by Mel Odom
The rest of what he intended to say was lost to the thundering assault of a nearby mortar round. The concussive force ripped and buckled the tent, and it knocked Stampede from his hooves. Hella got blasted off her feet as well and slammed into the hard ground.
CHAPTER 26
As she sucked air back into her lungs and struggled with the partial deafness brought on by the mortar explosion, Hella stared through the shredded tent walls and marveled that she was still alive. Muzzle flashes punched holes in the darkness all around her. She glanced around, searching desperately.
“Stampede!”
“Don’t yell, Red. I’m deaf enough as it is.” Stampede surged up from the ground like a mass of darkness come to life. Blood from a wound on his temple matted his fur. He raised his rifle and scanned the camp. His square teeth showed in a smile that held only lethal intention. “Let’s get Daisy and get out of here. We can get lost easier in the night.”
“Scatter.” Hella looked around but couldn’t find the fractoid anywhere.
Stampede shouldered his backpack. “What’s the first life you save?”
“My own.” After years of instruction, Hella’s answer came automatically.
“Then let’s get it done.” Stampede nudged her with an elbow.
Hella’s stumble turned into a full-blown run in a half dozen strides. Daisy bleated in fear, and that sound galvanized and focused Hella’s resolve. There was nothing she could do for Scatter or his mate at that time. If she and Stampede were free and running, that could change. She hoped it would change.
The mortars continued to rain death throughout the camp, but the security bots quickly adjusted to the attack. Sizzling lasers leaped from the bots and exploded incoming mortar rounds in the air. Most of them never reached the campsite, but a few still did, and those created instant craters.
Around the camp perimeter, the Sheldons closed in and exchanged gunfire with Riley’s hardshells. For the most part, the body armor turned away the biker’s deadly assault, but one of the wounded security guards stuttered back with both armored gloves wrapped around her throat. Blood fountained down the black material. Hella didn’t break stride, knowing there was no time to save the woman. By the time she could get through the armor safeguards, if the woman were even able to tell her the pass codes to get the suit open, she would be gone.
At the edge of the camp, Daisy fought her tether. She gentled at once when she discovered Hella was there then threw her head up and down in greeting.
Bullets chopped into the brush and trees. A security guard in a hardshell wheeled on them with his rifle to his shoulder. Stampede stamped his hoof, and the ground beneath the security guard erupted. The man flew backward several meters.
Three Sheldons surged forward with their weapons up and firing. They had their heads pulled down so their shells acted like collars and offered protection.
Bullets cut the air around Hella and Stampede. A least a pair of rounds hit the chain mail and drove Hella back, but she had her hand up and fired automatically. Two of the men went down, mortally wounded. Stampede removed the head of the first with a single rifle blast.
Breathing hard, pain arcing beneath the chain mail, Hella stopped at the equipment chest on the ground beside Daisy, clicked it open, and took out the saddle from inside. Stampede grabbed the chest and started lashing it into place on the mountain boomer’s back while Hella fitted the saddle.
A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a nearby security bot and reduced it to a flaming pyre. The ammunition cooked off in rapid succession. One of the stray rounds hammered Hella between the shoulder blades hard enough to drive her forward and take her breath away. But the chain-mail armor held, though she knew she’d be covered in a massive bruise for days.
Once the saddle was cinched into place, Hella stepped into the stirrup, grabbed the pommel, and swung herself aboard. Daisy quivered in anticipation, already wanting to get out of the firefight. Hella hesitated, not knowing which direction to take.
“North.” Stampede hauled his rifle to his shoulder, took brief aim, and fired. One of two of Sheldons nearest them went down with a massive bullet in his face.
Hella hesitated, staring at the skirmish confronting the camp. She didn’t like the idea of running from the fight. Scatter and Ocastya might be all right, but she feared for Colleen Trammell.
Stampede stepped up beside her and spoke loud enough to be heard over the gunfire and explosions. “Riley and his people are establishing a line.”
That was true. Riley and the hardshells repelled the ground attack, and the security bots had triangulated the mortar teams and were blasting them into the earth or into retreat.
“Colleen is back there.”
“She’s one of them, Red.”
“Not entirely.”
“Even so, if we go back there, we’re either going to end up dead because of the Sheldons or because of Pardot. We’ve got to go.”
Angry and frustrated, Hella reined Daisy over and pointed her toward the wilderness away from the camp. She put her heels to the mountain boomer’s sides and rode, staying low in the saddle as Daisy scampered through the rough terrain.
With incredible speed, Stampede ran behind them, keeping up effortlessly.
Hella headed up into the nearest hill. Plunging through swampland or landing in a sinkhole in the darkness might have meant death. Three hundred meters away, safely behind a clutch of boulders, she reined Daisy in, grabbed her rifle, and dropped to the ground.
Stampede had already settled into a position among the rocks. “We help knock out the mortars; then we get clear and hope Pardot doesn’t allow Riley to send people after us.”
As she scanned the landscape, Hella dropped prone on a rock, shoved the rifle out ahead of her, and pulled the butt to her shoulder. “Even if he does, we can get away. The ground here is too rough for the ATVs.”
