The Cause of Death (16 page)

Twenty-four hours after completing their transit-jump, Hannah and Jamie had just about recovered from the twin shocks of the jump itself and Bindulan's disconcerting message. Their incentives for coming in as quietly as possible seemed to be getting stronger with each piece of information they dug out about the complex, violent, faction-ridden politics of Reqwar. Jamie and Hannah did not know who had summoned them, or why, or if their pending arrival had been kept quiet, or if the whole planet knew about it. All they could do was hope they had been summoned by someone with good intentions, and try to avoid undue attention from the opposition--whoever that turned out to be.

And all those hopes went out the window the moment the
Hastings
entered parking orbit above Reqwar and cut her engines. Hannah and Jamie were both strapped in on the command deck, eager to see what happened next--and also eager to get the best possible view of the planet.

Reqwar hung in space before them on the other side of the big main view dome, a world of wide blue oceans, dotted with islands and island continents. The waters around the larger landmasses were bright green, tinted by the Reqwar equivalent of algae mats anchored in the shallower waters. Most of the landmasses were lifeless browns and greys, with patches of faded green showing where the Pavlat settlements were.

They passed into the nightside of the planet and saw the dim lights of two or three small cities. Cloud cover was at about the same levels as on Earth, but Hannah knew from her reading that one odd feature of Reqwar was the degree to which cloud decks could simply park themselves over a given piece of real estate for weeks or months at a time.

They had expected to wait until they had a direct line-of-sight link with the planetary capital, then attempt to contact the local government quietly, without attracting needless attention.

It didn't happen that way. Within seconds of their engines shutting down, the
Hastings
's autonavigation system received a hail from a groundside station and automatically entered into negotiations as to approach and landing procedures.

The
Hastings
was programmed to speak all of the more common standard machine-to-machine languages used by the Elder Races' various navigation centers. Hannah watched as the
Hastings
's nav system attempted to contact Thelmhome Spaceport and work up a flight plan.

Hannah was not particularly surprised when the autonav system kicked the problem back to her as being outside its competence. But she was taken aback when she saw what the problem was. "That doesn't make much sense," she muttered. She keyed in a few commands for the autonav to translate into the local navplot system and transmit to traffic control. The response she got didn't satisfy her. She tried a time or two more, then started swearing under her breath.

"Have a look," she said to Jamie. "This make any sense to you?"

Jamie brought up the navplot Hannah was studying on his command display. "
That's
the ground track they want us to follow?" Jamie asked in astonishment. "That's a glide path three-quarters of the way around the planet. Didn't you tell them we'd be coming in on a ballistic lander?"

"The autonav system told them that, and they gave it this plot, so it bumped the problem up to me. I told them the same thing, but all they said was that we are required to follow the indicated route. No exceptions allowed, because this was their standard approach path, period."

Jamie studied the plot for a moment, then let out a low whistle. "No it isn't," he said. "It's their standard setup for an ambush," he said. "That trajectory will give every region run by a faction opposed to the Thelm's government a chance for a potshot at us."

"You mean the regional factions have independent militaries? I thought Reqwar had a unitary government."

Jamie laughed hollowly. "Yeah. It does. Just like Earth."

Hannah grunted and nodded. UniGov did its best to pretend it really was united, and really was a government, and really represented all of humanity in its dealings with the various alien races. Still, it didn't fool many humans and probably fooled fewer xenos than the UniGov diplomats would like to believe. If Reqwar was no more unitary than UniGov, than it wasn't very unitary at all. "Point taken. But what makes you think our entry approach is an ambush?"

"A lot. Based on all the murky and dated info we have, it
seems
as if the main political debate of present times is between those who want to keep things as they are and those who say it's time to change at least a little. Call them Staticists and Dynamists. And anything new, or any outsiders--like us--represent change, and therefore danger, to the Staticist. And--well, I'll have to show you the rest."

Jamie worked the display controls. The globe repainted itself to show the landmasses in blues and reds of varying intensity, along with some splotches of grey. "That's an overlay of our approach ground track with a political map of the planet. Grey is no data. Blue is Dynamist territory, red is Staticist."

Hannah didn't say anything. She didn't need to. Jamie pointed at the screen. "We've got fourth-hand, third-rate intelligence reports that put good-sized military installations here, here, here, and here," he said, pointing at four areas that were very clearly marked as Staticist. Their assigned flight path took them directly over all of them--three of them with empty ocean to the east of their ground track, so that anything that got hit would almost certainly fall beneath the waves, rendering the evidence conveniently invisible. "The same semireliable intell says two of those sites are there for the express purpose of shooting down hostile spacecraft."

"So what happens if we
don't
fly that entry path?" Hannah asked. "If we just flew the sort of short ballistic-entry approach our lander is designed to make?"

"Best guess? We'd get called an imminent threat and get shot down on final approach. At last report, the main spaceport was under Thelm's Law--but it's in sort of a salient, a thumb-shaped piece of land that's surrounded on three sides by the High Thelek's land--and the Thelm is Dynamist, but High Thelek Saffeer is a heavy-duty Staticist."

"Wait a second," Hannah said. "There was something else that didn't quite make sense until now." She brought up a close-in detail map of the spaceport, showing their final approach and assigned landing area. "Would you bet your life that there's still Thelm's Law at the spaceport?" she asked grimly. "My guess is that there's been a change in management. Why else tell us to land where there won't be witnesses?"

