Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Karr swallowed hard. A whole new set of muscles was exposed and therefore an unknown set of qi points. Karr circled the engine nozzles, trying to deduce the qi meridians. A layer of flexor muscles lay over a layer of extensor muscles. Good. Karr wanted the flexors. A shot in the correct location would constrict all four nozzles and shut off the thrust. That in turn would cause Long Reach to dampen its internal fire. Closer inspection showed Karr that these muscles were not so different from the outer hull muscles he was familiar with. Encouraged, he set the Gattler for long, permanent needles; Karr wanted the orifices to shut and stay shut.

That should be the spot. Karr aimed at a point nearly centered amidst the four engine nozzles.

Unless he was badly miscalculating the new meridian... no. The point was tricky to locate, but Karr

was right.

He shot.

The living pistons contracted under his boots, pulling unseen plates of heat-resistant bone across the nozzles and the pillars of engine thrust constricted. However, unlike the external muscles Karr was used to, which responded slowly and predictably, the inner-hull groups reacted vigorously, clamping down in a fraction of the anticipated time. The thrust nozzles sagged. The fiery columns of exhaust sagged with them, like the petals of a titanic, wilting flower.

Unbalanced thrust began to tip Long Reach over. A mass of bubbles exploded to the ocean surface from below, presumably from one of the many openings Karr had seen. Escaping air meant water was rushing into the hull, further complicating matters.

Long Reach began to sink, rolling ponderously, twisting downward, its oily hull disappearing under vibrating water.

Alarmed, Karr dropped to hands and knees and grabbed the head of the qi needle, but his gloves were slick and he could not get it out. Karr struggled with locking rings on his wrists, intending to pull his gloves off and grab the needle with bare flesh. However, his hands were saved from hideous burns by a convulsion, which suddenly rippled every muscle on the ship from the surface of the waves all the way up to its top.

Karr lost his balance and his grip and tumbled down the side. Arms and legs skipped off slippery surfaces. The kilnsuit froze, plates locking up at each impact. The ocean surface rushed at him, frothing and bubbling as it pulled Long Reach under. Karr bounced the last stretch and splashed hard into the water, holding the Gattler for dear life, bubbles whirling around his helmet. It was hard to tell which way was up. Karr was spun and jostled in the turmoil near the descending fugueship hull. He had to get away or be sucked down with it, but his outboard thruster was gone and he could not swim in the bulky suit.

The end over end motion was making him sick. With few other options, Karr activated the kilnsuit's maneuvering thrusters, punching them at full power. Uncontrolled thrust yanked his arms and legs to the end of their sockets; Karr broke through the boiling surface, feet flipping into the air. He cartwheeled right over before landing head up and bobbing on the turbulent surface.

Long Reach's stern was half gone. The pillars of engine thrust were diminishing in size and force, and sagging down at the ocean surface. One of the petals was sagging right down at Karr! He would be incinerated. Karr thumbed the thrusters again. This time the backpack kicked him in the small of his back, and he plowed across frothing water like a rag doll skipping behind a speedboat. Karr crossed the space between fugueship and heavy lifter before he knew it. The hovering craft loomed up fast. Ten yards, three yards, one yard. Karr killed the thrusters and reached up. No good! He needed longer arms. Either that or he should have thought to extend one of the lifter's robotic grappling arms before he set out, because he couldn't reach any part of the orbiter.

Jenette solved the problem for him. The lifter suddenly splashed down, nearly crushing Karr. He bounced down off the hull, briefly sinking underwater, but then bobbing back up and grabbing hands that reached down at him. Thrusters pushed; both humans pulled as hard as they could, together managing to heave Karr over the lifter's shallow sidewalls.

Karr rolled to his feet, muscles complaining. He lumbered for the cockpit while unlocking and removing his helmet.

"Got to get out of here!" Jenette yelled, pointing up at a column of fire that was sagging their way. It was far thinner than last time Karr had looked, almost sealed off in fact, but would still do great harm to

the heavy lifter and its occupants.

Karr clambered into the cockpit and worked the controls, raising the lifter off of the water and side slipping neatly between two of the wilting columns. Fiery exhaust hit the water with a great hiss as Long Reach disappeared from view, but the conflagration was not extinguished. The boiling bubbles increased a hundredfold as seawater rushed over the exposed superconductor end. Hellfire glowed underwater as the fugueship sank. As the heavy lifter's engines spooled up, the force of gasses bubbling up from below became so strong that Karr felt a strong updraft buffeting the hull. Curlicues of fire appeared here and there, erupting high into the air like miniature solar flares.

The lifter engines reached full pressure. Karr hauled up on the throttle and twisted the steering yoke hard over. "Take cover!" The lifter rose, turning tail and accelerating away.

Jenette crouched under her reflective blanket as the ocean surface burst open under them, a gout of flame hammering skyward. Unlike Long Reach's fusion exhaust, this fire was not confined to four narrow columns, but expanded on contact with the atmosphere? a wall of fugueship vengeance roaring into the sky, swelling wider and wider and eating up everything in its path. A wave of stifling heat hit the lifter.

Karr was already at maximum power. All he could do was angle the lifter to surf the pressure wave that expanded in front of the thundering inferno. The encircling fog bank was blown away in an instant.

Smoldering island fragments were swept up and vaporized. The fire on the lifter's tail grew brighter and brighter, gaining; the dashboard in front of Karr glowed red beside the shadow of his head. He tipped the lifter's stern up, hoping to shield himself and Jenette with the hull.

The fury washed over them. Fire swamped the lifter on all sides. Only a tiny patch of blue sky remained ahead, as if they were looking up from the bottom of a deep flaming well. Fingers of the flame licked over the lifter's sidewalls. Jenette screamed as, for one horrible moment, the dot of blue sky was gone. Unrelenting heat sucked the air out of their lungs and seared Karr's exposed head. He clenched his eyes shut as the tremendous force tried to flip the lifter over; even closed, the insides of his eyelids were white hot.

"Sonofabitch!" he swore, fighting the controls.

And then the inside of his eyelids dimmed. He could breathe again. Cool air rushed across Karr's face and he opened his eyes. The lifter had shot out of the wall of fire, singed, but unhurt. Jenette peeked out from under her blanket.

"We're alive?" she asked, incredulous.

Karr was afraid to look back, but he leveled the hull anyway.

A new column of flame burned in place of Long Reach's comparatively tiny exhausts. Kiloyards wide at sea level, the firestorm reached thousands of feet into the daytime sky, disappearing into clouds turned luminescent by its brilliance.

The ocean was on fire.

"My God," Karr whispered. "What have I done?"

XVIII

The proto-man lies before her. She removes his generic gray clothes. She opens the lock on his head, removes and places his boy-mind in a jar by the headboard, twisting the lid up tight. It must not get out. It is the boy-brain that holds the man-body back. The body alone is enough.