A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 50 The Observation Bay

We watched in silence. People clumped in uncertain groups. They clustered at the windows, unable to tear themselves away. Behind us, the monitors hummed and chirped, recording everything. The technicians murmured softly into their headsets, but their words were muted and their expressions were grim. There was no banter, no commentary; the normal buzz of chatter was missing.

Nobody was prepared for this-not on this scale. There was no wiry to describe the depth of isolation and aloneness we were suddenly feeling, the profound sense of abandonment and futility. It infected the Bosch like a palpable stench. Suddenly, the last illusion of normalcy had been shattered. The world we thought we knew was truly dying. It was over. All of it.

I couldn't handle it. I left the forward lounge and headed downstairs to the spacious cargo level. It was louder here. Things were busier. Mechanical things were happening. People moved with purpose and intensity; there was a lot to do and there wasn't u lot of time. They weren't looking out the windows and they weren't brooding about what they saw.

The huge access hatch of the number-one cargo bay was gaping wide open. Launching racks hung down out of it like trailing fingers. Periodically, there came the sound of something thumping into position, followed shortly thereafter by a louder noise as it whooshed down and away.

The technical crew had begun dropping probes and launching spybirds to scout the fringes of the mandala. They'd be at it all night long. A whole spectrum of silent peepers was moving into place, all kinds of mechanimals: spiders of all sizes, insect-like creepers and crawlers, spybirds, bat-things, kites-even a slick mechanical snake. And of course, the usual assortment of prowlers, growlers, and bears.

All of these things had to be plugged in, warmed up, checked out, briefed, targeted, pointed, loaded, and launched into the darkening terrain below. Nobody here would have a lot of time for anything until after the last machine was launched. Later, after the data began flowing in, after it was collated and analyzed and displayed, after all the photographs began appearing on the giant display screens-then this crew might begin to feel the same impact. Right now, they worked.

In the aft-most cargo bay, the retrieval team was probably bringing in the last of the flyers now. The Batwings[4] had been out all afternoon, soaring ahead, scouting, scanning…

All but one of them had returned safely. We'd lost contact with it and had no idea why. No rescue signal had been received. Captain Harbaugh and General Tirelli had discussed the matter and decided not to risk any more flights until daylight. We'd send out spybirds instead. If they found the pilot, we'd call for an immediate rescue mission. Otherwise, we'd wait until morning and send out three Batwings on an aerial search. If they found anything, we'd call in choppers. If not… we'd turn the search over to Rio de Janeiro and let them decide how to proceed.

It was a cold and heartless decision-but it was exactly this kind of decision that Lizard and I had been discussing yesterday morning. The mandate of this operation was more important than any individual life. The reconnaissance pilots knew what the mission orders were, they knew the risks. If they went down, we'd try to look for them. But we wouldn't—couldn't-delay the Bosch. The Brazilian government had given us just ten days to go in, take pictures, and get out. The airship would sail on whether a downed pilot was found or not.

The pilots were all volunteers.

Oh hell. Everyone aboard this thing was a volunteer. The same orders that applied to the pilots applied to all of us. And we all knew it. At the time we'd been briefed, I don't think anyone had really believed in the possibility that the order would actually be applied. Other than the scouting flights, nobody was leaving the airship. The entire mission would be carried out by remotes. The only direct contact we would have with the mandala nest would be our observation posts set up in the cargo bays.

But now, with one pilot missing and presumed down, and the blighted Amazon rumpled beneath us; the reality of it all was starting to come home. I watched as three more spybirds were uncrated and mounted in the launching racks. Silently, I wished them godspeed and luck. I'd never met the pilot, I didn't even know her name. I just wanted her home safe. I hoped she had someone to welcome her return. And I wondered how I would be feeling if it were Lizard out there in the fast-fading twilight.

I shuddered and headed aft, toward the number-two cargo bay where the primary observation team would be readying for the Coari flyover.

The bay had been especially refitted for this mission. A railing had been installed around the huge open access, so we could lean out over it and look straight down into the nightmare below. Captain Harbaugh was letting the airship descend as low as she could. She was going to bring us down to twenty meters, then if it appeared that nothing in the camp was going to reach up and grab us, we'd ease our way down to fifteen, and maybe even ten. We wanted to get as close as safely possible. This was going to be very intense.

As I entered, somebody gave an order, and the lights in the cargo bay were muted. Throughout the airship, the lights were going down. The plan was not to show any illuminated windows at all; just an enormous pink sky-whale. It was especially important that the observation and launch bays be dark. We didn't want to reveal a great open hatch in the belly of the vessel, blazing away like glory into the night and attracting the Chtorran equivalent of moths and God only knew what else.

