Catch the Lightning (19 page)

“And you?” I asked. ‘You’ll promise the same for me?”

“Yes,” he said. “You have access to my systems. You are in my mods, nets, memories, and files. Your influence has migrated to all of my processors. No virus scanner can remove such a thorough invasion of my systems without destroying their integrity. If you come with me, the fact of your presence will continue to rewrite my code, penetrate memory locations, alter functions.” My thought then was: What am I getting into? But I had no time to think it over. “You have my word. I won’t betray you.”

“I trust your word. I will take you.”

Just like that. A switch in his brain changed from one setting to the other. He turned back to his ship,- dropping our conversation as if swapping to another node. I went back to the others, embarrassed at having such a strange, personal conversation in front of an audience.

The link between Althor and the Jag strengthened as the ship found more locations in his web it could safely access. Their communication was too fast to follow now, a dance of verbal, vocal, and manual messages. They were merging. Except it wasn’t only them. I was trapped in their link A growl sounded behind us. Turning, I saw two panels open down from a bulkhead like drawbridges, three feet wide and four feet long. White material covered each panel and filled the cylindrical hollows they had uncovered.

“Get in the cocoons,” Althor said. “All of you.”

As I stepped toward the hollows, I overheard a message from the Jag about aircraft “scrambling from Nellis.” My foot touched a panel and the material on it snapped a ropy arm around my leg. It yanked, and I fell across the panel. Other ropes snaked around my body and dragged me into the cavity, maneuvering until I sat facing outward with my legs stretched out. The cottony material covered everything except my nose and eyes, and the panel sank into the deck until my legs lay in a rectangular depression filled with a silky white cocoon.

“What the— Shit!” Daniel jerked as a rope of cocoon silk pulled him down. He fell across my legs, his knees thudding into my thighs. He thrashed as the cocoon crammed him into the hollow with me, but the harder he fought, the tighter it wrapped around him.

“Daniel.” I struggled underneath him. “I can’t breathe. You’re too heavy.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. He slid his arms around my waist and we maneuvered into a more tolerable position, with me in his lap and our legs stretched out. His embarrassment left a sharp astringent scent in the air. In the other cqcoon, Joshua and Heather had their arms wrapped around each other, looking far more content with their close quarters.

“Daniel,” I said.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help this.”

“I know. That’s okay. Do you know what scrambling means? Aircraft scrambling from Nellis?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The Jag told Althor.”

“Nellis is an air force base near Las Vegas,” he said. “Scrambling means they have chase planes in the air, probably an umbrella over Yeager flying a loose ‘flagpole’ around the base and surrounding area. They’d chase off any aircraft trying to find out what was in that hangar.”

I swallowed. “And stop anyone trying to take off?” .

He exhaled. “Yes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a squadron airborne at all times right now. Maybe twenty-four aircraft working in waves, six new to launch each time six land.”

“Do you think Althor can get past them?”

He spoke uneasily. “I don’t see how.”

From the cocoon, only a corner of the holo in the cockpit was visible. It was enough, though, to see a blast of flame sear the area around the ship, followed by clouds of exhaust that billowed over the debris-strewn asphalt. The rumbling grew more insistent and the deck tilted, pressing us back into the cocoon.

The Jag lifted into the air. Althor’s link with it slipped—no, ripped. He made no sound, but I felt the scream he bit back I later learned his damaged links with the Jag were stimulating neurons in his brain that registered pain. He wasn’t actually being hurt, but the messages his brain received interpreted it that way.

The Jag hung a few yards above the ground, its thrust balancing gravity. Billows of exhaust filled the holo image; whatever stealth systems the ship had obviously weren’t functioning. Yet despite all that excitement, the ship barely managed to wobble over the fence. It climbed higher and cleared the next hangar, blasting the roof into oblivion. We made it out over a taxiway— and’the thrust quit.

We dropped in a sickening lurch. The engines kicked in, cut off—and we hit asphalt with a jarring impact. It shoved the air out of my lungs as if I’d been kicked in the ribs. Althor’s hands flashed over his controls, his voice running a stream of commands. Instead of trying to take the ship straight up again, he taxied across the asphalt, engines roaring. We turned onto a long road and sped up until it felt as if a huge, invisible hand pushed us into the cocoon. The ground fell away—no, we leapt away from the base.

