Air Force One, Part Four (2)
"How many if the aircraft’s systems does your friend now control?" the Colonel asks, eyes narrowed. "Hey don’t get too excited," Johnny’s voice replies over the radio. "All I got for you right now is the scheduling software. Your airplane thinks you guys are a maintenance crew. Just showin’ up a few years late is all." OK, shut up now big guy, Mick thinks. "Tell your friend to cease transmission immediately," Tennen shouts to Mick. He has what he wants, and he does understand enough to know that he doesn’t this other "man" in the ship’s computer systems longer than is absolutely necessary. "OK big guy—" Mick says immediately into his headset, but the pilot interrupts. "Radio traffic has ceased," the left-seater shouts. "Commence radio jamming," Tennen replies. "No!" Mick yells, his voice continuing to come through the cockpit speakers. He slaps the pilot’s hand away from the touch screen, and turns desperately back toward Tennen. "It thinks we’re a maintenance crew. Maintenance crews don’t jam radio traffic! You try that, and the higher-level security logic will activate in a microsecond! We’ll be dead before the rotors go around twice!" The innkeeper starts out thinking that he’s lying — making it up as he goes along. The last thing he wants is for his hundred and fifty ton "buddy" to have no way back in to the ship’s control systems. But as he speaks, he also manages to convince himself. The aircraft is nothing like a Bolo-grade intelligence in its capabilities, but he knows for a fact that it is an AI and was designed well after the first test of the Mark II machines that he once worked on. It is almost certain to have been architected along the lines of the Mark IIs — which means that higher level functions really will be activated by the kind of behavior that Tennen is on the point of ordering. They will easily override the assertions of the simple scheduling processes that Johnny has subverted. With exactly the result he has just described. It’s very upsetting. As he watches Tennen look down at him, Mick realizes that, without forethought or warning, all their lives have suddenly come to depend on just how convincing he made his casual off-hand tale. Or perhaps it is the real fear in his eyes that finally convinces the Colonel. "No jamming," Tennen orders. "Take us to the aircraft!" Mick releases his breath slowly, takes another, and looks away again — down toward the waiting expanse of the great ship. Air Force One Behind him looms a metal wall thirty feet high. Above its edge the wind whistles with the force of a modest hurricane. Seventy-five miles per hour is the slowest the great ship can travel without risking frequent stalls. Where Mick stands, only a few yards from the apex of the broad triangular landing deck, the force of the wind is reduced to what you might expect in the early stages of a thunderstorm down on the ground. There is always at least a stiff breeze, and it changes directions unpredictably from one moment the next, gusting sometimes with enough force to take your breath away. With more than half the area of a football field, the corrugated deck is the largest flat metal surface the innkeeper has ever seen. It is in fact the largest flat metal surface in existence anywhere on Earth. Once, had his life followed a different track, he might have stood like this looking out over the deck of an aircraft carrier. That would have been larger. But all of those once-mighty war machines are sunken beneath the waves now: burned and broken hulks gathering their first thin layers of white coral or gray silt. Now only Air Force One remains — not unscathed, but still sailing. Still crossing the endless leagues of its more rarefied ocean. The last helicopter comes down carefully near the aft edge of the landing deck, its rotor blades swinging only yards from the metal wall, which has sloped down at that point to within only five feet of the deck. Men are tying down the other helicopters to white-painted cleats set into the deck. Page stands near Mick and his agents walk forward, untroubled by their jackets flapping in the wind. Mick ignores them and looks up, above the nearly crowded deck, above the barrier at its windward edge, up to the banks of storm clouds that tower still five miles above him. One of Page’s agents has punched the final password into the keypad beside the wide steel door set into the landing area’s apex. It slides open to reveal a wide hall into the aircraft’s darkened interior. The agent stands looking inside for a few seconds, then returns to his captain. Looking down again from the cloud tops, Mick sees Tennen standing ten yards off across the deck. The two nearest helicopters are some distance behind him, and Mick wonders why the Colonel doesn’t approach nearer. The old man’s white hair catches in the fitful wind. His men walk up behind him. High above, the topmost reaches of the cloud-peaks glow gold and violet — still able, at their great altitude, to catch the light of the setting sun. Tennen looks directly at Mick, smiling faintly, and his hand rises in the air. Mick is distracted by the fact that Page has put a hand on his shoulder. At the same moment he sees that Tennen’s men, all armed, are bringing up their weapons. "Ak bet!" Tennen shouts above the wind, bringing down his hand like a knife. With his grip on Mick’s shoulder, Page hurls the innkeeper the last few yards toward the open door as though he were a child. Barely able to gets his arms up to protect his face from the floor, Mick hears the coughing, popping sound of machine-gun fire. He rolls on the floor to bring himself face-up again, half sitting up. One of the agents is in the air, his arms flung out by the force of bullets striking him. Many of Tennen’s men are down as well; each shot that an agent fires finds its target in a man’s heart or forehead. Only Page himself cannot hit the target he has chosen. As Mick watches he drops one gun while simultaneously