Cy released a pair of rockets and banked to the left. He felt rather than saw them explode. A support gave way, the tower shivered and crashed to the ground with a loud boom.
"Yahoo!" Cy yelled as he skimmed across the compound. He walked streams of purple-blue tracers through thin-skinned prefab buildings, laughed as partially clad Il Ronnians spilled out through doors and windows, and yelled insults that no one else could hear. "Take that, you pointy-tailed bio bods!"
Then something scary happened. Indicator lights winked on his control board. The cannons fired twenty rounds apiece and stopped. The last pair of rockets hit the base of the com mast and blew up. It toppled like a huge tree, crushed a pair of air cars, and breached the fence. Blue and white electricity danced in and around the wreckage as new connections were made and the compound's sensors blew out.
Ground fire arched up and around Cy's ground car. It was deceptively pretty. The Il Ronnians were firing back. Fear reached up to pull the high down. Cy banked to the left, circled back, and searched for Lando.
Nothing… nothing… there! Standing up and waving like a damned fool. Good thing the silly so-and-so had his trusty cyborg buddy along to back him up.
Cy sideslipped toward the ground, fired the reverse thrusters, and slowed down enough for Lando to dive in over the side. His legs still waved as Cy put the air car into a steep climb. Tracers wove patterns around them and the aircraft shuddered as a shell punched its way through the rear passenger compartment. The compound grew smaller as it fell away.
Lando was furious as he straightened himself out and fought his way into a sitting position. "Dammit, Cy! What the hell were you doing?"
"Slowing them down," the cyborg replied smugly. "They'll have a heck of a time following us now."
Lando looked back over his shoulder. Cy was correct. The compound was a quickly shrinking mess. Fires burned, electricity shimmered, and searchlights carved panic-stricken circles in the sky. There were no signs of pursuit. He looked at the cyborg. One vid cam was aimed forward while another looked his way. He would have sworn that he saw it wink.
The cyborg kept the air car low to avoid Il Ronnian radar and followed the terrain toward their destination. It felt like a high-speed roller-coaster ride.
Lando didn't mind the motion but would have preferred to fly the aircraft himself. But Cy had refused his repeated offers to take over so there was nothing he could do but wait and worry.
His main concern, other than for Della's safety, stemmed from above. Surface radars are one thing, but orbital detection systems are something else. Lando imagined delta-shaped fighters dropping from orbit, their target acquisition systems locking up on the air car, their missiles leaping outward.
Would they know what was coming? Would they get some sort of warning? Or simply cease to be?
The smuggler had no desire to find out.
But the minutes became an hour and nothing happened. Finally, after what seemed like an endless series of ups, downs, and sideways jogs, they turned into a long V-shaped valley. It took little more than a glance to see that a major battle was under way.
Light blossomed over the far end of the valley as a series of illumination rounds went off. The smuggler saw that the Il Ronnians had constructed a compound, which though crude, had been heavily reinforced. There were weapons pits galore, automated energy cannons, and a network of interlocking trenches. All heavily sandbagged.
An oval-shaped fence extended out from the compound, and at one end of it, as far from the fighting as they could get, hundreds of constructs lay huddled on the ground. Whether dead or alive the human couldn't tell.
Lando saw pinpoints of light sparkle across the surrounding hillsides as fire was directed inward toward the Il Ronnian compound. But it was nothing compared to the volume of fire that was returned.
Fire stabbed outward like the blossoms of some terrible flower. Entire sections of the surrounding hillsides seemed to soar upward, then fall toward earth. There would be no way to survive that terrible fire. Constructs were dying by the scores.
Lando felt a terrible emptiness in the pit of his stomach. What the hell? There was no attack on for tonight. And with Della missing, who had ordered it anyway?
But his thoughts were snatched away as a tidal wave of air hit the air car, flipped it over, and rushed away to bounce off the opposing hillsides. Their harnesses held them in. Lando's better than Cy's… since no one had anticipated the possibility of a globe-shaped pilot.
