Copyright 1986 by Walter Jon Williams Chapter One

shuttle's trough, decelerates, fires a radar-homer. Pushes the delta into the sun again.

"What's that signal?" one of the shuttle pilots asks, his passive sensors having picked up

the radar pulse from the missile. His answer comes soon enough. Flame blossoms at, the shuttle's

base, among the clustered rockets.

"Himmel!" says the same voice. Cowboy pushes another radar-homer out of its fairing.

"Ground, this is Tempel one-eight-three. Report we are under attack..." The boy twigs

fast, Cowboy thinks. The second missile plunges into the shuttle's stern and sends molten metal

spewing through the thruster compartment. Cowboy is already feeding alcohol into the afterburners,

slamming back into his couch again, diving under the target. The shuttle is twisting, trying to

make its escape. Too slowly, too big to miss.

"Tempel one-eight-three, say again?" Ground doesn't seem to be very quick on the uptake.

Cowboy looses another missile in the direction of some cargo doors and pops out his dorsal minigun

turret. Thirty-millimeter rounds riddle the shuttle's belly. If he knocks out enough hydraulics,

they won't be able to drop their landing gear, and even if the shuttle gets away, it might crash

on landing. Sparks stitch a bright trail along the shuttle's vast belly as pieces of alloy

shielding are torn apart. Freon pours like mist into the sky from broken coolant veins. The pilot

isn't waiting for the people on the ground to figure things out; he's making maximum use of his

maneuvering thrusters and flaps, and is dropping like an elevator, trying to swat the delta with

his entire craft. Cowboy dodges easily, fires a missile into a riddled part of the ship, and hopes

it will cause structural damage. His dorsal minigun is empty and he retracts the turret.

He burns forward along the massive ship, inverting himself, the belly gun slamming out of

its faired hatchway. He begins firing the minigun up into the command section, aiming for the

control crystal and the pilot. An oxygen tank explodes with a puff of frigid gas. He can see

electricity arcing between broken cables. He fires another missile into the wreckage and suddenly

the shuttle's frame screams in pain, a sound Cowboy hears as attenuated shock waves that rock the

Express. Pieces of metal begin peeling off from the base of a fifty-foot canard, little bits of

chaff whipped by the thundering slipstream.

"She's coming apart under us," the pilot reports, and it's true. Pony Express twists out

of danger as the canard rips away, as hydraulic fluid spurts like arterial blood into the air. At

Mach two there isn't much leeway for a shape that loses its aerodynamics. The shuttle lurches,

slews to one side, begins to crumple.

"Tempel one-eight-three..." the pilot begins, but then there's a final, echoing click as

the transmitter flattens against a wall of air and suddenly there's nothing on that channel,

nothing but the feeble sound of ground control trying to regain contact, talking to no one but

himself. The shuttle is a silver blizzard of alloy, twisted structural members, wings, canards,

tumbling cargo drums, all spinning toward a final engagement with the Pacific hidden under the

vast swirl of cloud below. Pony Express banks over the metal storm, its engines cycling down

toward green, and begins its long descent toward Nevada.

Cowboy feels his neurotransmitter hail begin to slacken. He flips a mental switch and

fires a quick-burst transmission toward Nevada. "This is Cowboy. Mission accomplished. You may

applaud at will."

"No time to cheer, Cowboy." It's Reno's waterlogged voice. "Everyone's too busy right now.

Would you like to listen in?"

"So long as you keep that white-brained pederast out of my head," Cowboy says.

"I don't think he wants to talk to you anyway. He seemed kind of upset."

Pony Express stoops like a hawk over the Mojave, shedding speed as it loses altitude. Reno

cuts him into the commo net and suddenly his mind is a babble of voices. The Dodger's people in

the West, the Hetman in the East, and Roon's people everywhere are all feeding news releases to

the interface screamsheets. "Tempel Cure Down in Flames." "No Relief for Sufferers of Viral

Huntington's. " That's the first news.

