Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

“My advice,” he said as he stuffed the new items into the smuggler’s belt, “is to do what they told you and forget you saw me.”

“I figured as much,” Zarn sighed.

“What’s this God’s Saucer you’re taking me to?” he asked.

“A big industrial spaceport about eight hundred kilometers north of Ipswitch. I grew up there.”

Terson wasn’t aware of anything north of Ipswitch. “I never heard of it,” he noted suspiciously.

“It’s our dirty little secret,” Zarn chuckled. “Did you ever wonder how Nivia generates enough income to support the infrastructure down south?” Despite the draconian restrictions, Terson had always assumed that Nivia derived its income from food exports. Zarn shook his head. “God’s Saucer sits on top of a big reserve of petroleum. It was too far into development and generating too much income to abandon back when the Southies went all crazy with environmentalism.

“We were already exporting a hundred times more than we used, so the Legislature promised not to expand it. It already had a spaceport, so they never bothered to connect it to Ipswitch and Saint Anatone by road. We pretty much stay up here, and the Southies pretty much stay down there. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s like being on another planet. I’m surprised they settled you in Saint Anatone instead of up here.”

“Saint Anatone’s got the courts,” Terson guessed.

“I suppose. Take some time to look around; I think you’ll like it.” He applied power to the four ducted fans mounted fore and aft. Vectored thrust blasted snow back into the air and the car rose quickly. Terson tugged the harness over his shoulders as the car accelerated, experiencing the universal anxiety of a pilot reduced to the status of passenger as wind buffeted the airframe.

Terson rubbed a circle in the fog of moisture clinging to the inside of the windows to find that they were just meters above the treetops, a mistake common among those who assumed lower was safer. “Get some altitude!” Terson exclaimed. “A wind-shear will put us in the ground!”

“Sit back and shut up,” Zarn quipped. “I know what I’m doing.” The temperature dropped rapidly as they flew inland. The strength of the storm increased as higher elevations ahead blocked the front’s progress. The atmosphere dumped more moisture in order to rise and what started as wet snowfall on the coast threatened to transform into a roaring blizzard. Despite Terson’s anxiety, the car and its pilot appeared capable of handling it. Eventually his eyelids grew heavy and his head began to nod.

A flash of light bright enough to sting his eyes through closed lids jarred him awake. He straightened up in his seat to question Zarn, but a deafening boom and simultaneous concussion struck the car before he formed the words and all he could do was brace himself while the car spun like a leaf in a hurricane. Zarn’s curses competed with the howl of the fans as he fought to regain control.

Branches beat against the fuselage like drumsticks as the car lost altitude. A glancing blow wrenched at Terson’s straps; the canopy blew out over his head, showering him with fragments of windscreen and tree bark. The car caromed off another tree, snapping it with a crack, then plowed into the ground. Snow exploded through the shattered windows as the car slid across the ground. The safeties finally blew, silencing the fans’ tortured rattle and plunging him into a sudden, eerie silence broken a moment later by the distant rumble of a sonic boom.

He knew then that the light that woke him came from the thrusters of a large aircraft traveling well above mach. The shock wave had proven as effective as weapons fire against the light aircar. Fortunately, the speed of the assault had carried the attacking aircraft several kilometers past its quarry, offering a head start that Terson and Zarn couldn’t afford to piss away.

Terson pushed out clods of heavy, packed snow until he found the door release; once open it took only minutes to completely extricate himself. He hadn’t heard so much as a groan from Zarn and Terson made his way forward to find his worst fears confirmed: the front of the car had taken the brunt of the impacts and the entire right side of the fuselage was missing. The damage had compromised Zarn’s harness anchors, partially ejecting him from the cockpit to be battered to death by the trees.

Terson went to his knees next to the wreckage of his friend’s body—the misfortune clinging to him was intent on destroying everyone around him while leaving him unscathed. A ragged scream of rage and frustration tore at his throat until it drove the last trace of breath from his lungs and he collapsed against the side of the car.

Something in the dark void responded with a predatory yowl.

Terson’s sense of self preservation prodded him to take action to defend himself, but he resisted. What good was his survival if it only doomed those close to him? Wouldn’t surrendering to the wildlife or the elements be more responsible than living only to cause someone else’s death? With that thought came the realization that there was no one else. Zarn’s death removed the last person from the face of the planet that Terson even remotely gave a damn about.

The faint hum of repellers rose above the rustle of branches. A spotbeam illuminated a haze of fine snowflakes in the air as it swept back and forth some distance away. Whoever knocked the aircar out of the sky was returning to check their handiwork. Terson climbed to his feet with a burst of adrenaline singing in his veins.

The possibility that Den Tun or his mysterious gaijin planned to silence Terson permanently after he did their bidding was always in the back of his mind, but he doubted that they would attempt it until after securing custody of the old man’s package. An EPEA patrol would certainly attempt to take out the aircar, but would have employed gunfire or missiles to do so, not a method as dubious as a sonic boom.

The obvious remaining suspects were Den Tun’s Onjin , who cared nothing for the aircar’s passengers but had sufficient motivation to preserve the information it carried; the Onjin , who murdered Virene and hounded Terson beyond the boundaries of civilization. Terson welcomed the chance to confront them on his own terms. They might kill him in the end, but at the very least he would die knowing that Den Tun could confirm another traitor among his people.

First, a weapon: Zarn’s gun was gone; there was nothing left of the shoulder holster but a broken strap. Belted to his hip, however, Terson found a sheathed blade—the local variant of the ubiquitous Bowie knife. He scooped snow from the remains of the cockpit as fast as he could, tunneling down to the glove compartment where Zarn had stowed Den Tun’s package. At best he could use it as a bargaining chip; at worst, prevent the sons of bitches from learning anything from it.

He found it, apparently undamaged, and beneath it the flashlight. Terson shoved the package inside his coverall and fumbled with the light. He cupped a hand over the lens allowing only a narrow ribbon of illumination to escape from between two fingers while he did a quick scan for anything else useful in the debris. Nothing—at least nothing he wouldn’t have to dig for. The roving search light was only a few minutes away now and he was out of time.

Hal, Dayuki and McKeon slowly traced the path of destruction left by the shuttle’s supersonic, low-altitude pass. Heavy snow reduced the craft’s scanners to near-worthlessness. All three peered down through the cockpit ports hoping to catch a glimpse of their quarry among the bent, broken and fallen trees illuminated by the landing lights.

“We’ll never see it if it’s buried,” McKeon said.