Lando thought Cy had blown it and lost control. But the sudden roar told him otherwise. No, the problem consisted of aerospace fighters, the same ones he'd wondered about earlier. Now he knew why they'd been allowed to travel unmolested. The Il Ronnians had focused all of their attention on Holding Area Two.
Cy flipped the aircraft right side up and hugged the left side of the valley. He flew low and slow. If the fighters spotted the air car, and they almost certainly would, chances were they'd leave it alone. And why not? The Il Ronnians controlled the air, so any and all aircraft automatically belonged to them.
Lando activated the comset and punched his way through the frequencies. The smuggler heard code, encrypted voice transmissions, and the sound of a familiar voice. His heart took an unexpected leap. He went back a freq. The voice was familiar indeed! It belonged to Della.
"Listen to me! Pull back. Disengage. That's an order, dammit! I don't care what God said. He doesn't know anything about war, and I do. That's why he brought humans here in the first place. Remember?"
Wexel-15 sounded confused. The chatter of a machine gun threatened to drown him out. "But we thought you were dead, and God said to destroy the compound, so we attacked."
"Well, I'm telling you to retreat, and to do it now. Understand?"
Wexel-15 sounded contrite. "Yes, Della. We will pull back."
True to his training Wexel-15 switched to the team frequency and left the command channel open. Lando wasted little time in fumbling an Il Ronnian headset into place and activating the mike. "Della! Where the heck are you?"
Della was cautious, understandably reluctant to reveal her position unless she was sure it was him. "Pik? Is that you?"
"And who else would be wandering around in the middle of the night looking for stray bounty hunters? Give me your position and we'll pick you up."
"You have transportation?"
Lando grinned. "An air limo complete with round chauffeur."
Della laughed. "Okay. I'm just below the ridge line on the north side of the valley, halfway between the spires."
Another set of flares went off enabling Cy to see the jagged ridge line and twin spires. He banked in that direction and activated the air car's running lights.
As the ridge came closer Lando felt an almost overwhelming desire to take over the controls. It seemed as though Cy was coming in way too fast. But the cyborg braked, the air car slowed, and the smuggler saw a light blink on and off.
Cy made a course correction, slowed even more, and coasted along the side of the hill. The light blinked again. It was ahead and off to the left.
The cyborg killed all forward movement and nudged the aircraft in until the running lights colored the rocks.
Della appeared out of the darkness. She had a pack on her back, and a rifle in her hand, and a smile on her face. Rocks slid and clattered as she moved.
Lando felt the nose of the aircraft sink as Della climbed aboard, then rise again as she made her way back toward the open cockpit. He stood to help her in. They sat side by side on the bench-style seat.
Della handed Lando the rifle. The barrel was bent and clogged with dirt. She grinned. "It made one heck of a pry bar."
Lando didn't say a word. He just dropped the weapon into the back seat, put an arm around Della's shoulders, and pulled her close.
A fighter roared the length of the valley and pulled up toward the stars.
Cy killed the air car's running lights and headed away from the valley.
Lando looked past
Della. The fighting had died down to an occasional shot. A flare went off. It lit up her face. There was dirt on it. Lando looked into her eyes.
"They said you were dead."
"They were wrong."
"I love you."
Della looked at him for a long time. She nodded soberly. "And I love you."
"Good," Cy said matter-of-factly. "I'm glad that's settled. Now, let's find God and ask him what the heck's going on."
17
Pik Lando and Della Dee followed Wexel-l5 and Dru-2l into a drab, somewhat utilitarian room. In fact, judging from the now empty bins that occupied one wall, it had once served as some sort of storage area.
The room lay at the heart of the long-disused industrial complex that served as construct headquarters. Lando knew that not too far away a thousand recruits were busy studying newly made training tapes, marching back and forth across an empty warehouse, and making their way through a really tough obstacle course.
