The Imprisoned Earth

by Vaughn Heppner

  Elder Paris Roan might have been the one who told me that all times and civilizations eventually have Dark Ages. There had been a Dark Age after the Bronze Age on Terra when many cities had fallen to roving Sea Peoples. There had been another Dark Age after Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome. Maybe a Dark Age had hit this part of the Orion Arm. Some people had spaceships but others lived poor, planet-bound lives.

  What did any of that have to do with mentalists, Calidore, invading Masters or the Avantis? I knew so little, and I had yet to hear anything about spacemen digging in ancient ruins for high technology. Supposedly, that was the reason the shining woman in the Arch Ship had sent me here.

  I ate, slept, bounced around in the cargo hold and wondered if starmenters truly existed and what would happen if I fell into their hands. According to the little I’d heard, starmenters were some type of space pirates. Maybe they plundered less advanced worlds, taking whatever they desired.

  As the days passed, my wrists and ankles chafed, but I felt stronger than when I’d staggered out of the desert toward the fire. I told myself that I was biding my time—and I was, until the inevitable happened…

  ***

  Not that I’d any idea something bad was going to happen. But maybe the angry Sarai Desert had finally decided to pay back the Gyr Falcon’s crew for failing to let it drink someone’s blood. Thus, the Desert decided the crew would supply the need.

  The day was ending, dusk approached. I could tell because the worst heat had departed. The wind had died down and the occasional opening seam in the shifting ship-planks showed less brightness out there than before.

  Suddenly, I heard frantic shouts topside. Then, someone screamed in mortal pain. Others began shouting louder.

  I strained to hear actual words, finally hearing, “Sky-sharks!”

  Two sky-sharks had attacked me near the Kurgech Mountains when I’d first appeared. The Wind Runners had openly spoken about needing better weaponry against the airborne scavengers. Yes. A sky-shark attack made perfect sense.

  I grunted as I twisted my wrists back and forth, trying to free myself.

  I’d left the bonds alone so far because Alger always checked them when he came down. Now, I attempted to loosen the leather straps, but that proved futile. Okay. I was stronger than before. Maybe I was strong enough to simply break the bonds.

  With a roar, I yanked my hands. I did it repeatedly. Soon, I was panting as sweat poured from me. I might be stronger than I used to be, but I wasn’t yet strong enough to burst my bonds as Samson had done in the Bible story.

  I heard crackling fire and looked up, seeing flames dance. At that point, hull planking explosively blew inward. I ducked, lying flat and screwing my eyes shut.

  The Gyr Falcon bucked, and I heard hissing. The vessel lurched to the left. Through a hole in the hull, I saw one of the balloon tires deflate rapidly.

  The shouting topside became panicked. Were Gosso and his crew losing the fight?

  I rolled across the tilted floor like a child, moving to where I saw shards of wood. Reaching one with a jagged piece of metal attached to it, I used my hands, picking it up and sawing at the leather bonds. It was slow, painstaking work, and I could feel blood slick the wood as I cut myself, but I kept at it.

  The Gyr Falcon bucked again as shards and pieces of hull planking blew past me. A nearly spent shell hit bales of pelts, but did no other damage. Miraculously, I remained unhurt. I could see outside more easily and saw the passing desert and the Kurgech Mountains in the distance.

  Finally, my desperate work paid off, and my wrists parted. Frantically, I tore at the leather around my ankles. Soon, I flung the binding away and climbed to my feet.

  The wind runner lurched crazily. I stumbled and fell back down. Then, the upper hatch opened. A wild-eyed Alger saw me, brought his flintlock to bear and pulled the trigger even though his hand was shaking. The hammer fell—a thunderous explosion and a puff of black smoke heralded a pellet that whizzed past my head, striking the wooden floor.

  “What was that for?” I shouted.

  Foam bubbled past his lips and his eyes were glassy. He felt frantically over his body and found another flintlock. “Spaceman!” he screeched in an old man’s quaver, bringing the weapon to bear. He pulled the trigger, but this time, nothing happened. He stared at it and finally cocked the hammer, re-aiming at me.