Static came from the cockpit. “… immediately,” a crisp voice said. “I repeat, land your craft immediately.”

“My intent is not hostile,” Althor said.

I heard an indrawn breath and voices crackling in the background. The crisp voice spoke again. “Then land your craft and release your hostages. If you refuse, we can only assume your intentions are not to the benefit of this country. Or planet.” Messages flashed in my brain, data sent from the Jag to Althor. Most of it was in Iotic, but bits and pieces came in English. Whether the Jag deliberately translated or was automatically adapting to my mind, I didn’t know. But from the familiar words and the images the ship produced, the situation became clear: a “ceiling” of fighters was holding us down. We were flying in a low circle while the Jag searched for a hole in the ceiling.

“If I land,” Althor said, “I am your prisoner.”

“We have no wish to harm you,” the man at the base said. “Why should I trust you?” Althor asked.

“Trust has to begin somewhere. You ask us to trust that you aren’t hostile. Prove it.”

I felt Althor’s anger crackle, felt the words I don’t have to prove anything to you on his tongue. He bit them back. Instead he said, “Call off your fighters.”

“You violated our airspace,” the man answered. “With an armed warcraft. If you refuse to land, we will be forced to use whatever means necessary to stop you.”

“If you fire on this craft,” Althor said, “it will be considered an act of hostility by Skolian Imperial Space Command.” Another voice came on the radio. This man was excited, barely able to contain his words. “We don’t want to hurt you! We want to talk to you. What is your Space Command? Are your people coming here? How do you know English so well?” Althor spoke carefully, choosing his words with help from a translator that whispered in his mind. “My commanding officers know where I am. If you persist in holding me, they will interpret it as a hostile act.”

The first voice came back on the radio, clipped and cold. “We have found no trace of another ship in this system. Your craft was damaged and abandoned in orbit.”

“I’ve already contacted the mothership,” Althor said.

“No indication exists that your craft transmitted any message.”

“Then your search was too primitive,” Althor said. I knew he was stalling.

“Land now,” the voice said. “Or we will fire.”

Throughout the exchange, the Jag was sending Althor updates on its web. Most of its weapons and navigations capability were off-line. With Althor’s help, it was fixing itself, but it wasn’t easy. It couldn’t have sent any message anywhere, and Yeager was calling his bluff.

“They ought to be more afraid of what will happen if they don’t let him go,” I said.

“You think if they captured a MiG, they’d let it go?” Daniel asked.

“This isn’t a EuroEast airplane. It’s from another star.”

“And its pilot knows English? Looks human? Leaves his ship spying on the planet? Kidnaps a woman and commits murder as practically his first acts on Earth? They must be scared shitless.”

“You agreed to help.”

“I’m just trying to make you see why those chase planes will fire on us.”

I spoke softly. “Daniel, we could die.”

He swallowed. “I know that.”

“But you still wanted a ride.”

“Hell, yeah. When will I ever get this chance again? Besides, they’ll do everything in their power to get Althor back alive.”

“I hope you’re right,” I muttered.

In the cockpit, Althor was trying to negotiate. “You’ve damaged my craft. I may not be able to land.”

“Can you eject?” the crisp voice asked.

“Not all five of us.”

A message from the Jag flashed in Althor’s mind. In the same instant, pressure slammed my chest, flattening me against Daniel.

“Holy shit.” The voice came from what the Jag identified as a chase plane. “Look at that mother go!”

The pressure grew worse, crushing us. Spots danced in my vision. Darkness closed in, withdrew, closed in again.

The pressure stopped as suddenly as it had started. Daniel slumped forward, his head against mine, and a red drop of liquid floated past my face. Twisting around, I saw that his eyes were closed. Blood from his nosebleed floated through the air in wet spheres.

Turning back, I saw Althor floating toward us. It was eerie the way he moved, as if he were underwater. His tie drifted, its end curling in the air. I struggled to breathe, but I couldn’t get enough air. I looked past Althor to the holo that showed outside the ship—and I passed out.