Then the news reports begin to target on specific screamsheets. NewsFax receives a report

that the Tempel flight was shot down. Seconds is told the Tempel shuttle was sabotaged. MedNews

gets reports that the cure might have had unforeseen side effects, that all the Tempel money went

down the drain. MarkReps receives a report that Tempel is overextended in its takeover bid, a

report fleshed out with a lot of Roon-generated statistics. MedNews gets confirmation from a "high

Tempel official" that the Huntington's cure was worthless. NewsFax received an "unconfirmed

report" that Tempel sabotaged its own shuttle in order to prevent the news about the cure from

leaking.

While the reports storm into the screamsheet offices, Roon, the Dodger, and Michael are

beginning to dump Tempel stock on the Chicago exchange. The sell orders are laundered through a

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few hundred robobrokers, concealing the fact they're coming from only a few sources. The

robobrokers are monitoring the screamsheet traffic and "Tempel" is coming up a lot. Red lights

begin to wink on the computer decks of the robobroker's human supervisors. News about the sell

orders hits the screamsheets, and the panic begins.

Temper stock falls, triggering automatic sell orders from thousands of automated brokers.

Nervous stockholders jitter to their monitors. Tempel had been hovering at 4,500 when Cowboy's

miniguns began hammering the shuttle, now it's down by nearly 800. Screamsheet stories reflect

Tempel's lack of capital reserves, its research budget wasted on a useless cure, the rumors of the

self-sabotage, the possibilities that there will be no dividend this year or the next. Michael and

the Dodger feed the panic with a continuous round of small sell orders. The market goes crazy.

Pony Express whispers across the Nevada line, a black cursor descending, like a graph of

the values of Tempel shares. More warning lights flash in Chicago. Tempel execs are denying the

screamsheet reports, but no one believes Orbitals anyway, and all it does is feed the rumors.

Tempel shares have lost 56 percent of their value in about twelve minutes. Chicago exchange

officials begin feeling heat from outside the well, and trading in Tempel stock is frozen "pending

confirmation of outside reports."

That only fuels the action elsewhere. Roon dumps large blocks of stock onto the Osaka and

Singapore exchanges. Tempel shares are falling so fast in Mombasa that Roon doesn't even need to

interfere there. In Osaka, Tempel is down under 900 before trading is shut off on orders from the

Exchange Master Program. Singapore doesn't follow the regs and Tempel continues to decline.

The Orbital begins its response, declaring an immediate 5-percent dividend. The plunge

begins to slow as Pony Express begins to circle its base. People are beginning to look more

carefully at the rumors. Roon tries to counter by ordering a screamsheet report that Tempel can't

pay its declared dividend, that all its capital is tied up in the Korolev bid. The United Orbital

Soviet announces the combined pharmaceutical bloc is funding Tempel's dividend, which appears

simultaneously with Couceiro's personal announcement that Tempel is divesting itself of all

Korolev stock, that the takeover bid is concluded unsuccessfully, but that all profits will be

used to guarantee the dividend. With the dividend guaranteed by two different sources, Tempel

stock begins to stagger upward. Michael tries more screamsheet rumors, but people are thinking

twice about any more unsubstantiated Tempel stories.

A cold pulse moves over the net, firing at the speed of tight from Roon's big crystal AI.

Cowboy cringes at the sound, tastes a phantom foulness in his mask. "We've hit bottom. Start

buying. We'll sell at fifteen hundred and hope we catch a profit-taking storm and drive it down

again."

Cowboy rotates the delta's exhaust, hovering over the Nevada desert. Buy orders swarm out

through the robobrokers. Tempel's recovery is faster than its collapse. At 1,500, sell orders go

out again, but there are more eager buyers than sellers. Prices hover uncertainly for a few

seconds as profits are taken, but there is another announcement from Couceiro.

The reserve supply of the Huntington's cure will be brought down from orbit within days,

accompanied by Orbital cutters to prevent attack. The screamsheets begin printing releases about

the safety and effectiveness of the cure. Prices roar upward.