  I hurled a heavy chunk of wood I’d found on the floor, hitting his forehead, forcing his head back. He tumbled away from the hatch, screeched again, and reappeared, possibly having jumped to get back. But he’d miscalculated and fell through the hatch into the hold.

  Like a mountain lion, I was upon him, tearing the flintlock from him and aiming it at his head.

  He shrank back and whimpered, “Please, don’t shoot me.”

  In disgust, I kicked him in the head so he slumped unconscious. I knelt beside him, felt his waist and found a long dagger, yanking it free.

  The Wind Runners were going to ransom me, but they had fed me and let me rest for a time. The sky-men had riddled me with bullets, looted my knife and Calidore computer slate, and left me for dead. I hated them more. Reaching the ladder, I began climbing to see what I could do.

  -23-

  It was chaos on the main deck. One of the masts had fallen, probably struck by a shell. The mast had crushed several men and draped the sail over the side so it dragged on the sand. Even as I watched, Gosso finished hacking the sail free with a cutlass so it slithered overboard.

  The sun had almost sunk into the horizon, casting the desert in a bloody hue. The Gyr Falcon barely moved now, listing badly to one side. A sky-shark shrieked overhead, its machine gun chattering. Gosso straightened at the sound and shot off his feet, pitched over the side of the wind runner as bullets riddled his body. His abandoned cutlass clattered onto the deck.

  I climbed out of the hatch, dashing to the cutlass, exchanging it for Alger’s knife.

  Hooks thudded onto the hull railing. Men in black leather coats and pants scrambled up knotted ropes, climbing onto the deck. They were tough-looking, like bikers I’d seen in picture books about 1970s America. The raiders panted, likely from running to catch up to the wind runner, toss the hooks and climb the ropes. They began to unlimber weapons from their backs.

  The few Wind Runners left on deck looked crestfallen and defeated as they spied the enemy boarders. I cocked my stolen flintlock, aimed at a muscular man, his leather vest showing off curly black chest hairs, and squeezed the trigger. The hammer struck the pan, the flint sparking. A spark ignited the black powder, and my gun roared as smoke billowed upward.

  The muscular sky-man staggered, with a stricken look on his face. Abruptly, he collapsed onto the deck, with an ugly hole in his forehead.

  “Charge!” I shouted, racing at the boarding party.

  The few Wind Runners with weapons in hand recognized me, shrinking away as I ran past. They began pitching their flintlocks and bloodless daggers onto the deck.

  That didn’t connect with me right away. I had the fighting frenzy, and I hit the boarding party, perhaps too astonished to realize I meant to fight to the death. I cut one of the boarders across the face. He spun screaming. I chopped furiously at another, braining a man, smashing through his helmet and skull, killing him.

  I heard a horrible, ugly laugh, only vaguely realizing it was coming from me. “Fight!” I roared, slashing, opening a boarder’s throat.

  A different boarder aimed a machine gun at me. I didn’t hesitate, but hurled the cutlass at him. Incredibly, it spun and hit him just right, the blade cutting open his face. He fell overboard, his machine gun flying out of sight with him.

  Perhaps the hopelessness of my plight had fired my brain. Normally, I fought hard but dispassionately, using my brain as much as my muscles. Now, I grabbed a boarder, lifted him high and brought him down hard across my up-thrusting left knee. I heard his spine break, his gasping breath, and shoved him from me, crippled for life—if he lived. I picked up his falle
n revolver, a foreign design I’d never seen before. It had a good heft, and I saw bullets in the cylinder. With a snarl, I aimed it at a charging boarder, fired, and smiled at the weapon’s kick.

  He kept coming, though, a tough one. So, I fired again, hitting him again. With a roar, he swung a heavy knife at me. I ducked, pushed him aside as I thrust upward and emptied the gun at two others coming at me. The first man tripped over the railing, falling off the wind runner. The next two went down to the bullets. One of them had a big old knife that fell to the deck. I scooped it up, snarled with battle madness and saw the strangest sight so far—it stilled my rush for a moment.

