Worlds in Chaos (45 page)

“This is the man in the middle of it all, Mitch. Lan, meet Major Harvey Mitchell.” They shook hands.

Following Mitch was a woman wearing some kind of cap under a fur-trimmed hood, with blond hair showing on either side of her face, tucked down into her jacket. She moved over to stand close to Cavan as they came up, and smiled. Even with the outlandish garb and the spray and the wind, the first impression that Keene registered was that she was stunningly beautiful. “Hello. You are Dr. Keene. I recognize you from the television,” she said. Despite everything, her voice was managing to laugh. Keene came close to falling instantly in love.

“Ah, yes. It’s about time that you met Alicia too,” Cavan told him.

Keene blinked. “
This
is Alicia? But how on earth did you find the time to collect her as well?”

“I could hardly leave her behind, Landen. There’s no telling how, or when, or even if we’ll be going back.”

They moved with the others through the gate into the launch complex. Wind whistled through the fifteen-foot-high, razor-wire-topped fence. Engines opening up for takeoff roared from somewhere behind them.

The turboprop, it turned out, had been carrying just the Kronian hostages and their escorting force. Voler and the other names involved in the plot had all been in the plane following, which had flown away. Evidently, the idea had been for the inside force to seize one of the Boxcar orbiters being readied for flight and secure the launch facility, then board the hostages and their guards, with the elite arriving last, when everything was in place.

General Ullman, none the worse for his experience, met them in the Transit Lounge of the OLC-6 East complex, which was where outgoing personnel were assembled prior to launch and incomers awaited transportation. Nobody had any idea where the jet might be heading now, but with the hostages freed that had become a secondary issue. The first priority was to get the Kronians out before conditions got any worse, and the means to do it was right there, in the form of the Boxcar orbiter that Delmaro’s force was supposed to have seized. The Launch Supervisor was summoned and asked to initiate preparations accordingly, while the communications section tried to get a connection through to the
Osiris
to update Idorf on what was happening.

Communications with the East Coast administration were erratic and confused. When Cavan and his Special Forces contingent left, preparations had been in hand to relocate the entire executive arm of government to the FEMA Southern Region command center in Atlanta, using one of the special aircraft originally equipped to provide a mobile headquarters in the event of nuclear war. An AWACS flying command post that was to provide communications while the Washington facilities were being moved had gone off the air suddenly, it was suspected from a meteorite hit. The Washington area had suffered heavy bombardment, with a lot of fires started. Cavan didn’t know how much of the East Coast was affected, but when they took off there had been huge detonations lighting up to the north. On the flight over, they had seen large fires in the vicinity of Indianapolis.

Then it was discovered that one of the launch technicians, acting on his own initiative when Delmaro’s soldiers appeared, had disabled the hydraulic systems that elevated the Boxcar orbiters to the launch position. The damage wasn’t fatal, but it could take several hours to fix. And that meant that the Kronians were not going to get out before the storm.

Personnel not involved in fixing the Boxcar elevation hydraulics or trying to establish communications with the
Osiris
had been moved into the sturdier, safer structures. Grid power had gone, and the facility was running on its own gas-turbine-driven generators. Outside, the air was filled with pieces of sheeting torn from roofs, metal covers and cowls, and other windborne missiles. Fifty-foot waves had demolished the boat dock and were washing over the beaches and dunes on the north side of the base. The launch complex and runway were situated on the three-hundred-foot-high Burton Mesa dominating the area, and had escaped inundation so far, but the winds had torn loose and wrecked several launch vehicles at the exposed gantries and carried away parts of the buildings and other structures. The Boxcar orbiters were protected beneath the doors roofing their enclosed servicing bays, but there could be no question of launching them until conditions eased. In the general base area, those who had not yet left on Highway One had no choice but to sit tight. Perhaps they were better off than those who had gone.

Sitting scattered around the Transit Lounge were Keene, with Charlie Hu and Colby, most of the Kronians, including Sariena but not Gallian, a mixture of Mitch’s Special Forces and Penalski’s Marines, and some staff from the complex. The walls carried posters and cutaway drawings of various spacecraft, engineering charts and procedure guides, a map of the base and another showing the surrounding area, and a bulletin board covered with notices concerning things that didn’t matter anymore. All the windows were sandbagged, and those not already blown in or smashed by flying objects had been taped. Cavan answered the remaining questions from a worn easy chair by one of the tables, sipping black coffee from a plastic mug. Alicia sat by him, her parka thrown over the back of an adjacent chair to reveal golden hair that fell to her shoulders in sinuous waves, and an equally sinuous body that drew glances from every male in the room.

“Landen and I had already agreed that it had to be Vandenberg. We figured the rest out from what happened at LAX. Beckerson and a small group who were with him on the flight from Washington announced a change of plan and transferred to a T-43 that was waiting for them when they got to Edwards. It took off within minutes, before anyone there knew what was going on. A half hour later, the same T-43 landed at LAX and collected your good woman, Fey, and her traveling companion, along with a couple of others that had also arrived there. Now, a T-43 is a biggish aircraft to be using for such a small number, but all the same we didn’t think the Kronians were on board it. You wouldn’t bring your hostages into a place like LAX. Too much risk of something going wrong. You’d keep them out of the way until the time came to produce them. But it would either lead us to them or rendezvous with them somewhere, depending on the plan.”

