Sky Raider, page 23
The inside of the tent was sumptuously decorated with fur rugs on the floor and actual wood furniture. There was even a bed with a brass railing headboard that looked so normal it gave Mildred a touch of homesickness. Then a piercing scream cut the night, the flames rising to cast nightmarish shadows on the cloth walls, and she was all grim biz once more.
There were alcohol lanterns on the dining and bedside tables, but lighting those would only have announced their presence to everybody in the crater. Separating, the women began to ransack the place, turning over tables and yanking open chests to find only food, blasters and miscellaneous machine parts. The blasters all seemed to have parts missing, but the grens were good. Krysty grabbed two and tossed one to Mildred. The physician made the catch and tucked the explosive charge into a pocket of her military jacket.
“Check the bed next,” Mildred said, watching the shadows on the cloth wall. Blaster shots were sounding regularly across the airfield, and there came the chatter of the Uzi, closely followed by the loud report of the Colt Python. Karl had said the airfield had only twenty workers, but there certainly seemed to be more. Had he lied? Or had the reinforcements already arrived from Thunder ville?
Ripping off the blankets, Krysty slashed the mattress, then flipped it over. There, on the box springs, was a small leather volume. Hastily grabbing it, Krysty angled the book to try to read by the flickering firelight.
The math and the diagrams made no sense to her, but Tregart described her problems in duplicating the Angel in exquisite detail.
“This is it,” Krysty said, pulling out her butane lighter and thumbing it alive. For a split second the woman paused, knowing she was destroying an invaluable wealth of technological information. Then reality came back hard and she placed the flame to the ancient paper. It caught easily and soon the manual was burning freely.
“Goodbye, yellow brick road,” Mildred said under her breath as the journal was tossed onto a table.
“Not quite yet,” Krysty mused, grabbing a lantern and turning it upside down. The glass flue fell off with a crash and the alcohol poured out of the reservoir onto the journal. The red flames turned blue for a tick as they swelled in volume.
“My lady, is that you?” a sec man asked, throwing open the flap to the tent. “I heard your voice and—” Seeing the two women, his smooth face registered shock. “Outlanders!” he cried, going for the blaster on his belt.
Mildred and Krysty fired in unison, the barrage of lead punching the man outside.
“Back door,” Mildred stated, pulling the SiG-Sauer to cover the entrance with her two blasters.
Slashing the tent with her knife, Krysty ripped apart the cloth and stepped through into the fiery night. She held the rent wide for Mildred, then the women took off into the billowing smoke.
Hot embers stung their faces, and it was difficult to see anything clearly through the flames. They stopped as a crackle of blasters came from behind, then the women understood it was only the ammo in the burning tent starting to cook off.
Moving away from the area, they ran over more chilled sec men, and arched around a bonfire of what seemed to be the skeletons of giant birds.
“That the Sky wags?” Krysty demanded, squinting against the heat and smoke.
“That’s them,” Mildred said, studying the fire. There were six frameworks for biplanes in the heart of the blaze. Six! With those, Tregart had planned to rule the world.
“Look good and chilled to me,” Krysty said resolutely.
“They’re nuked,” Mildred agreed.
“Thank Gaia!”
“Gaia?” a voice repeated.
The women turned with their weapons at the ready as two figures came out of the smoke. Krysty and Mildred almost fired when the men raised blasters, then the thick fumes parted for a moment and everybody relaxed.
“You okay, Millie?” J.B. asked, blood dripping off his face. There was a new hole in his fedora and a piece missing from his leather jacket.
“Just battered and bruised,” Mildred replied with a weary smile. “Are the slaves free?”
“Gone,” Jak stated, a slash along one cheek crusted with dried blood. “Run fast with chains off.”
“Get the book?”
“It’s ashes.”
With the firelight dancing on his glasses, J.B. looked around. “Then we’re done,” he stated. “Let’s get back to the wag.”
“Freeze!” a screaming voice interrupted.
