Another plane screamed overhead. Explosions crackled throughout the valley. She kept her head down, hearing shrapnel zizz through the air and plunk into the grass.
They ran toward a small stone animal-pen by the side of the stream. Dloan and Zefla dived over the pen’s stone wall. Cenuij vaulted; she jumped, falling into the grass circle within. She looked over, back to the wreck of the blazing half-track. Miz was helping Keteo carry a long, heavy-looking kitbag. She wiped sweat from her eyes and looked up.
In the sky above the hills, a large plane flew in front of red, sunlit clouds. A line of ruby-tinged shapes fell from the rear of the plane, becoming dark as they fell into the shadow of the hill, and blossoming into parachutes before they were hidden by the hills themselves.
“Definitely safer in the Land Car,” Cenuij muttered.
“Excellent response time,” Dloan murmured.
“Recognize them?” Zefla said.
“No,” Dloan said as Miz and Keteo—limping heavily, face covered with blood—heaved the kitbag over the wall of the pen and then collapsed over it.
“Who we dealing with here?” Miz said, breathing hard.
“Just saying,” Dloan said. “Contract army; couldn’t recognize them.”
“Where’s Roa?” Keteo asked, wiping blood from his eyes.
Zefla looked over the top of the stones toward the wrecked half-track. “Can’t see him,” she said. She looked back at Keteo. “What about the radio guy?” she asked.
Keteo shook his head. “No more,” he said, then knelt, looking over the stone parapet. Miz was tearing the kitbag open, in between glancing up and around.
“What hit us?” Sharrow said.
“Down!” Miz shouted. The scream of a jet came almost instantly. The ground pulsed beneath them and rocks tumbled off the pen wall. They waited for the pattering debris to stop falling, then looked up. A crater had been blasted in the river bed twenty meters upstream; water was pooling into the steaming, smoke-shrouded hole.
“Shit,” Cenuij said, holding his leg.
“Debris?” Zefla asked him, sliding over to him.
Cenuij grimaced. He lifted his leg up, flexed his ankle. “I’ll survive.”
“Tank sensors…” Dloan said, his voice trailing off as he watched Miz pull a large gun out of the kitbag. Keteo went over and pulled another tube-shaped weapon out. Dloan joined them, eyes wide.
Sharrow shook herself; she opened her satchel and saw the HandCannon. She pulled the gun out and searched through the spare clips in the bottom of the bag. Her redhead wig was down there too, but she ignored it.
“Shit, here’s another one,” Cenuij said.
The plane swooped, barreling straight toward them. Miz lifted the gun he’d found, trying and failing to make it fire. Sharrow found the HandCannon’s bi-propellant clip but it was too late. Something fell from the plane, tumbling. She fired up anyway as the plane tore overhead, the gun thud-thudding in her hand as the jet swept over. Something whistled through the air, just ahead of the zooming jet’s roar.
She hugged the ground. Detonations rippled through the earth and grass; a noise like a million firecrackers burst overhead. The debris was tiny and sounded metallic. She raised her head first. More detonations crackled downstream.
“Terrible aiming,” Dloan said by her side as he took up a large gun. He pulled a magazine out of the kitbag, then another and another.
“Cluster bombs!” Cenuij said, gulping as he looked at where a last few explosions were flashing and cracking down the valley. “Are they legal?”
Keteo banged the side of the tube-weapon he held, muttering.
“They become legal,” Zefla said. “When you do something like attack a Court-licensed Land Car.”
Sharrow threw the empty clip away and emplaced the bi-propellant magazine. “Think they’ll stop bombing?” she said, digging for the other rocket clip in the satchel. “Those paras must be pretty close.”
Miz checked the gun he had. “You’ll be lucky,” he said.
“These rounds are all the wrong caliber,” Dloan said, digging through the kitbag. He sounded disappointed.
“Two more,” Zefla said, looking up the valley.
Two sharp, dark shapes turned against the fading evening light, then seemed to hover there, growing larger.
“We should have taken that box,” Cenuij said. “That black box. The Court—”
“Solo!” Keteo yelled. He pointed down the valley.
