FALLEN DRAGON (52 page)

A medic squad was picking up pieces of Graham Chapell from cleared sections of the pitch, putting him in thick black polyethylene bags.

"Bastards," Lawrence hissed as the Skin eased him toward the waiting jeeps. "You utter bastards."

Dean Blanche was ushered into the mayor's study by one of Ebrey Zhang's aides. The commander only needed one look at the carefully blank expression on the internal security captain's face to know it was going to be bad news.

"So?" he asked when the doors were closed.

"They were our land mines," Captain Blanche said.

"Shit! Are you sure? No, forget that, of course you are. Goddamnit, how could that happen?"

"We don't understand yet. According to the inventory they're still in storage. We did a physical check, of course. Eight are missing."

"Eight?" Ebrey asked in alarm. "How many were planted in the park?" He was never terribly at ease with land mines. Z-B policy required them to be available in case the situation on the ground became troublesome, and the squaddies had to protect strategic areas from outright aggression. Effectively that meant the spaceport during their retreat. He was thankful that he'd never had to order their deployment. The damn things were a lethal legacy that could last for decades, completely indiscriminate in choosing their victims.

"We found five. With one detonated..."

"Oh, Christ." Ebrey went to the small drinks cabinet on the rear wall and poured himself what the locals laughingly described as bourbon. He didn't normally drink in front of his junior officers, and certainly not those from internal security, but it had been a long, bad day, and this wasn't a happy ending. "Want one?"

"No, thank you, sir."

"Your choice." He stood at the French windows, looking up into the night sky. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the stars were twinkling warmly. After today, he was seriously beginning to wonder if he'd ever make it back up there among them. "So we've got three mines planted out there somewhere in town waiting for us to step on them."

"Two, sir."

"What? Oh, yes. Two unaccounted for. Any chance the platoons could have missed them in the park?"

"It's possible, sir. I'm going to order another sweep in the morning, when it's light."

"Good man. Now how in Christ's name did they get them out of the armory?"

"I'm not sure, sir." Blanche hesitated. "It would be difficult."

"You mean difficult for anyone outside Zantiu-Braun."

"Yes, sir."

"I can't believe one of our own people would do this. There's no grudge or vendetta worth it." He looked around sharply at the deeply uncomfortable captain. "Is there?"

"No, sir. Nothing that serious among the platoons."

"We're missing somebody. Jones Johnson, the one whose blood they found. Could he have... I don't know, defected?"

"Possible, sir."

"Is Johnson capable of getting into the armory?"

"I don't know, sir. A lot of the squaddies tend to know shortcuts through our software."

"Damnit. We have safeguards for a reason. Especially on weapons."

"Sir. I do have one possible lead."

"Yes?"

"The other mines were on standby, and the soccer teams were running all over that field for thirty minutes before the explosion. It must have been activated just before Chapell ran over it."

Ebrey brightened. "KillBoy transmitted a code."

"Yes, sir. If it went through the datapool we can try to trace it. Of course, it could have been an isolated transmitter. In which case, someone had to be close enough to send the code. I can review all the memories from every sensor in the district. The AS may be able to spot someone who fits the right behavior profile. But somewhere in today's data there should be some evidence."

"Whatever you need, as much AS time as it takes, you've got it. Your assignment has total priority. Just find this piece of shit for me. I don't care how long it takes, but I'm going to see Mr. KillBoy swinging from the top of this Town Hall before we leave."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Earth. Once more.

The brilliant white-and-blue world continued to fascinate Lawrence as much now as it had during his first arrival five years ago. As always during the transfer flight down from Centralis to low orbit, he spent as much time as possible staring at the real-time images provided by the interorbit ship's visual sensors. As they curved in over the Americas he watched wide swirls of cloud twisting with soft grace out across the western Atlantic, congealing into a single storm spiral, pure white around the ragged edges, but darkening swiftly toward the dense high center as if night were erupting out of its heart. Within days the Caribbean islands would be cowering from winds and waves and stinging rain, unbound elements stripping the leaves from every tree and washing the land into new shapes. Once again their population would hunker down and wait for the howling winds to pass. And then afterward they'd carry on anew, treating the event like an unwelcome holiday. The palms would sprout new fronds, and people would sport and swim on the clean white sands. He smiled down at them from his angel's perch. Only on a world so teeming with life could such acclimatization occur, he thought. A world where life belonged, where symbiosis between nature and environment was the governing evolutionary factor. Unlike Amethi.

He still held a nest of feelings for his old homeworld. They weren't as strong now as they had been when he first arrived, and most of them remained antagonistic. But every now and then, he could recall times and places from that world when he'd actually been happy, or enjoyed himself. None of those times were with Roselyn. He still shielded himself from those recollections. There was too much pain involved, just as sharp and bright now as the day he left.

His hand went to the pendant under his shirt. He'd almost flung it away the day he left Amethi. Then he decided to keep it so he would never forget all of the treachery at loose in the universe. Nowadays it was a kind of talisman, proof he'd survived the very worst life could throw at him.

The Xianti 5005 carrying them down landed at Cairns spaceport in the middle of another of Queensland's baking
h
ot afternoons. There was no
one
waiting to meet Lawrence. He walked past his platoonmates as various families rushed forward in the arrivals hall. Wives and long-term girlfriends flung themselves at their menfolk, clinging tightly and trying not to cry. Until the starship arrived back from Quation two days ago, none of them had heard how the asset-realization campaign had gone; who was alive, who was injured, who wasn't coming back. Relief and fear echoed through the big air-conditioned hall. Children milled around the embracing couples, smiling and happy that Daddy was home again.