The companions turned and fired all of their weapons at the same time. There was a startled cry and two arrows shot by harmlessly. Warily moving closer, the four found a man lying on the ground. Still alive, his chest was pumping crimson and there were two empty crossbows in his twitching hands.
“Ya…fragging outies may have got me…” René said in a low wheeze, “but you’ll still get aced…My dogs will—” The man trembled and expired.
“Dogs?” Jak demanded suspiciously, cocking back the hammer on his Colt Magnum.
“They’re already on the last train west,” Krysty stated, reaching down to yank off the whistle hanging from a rawhide cord around the neck of the corpse. Might come in handy someday.
Leaving the burning tents behind, the cool desert wind deliciously washed over the companions. Getting their bearings, the four started at a run back toward the distant gate. A few bodies and windblown debris were scattered across the ground. As they dashed past a pile of wooden boxes, a sec man reached out of hiding to grab Jak by the collar. The man shrieked in agony as his fingers fell away from the razor blades hidden along the coat collar, then Jak slashed out with a knife, ending the matter.
A tent collapsed, blowing hot air and embers to the sky. But a sec man stumbled from the fiery heart of the inferno, horribly burned over most of his body, the blackened skin cracked and oozing in a network of gaping flesh. Shouting obscenities, the dying man started forward, firing a brace of revolvers. Stuttering lightning shook the night as J.B. cut loose with the Uzi machine pistol on full-auto, the hail of hot lead fanning the destruction to stitch the charred man across the chest. But already numb from the overload of his pain, the man didn’t even feel the hits and turned to aim both blasters at the startled Armorer.
The black-powder weapons roared, and J.B. felt something hum past his cheek as he gave the sec man another long burst. The stream of 9 mm Parabellum rounds hammered the dying attacker back into the blazing ruins of the tent and he disappeared among the flame and smoke.
Without warning, a violent explosion echoed across the airfield. The companions pivoted to see the gate blow apart. The wreckage was still falling when the black Hummer smashed its way through the splintered timbers and started rolling their way.
Rushing from the darkness, a man fired a crossbow at the wag and missed. Behind the steering wheel, Doc veered the armored wag abruptly and clipped the sec man with the front fender. He went flying to land on the ground with a sickening crunch.
In a squeal of brakes, Doc stopped the Hummer near the companions. “Ten minutes exactly,” he reported. “I do hope that I am not tardy.”
“You’re right on time,” Mildred said, assisting Krysty into the wag. In the ceiling light of the Hummer, the physician could now see just how badly soaked was the redhead’s shirt. The firelight had disguised the sheer volume of blood. Not good. This wasn’t good, at all.
“Did you get the technical manual?” Doc asked as J.B. and Jak piled into the vehicle.
Her face a waxy color, Krysty grunted as she leaned back in the seat. “Yes,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “And the Demons are all burned.”
“Exemplary,” Doc declared, very displeased with the woman’s appearance.
Throwing the wag into gear, Doc drove jerkily across the littered field, encountering no further resistance. But situated at the windows, J.B. and Jak tried to watch for trouble from every direction.
Reaching the smashed gate, the Hummer rolled over the assorted debris, and Krysty gave a pained expression at every jolt. Opening the woman’s bearskin coat, Mildred finally saw the wound. A tooth was still buried in the ripped flesh.
As they pulled away from the crater, the wheels started humming softly as the big wag built speed across the smooth landscape. They could faintly hear an alarm bell ringing from the walled ville just to the north.
“Find me a level stretch,” Mildred demanded, pulling items from her med kit. “And I’ll need light. Lots of light.”
“That’s not advisable,” J.B. warned, thumbing fresh rounds into an exhausted clip for the Uzi.
“Got no choice,” Mildred said hoarsely, applying a compress. “She’s dying.”
“So be it,” Doc said calmly, and he turned off the headlights. “Jak, be my guide.”
“Got covered,” the teen said, his ruby-red eyes staring ahead into the moonlight desert.
Racing for the safety of the foothills, behind them dozens of sec men on horseback poured out of Thunder ville, led by a grim and bloody-faced Captain Brian Stone.
