John nodded.
Overhead a wedge of red Azteca blimps fought to get over the city. Four small, more agile, Capitol City blimps converged on them, firing their guns with random popping sounds. Grapelike clusters of bombs swayed from the Aztecan undercarriages.
A Capitol City blimp exploded and fell out of the sky. Men jumped from it, clothes on fire. They fell until they disappeared in between the buildings.
John watched the last of fifty men walk aboard Ma Wi Jung. They climbed up the wing, looking around nervously.
Another detachment of mongoose-men stood on the docks, guns ready.
Clusters of bombs exploded in the streets. An Azteca blimp caught fire and headed back out to the forest. It blazed its way down over the walls.
Several permanent stacks of smoke hung over their heads. Two of the small Capitol City blimps dipped into the smoke to hide and wait for the next Azteca wedge to bomb the city.
John stood up from the wing.
Time to pull his plan off.
John walked forward to the tip of the wing and addressed the mongoose-man on the dock who had rounded up the men inside the ship. “Your men know that I, and only I, command this? You told them what they might have to do if I need help?” The mongoose-man nodded. “Then good luck holding the Azteca back.”
John walked back up the wing.
Pepper waited inside the cockpit. He pulled a large canvas trench coat on and strapped knives next to either boot. “I want to repeat to you that I’m not going in, John, I mean it. I’m staying here to make sure no Teotl gets aboard and kills your fool ass, you understand?” All fifty mongoose-men lined the corridor under the top air lock, crammed shoulder to shoulder.
“I understand. We dust off now,” John told him.
“If we wait until night, they can’t hit it with artillery. If we go right now, they will harm it, John. I doubt she’ll be able to repair herself, or if she can, it might take many, many years for her to recover. We can’t take this risk.”
John sat down on the main couch. It canted itself into a takeoff position. “They might fall today yet, Pepper.”
Pepper grabbed a fistful of John’s shirt and pulled him out. “Think straight, John,”
John snapped his fingers. It was echoed by the sound of fifty gun safeties releasing, then the sound of fifty guns cocking. “Fifty crack jungle warriors, Pepper, in close quarters with guns aimed at you. You have a good chance, but so do they.”
Pepper dropped him back into the couch and punched the wall. It rippled. A display several inches away shattered and rained to the floor.
When he pulled his fist out, the imprint remained.
Pepper sat down on the adjacent couch and put his head in his hands. “Go.”
“Hang on,” John yelled to the mongoose-men. “It’ll be bumpy. There should be handles in the wall. Safety your weapons.”
The Ma Wi Jung rumbled.
“You are using a delicate interstellar ship as a cheap troop transport,” Pepper growled.
John leaned back into the couch. Somewhere in the back of his head he began to make a link with the ship, the halfliving computer inside it. His visual cortex lit up with an imposed world of information. This was what he did. He was a Pilot. Only John was built to interpret this complex brew of information.
He shut his eyes and pulled Ma Wi Jung out of the harbor water. On the outside left-down camera he could see water streaming down and soaking the docks.
Facing forward, he saw three blimps. Capitol City. Their heat signatures still stood out in the heavy smoke.
In the far distance, a wedge of five Azteca blimps moved leisurely forward.
John raised Ma Wi Jung up even farther, moving past the Capitol City blimps like a silver ghost breaking through the smoke.
Then with a grim smile he jacked the ship forward, ignoring the ping of bullets fired from the ungainly, red airships in front of him, and flared upward at the last minute.
Behind him the Azteca blimps popped like soap bubbles from the punch of Ma Wi Jung’s engines, while, inside, the mongoose-men hung to the walls as they shook and rumbled.
John let the ship spin as he scanned the barren landscape around Capitol City’s walls, then found his target.
Now he would bring revenge to the people who had invaded his land and broken his family.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
After several seconds of flying, John’s eyes flicked open. Despite the medic pod’s reconstruction, Pepper saw one overriding look on John’s face: tiredness. Lines etched the corners of John’s mouth, layered on top of the clenched lips. “Show them all the exits,” John said.