Sharrow saw two flashing lights; they rose into the air on two masts above a large dark shape. More lights glittered, and the dark shape became a large ACV, two—then, as it slewed briefly, four—large propellers visible above it.
Keteo whooped.
Dloan stared at the hovercraft. “How did they get that up here?” he asked.
“Rivers!” Keteo said cockily.
Sharrow looked back to the two approaching jets as they bellied down, each leaving two thin gray tubes of vapor behind them, curling from their wingtips in the humid evening air. Miz tried to fire at the planes, but the gun wouldn’t work.
“Shit,” he said. “This thing needs a fucking power pack…”
Dloan turned to look at the jets and put down the gun he was holding, watching the aircraft as a third shape turned in the air above the valley head and started on the same bombing run. He shook his head.
“No matter,” he said softly.
The planes floated closer. Sharrow held the HandCannon in both hands, ready. Two black shapes hung under each of the planes’ wings. The canisters detached and started to fall, tumbling through the air toward them.
“Aw, fuck…” she heard Miz say.
“Bye,” Dloan said softly.
Then both planes became cerise spheres. The falling canisters pulsed bright pink in the same instant.
The light was too bright. Sharrow closed her eyes, not comprehending. Dloan shouted something, then he thudded into her, on top of her, putting the light out. The world pulsed and quivered, shock waves hammering into her already ringing ears.
The weight on her lifted. She opened her eyes. Dloan was standing above her, eyes bulging, mouth hanging open.
“Dloan!” she shouted. “Get down!”
Dloan swiveled, mouth still hanging open. Keteo stood up beside him, his mouth open too. He was staring back toward the half-track. Sharrow got up on her knees beside Dloan.
The two jets had disappeared. Tiny glowing bits of wreckage were falling all about, landing smoking in the surrounding grass, hissing in the water and clunking into the stones of the animal-pen like some bizarre hail. Zefla yelped and brushed one red-hot shard off her arm. Echoes rumbled round the valley. There was a long smoking crater on the flank of the hill across from them, tattered wriggles of smoke guttered from a scatter of small fires downstream from the pen, and from the dip beyond a dark black cloud was rising on a shaft of smoke and flame, partially obscuring the view down the valley toward the Solo.
The third jet swept overhead, climbing and turning hard. It too became a vivid ball of light; the explosion shook the ground and the wreckage fell gracefully to the hill in a thousand fiery pieces trailing black smoke like some vast firework gone wrong.
Keteo leaped into the air. “Roa!” he yelled, flourishing the unused tube-weapon.
Sharrow went to the downhill parapet of the animal-pen. They seemed to be surrounded by pillars of smoke. Down-valley, beyond the rising column left by one of the crashed planes, the Solo was visible, stationary a few hundred meters below, engines droning.
The half-track sat, still burning in the gloom beneath the dark hill. Violet light sparkled just behind it. She turned and looked above the hillside where the wreckage burned. A dot in the distant sky burst with light.
“Roa!” Keteo yelled again. He grinned down at Sharrow, then looked slightly embarrassed, and shrugged. “Me, really,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Wow!” Dloan said, looking round at them all. “Wow!”
“That’s what was in that box,” Cenuij said crisply. He snorted. “The wonders of ancient technology.”
“Oh boy,” Zefla said. “Is that bozo Roa in trouble now.”
Light ridged the hilltop above the flaming wreckage of the third plane. Ricochets whined off the stones of a nearby wall as the sound cracked over them.
“Paras are here,” Dloan said, as they all ducked down again.
“I can see Roa moving,” Zefla said, peeking out of a hole in the wall.
Answering fire from the ACV echoed around the valley. More gunfire came from the ridge of the hill, pattering around them.
Miz was crouched down beside Keteo. “Got a communicator?” he asked the youth.
“Yeah!” he said.
“How about using it to tell your pals in the ACV we’re on our way?”
“Good idea!” Keteo said. He pulled a small device from his pink combat jacket. “Solo?” he said.
Miz sidled over to Sharrow, who was taking aim at the hill summit. “Down the stream?” he asked her.
Keteo chattered excitedly to somebody on the Solo.
