The rain finally stopped mid-morning, and the clouds thinned, though they didn’t clear out entirely. The pilot awoke, groggy but capable of understanding their situation. Zheng and Meiko ventured out to see if anything further could be recovered from the aircar, but returned moments later shaking their heads.
“It’s just gone,” Zheng said. So was the tree they’d anchored the car to.
The river had risen halfway to the treeline from where they’d left it. They picked their way carefully among the rocks along the new shoreline in a vain search for salvageable gear, finding nothing human-made.
“We were broadcasting our location up until the crash, so search parties ought to come looking for us soon.
I’m surprised no one’s overflying the valley already,” Zheng said. She looked at her djinn wistfully. “No signal.”
Meiko got a thoughtful expression on her face. “Perhaps not through the Ileri system,” she said. “But there’s another option.”
“What do you mean?” Noo, applying a fresh bandage to Fari’s wound, looked up. Her partner was running a slight fever, but they had nothing to treat the deep puncture to prevent infection, and she was worried.
“I might be able to contact Amazonas,” Meiko said, raising her own djinn. “If it’s overhead, that is.”
“You’ve got satellite-comm capability in that?” Teng asked, astonished. “In that small a package?”
“Under good conditions, yes,” Meiko replied. “If I can’t raise Amazonas, there ought to be something overhead I can talk to, though it might take a while to get someone to answer.”
“Why didn’t you try this last night?” Noo demanded.
“Too much cloud cover and interference from the storm,” Meiko said. “I still might only be able to receive. My transmitter’s not that strong.”
Zheng nodded decisively. “Let’s try it. You need high ground with a wide horizon?” Meiko nodded. “Right. Teng, you go with her. Between the two of you, I expect you can find someone who will respond to one of you.” She pointed at Noo. “Okereke, you and I will put together a distress signal. Someone’s going to come looking for us eventually and we need to be easy to find.”
Two hours later, a boom echoed down the valley and startled the birds nested in the trees lining the river. The air exploded with wings and bodies, a sudden burst of brown and black occluding the morning sky. In Noo’s brain, the color of the sky was always blue of some shade; today was a hazy gray, and it just looked wrong...
“Right on time,” Meiko said beside her, one hand shading her eyes as she watched the clouds.
Zheng emerged from the cave and ambled through the trees towards them. She looked up and down the valley, then across, then raised her djinn, pointing it first across the river, then both up- and downstream. Noo watched her, one eyebrow raised inquisitively. “Laser rangefinder,” the lieutenant said, tapping her djinn with her right index finger. “Checking the LZ clearance. Old drop-trooper habit.”
“Didn’t you do that already?” Noo asked.
“It never hurts to be certain,” Zheng said.
Noo spotted their target first. It appeared through a break in the clouds, a swift black shape too large and moving too quickly to be anything natural. She pointed. “There.” The others turned and she saw relief on both their faces. The shape disappeared behind the clouds again, but then reappeared, larger and closer.
Zheng lit a flare from the emergency kit and tossed it onto the rock-strewn bank. “We should all move back up to the cave mouth,” she said, and they scurried back to shelter.
The heavens roared, and all three of them ducked inside the cave as the descending shuttle fired its landing jets. “Told you I could find us a ride,” Meiko said with a grin.
The whole craft was colored bright yellow, which struck Noo as odd. Then it settled in to fully land, its belly meeting the water, and steam exploded from the water’s surface with such violence Noo took several stumbling steps backwards, only to be brought up short when she backed into the cave wall. Within the cloud of steam the shuttle disappeared. She brought her hand up to her mouth, wondering if it had exploded, even though she knew she’d be dead if that had happened. As the shuttle cooled and the steam blew away, Noo saw the shuttle change color, the yellow fading as it seemed to disappear within the cloud. Squinting, she realized she could still make out the outline, aided by the roiling water that surged around the lower fuselage and wing roots. Chameleon coating, she realized.
Her djinn pinged to her audio implants with the message that a new network connection was available, though her djinn couldn’t access it. She looked over to Meiko who, it seemed, could, judging by the attention she seemed to be giving to a private AR window.
Five minutes after it touched down, a long hatch half the length of the fuselage popped out from the shuttle’s side and quickly swung up. A pair of troopers in fatigues, light armor, and combat exoskeletons bounded out, crossed the wing in great, leaping strides, and splashed into the shallows. They bounded out to take up security positions, weapons pods protruding from their exoskeleton arms.
Perimeter thus secured, the rescue team surged out and soon surrounded their little party on the bank. They were all young, fit people, none of them over the age of thirty, if she was any judge. A slender young woman whose wide, flat face poked out from under her helmet came to a halt in front of Meiko. “M. Ogawa? I’m Lieutenant Lac,” she said, in a lilting accent Noo didn’t recognize. “I understand you have wounded?”
