The Amtrak Wars: Blood River

by Patrick Tilley

  Side-Winder, who claimed to have been working inside Ne-Issan for years, had been just part of a baffling set-up that had included some hard cases from one of the Iron Masters’ own intelligence networks. Steve, unaware of this linkage, had done a separate deal with a highly-placed samurai from another network, and there were probably more. Layer upon layer of deceit and intrigue, like the bland protective coating that concealed the ultimate truths about the First Family, the Amtrak Federation and their hereditary enemies, the Mutes.

  The task he had been given by Karlstrom – and had voluntarily undertaken for Mr Snow – was difficult enough in itself since the popular belief among Mutes was that no one ever returned from ‘the Eastern Lands’. But it was made doubly difficult by his feelings for the people he had been ordered to betray. Cadillac and Clearwater had revealed themselves to be ‘straight’ Mutes, with perfectly formed bodies and clear, unblemished skins – just like real human beings – which had been skilfully camouflaged by vegetable dyes to blend with the multi-coloured hides of their clanfolk.

  Mr Snow was afflicted with the characteristic skin and bone deformities that had caused all Mutes to be labelled ‘lump-heads’ but he had also been blessed with an encyclopaedic memory, a piercing intelligence and a fund of ageless wisdom spiced with his own engaging blend of mischievous good humour.

  Steve’s dilemma arose from the fact that he had – to use the time-worn pre-Holocaust phrase – fallen deeply in love with Clearwater and she had responded with equal passion.

  Raised in the Federation where the word ‘love’ was not even part of the vocabulary, Steve had never experienced this depth of emotional involvement before. But he had been extremely close to his kin-sister – closer than two normal human beings can get. He and Roz shared a secret telepathic link of extraordinary intensity that had set them apart from other Trackers since early childhood and on reaching puberty, she had coaxed Steve into a covert sexual relationship.

  With his posting to the Flight Academy at the age of fourteen this had gradually broken down due to the long periods of enforced separation. Roz still felt the same but Steve, the reluctant partner, had moved on. With his kin-sister, it was the mental bond that was paramount; his feelings for Clearwater – which had caused Roz such anguish – were of an entirely different order.

  Those feelings had caused Steve a great deal of soul-searching too. From the very first days at school he had been taught to regard the malformed Mutes as repugnant, disease-ridden animals; an insult to Nature that had to be ruthlessly exterminated. It therefore followed that an intimate physical liaison between a Tracker and a Mute was an unthinkable aberration; the product of a sick mind. But the attraction he and Clearwater felt for each other had been instantaneous and irresistible and, for Steve, the desire to possess her body and soul had developed into a dangerous obsession.

  His bond with Mr Snow and Cadillac was based on a debt of gratitude. Even though he had taken part in a murderous air raid against their clan, they had nursed him back to health after a near-fatal crash and later had saved him from certain death. Had they been captured by Trackers, they would have been killed out of hand but these two so-called savages had shown a degree of forbearance and forgiveness which he did not deserve. His feelings for Clearwater had led him to betray their trust but, once again, there had been no recriminations and he could not bring himself to betray them a second time.

  The Manual made it clear that normal moral considerations did not enter into the relationship between Trackers and the Mutes. Despite the superficial resemblances they were not people, they were mentally-defective anthropoids whose place on the evolutionary tree was approximately halfway between human beings and the vanished apes. Karlstrom, the head of AMEXICO, had told him that ‘promises to Mutes don’t count’. One half of Steve knew that to be true but the other, newly-awakened half told him it wasn’t so.

  From the moment he had emerged to make his first solo flight above the overground a profound change had taken place within him. He had felt himself being torn in two. The solidarity he felt towards his fellow Trackers, the solemn oath of unswerving loyalty to the First Family conflicted with the growing feeling that he was not and had never truly been part of their underground empire. Entering the Blue-Sky World was like … coming home. It defied all reason but every fibre of his being knew it to be true.

