Cloud Warrior

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘This could be tricky!’ yelled the crew-chief. He had broken out some lengths of rope and the ground crew stood ready to lash the Skyhawk down. But first, they had to pull her out of the air.

  Gus White clambered out of the duck-hole and grabbed Steve’s arm. Like everyone else, he was drenched to the skin. ‘Shee-yitt!’ he screamed. ‘She’s still loaded with nap!’

  Steve stared through the lashing rain at the bucking Skyhawk. One of the containers was still clipped to the starboard rack.

  Gus pulled at his arm. ‘If she hits hard and that goes up –!’ He took a step towards one of the duck-holes.

  Steve grabbed the neck of Gus’s fatigues and hauled him back. ‘Stay right here, you yellow bastard!’

  Gus tore himself free angrily and stood his ground, stung by Steve’s accusation. ‘Why the hell d’she come back now anyway? Why couldn’t she have ridden this out and come back when it was all over?’

  There was no time to reply. Jodi Kazan’s Skyhawk swept in towards them on a level with the flight deck. When it was about twenty yards away, the wind suddenly slackened. Instantly, Jodi cut the motor. She’d obviously thought about that too. The Skyhawk rocked from side to side, slipped backwards and lifted, putting the three wheels six feet off the deck.

  This was it. There was only one bite at this cherry.

  Steve, Gus, and the ground crew leapt up and dragged the Skyhawk out of the air. Somehow Steve managed to get his hands over the edge of the cockpit oblivious of the fact that his left elbow was resting on the racked napalm canister. He hauled downwards, adding his full weight to the aircraft. Gus got one arm over the nose. As their heads came level with the edge of the cockpit they saw why Jodi had come back now instead of waiting. Her flight fatigues were soaked in blood that seeped out of a hole above her right breast pocket.

  Steve had little more than half a second to register the scene. He glimpsed the barbed point of a crossbow bolt sticking out through the back of her seat. To judge from the angle, it must have come up through the floor between her legs. Jodi’s head lolled forward. With the dark visor of her helmet clipped shut it was impossible to tell if she was still alive.

  The ground crew struggled to lash the Skyhawk down. A howling, shrieking, demonic blast of wind lifted it off the deck, tore it from their grasp, turned it over and slammed it upside down against the roof of the car behind. Steve and the others stared horrified and helpless as the wings crumpled under the impact, struts sheared, and the cockpit toppled sideways, crunching like the pendulum of a disintegrating clock into the side of the wagon train. A great burst of orange flame streamed back along the car as the napalm canister exploded then, an instant later, the wind swept the blazing wreckage into the raging waters.

  And she was gone.

  ‘Smokin’ lumpshit…’ murmured Gus. The wind tore the words from his mouth.

  Steve and the other crewmen crouched on the deck in a state of shock at their narrow escape, staring in disbelief at the smoke streaming from the heat-blackened, blistered skin of the next car; the only sign that Jodi Kazan had been there, just seconds before.

  ‘We had her,’ muttered the crew-chief. ‘We had her!’

  Overhead the thunder roared for the last time. Steve felt it sounded like a triumphant, faintly mocking finale. To what his sixth sense told him was merely the overture.

  Motor-Head, who was the leader of one of the two groups attacked by Jodi, Booker and Yates gathered the scattered survivors and brought them to where Mr Snow sat. The storm had subsided. The dark clouds that had gathered had been torn apart by the wind, washed white by the rain and dried by the emerging sun into fluffy, soft-edged shapes that faded into the blue sky as they drifted westwards.

  The Bears from the other group, under the command of Hawk-Wind joined them. Many of the warriors had suffered splash burns, some had been burned more extensively. All bore the pain stoically as was the custom among Mute warriors but it was clear to Mr Snow that several would not survive their silent ordeal. He could do nothing to help them. They needed surgical skills that exceeded those he possessed as the clan’s medicine man.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he whispered painfully.

  Motor-Head sent a warrior to fill a skin-bag with water from a nearby stream. The Bears squatted patiently in a half-circle before Mr Snow while the water was brought to him.

  Mr Snow swallowed the bagful without removing it from his lips. He wiped his mouth and throat then let out a long, world-weary sigh. His head still hurt. He felt the bump gingerly and addressed Motor-Head and Hawk-Wind. ‘How many of your warriors kissed sharp iron?’

