Skylock (13 page)

Trennt gazed down the dim cylindrical hole.

"Think we can trigger it some other way? An external charge on top, maybe?"

Baker shrugged helplessly. "Shoot, Jimbo. I'm an old-time H and E man: primer cord, plastique. Don't know squat on nukes. Only what they told me on placin' this un."

"Guys," reminded the pilot.

Trennt glanced hastily about. He kicked at the empty can of alcohol used to start the failed blaze.

"This whole place is all aluminum and tinwork," he reasoned. "With the rising wind, a hot fire might be good enough to melt it all down. There must be more stocks of this stuff somewhere. Find whatever you can. Round it all up and set it all through the buildings. Then route a fuse. We'll have to hope the storm winds fan it hot enough to do the trick."

The shooter nodded toward the hole at their feet.

"What about the big one?"

Trennt set the dead primer tube in its trigger slot and slammed shut the floor cap.

"Not our problem. I'll finish gathering up here. You get started."

Baker sped off, yanking Kosinski from the doorway.

"Come on, Cuz."

A large cache of acetone, alcohol, and ether was stored in a distant point of the station. Fifty-gallon lots of the flammables were hastily parceled out among the buildings and primer charges set among each.

"Better get a move on," Baker warned Doc Ashton, routing a last fuse through the radio room.

The doctor fired a startled look from his vigil amid the corpses. "But the bodies."

Baker shook his head. "No time. 'Less you wanna stay, best get to the plane!"

The nuke's engines were howling to life as Baker yanked a friction fuse and hopped aboard. The primary wick split into five other trails, each snaking toward their target.

"Keep her just out of range for a while," Trennt told the pilot. "I need to make sure it works."

The frazzled young woman came to life at his words. She pushed up from her seat and through the loose heaps of research booty piled about the cabin. Her voice was numb and sluggish, but demanding as she arrived beside Trennt.

"What's happening? We're going? We can't. The others. We can't leave them behind. We have to go back!"

She ran to the hatch, clawing about its unfamiliar surface.

"We can't leave them! We can't!"

Baker intercepted and restrained her flailing hands.

"Easy does it, Sweet Thang," he whispered too closely. "No sense in all that ruckus. They ain't gonna feel nuthin', believe me."

The woman struggled on, but Baker kept her contained. Holding her prisoner in a kind of rough embrace, his flinty eyes roved approvingly over her shape.

Trennt interrupted from his place at a portal.

"You need to keep your hands busy? Then start packing all this loose stuff in for the trip."

The shooter assented, only slowly relaxing his grip.

"Okay, Jimbo. Okay."

Hundreds of feet below, the fuses reached their targets. A surge of purple-blue flame lit the jet's window glass as simultaneous ignitions stoked a massive blush of raw chemical energy. A fist of hard thermal air rammed the plane's belly and the camp dissolved in a roiling fire storm.

Nodding his satisfaction at Baker's work, Trennt motioned the pilot on. He then squeezed aft, to where the medic was busy tending the other survivor.

"What's he got?"

Doc Ashton rose, directing his words away from the stricken man.

"With all the gases which might've mingled, a diagnosis is difficult. But considering the skin necrosis about the eyes, nose, and mouth, I'd guess phosgene oxime poisoning."

Trennt frowned. "Phosgene? Like in the poison gas?"

"The same."

Trennt thrust his chin toward the woman.

"How'd she escape it?"

The doctor shrugged. "Phosgene, if it was that, is what they call a nonpersistent agent. It only rises to a certain height and breaks down rapidly by fog, rain; even heavy vegetation can restrain or filter it. Something as simple as a short breeze might've been enough to direct it away from her entirely."

Trennt studied the stricken man as he sucked feeble, wheezing breaths through an oxygen mask. "How bad is he?"

"He's through the latent period and into pulmonary edema. His lungs are blistered."

"Can you do anything?"

"Keep him on an IV, oxygen, and some codeine. If he makes the next forty-eight hours, he might have a chance."

"We'll get him to a hospital as quick as we can."

The medic shook his head. "Outside of a steady bed and an oxygen tent, it's as good here as can be done anywhere. The rest depends on him and luck."

The doctor's eyes hardened.

"None of this would've happened if they'd listened back home. And Heaven help me, everyone will know about it, this time. I don't care what the consequences are."