  For the moment, however, the crushing burden of these emotional and mental pressures had been supplanted by the more urgent and fundamental problem of survival …

  Steve, Jodi and Dave Kelso were all skilled pilots but they had never flown anything as sophisticated as the Skyrider. The instrument panel was overloaded with switches, dials and radio navigation aids, plus a video screen which showed the aircraft’s position as a dot on a moving map which had to be programmed before take-off. They had been in too much of a hurry to discover how to do this, and they were also unfamiliar with the engine which was more powerful and operated on an entirely different principle to the battery-powered Skyhawks they were used to.

  Steve had twice been a passenger aboard a Skyrider but the first time he had been too busy talking to the pilot – his late classmate Donna Monroe Lundkwist; on the second occasion, a night flight with a taciturn MX pilot who ignored most of his questions, he had spent the greater part of the trip gazing through the canopy at the star-filled sky.

  Until that morning, Jodi and Kelso had never seen a Skyrider but, like Steve, they had enough basic savvy to get one off the ground and manoeuvre it through the air, flying it not with the aid of the overloaded instrument panel but by the seat of their pants. The chance of making a fatal error had been greatly reduced by the provision of an ‘idiot board’ – an abbreviated list covering the essential control checks and settings a pilot was required to implement on take-off and landing.

  But the list did not tell them everything they needed to know before embarking on their journey. And since they had temporarily immobilized their guide, Side-Winder, and the two MX pilots sent to fly them back to the Federation, there was no one to tell them the planes were due to be refuelled for the return flight from a large storage tank buried in the sandy soil alongside the grass landing strip.

  With Jodi’s help, Kelso had filled two zipper-bags with food and other useful items from the beach store before leaving but if Side-Winder had not revealed its hiding place they would not have known such treasures lay buried beneath their feet. Similarly, it did not occur to them that there might also be a fuel dump. Even if it had, they would have been unlikely to discover its location. Like the beach store with its cunningly-arranged pebble lid, the access points to the fuel tank were hidden from unwelcome visitors beneath the weathered stump of a dead tree whose centre-section could not be unlocked without the aid of a special tool.

  The truth was, they were so pleased at having outwitted the trio sent to bring them in, the idea that the planes might be short of gas never entered their heads. They had only one thought – to get the hell out of Long Point as fast as possible.

  Steve was flying with Clearwater in the passenger seat and Jodi’s haul from the beach store in the cargo bay; Jodi herself was riding with Kelso and they had Cadillac in the cargo hold plus the second bag of looted goodies.

  Like Jodi and Kelso, Steve had checked the fuel state immediately after activating the batteries that powered the instrument panel and on-board systems. The visual display, which was graduated to show the fuel state as a percentage gave a reading of 75%. In the lower half of the dial there were four small rectangular windows set side by side. The first three were red and so was the bottom quarter of the fourth window; the upper part was white.

  Since his mind’s eye equated white as neutral and therefore representing nothingness, Steve assumed, not unreasonably that the three red markers matched the 75% reading, indicating three full tanks and one almost empty. There was a slight problem with the thin red strip in the bottom quarter of the fourth window but the fact that 3.25 did not divide neatly into
75% did not ring any alarm bells. He merely concluded that a zero per cent reading on the dial left the pilot with a quarter of a tank to cover those last few miles home before the engine went dead.

  He was wrong all the way down the line. And Jodi and Kelso, by the same perverse logic, made the same mistake. It was almost as if their brains, not wishing to disappoint their owners, had obligingly interpreted the observable facts to fit their expectations.

  The reverse was true. The red bar in each rectangle indicated an empty tank, and the percentage reading applied to the tank currently switched into the fuel supply system. The pilots of both Skyriders had flown in using the fourth, reserve tank and had already used up a quarter of its contents.

  It was only when they were in the air and had been heading west for an hour and a half that his euphoric mood started to evaporate. The red segment in the fourth window was creeping upwards, not downwards and the needle indicating the percentage of fuel remaining was dropping too fast. He said nothing to Clearwater or to Jodi and Kelso – now flying off his starboard side with their wing tip lined up with his tail – but thirty minutes later, after checking every knob, switch and dial, his worse fears were confirmed. The other three fuel tanks were empty.

  Shit, shit, and triple shit …!

