Paul Kozerski - Skylock.pdf - Paul Kozerski - margozap

- Chapter 1

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- Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

June 24, 2050. What remained of California had been written off as frontier. Too little American

influence. Hardly anything left recognizable or worthwhile after the Quake. In this, the midpoint of its

first century, the new millennium held little in common with all the technological greatness which had

preceded it.

Far up here though, all the tragedy and ruin seemed part of some other world. Lost to view from the

great wretched masses, a tiny bit of rare technology tracked silently along the border of near-space,

headed toward a far distant Midwestern retrieval site and the complex network of couriers waiting to

deliver it into anxious scientific hands.

Accompanied only by the low hum of its motor, Solar High Altitude Powered Platform 216B6 and a

dispersed fleet of its siblings cruised the thin North American air nonstop. Some performed the routine

daily function of measuring ozone concentrations and dust content of the upper atmosphere. Others

gauged the polar magnetic shift or the growth of unexplored quake rifts some twelve miles below. But

certain units, like 216B6, were dedicated specifically to watching the sun itself for the dreaded signs of

its healing.

Bursts of intense solar radiation had long ago fried all spy, weather, and communications satellites into

useless orbiting junk. So this type of inexpensive vinyl glider had become the government's feeble eyes

to the outlands of both space and ground.

sunlight during daytime hours and a bank of lightweight membrane batteries at night. The SHAPP's

optic orange color had long been faded to a pale yellow. Made brittle by constant immersion in lethal

ozone baths and high-altitude acid sleets, its fuselage and wings were riddled with pinholes from

micrometeorite hits and passage through volcanic dust clouds.

Still, the glider doggedly held to the 100 mph pace programmed at its launch those many weeks ago.

Leaving the NASA/Crop Research Division research station at Fort Collins, Colorado, 216B6 traversed

the great wasteland of America, spread dimly out 60,000 feet below. It crossed cities broken down to

kingdoms, towns fallen to clan rule, regions sterilized by the North American Flu epidemic—or worse.

Ironically, none of the damage had resulted from war. Not a nuke had fallen. Not a gun had been fired.

All the ponderous volumes on nuclear winter were just so much idle trash, for after a couple million

years of putting up with mankind's antics, it seemed Mom Nature herself had finally decided to

intervene. Realizing her error in sparing the rod, she now meant to yank the rug from under her sloppy

tenants through the simple, but effective, mechanism of global hunger.

Politically, Washington had held out the longest among its worldwide counterparts. Then it too followed

the rest of the world in closing down its bankrupt central government. But where even the Wall Street

crash of 120 years prior had at least left a rubble pile from which the nation could rebuild, here now was

only a smoking crater. The grand experiment was over; Uncle Sam, dead—and left unburied.

A hasty bureaucratic reorganization was devised that split the country along supposedly more

manageable, regional lines. Blocks of states were cleaved from their federal union and turned back to the

cloisters of their decentralized origin. A series of smaller governing offices were temporarily opened

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- Chapter 1

throughout the land. And a reunification was planned after the crisis had been stemmed. So, at least in

concept, the nation survived.

But all that was meaningless to the SHAPP. Flying solo so far above the ruinscape, its own life was

nearly over. Earlier, 216B6 had banked away from its outflight over the California peninsula. It departed

the distant rubble of the Great West Coast Quake and left behind the tricky wind patterns flushed

upward by the recontoured land.

Obeying the final orders of return and descent geared inside its old-fashioned clockwork brain, a dozen

hours from now, the broad-winged glider would begin a prescribed aerodynamic death ritual of gentle,

descending corkscrews. Its valuable data would be wrenched free and thrust into the waiting hands of a

complex courier network.

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Framed

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- Chapter 2

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- Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Trennt watched from the spartan back seat as his driver ran an adjusting hand over the crackling radio

monitor. He then checked his own obsolete, mechanical wristwatch. The hands showed 3:50 glowing in

silent, lime urgency on its dim face. Dawn was too near, safe haven too far off. Trennt looked again to

the darkened radio, wondering himself what was wrong with the thing. Northern lights were a continual

and understandable signal interference these days. But the month-end clear window still had another

twenty-four hours before it closed. The night sky was obligingly clear and reception should be good.

Yet, it wasn't so. The driver gave his receiver another rap of knuckles, then wrote it off.

"No more friendly voices guiding this ride," he offered soberly. Glancing from radio to horizon, he

appraised his rider. "And a hijacker's moon due up, to boot."

But if the wheelman expected any show of nerves from this particular passenger, he'd be sorely

disappointed. That part of Trennt had dried up long ago, making him so effective at what he did today.

Trennt was a prized member of the government's twenty-first-century express relay system. His job was

assuring the personal transport and delivery of priority communiqués between Midwestern pickup and

drop-off points. It was a vocation he handled with total unquestioning professionalism and personal

indifference to the cargo he carried.

The work had taken Trennt across great stretches of Midwestern desert and through crowded city ruins.

He'd escorted cargo midday to midnight, horseback to hotfoot; through a latter-day Pony Express

gauntlet filled with primitive dangers, both backwoods and open highway.

Understandably, a courier's life didn't boast of longevity. The stable's mules mostly did it for the

common macho-jock reasons of tech village status and perks. And the cheap thrill of pressing their luck

and daring to yank the devil's tail.

Reasonable precautions were afforded their ranks in issues of shirtweight body armor, scrip money, and

medicinal goodie packs. But anything more was strictly self-provided. It was a job for the fearless and

foolhardy. Or for those like Trennt, who simply needed the penance.

He'd done well, having started in the bowels of Chicago as a black market runner for Fat Manny, the

local neighborhood boss. During his two-year apprenticeship, Trennt had proven his mettle regularly,

hauling premium canned goods and bootlegged medicines in a car much like this.

Two wounds and no hijacks brought a notoriety that eventually ushered Trennt into the big league

transports of "most favored" status. And here he thrived.

Gravy runs were done in daylight and sometimes under escort. But tough, demanding ones like this were

what he craved. For unchaperoned travel after dark meant covert goods and rewards worth very big risks

to the daring opposition. Any solo car with wheels and gas was priceless in itself, not to mention the

black market value of whatever illicit freight it happened to carry.

As expected, competing forces of random bushwhackers and organized crime felt the challenge worthy

enough to subsidize their own fleets of midnight cruisers. And they loosed them to roam the old

blacktop in search of just such booty.

Tonight Trennt was tired. Having personally escorted this particular cargo pouch the full six hundred

miles from its South Dakota origin was his biggest run ever. Thankfully, the base leg from Milwaukee to

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