The Chicago exchange reopens trading in Tempel at 2,000. The Dodger and Michael have

exhausted their available funds. The proxy from every piece of stock they've acquired is sent at

once to Roon in Venezuela. Pony Express hovers over its pad, slipping toward the ground as its

landing gear slides smoothly out of its fairings, as Tempel prices seem to stabilize around 3,000.

The ground crew runs for the delta, carrying their camouflage net. Cold despair gnaws at

Cowboy's heart. The message that Roon sends through the network only serves to confirm Cowboy's

intuition.

"Your proxies are not enough to force Couceiro out. If I demanded a stockholders' vote at

this stage, I would only call attention to my part in this."

"Gutless bastard!" Cowboy shrieks. Pain burns in his awakening limbs.

"I can try to change some minds on the board, but I suspect Couceiro will have gathered

more admiration than enmity for his work today. I suggest we take our profits and consider it a

lesson."

"Afraid to make yourself a target, Roon?" Cowboy demands. "Afraid to play your games with

grownups?"

"He's out of the net," Reno reports. "He can't hear you. "

"I should have killed him when I had the chance," Cowboy says. He unstraps, pulls off his

helmet. Sweat trickles down his forehead. The canopy rises with an electronic whine. Desert heat

takes his breath away, even with the camouflage netting occluding the sun. He feels the crystal in

his head burning, his anger a roaring combustion in his heart.

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"Don't start breaking down the net," Cowboy says. "We're going to need it. I'll explain

later." He unfaces and stands in the cockpit, legging down the ladder as hands rise to his,

assistance.

The headquarters here is a bubble tent draped in camouflage nets. Fuel trucks and a pair

of panzers stand nearby, wavering in the heat. Helmet in his hand, Cowboy stalks into the tent.

Sarah meets him at the doorway. He sees a stricken look, eyes shadowed by despair. There's

a red crease across her forehead from the headset she was wearing when she was, tied into the net.

She reaches out, wraps him in her arms. Cowboy lurches to a stop. She presses her cheek to his

neck.

"'It's not over," Cowboy says. "Where's the Dodger? I don't want the net closed down."

She pulls back and looks at him. "What are you talking about?"

"We have a lot more stock now, we made a big profit. We're in a lot stronger position."

Sarah shakes her head. "What good is it? We don't-"

Cool air blows fitfully against Cowboy's forehead. The g-suit seems to clutch at him,

dragging him down the well.

"I shot them down once," he says. "I'll do it again."

For a moment Sarah seems suspended in time, her face a mask of shock. "The escorts.

They'll have escorts this time."

"Fuck the escorts." He takes her hand and leads her through the big bubble tent, toward

the comet section set up in the rear. The Dodger sits there amid the ruin of the plan, the

communications gear being broken down, the Flash Force specialists watching the bustle with cool

professional interest. Cowboy thinks he's never seen the Dodger look so old.

"Dodger," he says. "Listen. It's not over." He can see the heads turning toward him. "I

want to make a run."

Already the steel guitar is bending notes in his mind.

Chapter Twenty-one

Sarah ties naked and restless on her pallet in a section of the bubble tent sealed off by

an opaque hanging of Jovian plastic. Her arms and neck are red with sunburn from the hours she's

spent in the sun assembling homemade missiles, the sunblock she'd brought from Florida having

proved to be less than useful in the Nevada desert. Cooled air whistles through the duct but does

not ease her discomfort. She reaches for her beer and presses the cold bottle to her forehead,

feeling the chill in welcome contrast to her burning skin.

"Where are you going to get pilots, C'boy?" The question had been Warren's. "We got five

deltas, six if we don't keep one in reserve for spare parts, but we only got three pilots."

Warren's head shook slowly from side to side. "Most of the pilots died crossing the Line. And a

lot of the survivors are hiding from both sides in this war."