Before Trennt could question him, both men pitched sideways. The plane banged through a series of hard roller coaster jolts, shooting high one second, then slamming back the next.

The automatic cabin lights flashed on and Trennt realized just how black it had become outside. He spun about to see the plane's windshield filled with a tumbling cloudbank of cocoa and bone.

As previously advertised, the plane reacted automatically. Jolting the cockpit with a shrill warning buzz, a synthetic voice simultaneously confirmed their danger.

"Event alert! Event alert! Emergency course heading correction to 90 degrees . . . 135 degrees . . . 250 degrees."

The voice fell off as the ship's logic and Doppler systems conferred on the broadening scope of danger. Moments later a last courtesy broadcast sounded.

"Course abort warning! Course abort warning! Heading override; four-zero degrees relative. Full throttle engagement."

The craft began a hard, banking dive to the northwest. She screamed to full power and raced for all she was worth. Behind, the storm growled at its lost prey. Snapping frustrated at the nuke's retreating tail, it steadily fell rearward.

Kosinski fidgeted in his seat, helpless fingers working the empty air. There was no sense in grabbing at the controls. Shipboard intelligence would only wrench them away. Besides, the nuke's nanosecond feedback made his own best reaction time pale in comparison.

From his spot behind the pilot, Baker blew a low, measured breath and turned back for the cabin.

"Set up here if you want, Jimbo. It's all the same as elephants breedin' to me—somethin' I'd rather not watch."

He'd barely squeezed passed his comrade in the narrow passageway, when furious shouting erupted to their rear.

"
No!
You can't let him die! We have to go the other way!
Now!
"

The young woman was on her feet again. Only this time, clamped firmly in her hands was a .32-caliber pistol.

Baker glanced at the familiar piece and swept his eyes furtively toward Kosinski.

The pilot slapped a hand to his empty jacket.

"Damn!"

"You watch the plane," uttered the shooter contemptuously. "I'll handle this."

He started slowly aft, his best honeyed voice and thousand dollar smile leading the way.

"Come on, Sweet Thang, put that away. We got our hands full right now just tryin' to get outta here. We don't want you hurtin' yourse'f."

"I know how to use it!" she screamed. "And I don't care! We've got to turn around right now and get Martin to a hospital!"

Baker edged closer, offering upturned palms.

"We'll get him to one, soon as we kin, darlin'. Promise. But right now things're a little sticky. In the meantime, he'll be okay with the doc there."

"No!" she shouted. "I heard the voice up front say we were turning away. We've got to go back! Now!"

The woman sighted the gun barrel on Baker's chest as he closed the last few feet, his hands still open in surrender.

"I mean it!"

"Oh, I bet you do." The shooter spoke with a touch of true admiration. "Pretty gal like you with spunk is a rare thang. And one I ain't about to argue with."

He watched the hammer creep back ever so slightly and froze.

"Easy there, sweety. We don't want that goin' off in here by accident. Holes in airplanes ain't a good thang."

"Then do as I say! Turn this—"

Her words were cut off by another slap of unexpected buffeting. She fell aside. Baker leapt forward to intercept the gun. Somewhere in between the hammer rocked and dropped.

In slow motion, it did so again.

And again.

One bullet screamed into the cockpit, blasting the control panel between Trennt and Kosinski. Two more went wide. One drilled a cabin window. The other pierced the left rear fuselage.

The cockpit squealed in pain from a control interference alarm as the guidance system tried vainly to make connection with its reserve backup. But the first shot had derailed the automatic bypass. Instead, the plane's CRT screens quivered and went dead in unison. A moment later an explosive
crump!
rattled the port engine.

The jet shuddered tail to nose and slumped left. A spray of metal shards erupted from its damaged engine housing. They paced the craft a moment as split-second bits of light then fell off in the slipstream. Peeling composite skin barked and shrieked, giving way to a high-pitched warble of uncoiling heat exchanger tubing.

A hurricane roared in from the blown portal. Everything not held down levitated, then swept threateningly about the punctured hull. Whiffs of propellant steam gushed inside. The heavy, sweet glycol immediately changed the cabin into a slimy, choking steam bath.

With an engine suddenly gone, the unbalanced nuke swung up like a pendulum. She found her tail and heeled over toward her wounded left side. There, with a gymnast's grace, she paused, then started to pirouette over on her back—again in line with the storm.