  A red-haired woman pushed forward. She was stunningly beautiful, with hair like a lion’s mane. She held strange-looking guns, one in either hand. She wore leather garments like the other boarders, a leather vest with bindings keeping the flaps from exposing her large breasts. Her arms were deliciously slender and she wore thigh-high leather boots with heels.

  “Who are you?” she shouted at me.

  I shook my head, liking what I saw but finding it impossible to speak.

  “Give me your name, warrior. I’ve never seen anyone fight like you.”

  That unlocked my tongue. “Jason Bain,” I said, surprised at how slurred my words sounded. What was wrong with me?

  “Here, Jason Bain,” she said, pitching one of her exotic guns to me.

  Startled, I grabbed it out of the air.

  She laughed, and there was a crazy shine in her green eyes. With her freed hand, she tore away the bindings keeping her leather vest closed. One of the flaps momentarily exposed one of the loveliest breasts I’d ever seen. Her new, freer look absorbed my interest. She was spellbinding in her wild beauty and unruliness.

  “You’re no Wind Runner!” she shouted. “You’re a champion!”

  I nodded, intoxicated by her, by the green eyes that stared at me with obvious longing.

  She smote her vested breasts with a fist. “I’m Red Schaine, the leader of the Fighting Hunge. The way you battled just now—I think you could kill a neutraloid single-handed.”

  I said nothing, mesmerized by her.

  “Look at the gun I threw you,” she said.

  I did, noting the crystal at the end of the barrel.

  “It’s a laser pistol,” she said.

  I looked up at her in astonishment.

  “Jason Bain the Spaceman,” she said. “You’re going to join me on the plateau.”

  Before I could respond, something hard and heavy struck my skull from behind, and I found myself pitching to the Gyr Falcon’s deck, realizing the redhead had basely tricked me.

  -24-

  I awoke to a terrible pounding in my head and had to blink several times before I forced my eyes to focus. I remembered everything. The biggest surprise was my berserker-gang. Upon further reflection, I realized I hadn’t totally lost my head, but something extra had fueled me, propelling me to reckless action against the sky-men, the Fighting Hunge.

  I was sprawled amongst tied bales of pelts, the cargo of the Gyr Falcon. Did that mean I was part of the loot? The way the wild woman—Red Schaine—had looked at me earlier, I could well believe it.

  I felt the passage of wind and noticed the sun. It had risen to its mid-morning height. Had I slept an entire night and half the morning?

  I reached back and gingerly felt my head. There was a bruised spot, but not as bad as I would have expected. There wasn’t even a lump. The impact and weight of the treacherous blow should have given me a concussion and a big knot back here. My new healing process must have come into play.

  I was hungry as a bear after a winter’s hibernation. Standing up—I sucked in my breath at what I saw. I was on a sky-raft with railing around its edges. The deck was approximately the same area as the Gyr Falcon’s main deck, but in a square configuration. In the center of the raft was housing and a control panel. A black-clad sky-man stood at the controls. He spied me, turned his head toward his right shoulder and spoke roughly over it.

  Three others stood. Each of them cradled a machine gun. They aimed the guns at me and indicated that I sit back down.

  I did, deciding there was no sense arguing yet.

  From my location, I saw that we passed over mountain peaks and valleys, clearing the heights by about a hundred yards. There were green growths on the mountains looking remarkably like sagebrush back in Nevada. Some of the growths had yellow flowers. I spied a darting animal that might have been a rabbit, or something a lot like a rabbit. Racing behind it pursued a foxlike creature.

  How did this raft fly? I didn’t hear jet engines or see propellers. Could the Hunge have anti-gravity pods or something similar? That would be highly advanced technology as compared to the Allan Corporation.

  I peered around the sky, noting a few wispy clouds higher than us and bigger, fluffier clouds at our level. I counted three rafts and a dozen or more sky-sharks. We moved in a convoy, heading deeper into the mountains.

  I looked back and saw the Sarai Desert that began at the foot of what the Wind Runners had called the Kurgech Mountains.

