Paul Kozerski - Skylock.pdf
(
945 KB
)
Pobierz
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 1
Back
|
Next
Contents
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___1.htm (1 of 3)28-12-2006 13:52:13
- 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.
Powered by a toothpick prop and pusher-type electric motor, SHAPP 216B6 ran directly off the harsh
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
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___1.htm (2 of 3)28-12-2006 13:52:13
- 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.
Back
|
Next
Contents
Framed
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___1.htm (3 of 3)28-12-2006 13:52:13
- Chapter 2
Back
|
Next
Contents
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (1 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15
- 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
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (2 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15
Plik z chomika:
margozap
Inne pliki z tego folderu:
Paul Kozerski - Skylock.pdf
(945 KB)
Inne foldery tego chomika:
Abbott, Edwin A
Adams, Douglas
Aesop
Akers, Alan Burt
Alcott, Louisa May
Zgłoś jeśli
naruszono regulamin