He flew in figure eights. Pepper felt the motion through his feet. Keeping Azteca artillery interested, and their attention away from Capitol City.
“Okay.” Pepper stood up and massaged his fist. He’d pounded his knuckles into powder with that frustrated punch. They were beginning to heal again, but that was a dumb move just before action. “There are four ways to get out of this ship. Cargo’s the biggest, top air lock, and two front air locks.” He pointed directions out and walked forward. “You five, to the top. You should remember the way.”
Five mongoose-men walked back down the cramped corridor and climbed up a floor. Their feet echoed off the ladder. Pepper grabbed five more, stationed them at the right front air lock, and another five on the left. The rest he took with him down into the cargo bay.
John looped them around the sky some more, shoving them against the floor at times with acceleration as he needed.
Then they dropped. Pepper’s stomach flip-flopped. A hard jarring sound shook through the hull. Contact. “The more feathers, the more colorful, the better,” Pepper yelled. They’d all been shown pictures, told what to do, shown the layout of the sacrificial area. But a last impression before they jumped out would take their minds off the ship and back onto fighting. “Bring as many back alive as you can. John’ll be waiting in the sky.” The cargo bay opened, and the three nearest men slid down onto a broken tree log a few feet under Ma Wi Jung.
A mongoose-man threw a rifle at Pepper, and he caught it with his left hand. The man cocked his head out the door, asking if Pepper was going.
Hours ago he’d thought he was home free, giving John his memories back. He’d been dreaming of accounts he held in NovaTerra and Earth with interest still ticking, hot baths, and candy bars with names he recognized.
Now he was back where he had started.
Pepper looked down at the gun. He reached under his jacket with his other arm and pulled out the handgun Haidan had given him. It hardly matched the Ruger taken from him up north, but it was deadly enough.
Enough to ruin any Azteca’s day.
A mongoose-men held up a net for Pepper, but he shook his head.
What was it John had said? He killed people. How many could he kill before some random Azteca sniper dropped him with one in the head? Or would he be quick enough, lucky enough, coolheaded enough, to make it through this next one?
Fuck it. Pepper sighed and jumped down into the bush. This needed to be over, one way or another. Two hundred and ninety-eight years of waiting to go home had eroded his patience.
Pepper watched the Ma Wi Jung explode back up into the air as shots followed it. Each one made Pepper wince. The loamy ground sprung underneath him, making each long stride easy. Mongoose-men crunched through around him. Pepper kept each one in track as he scanned.
Long, drooping palms struck Pepper in the face, and then he burst out into the clearing. The smell of blood hung humid in the air. Hundreds of tree stumps lined the perimeter, but closer to the great wooden pyramid the ground had been cleared.
“Who goes?” cried a voice in Azteca. A priest, a loworder acolyte judging by the scraggly feathers and lack of blood.
“I do.” Pepper dropped his voice down until the words rumbled.
“Are you a god? Do you come for blood? I will guide you, good sir.”
Pepper hardly slowed a
s the young man realized his mistake and raised his mace. Pepper dodged the blow and struck the acolyte in the face with the same force and frustration he had struck the bulkhead.
He shook his hand free of skull and brain tissue and kept moving. He circled the pyramid, a half-mile dash, running so fast he could feel wasted energy rippling out of his body in the form of heat.
Then he turned toward the pyramid.
Guards moved forward. Pepper shot one with the rifle the mongoose-men had given him, used the butt to stave in another’s chest, and picked up the mace thrown clear as the man clutched his wound.
The third guard reached for his gun, abandoning any idea of trying to take Pepper for a prisoner. So Pepper shot him first.
A hundred Azteca priests of the highest castes milled about, not sure where to run. Mongoose-men finally caught up with Pepper and burst out into the clearing.
Now the priests bolted, running toward Pepper as they tried to escape the wide crescent of fifty silent mongoose-men with nets and guns.