  ‘Four hands plus one,’ said Motor-Head.

  ‘Six hands,’ said Hawk-Wind.

  Fifty-one dead. It could have been worse, reflected Mr Snow. If the arrowheads had managed to drop all their fire-eggs… It was unfortunate that Cadillac had not found pictures of these things in the seeing-stone.

  ‘Convoy and Brass-Rail, my clan-brothers, fell to the cloud warriors,’ said Motor-Head. His eyes glistened with tears. While it was not worthy of a warrior to yield to pain, it was perfectly acceptable to express grief. ‘I would be revenged.’

  ‘Now is your chance,’ said Mr Snow huskily. His throat felt as if it had been reamed out with red-hot fish hooks. Every bone, every fibre of his lean, hard flesh ached, burned, felt consumed by power that had passed through him. ‘The iron snake is trapped in the Now and Then River.’ He pointed down the slope in the direction of the lower line of trees. Three columns of smoke rose where the grass still burned from Jodi’s napalm strike. ‘The sand-burrowers in its belly must come out to free the snake. That will be the killing time. But you must be wary. They have sharp iron that strikes long blows with the speed of a rattler’s tongue. You must be brave but not foolish. You must hunt them as you would a fast-foot – quietly and with great cunning.’

  Motor-Head leapt to his feet and crossed his arms angrily. ‘She-ehh! Are the Bears to hide when their blood runs hot?!’

  ‘Hey-YAHH!’ roared the warriors. Even those with burned faces and raw swollen lips joined in the traditional response.

  Mr Snow rose painfully to his feet, steadied his aching legs and jabbed a warning finger under Motor-Head’s nose. ‘Listen, bonehead! There is to be no fancy, toe-to-toe knife work. I didn’t just give this my best shot to have you all mown down! This is not a rumble over a piece of turf. We are taking on an iron snake full of sand-burrowers. They don’t fight the way we fight. There’s no stand-off. They are not going to wait while you spit on the ground.’ He swept his eyes over the rows of squatting warriors. ‘The moment they see the end of your nose they are going to try and blow your heads off!’ He waved an arm in the air. ‘The way the cloud warriors struck from the sky! That’s the way you must fight today! You must be as brave as Bears but you must strike like coyotes! We have to wear them down. Pick them off, one by one.’

  ‘Heyyy-yaahhh…’ The response came as a reluctant growl from the warriors’ throats. It was clear that they, like Motor-Head, were not happy at the prospect, but Mr Snow’s authority could not be challenged when expressed in this forthright manner.

  ‘Go – quickly!’ ordered Mr Snow. ‘The river runs dry. And remember – the sand-burrower is not a man, but an animal. You do not fight animals. You hunt them.’ He stretched his left arm towards them, his hand extended, blessing the path they would take to the river. ‘Go! May the great Mother guide your arm. And may she drink the blood of our enemies and not from your cups!’

  ‘Hey-yahh!’ cried the warriors. They leapt to their feet and shook their weapons at the sky. ‘Hey-yah! Hey-yah! Hey-YAHH!!’

  Mr Snow watched them lope away towards the trees and the Now and Then River that lay in the valley below. A party of clan-elders summoned by a runner from the settlement’s forest hide-out joined him and together they set about the doleful task of despatching the dying. This was done with the aid of a narcotic shag, the dried shredded fragments of a psychedelic mushroom the Mutes
called Dream Cap. Taken onto the tongue and swallowed, Dream Cap quickly induced a state of anaesthetised euphoria. When it could be obtained, it was used in the crude bone-setting operations and basic surgery performed by some medicine men. Its purpose here was not primarily to ease the pain of dying but to loosen the bond between the warrior’s spirit and his earth-body.

  The elders gave the drug a few minutes to take effect, then aided by Mr Snow, killed the hideously burned warriors with a quick knife thrust through the heart.

  It fell to Mr Snow to despatch Little-Feet, a young, fourteen-year-old Bear whose left leg had, in places, been burned through to the bone. He placed his hand on the boy’s forehead and put the point of his knife on the slim chest. His hand trembled. His eyes glistened with tears.

