Chapter Ten




"Kind of a piss-poor shot, isn't he?" was J.B.'s comment after the cannie missed for a second time with the stolen longblaster.
Ryan squinted through one lens of his binocs. "It sure isn't the rifle's fault. At that range, he should be able to drive nails with it."
"Our friends in black down there don't seem to be much bothered by what he's doing," J.B. said. "Either that, or they're scared stiff."
"Don't look scared to me." Ryan said.
"Nah, to me neither," the Armorer admitted. "More like they couldn't give a rusty rad-blast."
"Hey!" Mildred exclaimed. "Did you see that?"
"Where?" Dean asked.
Mildred pointed to the left of Main Street. "A brilliant green flash, over between the big houses," she said. "Just there for a second, bright as day, then it was gone."
"Like stun gren flash, no boom," Jak agreed. "I see."
The Steyr firing a third time brought everyone's attention back to the heart of Moonboy. The gunshot echoed off the walls of the ridge. The five in black armor remained standing, like statues in the middle of the street.
Another miss.
"See where the slug skipped?" J. B. said. "That guy can't hit the broad side of a barn. Kind of humorous or mebbe pathetic."
"Pathetic is more like it," Mildred said. "He's probably got the oozie shakes so bad he can't keep the sights on target."
"If our cannibal colleague is not cautious," Doc said, "he will anger those black-clad folk."
"Already has, Doc," Dix said. "One of them's moving."
Ryan watched the figure in black climb up on the trailer and disappear into the windowless aircraft.
After a few seconds, its rotors began to turn. First the rear one, then the one on top, both spinning faster and faster, until a dust storm began to fly in the street.
"Got a real bad feeling, Ryan," Krysty said.
"Mebbe we should pull back."
"You seeing anything?" The one-eyed man asked. His concern was real. He'd had enough experience with her mutie premonitions to know they had to be respected.
"No," she said. "That thing just scares me."
"It's not after us," J.B. assured her. "Not yet, you mean," Doc said. "Perhaps we should take a lesson from our flesh-eating friend down there. Discretion is the better part of valor, John Barrymore."
Below them the cannie sniper, valorous or not, was sprinting across the rubble field with the Steyr.
Before the companions could retreat from the edge of the cliff or the fleeing cannie could make good his escape, the aircraft lifted off the trailer.
"Well, I'll be fireblasted," J.B. muttered as it shot up to the level of the ridge top in the space of a couple of heartbeats.
Browning Hi-Power in hand, Dean stood gaping as the unnatural flying thing hovered high over the ville. His eyes widened in amazement as it abruptly wheeled and dived on its prey like a mutie war eagle. At the climax of the screaming dive, a bolt of light shot from the weapons pod in the nose and cut a fiery trench across the earth, a line that seemed to graze the running cannie. A graze was all it took to put him down.
"What was that?" Krysty asked. "It gave off the same green flash I saw before," Mildred said. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it was some kind of a laser beam." For Krysty's benefit, she added, "A laser's a high-energy light that can cut through plate steel like butter."
"This one chopped through solid rock," Ryan said.
"If it was a laser," Mildred told him, "it was a good ten thousand times more powerful than any we had before skydark. None of the really powerful ones back then, the ones that could generate enough energy to create nuclear fusion, could fit into something as small as a helicopter. Took a complex the size of Moonboy to do the trick."
"So you're saying what?" Ryan prompted.
"I'm saying we didn't have the technology to make something like that in 2001. Somebody, somewhere has been pushing the research envelope. Contrary to reports, science isn't dead, after all."
"Lightning without thunder," Doc said, clucking his tongue. "My dear Ryan, this development does not bode well. Sadly, my fear that we are overmatched seems more and more justified."
The aircraft figure-eighted to come around again. The cannie lay sprawled on the ground and showed no interest in getting up. To Ryan it looked as if he'd dropped the Steyr, and he hoped it wasn't badly damaged. The aircraft made a low pass over the unmoving figure, checking for signs of life, then with a roar of its engine and a blast of dust from its propwash, it rocketed back up to ridge-top level. Hanging in the air directly over the center of Moonboy, it turned a slow, clockwise pivot.
"What's it doing now?" Krysty asked.
"Looking," Jak replied.
"Looking for us," Ryan said. "Nobody move, not a muscle."
When the nose of the aircraft swung past them, they all breathed a sigh of relief. The machine continued to turn, climbing higher as it did so, then from the peak of its spiraling ascent, it suddenly banked and dived on them at incredible speed.
"By the three Kennedys!" Doc cried. "It has seen us!"
Ryan shoved J.B., hard. "Go! Everybody, head east! I'll make it follow me."
There was no time for argument. Their last best hope was to scatter. Ryan already had drawn his SIG-Sauer. He led the diving aircraft, aiming well below it, and squeezed off three shots in rapid succession. He didn't expect to down the machine with 9 mm bullets, but he did expect to see them send sparks flying off its black skin.
There were no sparks. The craft had soaked up the slugs like a sponge, or he'd missed it altogether.
The gunfire did draw the attention of the pilot, who immediately angled the craft's dive toward him.
With a glance at the others, who were already taking cover behind the row of spires to the right, Ryan bolted across the jagged terrain, back the same way they had come. As he ran, he fired his pistol in the general direction of the aircraft.