“Two, in the cave,” Meiko said. “This way.” Meiko turned to lead the little party back through the trees to their erstwhile shelter. Lac’s medics stepped out of their exoskeletons and ducked inside. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Lac filled them in on all the news they’d missed. Perhaps she’d just absorbed one shock too many, but Noo could only listen numbly as Lac told them about the assassination of the Prime Minister, Miguna’s coup, Vega’s response, and the continued fighting in space and on the ground.
“Captain Gupta decided it was better to ask forgiveness than permission and ordered us to drop, said ze’d notify both sides ze was launching a humanitarian mission,” Lac said.
“Anyone take a poke at you on the way in?” Zheng asked.
“Nothing more serious than a couple of sweeps by targeting radar,” Lac said with a shrug. “More worried about the trip up, frankly. Our launch window opens in”—her eyes unfocused slightly as she checked her implants—“twenty-five minutes.” She turned and leaned over to shout up into the cave. “What’s the word, Sanjay?”
“Gonna need to put the pilot into stasis, ma’am,” came the reply. “Hematoma and a bad TBI, don’t want to overstress her with take-off acceleration.”
“Can you move her to the shuttle and do it there, or do you need the pod brought here?”
“Stretcher to the shuttle will be fine,” the lead medic answered. “I’d rather do the stasis prep in the bay there anyway.”
The lieutenant turned to her lead sergeant, a lanky woman older than the rest of the squad but still not even half Noo’s age. “Let’s get the ambulatory aboard, Sergeant, then double back with the stretchers.”
The sergeant murmured her orders over their tactical comm net and Noo found herself scooped up by a trooper. The young man cradled her gently and her brief ride was surprisingly comfortable despite the exoskeleton’s metal struts. He deposited her on the shuttle’s deck with care before springing back out again.
The shuttle was all business. The acceleration couches had the blocky, robust look Noo associated with military gear. It lacked the friendly hues of a passenger craft; the paint was a mix of pale green and dark gray, relieved by colorful labels everywhere the eye looked. There wasn’t a single loose object anywhere in the cabin; everything was tied, fastened, or bolted down.
“Are any of you prone to motion sickness, space sickness, or zero-gravity-adaptation syndrome?” one of the ratings asked them.
“Blessed Mother of the Rivers, yes,” Noo said. The others shook their heads.
“Would you like a sedative before we launch, or just anti-nausea meds?” the rating asked, as he guided her towards one of the acceleration couches.
The prospect of sleeping through the launch was briefly attractive. Noo considered it but shook her head. “Just the nausea meds please. And a barf bag.”
The rating helped Noo into the couch and helped fasten her harness. “One of the medics will be round in a few to administer the meds,” she said. She turned, opened a compartment on the nearby bulkhead, and extracted several airsickness bags. She tucked one under each of Noo’s chest straps, within easy reach, and two more alongside her legs. “Just in case,” she said.
There came a clattering sound from the rear of the compartment as the rest of the squad returned with Fari and the pilot. They hustled the latter off to the rear of the compartment. Noo hadn’t traveled in nanostasis herself, nor had she seen the prep procedure, but she gathered from the clipped voices just on the far side of unintelligible that they were rushing things a little bit.
The third medic squatted by her couch and requested access to her medical records. Noo bumped her djinn to his, transferring them. He examined them briefly, then ducked back to the triage bay. He returned with a pair of medication patches which he applied to her neck. “Those should hold you until we dock with Amazonas,” he said. “Let me know right away if you feel sudden tongue swelling, or itching feet.”
She gave him a weak smile. “And what happens if someone takes a shot at us?”
“In that case,” he said, “things might get rather interesting. Have you ever been on a roller coaster?”
“A what?” she asked. The medic grinned, then sent her some video footage. “It’s an amusement ride. We have them back on New Mumbai, and I’ve seen them on other worlds. Never been here before, though, so don’t know if you have them.”
Noo watched the footage with growing horror. “You people do this for fun? I’ll never understand groundsiders.”
They enjoyed a smooth take-off and easy flying as the shuttle climbed to scramjet altitude. The crew chief supplied the Ileris with limited access to the shuttle’s network, just enough to hook them into comms. She found she had access to at least some of the external cameras, too. She spent the first ten minutes watching the surface drop away below them as their spiraling climb took them ever higher.
Suddenly, the cabin lights all turned red.
“What’s going on?” she asked the sergeant, seated in the couch next to hers.
The sergeant frowned. “We’re being painted by someone’s radar. Not just a brush, they’re probably trying for a weapons lock.” She settled her body deeper into her couch, rolled her neck once, and pressed her head firmly back into the molded headrest. “Best get ready for a rough patch, ma’am.”
Noo tried to imitate the sergeant’s actions and had just settled her head between the flanges that sprouted on either side when she heard a series of thumps from below and beneath. “Countermeasures deployed,” said the sergeant.
“Why aren’t we evading?” Noo asked.
