Spinneret Read Online Free PDF Page B

seconds: the lieutenant on another line. “The Cessna’s being wheeled out now, Colonel. They’ll be leaving in five minutes or less.”
    Lieutenant Andrews already had the car running as Meredith slid inside. “Good. We’ll be waiting a couple hundred meters outside town. Let me know immediately if Two makes any response.”
    The medical team, it turned out, was unnecessary. Both of the flyer’s crewmen were already dead.
    Meredith walked carefully over the crash site, his stomach sore with the ache of tight muscles. The flyer had gouged a furrow perhaps a hundred meters long, scattering pieces of itself along the entire length, before coming to rest as a mangled pile of metal and plastic. The crewmen, similarly mangled, were discovered still in their cockpit.
    It was midafternoon before the crash specialists finished their survey and returned to Martello Base. “Near as we can tell, Colonel, all the repulsers just seemed to quit at once,” the captain in charge of the team told Meredith. “We’ll know more when the electronics people finish with the stuff we brought back.”
    Meredith nodded, gazing past the man as the Cessna was wheeled back into the hangar. He’d come here with the medical men and bodies earlier in the day, knowing he would simply be in the way at the crash site and hoping he could get some work done while the experts sifted through the rubble. The tactic had been only half successful; his mind had understandably refused to concentrate on inventories. “Any ideas as to why the repulsers should do that?”
    â€œNone, sir. I’d go so far as to say it should be impossible. They ran off of three completely independent systems.”
    â€œThe radar showed they were going pretty slow when it happened. If just the underside repulsers went out, would they have had time to switch to forward motion?”
    â€œThey should have—they were high enough and that maneuver’s programmed into the on-board. And if they had tried that and simply not made it up to speed in time, they would have hit a lot harder than they did.” The captain shook his head.
    â€œAll right,” Meredith said after a moment. “Get busy on that analysis; I’m grounding the other two flyers until you find out what went wrong.”
    â€œYes, sir. I’m … sorry, Colonel.” Saluting, the captain strode off toward the hangar.
    I’m sorry, too, Meredith thought as he turned and trudged toward the docks. Their first full day on Astra, and already he’d lost two men. That’s really showing the scoffers, Meredith. For an encore, maybe I could shoot myself in the foot.
    Three of the five hovercraft were bobbing gently beside the dock; Meredith passed them up in favor of a small motorboat. Casting off, he headed at half throttle toward the narrow entrance to Splayfoot Bay. By now the death certificates would be waiting on his terminal at Unie, and his stomach tightened anew at the thought of filling them out. He’d never been able to stoically accept death in his commands, not even as a line officer in the Honduras conflict where he’d faced it every other day. His years of desk riding, he was now discovering, hadn’t made him any better at seeing human beings as faceless numbers. Damn the Ctencri, anyway, he thought, twisting the tiller hard as he steered around a half-submerged rock. If it turns out to be a manufacturing fault, I’ll twist their silly crests together.
    He was just turning into the five-kilometer-long inlet leading to Unie when his phone buzzed. “Meredith,” he answered.
    â€œColonel, this is Major Dunlop,” the caller said, his voice barely audible over the engine noise. “I think we’ve got a riot brewing here in Ceres.”
    Meredith cut back the throttle. “Explain.”
    â€œAbout a hundred of the Hispanic field workers have gathered in front of the admin building and