  Little-Feet’s drugged eyes fluttered open. He made an effort to focus on Mr Snow. ‘Will I go to the High Ground, Old One?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Snow. ‘When the sun goes through the western door, you will walk the golden islands in the sky and when you are rested you will come again to our people as a child of the earth and do mighty things in our name.’

  ‘But I have not chewed bone,’ said Little-Feet. ‘I have no standing.’

  ‘In the eyes and the heart of Mo-Town our great sky-mother, you have great standing,’ said Mr Snow. ‘She has told me this. You have braved the fire of the cloud warriors and are truly a great Bear.’

  ‘I would have standing in my eyes also,’ said Little-Feet. ‘Let me die with my hands on sharp iron.’

  Mr Snow took the boy’s hands and placed them over his own on the handle of the knife. Little-Feet gripped his hand and wrist tightly. ‘Now!’ he cried, pulling hard on the knife. ‘Drink, Sweet Mother!’

  Mr Snow thrust the long blade swiftly and cleanly into Little-Feet’s heart. ‘Mo-Town drinks,’ he said, quietly. He sat back on his heels and watched the boy’s life ebb away. And wished yet again that, with the help of the Sky Voices, he might truly understand why the world was ordered thus.

  ELEVEN

  The storm which had swept over the wagon train cleared with the same mysterious rapidity with which it had developed. Less than an hour after the flaming wreckage of Jodi Kazan’s Skyhawk had plunged into the raging flood waters, the Now and Then River had been reduced to a narrow ankle-deep stream linking a chain of muddy pools, leaving The Lady from Louisiana high and dry, its lead cars lying tilted across the river bed, trapped amidst a crazy tangle of trees, boulders and sodden vegetation.

  Hartmann, the wagon master, was relieved to see clear skies overhead but he, like Steve Brickman, sensed that The Lady’s ordeal was far from over. He ordered Colonel Moore, the Senior Field Commander to despatch his linemen to form a defensive perimeter around the wagon train while Stu Barber, the First Engineer, took a party out to inspect the flood damage.

  Steve had a word with Ryan, the wingman who had been made acting section leader following the loss of Kazan, then sought out Buck McDonnell and asked permission to take a small party downstream to look for Jodi.

  The big Trail Boss turned him down flat. ‘She was skewered, roasted, then drowned in mud sauce, Mister. Nobody walks away from that. Besides which, we don’t waste wingmen on bag jobs. Get back to your post and get ready to fly.’

  Wearing sealed helmets fitted with armoured glass visors, moulded face plates, air filters and two-way radios, and clad in flexible body armour that gave them the fearsome anonymity of warrior ants, the linemen ran down the ramps dropped from the belly of the train and formed quickly into eight-man combat squads. Each man was armed with a three-barrelled air rifle and bayonet. Spare magazines, six canister-type flame-grenades, a machete, reserve air bottles and rations were carried in belt packs and pockets on the chest and thigh.

  The force was led by Captain Virgil Clay, the Junior Field Commander and they were followed out of the wagon train by Barber, the First Engineer, Buck McDonnell, and the twenty-strong damage control party. Clay, known by his radio call-sign ‘ANVIL TWO’, sent two squads upstream, two down, and sent three more squads up each bank to cover the open ground on each side. Aboard The Lady, the rest of the crew manned the weapon turrets, or stood ready to reinforce the groups on the ground should the perimeter come under attack.

  They didn’t have long to wait. Ginny Green, the first lineman to clear the mud-slide on the right-hand bank took a bolt through the chest. The impact of the ten inch-long missile lifted her clean off her feet. Arms outstretched, her body did a sloppily executed back-flip and hit the ground like a sack of rivets. The seven linemen behind and on either side of her hit the deck, shoved their rifles out in front of them and peered cautiously over the top of the bank. The first guy to poke his head up got a bolt through the back of his neck.

  ‘Shit!’ cursed the squad leader. He ducked below the top of the slide and flipped the transmit switch on his helmet from the squad channel to the Field Commander’s. ‘Anvil Two, this is East Side One. We have struck out twice and are taking fire from both banks. Advise. Over!’

  Clay’s voice came back through his earphones. ‘East Side, this is Anvil Two. Mow the lawn. Standby to jump-off. Out.’