I stopped at the railing and leaned over to peer down at the ground below. It slid by, looking exactly like one of the endless displays in the simulation tank. Here, closer to the actual mandala, the dark folded land was feathered with scarlet growths and near-luminous patches of blue iceplant that sprawled across the slopes of the hills like unmelted snowdrifts.

The airship was barely creeping along. We were slowing as we approached our target. By the time we reached the center of the mandala, it would be evening.

We passed slowly over tendrils of the settlement. The domes looked more and more like cancerous growths. Shapeless and unidentifiable things moved darkly in one of the corrals. I had no idea what they were. Three gastropedes came pouring out of the undergrowth, twisting and turning as they tried to comprehend the giant shape sliding across their sky. It was almost too dark to see now, but the gastropedes had better eyes than we did. They knew we were here.

I lifted my head and looked across the railing toward the other observers. They were all dark shapes in the gloom. Only a few people were gathered here; the rest were clustered around the video tables, watching the views that were starting to come back from the probes. As each data-channel was established, it was linked through to one of three ganglion-repeaters, and from there to the satellite-net. Later, after all the channels were up and running, we'd drop the ganglion-repeaters somewhere in the jungle, probably on some convenient hill, and Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Oakland, Detroit, Montreal, Orlando, Honolulu, and all the other stations would then be able to maintain real-time monitoring of this nest directly.

I noticed Dwan Grodin at the largest of the video tables; it was the brightest light-in the room, and it illuminated her face from below, giving her a ghastly Frankenstein's-monster look. I came around the corner of the railing and strolled as casually as I could over to the glowing display. A clump of technicians was listening to Dwan as she explained an obscure technical detail of night photography image enhancement-something about narrow-frequency coherent nano-pulses. The eye couldn't see them, but the specialized sensors in our cameras could collate the assorted pulses into full-color stereo displays.

The video table was showing a collage of today's scanning overlaid across the most recent satellite maps. It looked like a ragged and rumpled quilt had been spread unevenly across the table and illuminated from below. The height values in the stereo image had been doubled to accentuate the terrain, and the displayed landscape was creeping steadily past to mirror the progress of the airship. Even though the terrain below us was starting to flatten out as we approached the center of the mandala, the land still had a northward slope. The brighter zones of the display indicated areas where real-time updates from the probes were continually adding new information to the image.

Two of the technicians looked up as I approached; they returned their attention to the display without acknowledging my existence. Dwan glanced up, frowned, hesitated, then continued her painfully spoken explanation. I didn't know the doctor she was talking to. but I recognized the name on her tag: Shreiber, Marietta. Good-looking lady. Serious attitude problem. She looked over, didn't recognize me in the dark, then turned her attention back to Dwan. Maybe I'd talk to her later, maybe I wouldn't. Her actions of last week didn't seem quite so important anymore. I focused instead on Grodin.

Dwan's speech was slow and excruciating to listen to, but what she said was literate and to the point. "-including the ordnance overmap from the m-military n-network. The humans in the Coari infestation seem to have only a f-few weapons. All of the w-weapons have been d-disabled. Starting's-six m-months ago, Operation Nightmare b-began triggering random f-failures throughout the Amazon b-basin. As of three weeks ago, there were no working m-military devices in any of the three m-mandala nests on our primary site-selection list. The information g,-gathered in't-today's f-f-flyovers indicates that no replacements for any of the d-disabled weapons have been b-brought into the C'oari camp. So we d-don't have to worry about anyone b-below shooting at us."

"Unless they have handmade weaponry," I suggested. Shreiber looked up, annoyed. She thought she was the expert. Dwan was slower to react, but more intense. She looked across the table at me, angry at my interruption and uncertain whether or not she should even admit that I was there. Her face froze, and then reanimated in a fluster of confusion. Her features looked like they were all arguing with each other while her emotional processes churned. Her eyes fluttered, her mouth worked, her hands clenched on the table edge. Finally, her professionalism outvoted her annoyance. "I d-don't think so," she said with painful precision. "It isn't just that the c-capability for the't-technology is not c-commonly available; the d-desire for it also seems to be lacking. Apparently, the Amazon g-gastropedes d-do not f-feel particularly threatened by a human p-presence-and vice versa, thc humans in the b-basin seem to have reached an accommodation with the infestation." She glared at me. "P-part of our job is to find out how humans can exist unm-molested within a Chchtorran society."

"You don't exist unmolested inside a Chtorran society," I corrected. "You exist unmolested inside a Chtorran."

"I w-would expect you to say's-something like that," Dwan replied coldly. "All you w-want to d-do is's-slash and b-burn."

