Chapter Twenty
Satisfied with the main rotor's rpm, Captain
Ockerman released the skid clamps. As the gyroplane jumped off the
trailer and into the night sky, he addressed the passenger sitting
in the contour chair directly behind him. "We're out of here,
Pedro," he said through the helmet comm.
"'Oh, baby.'' Hylander groaned at the rapid ascent.
Ockerman smiled at the pull a sudden three g's of gravity squashing
his backside into the seat. Yeah, yeah, it was good .
In the cargo pouch at the waist of his battlesuit, the FIVE systems
engineer carried a tiny memento a single, flattened .44-caliber
lead ball.
He had pried the crude projectile from deep inside the first stage
of the missile. After penetrating the exterior skin, the bullet had
plowed through a nest of control cables and smashed one of the
guidance servos, coming to rest harmlessly against the outer
housing of the main engine. Fortunately, there were double and
triple backups of all critical systems, so even though they'd lost
a servo, no serious damage had been done. The control cables were
easily and quickly respliced. It had taken more time and effort to
fill and smooth out the damage to the exterior panels, which had
the potential for causing dangerous air friction and fatal drag at
escape velocities.
The whole repair process, from start to finish, had wasted just
forty minutes. With the missile now safely transferred by crane
onto its gantry, only two technicians were required to monitor the
remaining diagnostics, which were all automated. The colonel, in
his infinite mercy, had decided to let his systems engineer, his
biologist and his geologist all take a little recess, while he
completed the prelaunch work with Bennett, the lieutenant who'd
driven the missile across from Earth. In another four hours, they'd
have the missile fully prepped and in countdown mode. Liftoff was
scheduled to take place a little after dawn the following
day.
Because they couldn't risk another attack and perhaps some more
serious damage to the launch vehicle, once the repairs were
finished Gabhart had given Ockerman, Hylander and Connors the green
light to hunt down and eliminate the potential threat.
It was an assignment that warmed the cockles of Ockerman's
heart.
He took the airship up to three hundred feet and banked a turn for
the canyon mouth; once there, he swung 180 degrees and hovered. The
anonymous village spread out below him was tinted in various
unnatural shades of green, blue, orange and yellow, depending on
the relative intensity of radiant heat.
"There goes Connors," Hylander said. "Man, is he
honking!"
Ockerman's infrared sensor displayed a yellow Captain Connors
driving a green ATV out of town at high speed. Like Ockerman,
Connors ran without lights, relying on his battlesuit's simulations
to find his way through the dark.
After adjusting the parameters of his visor's infrared scan,
Ockerman cranked up the magnification to ten power and zoomed in on
the ground. The gyroplane's forward-looking sensor could detect
temperature differentials on the soil surface of less than one-one
hundredth of a degree. Variations that slight were meaningless
without a computer search for specific patterns of difference,
patterns that could be expected to be left behind when six people
were running for their lives.
Finding their footprints was almost too easy.
Even after more than half an hour, there was enough of an elevated
heat signature for the system to isolate them. Ockerman located one
set of tracks and followed it until it joined three others. At the
base of the cliff, the four sets of prints were joined by another
two.
"Connors," he said through the helmet-to-helmet comm link, "I have
all of our targets heading up the south side of the ridge, about
half a mile from the canyon entrance."
"Got any direct visual on them?" Connors asked. "If so, you'd
better feed it to me."
Ockerman magnified his view field even further, holding the
gyroplane steady as he scanned a greenish-blue landscape of craggy
pinnacles. After a minute or so he said, "Pedro, I got nothing.
What about you?"
"I can't see them," Hylander said, "but I can see the chute they
climbed to reach the summit."
"Yeah, I mark that, too. Are you getting the video feed,
Connors?"
"Roger that. I'll drive around to the other side of the ridge and
cut off their retreat. From the map sim, it's going to take me a
while, though. Maybe fifteen minutes, depending on the terrain I
have to cross."
"No worries," Ockerman said. "In the meantime, we'll try to locate
them and give you their exact bearings. I'll wait until you're in
position before I make my first run." With that, Ockerman signed
off.
The systems engineer tensed his lower back and his right biceps
simultaneously. The gyroplane responded with a gut-wrenching,
five-g loop.
Taken completely by surprise, his passenger could only
moan.
As much as Ockerman enjoyed developing the complex artificial
intelligences used in military weaponry, he liked the no-limits,
hands-on stuff even better.
