by Greg Keyes
“Yeah, it’s broken,” she acknowledged. She set about finding the medical kit, which contained self-stiffening strips for splinting’ primitive, but effective enough. She gave the woman a broad-spectrum antibiotic, too.
“They’ll get us now,” Jimmie groaned. “I know Hoku too well.”
“Do you,” Teng said quietly. “You don’t know me at all.” She got up and crossed back over to the wrecked ship. The smell of alcohol was almost overpowering inside; thus far, nothing had ignited the fumes, and she moved quickly, both to avoid becoming lightheaded and the risk of explosion. She found the rifle and the handgun Jimmie had procured for her. Both were primitive affairs; the handgun was merely a pain stimulator, useful at extremely close range. The rifle was better; it fired both armor-piercing and exploding shells. Such a weapon—like the laser the “whipper” had used on her—was supposed to be illegal to colonists.
Unfortunately, she had only one magazine, with perhaps twenty rounds. Well, the ship following her could scarcely hold twenty people.
The rain was slacking a bit, which meant only that the air was no longer an opaque curtain. She remembered the radar image of the crash site, and now she saw it revealed to her somewhat-better-than-human eyes. The flyer had skipped across a flat plain and fetched up against a rugged ridge, foothills to the mountains they would have soon crossed. The flyer would be in plain sight when the storm cleared.
Well, she did not have to be. Slinging the rifle on her back, pistol at her waist, Teng began cautiously climbing up the wet stone of the hills. She found a high point with good visibility. Rain was washing constantly down into her eyes, so she unfolded a broad-brimmed hat from her belt pockets. She sat there, eyes scanning the plains and sky through the drizzle of water pouring off of her hat. She switched on the cloaker, a fine net in her clothes which would confuse her infrared image and sonar, and settled in to wait.
Alvar closed his eyes against the fine mist the rain had become and yearned to be in a bed. His body ached from a million bruises and shocks, from the effects of plague, and from adrenaline burn. His brain, for the same reasons, was as useful for thinking as his mother’s home-made marmalade had been for toast, which was not at all. So he didn’t think; he just groaned inwardly and tried to imagine himself elsewhere.
“It’ll still fly,” someone was saying.
Alvar found that hard to believe. The flyer had seemed to fall apart like wet fibercard, tearing at the seams. How could it still fly?
“How fast?” That was Hoku, the scary one. Actually, the little man—Homik-something-or-other—was frightening too, but in a different way. A more distant way.
“Not fast at all. There are no afterjets, just fans. But the underjets work.”
Because we slid in on our goddamn side, Alvar remembered. On reflection though, landing right-side-up—sliding along the ground at high speed on underjets—might not have been such a good idea. As it was, they were all alive and relatively uninjured.
Sand was a few feet away from him, still manacled as he was with resistance cuffs. Like his, her arms sagged, lifeless and numb. She appeared to be deep in thought. Above them, the dark clouds still rolled and thundered, but the heart of the storm seemed to have passed on.
“If it will fly, we should get going, then,” Hoku said. His visage seemed like a skull filled with some black flame. Like the skeletal images who danced in the halls of the arcology on the Day of the Dead.
The small man and Hoku marched Alvar and Sand back into the hovercraft. Inside, the angles seemed wrong, but without the titanic hands of the wind pulling at it, the flyer felt solid again. Kewa was already inside, a dazed look on her face. A clot of blood on her brow suggested the cause of her disorientation. Hoku stopped briefly to take her chin in his hand.
“This will be over soon,” he promised her. “We’ll treat that. Can you hang on?”
Kewa nodded, and a bit of clarity returned to her features.
The Bluehawk rose shakily on sputtering jets, but rise it did, and soon Alvar felt the hovercraft moving through the sky, a bird wounded but not yet dead.
Hoku watched the terrain and the radar-sonar composite intently.
“If they made it through, we’ll never catch them,” Homikniwa said.