Then Sarah remembered the pictures on the wall of the Blue Silk, the few that weren't

swathed in mourning ribbons. She blurted out what she knew, and a call to Tampa was made. Maurice

was coming west, with 30,000 in gold guaranteed. Attempts had been made, one successful, to

contact a pair of old cutterjocks Maurice had recommended. Raw material for missiles were brought

in by chopper. Fuel and explosive were being cooked up day and night under a waving camouflage

net.

steps in, sealing the door behind him. Sweat pours down his face. He's in a pair of worn

coveralls, his forehead and hands bright with sunburn.

"Hi." He kneels by her side and bends to kiss her nipple. Sarah hands him her beer. He

sits, crosses his legs, drinks. "I've got to ferry in a delta from Colorado tonight," he says.

"The chopper's taking me out."

"When are you going to get some sleep?"

Cowboy wipes sweat from his forehead with his palm, then wipes the palm on his thigh. "On

the chopper flight," he says. "I'm not piloting."

"Shit, Cowboy." She scowls and props herself up on her elbows. "You need rest. Take off

your clothes and come to bed."

He grins. "I don't know just how restful that's going to be."

She moves over to make room on the pallet, pats the place beside her. Her voice is

deliberate. "Very...restful."

Cowboy puts down the beer and reaches for the zip on his coveralls, and at that moment he

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stops, his motion frozen. Sarah turns her head and listens, hearing the distant baritone throb of

the helicopter growing as it moves in from the north. "Fuck," Sarah mutters. She can see the fever

rising again in Cowboy's eyes, the brightness she'd seen two days before when he'd stalked from

his delta...the love of speed and metal, the obsession with the crystal interface and the

electronic extensions of his mind hurtling at the speed of light...In these moods Cowboy seems

surrounded, like an atomic nucleus, by a shroud of electrons, impenetrable, free from earthly

attachments, immune... He uncoils his long legs and stands up.

"Sorry," he says, but he's already gone, his mind lost in some internal space, insulated

behind his plastic eyes. He blows a kiss in her direction and leaves. Sarah reaches for her beer,

picks it up, puts it down again. She's lost her thirst. She rolls on her stomach, feeling the

fitful ventilator breeze begin to cool the sweat on her back.

Later in the day she's on communications duty. There isn't any heavy traffic, and messages

are being kept to a minimum to lessen the chance of Tempel detecting the net. She sits in the big,

still room, the foam pads of her headset chafing her sunburned forehead. She hates the military

atmosphere here, the guards, the duties assigned from above, all the emphasis on security and

discipline that cramps her dirtgirl style. The screen before her is blank except for a white

cursor. Across the room, a communications tech is doing something with cables, insulating tapes,

male/female connectors. The cooling system in here doesn't seem any more efficient than in her own

room. She taps the keys in frustration, a line of gibberish, then wipes it.

If she'd worked it right, Sarah knows, she wouldn't be here, sitting in an inflated target

in the middle of a former nuclear testing range, helping a collection of range rats take on the

Orbitals in a few homemade jets. She could be looking down on Nevada from a weightless home out of

the well, living there in exemplary alloy immunity with Daud, the both of them cleansed of the mud

that had clung to them all their lives. If she had just managed Andre better, if she had not let

sentiment contaminate her actions...if she had kept her desire pure and titanium-hard, she would

be safe now, wrapped in the perfect insulation of vacuum.

The cooling unit whispers of futures that will never be. She knows the one that is most

likely: charred bodies wrapped in melted metal, a personal death, a figure with uncertain features

but equipped with Andre's metal irises and Cunningham's whispering voice, coming with the

supersonic suddenness of a bullet. This whole ridiculous homemade venture exploding like shrapnel,

each survivor seeking cover, turning on one another in their search for safety.

The tech bangs on something with the butt end of a screwdriver. Sarah grins and relaxes in

her chair, pushing the headset back, wiping her forehead. She closes her eyes and rolls her head,

feeling her neck bones crackle.

Foolish as it sounds, there is no place she would rather be than here.

