“
I
don’t know," the drone said, “but I rather doubt it would be Culture agents. Who or what do you think these supposed agents
are after.
You."
“What if they were." Horza took another look at the holo display of the GSV’s internal layout. He briefly magnified the volume
around
Smallbay 27492 before switching the repeater screen off. The drone was silent for a second, then backed off through
the doorway.
“Great. I’m locked in an antique with a paranoid lunatic. I think I’ll go and look for somewhere safer than this."
“You do that!" Horza yelled down the corridor after it. He turned the hangar circuit back on. “Aviger." he said.
“I’ve done it," said the old man’s voice.
“Right. Get to the mess fast and strap in." Horza killed the circuit again.
“Well," Wubslin said, sitting back in his seat and scratching his head, looking at the bank of screens in front of him with
their arrays of
figures and graphs, “I don’t know what it is you’re intending to do, Kraiklyn, but whatever it is, we’re as
ready as we’ll ever be to do it." The stout
engineer looked across at Horza, lifted himself slightly from his seat and pulled
the restraining straps over his body. Horza grinned at him, trying
to look confident. His own seat’s restrainers were a little
more sophisticated, and he just had to throw a switch for cushioned arms to swing over
and inertia fields to come on. He pulled
his helmet over his head from the hinged position and heard it hiss shut.
“Oh my God," Wubslin said, looking slowly away from Horza to stare at the almost featureless rear wall of the Smallbay shown
on the main
screen. “I sure as hell hope you’re not going to do what I think you are."
Horza didn’t reply. He hit the button to talk to the mess. “All right."
“Just about, Kraiklyn, but—" Yalson said. Horza killed that circuit, too. He licked his lips, took the controls in his gloved
hands, sucked in a
deep breath, then flicked the thumb buttons on the
CAT
’s three fusion motors. Just before the noise started he heard Wubslin say:
“Oh, my God, you are—"
The screen flashed, went dark, then flashed again. The view of the Smallbay’s rear wall was lit by three jets of plasma bursting
from
underneath the ship. A noise like thunder filled the bridge and reverberated through the whole craft. The two outboard
motors were the main
thrust, vectored down for the moment; they blasted fire onto the deck of the Smallbay, scattering the
machinery and equipment from underneath
and around the craft, slamming it into walls and off the roof as the blinding jets
of flame steadied under the vessel. The inboard, lift-only nose
motor fired raggedly at first, then settled quickly, starting
to burn its own hole through the thin layer of ultradense material which covered the
Smallbay floor. The
Clear Air Turbulence
stirred like a waking animal, groaning and creaking and shifting its weight. On the screen, a huge
shadow veered across the
wall and the roof in front as the infernal light from the nose fusion motor burned under the ship; rolling clouds of gas
from
burning machinery were starting to haze over the view. Horza was amazed that the walls of the Smallbay had held out. He flicked
the bow
laser at the same time as increasing the fusion motor power.
The screen detonated with light. The wall ahead burst open like a flower seen in time lapse, huge petals throwing themselves
toward the
ship and a million pieces of wreckage and debris flashing past the vessel’s nose on the shock wave of air bursting
in from the far side of the
lasered wall. At the same time, the
Clear Air Turbulence
lifted off. The leg-weight readouts stopped at zero, then blanked out as the legs,
glowing red with heat, stowed themselves
inside the hull. Emergency undercarriage cooling circuits whined into action. The craft started to slew
to one side, shaking
with its own power and with the impact of debris swirling about it. The view ahead cleared.
Horza steadied the ship, then gunned the rear motors, flinging some of their power backward, toward the Smallbay doors. A
rear screen
showed them glowing white hot. Horza would dearly have liked to head that way, but reversing and ramming the doors
with the
CAT
would have
probably been suicidal, and turning the craft in such a confined space impossible. Just going forward was going
to be hard enough….