drawing another, already firing as he bring it up. Tennen stands, watching him. Every one of Page’s shots, aimed at the center of the Colonel’s heart, vanish in blue scintillations a yard in front of him. It takes only seconds for the storm of fire to slaughter the other agents. During that time they have shielded their leader to the greatest extent possible with their bodies, but finally they have all fallen. Then Page is flying into the hall’s entry, partly under his own power but largely with the energy of high-velocity rounds impacting his chest. The battle has ended in the time it has taken Mick to scramble halfway to his feet. Page lands near the spot that Mick vacated seconds ago, blood splashing from his chest as he strikes the floor. Mick stares down wide-eyed as the agent raises his weapon and fires his last two shots into a keypad panel on the opposite wall. Immediately, the metal door at the hallway’s entrance begins to slide rapidly shut. "Aha eseb u-secht ah!" Mick hears Tennen yelling angrily. Men run toward the door even while the last bullets are flying through its diminishing aperture, but the first of them arrives half a second too late. Then there is more gunfire striking the outside of the door, but its sound comes through the thick metal only dully. The long hall is almost silent. Mick falls to his knees next to Page, uncertain of whether to touch him. There are several obvious wounds in his chest, and probably more that can’t be seen in the hall’s dim illumination. A ghost of light filters down from exhausted florescent strips high up on the walls. But the agent’s eyes open again, and he turns his head toward the innkeeper. "The President," he speaks slowly, his voice thickened by blood, "had a key. Like a piece of plastic." He raises one hand to indicate a size of a few inches, then lets it fall back to the metal floor. "The crypto safes — won’t open without it. Or they burn the books. Find it," he says in a whisper. Don’t let — him — get it." Then the last agent of the United States Secret Service closes his eyes in death, like a man going to a well-deserved rest. Minutes later, still staring at Page, Mick is shaken from his stupor by a faint voice from the other side of the door and the sound of a tremendous blow on its outer surface. He looks toward it, but without great concern. A few minutes ago it withstood machine-gun fire and almost didn’t let so much as the noise through. Ten years ago, it withstood some small part of the overpressure of a nuclear blast. Nevertheless, he looks. In a few seconds he hears Tennen’s faint voice shout "Ah tain!" And the sound of another blow penetrates. But this time — there’s light. A second or two after he hears the blow and feels the shock of it transmitted through the floor, Mick sees slow ripples of dull red light spread in circles from the center of the door outward, so faint that he isn’t sure that he hasn’t imagined it. The Colonel’s voice shouts again, and another blow falls against the door — but this time the ripples of light are cherry-red. And after they fade away, Mick can see that the metal of the door is itself — ever so slightly — rippled. He takes a step back. The idea of foot-thick metal warping in response to slow ripples of light is somehow not nearly as disturbing to him as the sound of Tennen’s voice, shouting his unknown language. Mick stoops to pick up Page’s gun from where it has fallen. It’s empty, of course. He should have known that. The agent knew exactly how many bullets he had, and he used every one. And it didn’t do a damn bit of good. Mick drops the gun, feeling ice water run through his veins. Apparently these are not your typical Air Force guys. Mick was in the Air Force, and he doesn’t remember anything like voice-commands that ripple metal or force fields that stop bullets. And if Page couldn’t stop Tennen, how can he do it? What does he have — Above the door he sees a small video camera, looking permanently up the hall. Of course, they would have had those all through the ship, he thinks, plugged into the AI — "Ah tain!" the voice outside shouts again, but this time the force is enough to nearly knock the innkeeper off his feet. The ripples of light propagating somehow though the door’s solid steel are yellow-white, and they flicker outward from the center, fading almost at once. But where they pass, the waves in the door’s surface are two inches deep. "Johnny," Mick whispers to himself. He backs away from the deforming door another step, then turns to run up the dim corridor. Half the truckers are still outside the door, grumbling angrily as the Air Force men herd them back inside. The official reason is that, now that Tennen and half of his people are gone, there is once again enough room to house them all indoors for the night. It also occurs to Jack that, with little twilight left, it’s better to get everyone indoors in a controlled fashion before using the machine guns. Otherwise a few always manage to slip away in the darkness and confusion. He looks at the men who, at his signal, will make the first move, chosen because they seem most likely to be able to wrestle a weapon away from a soldier. "Are you OK?" he asks Anne. She’s standing next to him, and looks anything but OK. He expects she’ll do fine, though. He, on the other hand, looks OK — at least he assumes he looks alright — but doesn’t feel like it. "No," she says simply, a little louder than Jack would like. "I just can’t believe it. How could he just leave? How could he just walk away —" "Look," Jack says, "It’s OK—" "No it’s not!" she says, suddenly in tears. "Even if he trusted these people — can he just walk away now and leave me here with armed strangers? Doesn’t he care if I live?" She stops and makes an effort to control herself, wiping her face. "When we first came here," she speaks more quietly, "even after we started taking in customers, he would never even let me go downstairs alone! He had his shotgun