Holding the Pattern

Can a starport director murder his own air-traffic staff without triggering an automated incident review? Marimat intended to make the paperwork as agonizing for Harifat as humanly possible.

She kept her left thumb firmly pressed against the transmitter toggle on her console. Outside her shattered window, four hundred feet above the tarmac, the afternoon desert sun beat down on the parked shuttles like an open kiln. Inbound transports were already circling twenty miles south, their fuel reserves burning while she bargained for her throat.

\"Director Harifat,\" Marimat said, keeping her cadence level and sharp. \"In case your legal counsel failed to brief you, Section Nine protocols require three cabinet signatures and a verified hull breach to authorize lethal force against active flight personnel. You have neither. What you do have is sixty thousand passengers about to divert to the military strip at Obalat. That carries a penalty fine of two million credits an hour. Do you want to explain that line item to the regional council, or should I bill it directly to your office?\"

A thin hiss of static scraped through her earpiece. Harifat did not raise his voice. He sounded like an auditor reviewing an overdue water bill.

\"Regulations exist for operational starports, Controller,\" Harifat said smoothly. \"This terminal is no longer operational. The central core has experienced an uncontainable biological contaminant. If you refuse to cycle the emergency deadbolts from your side, environmental controls will initiate a full atmospheric scrub in sixty seconds. You will suffocate long before my recovery squad breaches the stairwell.\"

A dull electronic click sounded behind her ears. On the environmental panel beside the master telemetry column, the green oxygen indicators flickered and snapped to amber. The ventilation ducts overhead gave a heavy, shuddering groan as the primary intake dampers began to reverse their cycle, preparing to suck every liter of breathable air out through the exhaust chimneys.

Across the scorched linoleum, Shadimat leaned against the pedestal of the secondary radar array. His skin possessed the terrifying luster of beaten bronze fresh from the furnace, and each breath rattled in his throat like dry pebbles. When he shifted his weight, his bare forearm brushed the console casing. The paint curled and blackened on contact.

\"You cannot reason with butchers,\" Shadimat rasped, his knuckles white against his obsidian blade. \"They will drain the air from this cage and collect my ashes from the floor. Drop the blast doors and let me take the stairwell. I will draw their fire.\"

\"You won't make it past the tenth floor before you cook yourself alive,\" Marimat said without turning around. \"And if you drop dead on the stairs, your thermal reserve levels this entire terminal. Stay where you are, and stop leaning on the radar casing. That console is federal property, and my shift report is already long enough.\"

She did not wait for Harifat's countdown to run down.

Dropping into a low crouch beneath the line of shattered quartz glass, Marimat slid across the deck toward the environmental cabinet set into the southern bulkhead. The floor vibrated with the heavy thump of the reverse scrubbers. Her temples throbbed under the pressure of her federal dampener cuff, but she pushed her focus directly into the heavy steel latch of the atmospheric bypass.

She did not have a mechanical wrench, but she did not need one.

Extending three fingers toward the recessed maintenance hatch, Marimat gathered a concentrated spike of kinetic force at her fingertips. She snapped the pressure forward in a short, brutal punch.

The heavy brass override pin sheared with a sharp crack. Marimat gripped the raw steel bypass lever with her telekinesis, twisting the valve ninety degrees counterclockwise until the pneumatic seals slammed shut with an iron clang.

On the overhead panel, the amber purge warnings died instantly. The scrubber fans whined to a halt, locked into local manual circulation.

In her earpiece, Harifat's carrier signal let out an angry blast of digital feedback as the terminal lost remote command of the cab's air.

\"Manual loop engaged,\" Marimat muttered, exhaling a breath that tasted of copper and ozone. \"Try venting that from your executive lounge, Director.\"

A high-pitched acoustic crack tore through the open window frame.

The shot arrived from the crane boom half a mile across the tarmac. A syndicate marksman had caught her movement between the consoles, timing his trigger squeeze to the rhythm of the wind shear. A heavy kinetic slug tore through the dry desert air, aimed directly at the center of her chest.

Marimat had tracked supersonic approach vectors for six years. To her trained eye, the supersonic shockwave across the heat shimmers was just another flight path entering her sector without clearance.

She did not dive for cover. She planted her boots into the linoleum, raised her left palm toward the open sky, and ripped a razor-thin shearing wedge of telekinetic pressure across the window gap.

The bullet struck the invisible plane of force three feet from her shoulder.

A deafening shriek of screaming metal rang through the cab as the kinetic slug deflected upward at a forty-degree angle. It buried itself deep into the reinforced steel ceiling girder above the elevator shaft, showering the room in bright orange sparks and powdered acoustic plaster.

Silence slammed back down over the tower, thick with the smell of scorched lead.

Marimat slowly lowered her hand, shaking the vibration from her wrist. Her dampener cuff pulsed with three rapid warning chirps, protesting the sudden spike in neural strain. She ignored the ache behind her eyes and checked her auxiliary slate.

Out in the desert pattern, Bulk-Hauler Eight-Eight was still holding altitude at four thousand feet. Regional Six-Zero remained steady at Waypoint Kestrel. The sky was still hers.

A low, dry sound broke from the shadows beside the radar pillar.

Shadimat was staring at her, his amber eyes wide with raw disbelief. The obsidian dagger hung loose in his fingers, its tip resting against the linoleum.

\"You deflected a high-velocity kinetic round,\" he whispered, the formal cadence of his voice cracking with shock. \"With a flick of your wrist.\"

\"I deflected an unregistered projectile that violated my airspace,\" Marimat said, dusting plaster flakes from her shoulder epaulet. \"There is a difference. Next time, tell your friends on the crane that unauthorized descents carry a mandatory grounding.\"

\"You are no hostage,\" Shadimat murmured, shaking his head slowly as though trying to clear a deep fog. \"You are a shield-weaver. A siege master behind a glass wall.\"

\"I am an underpaid federal employee trying to keep twelve hundred passengers from running out of fuel while your friends attempt to murder me,\" she countered, stepping back to the primary console to verify the holding corridors. \"And right now, your internal furnace is running out of time.\"

Shadimat opened his mouth to reply, but a terrible spasm seized his body.

A choked gasp tore from his throat. The obsidian blade slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the deck. He fell to his knees with a sickening thud, both hands clawing at his chest as his golden skin flushed a blinding, incandescent white.

Small cracks formed along his collarbone, leaking wisps of pale solar smoke that smelled of superheated quartz. The heat radiating from his chest rolled across the cab in a suffocating wave, baking Marimat's cheeks from six feet away.

\"Shadimat?\" she called out, her professional detachment slipping as she took an involuntary step forward.

He fought to draw breath, his throat clicking as his jaw locked against the fever. Through the pale haze of heat rising from his shoulders, his amber eyes fixed on the heavy maintenance hatch set into the deck behind the radar pedestal—the reinforced access tube leading down into the windowless radar spire.

\"The lower level,\" Shadimat forced out, each word like grinding flint. His trembling, scorched fingers pointed toward the heavy iron ring of the maintenance hatch behind the pedestal. \"Armored bulkheads. Blind to their cranes.\"

Another violent tremor racked his frame, forcing his forehead against the blistered linoleum as blinding white-gold photon fire bled through the seams of his tunic. His strength was completely gone, his solar core burning on the edge of detonation.

Marimat looked from his incandescent skin to the dark iron hatch, her auxiliary slate heavy against her hip. The open sky was finished, and the glass cab could no longer keep them alive.