“Now, just a minute. Let’s get this straight,” Colby Greene said, sitting forward. “You weren’t still in Washington when this happened. You couldn’t have been. I don’t care how fast that Rustler is, you couldn’t have got all this organized and crossed the country in the kind of time we’re talking about here.”

Cavan shook his head. “We were already on our way by that time—just about over Nevada?” He looked inquiringly at Mitch, who was tilting his chair back with his feet on the table on the far side of the room.

“We were close to Vegas when we got the report from LAX,” the major confirmed.

Keene looked at Cavan, even more perplexed. “So what are you telling us, Leo? You’d left Washington two hours or whatever before? Without knowing where they were or when they were going to show up? You help yourself to a plane and a bunch of guys, and just decide to go joyriding west with the end of the world going on, just in case something turns up. Is that what you’re telling us?”

The others around the room could do little more than shake their heads at each other, too much out of it all to really follow what was being said.

“Ah, well, it wasn’t really like that, now,” Cavan said.

Alicia raised her eyebrows at Keene, then looked at Cavan. “Maybe you don’t know him so well, even after all these years, Lan,” she said. “You’re being too modest, Leo. I’d say it was pretty much like that, yes.”

“Not at all, not at all. We knew they were heading for LAX. And something had to happen pretty soon after they got there. All we needed was to be in the vicinity and equipped to react quickly.” Cavan looked around the room and appealed as if to a jury. “All right, I took the law into my hands and cut a few corners. So I’ll take the reprimand when it comes, right? But if I’d stopped to try it the proper way, we’d still be in Washington waiting for the right rubber stamps even now. There’s an old piece of Irish philosophy that says contrition is easier than permission. The service doesn’t agree, of course. But I don’t think they’ll be doing too much worrying for a while. As I said, I’ll take the reprimand when it comes.”

Keene leaned back in his seat, managing a thin smile and shaking his head. “Okay, Leo, go on. Then what?”

Cavan was about to reply, when the crashing sound of something large striking the building came from above. The lights flickered, then stabilized again. Several people started or raised their arms protectively. Others exchanged strained looks. Everyone was getting jumpy. Several seconds went by, but apart from the ongoing background of wind gusts thudding and the rattle of sand scouring the walls, nothing further happened. Cavan went on, “We got them on radar as they climbed out from LAX—another nice thing about that machine I borrowed. They headed north, and seemed to rendezvous with another plane that appeared from somewhere inland.”

“Which had to be carrying the Kronians,” Colby completed, nodding in a way that said he could see it all now.

“Exactly. Both of them headed out to sea for a while, and then went into a wide turn that brought them back lined up on Vandenberg. The one carrying the hostages was in the lead, obviously intending to land first. And there was our chance. If we could get in ahead of the second plane and grab the Kronians while they were separated from the Society of Friends, there would be nothing for anybody to bargain over. And the rest you know. . . . We weren’t aware at the time that an orbiter had already been seized, of course. But it worked out all right. Without the hostages to get them a safe passage aboard the
Osiris
, what could Delmaro and his force inside do with it? I must say, our young lieutenant friend from the Marines couldn’t have timed things better. His move at the gate clinched it. Where is he?” Cavan looked around, but Penalski was not in the room.

“I think he’s with General Ullman,” one of the technicians said.

The Launch Supervisor came in through the doorway. All the heads turned, waiting. “It looks as if we might be able to get two Boxcars off if this mess ever eases up,” he announced. “Forget the rest. Nothing else is getting off the ground. We’ve got forty-eight places in each one. There are thirteen Kronians. The Kronians have nominated six individuals for places on the
Osiris
. We have two children separated from their families, who get to go. There are eight more children with mothers only—six mothers—and they get to go. We have one expectant mother; she gets to go. That means there’s room for sixty more, assuming the
Osiris
confirms that it can take them. We think it’s likely that it will, since not much is going to be going up from Guatemala—but we haven’t made contact yet. In the meantime, we’re taking names now in the office outside of all those who want to be on the list. The places will be decided by drawing lots. Immediate family groups—that’s parents with children—get one chance, but if it comes up they all go. I’ve got my name down. Anyone else who wants to leave the planet, step along. It’s open to all. General Ullman and his family are there, just the same as the rest. Nobody’s playing God over this. For once, that job’s being left where it belongs.”

36

Keene stood with Sariena on one side of a concrete-walled space full of motor housings, cables, huge pipes, and color coded valves in the lower levels of the complex serving the Boxcar launch bays. People were camped around and under the machinery, and children were having fun climbing about on the pipes. Those who could, kept themselves busy preparing soup, sandwiches, and hamburgers, or bringing pieces of furniture or other comforts from the offices and labs higher up; others played chess or cards, read, or tried to entertain the children. An area had been set aside for treating the growing number of casualties, from people venturing outside and being hit by flying debris to lacerations from imploding windows.

Not being as big as most of the Kronians, Sariena had managed to find some Air Force fatigues to change into from the clothes she’d been wearing since the abduction in Washington, and so looked a little fresher, if obviously tired. She had told Keene their side of the story, not that there was a lot to it. They had been collected from the Engleton by what everyone assumed to be the official bus to take them to Andrews AFB, but the escorts turned out to be captors who took them to another airfield somewhere. From there they flew several hours to a landing strip in a desert location, where the plane was covered under an awning until departing an hour or so before its arrival at Vandenberg. Their escorts were all military, following instructions, and couldn’t or wouldn’t disclose anything beyond what the Kronians could see for themselves. The Kronians had been held in a couple of trailers under guard. All in all they had been treated well and courteously, if firmly.