Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [26]
“We’ve been watching the video, Major. How did you find them?”
“We already knew the transporter frequencies to watch,” said Ferris. “We weren’t counting on the Dissenter woman showing up at the same spot, though. We’d been following her for weeks, waiting for her to lead us to the Dissenters’ caves, but the Enterprise people’s arrival made us blow our cover. Will we go in now anyway, sir?”
“Yes, we’ll still carry out the cave mission. And we’ll arrest the Enterprise woman in the process.”
Crichton looked at the synchronized images on a bank of monitors behind him.
“The one-eyes gave us superb news video from this, Major. We did a live feed straight to broadcast on some of it. The excitement out there is incredible.”
Crichton’s mask-face stretched slightly in a configuration Ferris recognized as pleasure.
“Just another operation, sir,” said Ferris.
“I know you aren’t always comfortable with these necessities of presentation, Major. But the people need you.”
Ferris busied himself flicking a row of toggle switches over his head as the hovercraft prepared to take off. Crichton was right, he didn’t enjoy being in front of the camera. The camera was Crichton’s affair. Using the one-eyes to gather news video had been Crichton’s idea, and Ferris thought it was untidy from a military point of view.
“I endure them by defining them within my duty, sir. When am I going into the caves?”
“I’m sending another patrol in.”
Ferris paused for just a moment, a “why” on his face. But he quickly recovered with a snappy, “Yes, sir.”
“If we force them out,” said Crichton, “you’ll make the actual capture. On video.”
The hovercraft lifted smoothly.
“I have another mission for you now,” said Crichton. “Some criminals have just attacked a Mental Hygiene clinic and are destroying the mind-cleansing equipment. You’ll be—”
Crichton’s mouth seemed to jam up. The color drained from his face. His eyes stared forward at something off-screen. He started to quiver slightly, like a slab of aspic.
Ferris cleared his throat.
“Sir, are you all right?”
Crichton leaned over his desk and held his head for several seconds.
When he came back up he seemed to have recovered.
“Sorry,” he said, breathing like a man who’s been held underwater. “My injury has been giving me trouble lately.”
“Yes, sir.”
Crichton, still looking very pale, launched into the details of Ferris’ next mission.
The assault hovercraft—fitted with the most expensive ordnance available—flew Ferris on over miles of tenements, then over some mud flats strewn with old tires, rusting machinery, and household trash.
There, rising from the mud, was a cleverly assembled, monument-size sculpture. It was made of broken pieces of wood and sheet metal, and bits of colorful garbage. It was a caricature, a bust of a head seen often on Rampart, but here with features distorted to ludicrous effect, a mockery of manliness. The head was bent over, gnawing on another human head beneath it, in a rendition of a scene from Dante’s Inferno—Count Ugolino, in the Ninth Circle of Hell, eternally gnawing the bloody head of his partner in treachery, Archbishop Ruggieri.
The man who was the object of this parody was spared the actual sight of it. The nose-mounted camera of the hovercraft that bore him through the night did in fact record the junk-sculpture, but couldn’t display it on the hovercraft’s screens because, as parody, it was both criminal and contagious. Instead, the screens simply indicated that a target had been acquired.
The hovercraft circled back in a wide arc and came in low. Twin pod-mounted guns roared to life, firing fifty explosive-filled rounds per second, and in one quick pass the junk-sculpture was blasted to pieces. It became just more old garbage.
Chapter Seven
TROI FOUND HERSELF lying in a darkness impenetrable except for a small, faint patch of orange glow on a rock surface. The glow seemed only a few meters away, but she had no visual frame of reference.
Bruised and still handcuffed,