This dog loved to hunt.
Under a three-quarter moon, with the airship's sensory
enhancements, its complement of lethal weaponry, its speed and
maneuverability, there was no doubt about it. He was Shadow World's
ultimate predator.
If the opportunity came his way, he had no intention of sharing the
action with Connors.
"Ockerman, you're killing me back here," Hylander complained after
he found his voice.
"Toughen up, Pedro. This is the AirCav."
"If you make me puke inside my suit"
"What a fucking Grandma!"
"Let's just find the bastards and get the job done."
"Yeah, but with style." Ockerman gave his body a little twitch. The
assault gyro juked upward as if about to pull another
balls-to-the-wall, overhead 360. Ockerman didn't complete the
maneuver; he didn't have to. The juke was enough to wring another
highly satisfying groan out of Hylander.
The mission they were on was twofoldto preemptively stop the Shadow
people from making another hit on the missile, and to recover as
many live subjects as possible for Hylander's tissue studies. Part
of the biologist's mission was to evaluate the health danger the
indigenous population presented to migrants from Earth. FIVE's CEOs
were concerned that the natives could be carrying infectious
diseases that newcomers had no defenses against. It was conceivable
that in order to make Shadow World safe for colonization, military
units were going to have to isolate the existing human population
in internment camps, or simply exterminate them.
Either way, it was a job for the AirCav, Ockerman
thought.
In the back of the systems engineer's mind, he knew that no matter
how Hylander preferred his test subjects, it was up to the man in
the command seat whether the prey got captured or killed. Colonel
Gab-hart and Hylander could monitor what he was doing in the air,
even see what he was seeing through his visor, but they couldn't
remote-pilot the ship, or keep him from using its laser cannons, if
the mood struck,
Ockerman's mood at that moment was for a wipe-out.
A total fucking wipeout.
Hanging at summit height, he turned on the airship's laser-guided
microphones, which provided pinpoint audio surveillance. Within a
narrow field of search, he scanned for the rattle of gear, for
footfalls, for coughs. As he listened, he realized that he was
holding his breath, even though that wasn't necessary.
"Hey, Ockerman!" Colonel Gabhart said through the comm link, "I
hope you're not contracting wood on us up there. Your blood
pressure is flying higher than you are. You'd better start
breathing through your nose, or you're going to blow an
artery."
"Roger, that, Colonel."
Ockerman shut down the air-to-ground comm link, let out a howl and
turned another five-g aerial somersault. After that, he had to
briefly shut off his link with Hylander as well. The yelling hurt
his ears.
It had been a long time since Ockerman had flown in an actual
combat situation, and the action he'd seen had been very limited.
Most of the fighting in the Consumer Rebellion had taken place
inside the megalopolises, street to street, building to building.
Assault gyros couldn't operate at their full potential in the
enclosed, high-density, ultraurban environment. Shadow World, on
the other hand, was made to order for them. It had wide-open
spaces. No flight ceiling. No ground-to-air missiles.
A bell tone sounded in his helmet, indicating the computer had
completed its search pattern without scoring a hit. He opened the
comm link to his passenger; Hylander had settled into a sullen
silence. Ockerman shifted the gyro's position to take in a new
section of ridge. The onboard computer did the rest of the work,
precisely aiming the laser mike within the assigned grid.
The sensor picked up a brief clatter of sliding rock.
Ockerman zoomed in with the infrared on the identified area.
Everything was greenish blue. There were no halos of yellow behind
the outcrops, outlines of humans in hiding. No sign of animals,
either. He decided it had been a natural event, caused by the
erosion of the bedrock.
The bell tone chimed. Search pattern complete.
Ockerman turned the airship another ten degrees of arc and resumed
the scan. Almost at once, the laser mike picked up a human voice at
a decibel level that was no more than a whisper.
The voice gasped, "Oh, shit."
"Famous last words," Ockerman said.
J.B. FELT AS IF HE WERE staring down a mutie mountain lion or grizz
as one hundred yards away, a black specter hovered against the
backdrop of stars. Even at that distance, its propeller blades were
going whup-whup-whup inside his chest.
If he could see the plane, he knew it could see him.
A machine like that had to have a whole lot of technology that
could search out people. Since blas-terfire seemed to have no
effect on the craft, there was no point in wasting it.