“I think she’s waking up,” Heather said.

I rose through the darkness toward her voice.

“Tina?” Althor asked. “Can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes. A trio of faces looked down: Heather, Althor, Daniel. They crouched around the cocoon, holding handles on the bulkhead, hair drifting about their heads. Daniel’s nosebleed had stopped and Heather looked fine. Althor had taken off his tie and jacket, and the outline of his vest showed under his shirt. His contacts and beard were gone. Fresh blood stained his shirt, and though he showed no outward sign of discomfort, I picked up the throbbing pain in his shoulder.

The slice of the cockpit visible from the cocoon showed only a bulkhead. The holo had vanished. I wanted to look again, convince myself the stunning image I had seen was real. Earth. The turquoise ball had hung against the stars like a jewel in the Milky Way’s glittering swath.

A mechanical pencil drifted by my nose and my hair swirled in a black cloud, freed from its wig. I tried to get up and floated out of the cocoon.

“We’re in orbit,” I said.

Althor caught me around the waist. “Just barely.”

“Will you turn on the holomap again?” I asked.

“The what?” Heather asked.

“Holomap,” Althor said. “In the cockpit. It was showing Earth.”

“How did you know to call it a holomap?” Daniel asked me.

“I don’t know.” It hadn’t occurred to me to call it anything else.

Althor picked me up as if I weighed nothing, which I guess I did. He pushed against a bulkhead and we floated toward the cockpit, nudging aside debris that drifted in the cabin. I finally saw Joshua; he sat in the other cocoon, eyes closed, face pale.

“What happened to Josh?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Althor said.

“He looks awful.”

“He’s sick.” Althor pushed into the cockpit. “It happens to some people in free fall. Heather threw up too. You and Daniel both passed out. The oxygen mix in your cocoon was wrong.”

He slid me into the pilot’s seat, and it molded its exoskeleton around me. Control panels shifted in to fit my smaller size. A visor lowered over my head, hieroglyphs scrolling across it in a stream, but I pushed it back up, feeling trapped. Prongs poked the base of my spine and neck, trying to plug into nonexistent sockets. Even without a direct link to the Jag, though, I felt it more now. Cool. Impersonal. Puzzled. It wasn’t sure what it had caught.

Its exchanges with Althor murmured in my mind: we could go no farther until it repaired navigation and thrusters. We had been lucky to make it this far, into what it called a low-polar orbit. Althor had rigged a temporary fix to the shroud, enough so that we were, for the time being, hidden.

The Jag was also eavesdropping on Earth. The authorities apparently believed it was a scout of some kind. The ship picked up fragments of an argument, someone warning against shooting us down, that they didn’t know what would happen if the craft exploded. Another voice overrode it, giving orders to shoot.

Behind the transmissions, the Jag’s report on Earth-based weapons droned in my mind:
Theater High-Altitude Air Defense, Patriot PAC3, Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectile, RAPTOR/TALON, HEV…
It went on like a chant, the Jag digging up identities of what:—to it—must have been centuries-old defense systems that might not even have the same names in this universe. Althor asked a question and it answered, something about certain missiles being ground-launched, unable to reach us.

Althor “stood” wedged between the pilot’s seat and the forward controls, facing toward the cabin. It seemed a strange position for a pilot to take, but it didn’t really matter; the ship uploaded what he needed into his brain no matter what direction he faced. The process wasn’t as efficient as when he plugged into the Jag, but it still worked. The ship’s web sent out electromagnetic signals, most in the infrared, and Althor’s sockets acted as IR receivers.

A yellow legal pad with notes scribbled on it was drifting next to us. Althor sent it floating back into the cabin. “Can you clean up the junk in here?” he said to someone behind me. I leaned around and saw the others floating there, watching us.

“Sure,” Heather said.

“Put it in the cocoons,” Althor said. “They will transfer the debris to a holding cavity.”

As they went to work, I tried to get out of the pilot’s seat. “I should help.” The seat, however, had other ideas. It refused to release me.

Althor brushed my hair away from my forehead, where the scaffolding had hit. “I think you need to sit for a while. This is a bad bruise.”

“I’m okay.”

His expression gentled. “Humor me, then.”