Caliphate полностью

Hamilton nodded understanding. He then reached under the seat, his fingers questing for the key. "Where are you, you little . . . ah, here you are." He put the key in the ignition, said a probably hopeless prayer, and turned it. Half to his surprise the car started immediately. He reached up, took the goggles off of his head and set them on the seat between himself and Petra. Only then did he turn on the headlights and put the car's automatic transmission into drive.

Over the sound of the engine, and coming from somewhere above, Hamilton heard the sonic boom of a fast moving aircraft.

Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

"Come this way, children!" Retief shouted over the crying and the roar of air rushing through shattered viewports. "Come to the center. It will be safer there. If someone's hurt, help them. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"

He was surprised by how well they followed his orders. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, when you're born a slave you simply learn very young to accept the bad part of life and deal with it. Whatever the benefits now, it's still shitty.

Retief arranged the kids as best he could on the deck of the lounge. They covered an area of perhaps twenty by thirty feet. He thought about moving the tables around them but, No way; they're bolted down. The chairs he could move, though, and he began to.

Without a word, Matheson, seeing what the Boer was doing, dragged himself over and lay on his side along one edge of the layer of children. His body, he thought, would be better than nothing for protection from fragment.

Retief nodded in approval. Now there's a good man, he thought.

He was dragging a brace of the chairs from the side to the center when he saw a sudden fireball in the night, the light reflecting off the waters of the lake, now below, to the clouds, above.

Wide-eyed, Retief asked, "What the . . . ?"

"Seven Nine Three? Swiss Airspace Control. We have been ordered to defend you. If you have any self-defense capability, go to weapons tight immediately."

"Switzerland this is Seven Nine Three. We've got nothing. What's your ETA?"

"Look behind you, Seven Nine Three. Hell, look around you."

The pilot saw nothing initially, then a sudden burst of light from somewhere behind lit up the world. In that light he caught a glimpse of a brace of fighters. He thought he saw a large red cross painted on each fighter's tail. Down below he was certain he saw several armed patrol boats leaving for the deeper water. Those definitely came from the Swiss side of the lake.

Lee, still in Ling's voice, said, "Switzerland . . . Seven Nine Three. Honey, for that I would consider changing my sexual polarity."

On the other end, a female Swiss Armed Forces radio operator looked at a microphone in considerable confusion, before answering, "If you're a girl, Seven Nine Three, and are as sexy as you sound, you'll do just fine."

"We'll talk," Lee/Ling said. "Later."

Highway 12, Province of Baya, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

Late, late, late . . . shit. Hamilton drove like a madman. This was not, in itself, a problem; everyone in the Caliphate who drove, drove like a madman. But, what with castles blowing up, firefights, janissaries being alerted, dogfights overhead . . .

Seeing a road sign, mostly rusted through and in any case barely legible, Hamilton made a sudden decision. He slowed and jerked the wheel to the right, swinging onto another highway heading north.

Petra asked, "What are you doing?"

"Sudden rush of brains to the head," he answered. "All attention is on what's going on around and above the lake . . . that, and the castle. So what we're going to do—and, yes, it's a risk—is swing around af- Fridhav and come in from the other side. I think we're more likely to get away with this coming in from the east."

Petra chewed at her lower lip for a few moments before saying, "If you think that's best, I'll trust you."

And doesn't that make my chest swell? Hamilton thought.

Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

The shoreline swelled before him, all rocks and trees. The airship was in ground effect now, and still half a mile from shore. The pilot really didn't know if they'd make it. His control panel had become a Christmas tree of red lights from punctured gas cells and damaged or failing engines. Even if they did make it across, though, the airship wasn't going to land; it was going to crash.