Screaming Across the Sky Book 2 of Gamma Law (Gammalaw, Book 2) Paperback - 1998

Excerpt

The black airmobile VTOLs came in level with the tops of Iskra's twisted
scrub, scarcely more than three meters above the rolling countryside.
Detectors placed around the LAW detention facility in Periapt's western
hemisphere had already been knocked out by elite pathfinder teams, and--by
special agreement--intelsat observers were looking the other way.



The whine of turbines muffled by countersonics was Farley Swope's first
clue that something out of the ordinary was going down. She, Hippo Nolan,
and the rest of the Scepter survey team--relocated to the Iskra
facility a month earlier as a consequence of Claude Mason's escape from
Blades Station--couldn't decide whether the incoming ships constituted the
vanguard of a Roke attack or elements of a LAW death squad--Periapt's
Legal Annexation of Worlds forces.



A few of the facility's guard towers got off some ineffective fire before
the raiders answered with shock-and-stun ordnance. Caught near a barracks
viewpane with Hippo, Ice, and a couple of the others, Farley hit the floor.



Illumination rounds began to blossom outside the viewpane. The guards
brandished weapons as they attempted to drive the detainees back to their
quarters for a lockdown. The reaction of the guards was due only to the
fact that they hadn't been apprised of the raid beforehand. Before they
could accomplish much, a door was blasted open and concentrated nonlethal
small arms fire poured through the breach, flooring two guards and one
team member--Simone Weiner. They continued to shove the Scepter
crew back, while others scrambled to take cover and return fire. Nova
light streamed into the barracks from all sides, making it was impossible
to see precisely who was storming the facility.



Opposite the guards' defensive positions a corner of the prefab building
was ripped away by explosives. Soldiers wearing LAW battlesuits came
through the opening low, firing nonlethals and lobbing shock grenades.
Alarms blared from the PA speakers, which the raiders shot to pieces with
solid projectiles. From beneath her bunk Farley saw the unprotected guards
quickly outmaneuvered and neutralized.



Gradually, the inside and outside worlds quieted somewhat.



An engineer with the Scepter crew, Farley knew enough about
military ops to appreciate the training that had to have gone into the
assault; the raiders seemed to have every contingency covered, down to the
last detail. When they began calling out the names of the survey team
members, she hoped they would be equally methodical when it came to
killing her.



She had been anticipating this moment since the team's ignoble return from
Aquamarine several months earlier, a mission that had eaten up almost
twenty baseline years, though Farley and the others had aged scarcely
four. Nevertheless, she cowered under the bunk for well over a minute.
Then, steeling herself, she ran in a crouch for what remained of the
barracks doorway.



The raiders intercepted her before she was halfway there. It was obvious
that she was unarmed, but the raiders kept their weapons trained on her
while their apparent commander stepped over to where they had made her
kneel. His face was concealed behind the rebreather apparatus of his
LAW-issue helmet.



"Farley Swope?" he asked.



She nodded, then deliberately glanced around at the damage. "You better
hope they don't take this out of your salary, soldier," she told him.



He stared at her for a long moment, then laughed. "You've got us all
wrong, Farley. We're friends of Claude Mason."



"Mason?" she said in confusion. "But you're LAW--aren't you?"



"A relatively recent development--and somewhat beyond our control, in any
event. My name is Burning."



An expression of guarded relief came to Farley's face. "You're the
commander of the Exts--from Concordance." The term as short for
"exteroceptive," referring to the slave implants Burning's ancestors had
been forced to wear before their liberation during the Cyberplagues.



Burning gestured broadly toward the barracks. "This was the only way we
could convey Dextra Haven's job offer to you."



Farley blinked almost tearfully. "Hierarch Haven has a job for me?"



"For all of you," Burning amended.



His hand was moving toward the release tabs of his helmet when a muffled
detonation issued from somewhere in the barracks. As everyone swung toward
the sound, the hand of one of Burning's subordinates came down hard on the
commander's own.



"Bioweapon!" the Ext said, showing Burning some sort of wrist-worn
analyzer. "We musta tripped a fail-safe!"



Burning froze in place, then shouted, "Get these people outside! Delta-V!"



Someone had seen to it that none of the Scepter team would leave
Iskra alive unless by order of LAW. The poison gas released by the hidden
fail-safe device was already beginning to work on Farley when an Ext
scooped her off the floor and began to lumber toward the scorched doorway.



She heard strangled cries from some of the guards and team members. Then
her thoughts began a slow downward spiral into a seemingly bottomless well
of silence.



She died peacefully just outside the doorway.







"If you need to blame someone, Burning, you can blame me," Dextra Haven's
holo was saying. "I should have known something was wrong from the start.
Iskra's so secret a location, it doesn't even appear in LAW's most
classified documents, and there I was getting data not only on the base's
defense capabilities but on the intelsats that watch over it." She shook
her head. "It's obvious that LAW knew what I was planning. They used me to
eliminate the Scepter team." Her digitally composed figure gazed
straight out of its cone of light. "I'm so sorry, Burning."