Ryan didn't know what the range of the plane's laser blaster was, but he had a sixth sense when it came to being locked in someone's sights. At that moment, his alarm bells clanged. With a monumental effort he dived headlong, throwing himself behind a man-sized horn of rock. In the same instant there was a blinding flash of light, a wave of intense heat and a rocking explosion, which was followed by the whipping suction of a violent gust of wind. Over his shoulder he saw the black ship zoom past. The stone that had been his cover had been destroyed. Three feet of its tip sliced off clean. Nothing was left of the missing part. The light beam had detonated it like a gob of plastic explosive.
Ryan took a two-handed grip on the SIG-Sauer and, as the airship turned, he punched out four evenly spaced shots. He knew the capabilities of his hand-blaster and the limits of his own skill. At a range of fifty yards, with a steady hold, he could just about guarantee where the bullets would fall. And that was certainly inside a circle smaller than ten feet in diameter.
Yet he scored no visible hits.
"Fireblast!" he snarled, jumping up and ducking between a pair of towering spires.
With the others no longer in sight, Ryan was free to think about his own survival. It was a safe bet that he couldn't outrun the flying machine. Experience had taught him that he couldn't outshoot it, either. His only chance was to outthink its pilot.
The black ship approached his position, then stopped at a distance of seventy feet. Maintaining its altitude, it jockeyed first one way then the other, trying to get a decent shot angle on him.
Ryan pulled back behind cover as the laser cut loose again. This time the flare of light didn't wink out. The beam was sustained. The wave of heat made him groan. Smoke started to curl up from his hair. As the beam gnawed at the rock, it gave off a painfully shrill tone and he could feel the massive monolith vibrating. The rock crag weighed in the vicinity of two hundred tons. At its base, the circumference was probably twenty feet. Ryan was glad to learn that there were some things the aircraft's weapon couldn't shoot through in a single blast.
Then it got noticeably cooler. Shielding his eye from the glare, Ryan saw that the pilot had switched his point of aim to the pinnacle of the spire above him, a place where the rock was much thinner.
Time to move.
As he leaped away from the base, high overhead there was a thunder-crack explosion and the huge pinnacle came crashing down in a golden rain of sparks. The impact raised a cloud of dust that enveloped him.
Since running away from the machine was futile, Ryan dashed toward it. He had to have surprised the pilot as he burst out of the dust cloud, because he ran directly beneath the weapons pod without drawing another burst of green fire. He passed under the sleek belly of the craft and into the confined hurricane of its prop wind.
Fifteen feet below the middle of the aircraft, Ryan raised his pistol high overhead and fired straight into its guts. Though the range was no more than five feet, there was no clank of impact punctuating the flurry of gunshots, only the whine of deflected slugs as they ricocheted on the rocks around him.
Impossible, he decided as he raced onward, out from under the machine's tail propeller. Impossible but true. Bullets had no effect. His hopes for living through this encounter were sinking fast.
Before him yawned the cliff overlooking the mud lakes. He guessed he was very near to the gully they'd climbed in order to reach the ridge top. There was no time left for him to make major adjustments in his jumping-off point. If he had guessed wrong, the drop was going to be a lot longer than thirty feet. The airship wheeled around behind him, swooping down for the chill. Straining, he sprinted for the edge.
As he took the last, desperate stride and his right foot came down on nothing, he thought he'd blown it. Down was a long, long way. Legs flailing, he dropped below the ridge top. Above him there was a flash of light and blistering heat as the laser cannon blasted a new cleft in the bedrock.
Ryan hit the pile of loose gravel at tremendous speed. The impact with the ground knocked the wind out of him, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Because of the gully's steep angle, he continued to fall down the chute, skidding, sliding. He covered his head with his arm as he started to tumble, end over end. With no way to control his descent, he was just another boulder, rolling downhill.
Buffeted, bounced, battered, he came to a shattering stop behind a big rock. Momentarily unable to breathe, he struggled to rise. But as he regained his feet, he found himself face-to-face with the hovering black ship and the multiple barrels of its weapons' cluster. The aircraft was positioned to block any further movement on his part. He had nowhere to go.
Ryan raised his handblaster and opened fire. He didn't have a hope in hell of doing damage to the craft; he was buying a few precious seconds of time for his friends. The pistol spit out several more shots before its slide locked back. Tossing aside the empty pistol, he reached for his right boot and yanked the panga from its sheath.
"Come on, you fireblasted bastard!" Ryan shouted at the windowless craft. He slashed the heavy knife blade back and forth in the air. "Come out of there and I'll cut you a new one!"
Ryan expected the green flash any second.
He expected it to be the last thing he ever saw.
The ship moved in a little closer, as if the pilot wanted to get a better look at him. Without warning, a cloud of clear mist shot from one of the tubes in the aircraft's nose. Ryan gasped in surprise as the mist billowed, wet and stinging, around him. His involuntary intake of breath sucked tiny droplets into his lungs. He tried to close off his throat, but it was already too late. His knees buckled.
Before he hit the ground, he was out cold.

Deathlands 49 - Shadow World
titlepage.xhtml
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_000.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_001.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_002.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_003.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_004.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_005.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_006.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_007.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_008.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_009.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_010.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_011.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_012.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_013.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_014.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_015.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_016.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_017.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_018.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_019.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_020.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_021.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_022.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_023.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_024.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_025.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_026.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_027.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_028.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_029.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_030.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_031.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_032.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_033.html
Deathlands_49_-_Shadow_World_split_034.html