Paul Kozerski - Skylock_玖贝云文库

- 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

- Chapter 2

her atrophied twin sister, Chicago, had been uneventful and chauffeured, and the courier thought to

allow himself the luxury of a cigarette.

He studied the driver's ancient, grime-shiny Greenbay Packers windbreaker.

"Okay to light a smoke?"

The man spoke over a shoulder. "Sure. But keep it real low. The auto-dim system on my night specs ain't

working right."

"Okay."

Trennt dipped his head and drew a quick hit off the harsh, hothouse tobacco. He knew to keep the smoke

cupped. Night drives were done in total darkness and blackout specs a delicate commodity. The quick

flare of a nearby match might be enough to burn out an older, ailing pair, the mere glowing tip of a

cigarette, enough to damage hard-to-replace circuitry.

Trennt tossed the remaining pack ahead to the car's dashboard in good will. The driver nodded and

glanced back amiably.

"Thanks, man. I'll save 'em for later. Coming into some crowded overpasses on the homestretch. Need to

keep my eyes open, ya know. How 'bout you? Long trip?"

"The longest," answered Trennt.

"I know it's not smart to ask, but . . ."

Trennt finished the all-too-familiar question, "But what's in the bag?" He glanced at the dark, battered

pouch. "Never really sure myself. Coming from NASA's Dakota recovery site, I'd guess some kind of

high-altitude data."

"But that's just low-priority stuff, ain't it?" The driver sounded disappointed.

Although he'd wondered, himself, Trennt gave his stock answer. "This must be different."

"Yeah."

Both knew to end the shop talk there.

Trennt took another ragged puff off his smoke and, with a mechanic's appreciation, scouted the car's dim

instrument panel. Tach, oil, boost, and amp gauges all rode at contented midrange readings.

He hadn't really seen much of the car's exterior at the Milwaukee relay station, but he'd guess her to be

an old '06 Chevy Impala. Stripped of reflective trim and dolled up in high-tech options, ancient sedans

like it were the last production-bred heavies reliable enough to meet the challenge.

Whatever family had once tooled to soccer games and shopping malls in this old sled would sure be

surprised by it now. Its current occupants rode sandwiched between window glass of impact resistant

acrylic sheeting and a body layered with the plastic mesh of armorlite fragproofing.

The interior was gutted and reworked with a low-riding, back-seat cargo sump. The trunk held a self-

healing fuel cell and everything was set atop priceless solid core tires—hard as a rock, but never a flat.

The old civilian colors were long gone from this night pony, replaced with the modern wonder of stealth

antiradar paint. Equally sophisticated bad guys still might find you up close with their own night specs.

But they'd never see you on a green screen. In the midst of total social ruin, science marched proudly on.

Trennt popped a side window and rested an elbow on its edge. A flood of warm air rushed in. Above,

distant worlds softly twinkled their lover's light. It might have been any other sultry night in any other

year. Only the sluggish drone of a billion fatted locusts, singing lazily after their day's pillage, would

forever set it apart.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (3 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15

- Chapter 2

Trennt remembered happier late night rides of bygone years: coming home from Dena's folks in Los

Angeles, kids tucked away in the back seat. Her, asleep and cuddled against him, up front. Bright stars

and empty interstate, just like now. He moved a hand toward her image but touched only sterile sheet

metal and pop rivets in the darkness.

She had seen the truth, right from the start. No fooling that woman with threats of terrorist missles or

warlording anti-Christs. She'd known better than to believe in some grand, flaming extinction for

mankind. God worked in subtle and poetic ways, she'd advised. And the medium of His glorious, life-

giving sun proved just fine.

Trennt was too far removed from either science or religion to really understand the genesis of it all;

something to do with a freakish outbreak of sunspots was all he knew. Whatever, it was enough to put

the screws to humanity, big time.

He puffed his rough smoke, remembering the first days of this mess. Winters got glacial and long.

Summers molten and short. Weather jumped track everywhere, disrupting growing seasons, creating

mutant crop blights, defiant insect strains, and the steady decline of mainline food harvests.

Four seasons of major crop failures had seriously drained worldwide grain reserves. Led by dollar-

bloated desert oil countries and Asian manufacturing giants, a struggle for control of the world's grain-

producing regions mounted.

Offshore investors each hoped to create their own farms on foreign soil. But great stretches of Canadian

ground had succumbed to drought. South American bottom land sank hopelessly beneath the constant

flooding of a perpetual El Niño. So, the ragged American turf caught in between became the big prize in

a worldwide tug-of-war.

Hundreds of thousands of American acres were simultaneously claimed by Middle Eastern, Oriental,

and European deed holders. The Breadbasket of the World became their weakened hostage, paying out

corn, wheat, and soy ransoms from its own diminished output to a frenzy of foreign foreclosures.

With the calling in of a century's notes, a financial panic also ensued. The dollar collapsed. Toppling

headlong into a black hole of bankruptcy, it dragged world finance and trade with it. Global industry and

commerce locked up. Civilization ran aground in a worldwide famine and depression that now

approached its ninth year.