Large flashes showed the positions of the mortar teams. Hella identified one of them then used her night scope to lock in on them. She squeezed off rounds and put down both Sheldons. Beside her, Stampede’s huge rifle thundered again and again. When she couldn’t find mortar teams, she picked off Sheldons attacking the camp.
Two or three minutes later, with dead sprawled on the ground, the Sheldons retreated. Some of the hardshells started out in pursuit, giving in to the bloodlust that filled them, but evidently got called back. Part of the group cycled through the campsite. Chemical firefighting grenades dropped into flaming tents threw out massive amounts of flame-retardant white foam.
Although he wasn’t shooting anymore, Stampede lay still and surveyed the battle zone. “They’re looking for us.”
Searching through her scope and seeing the hardshells scrambling through the camp, Hella silently agreed. A few of the security guards were using binocs to search the surrounding wilderness. She wondered if they even knew she and Stampede had helped them.
“We need to get gone.” Stampede pushed himself up but kept using the rocks as cover from anyone spotting them from the camp.
Reluctantly Hella used her elbows and backed away from the rock to keep a low profile. Pain filled her chest from the bruising left by the stopped rounds that had struck the chain mail. She took a moment to build the rhythm in her mind and banish the pain.
A silvery wisp formed in front of her. A moment later, the wisp wore Scatter’s perfect features. “Hella, you are alive.”
“Yes.” Hella stayed hunkered down. She started to call out to Stampede, but she saw him turn around and knew that he had heard the fractoid.
“I am glad you lived.”
“So are we.”
Scatter looked around and it was strange watching the disembodied face twist and turn. Hella couldn’t help wondering how far his range to control the small group of fractoids would extend. “You have left the camp.”
“We had to.”
“Ocastya and I are still prisoners. You cannot leave us. We cannot help ourselves at this juncture. Ocastya needs help.
She needs to reboot.”
“I know.” Stampede walked over to join them. “It’s a long way back to where they came from. A lot of things can happen. After tonight, Riley and his people are going to be hard pressed to continue to provide security for the expedition. If we can, if a chance presents itself, we’ll help.”
“I only hope that is soon enough.” Scatter clearly wasn’t happy. “I will send this much of myself with you, but I will need to focus my energies on helping Ocastya. That way I can keep you informed of our location.”
“All right.”
“Hella, may I ride with you? To conserve energy?”
“Of course.”
“Please hold up your left hand.”
Not knowing what to expect, Hella held out her left hand. As she watched, Scatter’s face floated over and nested in her palm. Within seconds, his likeness had settled into a microthin layer over her palm. She flexed her hand and found the new coating didn’t restrict her movements and wasn’t noticeable.
“I will be in touch when I am able. Unfortunately I will have to initiate the connection. You will not be able to call to me.”
“All right.”
“Now I must go back to tend to Ocastya.” Scatter sounded fatigued and worried. “I wish you good fortune.” His likeness faded from Hella’s palm and left only the shiny layer behind.
Hella flexed her hand then reloaded her rifle and clambered back aboard Daisy. Stampede fell into step with her as they jogged through the trees and crested the hill.
“Keeping up with the expedition isn’t going to be a problem, Red.”
“I know.” Hella stayed focused, sweeping the surrounding landscape in case some of the Sheldons had scattered and gotten lost.
“We can travel faster than they can, but they’re going to maintain the tactical advantage. More men. More guns.”
“I know. But there has to be something we can use to shift that. This is our world. We know this place better than they do. And there’s a whole lot of distance between here and where we got them. We’ve got days to think and plan.”
The expedition moved out early the next morning.
From her position high in the mountains, Hella watched the ATVs grinding cross-country through her binocs. She reached down and shook Stampede awake. “They’re on the go.”
Stampede glanced at the eastern sky and saw the sun was barely up. “Got an early start.”
“Probably didn’t sleep after last night.” Hella continued watching the line of hardshells and ATVs snaking through the forest. She caught only glimpses of them, but the overall movement of the expedition was plain. Disturbed birds took off from treetops as the noisy vehicles neared, creating a visual marker system to the trained eye.
“They’re navigating by GPS, not maps.” Stampede stood and stamped his hooves to work out kinks in his legs. “That’ll slow them down too.” He scratched his chin, and his ears twitched. “Why would Pardot do that?”
Hella didn’t have an answer either. She and Stampede had created maps of the area and given them to Riley as they’d traveled. There were no real trade trails through there, but the expedition could get to one if they traveled north.
“Maybe they’re staying off the trade routes, hoping to lose us.” Stampede shifted his gear. “Could be Pardot is thinking we might try to rob him.”
“The two of us?”
“He could be worried that we could convince someone on the trade routes to throw in with us.” Stampede rolled his head, and his massive neck cracked. “Let’s get moving. We’ll find out soon enough. With them moving on not enough sleep, they should break for camp early this evening. At the very least, they’ll be fatigued tonight. That’ll work to our advantage.”