SNARLING A CURSE, Ryan dived off the BMW motorcycle, firing the Steyr. A cannie screamed as blood erupted from his knee and he crumpled holding the shattered limb.
Then a spear slammed into a boulder alongside Ryan and exploded into splinters that sprayed across his face. Instinctively jerking away to protect his good eye, the big man worked the bolt to chamber a fresh round, and shot another cannie in the heart. Then a third spear rammed him in the stomach.
The breath exploded from his lungs at the blow, and Ryan doubled over, just as the hail of bullets from the Angel racked across the landscape. One cannie yelled in shock and threw a spear into the air. Another turned and ran. Fighting to drag air into his lungs, Ryan fired the Steyr at the remaining cannies as he reclaimed the bike. The Angel was circling for another run. He had no time for this drek! Seconds counted right now. He had to keep moving, or everything was lost!
As the one-eyed man started the Beamer, a cannie charged and Ryan used his panga to slash at the flesh-eater. Howling in anguish, the cannie fell away, trying to use both hands to hold in his guts, the ropy intestines slithering out of the gaping wound in his belly onto the grass.
Rolling forward, Ryan slammed into another cannie and sent the man tumbling. In the clear, Ryan fed the predark machine gas and roared away just as Angel peppered the crest of the hill with a long burst of blasterfire.
Bouncing down the slope, Ryan cursed as the headlight blinked out. Slowing his speed, the furious man smacked it with a fist and the light returned with a vengeance, even brighter than before. Yes!
The buzz from the Angel grew louder and with a whoosh a reddish glow filled the night as the hill exploded from an expertly dropped Molotov. Dripping fire, the cannies dashed around madly, screaming in their unknown language. Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan streaked back to the Hummer tracks he had been following and took off for the nearby forest. Only a few more miles now…
Tregart tried another strafing run, and Ryan swung back to drive underneath the Sky wag before she could take aim. The Angel peeled away to the left, then swung back with its rapid-fire hammering the ground in a sideways pass.
Ryan’s luck held, and he escaped injury, but the bike was hit several times. The dashboard was smashed, the dilly bar dented, and the rear tire had taken a hit. Ryan braced for the unexpected crash, but the predark mil tire didn’t explode or even deflate at the puncture.
However, the man knew that he couldn’t depend upon it surviving a second strike, so he poured on the gas, forcing the Beamer to full-speed across the wild grassland.
Minutes translated into miles and Ryan discovered that he could smell the blood long before he saw the mound of corpses.
This was it. Ground zero. Just before breaking camp that morning, the companions had gone hunting. Or rather, they did some chilling. A herd of deer eating the grass just outside the forest didn’t seem to know what a human was, and had paid the companions no attention at all. Contentedly grazing, the animals watched placidly while Ryan and the others took aim with their blasters and then cut loose.
After the slaughter, the companions butchered the bodies, throwing the organs and meat around to make as big a mess as possible. Retreating to a safe distance, they waited and watched, hoping for the best. Their vigil was rewarded when the first stingwing arrived to investigate the wealth of fresh meat. Soon, there were dozens of the winged muties feasting on the aced deer, with more arriving every minute. That was what Ryan was heading for at sixty miles per hour. His secret weapon. A dozen dead deer covered with feasting stingwings.
As the headlight washed over the ragged skeletons, Ryan saw that a flock of stingwings was still there, tearing apart the rotting animals. Perfect. Sounding the horn, he saw the muties jerk their beaks in his direction, and then he plowed through the middle of the flock, crushing several stingwings under the spinning tires of the big bike. The headlight shattered, and a tumbling body hit the windshield, cracking the glass so bad Ryan thought it was going to come through. Crushed stingwings tumbled in every direction.
Rarely attacked alone, the stingwings were totally confused by the assault and took to the sky for safety. Whirling high above the grassland, they began to circle the rotting corpses, preparing to reclaim their food source, when a harsh buzzing sounded from the sky. The enraged muties saw something large flying their way and swarmed together to strike at the new enemy.