The entire facility was located deep underground, safe from prying eyes, and invisible to electronic sensors. And like everything else on the planet, the constructs had kept the complex in perfect repair, awaiting the return of their long-departed masters.
The storage room was empty now, empty except for a sturdy metal table and some matching stools. Lando found that these were tall, and almost comfortable, suggesting that they'd been designed for either the lights or the Lords themselves.
Wexel-l5 tried one, got off, and tried it again. He looked like a mountain on a stick.
What light there was came from two strip panels mounted on the ceiling. They flickered from time to time as if reacting to a distant maintenance problem.
There had been more and more of those lately, as the Il Ronnians herded thousands of constructs into concentration camps, and prevented them from performing their traditional duties.
Lando looked at Della. She looked at him. While the storage room was an unlikely venue in which to converse with a being who called himself "God," it was the logical place to interface with what amounted to a super-powerful maintenance computer. Not only that, but it also served as a useful reminder of the machine's original status, one device out of many.
Still, God was the only computer that had survived the night of death, and like any survivor deserved some respect.
Dru-21 wore a purse belted around his waist. He opened the flap, reached inside, and gathered something into his hand.
Then, moving with what Lando interpreted as dramatic deliberation, the light held his hand over the table. Construct looked at construct. Wexel-15 nodded.
The two of them had become quite close in recent days. Whether as a result of his advice, or because of necessity, Lando couldn't tell. But it was good whatever the reason.
The disks clattered as they hit. Some spun like tops, others fell over on their sides. Light winked off glossy black plastic.
Lando looked up at Dru-21. The construct took a disk and placed it at the center of his forehead.
"You are the first off-worlders to commune with God. There could be danger."
Lando turned to Della. "I'll go first. If I survive you can follow."
The bounty hunter picked up a disk and slapped it against her forehead. Her crossed arms and defiant expression said it all.
Lando sighed, shook his head ruefully, and reached for a disk. It felt cool against his skin.
Slowly, reverently, the constructs chose a disk and placed it on their foreheads. A lot of things happened at once.
Wexel-15's eyes rolled back in his head. Dru-21's normally expressionless face convulsed with pleasure, and the humans felt something akin to an electric current surge through their bodies. It brought neither pain nor pleasure, but was distinctly uncomfortable. Lando was in the process of reaching for his disk when the feeling disappeared. He heard a voice inside his head. It felt big, powerful, confident.
"Greetings." The single word seemed to reverberate through every cell of his mind.
Lando stirred uneasily. It felt weird to have someone or something else in his head. It was confusing too. Were thoughts sufficient, or should he speak out loud?
"Thoughts are sufficient," the voice said. "The Lords used thought to communicate with me, and I shall use it to communicate with you. Geeber dorx."
Lando frowned. "Geeeber dorx?" What the hell did that mean? He waited for the computer to reply but nothing came.
Thoughts that felt like Della flooded into the smuggler's mind. A telepathic conference call! It seemed God had a number of tricks up his electronic sleeve. "We would like to discuss the current military situation."
Lando felt God return. "You are to be complimented, Dee-1. Your tactics have been successful. Issle fleeb garbex noghorn… planetary rotations from now."
Lando looked around the table. Della shrugged, Wexel-15 looked confused, and Dru-21 was visibly concerned.
The smuggler's worst fears were confirmed. The gibberish was not part of God's normal communications patterns. He swallowed hard.
"Are you aware that some of your thoughts are reaching us in the form of gibberish?"
There was a five-second pause, as if God were checking on something. "Your powers of observation are flawed, Lando-1. All of my primary and secondary systems are operating at or above ninety-seven percent effectiveness."
Wexel-15 looked absolutely stricken, Dru-21's frown became even more pronounced, and Della looked thoughtful. Her thoughts were even, deliberate, as if speaking to a child.
"We believe that the Il Ronnians are trying to find you. If they succeed, their technicians will take you apart and remove you from the planet."
