“Er . . . you’d better give us more detail,” Cade said.
“Sys on,” Luke hissed.
“Oh, right.” Dialogues with the system needed to be prefixed. “System on. More detail,” Cade said.
“We were in contact with Hyadean traffic control located at the mission. Contact has been lost. Attempts to recontact the mission on other channels have failed. What do you want me to do?”
Cade looked at Luke and Marie again, as if for inspiration. “What options do we have?”
“Continue under manual guidance to the same destination. Alternatively, go somewhere else.”
“We don’t know how to fly this,” Cade said.
“I can fly and land it. You just supply voice directions.”
“Okay, let’s do that. . . . Continue to the mission.”
“Acknowledged.”
Marie was staring ahead through a view section of the nose. “Roland,” she whispered, clutching his arm.
“What is it?’
“What is what?” the AI queried, still toggled to dialogue.
“System off,” Cade said. There was no need to ask Marie again. Following her horrified gaze, he could already see the pall of smoke hanging over the skyline ahead. Although still five miles away, it had to be the mission.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Luke breathed.
They stared, numbed and speechless, as the flyer closed over the houses and boulevards. In places below them, lines of cars could be seen pulling over, making way for police and emergency vehicles already speeding in the direction of whatever had happened. The phone in Cade’s pocket emitted a call tone. He drew it out, still staring ahead woodenly. “Cade.”
“Roland, you’re okay!” It was Dee. “Thank heavens! We thought you might have been there already.”
“It’s Dee,” Cade murmured to the others. Then, louder, “Almost. We’re on our way, just a couple of miles south. What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. I’m at Anaheim, at work. Vrel’s here too. He stopped by for lunch. There were these huge explosions toward the coast. We heard them from here. Nobody at the mission is contactable. Something terrible has happened there. . . .”
“Vrel’s with her. Nobody’s answering from the mission.” There was no longer any wondering about why. The belt of demolished houses, shattered office towers, and streets choked with overturned cars, rubble, and debris was coming into view. Beyond, where the mission building had been, was just a crater partly visible through hanging dust and smoke. “Look, Dee, we’re just coming in on our approach now.”
“What can you see? Is it the mission?”
Cade had to swallow to prevent his voice from choking. “Bad news, Dee. Real bad. It’s been taken out. I mean right out. There can’t be any hope for anyone who was in there. Tell Vrel I’m sorry.”
“Terrain doesn’t match records,” the flyer’s AI reported. “Unable to execute stored landing profile. Request instructions.”
“Dee, I have to go. We’ll call you right back as soon as we know any more. You might want to call Hudro and the others out at Edwards. At least we know they’re okay.”
“Vrel’s talking to them now. . . . Okay, Roland, we’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
Cade directed the flyer to a section of street where several police cars were parked haphazardly in a cluster, another visible from above, approaching a block away. Several uniformed figures were in a group, trying to take in the situation, while others ran to check a partly collapsed house alongside, and another directed an ambulance that was just drawing up. The surroundings looked as if they had been combed by a giant lawn rake. There had been a grotesque rain of bodies—probably the protestors who had been picketing the mission. The police in front of the cars looked up as the flyer descended; two of them waved it toward a clear area on one side. “Forward slow, two o’clock,” Cade instructed. “Lower. . . . Hold it here. Take it straight down, vertically.”
“Confirm landing vicinity free of personnel and obstructions?” the AI requested.
“You’re clear.”
“Landing and terminating.”
“System off.”
It was worse outside the insulating confines of the flyer’s cabin. Stinging dust and fumes assailed Cade’s eyes and nostrils. Sirens whooped and howled from the surrounding streets; police radios cackled. In the lulls between, he could hear screams and terrified shouting not far away.