Night's Pawn (34 page)

Samantha nodded. "You do that. And then come back. I don't want you vanishing like last time."

Chase took a step back toward the door, but kept his eyes on her. "We'll see."

She nodded and smiled wistfully, then turned back to Cara. Chase couldn't read her expression, and he didn't have the luxury of pondering it. It was time to be on his way.

The telecom was supposed to be secure. He was taking Lanier's word for it, with Richard Villiers' behind it. Chase had spoken first with Janey, filled her in, then tapped in the number she'd given him. It was a private emergency number. Audio only.

FastHack answered on the first ring.

"Jack, this is Simon Church."

"How's the girl?"

"Well enough, all things considered."

"I was sorry to hear how it all turned out, " Jack said.

"Me, too," said Chase. "I need your help."

"Oh?"

"I need some information. I can't use the Nexus directly, I can't trust Shiva on this."

"That makes it difficult, to say the least."

"I'd like you to get the scan for me, Jack. Direct. Private."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I need someone's private telecom number. Somebody important whose number isn't listed publicly."

"That shouldn't be hard. Where is he?"

"In Moscow, Jack," Chase said. "He's in Moscow."

PART 4

GERMANY

Dragon, Great
(Draco sapiens)
A sub-form common to each of the standard dracoform types (eastern, feathered, and western), great dragons are typically up to 50 percent larger than average lesser dragons. As a group they tend to be extremely intelligent, usually conversant in at least one human language and often many. They are also magicians of great power, tending toward shamanic-style practices, though the nature of their beliefs are undetermined.

Though alien in culture and psychology, dragons, particularly great dragons, show an unaccountable interest in human culture and motivations. As none of the twelve or so known great dragons will comment on this fascination, its nature and implications remains a mystery.

<-—Excerpted and abridged from
Soul of the Beast
:

Draconic Anthropological Studies,

New World Press, Manhattan, 2051

32

The stealth transports were slipping neatly over the Baltic Sea, skirting Polish airspace and concealed from everything that looked their way. There were three of them, identical in design and in their absence of markings. They flew blind, relying on data from the three-dimensional electronic maps stored in their onboard computers and on detailed information fed them by a navigation satellite high overhead. The only sign of their presence was the slight electromagnetic leakage from those computer systems, the faint bloom of heat from the dampened engine exhausts, and their ghostly silhouettes in the night sky.

"Three minutes to Polish airspace," came a voice over the lead aircraft's intercom. Sitting in the converted cargo space of that craft, Chase shifted uncomfortably to adjust the load of his gear. Not for the first time did he question his decision to go in with the airborne contingent. Thinking about his long-ago training, he hoped it was true that such knowledge was never forgotten.

The group of aircraft would pass through Polish airspace for no more than a few minutes on their way to northern Germany. At the moment they were well within the zone watched by both German and Polish air-search radars, but those were not a concern. The mission's planners were more worried about accidentally crossing paths with an air patrol or a routine transport from the German port and military base at Bergen. Their flight path would take them across the northwest corner of Poland, about a hundred kilometers from that base.

Chase looked around at the other men in the craft, and marveled at how much had changed. Twenty years ago he'd been part of a team much like this one, but that team's reliance on technology had been minimal, a luxury their country couldn't afford, not even for their elite. Now, the sophistication and expense of each member's combat suits, let alone the aircraft that carried them, was staggering. It was far more than Chase had expected, but he'd lost the ability to be surprised a few days ago.

The one standing man, the platoon's senior sergeant, finished his last-minute briefing of the three squad leaders, then moved, combat rifle in hand, down the center of the aircraft toward Chase. The other men were seated against the sides of the aircraft, all of them garbed in mottled black and gray battle dress hung with matte-black equipment. Because they sat with the face shields of their combat helmets up, their faces were visible. They seemed relaxed, jovial, and continued the round of banter that had begun a few hours ago on the ground at the air base. Chase remembered only too well both the tradition and the anxiety it concealed.

The senior sergeant sat down next to Chase, forcing him to slide over on the slightly contoured bench. Gennadi Demchenko was still grinning at someone's last jesting remarks as he settled in his seat and handed Chase the assault rifle. Noticing another such weapon slung across the sergeant's back, Chase looked at him questioningly.

Demchenko shrugged. "Let's just say that the lieutenant has decided that the order to restrict you to carrying only a sidearm never filtered down through the proper channels. He expects to be very angry at someone, probably me, once we get back."

Chase smiled and hefted the weapon, examining it.

"This gun has a remarkable similarity to the prototype CAR-32 combat rifle Ares Macrotechnology was testing a few years back," he said.

The sergeant shrugged again, then smiled. "Our weapon designs are often imitated, and we suspect the AK-51 will be no exception."

The intercom crackled. "We are in Polish airspace. German airspace in six minutes. Mission standby in fifty minutes."

Chase glanced up at the words, then lifted the bullpup-style weapon, slipping his hand around the grip. It sprang to life immediately, sensing the presence of the smartgun weapon link in his palm. The rifle was ready and its status displayed in Chase's eye in a fraction of the time it took his heavy pistol to prepare.

Demchenko nodded. "I wasn't sure if your cyberware would be up to interfacing with the gun's systems. This has got the latest-generation hardware."

Chase released the weapon, slung its strap over his shoulder, then worked to find the most comfortable position for carrying it. He noticed that the gun remained active for a few seconds after he'd removed his hand, apparently just in case the connection loss was only temporary or unintended. Very clever design.