"That's the military mind-set," said Shreiber. "Don't worry about it. This isn't their mission. It's ours." She still hadn't twigged.

"It's not a 'mind-set,' ' I said quietly. "It's the result of direct observation-"

"You l-lived with r-renegades," Dwan stuttered. "You, of all p-p-people, should know- b-better."

"They fed their children to the worms!" I snapped right back. "There isn't any cooperation. It's a delusion."

"Listen, McCarthy-'' interrupted one of the technicians. I recognized him, Clayton Johns; big and beefy, he'd been a college football star or something. He was always grinning and slapping people on the back, and fucking anything that moved or even looked like it was capable of movement or had maybe thought about moving once. Right now, his expression was tight and his voice was low and controlled. He looked like he was about to get physical. He straightened where he stood.

I'd already decided, if he moved on me, I was going to break his kneecap. I was still thinking about the missing pilot, and I wasn't in a terrific mood. Clayton Johns apparently thought he was defending something; he spoke with ill-concealed arrogance. "You're not welcome here," he drawled. "So, why don't you just pack up your unwanted opinions and go take a flying-"

"Excuse me-?" A new voice. We all turned as one. General Tirelli and Captain Harbaugh had come quietly up to the video table. In the darkness, none of us had noticed. They were two grim silhouettes.

"If there is any flying," General Tirelli said politely, "Captain Harbaugh will order it. If there is any fucking, I will order that. As for Captain McCarthy's opinions, he's doing exactly what he was hired to do." She fixed Clayton Johns with a penetrating stare. "He is very welcome here. He is aboard this vessel to give us the benefit of his considerable expertise. He knows more about the worms than anybody else on this ship." She included Shreiber now. "He even knows more about the worms than you do. So I suggest that you make every effort to work with him."

Johns lowered his gaze so General Tirelli wouldn't see his expression. A mistake. General Tireili wasn't stupid.

She looked right through him with a penetrating stare and added, "If you don't like it, I'll be happy to reassign you anywhere you want. I believe there's an opening for a kitchen orderly."

Johns went rigid. He straightened up immediately. "No, ma'am," he said. "I have no problem."

"Hm. We'll see." Tirelli gave him a skeptical look. She'd dealt with this type before. She started to turn away

Dr. Shreiber wasn't as quick. She gazed across the video table, looking directly at me with a meaningful smirk. "I thought this was supposed to be a scientific mission, but ah, now I see otherwise. The priorities have shifted, haven't they… ?"

Tirelli turned back around slowly. I wanted to shout, ''Incoming-!"

"You stupid little bitch," the general said sadly. "You couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you? So blind and stupid and mean-spirited. What a deadly combination. Who needs the worms when we have you and your attitude problem aboard? I wasn't going to say this in public, but you've given me no choice. You-specifically you, Dr. Marietta Shreiber-are a very large part of this problem. Last week, you disregarded the formal chain of operational command established by the joint military and scientific network. You deliberately endangered the lives of this man and his on-site reconnaissance team. As a direct result of your reckless action, three lives were lost, and valuable information has been denied to the scientific community. Justifiably, I might add. You gave Captain McCarthy absolutely no choice but to respond as he did. And if Dr. Zymph hasn't already chewed you a new asshole for your arrogance, let me make up for that oversight now. By the time I found out you were on board, it was too late to. send you back-but if I'd known last week that you were going to be a part of the auxiliary on-site scientific team, I'd have canceled your ticket immediately. There is no place in this operation for someone who puts her personal goals above the goals of this mission."

"You're a fine one to talk," Shreiber snorted. "I know about your… relationship!" She made it sound like something dirty.

"He's not my relationship," Lizard said quietly. "He's my Ilusband. And he's here because my commanding officer assigned him here-over my objections-and not because I asked for him. Cuptain Harbaugh will confirm that. She was there."

Shreiber shrugged. Logic was irrelevant in this argument. "So what? You don't scare me. You have no jurisdiction over me. I work for Dr. Zymph."

General Tirelli grinned abruptly. Her grin widened. Uh-oh. She snapped her fingers at Corrigan, one of her aides. The man stepped forward. "Call Dr. Zymph. Tell her I've just relieved Dr. Shreiber of all her duties and placed her under house arrest. She's no longer a part of this mission." To Dr. Shreiber, "If I had a spare flyer, I'd send you back to Rio tonight. Unfortunately, we have a missing pilot to search for, and she's more important than you are." To Corrigan, "Now get her out of here. She's interrupting the real work."

He took her arm firmly. Shreiber looked like she wanted to say something else, but Corrigan shook his head at her and said softly, but firmly, "Don't make it worse." He escorted her off the observation deck, amid shocked stares.

The general waited until the door whooshed shut behind them.