under the bed every night for years before I finally made him put it up on the wall. Can he just walk away now —" "Annie," Jack interrupts her. He holds out one hand close to the table top. "Was he carrying it?" he asks in a whisper. "The shotgun? When they got on the helicopters?" "No," she answers slowly. "He was carrying all those boxes — " Jack looks around the room, torn between the need to do it quickly and the desire to not be too obvious about it." "You, know," he says distractedly, "I used to think that damn gun was glued to him. He wasn’t out with us in the tents last night —" As his gaze passes over the table where Annie was sitting last night, the table where she always goes when she has a chance to sit down at all, he forces himself to concentrate. If Mick were choosing a place— On the windowsill behind the table, barely visible in the failing light, there is the remainder of an innocent-looking roll of duct tape. "I think we should sit at your usual table," Jack says quickly. "I think he at least left you a going-away present." How can a fucking airplane have a fucking hundred foot long hallway that doesn’t have a single fucking door in it? Finally Mick comes up hard against double doors at the end of the long hall just as another tremendous report sounds from the door at the aft end. This time, though, it sounds different. Already knowing what he’ll see, he nevertheless looks back down the log hall. The outside door now has a hole a foot wide in it. Even the twilit sky behind it is bright compared to the corridor. He can just make out the silhouettes of men’s heads and shoulders, framed in the opening. One grip on the handle of the big double doors tells him that they are as locked as he expected. It looks like some kind of cargo hold anyway. Not what he needs. But what he needs must be in here. It’s the purpose of the whole damned airplane! Where would it be? It would be wherever they could shield it best, like in the very center— And he’s closer to the bottom right now— Something glints in the corner of his eye and he spins to his right so fast that he almost loses his footing. Half hidden in the gloom, there is a staircase. Before he can frame a thought about it, he’s gone three steps up the grillwork stair, grasping at the slick railing. Before he reaches the top of the first flight, another explosion echoes below him. This time, however, it is accompanied by the sound of the exterior door scattering in pieces down the length of the hall. Turning aft at the top of the stairs Mick finds another set of sliding double doors, but this one incompletely closed by more than a foot. The floor he entered at was already one level above the lowest level. That means that this is the center of the airplane, and the part that would be best shielded from electro-magnetic pulse. He squeezes through the opening into a darkened room twice the size of the Wolverine’s dining room, entirely filled with long rows of swiveling chairs facing narrow desks that angle up to become every variety of radar, video, computer, and communications screen. He hears running steps in the hallway. It doesn’t have to be a radio — Johnny will still be there. He’ll be listening in on everything by now. Try anything. Instruments on the nearest desk are still glowing, and there’s a headset still sitting on it as though its occupant walked away just a minute ago. Mick grabs it, pressing one headphone to his ear and bending the slender wand that holds the microphone in front of his mouth. It occurs to him that if that wand breaks he will probably be killed. "Johnny!" he gasps into it, too tired to take the extra effort to whisper. "Hey, good buddy, how—" Red’s voice immediately responds. "Shut up!" Mick shouts. "Get to the doors! Get control of all interior doors!" "Done," the Bolo says in his normal voice. "Close the doors to the main communications room now! No, just close everything! Close every fucking thing you can find!" "Closing," the Bolo replies. He uses the clipped, precise voice that Mick has only heard on one previous night. It’s faster than a normal human could speak without losing clarity. This is the voice that Johnny would use over his radio or on-board speakers to communicate with his commander in battle. Mick jerks back around to see the doors to his room sliding shut. "Good!" he yells. "Now interior cameras and weapons systems! Intrusion countermeasures! The central hall that goes to the landing area! Use everything you can find!" "Searching. Executing," Johnny says. One of the doors that Johnny has control of now is not a door in the normal sense but an intrusion countermeasure in its own right, which is why he didn’t find it a few seconds earlier. Now, while studying its operations protocols, he notices several prominent warning links and decides to detour to discover out what all the fuss is about. When he notices the door’s nominal closing speed, he realizes that he needn’t look any further. All he has to do now is watch the soldiers running up the hall, and wait. For a few hundredths of a second he amuses himself by trying to decide which are of worse quality: the aircraft’s interior optical or infra-red sensors — but he tires of the exercise after deciding that they’re all next to worthless. Far more interesting is the problem of guessing what question Mick is preparing to ask. Through one of the communications room sensors, Johnny can see that Mick is beginning to lean forward, indicating a desire to speak. Occasionally, while pursuing his other interests, Johnny remembers to re-check the progress of the "soldiers" in the hall. He knows that, whatever they are, they’re not soldiers. Neither their faces nor what he can make out of their cranium-shapes are in any database that Johnny has. And he pretty much has them all by now. It was this knowledge, communicated to Mick last night, that led by several unpredictable stages to the current sequence of events.
Copyright © 2000 Michael Goulish |