Cloud Warrior

by Patrick Tilley

  Booker and Yates were two of the five wingmen already serving aboard The Lady when Steve and the other ‘wet-feet’ had joined it at Nixon-Fort Worth.

  Kazan caught Steve’s questioning look as she turned towards the Skyhawk. ‘What’s bugging you now, Brickman?’

  ‘How will you find your way back?’

  Kazan pointed fore and aft. As if in response to her gesture, a pencil-slim shaft of red light shot vertically upwards from the roof of the lead command car; a similar beam of green light appeared from the roof of the tail car. ‘Soft lasers,’ she explained. ‘They go up to twenty-five thousand feet. All you have to do in bad weather is head towards ‘em and spiral down around till you hit the deck.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Steve.

  Half an hour later, Kazan hooked on to The Lady and reported to Hartmann. The blanket of mist wrapped around the wagon train went up a couple of hundred feet. Above that was a heavy overcast; the cloud base was down to four hundred feet. Kazan had climbed to three and a half thousand feet before breaking out into clear sky. Climbing higher, she discovered that the area of mist and low cloud extended over a ten-mile radius around the wagon train. Beyond that, the sky was clear and the weather conditions matched those of the previous days.

  Hartmann exchanged a loaded look with his chief exec and ordered Kazan to launch a forward patrol. She told the F.O.O. that she would go up with Booker and Yates. Like her, both wingmen had considerable experience of bad-weather operations.

  As two more Skyhawks were lifted onto the flight-deck, Steve and the other new wingmen listened while Jodi Kazan briefed Booker and Yates. When she’d finished, Steve jumped in with a question that had been bothering him. ‘I heard one of the guys say that you don’t allow wet-feet to fly if the cloud-base is below four hundred feet. That still gives us plenty of air space – so how come?’

  ‘It’s because of the danger from Mute ground-fire,’ said Jodi. ‘The field reports from the forward way-stations in South Colorado indicate that at least one in ten of the Plainfolk Mutes may be armed with a crossbow. In some clans it may be as high as one in four. That’s a lot of sharp iron. One of these days, we’re going to find out where they’re getting them from. They’re too dumb to make ‘em on their own. But until we get a lead on that, we stay high – especially you silver-wings.’

  ‘You mean unless the terrain allows us to fly low with an element of surprise,’ said Steve.

  Jodi eyed him narrowly. ‘What I mean, Brickman, is that you follow orders. If I catch you pulling any stunts, I’ll have your ass in a sling. And it’ll be me that’ll put it there. I don’t need Big D to keep you guys in line. These Mute crossbows may have a lousy rate of fire but in the hand of a skilled marksman, they’re deadly. Don’t ask me how they do it but the best of ‘em can shoot a barbed ten-inch bolt with pinpoint accuracy up to a range of a thousand feet.’

  ‘Is that why we were told not to fly below fifteen hundred?’ asked Steve.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Jodi. ‘But don’t think you can sit back and enjoy the scenery. One of those bolts is still travelling fast enough to kill you at two thousand feet – if it hits you in the right place.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Steve. ‘Shouldn’t you have told us this before we set out?’

  Jodi grinned as she stepped past him. ‘I didn’t want to spoil your trip.’

  Kazan’s Skyhawk was catapulted into the clammy grey blanket of mist. Booker followed seconds later from the starboard catapult, then Yates’s aircraft was rolled forward and locked onto the port ramp as steam hissed through pipes and vents, building up the pressure that would launch him into the air at forty miles an hour.

  Watching the screens in the command car, Hartmann saw Yates’s Skyhawk lift off and fade into the mist as he passed overhead. The NavComTech manning the radio established contact with Kazan. Hartmann gave the command ‘Wagons ROLL!’; The Lady moved off in a north-westerly direction past the now vanished site of Laramie, towards Rock River and Medicine Bow. Like Laramie, they were just names on the map; nothing more than reference points for finding one’s bearings.