“How could they have made it in that little sparrow? Bluehawks were designed to ride out storms.”
“True enough,” Homikniwa admitted. “But with an enhanced person like this Teng at the controls. …”
“Enhanced? You mean like the Kachina? Conditioned with deep hypnosis and engineered microbes?”
“More than that. Bones of chainsteel, extra organs, faster neurons. Enhanced.”
“What do you know about such things, Hom?”
The little man shrugged and returned his attention to fully to flying.
The flat cube pinged for their attention. It was Captain Rosa.
“Mother-Father,” the man began reluctantly.
“Go. Talk,” snapped Hoku. He had no time for confidence building now.
“Two flyers left the drum, some time ago. I tried to contact you.”
“Did you shoot them down?”
“We got one of them. They were so fast. And they had some kind of deflection field. We were lucky to get the one we did, and that with an X-ray laser, one of the big ones.”
“Idiot. A Whipper shot one down by himself.”
Rosa grimaced. “They were too fast, Mother-Father,” he repeated.
Hoku nodded. “When it comes back, you have to hit it. Be ready.” He closed contact.
“Well,” he told Homikniwa. “There’s something else to worry about. How are our weapons?”
“One of the lasers still works. We have two missiles, but I have red lights on one of them. We have a laser rifle, too, and a pair of handguns.”
“Wasps?”
“No, slug-throwers.”
“Fine. That Teng bitch doesn’t make a very good prisoner. Better if she dies, I think.”
Homikniwa nodded. “I agree”
They swept over eight kilometers in silence. Then Homikniwa pointed solemnly at the screen.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s them.”
Even at this distance—still too far away for visual contact—the reconstructed image their instruments gave them was one of a badly damaged ship.
“At least it isn’t strung out all across the landscape,” Homikniwa offered. “They may still be alive.”
Moments later, the ship itself came into view, a crumpled silver and blue toy against the Cornbeetle Foothills. Homikniwa began descending.
“I have two people down there,” he said after a moment. “Two live people anyway.”
“That’s one missing,” Hoku observed.
“It’s her,” Homikniwa said, with quiet certainty. “The warrior. Hiding somewhere.”
“Where?”
“In those hills. That’s where I would be.”
Hoku stared intently at the folded black stone that was growing close with each moment, searching.
“Why can’t the infrared pick her out?”
“She could be wearing some kind of screen. She had her offworld clothes, you know. I’m sure the traditionals took her weapons, but they might not have noticed a screen woven into her clothes.”
“Or, like me, they never heard of one,” Hoku said, shooting his old friend a suspicious glance.
“Just trust me, Hoku,” Hom said.
The ship hove closer, and one of the infrared figures suddenly began moving. Hoku squinted through the viewport.
“That must be Jimmie,” he said. “Shoot him.”
“Not right now,” Homikniwa said. “I don’t want her to know where the laser ports are.”
“She could be dead,” Hoku hissed in frustration.
“If Jimmie lived
, then Teng certainly did, Hoku.”
“She was wounded.”
“Makes no difference.”
Hoku considered that for a moment and nodded. Homikniwa was usually right about such things, and he had to trust somebody besides himself.
They settled to the ground thirty meters from the ruined ship.
“Maybe she isn’t armed,” Hoku suggested. “She hasn’t fired on the ship. Oh!” Hoku mentally chastised himself. Of course not. She wanted their ship. She would fire on them, when they came out of the craft.
“Right,” Homikniwa confirmed, seeing the realization dawn on Hoku’s face.
“What, then?” He could see the woman, slumped beneath the awning of a survival shelter. So close, but the ground was too rough to move the hovercraft any closer. They would have to walk out there and get her.
Hoku made his decision quickly.
“Kewa and I will get the woman. You keep your eye on the hills and shoot her with the laser if she fires at us. Surely she will miss her first shot.”