"Don't always go by what the files tell you," Chase said, turning the weapon upside-down. At his mental command, the ejection mechanism engaged and the clip popped up a few centimeters. He removed it and examined the color-coded striping across the top. He chuckled. "Well, I'm impressed. Caseless, light armor-piercing round, explosive tip. What's the red and black stripe?"

"Depleted uranium."

Chase raised an eyebrow.

"Just the very tip, for penetrating vehicular armor," the sergeant told him. "Just in case."

"Aren't you worried about blow-through?"

"The round fragments well," Demchenko said. "Besides, this isn't a hostage situation."

Chase noticed that the weapon's visual status display indicated that the rifle had an under-barrel grenade launcher fed from a magazine of eight minigrenades. The ammo counter, however, read zero. "No grenades?" Chase asked.

The senior sergeant grinned. "I give you an automatic rifle instead of your pistol, and now you want grenades? "

Chase shrugged, distracted for a moment by a round of laughter from the other platoon members. The sergeant turned briefly, then looked back at Chase, shaking his head. "Too many of them don't understand," he said quietly. "What we're doing may not be unprecedented, but it's explosive politically if we're discovered."

Chase braced the combat rifle against his thigh and powered it down for safety. "How many of these missions do you pull a year?"

"I really shouldn't say, but it's probably no more than what would have been normal when you were active." The sergeant looked down and began to work an invisible bit of dirt off his boot. "But not at all like the one you were involved in."

"How much do the others know about that?"

"Nothing," said the sergeant. "Only the officers, and me, because the lieutenant thought that it might be a good idea since I'd be looking out for you."

"How do you feel about that?"

The sergeant eyed him oddly. "About covering you or about what you did?"

"Both."

Demchenko shrugged. "When I was in tactical school, we actually looked at your mission profile and execution files once. It created quite a controversy when the administration found out, but…"He leaned back against the aircraft wall. "It was all very unfortunate. Many wrong decisions were made by everyone involved. But the loss of a guided missile cruiser is not something that can be tolerated, regardless of whether it's called a 'theft' or 'defection.'"

"No," said Chase, "I suppose not." He sighed. "I'm amazed to this day that I never thought to question those orders. To go in and just kill them…"

"He was your commanding officer and your brother. You had no reason to doubt the veracity of what he told you. Why would you?"

Chase looked at him. "Because I'm a human being."

"You were a soldier. Soldiers receive inhuman orders all the time. It's why there are soldiers. We do the things human beings will not."

Chase looked away and then leaned back as well. He looked at the tarpaulin-covered crates, possibly mechanisms, that were built into the aircraft near the rear cargo ramp. They were also immediately adjacent to two normal-sized emergency exits. Nobody would tell him what those crates were. Chase tilted his head back.

"I'm not a soldier anymore," he said.

"Then why are you here?"

Chase closed his eyes. "It's something I have to do," he said. "I have to see it to the end. I'm playing the game, and these are the rules."

"Sometimes," the sergeant said to him, "we must be soldiers even if we don't wish to. Those are the rules, and until the game changes, that's the way it will stay."

33

The transport was in the midst of a gliding, banking turn as Chase dropped from it, the second to last out the rear of the aircraft. Last out was Senior Sergeant Demchenko, as befit his position as assistant platoon leader. The platoon's leader, Senior Lieutenant Grachev, had been first out into the clouds, his men following. The cloud cover was heavy, but high, and Chase was only lost in the black soup for a few moments before he fell into the open.

The sophisticated circuits in his battle gear were monitoring the drop the entire way. They'd flashed a warning on the visor of his headgear just as the automatic deployment system slid him down the rail and out the back of the aircraft. Now, in free fall, it told him exactly how far below him in the darkness was the hard, unyielding ground. He wasn't sure if he was pleased to have that information.

The air was misty, but with enough visibility to just make out the foggy glow of Magdeburg kilometers to the south. A message crackled over his headset radio.

"Rocks inbound." It was the voice of the company commander, Major Abdirov, alerting Fourth Platoon on the ground that the airborne elements were incoming. Because of the real danger of the Germans intercepting their radio transmissions, they'd decided to make all communications, radio and personal, in English. None of the soldiers carried anything that marked their country of origin. Chase suddenly thought of the combat rifles. They
were
Ares CAR-32s; the unit wouldn't be carrying actual Kalashnikova weapons for that very reason. Where had they obtained the weapons?

He twisted in flight to get a look at the retreating stealth transports, but the cloud cover now obscured them completely. He'd have to take a good look at one of them later when the V/STOL craft picked them up after the mission. He hadn't been able to see much of the transport when they'd loaded up; only the rear profile was visible as they'd transferred from the trucks to the aircraft. It looked familiar, but Chase had dismissed that impression as a debt of design. Now he wanted a better look.

The altimeter display began flashing. It and every other gauge on the helmet's heads-up display was red to maintain his night vision. The flashing was an early warning that it was almost time to deploy his chute.

He rotated again and faced the ground. Without moonlight, all that lay below him was almost impenetrably black. He raised the light amplification in his own eyes as high as he could, trusting them over the helmet's systern. There was only a slight increase in clarity; without moonlight there was little light to amplify.

Even his heat-sensitive thermographic systems were of little help. The ground and the base ground cover were all the same temperature, and so offered no differentiation between them to his sight. His vision systems, coupled with what light amplification he had, were sophisticated enough to separate the larger trees from the ground, however. Fortunately, the sun had shone earlier in the day and both trees and ground were retaining, and radiating, uneven amounts of heat.