He nodded for the pickups, then pushed his long red braids from his
forehead. "We should have seen it as well, Madame Haven."



Her expression remained grim. "Remember this, Allgrave: We had a hand in
their deaths, but we didn't kill them. LAW killed them."



Burning nodded. "We carried out the executions with such finesse that
LAW's holding off sending a like team to Miseria Isle to do the same for
us; is that it?"



Haven snorted ruefully. "LAW isn't even acknowledging that there was a
raid on Iskra, Allgrave. They're blaming the deaths on a cybervirus that
infiltrated the fail-safe system. Just as they did with Byron Sarz's
failed attack on the Lyceum ball."



Behind Burning and to his left General "Daddy D" Delecado ran his hand
over his mouth. "How many times they gonna use that excuse before people
start refusing to buy it?"



Haven's figure shifted slightly. "You've been on Periapt for only two
months, General. People here would rather blame a rogue virus than accept
LAW's covert executions or indeed that the Legal Annexation of Worlds
subscribes to any hidden agendas. When in doubt, why blame human nature
when you can so easily fault technology?"



Burning broke the long silence. "How did Mason take the news of the death
of his teammates?"



Haven exhaled audibly. "It's hard to tell, what with these aphasic
episodes of his. I'm actually beginning to believe the Peace Warrantors'
claim that he at some point engaged in an illegal cyberinterface. Half the
time he acts like he's listening or speaking to ghosts."



Burning thought about the implants his ancestors had been forced to wear
during their hundred-year enslavement to Concordance's First Landers.
Stories had been handed down of people feeling as if they were puppets
operated by the implants themselves. But those stories were from a time
before the Cyberplagues had reached Concordance, liberating the Exts from
their implants while spreading death and wreaking havoc on nearly every
human-colonized world in the galaxy.



"Is Mason in any danger from LAW?" Ghost asked.



Haven turned to face Burning's sister, whose mask of facial scars had been
executed by her own hand. "Even if Mason was thought to be fully sane, his
media visibility affords him protection. Perhaps when the pressgangs are
done with him, he'll have to hire a team of bodyguards to watch his back.
But by then all of us will be long gone from Periapt."



"Why would LAW want the Scepter team dead?" Ghost asked, coming
alongside Burning. "LAW and the Lyceum have already agreed to fund your
mission to Aquamarine, so what harm could they have done at this point?"



"Precisely," Haven said. "What harm? Unless the mission LAW has seen fit
to grant me is nothing more than a ruse to remove me from Periapt in the
same way the Scepter team was removed from Iskra. I learned only
this morning that LAW has named Buck Starkweather commissioner of the
AlphaLAW mission to Hierophant, which means that I'm going to be answering
to him until Terrible Swift Sword deposits us on Aquamarine.
Anything could happen during the voyage--or once we're shuttled down the
well."



"A convenient accident, huh?" Delecado said.



"I'm all but counting on one, General."



"Then your GammaLAW mission goes ahead as planned?" Burning asked after a
moment.



Haven nodded. "For me it does. Whatever risks I undertake will be
justified if Aquamarine offers some resolution to the Roke Conflict."



Trinity, thirty light-years from Periapt, was thought to have been the
target of the as-yet-unseen aliens' most recent attack. The planet had
gone silent a month earlier, though no one could say with certainty
whether the Roke were to blame or whether some cosmic catastrophe had
occurred. Ever in need of increased funding, LAW had been working hard to
persuade Periapt to accept the former explanation.



"In light of what happened on Iskra, I won't hold the Exts to their offer
to throw in with me, Burning."



Burning raised himself to his full height. "So long as the terms haven't
changed--Colonel."



His use of Haven's honorific rank among the Exts wasn't lost on her. "They
haven't," she said firmly. "You have my word on that. I'll send all of you
home to Concordance--or wherever you want to go--parole completed, after
four subjective-years."



"From what you're telling us about LAW," Delecado said, "it sounds
unlikely that a relief starship will arrive in ten years, let alone four
or five."



"I won't lie to you, General. A ship might not come for twenty years. But
in two years' time I expect to have my own starship wrapped around the
zero-point-energy drive Starkweather will be leaving us. I have no
intention of being marooned on Aquamarine with the key to a human-Roke
peace in my hand."



Burning pivoted so that he and Delecado could exchange glances. "Ma'am, we
just might have something than can keep Starkweather from sabotaging you,"
Delecado said. "Something we liberated from Iskra after we saw what we'd
done to Swope and the others."



"What is it?"



"A superconducting explosive device," Burning supplied.



"Gives all appearances of having been overlooked for decades," Daddy D
added.



Haven was clearly dumbfounded. "Talk about a bargaining chip ... but you'd
have to be able to get it aboard Terrible Swift
Sword undetected--"



"Assuming LAW doesn't realize that the device is missing, we can do that
by dismantling it and concealing the modules among our own equipment."



Haven made a plosive sound. "Allgrave, if LAW had even a suspicion, you
would already have joined the Scepter crew."