The situation had leveled off somewhat, giving scientists hope for an eventual "solar recovery" and

likely return to a normal existence. But it didn't much matter to Trennt. His life was long over.

He took another hit from his smoke and spied the first fingers of dawn prying under the black eastern

sky. A familiar scent was growing in the mucky breeze. Chi-town. He'd recognize that cheesy puke

smell anywhere. Home. Like hell.

"Heads up!"

On the car's dash, a tiny red LED flickered. Their scanner had picked up another mobile electrical

source. Still distant, but by the increasing pulse, closing fast.

Trennt squinted about. The surrounding highway loomed empty and still. A couple of junk cars lay

sprawled across the median. A broken-backed semi and some other trash with them. Then, up left, bingo.

Tucked neatly in the crotch of an approaching overpass sat another car. Two murky figures shone dimly

inside and the muggy air carried a heavy whiff of its rich, idling exhaust. The night was about to get

interesting.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (4 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15

- Chapter 2

Trennt's driver yanked on the floor shift. He dropped back a gear and broke the rear wheels loose with

the power surge. The tachometer peaked out as they blew past the now rolling interceptor.

"Too easy," he muttered over a shoulder. "It's a good bet they've got someone else, waiting ahead. You

hang on to your cargo and hug the floor. If it looks bad, I'll try to slow down some place soft, so you can

bail out."

Trennt knew the routine. Elbows in, chin down, tuck and roll. He'd done it a few times and didn't like it.

Still, he got into the preliminary crouch, tightened his shirtweight armor against friction burns, and

braced a foot low on the door in preparation.

Their second opponent cruised a half mile beyond. It was a faster wagon, already rolling at intercept

speed. And merging from their right were two more bandits. The robbers had planned their ambush well.

There was no crossing the garbage-strewn median strip anywhere near here. No way off I-294 for

several more miles.

From his hiding place, Trennt heard the other cars bracket them. He felt their testing fender bumps and

his own driver's NASCAR-like taps in return. A satisfying crunch vibrated and Trennt heard one

opponent fishtail away on crying tires.

"Hang on!"

His wheelman cut a hard arc away from the second pirate, adding a squirt of nitrous oxide to the engine.

The Chevy chirped its tires and leapt ahead of its pursuer. But at that same critical moment, the car's

interior exploded in a grating halogen brilliance. Hot, white, and loaded with candlepower, the cruel

radiance instantly bleached away all color and shape.

The opposition had hoped to blow out their night goggles with a spotlight overload and force them into

an easy collar. Set low in the car, Trennt's own battle damage amounted to only a faint, red afterimage

that quickly dissolved with a few blinks. But the driver wasn't as lucky.

"Dammit!" he bellowed. "The light got through my specs. Grab the wheel, man. Quick!"

Trennt sprang from his crouch and lunged halfway over the seat back. He grabbed the steering wheel as

the driver leaned aside, ripping off his night goggles and jamming clenched fists to his scalded eyes. The

man's throttle foot instinctively stayed mashed to the floor though and Trennt was left guiding a runaway

missile from an impossible angle.

"I can't keep on like this," he gasped. "Can you take her back?"

The driver held spread hands before his dim, anguished face.

"No, way! My eyes're on fire! Crawl on over!"

He scooted aside, but still kept his throttle foot jammed as Trennt plunged over the seat's rock-hard

bulletproofing. Quickly settling in, Trennt familiarized himself with things.

"Okay! I've got her. Give me your specs."

Trennt one-handed the electronic glasses about his head and jabbed the temple reset button. But as he

dreaded, nothing happened.

"No good," he snapped, peeling them back off. "They're fried. If this rig has headlights, we've got to use

them."

The driver spoke through gritted teeth. "Low right, by your knee."

With a single toggle flip, the dead night erupted to a brazen, polished steel glare. Trennt hunkered

behind the steering wheel in a squinty grimace.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (5 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15

- Chapter 2

"Might as well add a siren!"

"Shouldn't be too far from the I-55 cloverleaf," encouraged the huffing driver. "Concrete's too bad to

chance holding a car anymore. But we can take the far side embankment up. Just keep heading south.

You'll see the overpass."

The blinded man licked his lips and drew a pained breath.

"By your seat," he added. "Taped to the runners; a starburst grenade. Tear it off and pass it over. If they

get too close, yell out and I'll give 'em one back."

Trennt felt low in the blackness. There, by his left ankle, was a beer-can shape. He yanked the device

free and milked its safety spoon, eager himself for a quick payback. But the bandit car had fallen off,

satisfied to merely tag along—or to keep herding them ahead.

Trennt saw the blockade with only seconds to spare. A half dozen more cars sat parked and ready. Their

crews, all armed with 1000-watt light guns, patiently awaited his arrival.

The dim glint of all those shot-ready chrome reflectors stole Trennt's breath. No way could he dodge a

barrage of that magnitude. But, he also wondered, were the bandits really intent on blinding him and

chancing a high-speed wreck that might ruin both car and cargo? Or was it just part of some grand

diversion?

