Halo | Page 4

lifted into twilight over the city. The soft white glow from the dome light vanished, then there were only the last moments of orange sunlight coming through the bubble.
The temple plain was spread out beneath, all murk and shadow, with the temple and pagoda spires reaching up toward the light, white stucco and gold tinted red and orange.
"Man, that's a beautiful sight," the pilot said.
"You're right," Gonzales said. It was, but he'd seen it before, and besides, it had already been a long day.
The pilot flipped his glasses down, and the plane banked left and headed south along the river. Gonzales lay back in his seat and tried to relax.
They flew above black water, following the Irrawady River until they crossed an international flyway to Bangkok. Dozing in the interior darkness, Gonzales was almost asleep when he heard the pilot say, "Shit, somebody's here. Partisan attack group, probably--no recognition codes. Must be flying ultralights--our radar didn't see them. We've got an image now, though."
"Any problem?" Gonzales asked.
"Just coming for a look. They don't bother foreign charters." And he pointed to their transponder message flashing above the primary displays:
THIS INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT IS NON-MILITARY.
IT CLAIMS RIGHT OF PASSAGE UNDER U.N. ACT OF 2020.
It would keep on repeating until they crossed into Thai airspace.
The flight computer display lit bright red with COLLISION WARNING, and a Klaxon howl filled the plane's interior. The pilot said, "Fuck, they launched!" The swing-wing's turbines screamed full out as the plane's computer took command, and the pilot's hands gripped his yoke, not guiding, just hanging on.
Gonzales's straps pulled tight as the plane tumbled and fell, corkscrewed, looped, climbed again--smart metal fish evading fiery harpoons. Explosions blossomed in the dark, quick asymmetrical bursts of flame followed immediately by hard thumping sounds and shock waves that knocked the swing-wing as it followed its chaotic path through the night.
Then an aircraft appeared, flaring in fire that surged around it, its pilot in blazing outline--a stick figure with arms thrown to the sky in the instant before pilot and aircraft disintegrated in flame.
Their own flight went steady and level, and control returned to the pilot's yoke. Gonzales's shocked retinas sparkled as the night returned to blackness. "Collision averted," the plane's computer said. "Time in red zone, six point eight nine seconds."
"What the hell?" Gonzales said. "What happened?"
"Holy Jesus motherfucker," the pilot said.
Gonzales sat gripping his seat, chilled by the blast of cold air from the plane's air conditioner onto his sweat-soaked shirt. He glanced down to his lap: no, he hadn't pissed himself. Really, everything happened too quickly for him to get that scared.
A Mitsubishi-McDonnell "Loup Garou" warplane dived in front of them and circled in slow motion. Like the ultralights it was cast in matte black, but with a massive fuselage. It turned a slow barrel roll as it circled them, lazy predator looping fat, slow prey, then turned on brilliant floods that played across their canopy.
The pilot and Gonzales both froze in the glare.
Then the Loup Garou's black cockpit did a reverse-fade; behind the transparent shell Gonzales saw the mirror-visored pilot, twin cables running from the base of his neck. The Loup Garou's wings slid forward into reverse-sweep, and it stood on its tail and disappeared.
Gonzales strained against his taut harness.
"Assholes!" the pilot screamed.
"Who was that?" Gonzales asked, his voice thin and shaking. "What do you mean?"
"The Myanmar Air Force," the pilot said, his voice tight, face red beneath the flight glasses' mirrors. "They set us up, the pricks. They used us to troll for a guerrilla flight." The pilot flipped up his glasses and stared with pointless intensity out the cockpit window, as if he could see through the blackness. "And waited," he said. "Waited till they had the whole flight." The pilot swiveled around abruptly and faced Gonzales, his features distorted into a mad and angry caricature of the man who had welcomed Gonzales ninety minutes before. "Do you know how fucking close we came?" he asked.
No, Gonzales shook his head. No.
"Milliseconds, man. Fucking milliseconds. Close enough to touch," the pilot said. He swiveled his seat to face forward, and Gonzales heard its locking mechanism click as he settled back into his own seat, fear and shame spraying a wild neurochemical mix inside his brain--
Gonzales had never felt things like this before--death down his spine and up his gut, up his throat and nose, as close as his skin; death with a bad smell ... burning, burning
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2. Anything I Can Do to Help You
As the morning passed, the sun moved away from the stained glass, and the room's interior went to gloom. Only monitor lights remained lit, steady rows of green above flickering columns of numbers on the light blue face of the monitor panel.
A housekeeping robot, a pod the size of a large goose, worked slowly across