  What was the correct response to my capture? I lay back and put my hands behind my head. If I hadn’t been a captive, this would have been an exhilarating experience. The Fighting Hunge, as Red Schaine had called them, were clearly technologically superior to the Wind Runners. According to the Wind Runners, the Hunge traded pulsating rocks with the starmenters, receiving the sky-sharks as payment. Surely, the Hunge got more than just that, though. Whatever the case, I was more likely to find mentalists if I interacted with the Hunge and starmenters than if I’d stayed with the Wind Runners. So joining the sky-men, even in this capacity, was likely a step forward.

  I frowned. Did I owe the Avanti anything? If the shining being had been one, she’d encased Terra in a crystalline shell. That struck me as hostile. Maybe I needed to find the mentalists and make common cause with them against the Avantis.

  I heard a drifting shout, looked at the pilot and saw him waving to other raft pilots.

  With a lurch, our raft began to descend.

  I slid near a rail and looked down. Below was a large plateau. Schaine had said I’d join her on the plateau. Would I do so as chattel, or as ransom property to sell to the starmenters? I hadn’t seen any captive Wind Runners. Had there been survivors from the Gyr Falcon? If so, had the Hunge let them go, shot them or what?

  I was at a grave disadvantage. I knew so little about this world and these people. Couldn’t the shining one have done better than giving me a digitized Dr. Calidore? What had ever happened to the computer slate anyway?

  There were crude rock dwellings with thatch roofs below. I saw a place with a coal fire and smelting pit and a different area with a giant steam engine turning a long, flat leather belt that disappeared through a large hole underground. Farther away on the plateau, there were garden plots with skinny shirtless men hoeing weeds. Would that be my fate?

  A few others in black leather moved about down there, including children. Was this a Hunge encampment, then?

  The rafts lowered toward a chalked-out area, with the sky-sharks shooting down faster. Men on the ground pulled black tarps from—I blinked in astonishment, seeing missiles swivel, aiming at us. Here was yet more evidence of higher technology.

  Finally, our raft landed with hardly a shudder. Nearby, the other two rafts landed. By this time, the sky-sharks were down. I saw one eager flyer sprint from his air-plank to an outdoor area where big men swilled beer at picnic tables. Several young women in fur bikinis served them, bringing platters of food from a large tent or sitting on a man’s knee as he kissed and fondled her.

  Was the plateau a pirate’s haven?

  The sprinter reached the beer drinkers at the picnic tables and pointed at my raft. I had the impression he was telling a fast and furious story. The biggest man drinking beer slammed his mug onto the table and stood abruptly, tossing the girl on his lap to the ground.

  With a scowl, the huge man l
ed a procession toward the landed rafts. I wasn’t certain why, but I had a suspicion this had something to do with me.

  -25-

  The huge man was the biggest among the Hunge, a veritable giant. He wore a black leather vest and pants like everyone else and had on biker-style boots. He had a giant black beard, squinty little black eyes and a bald head. He had what looked like rock-hard and impressively sized muscles, as if he were a weightlifter on steroids. And, he sported a machete on his belt and a hand cannon of a gun, maybe a .55 caliber revolver.

  The sky-raiders filed off the rafts, gathering in a mob, waiting for the big man and his buddies to reach us. The tattler hurried to keep up with the big man, and I saw the tattler pointing at me.

  The mob of raiders turned around to look at me. I approached them while taking stock. I was weaponless, feeling well enough, I supposed, and likely a prisoner. I’d killed sky-men—Hunge—during the raid against the Gyr Falcon. Surely, they would want to kill me or maybe even torture me for what I’d done during the fight.

  “That’s him,” the tattler told the giant.

  The huge bearded man towered over everyone, and he would be a head taller than me. He likely weighed twice what I did with his over-muscled blocky physique. If there were such things as trolls, he was one of them.

  The mob murmured, one man talking about an angry Esteban Dan. I assumed that was the giant’s name.

  Before anything started, I could have used some water and would have liked to take a leak. But I didn’t think that was going to happen.

  “You!” the giant shouted.

  I pointed at myself.

  “Yes, you,” Esteban roared. “Get ready to die, scum dog.”