There had been a local girl called Sandy whom Lawrence could reasonably claim to be a regular girlfriend in the time between Floyd and Quation. Sandy had promised to wait for him, but that was just over nine months ago now. She was twenty-one; he never seriously expected her to hang around.

So he walked out of the terminal building into the clean sea air, taking a long minute to look around at the scrub-covered hills behind the spaceport, looming dark as the sun sank behind them. The humid breeze blowing in from the ocean. Gulls squawking. Another spaceplane splitting the air overhead like slow thunder. He smiled around at all of it, welcoming the scene as he might an old friend. He would always associate the sea and its smell with Earth.

The taxi rank was at the south end of the terminal. Lawrence walked down to it and slung the only luggage he had, his shoulder bag, into the backseat of the elongated white bubble. It had a human driver rather than an AS, an old Chinese man who wanted to talk about how Manchester United was playing this season. He thought Lawrence's accent was British.

"Never been there," Lawrence had to admit.

"But you know about Man-U?" the driver asked anxiously.

"I've heard of them."

"Of course you have. Most famous team on the planet I access every game. I installed a horizontal hologram pane in our apartment so I can watch the whole pitch. My wife doesn't like it."

"No kidding?"

"Yeah, she wanted a new sofa. I access through membranes as well. The last three seasons I've paid the team's media agent for multi-player-viewpoint feed. It costs, but it's worth it. This way I can see what's happening on the ground as well as get an overview. I like to stay with Paul Ambrose as my viewpoint when the first eleven play, he's got good ball sense."

"Sounds great."

"First eleven only play once every four days. I have to make do with second eleven and third eleven in between."

"Uh-huh."

"Afternoons, I access the under-twenty-one side. Sometimes I have to record them when I'm working. My friends in the other cabs, they have fun trying to tell me who wins. I turn my datapool access off and they drive up next to me and shout the result. I always have to shut my ears those afternoons. One day, when I save up enough, I'm going to Europe to watch them play live. My wife, she doesn't know that."

"Really." They had cleared the spaceport to merge with the short highway into town. To his left, Lawrence could see the thin strip of protected mango swamps running along the coastline. On his right, suburban apartments had colonized the land almost up to the foothills.

"You just down from Quation?"

"Yep."

"Your wife not meet you?"

"Not married."

"Wise man. You enjoy yourself while you still can, my friend. When I go to Europe, I won't take my wife. So you got anywhere to stay tonight?"

Lawrence could have returned straight to barracks; it wouldn't have cost him anything. But the whole fleet was on four-week leave, and the bonus pay for the campaign was sitting in his bank as well as the whole nine months' back pay. He'd made no plans at all. Some of the other single guys on the starship were talking about sailing between Pacific islands and raising hell on every beach resort they landed on. Colin Schmidt had invited him on a tour of the casinos in Hong Kong and Singapore. Others promised Perth still rejoiced in its claim to be party capital of the Southern Hemisphere, an easy train ride away. "No," he said. "I don't have anywhere to stay." He pressed the window key and let the glass slide halfway down; wind and highway noise rushed in. Up ahead the glare of lights from the Strip was already flickering through the town's outlying buildings. Lawrence laughed at the sight of the gaudy neon and holograms beckoning him back greedily. He'd never been so perfectly content. No cares, no obligations, plenty of money and lots of time to spend it in. Life didn't get much better.

"I know some places," the taxi driver said, giving him a hopeful sideways glance.

"I'm sure you do. Okay, what I want is a decent hotel, maybe one with a pool. Not too expensive, but somewhere with a wideband datapool feed and twenty-four-hour room service. And where they don't mind me bringing a guest home for the night. Got that?"

"Ah!" The taxi driver nodded happily. "I know just the place."

The hotel was just on the seedy side of its two-star rating. But it did have a pool, and Lawrence's second-floor room had a tiny balcony that looked over the gray geometrical sprawl of southern Cairns. He checked in and wandered down the nearest shopping street, a broad glassed-over concourse whose bargain customers had successfully repelled the bigger chain stores from investing. He bought some clothes in the small shops. Nothing too sharp, just something that he could wear out on the Strip, and that didn't have a Z-B logo.

He scored with a girl early on that night. A great roundabout walker in her late teens, out on the road with her friends, backpacking their way around the coast of Australia. She was pretty, and slim, with olive skin and her dark hair arranged in tight braids that had colored phosgene beads dangling on the end. When she moved her head quickly, they twirled round like a rainbow halo. He sweet-talked her away from her friends before they all hurried back to the hostel and their prebooked cots. She was fascinated that he'd actually been born on another world, appreciative of the classy foreign bottled beer his money bought, and showed a keen interest in the fact he'd spent months away from Earth.

"Deprived, huh?"

"I guess you could say that," he admitted. "The natives weren't very friendly."

Back in the secluded shadows in his room she screwed like an energetic kangaroo, pounding away up and down on top of him. For the first hour he was sure the dilapidated old bed was going to give way under them. He poured more of that expensive beer over her chest and licked it off before she pushed his head down between her legs. They accessed a thrash-rock feed and tried to fuck in time to the thumping music, eventually collapsing in howls of laughter as the codpiece-endowed vocalist screeched out lyrics about giving his baby some hardassed lovin'. Room service delivered club sandwiches with more drink, and they sat cross-legged on the sagging mattress feeding each other. Then they watched a non-i comedy show before fucking again.

She left first thing in the morning to join up with her friends. They were heading farther north, hoping to get some casual work in Port Douglas to pay for the next leg of their great middle-class adventure. By midday Lawrence had to think hard to remember her name.