  After travelling fifteen miles, The Lady was still enveloped in dense mist. Kazan, Booker and Yates, circling at five thousand feet around the line of advance reported that the pancake-shaped blanket of low cloud and mist had moved with the wagon train. The NavComTech acknowledged Kazan’s message, routed it through the voice-print converter and keyed it through to Hartmann’s signal screen. The wagon master read the signal and hit the relay button which put it on the station screens of the executive officers positioned round the saddle. Buck McDonnell was the first to swing round and meet his eye. The others were quick to follow.

  Hartmann surveyed their tense faces. He knew what they were thinking. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Anyone got an explanation?’

  Nobody said anything. Nobody dared. They realised, as Hartmann realised, that there was only one explanation for what had happened. The Lady was facing a clan aimed with Mute’s secret weapon – magic. The Mute’s ability to manipulate natural phenomena was something that the Federation refused to acknowledge. Indeed, any public reference to the subject was a punishable offence. Yet everyone facing Hartmann believed that the mysterious summoners did exist and were, reportedly, to be found among the Plainfolk.

  ‘Do you want to put up more Skyhawks?’ asked the F.O.O.

  Hartmann drew the ends of his moustache in towards his mouth and weighed his reply. ‘Not yet. I think we ought to wait until the weather improves.’

  The F.O.O. got the message. So did everyone else.

  ‘Tell Kazan and her two wingmen to circle the edge of the cloud cover and report any movement of hostiles,’ continued Hartmann. ‘I have a hunch that someone may be planning to pay us a visit.’

  Buck McDonnell, the square-shouldered Trail-Boss straightened up expectantly as Hartmann swung round in his chair.

  ‘Batten down the hatches, Mister McDonnell. I want everyone in battle order, all weapons cocked and ready. Put ten rounds through each barrel.’

  McDonnell swept his gold-topped stick under his left arm and saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hartmann ordered The Lady forward at a cautious five miles an hour then turned to the exec charged with the organising of the close-quarter defence of the train. ‘Pipe steam, Mister Ford.’

  The exec activated the system that blasted the invisible jets of super-heated steam out of the nozzles in the outer skin of the wagon train then checked each car, triggering a five-second burst. The lethal shafts shot out some fifteen feet before materialising as a searingly hot cloud that merged quickly with the clinging mist.

  Throughout the night, Cadillac had sat with Mr Snow while the old man prepared himself mentally for the moment when he would attempt to summon up the earth-forces. In the eerie light of pre-dawn when the watching eyes that studded Mo-town’s dark cloak began to fade, Cadillac had been amazed to see the mist gather around the iron snake, and the layer of grey cloud from overhead.

  No chilling sound had issued from Mr Snow’s throat as it had from Clearwater. He had simply squatted crosslegged as he often did, hands resting on his knees, face turned to the sky, his sight turned inwards. Now and then his breath came in gasps. The sinews of his wiry body tightened and he clenched his jaw and fists as if trying to contain some inner force that caused his whole body to judder violently.

  Around dawn, he was shaken by a particularly violent spasm that caused his back to arch and finally toppled him over. Cadillac pulled him into a sitting position and cradled his head. After a few minutes, Mr Snow’s eyelids fluttered open.

  ‘Are you all right, Old One?’ asked Cadillac anxiously.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mr Snow. He breathed deeply. ‘Clouds are easy.’

  Jodi Kazan flew at a height of five hundred feet round the ragged, circular edge of the cloud that sat obstinately on top of the wagon train. She altered course constantly, zigzagging from side to side, occasionally turning back into the cloud, emerging at a hig
her or lower altitude and on a different heading so that, even though she was dangerously low, it was virtually impossible for a Mute crossbow-man to draw a bead on her.

  In her skilled hands, the Skyhawk was a like a kite jinking on the end of a line in a stiff breeze. This was where her accumulated combat experience came into play. Manoeuvring the aircraft was now totally instinctive in the same way that her body drew in breath without conscious effort on her part. The Skyhawk was as much part of her as the lungs and heart within her chest. All her attention was directed towards the ground, searching it with the sharp-eyed concentration of a bird of prey; the fingers of her right hand curled lightly around the pistol grip of her rifle, ready and able to bring down a running Mute in mid-manoeuvre with the aid of what the First Family weapon designers proudly termed ‘an auto-ranging laser-powered optical sight’ that threw a red aiming dot on the chosen target.

