of people to vapor?"

That got some uncomfortable looks, all around.

"Let me put it this simple," April told her. "If they want to keep thinking that they can. But if they don't learn
we
don't think that way, it's going to kill them. So consider it a kindness to tell them, no matter how badly it makes them regard me."

Adzusa started slowly nodding, like it was finally getting through. "So after a couple hundred years of politicians training us not to believe much of what they say, you are going to demand the right to believe them?"

"You got it. If they say, ‘We'll kill you,' they better mean it and do it damn quick."

Adzusa finally accepted the video with much trepidation. Not at all sure how she would edit it. It was a definite hot potato. It amused April a little, to see her get too much story.

"Ask Genji Akira what to do with it," April suggested to her.

She nodded acceptance, that was a good idea.

"Let's look at my sat coverage, since there's nothing on the news," April suggested. It took a few minutes to actually find the airfield. When she did the center of the X the runways made, had a surprisingly large crater in the middle. The ridge of dirt thrown up around the crater extended all the way to the beach at one point.

There was still one fire off to the side burning, but the plume of smoke was blowing South-West now and they could see the apron was pock marked with smaller craters, as well as three small pits clustered on the long Western extension of the runway from the X.. Each one had a pile of debris around it, where the aircraft burned or just disintegrated, from an orbital weapons strike. A few looked bizarre, because there would be a blackened crater, with the detached wings and sometimes tail, laying beyond the edge of the crater, but the main part of the aircraft gone so thoroughly it couldn't be identified. It was entirely too reminiscent to the Earthies of a swatted bug, lying with wings knocked off.

The surrounding area didn't look that bad, except the control tower was just plain knocked over. Some of the hangers were pushed over crooked, from the blast but not knocked down. Nobody had much to say about it. It looked like there were lots of big trucks, probably fire and rescue, between the hangers and on the edge of the flight apron, so they must have the fires and other emergencies under control.

Despite her resolve not to endanger them with her presence, April found herself being told, not asked, that she would have dinner with them served right where she was and spend the night in the small room where she had been treated, so she would not have to go up stairs. Somewhere along the way she realized the initial revulsion at her actions had disappeared and her hosts seemed to understand her need to defend her home and family better now. Whatever she had said that had swung their opinion, she only hoped Adzusa could do the same thing with the public.

Supper was good, but awkward reclining. Cook seemed to have considered that also. There was nothing like soup, to struggle with while reclining.

Chapter 36

"I'm sorry. I know it's rude to keep it on at dinner," she told them, when her pad chimed.

"Things are a bit uncertain right now," Papa allowed. "Don't worry about it."

April routed it to the bigger screen on the table, they'd used to watch her public eye file. April felt like it was rude to shut out everyone around her by taking it on a hand held pad, while she couldn't easily get up and go in. They'd all sit around trying to be quiet and pretend they weren't listening. Better to share. She couldn't imagine anything she wouldn't share with them anyway. Eddie was looking out of the screen at her with a troubled expression.