An incoming call tickles her mind as a signal begins bleeping on her screen. She adjusts

the headset over her temples and sends a mental signal. Her nerves cringe in response to the cold

pulse of distant crystal madness.

"This is Roon. My people found the time and date of the shipment."

Sarah flips on the recorder. "Ready to receive," she says into the mic; no point in using

the headset for chat.

"Is that you, Sarah?" The forced intimacy of the words whispering in her head is worsened,

made almost unendurable, by their tonelessness, her knowledge of the man sitting in his alloy

castle, stroking the shining hair of one of his victims while he purrs into his chips. "I remember

you very well. Smooth olive skin, and the scars you wore with such defiance. I would have taught

you the futility of such defiance, Sarah. Taught you the joys of submission."

The frozen, remote voice turns her bones to ice. She's going to have to edit this

recording; she's not going to let anyone else hear this. "I'm not Sarah," she says. "If you don't

have a message for me to pass on, clear this channel."

"Ah." Even through the tonelessness Sarah can sense Roon's pleasure in her anger. "As you

wish. The new shipment is coming down tomorrow on the Venture-class shuttle Argosy, arrival time

calculated as eighteen thirty-two. The shuttle will be landing at Edwards, not Vandenberg. It will

be escorted by six Hyperion-class frigates."

Sarah's heart is crowding her chest. Tomorrow is much too soon. Cowboy's pilots haven't

even flown together yet. And Edwards is the Orbital's military and testing field, not their

commercial port-no facilities to land the frigates at Vandenberg, she figures. They're big ships,

capable of maneuvering in space and atmosphere both. But on the other hand, the change might be

good-Edwards is closer to the base in Nevada, and the shuttle will be within Cowboy's range for a

longer period.

"Message received," Sarah says, and repeats it to make certain.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, I truly am." The cryogenic voice sounds infuriatingly superior. "I know

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this is too soon for you to make adequate preparations. But your failure will only delay the

historic relationship for a short while. The new order will evolve regardless. The pure

inevitability of the data demands it."

Sarah snaps off the recorder. She tries to cool the anger in her voice. "We will proceed

as planned," she says. "We will down the shuttle."

There is a fractional hesitation in Roon's voice. "Understood," he says. And his presence

fades from the network. The white cursor begins to blink again.

Bastard, Sarah thinks. If we go down, if there's nothing left, I'm going to pay you a

visit and run Weasel right into your brain. Leave the planet a little cleaner when I'm done.

Sarah pages the Dodger and calls him to the room. She uses her headset to edit Roon's

comments and has the new version ready when the Dodger walks in. She plays him the recording and

watches the concern build in the older man's eyes.

He cuts a plug of tobacco for a long silent moment. "We can do her, maybe," he says. "But

we're still missing a pilot."

Sarah hunches over her screen. "I'll find you one," she says. Maurice has told her about

some guy who, last anyone heard, lived on Catalina. He's moved and no one knows where.

She digs through records, finds his address, calls his old neighbors. One of them mentions

Santa Barbara, where she has to go through the same procedure. This time a neighbor mentions

Carson City. Jackpot. The man's almost next door.

He turns out to be in need of thirty K in gold. The Flash Force arranges for helicopter

delivery tonight.

The Dodger beams at her and pats her on the shoulder. "Good, Sarah. We've got our team."

He shifts his tobacco from cheek to cheek and looks for one of the cuspidors his people have

brought with him: "Your Maurice is flying in tonight. I've got to get all the pilots together with

him so they can get his lecture on Orbital tactics."

More military stuff. Sarah's glad she won't have to deal with it. She's got another hour

left on the monitors before she can break for dinner, and even then it will be a mass meal served

in a special tent, too reminiscent of her childhood meals in DP camps for her to look forward to

it with any appetite.

The Dodger shuffles away. Sarah watches the white cursor blink and wishes she had

something cold to drink. Then the cursor is racing across the screen with a piece of incoming

data, and a new voice is tickling Sarah's temples: "I want to talk to Sarah. Tell her it's her