The forty-foot-wide median strip was weedier here than other places they'd passed, yet strangely

unbarred and inviting. Then Trennt spied slivers of black quicksilver wavering through its concealing

growth.

Natural or engineered, the median was simply a bog. And the bad guys just out for an easy collar. Let

the driver try a stupid dash across and trap himself. Then bust his head, grab the loot, and call it a night.

The old caveman and mammoth routine. Hardly original, yet well proven.

But one thing Trennt had cultured early in his lost California home was a knack for off-road driving. He

called to his blinded chauffeur.

"Can this thing mud?"

"Mud?"

"Yeah, run the bogs."

"How deep?"

"Don't know yet. But I wouldn't say we have much choice."

"Try it. Drop her down a gear when we hit. Keep the tach riding high."

The driver yanked the safety pin from his light grenade and clamped hard on its spoon. With his other

hand, he reached over and took hold of the nitrous oxide knob between them.

"I can still run the joy juice. Say when!"

Trennt aimed the old beast for a straight shot through the dividing strip and gave it open rein. It hurled

itself across like a champ, not even touching ground until halfway through the mire. Boring the rest

aside like a high speed snowplow, it mounted the opposing concrete mud drenched, but hardly winded.

"Now!"

Back on solid ground, Trennt's passenger let the starburst grenade roll out his window. A split second

later the night sky lit to a brilliant false dawn.

The ploy worked. Their own teams blinded, only a couple of the parked cars were able to start after

them. But the tone darkened as the first weapons barked in the Chevy's wake. Bullets slapped its rear

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (6 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15

- Chapter 2

flanks, thunking hollowly into the fuel bladder. Tire hits vibrated and jerked the steering wheel.

The loose weave of interior frag netting popped and whined as it trapped and smothered more wild

slugs. Even so, occasional bullet slivers did get through. Whizzing about the passenger compartment like

mad hornets, one ricocheted off the dashboard and bit Trennt's thigh. The chase drew its first blood.

Trennt angrily yanked open the car's exhaust cutoff and pegged the gas pedal. His Chevy squatted low

and keen, easily outpacing the hounds.

"Should be coming up on the Central Avenue overpass," said the sidelined driver. His voice was

suddenly sluggish and oddly braced.

Trennt checked his flanks and rear. The on-ramps were indeed too crumbled and dangerous to risk. But

the night pony had all the heart it took for hill climbing. The rest didn't matter.

He doused the headlights, pumped his unlit brakes, and slowed enough to tackle a crumbly slope face.

The tranny clicked back to low and was joined by a couple notches of parking brake to balance the rear

wheels' grip. A nice, even sip of nitrous oxide coaxed more torque from the old V-8 and the car lugged

on, heavy but confident.

Once over the crest, Trennt left his car and rider to creep back and watch the highway below. Through

the quarter light they came. Full bore and bent on revenge. Their own headlights now brazenly lit, they

roared beneath, shaking the weary overpass with their harsh, blatting exhaust. Four, five, six—that's

right, boys. Keep on going. All the way downtown.

Trennt rolled to his side and drew a deep relaxing breath. About him, shapes were condensing from the

thinning night. Here was the somber gray outline of another trashed suburb. Marked by a half-fallen

water tower still carrying the weather-beaten township name of Berwyn-Stickney, it was the carbon

copy of so many other outlying Chicago spots: littered with stripped and torched cars, paved with

buckled, pockmarked streets. The area's huge and abandoned sanitation plant loomed as a silent, hulking

derelict in the murky distance.

Ironically, the desolate landscape also sat dotted with cheery strips of fluorescent rag—fresh surveyor

stakes, marking off more of mid-America for razing. Sometime soon, lame duck President Warrington's

army of farm contractors would commence grinding this wasteland into another fortressed brick-dust

farm, vying for any extra measure of grain to channel into the sorry regional harvest.

Trennt started back for the idling car.

"Well," he asked the napping driver, "where to from here?"

With no answer, he called again.

"Hey."

Still there was no reply. Then he inhaled the sweet-sour pungency of blood and adrenaline—that old

familiar battlefield scent of the badly wounded. Trennt quickened his pace and found the man half

conscious, glazed in a chocolate-syruplike sheen of heavy venous blood. Regardless of cargo priority,

Trennt owed him some tending.

He carefully nosed the tired Chevy through the weedy rubble of old Pershing Road, past gutted Georgian

houses, through ghost neighborhoods where kids once played hopscotch and street football, where

housewives had gossiped and soap operas played. Now all that was a memory, skinned out by salvagers

and torched by crazies. America's essence had become a home for bats.

In a makeshift lair, Trennt turned off the car and carefully rolled the driver to his side. A golden BB had

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...rski%20-%20Skylock%20(Baen)%20(v5)/0743435702___2.htm (7 of 10)28-12-2006 13:52:15

Paul Kozerski - Skylock

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: