Bad Timing
Page 6
Red gritted her teeth in fury. "You useless, pathetic, stupid-"
Above her, the Blimp tensed. "What did you call me?" she asked in a suddenly menacing voice.
Red thought back. "Um... Useless? Pathetic? Stupid?"
From above her came a terrifying roar of rage. "Nobody calls me stupid!" the Blimp shouted in a voice that barely sounded human any more.
With a huge sense of elation, Red realised that the pressure on her body had relaxed. The weight pressing down on her, pulling the parachute tight around her, had lessened. She twisted round, trying to work herself free.
And came face to face with the demented creature that the Blimp had now become. The other mutant's lips were pulled back from her teeth, which were bared in a snarl of rage. All over her body, her veins were literally standing out from her flesh. Her muscles were knotted. As Red watched they seemed to writhe and grow, emerging from the shrinking flesh around them. With a fierce cry that sprayed spittle over Red's face, the Blimp lunged with her now skeletally thin hands and grabbed Red's throat.
Red felt as if her head was being squeezed from her body like toothpaste from a tube. She was utterly unable to breathe, her windpipe crushed shut. She clawed at the hands holding her, but couldn't shift them even a millimetre. The Blimp's strength was unbelievable.
Red tried to call out for help. Only a pathetic squeak emerged. She kicked out with legs, but she might as well have been hitting the other Strontium Dog with a feather. She could already feel her vision dimming as her body cried out for oxygen. With her last remaining strength, she kicked out again - this time at the branch above her.
Nothing.
Desperately, hopelessly, she kicked out again.
This time, it gave. With a sudden sharp crack, the branch broke away from the tree and the two mutants plummeted towards the earth, the freed chute blooming out above them in the humid jungle air.
When they crashed to the ground, the fall jarred the Blimp's hands loose from Red's neck and knocked her into unconsciousness. Red herself was semi-conscious from lack of oxygen, so her body was nice and relaxed for the impact. She spent a few moments with her eyes shut, revelling in being on the ground and - amazingly - in one piece.
When she opened them, it was to see the astonished faces of Middenface and Johnny peering down at her.
"Hey," she croaked, struggling to produce a noise through her bruised throat. "Don't tell me I don't know how to make an entrance."
Nearby, hidden in the jungle, a young woman peered at the frozen tableau in front of her. She had heard of the Glass People, of course - all the children in the village were brought up on bedtime stories of the humans who moved more slowly than the corn grew, and broke if you touched them. She had hoped, dreamed, that one day she might meet one, but she had never truly believed that day would come.
Never believed it, until she had watched the two strange women float down from high in the sky as gently as feathers. And then one of the two men, the dark-haired one, had turned so slowly towards her, and she'd got her first good glimpse of his ruggedly handsome face, his amazing white eyes. It was as if she'd been struck with a bolt of lightening.
It was at that point that something else she had never believed was possible had happened. At the age of eighteen, she'd fallen in love for the first time.
6 / FOLLOW MY LEADER
Every part of Red ached, and the parts that weren't aching were bleeding. Still, she was feeling a lot better than she had been ten minutes ago. Amazing what surviving a hideous plane crash followed by a near-terminal two thousand-metre drop could do for a girl's mood.
It was pretty amazing what the fall had done for the Blimp, too. Red glanced at the other mutant sitting beside her in the small clearing as Johnny led an impromptu council of war. The Blimp looked, quite literally, like a new woman. Her berserker rage gone as quickly as it had arrived, she was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside Red, idly running her fingers through her blonde curls. The reason she was able to sit cross-legged was that she had - in the course of her manic rage - shed roughly two-thirds of her body mass, eating up the excess fat to fuel her inhuman strength. What was left behind after the blubber had burned away was a curvaceous, quite stunningly attractive young woman. Middenface McNulty certainly seemed to think so - he, like Red, was staring at the Blimp rather than paying a blind bit of notice to what Johnny was saying.
Johnny frowned in annoyance at Middenface, then turned his attention to Red. "Don't suppose you managed to hang on to your tracking system in the fall?" he said.
Red's mouth twisted in annoyance. The heat, climbing to unbearable levels along with the sun, was making her irritable. "Yeah, that was at the forefront of my mind when I was plummeting to my death."
Johnny sighed. "Thought not."
"Tell you something though, honey," the Blimp said, "I sure got a good look at the scenery when I was coming down, and by my reckoning the mountains are thataway." She pointed to their left.
"That's where O'Blarney has his base, isnae that right?" Middenface asked, while continuing to look at the Blimp with a rapt expression.
"Yeah," Johnny said. "Assuming we're anywhere near where we're supposed to be, and not on another continent entirely."
"We'd better hope we're on the right land mass," Red said. "I don't care about the bounty, our ships are both toast. If we don't find O'Blarney we won't find a way off this planet."
"The lassie's right," Middenface agreed, briefly switching his attention to Red. "If we have tae cross an ocean to get tae the scunner, we'll be tae auld tae fight him."
"How far away were these mountains?" Johnny asked the Blimp.
"Hard to say," she told him. "Not more than a few days' travel, I reckon."
Johnny shook his head, then stood up. "Well, I guess we'd better get going. Not like we can afford to be wasting time."
Middenface also scrambled to his feet. "Least landing so far away should gi' us the element o' surprise."
Red pushed her sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes to stare incredulously at him. She'd never understood why Johnny - who was sharper than a micro-knife, and just as deadly - had chosen to pair himself with a dull blade like McNulty. "That's assuming he didn't see that little firework display we put on when we landed," she said.
"And that the first party of Strontium Dogs never made it far enough to tip him off," Johnny added, as he carefully checked the straps on his armour, tightening one on his shoulder with a sharp jerk.
Red looked at him, baffled. "First party?"
Middenface grinned at her, clearly delighted to have gained the conversational upper hand. "Aye, did ye naw ken? We had a visit from wee Craterheid Cleeg, looking just about ready for a telegram from the Queen o' England. Now ye might think he'd been using the wrong anti-wrinkle cream, but I reckon he was sent here before us, kind of an advance guard frae Delater. What do ye think, Johnny?"
"I think the same."
Red thought back to the meeting which had summoned her to this godforsaken place, and had a sudden moment of revelation. "Sneck!" she said. "I knew I recognised that messenger - it was Irish Meg."
"And he sent young Jiminy Cricket after me," the Blimp said. "Not so young any more, poor soul."
Red realised that her fists were clenched in anger. Irish Meg - a round-cheeked girl who looked like she ought to be milking cows, not hunting down criminals - had always been good to her. One of the few who was. "That bastard!" she said.
"Yeah," said Johnny, his eyes burning into hers. "You'll get no argument from me. So why don't we go and find O'Blarney before we end up the same way. And when we've dealt with O'Blarney, then we can deal with Delater."
For once, Red was in total agreement with Johnny. She checked her blaster, swung round in the direction of the mountains - then swung back round again, blaster raised, nerves quivering, to face the loud snapping sound that rang out from the thick jungle vegetation. Beside her, Johnny, Middenface and the Blimp had all done exactly the same.
Red had just reached the decision that it was probably the latter, in which case she might as well fire anyway, when she heard a voice float out of the jungle.
"Think they're... fifteen metres..." it said.
Middenface - kneeling to one side of her - instantly swung his blaster to aim for the voice's hidden source. Before he could fire, Johnny grabbed his arm. When Middenface looked questioningly at him, Red saw Johnny shake his head. But she noticed that he kept his blaster trained on the source of the voice as he did.
Then another voice came, clearer this time, and female. "I've walked through twenty kilometres of jungle. I've been bitten by about ten thousand insects, I've probably got leeches in places I don't want to know about. If this has been a wild goose chase, Min Qi, I am going to kill you."
Red relaxed. She recognised the voice.
A second later, its owner emerged into the clearing. It was the beautiful dark-haired Strontium Dog who called herself Enigma. Beside her were the two animal-like mutants - one huge and slow, lumbering on two legs, the other fast and monkey-like, scampering on four. Trailing behind them came a bland-faced, slightly ineffectual-looking woman.
As soon as they saw Red and the others, the newcomers stopped short. The monkey-like member of the team smiled. "As I told you," he said to his friends, "those who follow the path will never stray from the path."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Enigma said impatiently. Then she turned to Johnny with a suddenly brilliant smile. It was like someone had thrown a switch, lighting up her whole face. "Johnny Alpha, right?" she said. She moved up to him and put a hand on his arm. Red noticed that she let her breast brush against Johnny's side as she did, as if by accident.
"Yeah," Johnny said guardedly. "And you are?"
Enigma kept hold of his arm, while swinging round to point at the other newcomers. "The big guy calls himself the Sloth, that-" she pointed at the simian mutant, "is Min Qi Man. And that-" she waved at the pretty young woman in a way that was subtly but obviously dismissive "-is Woman Man."
The young woman stepped forward. "You can call me Jo," she said. "We're Team X."
The Sloth stepped forward, his movement so smooth and so slow he seemed to be flowing like treacle. "Brother, I'm mighty glad we found y'all. See, we've been a'talkin, and we reckon we'd like you to be our new leader."
Johnny didn't look overwhelmed with happiness at the idea.
Team X, Johnny soon found out, had been together for just three months. In that time they'd only been on one mission together, and that had been interrupted by Don Delater's summons before they'd seen any action. New recruits to the Strontium Dogs, they'd spent the remainder of their time training together, melding themselves into the kind of fighting team that would be feared by criminals the galaxy over. Or so their fallen leader had told them. Carl Kale had been a mutant with an idea. He'd been in the bounty hunting game a few months before the others. He'd even been on a mission - from which he'd returned without a perp, and without his left hand either.
Bounty hunting, he'd quickly realised, was a dangerous game. If you wanted to survive it, you'd better have back-up. So, as the other mutants had made their way to the Doghouse, he'd recruited them one by one to join his team. He'd persuaded them that together they could have something - discipline, a sense of belonging, a well-balanced mix of powers and abilities - which the other Strontium Dogs didn't have. It would give them an edge. It would keep them safe. The other mutants, green and scared, had leapt at the chance.
Then Carl Kale had got himself killed a few minutes into their first mission.
Now they wanted a new leader. Someone, Enigma acidly suggested, who actually knew what he was talking about.
Jo now smiled at Johnny encouragingly. "We've got a spare uniform and everything," she said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Johnny could see Red staring at him with barely disguised amusement. Middenface, on the other hand, was scowling. His partner seemed to think he might actually accept the offer.
"Look-" he said.
"Johnny dinnae need more partners," Middenface said hotly. "He's got me!"
Enigma scowled at him, her features suddenly looking petulant rather than pretty. "We weren't asking you," she said, then turned back to Johnny, her sultry smile instantly back in place. "Well?"
Johnny shook his head. "It's like the man said," he told her. Middenface grinned at him, looking relieved. It occurred to Johnny that McNulty liked their partnership, and didn't want anyone else sharing a piece of it. That was fine with Johnny: he liked their partnership too.
Team X, though, looked far from happy.
"Why not?" Woman Man asked. As she spoke, she glanced over Johnny's shoulder, eyeing the jungle nervously. All the rest of the team, Johnny noticed, kept darting nervous glances around them, jumping at the slightest sound. First battle jitters, Johnny thought. Some people learnt to deal with the fear, the constant presence of death hovering just over your shoulder, whispering into your ear that each second could be your last. Some people never did. It was too early to tell which way the members of Team X would go - and Johnny had no intention of nurse-maiding them while he found out.