  Any wingman who flew in a straight line and took more than ten seconds to line up on his target was liable to find a ten-inch crossbow bolt spoiling his digestion. If they didn’t go straight through you, the barbed points made it impossible to pull them out without tearing yourself apart. They had to be cut out, preferably by a field surgeon, and it was said that they were often dipped in some kind of shit that caused a non-fatal wound to turn gangrenous.

  Jodi had been shot at during punitive actions against groups of runaways from Mute work-camps. Where they got their weapons from was a mystery. There had been unconfirmed reports that small bands of Tracker renegades were involved but, to Jodi, such stories did not make sense. With overground radiation levels still dangerously high, why would any foot-loose Trackers waste time setting up a trading operation when they would not survive long enough to enjoy any benefits that might accrue? And what could they possibly hope to gain?

  Despite the ruthless pacification of the overground above the Inner and Outer States of the Federation, none of it beyond the guarded perimeters of the work camps and way-stations could be regarded as one hundred per cent ‘safe’. Even though Trail-Blazer expeditions might have killed everything that moved several times over, groups of hostiles kept infiltrating the fire-zones where, despite the danger, they stayed holed-up, waiting for an opportunity to make a sneak attack on a way-station or a lightly-armed wagon train on a re-supply mission.

  Acting on an inexplicable hunch, Jodi cut the motor and side-slipped silently out of the low cloud. She was startled to see two large groups of Mutes break from the cover of the tree line. They were moving in the direction of the wagon train. Jodi yanked back on the control column pulling the Skyhawk into a steep climbing turn. Her one thought was to reach cloud cover. No crossbow bolts followed her into the cold damp greyness but that was no guarantee she had not been spotted. Mutes rarely wasted their precious crossbow bolts. The Field Intelligence reports she had read all stressed this point. The bolts were greatly prized and in desperately short supply like the crude but highly efficient bows that fired them.

  Back inside the low layer of cloud, Jodi switched on her motor, flying at the slowest (and quietest) speed she could without losing altitude. She called up Booker and Yates and told them to join her above the northern edge of the cloud bank then radioed a brief report to The Lady. Hartmann told her to hit the Mutes before they could mount an attack on the wagon train. Hoping that the thick cloud would muffle the noise of her motor, Jodi pushed the throttle wide open and climbed southwards through the murk. Breaking out into the clear, brilliant blue sky above, she made a one hundred and eighty degree turn, cut the motor again, and glided back towards the advancing Mutes. Below her, away to the left, she saw a tiny arrowhead silhouetted against the white cloud tops. It was Yates, converging on the rendezvous point.

  The Skyhawks, with their inflated aerofoil section wings possessed excellent glide characteristics and, in optimum weather conditions, could soar on a rising current of air, staying aloft for hours without using their motors. Silent soaring flight offered a measure of tactical surprise but speed and direction were dictated by the prevailing weather and the thermals were not always where you needed them. It was best suited to long-range, high-altitude patrols. When you were contour-flying, hugging every rise and fall in the ground, shooting from the hip, you needed maximum revs and then some. What was known to wingmen as ‘melting the wires’.

  As Jodi circled over the northern edge of the pancake cloud covering The Lady, Booker and Yates angled in towards her, the metallic blue solar cell fabric atop their wings glinting in the sun. They closed up on her, Booker tucking himself just under her port wing-tip, Yates to starboard. They wheeled silently in arrowhead formation, keeping the same precise distance; close enough for Jodi to recognise the smiling faces under the raised visors of their red and white lightning-striped crash helmets – the mark of wingmen from The Lady. Both sat strapped into blue cockpit pods slung from rigid struts under Skyhawk’s wing. On the nose of each pod was the red, white and blue star and bar insignia of the Federation, followed by a white aircraft number.

  Flying like this in tight formation, banking through the cool, clear air above the clouds was something that Jodi never tired of. It gave her a constant charge; awakened feelings inside her that she savoured without attempting to analyse them, or put them into words. Like Steve on his first flight, Jodi did not know that she was responding to the beauty of the skyscape, the overground world; an overwhelming sense of freedom. She only knew it felt good.

