Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

"Hey," Hennessey protested mildly. "Those are mine."

He was a thirtyish Anglo with prominent cheekbones and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. He had no accent-straight

Mid-Atlantic Net talk. Below the baggy plastic poncho there was something lithe and weaselish about him.

He smiled at her, tightly, looking into her eyes. "You

American? USA?"

Laura felt for her sunglasses. They'd pushed the sari back, showing her blond hair.

"I see it!" Yaobang burst out excitedly. "A flying ground nut!"

Hennessey's eyes widened. He'd recognized her. He was thinking fast. She could see him shift forward onto the balls of his feet.

"Maybe it's Grenadian!" Yaobang said. "Better warn everyone!

I'll watch the thing-missy, you go running!"

"No, don't do that," Hennessey told her. He reached under his poncho and tugged out a piece of machinery. It was small and skeletal and looked like a cross between a vice-grip wrench and a putty applicator. He stepped near Yaobang, holding the device with both hands.

"Oh, God," Yaobang said blindly. Another wave of it was hitting him-he was trembling so hard he could barely hold up the binoculars. "I'm frightened," he sniveled. A cracked, reflexive, little-boy voice. "I can see it coming.... I'm afraid!"

Hennessey pointed the machine at Yaobang's ribs and pulled its trigger, twice. There were two discreet little coughs, barely audible, but the thing jumped viciously in Hennessey's hands.

Yaobang convulsed with impact, arms flying, chest buckling as if hit with an axe. He fell over his own feet and hit the deck with a clatter of binoculars.

Laura stared at him in stunned horror. Hennessey had just blown two great smoking holes in Yaobang's jacket. Yaobang lay unmoving, face livid and black. "You killed him!"

"No. No problem. Special narcotic dye," Hennessey blurted.

She looked again. Just for a second. Yaobang's mouth was clogged with blood. She stared at Hennessey and began back- ing away.

With a sudden smooth, reflexive motion Hennessey cen- tered the gun on her chest. She saw the cavernous barrel of it and knew suddenly that she was looking at death. "Laura

Webster!" Hennessey said. "Don't run, don't make me shoot!"

Laura froze.

"Police officer," Hennessey said. He glanced nervously off the port bow. "Vienna Convention, Special Operations

Task Force. Just obey orders and everything will be fine."

"That's a lie!" Laura shouted. "There's no such thing!"

He wasn't looking at her. He kept looking out to sea. She followed his gaze.

Something was coming toward the ship. It was rushing over the waves, with astonishing, magic swiftness. A long white stick, like a wand, with sharp square wings. Behind it a slim straight billow of contrail air.

It rushed toward the bridge, at the stem, a needle on a thread of steam. Into it. Through it.

Raw fire bloomed, taller than houses. A wall of heat and sound surged up the deck and knocked her from her feet. She was down, bruised, flash-blinded. The bow of the ship bucked under her like a huge steel animal.

Roaring seconds. Pieces of plastic and steel were pattering onto the deck. The bridge superstructure-the radar mast, the phone antennas-was one vast, ugly conflagration. It was like someone had built a volcano in it-thermite heat and white- hot twisting spars of metal and lava globs of molten ceramic and plastic. Like a firecracker in a white wedding cake.

Below them, the ship was still pitching. Hennessey had lurched to his feet and made a run for the railing. For a moment she thought he was going to jump. Then he was back with a life preserver-a big ceremonial flotation ring marked in Parsi script. He stumbled and rolled and got back to her.

There was no sign of his gun now-he'd folded it again, tucked it away.

"Get this on!" he shouted in her face.

Laura grabbed it reflexively. "The lifeboat!" she shouted back.

He shook his head. "No! No good! Booby-trapped!"

"You bastard!"

He ignored her. "When she goes down, you have to swim hard, Laura! Hard, away from the undertow!"

"No!" She jumped to her feet, dancing away from his lunging attempt to tackle her. The back of the ship was vomiting smoke now, huge black explosive volumes of it.

People were scrambling across the deck.

She turned back to Hennessey. He was down and doubled over, hands knotted behind his neck, bent legs crossed at the ankles. She gaped at him, then looked to sea again.

Another missile. It slid just above the waves, its jet flare lighting the rippled water with flashbulb briefness. It hit.

A catastrophic explosion belowdecks. Hatch covers leapt free from their hinges and tumbled skyward like flaming dominoes. Up-leaping geysers of fire. The ship lurched like a gut-shot elephant.

The deck tilted, slowly, inexorably, gravity clutching at them like the end of the world. Steam rose with a stink of scalded seawater. She fell to her knees and slid.

Hennessey had crawled to the bow rail. He had an elbow hooked around it and was talking into something-a military field telephone. He paused and yanked its long antenna out and resumed shouting. Gleefully. He caught her eye and waved and gestured at her. Jump! Swim!

She lurched to her feet again, lusting blindly to get at him and kill him. Strangle him, claw his eyes out. The deck dropped under her like a broken elevator and she fell again, bruising her knees. She almost lost the flotation ring.

Her shins were wet. She turned. The sea was coming up over the starboard bow. Gray ugly waves thick with blasted chunks of flotsam. The ship was eviscerated, its guts spewing out.

Fear overwhelmed her. A panic strength to live. She ripped and kicked her way out of the enveloping sari. Her sandals were long gone. She pulled the ring over her. head and shoulders. Then she scrambled to the bow rail, clambered over it, and jumped.

The water rushed over her, warm and dank. Twilight was leaching from the sky, but the ship's blaze lit the straits like a battlefield.

Another minor explosion, and a flare of light by the ship's single lifeboat. He'd killed them. Good God, they were going to kill them all! How many people-a hundred, a hundred and fifty? They'd been herded into a cattle car and taken out to sea and butchered! Burned and drowned, like vermin!

A drone hummed angrily just over her head. She felt the wind of it on her sodden hair.

She got the ring wedged under her armpits and started swimming hard.

The sea seemed to be boiling. She thought of sharks.

Suddenly the opaque depths beneath her naked legs were full of lurking presences. She-swam hard, until the panic strength faded into chilly shock. She turned and looked.

It was going. Stern last, rising above the sea in the last hissing remnants of flame, like a distant candlelit tombstone.

She watched it for long, thudding heartbeat seconds. Then it was gone, sinking into nothingness, blackness, and ooze.

The night was overcast. Darkness came on like a shroud.

The rush of afterwash hit her and bobbed her like a buoy.

Another hum overhead. Then, in the distance, in the dark- ness, the chatter of machine-gun fire.

They were killing the survivors in the water. Shooting them from drones, out of darkness, with infrareds. She began swimming again, desperately, away.

She couldn't die out here. No, not blown to shreds out here, killed like a statistic... . David, the baby .. .

An inflatable boat surged by, dark man-shapes and the quiet mutter of an engine. A slap in the water-someone had tossed her a line. She heard Hennessey's voice. "Grab it.

Hurry up!"

She did it. It was that, or die here. They tugged her in and hauled her up, over the inflatable's hull. Hennessey grinned at her in his drenched clothes. He had companions: four sailors in white round hats, neat silky uniforms, dark with a gleam of gold.