Pepper waited, chest heaving overtime as he pulled in enough oxygen; too much, he felt dizzy.
He shot the first priest in the thigh, and the man fell forward into the mud. The one next to him slowed, and Pepper shot him in the foot.
They wielded knives slick with the blood of Nanagadans’ hearts, and Pepper took those same knifes out of their hands and hamstrung them. Others he knocked out, smashing their faces in enough to let them live, but never forget.
When calm, planned actions resulted in nicks and cuts on his arms and chest, Pepper cut loose. Sizzling with energy, he thrashed through the crowd and cut the legs of anything with a high enough rank. He was a silent, methodical blur amidst the colored confusion.
Acolytes simply died, not worth the energy of saving.
Pepper killed and maimed and cut and slashed until all he was left with were shapes in the bloody mud, shapes that groaned and cried out to their gods.
He looked like one of them, now. Blood ran down his shoulders. His shirt dripped with it. It streamed off the edges of his trench coat and matted his hair. He couldn’t blink through the gore on his face.
The mongoose-men stood and looked at him.
“Fire the flare,” Pepper ordered. “Bag them.”
They had mere minutes before the warriors came. He could hear them. He blinked, blind, as the actinic green of a flare filled the clearing.
Ma Wi Jung banked out of the sky and flew in over the treetops, making them shake so madly it looked as if they were dancing. The starship dropped over the pyramid, smashing it with shrieks and groans, and opened the bay doors.
Half the mongoose-men dragged priests unceremoniously to the ship while the others brought up the rear.
Pepper stalked back toward the Ma Wi Jung.
He looked around, suddenly aware that hundreds of eyes watched him through the bars of the pens erected around the pyramid. Nanagadans waiting to be sacrificed.
Thirty seconds before the first warrior burst out at them.
Pepper looked over at the mongoose-men. He could see some sidling toward the pens while trying to cover their comrades hauling half-unconscious priests.
“Open the pens,” he said. “I’ll cover.”
He reached under his sticky trench coat for more rounds and reloaded the Nanagadan handgun. He’d dropped the rifle somewhere.
Once loose, the Nanagadans would be slaughtered by the Azteca. But they didn’t have room for them in the ship. Maybe some would survive, and at least they would die on their own terms, not at the hands of some priest with a knife. Better to go down fighting than be slaughtered like a cow.
In the forest several Azteca arrived. He could see body heat signatures in the cool, dark jungle, waiting to gather enough numbers to attack.
“Gentlemen.” Pepper picked up a mace slick with fresh blood from the nearest mud-caked body and walked toward the forest.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
As the Azteca pushed into the clearing, John watched Pepper sprint back into the Ma Wi Jung.
John shut the doors and took off.
He flew the Ma Wi Jung around the peninsula over the water and landed in Capitol City. They disgorged their bloody, half-unconscious cargo onto the wharf without even landing.
From outside it would look like a miscarriage from a giant, silvery bird.
Inside the ship Pepper forced his way through the wounded mongoose-men into the cockpit to face John. The stench of death on him was overwhelming. He looked horrific. His bloody footsteps meandered back down the corridor.
“How many more of these trips do you want, John?”
“As many as we can,” John said.
When he dropped them off on the second one, John circled around and kept a camera on the scene. He saw Pepper moving around the pyramid clearing and cutting the priests off again.
The flare went off after three minutes. John dropped down again. Again the mongoose-men dragged bloodied priests into the hold.
This time Pepper came with a net of his own. A large grublike figure struggled inside.
“Teotl.” Pepper dropped it at the mongoose-men’s feet. “Adapted for nonphysical activity.” He smiled. “Helpless.” And he winked at John. Just like the old days. Blood in the air. And something in the back of John’s mind almost had him wink back.
John closed his eyes to it all and took off again, dodging around the sky, watching the blimps in slow motion, and dropped off the captured cargo.