“We’ve got to hit the right patch of sky before we kick on the big motor,” replied the sergeant. “We need to be at the right altitude, bearing, and position in order to make our orbit insertion.”
“What happens if we aren’t there?”
“We’ll still make orbit, most likely,” the pilot said. “We’ll just be in the wrong orbit to rendezvous with Amazonas.”
They continued their spiraling climb. Another thump came from below and behind. The shuttle straightened abruptly, nose still angled to climb, no longer turning.
The sergeant cursed as the cabin lights flicked twice. “ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR ACCELERATION,” sounded across the comm net.
“Too early,” the sergeant said, and then the rocket fired and a giant’s fist slammed into Noo for the second time in less than a day.
The pressure seemed to come all at once and she felt her body sinking into the gel-filled cushion of the acceleration couch. The sides of the headrest did indeed come up to cradle her head and neck protectively. She did her best to breathe and found it difficult but bearable. The worst part was the way her face felt, like her cheeks were being pulled off from behind.
Without warning, the rocket cut off and Noo’s body surged forward against her straps. Her relief was short-lived as the shuttle rolled over, belly to the heavens, and the nose pitched down. Her stomach rebelled at this and her hands scrabbled for one of the airsickness bags. Someone whooped from the compartment’s rear, and she heard the sergeant’s answering bellow of “Secure that!” Another thump from behind and below, only now it was behind and above, and she filled the bag with last night’s protein bar.
The shuttle rolled again, coming back into proper orientation at least as far as up and down went. She heard the roar of the atmosphere jets again and the nose pitched upwards. Noo managed to seal the barf bag and shoved it into a slot in the bulkhead, indicated by a friendly AR tag that popped up. Distantly, she heard a ripping noise, and the deck beneath her feet vibrated. “What’s that?” she said, surprised at how steady her voice seemed.
“Point-defense cannon,” the sergeant called back, and then the rocket fired again and stole her breath for a moment.
This time, the rocket fired for a solid six minutes and change, according to her djinn. In the AR window she’d linked to the external camera she watched the sky go from blue to violet to black as they climbed.
The rocket cut out again, and this time they were in zero-g. Noo’s stomach was still unsettled and she gulped air but managed to avoid vomiting again. The cabin lighting returned to normal.
<How are you doing up there?> Meiko asked.
<Wishing I’d taken the damn sedative,> Noo admitted. <Will we make the rendezvous with Amazonas?>
<I don’t think so, not the one they’d planned,> Meiko sent. <But we’re in a good orbit, I believe. Lieutenant Lac doesn’t look concerned.>
“Flight deck here,” came across the all-hands channel. “As you probably noticed, we attracted some unwanted attention on the way up. Amazonas is preparing to maneuver for a new rendezvous, but we’ll need to make a couple orbits before we can mate up. New rendezvous in one hundred fifty minutes and change.”
<See?> Meiko sent. <Before long we’ll be docked and have Fari in a med bay.>
<Can’t come soon enough,> Noo replied, fingering her Eshu charm.
She tried to relax and pretend that she was just on a trip to the hub. The medic who’d ministered to her earlier came up to check on her. “She’s solid,” the sergeant told him, and Noo gave her best affirmative nod. Her discomfort eased and she engaged the sergeant in conversation for a while. The sergeant hailed from Jakarta, one of the First Fourteen worlds like Ileri, and a founding member of the Commonwealth.
Five tense minutes passed. Noo tried to see if she could spot the incoming craft and thought a particular bit of silver in her view field might be one of them.
The pilot fired the rocket again, and the thrust pressure actually made Noo feel better physically even as she realized this was bad news. Damn, but she hated being strapped down in this metal and composite can in the sky. She was tired of nameless, faceless enemies coming at her and her family. She was pissed off at Miguna and his faction for breaching the peace. She wanted, needed, to be free to operate, to chase down leads, to find the shit-lickers who’d shot Saed and killed Ita and all those others, to snap restraints on them and tell them they’d been clipped.
The motor cut out while she was trying to organize her thoughts, anger fueling her despite the exhaustion and her body’s rebellion. “New hostiles, a pair of cutters, launched on us,” the pilot said. “Be prepared for sudden changes in acceleration.”
She saw the planet swing through her view as the pilot spun the ship onto a new heading. The giant stood on her chest again for a few seconds as the rocket fired once more.
Then, suddenly, a pair of brilliant flashes lit her window, and whoops once again filled the passenger compartment. The sergeant joined them this time, and a series of smaller flashes appeared, closer by.
<What happened?> Noo asked Meiko.
<Amazonas,> came the answer. <They changed course to match ours, took out the cutters, and now they’re clearing the missiles.>
<So we’re going to make it?> Noo sent.
<It appears so,> Meiko replied.
<Good.> Relief had to be there somewhere, but for now, anger was her fuel. <We need to make a plan. We still need to track down those turds we came for.>