“Yes,” she said. “Down the stream. Any time you like.” She rose up just enough to fire at the hillside. Some careless soldier skylined, and so died in silhouette. Sharrow ducked back, changing magazines.
“Okay?” Miz asked Keteo, over the sound of bullets thudding into the ground and stones around them.
“Okay!” the boy yelled. “They’re waiting.”
“Let’s go,” Miz said. “Down the streambed.” He nodded at Keteo’s pink combat jacket, which even in the gathering darkness looked very pale. “That jacket makes you kind of conspicuous, kid; you might want to ditch it.”
Keteo looked at Miz as though he was mad.
Sharrow declipped the bi-propellants.
Miz watched her, scratching his head. “Will you stop fiddling and fire that damn thing?” he said.
She glared at him. “These are B-Ps,” she said. “No better against infantry and too easy to back-trace.”
“Oh, my mistake,” Miz said, watching her shove a different magazine home. A small explosion threw soil into the air ten meters upstream.
“ Rifle-grenade,” Dloan said.
She was ready to fire. She glanced at the others.
“Go!” she yelled. She started firing. Zefla and Dloan—quickly followed by Keteo and then Cenuij—jumped over the stream-side wall of the animal-pen.
Sharrow ducked down again. She changed clips again, her ears ringing again, her wrists aching. Miz was sitting a meter away, his face just visible, grinning at her.
“Get!” she yelled at him.
“You get,” he told her. He held his hand out for the gun.
“No,” she said.
She turned and started firing. Something dropped into the animal-pen a couple of meters away; Miz dived, grabbed and threw the rifle-grenade away toward the road; it exploded in midair.
She looked round; shrapnel tinkled against the far wall. Bullets sang off the stones they were crouched behind.
“Let’s both get,” Miz suggested.
They leaped the wall, stumbled down across the grass to the shallow river and staggered in, then waded downstream, heads bowed, slipping on submerged rocks, bullets whizzing above.
The Solo was invisible, hidden by the hollow where one of the downed planes had crashed. The ACV’s flashing lights lit up rising smoke in front of them and the grass on either side of the stream ahead. An underwater pulse almost threw them off their feet; a grenade made a white exploding shape in the stream, back near the animal-pen.
They came to the lip of a small waterfall and struggled out onto the grass, running down into the hollow where the wreckage of the aircraft burned in cratered patches and the Solo waited, its slab-sided stern turned to them, rear ramp closed but a small door open above a mesh ladder. Elson Roa was climbing the ladder over the bulge of the hovercraft’s man-high skirt. The Francks were right behind him. Keteo was helping Cenuij, who was limping.
Sharrow and Miz ran down through the big ACV’s prop wash. “Wish they’d put those fucking lights out.” Miz gasped.
They splashed through the stream again as Zefla climbed to the door. Tall splashes in the water announced bullets falling amongst them, and sparks burst off the rear of the hovercraft; air whistled out of small, ragged punctures in its skirt. Dloan waited for Keteo, then picked him up and threw the boy halfway up the ladder. He scrambled the rest.
Cenuij was next, hauling himself hand over hand.
Sharrow and Miz reached the black curve of the ACV’s skirt. Dloan made to help her up, but she nodded him to go next. He paused on the way up as something pulled at the dark cloth covering his right leg, then he continued.
“Ah!” Miz said, and whirled round. Sharrow looked back to see him glance at one hand and then stick it behind his back, and look at her. “Nothing,” he shouted above the noise of the engines, grinning. Blood dripped into the water behind him. He nodded at the ladder. “After you,” he yelled.
She stuck the gun in her mouth, gripped the ladder and climbed. Miz was right beneath her.
Cenuij was in the door, reaching down to her. He looked furious.
“Can you believe it?” he said, grasping her hand. “He threw it away! Thought it had stopped working, so he threw it away!”
Cenuij pulled her toward him. Roa was further in, yelling into a communicator. Dloan sat on the floor inside, holding his leg. The ACV was moving. Shots thumped around the opened door.
Sharrow hauled herself into the doorway and turned to reach down for Miz.
At first she thought Cenuij was doing the same thing, then he slumped heavily on top of her and tumbled out of the door.