Jamie could see it as plainly as she could. Their assigned landing point was ten kilometers away from the normal set-down zone, and even farther off from the terminal itself. "That's about as isolated as you can get on the spaceport," he said. "Far enough off that you wouldn't have to worry much about blast debris in populated areas. Or chance witnesses."

"Right. My bet would be that your High Thelek friend is in control of the spaceport these days. He's painted a target on the ground and told us to land on the bull's-eye. So, if we fly the assigned approach, we'll beat the hell out of our lander and probably get shot down before we ever
get
to final approach," said Hannah, staring at the screen. "If we
don't
fly it, we'll probably get shot down. And if we
do
manage to land, we'll be sitting ducks. Got any suggestions?"

"Well," Jamie said in an apologetic tone, "I do have one. But you might not like it."

That we quit and go home right now
? Do what Bindulan suggested and REFUSE THE ASSIGNMENT? She couldn't blame him if he did suggest such a thing. It would be impossible to do their work without at least a minimal level of cooperation from the locals. If instead the locals were looking to kill them at once--and they weren't even exactly clear what they were supposed to be doing on arrival--there would come a point when there would be no point in persevering. "Go on," she said cautiously. If he did suggest bailing out, she had no idea how she would reply. After all, she had pretty specific orders to come home alive, or at least bring Jamie home alive. She liked to think it came to the same thing.

"Well, if they have any sort of file on the BSI--and they ought to--they'll know we have a reputation for being lousy pilots. And
I'm
no pilot at all."

"No, you haven't had the training yet. What's your point?"

"Well, no offense, but maybe we should play up to that reputation."

"What do you mean?" Hannah asked.

"Maybe you should fly the assigned approach route," Jamie said, "but just not very well."

ELEVEN
ENTRY

The
Lotus
lifted off from her docking stand on the upper deck of the
Hastings
and came about to the proper attitude for her deorbit burn. Hannah moved the
Lotus
about two hundred meters away from the
Hastings
and then took her hands off the controls. The
Hastings
came about to a new attitude and fired her main engines.

Hannah watched the
Hastings
--and their ride home--boost out of view toward a more distant and safer orbit, then turned toward the controls of her own little ship with something less than complete confidence. The
Lotus
was a far more cramped and spartan craft than the
Hastings
. The pilot and copilot chairs would have been a tight fit even without pressure suits. In the suits, they barely fit at all.

Hannah was, in theory, qualified to fly such landers, but she had flown only one actual landing in one--and that under far less challenging conditions than they now faced. But there was no sense spending too long with her doubts. This would
have
to be a largely manual entry. It was all on her.

"All right," she announced as the countdown clock moved toward zero, "here we go."

The
Lotus
's autosequencer fired the main engine, right on spec for attitude, thrust, and duration, leaving them exactly in the groove for entry. That was all well and good--but the rest of the flight was up to Hannah.

"Okay," Jamie said, watching the tactical plot, his voice coming to Hannah through her suit radio. "Site One coming over the horizon
now
."

There was silence in the ship for a minute or two, but then an alert tone went off.

"We're getting painted by triphase radar," Jamie announced as he silenced the beeper. "
That
sure ain't traffic control. Definite hostile intent."

"Might be time to make my first mistake," Hannah said. She brought the
Lotus
about to a new pitchdown heading and fired the translation thrusters, introducing a navigation error into their previously correct heading. "Oh, dear." She smiled. "I've corrected for an error that wasn't there in the first place. Now I'll have to correct in the opposite direction."

"They've locked on," Jamie announced.

The
Lotus
jerked hard sideways and shuddered violently as Hannah deliberately overcompensated for her phony error. Two warning lights came on, and three distinct audio alerts started beeping.

"Lock lost," Jamie reported. "I think we have them confused."

"Wonderful," Hannah replied, fighting the controls. Confusing the opposition wouldn't be all that much help if she managed to get them killed while doing it.

With a bang and a rattle, the
Lotus
let it be known that she had hit the top of Reqwar's atmosphere. Almost immediately, two more audio alarms popped on, warning of too-rapid temp increases. The
Lotus
was a tough little ship, but she couldn't hold up to all that much overheating. Even the flight path they had been instructed to take would have been rough on the lander--and the flight path they were currently on would be harder still on the hardware.

"Time to do a skip-out," Hannah called out. "Hang on a little bit harder."

"They have lock again," Jamie called back. "Do it before they get a weapon on us!"

Hannah gritted her teeth and pulled back on the joystick, shifting their angle of attack. Suddenly the
Lotus
was pulling twice as many gees, eyeballs down, pressing them hard into their seats with crushing force. More alarms instantly began hooting--then cut out, as the overloads went away, at least for the moment, and the gee forces slacked off. The
Lotus
had literally bounced off the top of Reqwar's atmosphere, and was heading back out into space. The temperature alerts shut down and the strain gauges slid back into the normal range.

Suddenly the cabin of the lander was strangely quiet. But it was nothing but a lull before the storm. Things were going to get a lot worse before they got better--if they
ever
got better.

"Tell me we're out of range of Site One," Hannah said. She brought the
Lotus
about to a normal entry heading again. They were near the top of their atmospheric skip, and just about to head back down again.