Capping off his breath, Kosinski locked his eyes on the speeding maelstrom. A hateful, living plasma of corkscrewing gray spires, thundering gunmetal columns, and jagged quills of pink/cobalt lightning roared toward him. It was cruelly beautiful and hypnotizing, even in its deadly peril. And only fleeting seconds away. But his eyes were frozen.

"Drue! WAKE UP!"

The pilot swiveled dumbly toward Trennt.

"Come on, man! What do we do?"

Kosinski blinked himself free of the windshield and ran inspecting hands over the damaged control panel. The bullet had entered a main breaker junction. A corner of the Bakelite housing was shattered. Beyond, he could see a couple of split capacitors. He yanked at them unsuccessfully.

"Give me a hand!"

Together, they pried at the warped unit. Slowly, their bleeding fingers dug it away. But not nearly as fast as the approaching storm narrowed the gap between them.

Another inch out. Another glance ahead. Both men took to peeking, squandering priceless seconds. Yet even Trennt found himself lulled by the horrific gorgon, wanting to stop and stare.

"Don't look at it!" he managed to order them both. "Keep pulling!"

Finally a satisfying click sounded. "Got it!"

Wedging the unit between his knees, Drue picked out the spray of loose brown splinters. Tucking a pen inside, he pried the grounded electronics back into a passable stance. Thankfully, the solder joints looked solid.

The block slid back on its runners. Mated with its waiting connectors, a joyous yuletide wash of LEDs and readouts flashed back to life. But they held no active logic. Just baseline warm-up grids and test patterns.

"What's wrong?" cried Trennt through the deafening wind.

Kosinski pressed the reset button, waited, and pressed again. A dismal message glowed on the control panel; robbed now even of its normal synthesized voice.

AUTOPILOT NONFUNCTIONAL.

Drue grated his teeth, pecking lamely at the jet's keyboard. Miraculously, the CPU processed and obliged his petition.

USER REQUESTS MANUAL AIRCRAFT CONTROL. ENTER PASSWORD AND USER ID, PLEASE.

" 'Please'?" Trennt suppressed a nervous chuckle at the untimely courtesy.

Drue played tense fingers on the keys, somehow synchronizing his motions with the jarring turbulence long enough to sequence the proper strokes.

YM03468 ACKNOWLEDGED. CONTROL SYSTEMS RELINQUISHED TO USER. MANUAL FLIGHT MODE IN EFFECT. DO YOU WISH PILOT ADVISORY PROVISIONS?

The flier never had time to answer, as command of the plane was immediately dumped into his lap. Even so, the craft seemed to resent its forced surrender, wanting to continue on in its deadly aerial ballet.

Drue crammed the controls to their opposite stops, piling on a ton of body English when there was nothing more mechanical to coax. There he hung silent, like an exhausted terrier, waiting.

In a time scale measuring eons, the nuke finally came to her senses. She grudgingly slowed in her wingover and nosed obediently back around. But she felt different. Like a freshly broken horse . . . limp . . .  dispirited and too slow to run.

The first real piece of storm cuffed them insubordinately. A hard rattle of gravel-like hail swept aft. Then came the boiling black gut of the monster itself, gobbling them whole.

An avalanche of mauling air pressure slammed down on the hapless riders. Their eye sockets boiled dry with pain. Flaming nails pieced their eardrums. Still, the nuke felt heavy . . . sinking.

Kosinski searched rear left. Outside, propellant continued gushing to green steam from her maze of severed wing arteries.

"Why hasn't that damn cutoff kicked in!"

He ran a hand across an overhead bank of mucky emergency switches. There was no backup response; electric or hydraulic.

"Autoservos must be gone!" he cried to Trennt. "Down between us is a panel and hand wheels. Got to turn it off!"

Trennt clawed open the access plate set low between them. Inside were a pair of common pipe valves. Five awkward turns to the left felt like a thousand. But the gushing vapor trailed off and stopped.

"That's it!" called Drue. "Okay, good!"

The nuke volleyed between hammering vertical gusts. Nearly rammed into orbit one moment, it was slapped into a bottomless pit the next. In the driver's seat, a dark part of Kosinski's brain screamed for him to rabbit—jam in takeoff thrust and quick-burst the reactor, gamble on the health of his remaining engine to handle the overload. But he struggled above the temptation. Even without gauges, he knew the coolant level must be marginal now. And even if the flash-valving of the core lock-off still worked, there were sure to be air pockets in the plumbing.