3

Clear Air Turbulence

“What!" roared Horza.

“Target/acqui—" the suit began again.

“Oh shut up!" Horza shouted, and started punching buttons on the suit’s wrist console, twisting this way and that, scanning

the darkness

around him. There ought to have been a way of getting a head-up display on the inside of the helmet visor to

show him what direction the

signals were coming from, but he hadn’t enough time to familiarize himself completely with the

suit, and he couldn’t find the right button. Then he

realized he could probably just ask. “Suit! Give me a head-up on the

transmission source!"

The top left edge of the visor flashed. He turned and tipped until a winking red dot positioned itself on the transparent

surface. He hit the

wrist buttons again, and the suit hissed as it evacuated gas from its sole-nozzles, sending him shooting

away under about one gravity. Nothing

appeared to change apart from his weight, but the red light went out briefly, then came

back on. He swore. The suit said:

“Target/acquisition—"

“I

know,

" Horza told it. He unslung the plasma pistol from his arm and readied the suit lasers. He cut the gas jets, too. Whatever

it was

coming after him, he doubted he’d be able to outrun it. He became weightless again. The small red light continued to

flash on the visor. He

watched the internal screens. The transmission source was closing on a curved course at about point

zero-one lights, in real space. The radar

was low frequency and not particularly powerful—all too low-tech to be either the

Culture or the Idirans. He told the suit to cancel the head-up,

brought the magnifiers down from the top of the visor and

switched them on, aiming at where the radar source had been coming from. A

doppler shift in the signal, still displayed on

one of the helmet’s small internal screens, announced that whatever was producing the

transmission was slowing down. Was he

going to be picked up rather than blown apart.

Something glinted hazily in the magnifiers’ field. The radar switched off. It was very close now. He felt his mouth go dry,

and his hands shook

inside the heavy gloves of the suit. The image in the magnifiers seemed to explode with darkness, then

he swept them back to the top of the

helmet and looked out into the starfields and the inky night. Something tore across his

vision, pure black, racing across the backdrop of sky in

utter silence. He jabbed at the button which switched on the suit’s

needle radar and tried to follow the shape as it passed him, occluding stars;

but he missed, so there was no way of telling

how close it had come, or how big it was. He had lost track of it in the spaces between the stars

when the darkness ahead

of him flared. He guessed it was turning. Sure enough, back came the radar pulse.

“Ta—"

“Quiet," Horza said, checking the plasma gun. The dark shape expanded, almost directly ahead. The stars around it wobbled

and

brightened in the lens effect of an imperfectly adjusted warp motor in cancel mode. Horza watched the shape come closer.

The radar switched

off again. He switched his own back on, the needle beam scanning the craft ahead. He was looking at the

resulting image on an internal screen

when it flickered and went out, the suit’s hissings and hummings stopped, and the stars

started to fade away.

“Sapping/effector/fi… re…" said the suit, as it and Horza went limp and unconscious.

There was something hard under him. His head hurt. He couldn’t remember where he was or what he was supposed to be doing.

He only just

remembered his name. Bora Horza Gobuchul, Changer from the asteroid Heibohre, lately employed by the Idirans

in their holy war against the

Culture. How did that connect with the pain in his skull though, and the hard, cold metal under

his cheek.

He had been hit hard. While he still couldn’t see or hear or smell anything, he knew something severe had occurred, something

almost fatal.

He tried to remember what had happened. Where had he been last. What had he been doing.

The Hand of God 137!

His heart leapt as he remembered. He had to get off! Where was his helmet. Why had Xoralundra deserted him.

Where was that

stupid medjel with his helmet.

Help!

He found he couldn’t move.

Anyway, it wasn’t

The Hand of God 137,

or any Idiran ship. The deck was hard and cold, if it was a deck, and the air smelled wrong. He

could hear people talking

now, too. But still no sight. He didn’t know if his eyes were open and he was blind, or if they were shut and he couldn’t

open them. He tried to bring his hands up to his face to find out, but nothing would move.

The voices were human. There were several. They were speaking the Culture’s language, Marain, but that didn’t mean much; it

had grown

increasingly common as a second language in the galaxy over the last few millennia. Horza could speak and understand

it, though he hadn’t

used it since… since he had talked to Balveda, in fact, but before that not for a long time. Poor Balveda.

But these people were chattering, and

he couldn’t make out the individual words. He tried to move his eyelids, and eventually

felt something. He still couldn’t think where he might be.

All this darkness… Then he remembered something about being in a suit, and a voice talking to him about targets or something.

With a

shock he realized he had been captured, or rescued. He forgot about trying to open his eyes and concentrated hard on

understanding what the

people nearby were saying. He had used Marain just recently; he could do it. He had to. He had to know.

“… goddamn system for two weeks and all we get is some old guy in a suit." That was one voice. Female, he thought.

“What the hell did you expect, a Culture starship." Male.

“Well, shit, a

bit

of one." The female voice again. Some laughter.

“It’s a good suit. Rairch, by the look of it. Think I’ll have it." Another male voice. Tone of command; no mistaking it.

“…" No good. Too quiet.