  Almost as good as killing Mutes.

  TEN

  With Jodi in the lead, the three Skyhawks flew in a silent descending curve that took them over the line of the Laramie mountains. Jodi’s intention was to come round behind the advancing Mutes, firing a lethal burst into their unsuspecting backs before slamming the throttle forward and jinking away under full power, returning from different directions at low level to pick off the remainder. In previous actions against the Southern Mutes she had found that they were as terrified of ‘cloud warriors’ as they were of the ‘iron snake’ and, if subjected to a determined, vigorous attack, usually turned tail and fled for cover.

  Like the execs to whom she had reported, Jodi had not allowed the idea that Mutes might possess magical powers to take root in her mind. The interaction of earth-forces; ground and air temperature, humidity, atmospheric electricity, the movement of air masses over differing terrain were part of a logically constructed system of cause and effect which could be recorded, analysed and understood. Like Hartmann and his officers, Jodi had found it strange – and slightly unnerving – that the mist and low cloud that had formed overnight around and above the train should still persist several hours after sunrise. And not only persist; actually appear to move with the wagon train when it had begun its advance. Jodi was not an expert but she preferred to think that there was a simple, rational, meteorologically-sound explanation for what had occurred.

  Back in Nixon-Fort Worth, she had been irritated by Steve Brickman’s probing questions about the rumours of so-called Mute ‘magic’. Odd things had happened in the past but when the facts were considered carefully and coolly – as in the incidents investigated by the Assessors – it was clear that most of the things people claimed had happened either didn’t happen at all, or were nothing more than a strange coincidence. A haphazard conjunction of events which, in the heat of battle, had seemed extraordinary. What everyone carefully ignored was the fact that many hardened trail-hands stoked up on illicit caches of Mute ‘rainbow grass’. It was a Code One offence but that did not appear to deter the users from getting blocked out of their skulls – usually before making an overground sortie from the wagon train. Given the hallucinogenic effects of the grass it was not surprising that some trail-hands had weird experiences. And since they could not own up to smoking it, what better than to claim they had been victims of Mute ‘magic’? The idea, and the lurking fear of it, was a real morale sapper. It was little wonder that it had been ruthlessly stamped on by the First Family. In the world they had laboured unceasingly t
o create, all was explained and inexorable logic prevailed. Despite the odd, occasional doubt, Jodi had clung stubbornly to the official viewpoint. She refused to consider the possibility that ‘summoners’ really existed. The idea that the Plainfolk clans had people who could manipulate the weather at will was plainly ridiculous.

  As this thought passed through her mind, Jodi heard an ominous rumble of thunder. She looked up through the clearview panel in the wing. The sky was clear. But it had been hot and humid for days. When that happened you often got a build up of pressure and static and then…

  Jodi checked the movement of the rifle mount and the ease with which she could pull the weapon into her shoulder and take aim, squeezing off imaginary shots on the uncocked trigger at rocks on the slopes of the mountain below. Satisfied, she stretched out her arms and pointed three times at Booker and Yates. They veered away obediently, opening out the formation to fly three wingspans from their section leader. As they assumed their new positions and turned their faces towards her, Jodi raised her right hand and brought it down in a slow chopping motion over the nose of her Skyhawk. It was the signal to go into what was known as a free-firing attack. Jodi brought her dark visor down over the chin piece of her helmet, grasped the pistol grip of her rifle and pulled the butt into her shoulder. Booker and Yates did the same.

  With their propellors windmilling silently behind their backs, they swooped down over the western flank of the Laramie mountains like three giant birds of prey. The tops of the forest of red trees that carpeted the lower slopes rushed up to meet them.

  To the south, The Lady continued to advance cautiously, still blinded by the heavy mist. Unknown to Hartmann, the wagon train had wandered two or three miles off course. What he took to be the eroded remains of Interstate 80 which had once run from Cheyenne, through Laramie and then westwards to Rawlins, was actually a dry, shallow, river bed. As they followed its winding course northwestwards, Hartmann noted that the ground on either side was rising steadily. He made his second mistake of the day in thinking that they were passing through a cutting.