  ‘Mow the lawn’ was lineman jargon; a call for an extended, heavy burst of out-going fire in which a stream of bullets were pumped into every hummock of grass, every bush or piece of scrub in the fan-shaped area that formed a group’s immediate front. Anything that could furnish cover for a Mute warrior was riddled with lead.

  Stu Barber, the First Engineer, moved under one of the wagons and spoke to Hartmann via one of the outside tv cameras fitted for that purpose. Buck McDonnell, toting a three-barrelled air rifle, stood guard beside him.

  ‘It looks a real mess,’ he reported. ‘But apart from a few dents and that broken passway seal, we don’t appear to have suffered any structural damage. The big problem is the debris that’s piled up under the wagons. We’re not going to be able to move until that’s cut away and I reckon it’ll take a good six hours. Maybe more. I’m going to need at least a hundred men out here if you want The Lady back on the road by sundown.’

  Hartmann chewed over his reply. ‘You’ve got twenty out there now. I’ll give you another forty. If Clay’s force is sufficient to contain this attack, I’ll release more men later. Mr McDonnell, will you come aboard and organise the work-party?’

  ‘Right away, sir!’ McDonnell stepped up to the camera. ‘Uh, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but these river banks are a mite too high for comfort. We don’t have a clear horizontal field of fire from the top turrets to back up our perimeter defences.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Mr McDonnell,’ replied Hartmann. ‘But we are facing an undisciplined lightly-armed enemy. Individually brave and tenacious, but without any overall military organisation. I’m sure our men can hold the line until we dig ourselves out.’

  ‘Yes sir!’ McDonnell threw a salute at the camera and hurried aboard. Another screen picked up the Trail Boss as he ran up the ramp into the wagon train.

  A few minutes later, Big D entered the saddle. He was just in time to hear Anvil Two come on the air with the news that they ‘had hostiles wall to wall’. Both up- and down-river sections had reported incoming fire and the men on the east and west banks were pinned down. Five linemen had been hit, three fatally. As yet, no visual contact had been made with the enemy.

  ‘I thought these lump-heads were supposed to stand up and fight,’ muttered Colonel Moore, the Senior Field Commander.

  ‘Maybe we have to stand on their toes first,’ said Buck McDonnell. He turned to Hartmann. ‘Our boys have got to storm those banks and break out, sir,’ he urged. We mustn’t let ‘em pin us down in the river while we’re trying to move The Lady.’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me,’ said Hartmann drily. He hit the transmit button. ‘Anvil Two, this is Lady Lou. Message. Over.’

  Clay responded instantly. ‘Anvil Two loud and clear. Over.’

  Hartmann leaned towards the mike. ‘Push on, Mister Clay. I
want a secure five hundred yard perimeter around The Lady by midday at the latest.’

  ‘Anvil Two. Roger. All groups Wilco. Out.’

  Hartmann turned to the Trail Boss. ‘Pick forty strong men, Mr McDonnell.’

  ‘I tapped them on the way up here, sir,’ said the Trail-Boss.

  ‘Okay.’ Hartmann looked towards the tv image of his engineering exec. ‘Put them to work with your damage control party, Stu, and let’s get this train back on the road.’

  Barber reached up to lower the visor of his helmet. He looked distinctly unhappy. ‘Are you sure you can’t spare any more hands? Sixty is nowhere near enough. The more men I have, the sooner–’

  Hartmann cut him short. ‘Just do the best you can, Stu. Put everybody on the rear end. If Coop can take four or six wagons down river and up onto either bank it’ll give us the firepower we need to cover the spadework.’

  ‘On my way,’ said Barber.

  Hartmann broke the connection with the external monitor screen that Barber was watching and swung back to the Trail Boss. ‘Drive ‘em hard, Mr McDonnell.’

  Urged on by Captain Clay, the combat groups on the river banks charged over the top with their rifles switched to full auto. Several more men went down before both elements reached a stretch of undulating ground that provided some semblance of cover but, as they threw themselves down, Mute warriors leapt out of shallow grass-covered holes in the ground behind them and attacked them with knife-sticks and stone flails. The hand-to-hand fighting was short, sharp and bloody. Several linemen fell to the lightning-fast knife-work of the Bears but in the end, the firepower and the disciplined cohesion of the Tracker combat squads triumphed.