She grabbed at him but missed; he fell past Miz, bounced off the ACV’s skirt and landed slackly on the grassy bank of the stream, limbs flopping spread around him.
Miz hesitated, looking down and back as spray burst from beneath the hovercraft’s skirt.
Cenuij lay on the grass, staring up at the sky, eyes open, blood pouring from each side of his head.
The ACV moved away and picked up speed, puffing up great shrouding clouds of spray into the hollow in front of the waterfall and punching huge, rolling holes in the smoke from the burning wreckage, all lit by the flames and the hovercraft’s flickering lights. Roa was still shouting. Hands came and held Sharrow’s shoulders.
She saw Miz tense as he looked down at Cenuij, getting ready to leap off the ladder.
“Miz!” she shouted. He looked up at her. The spray rose about him as the ACV accelerated, engines barking and clattering.
Cenuij lay still; ten, then twenty meters away as the pulsing light faded around him. Then the hovercraft’s lights finally flicked off.
“Miz!” she screamed into the shadows.
She reached down, felt his hand and pulled him up.
She and Zefla hauled him in through the door.
The small waterfall reflected the fading flames of the plane-wreck; the hollow became a bowl of shadows as the Solo drew away.
Cenuij’s body lay motionless on the ground, a dark “X,” like something pinned out, sacrificed to the encroaching darkness.
18
The Dark City
The android crossed the central plaza and walked along the quiet street through skeins and patches of ground-mist and past the shells of tall, roofless buildings filled with watery morning sunlight. The android was slender and a little below the height of the average Golter male; its outer substance was formed from metal and plastic and it wore no clothes. Its body had been sculpted to vaguely resemble a rather idealized male figure, though without genitalia. Its chest was usually said to remind people of the breastplate from a suit of ancient armor. Its head held two ear-shaped microphones, two eyes like round sunglass lenses, a flat nose with two sensory nostril slits, and a small loudspeaker shaped like a pair of slightly open lips.
Where the buildings gave way to a small park, the and
roid turned and descended a wide set of curving steps, past arcades edged by tattered, faded awnings, down toward the mist-strewn waters of the silent harbor. On the esplanade it turned and made for the Guest’s Quarter. Sunlight threw its long thin shadow behind it, across paving stones that were clean and without litter but cracked and holed.
The android carried a slim plastic folder in one hand; the plastic went slap-slap against its plastic-covered thigh for a few steps as the light breeze caught it, then the tall figure shifted its arm slightly, holding the folder further away from its leg. The noise stopped.
Vembyr was a city of many towers and spires and fine, ancient buildings that curved round a picturesque bay backed by tall forested hills in south-west Jonolrey. It had been abandoned by humans five millennia earlier after a nuclear power plant further down the coast had blown up and the winds had been blowing from that direction. The fall-out had covered the city, forcing its evacuation. It had lain abandoned for centuries, slowly falling into disrepair and only ever visited by scientists or their remotes monitoring the slowly decreasing radiation levels, until the androids had finally won their legal battle for civil rights, and started looking for a homeland on Golter.
The android separatist faction took out a ten-thousand-year lease on the whole city for a sum little more than nominal.
On the other side of the harbor, the android left the esplanade and climbed another broad curved set of steps, through a slowly rising cloud of mist. About halfway up it stopped to watch another android who was walking along a single step with a halting, shuffling gait, crossing from one side of the tall flight to the other. The android walking along the steps passed a meter away from the other; it gave no sign of noticing it, but continued its hesitant walk to the far edge of the steps, then turned and walked slowly back the way it had come. The first android watched it pass again, then continued up the flight. A shallow groove had been worn in the step’s white marble a centimeter or so deep.
The android with the plastic folder walked away along the deserted arcade at the top, and disappeared into the silent mist.
In the street that housed the Irregular Embassy a group of androids of various model-types were dismantling a shining metal tube that crossed the street ten meters up, between two ornately decorated stone buildings which had been recently restored. A couple of large dump trucks sat in the middle of the street, their cranes lifting sections of the transit system tube away as the pieces were freed. An android with a welding arm was cutting at the tube’s shiny surface, producing a waterfall of sparks that descended through the light, golden mist at the end of the street like pieces of splashing, fading sunlight.
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