Nigel Findley - House of the Sun

Quinn Harlech took a step toward me, and instinctively I tried to bring my shiny spanking new Ares HVAR to bear. No luck. I could still breathe-thank the spirits for major favors-and I could still keep my balance, but I couldn't zero the assault rifle on the elf's chest. Momentarily, I considered butt-stroking him across the face with the rifle stock… and instantly the muscles I'd need for that move seized up on me, too.

"All right, already." I snarled. "What?"

Harlech smiled, but it wasn't the self-confident expression I remembered from our last encounter. If anything, he looked like some teenager trying to explain to his dad how he'd "creased" the family 3220 ZX. "Gerelan-o ti-makkalos-ha, goro," he said. "Forgive my stupidity, Mr. Montgomery." He shook his head. "I misunderstood. It's been long"-he frowned-"very long, since I mistook matters so badly."

Again I tried to bring my rifle into line. Not so much because I wanted to cut him down, but just to see if I could.

I couldn't.

"What the frag are you talking about, you slot?" I demanded.

Harlech shrugged uncomfortably. "I misjudged you, Mr. Montgomery," he said. "I thought you were a destabilizing influence. Instead, you were striving to stabilize the situation. I misinterpreted your place in the zarien. Do you understand?"

"Actually… no," I told him.

"I was striving to eliminate a force that supported the se-curo ja-rine" he said earnestly. "The Chaos. That's what I thought you were. In fact, my actions might well have precipitated the se-curo ja I was trying to prevent. Will you forgive me, goro?"

I shook my head slowly. "Maybe," I said. "If I ever understand what the fragging hell you're talking about."

"Let me help put things right." Harlech reached out toward me, a gesture of pleading. "I can, you know. Let me come with you."

And that's when I laughed. "You've got to be farcing me."

His monoblade-sharp blue eyes flashed. "I know things you'll never know, Mr. Montgomery," he said softly, insinuatingly. "Do things you'll never be able to do. Things you can't succeed without."

"Then I'm fragged, aren't I?" I shot back, my voice harsh. "I'd rather French-kiss a fragging juggernaut than trust you, slot."

I could feel the elf's sudden anger, like a static charge in the air around me. But then I felt him willfully suppress it. "At least let me accompany you," he said reasonably, gesturing toward the Merlin.

"Frag you," I told him. "You try to get on that bird, I'll have you cut down in your tracks."

Harlech lowered his head, glaring up at me from beneath his dark brows. In that moment I felt real fear. "Do you really think you can do that?" he whispered.

From the corner of my eye I saw Akaku'akanene, still struggling against the magical control immobilizing her. "Maybe not, Quinn," I said conversationally. "But what do you want to bet? Are you willing to bet your life that you can control me and the soldier-boys on that bird… and keep her from tearing your liver out?" I gestured with my chin toward the Nene shaman. "Do you want to bet on that, Quinn?"

I watched as the elf's eyes narrowed, and my gut churned with the conviction mat he could manage it. But men his frown eased, and he shrugged lightly. "A point to you, my friend," he said. "But you will find it difficult to keep me away from Haleakala, you know. I will be seeing you again."

Harlech turned away, his old-style camouflage coat flaring behind him like an abbreviated cloak. Again-out of a sense of completion, if nothing else-I tried to bring my assault rifle to bear.

My muscles worked this time, for a wonder. My finger touched the trigger, the sighting laser burned, a ruby firefly tracked across to rest on Harlech's spine…

And in that instant he changed, momentarily shifting into an extended prismatic after-image. An instant later, he was gone as if he'd never been.

With an effort I backed off on me trigger, a gram or two before it broke. Something told me that hosing down a Hawai'i National Guard base in the middle of the night wouldn't be the smartest thing I'd ever done.

Pohaku, Kono, and the military team were looking a tad edgy by the time I climbed aboard the Merlin, but I wasn't about to explain to them what had kept me. For that matter, Akaku'akanene was acting a mite testy, too, but I wasn't really in the mood to talk to her either.

The Merlin was set up as your standard troop carrier, with basic sling seats bolted to the fuselage on both sides, facing inward. Clambering up the ladder, I saw one empty seat, up forward-beside Alana Kono, as a bonus-so I excused my way past the troops and slumped down into the kevlar fabric. I buckled up the four-point harness and then stashed the assault rifle under my feet, hooking its sling onto a retention bolt. In my peripheral vision I saw Akaku'akanene giving me a solid dose of stink-eye as she buckled in toward the tail of the plane, but I made sure not to make eye contact.

Someone outside folded up the ladder, before slamming and locking the hatch. The engines ran up, a howling turbine shriek that came right through the fuselage and drove into my ears like icepicks. The Merlin bobbled and shook, and men lifted up, up and away.

I'd ridden in Merlins and their ilk before, of course; who hasn't? So I wasn't expecting any problems with motion sickness. Of course, what I was familiar with was the civilian configuration of the tilt-wing bird, with comfortable, forward-facing seats and lots of windows. The military configuration? It sported the most uncomfortable seats I've ever gone a long way to avoid, and no windows whatsoever.

No windows. Ever think about what that means? A tilt-wing VTOL like a Federated-Boeing Commuter or a Merlin takes off and climbs like a helicopter… which means that it generally takes a serious nose-down pitch when it's climbing out. So how does the old sensorium interpret mat? The floor's horizontal, chummer-that's what the eyes and the brain say, because floors are always horizontal. But the inner ear says the floor's at least 20 degrees off horizontal. It's that mismatch between what your brain knows and what your inner ear's saying that causes serious motion sickness. Typically the cure is to look out the window and get a reality check from the horizon…

No windows in a military transport, chummer. I was starting to feel real green around the gills when Alana Kono came to my rescue. At first I thought she was just massaging the base of my skull behind my ear, but then she removed her finger and I realized she'd slapped one of those neoscopolamine narco-patches onto my scalp over a major artery. I turned to thank her… and the neoscope in the patch had already kicked in enough to turn my grateful smile into a bedroom leer. The female gillette had the courtesy to blush and turn away.

I was really glad for the narco-patch as the Merlin pivoted its wings to shift from VTOL to forward flight. The turbulence was bad enough; even worse, though, was the knowledge that tilt-wings like Merlins are very vulnerable to engine cutout during the pivot process. If the engines stall out men, there's nothing to save you. Not gliding-there's no lift from the wing in the transition aspect-and not autorotation-ditto for the rotors/airscrews. Apparently, though, my narco-patch was dosed up with so much don't-worry juice that I could observe the tilt-transition as "just one of those things."

Suddenly I realized something and turned to Alana Kono. "You know," I said somewhat sheepishly, "I don't have a fragging clue where Haleakala is."

That earned me a sneer from Pohaku-no fragging surprise there-and another grin from Kono. From inside her armored jacket she pulled out a palmtop, flipped open the screen, and worked for a moment with the stylus. Then she handed it over to me. "Here," she said, pointing to the map.