Homikniwa looked grim. “No, I wouldn’t count on that. Kewa and I should go. You man the laser.”
Hoku felt a brief irritation. Homikniwa had been gently countermanding his orders and discarding his suggestions for the past hour. But then he saw the sense of the suggestion. Certainly Homikniwa was quicker than he, more adept at surviving injury. Kewa, though, with her head wound. …
“Take one of the rifles,” Hoku said, by way of assent. Homikniwa stood, nodded confirmation. He opened a locker and lifted out a tough-looking weapon. He already had a sidearm.
“Keep your eyes up there,” he told Hoku, pointing at the highest reach of the first ridge. Then he went back.
Hoku saw Homikniwa and Kewa after they exited the Bluehawk. Homikniwa was moving quickly, not quite running, and Kewa stumbled after him. She seemed better, and Hoku felt a bit relieved; maybe she didn’t have a concussion after all. Ten more steps and they would have the alien. Hoku could deal with Jimmie later. For now, they just had to get out of here, before the Reed flyer showed up.
There was no sound at all, but a red rose bloomed on Kewa’s back, and she spun around like a child playing “whirlwind”. Her eyes were very wide, the one glimpse he had of them. Then she was lying on her face in the dirt.
Homikniwa was moving faster than a human being ought to move. A score of bright green spears stabbed out from him toward the ridge as he sped across the ground, leapt over a two-meter high shelf of stone, and vanished.
Hoku gaped, comprehension suddenly inserting itself into his forebrain. Where the fuck had those shots come from? He hadn’t seen!
But Homikniwa had been shooting at a specific target; Hoku had seen the bursts. Furiously, Hoku thumbed the gun sight around and fired a missile towards where Hom’s shots had been aimed. The Bluehawk seemed to gasp with its release, and Hoku watched the white trail bridge the distance to the mountain. There was the briefest of pauses, and then a blue-white flash that left spots before his eyes. A few seconds later, the sharp roar of the explosion shuddered the Bluehawk.
Hoku watched the ridge, now obscured by drifting smoke, blinking furiously at the afterimage of the detonation.
For a few moments, nothing, and then a sharp report, as of someone clapping boards together, right by his ear. He jumped, startled. There was a pockmark on the windshield, right in front of his face. It would have gone right between his eyes, had the shield been anything less than chainglass.
What was this creature?
And where was Homikniwa?
Frustrated, targetless, Hoku waited with his thumb on the laser contact.
Chapter Thirty
Teng squeezed off two more shots at the man in the flyer before she gave up. She hadn’t been certain that the colonials would use chainglass for everything, but it appeared that they did. Still, whoever was there was rattled; the missile had come nowhere near her, and the jabs from the laser were sufficiently uninformed that they posed no threat either. Not so the little man on the ground, whose aim had been uncannily accurate. Teng wondered if he were another of these “Kachina”. If so, he would be a problem, but not one she couldn’t handle. The last time she had been too concerned about Alvar to concentrate. This time, there would be no such distraction. Wherever Alvar was, he was no longer any concern of hers.
Bullshit, said an irritating little voice. At least she hadn’t spoken out loud this time.
Where was he? Teng wished for a pair of broad-spectrum goggles. Her own “natural” sight had some enhancements—she could see a bit further down the red end of the spectrum than the unenhanced, could see more detail at greater distances. But she couldn’t see the heat tail her foe was leaving—if he was moving at all.
She glimpsed him an instant later, darting from the shelter of a rock, traversing an open slope with improbable speed. She squeezed off two of the explosive rounds, almost instantly regretted it as the eruptions clouded the area with dense grey dust. She had assumed that the storm wet things down, but she didn’t know this area. Or this planet, for that matter.
Well, he would be closer, soon. Teng searched about for a defensible position, found it in a ledge of stone a few meters away.
