Robert Charrette - Find your own truth

Dog danced at Sam's side.

"Contact, bearing forty-five relative," Rabo called out.

''Moving?" Ghost asked.

"Negative. Location matches prediction near enough. I think it's Wichita. "

"Take us in closer," Tsung ordered.

Janice sat back, hugging her knees to her chest. It was a child's pose, but it helped her keep a grip on herself. She needed all the help she could get. Here in the confines of the submersible the scent of meat was strong, and hunger gnawed at her continuously. She was glad something would be happening soon. She had thought they would never find the lost submarine among the ridges of the shelf.

Rabo's voice came again on the speaker. "I think we may have a problem.'' "What's the problem?" Ghost asked. "Can't you dock?" Tsung said. "Drek! Knew it," Kham snapped. "We're wasting our time."

Rabo's detached voice continued, as though none of them had spoken. "Density scans are consistent with air in the hull."

"What's unusual about that?" Tsung asked testily. "Hull down this long should have leaked out any air she held when she went down. Somebody's repressur-ized her.''

"Any other craft around?" Ghost asked. "None showing, but I've got sounds on sonar and they're coming from the Wichita. There's somebody on board.''

"Mechanical or organic sounds?" Ghost asked. "You ain't running a sim chip on de side, Rabo?" Kham growled.

"Ain't done that since the Fuchi run. I learned my lesson. This is real, Kham. I don't know what the noise is, or what's making it, but it's real." There was silence for a few moments. "They'll know we're coming," Tsung said to Ghost. Ghost nodded. "Whoever they are." "Does it matter?" asked Fast Stag, the other norm. "It matters," Tsung said. "Minimal opposition was the spec. Price goes up if there's serious trouble."

"What about an astral scout, then?" Fast Stag asked, looking at Tsung.

"Already tried. There's a school of hexfish out there that picked me up as soon as I poked my head through the Searaven's hull. Those things hunt astrally as well as mundanely, and they're worse than piranha. Maybe you'd like to swim across?"

While Fast Stag shook his head in an emphatic "no," Ghost said, "We'll have to dock without a re-con then."

"Rabo!" Kham barked. "Any way ya can slide us in quiet?"

"Negative," the rigger replied. "They're not using any active probes, but if they Ve got any of the Wich-ita's passive gear going, they'll hear us coming. No way to avoid it. Probably won't know what we are, though. The sub's databanks won't have specs for a submersible like the Searaven. They might not know we can dock.''

"And can we dock?" Tsung asked. "Yeah. Didn't I tell you? The Wichita's aspect is almost perfect. There's a little fibrous debris around the forward hatch, but the approach is clear." "Let's get it over with," Janice said. The runners ignored her.

"They'll hear the docking just through transmission of the vibrations," Tsung said. "It won't be a surprise."

"Surprise is a tool, not an end in itself," Ghost observed. "We must neutralize the bombs. If those aboard the Wichita belong to the enemy, speed is now vital."

Ghost's two tribesmen nodded their agreement. John Parker, the other ork, looked to Kham for his lead. Kham looked to Tsung. No one bothered to ask Janice for her opinion.

"If we're going to party, we'd better get on with it," Tsung said. "Whoever's in the Wichita didn't get down here without help, and we don't want their taxi dropping in on us. This run's too straight-line as it is; weVe got no freedom to maneuver. I don't want anybody sitting on our line of retreat."

Ghost gave the mage a sharp nod. "Rabo, take us in."

"Won't be a surprise," the rigger said. "We have no choice," Ghost told him. The docking approach went smoothly. The Searaven settled forward of the sail at the one hatch capable of being opened from the outside. The taxi shuddered slightly when her connection collar contacted the hull of the Wichita. As soon as Rabo reported a full lock and transmission of the unlocking codes, Kham opened the internal hatch and crammed his bulk into the nar row docking passageway. Parker stood at the edge holding Kham's automatic rifle, ready to hand it down to his boss as soon as he cleared the way. Janice could hear Kham grunting with the eifort of freeing the emergency hatch releases on the Wichita.

The ork's shoulders bulked back into view briefly as he swung the Wichita's hatch open. A strange, musky odor drifted up from the submarine, overpowering the briny smell of the water in the docking tube. Kham dropped out of sight almost immediately. Parker called a warning and dropped the rifle down the hole. Then he followed it down. Ghost was next through, then Sally and the other two Indians. No one called for Janice to follow, but she did. She didn't want to be alone in the echoing hollow of the Seamven's passenger compartment.

The climb through the docking attachment and the Wichita's lock was short but intensely uncomfortable. The designers had never expected anyone of her size to use the space; she scraped off fur and skin on every projection. The wounds itched from the salt water coating all the surfaces around her, but they would heal soon enough. It was more the closeness and the damp that bothered her.

These worries became minor when compared to what she felt once they reached the deck of the Wich-ita. The musky odor was stronger here, tinged now with a rank smell from the norms and orks. They were afraid. She wondered if they could smell her fear as easily as she did theirs. The light level was low, but more than enough to let her see. Dead fish and other sea creatures lay on the decking, and dense cobwebs hung in thick strands all around the runners. With every surface corroded and clogged by seaweed and barnacles, the compartment looked more like the undersea hideaway of the selkie prince from Carter's Queen of Sorcery than the warship it had once been.

No one said anything; no one had to. Janice suspected they all had the same bad feeling she had.

Somewhere aft of them, toward the main bridge, something skittered in the darkness, claws scraping on metal.

The elf had said he could cripple the outer electronic defenses of Warlord Han's enclave, and he was as good as his word. As for Striper, her skills at physical penetration had proven to be as good as her boasts about them even better than his own. Neko's most likely scenario hadn't involved reaching the missile base without at least a minor confrontation with the warlord's forces. But they had. Of course, the brush fire that had sprung up at the far end of the valley was attracting much of the facility personnel's attention. He might have thought the fortuitous blaze a good omen, if he believed in such things.

The base didn't look military, but then that was the purpose of camouflage. The maps he had obtained showed the warhead storage to be hidden in the shadows of a bank of grain silos. The warlord's people were only beginning to reactivate the base, and had not as yet armed any of the missiles with warheads. They had not even tested one, which was not surprising. If the warlord was as cautious as his reputation, he would never trust a nuclear weapon to an untried delivery system especially one that had been moth-balled for more than forty years. Neko was sure the arsenal would be as full as when Nightfall had revealed its location to her master.

The ground floor of the building near the grain elevators looked much as one would expect an agricultural office to look. But then, would he really know if something were out of place? The press of a concealed panel turned what should have been the utility closet into an elevator. They took it down.

The subterranean level abandoned pretense. The corridors were drab, with the austerity and severity of military architecture wherever he had encountered it. Only the uninitiated could think it fostered a zen serenity. The cold concrete would echo sounds in harsh clamor, but the halls were deserted. This was going to be easy.