The Sloth could clearly read Johnny's decision in his face. "We're one hell of a team," he said imploringly. "Second to none, Carl always said."
Red let loose with a throaty chuckle. "Yeah, I'm certainly impressed. Most people would wait at least an hour before getting their leader killed. I think you've set some kind of record."
Min Qi Man scampered up to her, his prehensile tail held high behind him in what Johnny guessed might have been a sign of anger. "The foolish man laughs in the face of the storm," he said to her. "The wise man builds a shelter."
Red's hand drifted closer to her blaster. "Are you calling me a fool?" she asked in a dangerously calm voice.
"I'm sorry, the answer's still 'no'," Johnny interrupted, before the situation could get out of hand. "Middenface and me work alone, and we'll catch O'Blarney alone. Red and the Blimp can tag along if they want-" he registered and enjoyed Red's irked look at this - "but rookies like you would just be dead weight. If you take my advice, you'll sit out the action here. We'll pick you up on our way back."
The members of Team X glared at him, even the previously imperturbable Sloth. Jo looked close to tears. "Well, of all the-" she said.
Then they heard the noise.
It was almost subliminal at first, a low dangerous hum that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, as if the trees themselves were singing to them. But as they listened it became louder and louder, till it was almost painful. Blasters drawn, they spun to face the trees.
Nothing. There was nothing to see. But the noise was all around them. Whatever it was it seemed to be already among them. Where was it?
Middenface scowled round at the seemingly empty jungle. "Come oot, ye cowardly wee neep-heid!" he suddenly shouted, as if the tension had become too much for him. His brow was dripping with sweat. He raised a hand to wipe it from his eyes, and as he did, it seemed to stutter in the air, as if banging against some invisible obstacle. Middenface let out a cry of pain, and clutched his arm to his chest. Johnny could see a large red welt rapidly rising on the white flesh of his companion's wrist. The hum ratcheted up a notch, so that Johnny had to fight to stop himself clasping his hands over his ears. The sense of imminent threat was sending the adrenaline pumping round his body, quickening his heartbeat, knotting his gut and bringing out an ice-cold perspiration on his face.
Then, suddenly, he realised. "Bees!" he said.
"Where?" the Blimp asked, head turning fro
m side to side.
"Everywhere," Johnny said. "They're all around us."
"But how-"
"They're moving too fast for us to see."
The Blimp spun round quickly, as if believing she might be able to catch one of the creatures in mid-flight.
"Stand still!" Johnny shouted at her. "If you move, you'll-"
It was too late. The buzzing around the blonde mutant heightened in pitch and - for a fraction of second - Johnny got a glimpse of the bee as it readied itself to plunge its needle-sharp sting into the Blimp's arm. The creature was huge, at least as big as Johnny's fist, its bulbous body marked with broad red and green stripes. The Blimp shouted and clutched her chest as the creature plunged in its sting, penetrating her thick body armour with ease.
She cried out again, and Johnny knew that another of the creatures had attacked her. Then another. From the size of the things, he guessed that each contained enough venom to paralyse a small animal. He doubted the Blimp could survive many more stings.
As the beleaguered mutant curled in on herself in a protective foetal ball, Johnny aimed his blaster at the air around her, but the creatures didn't stay still long enough to afford him a clean shot. And he feared that any attempt to kill one of them would merely enrage the others.
His mouth filled with bile, the bitter taste of his helplessness. A fellow Strontium Dog was dying in front of his eyes, and he could do nothing. And when the bees had finished with her, the rest of them were sitting targets. He glared into the air, alpha rays spilling like fire from his eyes, but their enemy remained invisible to him.
To his left, Enigma suddenly shouted out in pain and dropped to her knees. For a moment he thought she'd been stung, but then he saw the look of intense concentration on her face. Her hands were pressed to the sides of her head as if trying to hold it together.