While she waited, Teng thought through her long-term plans. If the peacekeeper flyer had made it through the colonials’ defensive perimeter—and Teng had few doubts about that—the reinforcements would be here soon. What then? Retrieve the alien, she supposed, and Jimmie if possible. But then again, what did Teng want with the alien? She found it unlikely in the extreme that the alien would be of any use to the Vilmir Foundation. The real challenge was the alien ships themselves. The Vilmir Foundation wanted them of course, for the technology they might contain. Yet the possibility that they could learn something from the ships paled before the dangers they represented. The ships had made one attempt to contact the colonials, by sending down this bizarre clone. Why couldn’t they do it again, after Teng left, with or without the alien woman? Teng had no idea how long it would be before a real pacification force managed to get here, but she supposed it would be some time; Vilmir resources were spread thin, and despite the importance of the alien ships, it would take many years for a real expedition to get funded, built, and sent, especially after the recent revolt on Serengeti.
The other great risk was that Jimmie was right, that the ships posed a danger to the colonists themselves. If the Fifth World were destroyed, the long-term investment of the Foundation would be in shambles. Teng had already fought in one stock-market war, and had no particular wish to fight in another.
Yes, counting on the alien woman was a risk the Fifth Worlders had to take because it was their only choice. Teng, however, was rapidly coming to see another. She was a warrior, and she wanted to fight. It was the only thing she was good at, that much was clear to her now.
A rock clattered down-slope. A ruse or an actual stumble on her opponent’s part? It didn’t matter. She was death, and the man was coming to meet her. Teng took several deep breaths, preparing. She checked her weapon. Thirteen rounds left, and it only took one.
Fuck Alvar, anyway. Sure, he had been plagued; that meant only that he had done what he really wanted. Maybe he really had loved her, when she was the only woman available, but now … she would have had to leave him anyway. What was the point? He was right and she was wrong. His life was here, now, and it was best that the break be clean. Very clean.
She caught the motion in her peripheral vision and dove without hesitation. Green light licked at her ear, and the wet stone behind her hissed and spit. She rolled, firing twice, using explosive rounds—and that was the end of those. She flicked the magazine to armor-piercing as she came to her feet, running straight into the new cloud. Her wounds hurt mightily, but they would not bleed; a day or so was all her system needed to throw up dikes around such surface cuts. She could wish for a little less stiffness, but everything ha
d a price.
Another laser burst scored across her shoulder, and the concealment web sputtered, most likely broken now. She would have to end this fast, then: now the man in the flyer would be able to see her. In fact, the one glance she spared to the plain showed her the flyer slowly lifting. She needed the laser, now.
She spun down behind a rock as the barrel of her enemy’s rifle appeared again, and she squeezed off two more rounds; they struck bright sparks on stone, both of them. If she gave the man time, he would pin her down. He was only six or seven meters away. It was now or never.
Teng leaped up like a panther, the rifle pumping steadily in her hand. She covered the distance in no time at all, following her bullets. She suppressed an urge to howl, and a fierce joy bubbled in her blood as adrenaline that was better than adrenaline lit her up.
When she came over the ridge, he was moving, and her first two shots missed. The third caught him clean in the belly, and the fight should have been over. Instead, he launched himself at her, leg stabbing out a sidekick. She fired once more before the blow hit her, reasonably assuming any physical attack he landed was less dangerous than the laser. Blood spurted in the center of his chest.
The kick punched into her like a steel piston. She felt her hardened ribs break, and one tore into her lung. The impact lifted her up and back, and the rifle spun from her hands as she twisted to break her fall against the rocks. The little man followed her; his face was a mask, set and certain. He still had the laser, but he did not point the barrel at her, instead swung it down on her like a club. She deflected it with a rising block and countered with her own kick, striking him a glancing blow. He fell back, landed roughly against the stone. They watched each other then, both lying there. Teng noticed that he wasn’t bleeding very much.
“Who are you?” she gasped painfully. Her punctured lung felt as if it had collapsed, and breathing was painful.