  Steve selected the plane-to-plane channel. They had maintained radio silence since leaving Long Point to prevent any electronic eavesdroppers getting a fix on their position. With no word from Side-Winder or the two MX pilots for over two hours, alarm bells would be ringing all over Grand Central and once Karlstrom found out what had happened – if he didn’t know already – the long knives would be out. Now was not the time to start broadcasting their predicament but Steve had no choice; this was a life-threatening emergency.

  ‘Breaker One to Breaker Two. What’s your fuel state, over?’

  Kelso’s voice came back through his headset. ‘Funny you should ask. Kaz and I have been trying to work out why we were burning up so much fuel at the optimum cruising speed and altitude. We started off with 75% and now we’re down to 30.’

  ‘I got 37 on the dial,’ said Steve. ‘That’s the good news. The bad news is that reading only applies to one tank. We’ve been flying on the reserve since take-off. The other three are empty.’

  ‘Jeeezuss!’ Kelso cursed volubly. ‘So how much does the tank hold? Hang on a minute – Jodi’s tryin’ to see if there’s a vidifax version of the handling notes stashed somewhere. You got one?’

  ‘Stay tuned …’ Steve told Clearwater what to look for. They searched the cockpit and drew a blank. ‘No joy, Dave. Best thing we can do is throttle back. Be careful though. These things fall out of the sky below 65. But if we can burn off less fuel we can maybe extend the mileage.’

  ‘By how much? We’re burning it up faster than you are because we got a bigger load! Or have you forgotten we’re carrying a Ratfaced ‘coon skin in the back?’

  ‘Go easy, Dave. He’s wearing a paint-job just like you guys.’

  ‘Maybe. But he ain’t the same underneath …’

  ‘Now listen! Don’t start peddling that shit! We’re all in this together!’

  ‘Yeah, except we ain’t all in the same airplane! I’m not happy about this, Stevie. Jodi’s just shown me the map. There’s a big stretch of water lyin’ right cross our line of flight.’

  ‘I know. Lake Michigan. The far side is the birthplace of the She-Kargo Mutes. The ancestral home of our two friends here.’

  Kelso came back louder than ever. ‘What good is that going to do us if we drown before we get there?!’

  ‘We’re not going to!’ cried Steve. ‘We can make it!’

  ‘This side or that side – what’s the difference?!’ bellowed Kelso. ‘We’re gonna get our heads sliced off wherever we come down! I knew it was too good to be true!’

  Turning to Jodi, Kelso said: ‘Didn’t I tell you that sonofa-bitch would foul things up for us sooner or later?!’

  Jodi, who was studying the video position-plotter and checking distances on a plasfilm map answered him with her eyes but kept her mouth shut.

  Steve also let it pass. ‘Y’know what? There must have been a fuel dump at Long Point.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ sneered Kelso. ‘You got any more useless information?!’

  Jodi lost her patience. ‘Cut it out, Dave!’

  They maintained the same course for several minutes in stony silence. Steve looked across at the other Skyrider and saw Jodi’s head bobbing around as she made another search of the cockpit. Eventually she held up a flat rectangular object and waved it triumphantly.

  ‘Breaker Two to Breaker One. Got it, Steve!’

  What Jodi had found was a vidifax, a slim pocket-sized databank measuring four by eight inches. The top surface was divided into an LCD screen and a set of special function keys including a Scroll command which allowed the viewer to scan blocks of copy by moving them line by line upwards or downwards across the screen at varying speed.

  Jodi selected the main menu, moved into the Fuel menu and found the information they required. ‘Okay … you there Steve?’

  ‘Breaker One, listening out …’

  ‘The reserve tank holds 30 gallons of fuel. The optimum burn-off rate is 1 gallon every 25 miles giving a maximum range of 750 miles –’

  Kelso chimed in, ‘But we only started with 75% of that.’

  ‘I know,’ said Jodi.

  Steve fed the figures into the small calculator on the low console that ran out from the instrument panel to a point midway between the two seats. ‘That still gives us a range of 525 miles.’

