'Brevet Major General Younger, Lauderdale. At your service ma'am.'
'Thank you.'
'You've been looked after?'
'I have.'
'You like ossobuco?'
Chantal was fazed. 'Why, I've never had it.'
'Fine. You won't have anything to compare my efforts with. Eight o'clock sharp suit you? Dinner, I mean?'
Lauderdale, who turned into a statue with a steel backbone in Younger's presence, chipped in with 'Ms Juillerat wanted to see our command centre, sir.'
'Commendable, captain. Eight o'clock?'
'Certainly, Brevet Major General.'
Lights moved on the big map, and people with headsets talked into their microphones. It was the kind of set Chantal remembered from teevee coverage of the space program in the late '70s, or from repeated secret agent shows from the '60s.
'Well, ma'am,' began the Major General, 'there are always many missions to keep track of. There's a GenTech convoy out of El Paso headed for San Bernardino. El Paso is the railhead for the vat-grown organs that come out of Mexico, and San Berdoo is GenTech's West Coast centre for transplant surgery. We're riding shotgun on a shipment of hearts, lungs and livers, I guess.'
'GenTech are a major customer?'
The Major General looked stem for a moment. 'The United States Cavalry doesn't have
'I'm sorry. English is not my first language. Sometimes I make errors.'
'Think nothing of it. You're right, GenTech do route much of their interstate traffic by us. I think that's a mark of confidence. The other corps do the same. And we do a lot of wagonmaster work.'
'You shepherd the resettlers?'
'That we do. It's a tradition of the outfit.'
'Do you have much connection with the Josephites?'
Younger paused. Chantal wondered if she had said the wrong thing, aroused his suspicion. Finally, he answered her, 'no, not that much. At the first, we kept the route to Salt Lake open, but they have their own Ops now. I understand they do a decent job, but I'm not really up on the affairs of Deseret. I'm not sure if it's within our jurisdiction. It's only notionally part of the United States.'
'Sir,' cut in a woman at one of the tracking consoles. 'We have a trace from Tyree.'
Younger turned, and stood over the tracker, peering at the screen. There was a moving blip, travelling down an anonymous road.
'Put it up on the big screen, Finney.'
Captain Finney, a plain, pleasant-laced person, punched some keys, and her picture took up the whole wall. There were placenames. Dead Rat, Friendly, Baker Butte, Poland, Crown King, Octave. The blip travelled last. It was the only thing moving.
'That's wrong,' said Finney. 'Tyree was supposed to swing by the Petrified Forest, check out Escadilla and come back by way of Tucson. She's in the Tonto Basin.'
'You're sure it's her cruiser?'
Finney flicked some switches. 'Double-checking. Yep, the radio's down, but the auto-recognition is still holding steady. She's moving flat out, pushing the capabilities of the cart if you ask me. That's Tyree all right. At least, that's her ve-hickle and it's not programmed for any other driver.'
'Looks like we've got us a rogue. Vladek, muster some pursuits.'
Colonel Rintoon got on the telephone, and scrambled some field units, ordering them to intercept. He held the receiver to his uniform chest and looked up at the screen, taking it personally.
Chantal was trying to follow this.
'Leona is true and blue, sir,' said Finney. 'She's Cav from the toes up. Something bad must be going down.'
'I don't like this.' Younger pulled out a cigar and chewed it unlit.
'Is this an unusual occurrence?' Chantal asked.
Younger chewed some more, and looked pained. 'I should say so. You can't hijack a Cav cruiser. It shuts down unless you feed it your personal code, and it even double-checks your body heat pattern. There's only human error.'
'And what exactly has gone wrong?'
'Sergeant Tyree—a good soldier—appears to have gone renegade. She's obviously not in pursuit of anything, and she's way off her course. She's twelve hours overdue on a return to the fort, and she hasn't called in since some time yesterday afternoon. She's got a Trooper and a liaison from Turner-Harvest-Ramirez with her.'
'I have a response from a patrol,' said Rintoon. 'Conway and Mixter are up on Mogollon Mesa. They can come down and interface with Tyree and Stack. If they need help, Conway'll give it. If they've turned, Conway'll put an end to that.'
Finney looked as if she was about to protest, but she let it go. Younger nodded, and Rintoon relayed the order. A new blip appeared on the screen, moving in a course set to intercept the original light.
'Who's the T-H-R guy? What do we know about him?'
Rintoon had the facts. 'Kenneth Kling. A nobody. No record at all. He just has a nuisance value assignment.'
'If Tyree is clean, it could be this Kling who's gone psycho on us.'
Finney swivelled on her chair and tapped another keyboard. 'I'll have his profile faxed in from T-H-R in Denver.' A printer stuttered, and Finney tore off a strip. 'Shit! Uh, sorry, sir. I mean, uh, we have a negative on Kling. He's in his peter position, no advancement possible, no initiative, no more than basic skills, no major kinks. Someone has handwritten 'self-important sonofabitch' in the psychological evaluation box. This jack is one of nature's born hostages. No way could he be behind it.'
The second blip was within twenty miles of the first, and closing fast. It was strange to see a potentially lethal combat reduced to a giant kiddie's board game.
'Lenihan, patch Conway through the p.a. system,' ordered Younger.
A smart young lieutenant with a headset flicked some switches.
'…proceeding South-South-West…' crackled a male voice. 'No visual contact as yet…'
'He means they can't see it,' Younger explained.
The blips were getting close.
'…I have it…a cruiser, for sure, up to 150 per according to my clock…does not respond to radio transmissions…am pursuing parallel course…
The blips moved together, faster. The background mapscreen changed at the edges to accommodate the pursuit. The placenames they passed blurred.
'Make contact, Conway,' said Rintoon.
'…proceeding…'
There was a tearing noise over the loudspeaker, then a feedback whine. One of the blips went out.
'We've lost Conway,' said Lenihan.
'Lost?'
'Lost, sir.'
'Lost contact?' asked Younger.
'No…' Lenihan's voice was nearly cracked. 'Lost. We have a heat source, but no ve-hickle. Conway's cruiser has been destroyed.'
'That's not supposed to happen. What could Tyree be packing that could do that much damage?'
'I'd have to run that through the computer and get back to you, sir. A battlefield nuclear weapon would do it, but that doesn't conform to the facts we have here. The best I can think of is a lethal malfunction in Conway's cruiser, and that doesn't fit the pattern either.'
