It was Telach. She came over to him and crouched next to his station. “You’re my man, Malachi. Do it.”
“Hey,” he said. While he appreciated the verbal stroke, her presence made him nervous. He tapped the keys with his thumb and pinkie, sweat pouring from his fingers.
“Ground team has to know — go or no go,” said Rockman. “It’s getting toward day out there. Should I bag it for tonight?”
“Hang on,” said Telach.
Malachi pushed his head down toward the keyboard, tilting his head toward screen two, where his course was projected. He was below the spaghetti tube by a good hunk.
“Go or no go?” asked Rockman.
“Just hang on,” said Telach.
The computer had calculated new launch data, recommending a sweeping arc as he approached the site. The pattern would rob so much momentum that he’d have to find a new self-destruct site, but he’d have to worry about that later. Malachi got a tone from the computer, counted another three seconds, then hit the keys as the diamond-shaped piper in his main screen glowed bright red.
Twenty-eight sensors shot out from the belly of the Vessel as Malachi applied just enough body English to slip the spinning pipe through a pair of drunken-S maneuvers. They fell in a jagged semicircle around the target area, hitting it like a hail of rocks.
They were supposed to form a circle, but this was going to have to do.
“All right,” said Telach, standing up. “Jimmy, you have the sensors?”
“Just starting to bring them in now,” said the Art Room techie charged with hooking into the bugs Malachi had dropped. “Got a couple of dead ones.”
“Enough for a profile?” she asked.
“I think so — got a couple of dead spots.”
“All right, ask Tommy if he can work with it.” She slapped Malachi on the back hard enough to make him lose his breath. “Good work.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he told her, scanning for a place to blow up his high-tech dump truck.
11
The canvas bag hit Dean in the back as he stood a few yards from the van, his hands on his hips, admiring the moon and wondering what the hell they were going to do next.
“Put ’em on, cowboy,” said Lia.
Dean picked up the bag and held it as she walked toward the edge of a stone wall about eighty yards away where Karr was watching the nearby highway with a starscope. The moon was so bright it was possible he didn’t even need the device. Karr gave her the scope and walked back toward the van.
The bag contained a thin vest and a pair of black pants. Dean stripped down and put on the pants, which were a little loose and stiff-legged. He pulled the vest over his black T-shirt. It looked and felt like the thin vest a hunter or skier might wear for additional warmth beneath a jacket. Karr explained that beneath the quilted fabric were flat tubes made from a boron alloy; the tubes could stop a bullet from an AK-47 at twenty paces.
“What’s the deal with the pants?” Dean asked Karr. “They shielded?”
“Nah, just black. Princess is very fashion-conscious. That and they have a locator in them. If you get lost I can find you.”
A car passed on the highway nearby. Dean watched the vehicle move past, its headlights making a long arc across the empty lot and the building.
“Another hour they usually send a guard around,” said Karr. “But we should be inside by then.”
“What are we waiting for?” Dean asked.
“Just waiting. You a big coffee drinker?”
“Cup or two a day. Why?”
“You ought to give it up. Makes you too jittery.” Karr walked over to the van and got in, emerging a short time later wearing a vest similar to Dean’s. As Karr walked toward him, something sparkled in the northern sky.
Dean stared up at it. “Shooting star,” he said.
“Nope,” said Karr. “Not even close.”
Karr stretched his arms and put them behind his head, staring in the direction of the meteor. Dean decided that he must be listening to something over the complicated com system that was partially implanted in his head.
He couldn’t imagine working with something like that. You’d feel like a psycho, hearing voices.
It was a damn good thing they didn’t have that in Vietnam, he realized. There was no telling what the people back at headquarters would try. He imagined being on patrol and having Dick Nixon whispering in his ear.
Dean laughed. Karr turned around, gave his own laugh, then went back to staring into the night.
The next step would be using pure robots, thought Dean. Maybe that was a good thing — better a machine got broken than a man killed. Still, it didn’t feel entirely right.
Could’ve used this vest in Nam, though. Lightweight sucker.
Karr turned abruptly and walked toward him. As he did, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled very loudly.
“They hate when I do that,” he told Dean, tapping him and heading back to the van.
“They had some problems putting out the sensor net, but we’re good to go,” Karr said, opening the door. “Hop in. Princess can ride in the back.”
He started the motor, then took a small handheld computer from inside his shirt. He clicked a switch and a grid map appeared; another flick and a white-and-black diagram filled the screen.
“Are we going or what?” said Lia, opening up the back.
“Keep your shirt on.” Karr slid the van into drive and they started rumbling toward the highway. “Here’s the layout,” he told Dean, handing him the handheld computer. “This part here is a set of pumps and piping for underground oil tanks; don’t worry about it. We go through this fence, down through this storage yard to this compound. It’s like an auto salvage place, a junkyard. Except the cars are hot, and generally new. That’s where our parts are. If they’re ours. We don’t think there’s guards, but we’ll know in a minute or two.”
“How?”
“That flash of light was a space-launched plane self-destructing. Before it did that, it dropped a bunch of little sound and motion detectors, okay? They’re on the ground, and our people back home are using them to augment the other data they have. We wait until they’re sure they have all the players set, then we move out.”
“They can see what’s going on in there?” asked Dean.
“Not exactly. There wasn’t time to move the optical satellite that covers this region, and besides, it’s night, right? Can’t see in the dark. You’re going to ask me about infrared, right?”
“Not really,” said Dean.
“Not precise enough, not for this. This’ll do; don’t worry.”
Karr cranked onto the highway.
“You can shoot, right?” said Lia from the back. “I mean, you
Dean turned to find Lia holding a submachine gun on him.
“Take it,” she said. “I know it’s a piece of shit. Just take it.”
“Nah. Solid gun,” said Karr. “Just old. Like Dean. He’s not a piece of shit.”
“Remains to be seen,” said Lia.
The gun looked like a shortened AK-74, with a folding metal stock and an expansion chamber on the muzzle to control the gases when fired. It had a long banana-style clip and an oddly shaped flash hider.
“AKSU. Basically a sawed-off AK-74,” said Karr. “We have to go native. But it’ll do the job.”
Lia had a similar gun in her hand and was piling up clips from a hidden compartment in the truck bed.
“Uses a five-millimeter bullet,” continued Karr.
“Five-point-forty-five,” said Dean.
