Khepera at the Dawn

The Drop

Ibrahim's nerves jangled and jittered as he took the elevator from the Lahab-u-Din's shuttle hangar. When the lift doors opened on the carrier's bridge, he had to steel himself for just an instant before stepping out.

It wasn't Ibrahim's first time on a military vessel, not by any means, but he still felt a twinge of almost existential despair at the sight of the ghazi pilots, astrogators, datapushers and grunts, no more than swatches of paleness surrounded by dimness, midnight turned to multi-hued twilight by the mingling of the blue glow of the overhead lights and the red and green flicker of datascreens. The contrast to the broad pastel sweeps of the Booth's datapanels and the relatively plush comfort of the controllers' work spaces was a stark one.

Maybe that was how the ghazis had earned their reputation for fearlessness. The professional soldiers knew that survival in battle meant getting sent back to their ships.

Then he found Lieutenant al-Mutawwali, standing at attention with square shoulders and straight back - unusually straight, even for him. Uncomfortably straight, Ibrahim would have thought. When the man nodded and mumbled something just below the threshold of audibility, Ibrahim understood his posture. He was on-line with Setna Amjed. It took some effort for Ibrahim to suppress a guilty flush of pleasure. It looked as if the drill sergeant had met his match.

Ibrahim moved up to stand just behind the Lieutenant at what he hoped was a properly polite distance. Try as he might, Ibrahim couldn't make out a word of the marine's conversation: the Lieutenant spoke softer than a whisper, undoubtedly straining even the hyper-sensitive pickup of his military-grade comm to maximum. Amjed must have been putting on one of his best performances.

Al-Mutawwali turned off his comm with a tap. The ghazi took a deep breath, held it and released it in something very like a sigh of relief.

"Lieutenant al-Mutawwali. Sir."

To his credit, the ghazi didn't jump out of his skin when Ibrahim spoke his name. A twitch of a shoulder maybe, but as one who had been on the receiving end of Setna Amjed's vitriol only moments ago Ibrahim knew al-Mutawwali's remarkable composure for what it was.

"Warden Smith," the Lieutenant said coolly. Overcompensating. "We're about to retake the Mount, get back into the Park Management System. I understand you've received your orders?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. I'm to observe."

"And make your codes available to me at any time."

"Yes sir. And that."

"We'll get along just fine, then." The Lieutenant turned his still-too-straight back on Ibrahim. "Damned clouds," he murmured. Ibrahim turned his attention to the image of Murkworld on the main viewscreen. Sure enough, the continent was buried under a roiling mass of clouds. Cut off from the surface comm grid, and now unable to observe from above. Ibrahim didn't envy the Lieutenant's position.

A marine approached, a hint of "is-this-doggy-going-to-bite trepidation in his eyes as he saluted the Lieutenant. "Drop sphere's loaded, sir."

"Ah," Al-Mutaswali murmured. "Good." His clipped tone made the news seem anything but good, and Ibrahim wondered why.

A drop sphere. They were going all out on this mission. When the marines had landed on Glory of the Ottomans, the drop sphere had been little more than a simulation brewing at the heart of some military thinktank's AI net - though even then the military newsgroups had been aflame with rumors about its capabilities. Designed for the profoundly unlikely occasion of an invasion of the Ghul homeworld (which had yet to be discovered), the spheres relied solely on grav-generators for ... well, propulsion wasn't quite the right word. Push? No. Movement. The only word Ibrahim could think of that left out any implication that such archaic a force as thrust had anything to do with how a drop sphere got from place to place. The grav-generators gave ghazi pilots full control of movement in all three dimensions and the ability to slip into atmosphere without the friction-generated heat signature that invariably betrayed even the suprisiest of surprise drops