"That is umberlak."
Della shrugged and looked at Lando. He decided to give it a try. "Tell us where you are. We will send troops to protect you."
"I am everywhere ibor nowhere at all."
Lando forced himself to be patient. "That is impossible. Everyone is somewhere."
"Ardo klonk."
There was silence for a moment. All of them felt the same sense of dismay. Della chose her words carefully. "Did you order an attack on the valley that the Il Ronn call 'Holding Area Two'?"
"Yes."
A sensible reply. Expressions brightened.
"It was a poor decision. Many constructs died because of it. Why did you do it?"
There was a long silence followed by: "Nander pog 77784321 orbo."
More gibberish. Faces fell. There was another long silence. Their thoughts were the same. God had suffered some sort of mental breakdown. Why? There was no way to know.
Lando waited for God to read their thoughts, to deny the problem, but nothing came.
Wexel-15 spoke for the first time. His question was appropriate for the general that he had recently become.
"We need information about the Il Ronn. Supply dumps, communications, troop placements, anything you can give us."
"UCKERGAT!"
The thought had an urgent feel.
Dru-21 was the first to respond. "Could you repeat that, please? We did not understand."
"UCKERGAT! UCKERGAT! UCKERGAT! UCKERGAT! UCKERGAT! UCKERGAT!"
Lando shook his head slowly. "I hate to say it, but God is a few planets short of a full system."
Dru-21 tried once again. "God? Are you still there?"
"Abernom 6666 XXXX demidog."
Lando peeled the disk off his forehead and dropped it onto the table.
Slowly, reluctantly, the others did likewise. They started to rise but stopped when the table started to vibrate. Suddenly, without warning, large sheets of paper began to appear from under the tabletop. They hit Wexel-15's knees, startled him, and slid to the floor.
"What the…?" Lando got off his stool and dropped to his knees. He saw that a large black box had been mounted under the tabletop. A printer of some sort. It whined softly as sheet followed sheet onto the floor.
God, or the part of God that was still rational, was responding to their request for information. Or was trying t
o anyway.
The process continued unabated for a full five minutes until it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Lando estimated that more than two hundred sheets of paper had been delivered.
Humans and constructs worked shoulder to shoulder to retrieve the printouts and stack them on the table. However, due to the fact that Dru-21 was the only person who could actually read the printouts, the rest were forced to watch while he sorted them into piles.
Dru-21 found that many of the sheets were covered with total gibberish, while others made partial sense, but were useless because they dealt with crops, warehouse manifests, or other mundane matters.
Still, he found that some of the printouts contained what appeared to be valuable information about Il Ronnian defenses, troop movements, and so forth, not to mention the beautiful, almost flawless satellite photos of the planet's surface.
It took time to sort them out, select what seemed like the most important, and shuffle them into some sort of order.
So, while Dru-21 worked on that, Lando took the satellite photos and taped them to the wall. They at least were something he could understand without Dru-21's assistance.
The first thing he noticed was that all of them had been obtained from Il Ronnian rather than indig satellites. In fact, knowing the Il Ronnian tendency to steal anything that wasn't nailed down, Lando supposed that the local satellites, if any, were safely stashed in the belly of some warship.
The smuggler couldn't read or write Il Ronnian, but it didn't take a linguist to see that the photo captions featured the same twisted script that he'd seen on captured cargoes, and in numerous documentaries.
The photos were Il Ronnian all right, which meant that God had the ability to tap into their communications systems without them knowing, and steal whatever he wanted. Or had been able to do so anyway, since his abilities seemed more than a little impaired at the moment.
Like Lando, Della was immediately attracted to the photos, and the information that they contained.
The first thing Della noticed was that while the photos were intended to provide the Il Ronnians with intelligence about the constructs and their activities, they worked in reverse as well. The damage caused by the destruction of villages,
Drifter's War Page 18