Hella rode Daisy and the forest around them became an endless sea of green leaves and gnarled bark. The mountain boomer’s movements still caused twinges of pain to skyrocket through Hella. She undressed her wound and worked on it some more. She expected to have it healed completely in another two or three days.
That knowledge filled her with hope, but she knew the task she and Stampede had set for themselves was almost impossible. She wondered if it would be better if they just cut their losses and didn’t try a rescue attempt.
Even trailing the expedition in a tandem fashion exposed them to danger they might not see coming. Another group, possibly the Sheldons from the previous night, might discover the group and try to close in on them. The first thing they would find would be Hella and Stampede.
If the new group found them, they’d try to kill them quietly to get them out of the way. Failing that, they’d just open fire and chase Hella and Stampede back into Riley’s security team. The welcome there probably wouldn’t be any less lethal.
A rock and a hard place pretty much summed up the potential situation.
Early that afternoon, a line of dust to the west drew Hella’s attention. She pulled her binocs from her chest pack and studied the terrain.
“Something?”
“Dust to the west.”
“How far out?”
“Maybe a couple klicks.” As she watched the movement of the dust, the way it constantly hung in the air, Hella grew more confident and more afraid that the dust meant there was another group in the area.
Stampede clambered atop a nearby stand of rock and took out his telescope. “There’s someone out there. Looks like a sizable group.”
“A group that big, you’d think they were a trade caravan, but there aren’t any trade routes there.”
“Could be another highwayman team.”
Hella tracked the potential forward progress of the group. Depending on the relative speeds of the unknown pack and of the expedition, one or the other would intersect. “One of them is going to cut the trail of the other. If the expedition gets there second, Riley will see someone else has been there and put his team on high alert. That’s not a big deal.”
“But if the new arrivals are highwaymen, they’ll read the tracks as a possible target.” Stampede growled in the back of his throat.
“That might work out for us. They won’t be able to take the expedition all at once, so maybe we can use the distraction to get to the fractoids.”
Stampede snorted. “You say that like that wouldn’t also be an invitation to get shot dead by one side or the other.”
Hella couldn’t refute that.
Hours later, the unknown group, which had been making faster progress than the expedition, pulled up and settled in. The dust tattoo they’d left in the air vanished.
Hella studied the area through the binocs and grew frustrated with the thick forest that covered the group. She wasn’t able to see the expedition either, but Pardot and Riley were known quantities.
“Do you think they’re camping for the night?”
“Got an hour of sunlight left.” Stampede stood beside her with his telescope to his eye. “Would you stop to camp?”
“Depends on whether I was where I wanted to be.”
“How far do you think the expedition is from those people?”
Turning her binocs back to the expedition, which would come within a half klick of the unknown group’s position, Hella estimated the distance, the rate of speed, then the travel time. “Half hour.”
“Plenty of time for them to set up.” Stampede snorted in disgust. “I’d say they’re exactly where they want to be.”
“Do you think Riley or his scouts know they’re running into a trap?”
“They haven’t altered course or slowed down. What do you think?”
Hella didn’t bother to answer.
“Well, now. Who’s ambushing who?”
“What?”
“Look to the west. Up in the clouds. You have to be careful looking into the setting sun.”
Gingerly, Hella shifted the binocs and scoured the sky. She caught a couple of bright spots that made her eyes sting then she spotted what Stampede had seen.
Two zeppelins—no mistaking those cigar shapes�
�caught the sun and almost blended in as they sailed through the sky. Large fans on the tail assemblies and on the sides powered the aircraft.
CHAPTER 27
Hella stood frozen in wonderment. She’d read about the aircraft before and been fascinated, but she’d never before seen one. She’d heard they still existed, but no one in the Redblight used them, and no one had ever brought one there before that she knew about. Zeppelins were expensive to build and to operate, and unless whoever owned them had a secure place to keep them, they would have been primary targets for thieves.
The zeppelins glided through the air as effortlessly as a minnow through shallows and looked as graceful doing it. The sleek hulls bore no markings, no claim of ownership.
“You think those ships belong to Pardot?” Hella lowered her glasses. Once she’d fixed the locations of the zeppelins, they were large enough to be seen with the naked eye.
“Know anyone else that could call them out there?”
“They could be just sailing over.”
“Yeah. Want to bet on it?”
Hella didn’t. The cold realization that Scatter was going to be lost to them in a short time closed around her heart. She focused instead on the possibilities afforded by all the variables in play. “If Riley knew he was rolling into an attack, would he go there?”
“I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t.” Stampede shook his head. “But Riley? I don’t know, Red. He and Pardot concentrate on their own vision of the world and expect events to just line up behind it.”
“The airships are probably armed.”
“I would hope so. Maybe they’ll even have some armor. But they also make a huge target for anyone who wants to bring them down. The question is whether the ambushers are after Pardot’s expedition or the zeppelins. The real question is whether we want to take a chance and get involved.”
Guiltily Hella gazed down into her left palm. She thought about Scatter and the pain and fear she’d heard in his voice when he thought about losing his mate. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose someone who had been that much a part of her life, but she knew how much she missed knowing who her parents had been.