  ‘Hang on. Don’t get excited.’ said Jodi. ‘That burn-off rate only applies to an unloaded Skyrider with pilot only and no fuel in the other tanks. We got some more figuring to –’

  Kelso exploded. ‘Well get to it, Kaz! The needle on this dial is heading down towards the 20% mark.’

  Jodi let him have it. ‘Dave, for chrissakes gimme a break! You sound like a jackal whining after a bitch on heat.’

  ‘We’re close to 29,’ said Steve. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything if we don’t know how far we’ve travelled.’

  ‘I think I can answer that. I managed to get this mapping screen working a while back. We’re coming up to navref point Grand Rapids. That means, lessee … we’ve travelled 312 miles so far.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll get back to you.’ Steve began to button in the numbers.

  Jodi passed the map over to Kelso. ‘Check how far it is from Grand Rapids to navref Milwaukee …’ Her fingers darted over the calculator.

  After a short while, Steve came back on the air. ‘Got it. The burn-off rate is one gallon every 22 miles. If this 29% reading is accurate, we can cover another 195 miles. How about you?’

  ‘Not too good, Steve. With our extra loading we’re only doing 18.9 miles to the gallon. There’s only six left in the tank. According to the calculator, that’s 113.5 miles. But that doesn’t take into account this headwind we got blowing up our nose.’

  Steve glanced at his folded map. ‘We still got a chance. Lake Michigan is only 80 miles across.’

  Kelso’s voice ricochetted round the inside of his skull. ‘We ain’t got to Lake Michigan, you dickhead! Look at your frigging map! We’re just comin’ up on Grand Rapids. That’s a hundred an’ twelve miles from Milwaukee! Look out the windshield! That’s a fuggin ocean out there! You seriously expect me and Kaz to try and cross that with maybe just enough gas for one hundred and thirteen?!

  ‘What d’you want me to do?!’ shouted Steve. ‘Jettison fuel so I’ve got the same chance as you? Get your brain into gear, Dave! We’re eight thousand feet up. If the motor cuts, you can glide another ten, maybe fifteen miles.’

  ‘Oh, really? The man who didn’t know he was flying with empty tanks is now the expert on Skyriders! If you think I’m flying out over that stretch of water just to find out if this thing glides like a fuggin brick you got another think comin’! I want grass under my wheels when the juice runs out. Me
and Kaz are headin’ south!’

  Steve dropped back and closed in until they were flying with wingtips almost touching. He looked across at Jodi Kazan who sat blocking his view of Kelso. ‘Jodi, for crissakes! Can’t you do something?!’

  She drew her right hand swiftly across her throat – the signal used to tell pilots to cut the motor and which was also employed to indicate the abandonment of a fruitless situation or discussion. ‘I think he’s right, Steve. Have you seen what’s up ahead?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kelso. ‘Check the weather at two o’clock!’

  Steve switched his eyes from Jodi to the north-west quarter of the sky. The long grey bank of cloud that had been poised ominously on the horizon had begun to move while his attention had been diverted by his lengthy investigation of the crowded instrument panel, the search for the vidifax and the calculations of the plane’s fuel consumption. The cloud mass was now angling in rapidly across their front.

  Clearwater levelled a finger at the ragged ash-grey wall of cumulus. ‘Look! It carries the White Death in its belly!’

  She was right. It was a snow cloud whose front edge stretched out of sight in both directions and whose lumpy top layer rose, in places, to almost double their present altitude.

  Jodi spoke into the mike fitted to her borrowed crash helmet. ‘We’re gonna have to run ahead of this, Stevie. It must stretch from here to South Dakota. On the fuel we got left we’re not gonna be able to climb over it and flyin’ through it ain’t gonna do us no good either. If we end up being’ forced to land in what the good ole boys call a ‘white-out’ we could be in all kinds of trouble.’

  ‘We’re in trouble whatever we do,’ grunted Kelso. ‘This is as far as we go, Kaz.’ Easing back the throttle, he pushed the control column forwards and over to the left and dived under Steve’s tail.

  Steve caught an over the shoulder glimpse of the Skyrider as it slid beneath him. He banked to the left and saw it reappear in front of him. He cursed quietly and stabbed the transmit button. ‘Breaker One to Breaker Two. What’s your new heading?’