He opened his eyes again as they touched down onto the wharf. Pepper had lost forty or fifty pounds easily. His face looked thin now. He didn’t loom over the other men. He couldn’t keep that up much longer, John thought, dropping in for attack number three.
The cargo bays dropped open, John took the Ma Wi Jung back into the sky.
They were doing what they did best, what they had modified their bodies to do. John flying, his mind interfaced wholly with the ship, Pepper an efficient killing machine on the ground.
Just like the old days.
John came in carefully, watching the trees in all spectrums. The ground crawled with Azteca. The dark forest lit up with the firefly blinks of muzzle flashes. The hull was pockmarked with bullets.
He dropped into the clearing. This time only thirty-nine mongoose-men climbed back aboard with their cargo. Pepper leaped into the right front air lock at the last minute.
Cameras picked him up, half-naked, bullet holes oozing blood. The blood on his skin sizzled like a grill. Pepper grabbed the wall to keep his balance. “Water,” he demanded.
John gained altitude, paused to reorient the starship, and the whole craft rang like a bell.
Smoke poured into the corridor, and emergency foam followed it. They lurched back toward the docks as John coerced the ship to tell him what damage they had taken. It didn’t respond. John got the sense it was focusing all its attention on trying to repair itself.
He wobbled them down toward the docks and waited for Pepper while some of the mongoose-men unloaded more bloodied nets of Azteca priests. Two mongoose-men sat in the cockpit, holding their guns nervously.
Pepper stumbled forward to John. “We’re hit.” Pepper had lost even more weight, burning it up as fast as he could speed around and kill. John could count his ribs. “That is it, now. We can’t risk any more damage. Let it go repair itself. We’re done.”
John opened his eyes, losing in his head all the ship’s visions of the world around it. “One last compound.”
Pepper sipped more water from a tin flask, trying to cool himself down and recover lost water weight. The leather strap dangled around his forearm. “They’re wise to you now. I’ll bet they have more artillery than that last one in place over the sacrificial areas. Ma Wi Jung will get hammered. She’ll be far from spaceworthy.”
“One more,” John said.
Pepper broke the straps off the flask and leaned closer.
“Stop him,” John ordered.
Two mongoose-men leapt on Pe
pper. The first smacked him in the face with the butt of his gun, the other slipped a noose around Pepper’s feet and yanked him onto his side. All three fell to the ground, struggling. A third mongoose-man in the corridor ran forward and put a knee to Pepper’s chest and a gun on his neck.
None of this could have been done without Pepper’s being weakened by the fighting. John was relieved when they stood up with Pepper between them bound in ropes. The alternative, if Pepper had not fought and weakened, would have been to surround him with guns again. A second showdown that would have ended in many dead.
“Take him out on the dock. Keep him secure and feed him as much jerk chicken and water as they can spare.”
Pepper would break out quickly enough. But not soon enough to stop this last foray. John avoided Pepper’s eyes as the mongoose-men dragged him away.
What a mess.
John closed his eyes as they dropped Pepper onto the ground. He watched the thin trail of smoke coming out of the rear of the ship and checked over the numerous holes in the ship’s side, trying to remember if there was anything critical nearby.
The more priests they had, the more likely they could force the Azteca to turn around and go home. Just one last run.
He closed the doors in the belly of the ship and took to the sky.
John angled the ship down, dropping toward the trees. But even as he did so, he knew he was in trouble. Several large guns had been towed into place, and they caught him in cross fire. He dodged below the Azteca artillery and to the ground. As he looked up, he knew getting back into the air would be expensive.
Azteca waited on the ground for his thirty-nine mongoose-men.
Without Pepper they would face a slow, desperate fight.
John gunned Ma Wi Jung just over the ground ahead of the mongoose wedge at the Azteca. He dropped her belly to the ground and scraped it toward the gathered enemy.
Tortured metal screamed back at him. The ship hopped into the air again, and he repeated, feeling the bay doors buckle and fall off.
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