The hole wasn’t big enough. Horza saw it coming toward him and knew straightaway. He used one shaking finger on the laser
beam-
spread control set in the semi-wheel of the controls, turning the spread up to maximum then firing once more. The screen
washed out with light
again, all around the perimeter of the hole. The
CAT
stuck its nose and then its body into another Smallbay. Horza waited for something to hit
the sides or roof of the white-hot
gap, but nothing happened; they sailed through on their three pillars of fire, throwing light and wreckage and
waves of smoke
and gas before them. The dark waves blasted out over shuttles; the whole Smallbay they were now moving slowly through was
full of shuttles of every shape and description. They were floating over them, battering them and melting them with their
fire.
Horza was aware of Wubslin sitting on the seat beside him, his eyes locked on to the view ahead, his legs drawn up as far
as possible so
that his knees stuck up above the edge of the console, and his arms locked in a sort of square over his head,
each hand grasping the biceps of
the other arm. His face was a mask of fear and incredulity when Horza turned round to glance
at him, and grinned. Wubslin pointed frenziedly at
the main screen. “Watch!" he shrieked over the racket.
The
CAT
was shaking and bouncing, rocked by the stream of superheated matter pouring from under its hull. It would be using the
atmosphere
around it to produce plasma, now that there was air available, and in the relatively confined space of the Smallbays the turbulence
created was enough to shake the vessel bodily.
There was another wall ahead, coming up faster than Horza would have liked. They were slewing slightly again as well; he narrowed
the
laser angle again and fired, pulling the ship round at the same time. The wall flashed once around its edges; the roof
and floor of the Smallbay
flashed in loops of flame where the laser caught them, and dozens of parked shuttles ahead of them
pulsed with light and heat.
The wall ahead started to fall slowly back, but the
CAT
was coming up on it faster than it was crumpling. Horza gasped and tried to pull
back; he heard Wubslin howl, as the vessel’s
nose hit the undamaged center of the wall. The view on the main screen tilted as the ship rammed
into the wall material. Then
the nose came down, the
Clear Air Turbulence
quivered like an animal shaking water from its fur, and they were
rocking and yawing into yet another Smallbay. It was totally
empty. Horza gunned the engines a little more, took a couple of bursts with the laser
at the next wall, then watched in amazement
as this wall, instead of falling back like the last one, crashed down toward them like a vast castle
drawbridge, slamming
in one fiery piece onto the deck of the empty Smallbay. In a fury of steam and gas, a mountain of water appeared over
the
top of the collapsing wall and poured out in a huge wave toward the approaching ship.
Horza heard himself shouting. He rammed the motor controls full on and kept the laser fire button hard down.
The
CAT
leapt forward. It flashed over the surface of the cascading water, enough of the plasma heat smashing into its liquid surface
to
instantly fill all the space of Smallbays its passage had created with a boiling fog of steam. As the tide of water continued
to pour from the
flooded Smallbay and the
CAT
screeched above it, the air about the ship filled with superheated steam. The external pressure gauge went up
too quickly
for the eye to follow; the laser blasted even more vapor off the water in front, and with an explosion like the end of the
world the next
wall blew out ahead of the vessel—weakened by the laser and finally blasted away by the sheer pressure of steam.
The
Clear Air Turbulence
shot out from the tunnel of linked Smallbays like a bullet from a gun.
Motors flaming, in the middle of a cloud of gas and steam which it quickly outdistanced, it roared into a canyon of air-filled
space between
towering walls of bay doors and opened accommodation sections, lighting up kilometers of wall and cloud, screaming
with its three flame-filled
throats, and seemingly pulling after it a tidal wave of water and a volcano-like cloud of steam,
gas and smoke. The water fell, turning from a
solid wave into something like heavy surf, then spray, then just rain and water
vapor, following the huge flapping card of the bay door tumbling
through the air. The
CAT
wrenched itself round, twisting and slewing through the air in an attempt to check its headlong rush toward the far wall
of Smallbay doors facing it across that vast internal canyon. Then its motors flickered and went out. The
Clear Air Turbulence
started to fall.
Horza gunned the controls, but the fusion motors were dead. The screen showed the wall of doors to other bays on one side,
then air and