“MOTHER OF DOOM!” Sandra cried as the flock of stingwings rose from below and charged straight at her.
Slamming the joystick to the left, she tromped on the fuel pedal and the engine surged with power as the biplane slipped sideways across the deadly sky.
A stingwing darted past the woman, obviously misjudging the airstream, and went directly into the spinning propellers. The wooden blades only slowed for a moment as they annihilated the creature, blood and feathers spewing out in a grisly spray.
Another stingwing slammed into the guyline supporting the left wing and was beheaded. But a third punched straight through the right wing, leaving a hole in its wake.
Biting back a curse, Sandra shoved the stick forward and started heading for the ground, adding the pull of gravity to her engine to almost double her speed. So this was what the outlander had been heading for, a flock of stingwings! And she had been so sure that he’d been leading her back to his ville. The son of a bitch would pay for this! Her eunuchs would spend months torturing the man, and in the end Tregart would be wearing his tanned skin as a new pair of boots. Oh, yes, he’d pay!
As her speed increased, the wings began to shake, the wires humming musically from the strain of the dive. The stingwings were falling behind, but the earth was coming dangerously close. With no choice, Sandra eased up on the power and began to swoop upward.
Almost instantly the muties surrounded the Angel. Another died in the spinning propellers, but a third hit the rudder, going completely through the fabric covering the wooden frame.
Instantly, Sandra found the stability was gone, the biplane responding sluggishly to the stick. Blind norad! Dropping the wing flaps and shoving the stick sideways, the baron spun the biplane around in a barrel roll, the wings smacking the stingwings out of the sky and a dozen broken forms tumbled to earth.
Leveling out the biplane, Sandra saw a stingwing slam into the canvas cowling and rip off the stiff fabric to expose the working engine. As the crumpled body dropped away, black smoke began to pour from the machinery, the well of exhaust temporarily blinding her.
Snarling curses, Sandra started to reach for her sunglasses, then stopped and eased the flow of fuel to the engine. Drawing her blaster, the furious woman fired at the encircling stingwings. But it only seemed to enrage them more. The biplane confused them, but blasters they understood. Those were used by two-legs, and those were food.
A stingwing landed on the left wing, sunk its talons into the tough fabric and began to peck at the guylines holding the struts in place. Flying with one hand, Sandra leveled her blaster and fired. The stingwing exploded and fell away. But another slammed into her wrist and the blaster went flying. She saw it tumble only a few feet away, then drop behind and vanish.
Shitfire! Pulling one of her palmblasters, Sandra started to badly cough from breathing in the exhaust of the struggling engine. She unleashed both barrels at the stingwings, but only scored a single chill. The angry muties attacked again and again. Mostly striking the guylines, probably because of the high-pitched noise they were making. But a few were tearing at the fabric, exposing the inner framework of the biplane. In cold logic, Sandra knew that if enough of that was loosened or damaged, she would lose control of the Angel and death would swiftly follow.
Pulling out her last derringer, Sandra briefly debated trying to land and run for cover in the trees, but that would mean abandoning the Angel to the muties, and after they were done, it would never fly again. Visions of her ville cheering as the food arrived flashed through her mind, the new blaster in the hands of her father, the explosion that crushed Indera ville. Power, freedom, life, it all depended on the Angel. No. She could no longer leave it behind than her own beating heart.
“Mutie scum!” Sandra screeched, firing at the things and acing two more. Yes!
Working the controls, the woman swooped downward to suddenly bank back upward, twisting around in a loop. The bizarre maneuver confused the creatures for a moment and suddenly she was behind the flock.
“Die!” the woman screamed, squeezing the trigger on the joystick as she charged.
The heavy-duty combat rounds of the rapid-fire tore the stingwings apart, and then the props chewed through the core of the fluttering group like death itself. The spray of blood coated the windshield, completely blinding the woman, and the engine sputtered from the strain, nearly dying. She fed it maximum power and tightened the choke, thinning the air-shine mix to make it as rich as possible. Come on you, big bitch, don’t chill on me now…she railed.