They had one hope of surviving the next few hours, and it was slim,
at best. What they needed was hardened shelter, someplace that
would stand up to the laser cannons. But finding it in the dismal
half-light with the aircraft in pursuit was going to be
difficult.
Turning his back to the machine, he spoke softly to the companions,
"Retreat. One file. Tight. I'm point."
Assuming they'd already been spotted, there was nothing to be
gained by a stealthy exit. J.B. burst from behind the outcrop and
charged full tilt, boots thudding across a stretch of open ground.
He ducked between the ridge's tall spires and kept on going. At his
back he heard the grunts and curses from the others as they fought
to keep up. Despite their best effort, they were slow-moving
targets, and their escape route was entirely predictable, dictated
by the impassable spires of rock.
Over the sounds of their desperate retreat, J.B. could hear and
feel the propellers' insistent beat. The aircraft hung behind and
above him, watching, waiting, perhaps fine-tuning its elevation and
angle to take the perfect chill shot. J.B. expected to die before
he reached the top of the chute on the other side of the ridge. No
shot came.
He paused for breath at the drop-off. Over his shoulder he saw that
the aircraft hadn't advanced. The pilot was toying with
them.
On the plain in the distance below, moonlight turned mud lakes
silver, and clouds of steam rose into the night sky, carrying with
them the smell of hot sulfur. J.B. looked over the edge. Thanks to
the dim light, the drop didn't seem so bad. Of course, it didn't
matter how it looked. They had to make the jump, anyway.
Suddenly, the sound of the aircraft changed. When the Armorer
looked back, it was no longer there. The prop noise faded as the
now-invisible ship swung away from them, circling and then crossing
the ridge to the west. Once the aircraft cleared the ridge, it
arced back in their direction. More head games, J.B. thought. "He's
going to nail us when we're in the chute." he told the others.
"We've got to hit the ground running."
J.B. screwed his hat as far down on his head as it would go, then
hurled himself over the edge. As he flailed his legs to keep his
balance, the wind rushed up at his face, ripping at his glasses,
screaming past his ears. He hit the ground all right, but not
running. As he landed on the soles of his feet, his knees caved in
from the force of the impact, and his butt smashed down on the
gravel in the chute.
He shook it off as best he could. There was no time to really pull
himself together. He had to get out of the way or be crushed by the
others jumping after him. As J.B. shoulder-rolled down the slope,
he felt the whoosh and heard the grunt Mildred made as she crashed
to the ground. Then he was up and running. He couldn't wait to make
sure everyone else made it down because that would have blocked the
escape route.
After three or four strides, his run became a slide, and his slide
was on the verge of becoming another fall. He jammed the buttstock
of the M-4000 into the loose rock, using it as a rudder to control
his wild descent.
At the bottom of the chute, the grade flattened and J.B. came to a
skidding stop. Mildred bumped into him a moment later, followed by
Jak, Dean, Krysty and Doc. The experience had turned the old man a
whiter shade of pale. Eyes tightly shut, Doc kept shaking his head
and mumbling to himself. It was a miracle that no one had broken an
ankle.
Barely breathing, they listened, straining to screen out the rumble
of volcanic lakes and hissing steam vents. Overhead, now lost in
the dark, the rhythmic beating of the aircraft came at them from
the south.
"Let's move," J.B. urged.
Because he had no choice, he led them through an obstacle course of
boiling hot springs, over ground he knew had to be undermined. They
ran on a thin crust of earth that could give way under their
combined weight, plunging them to a terrible death by
scalding.
"Don't break. Don't break. Don't break," he muttered with every
running stride.
They reached and rounded the muddy shore of an infernal lake, and
as they raced on, they kicked through a scatter of shattered bones,
pelvic girdles, ribs, vertebrae. There were paw prints, as well.
Lots of them, jumbled and pressed deep into the muck. The heat
along the shore was so intense that the sweat dripping off J.B.'s
face, off his chest, and pouring down the middle of his back had no
cooling effect. He felt as if his clothes were going to burst into
flame.
When he looked up, a black shadow passed across the stars, cutting
off all hope of their retreat. J.B. slowed, then stopped. He stood
slope-shouldered, his blasters hanging useless in his hands. The
companions closed ranks around him, facing the oncoming aircraft.
Rumbling caldrons to the rear spit drops of boiling mud on their
unprotected backs.
It was the least of their worries.
Silhouetted against the blue-white moon, the aircraft slowly turned
its weapons pod toward them.