Cloud Warrior

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘I was kidding,’ said Steve. He took her arm and led her off the bridge. As they walked back along the throughway towards John Wayne Plaza, Steve puzzled over what had prompted him to make such an outlandish remark. Like Roz, he had never eaten, or ever thought of eating a fish before. In fact, he had only known what the moving shapes were from having seen pictures of fish during an Academy lecture dealing with the main types of overground flora and fauna. Fish had only merited a passing reference, the main point of the lecture had been a review of the dangerous snakes, and the various other beasts of prey that might be encountered on a Trail-Blazer expedition. Yet as they had stood looking down into the water, he had had the distinct impression that somewhere at the back of his mind was the name of that particular fish, plus the knowledge that under the dark spotted skin, the flesh was pink and tender – and remarkably tasty when roasted over a wood fire.

  Since their minds had not joined on this particular occasion, Steve decided not to say anything to Roz. She was still troubled by the shared sensations of his overground flight for which neither had any explanation. With the start of the gruelling three-year Medical Doctorate course now less than a week away, his fifteen-year-old kin-sister had enough to worry about.

  SEVEN

  When you finally come face to face with a wagon train, the thing that hits you first of all is its size. They’re enormous. They make the rail-based MX missile trains that provided shelter and transport for the founders of the Amtrak Federation look like those narrow gauge miniatures that the kids used to ride on in pre-Holocaust amusement parks.

  The Lady from Louisiana – which Steve stood gazing up at – was a space-age, multi-section, articulated vehicle over six hundred feet long! It was believed to be another example of the genius of First Family design engineers but it was not, in fact, an original concept. It was a direct development of the US Army’s experimental overland train prototypes built in the 1960s. The technical specifications and design details had survived the Holocaust because they were stored in the prodigious memory of COLUMBUS, the giant computer that was the guiding intelligence of the Federation; the inexhaustible well-spring of 20th century science and technology from which the First Family drew their inspiration.

  The Lady consisted of two command/fire control cars standing some thirty-five feet high to the roof of their raised cabs and situated at the head and tail of the wagon train, two power cars, and twelve weapon, cargo and accommodation cars – all connected by flexible passways. Each forty foot-long section was mounted on four huge low pressure tyres, twelve feet in diameter and twelve feet wide, capable of traversing most types of terrain. Hydrogen-fuelled turbines mounted in the power cars produced electricity for the drive motors attached to each of the sixty-four wheels.

  Camouflaged in black, brown and two shades of red, the wagon train’s moulded SuperCon shell was lined with lead to provide protection against radiation. Each car had several small shielded periscope ports fitted with armoured glass that could be uncovered in an emergency but under normal conditions external vision was via clusters of remotely controlled tv cameras. Long-range surveillance was provided by a section of ten Skyhawks flown by wingmen like Steve. The train was also equipped with air guns, laser weapons plus a variety of other electronic devices and – for close-quarter defence – invisible superheated steam jets that could blast human flesh straight off the bone in seconds.

  Gus White joined Steve by the side of The Lady. He was still as mad as hell at not having been assigned to Big Red One but he was doing his best not to show it. ‘What do you think?’

  Steve shook his head in wonderment. ‘Even though we trained all year on a full-sized mock-up of the launch car and lived inside that simulator for a week, when you finally see it all in one piece it’s…’ Words failed him.

  ‘… big,’ said Gus.

  ‘You can say that again,’ agreed Steve. ‘No wonder the goddam Mutes head for the hills when they see one of these things coming.’

  ‘Yeah,’ grinned Gus. ‘They call ‘em “iron snakes”. I can’t wait to see their faces when this little ol’ snake starts breathing on them with some of that superheated steam.’

  Side by side, they wandered along the length of the train, noting the multi-barrelled weapon turrets mounted on the sides and the roofs of the cars. Squads of engineers were checking out the motors on the huge wheels, and testing the movement of power controls.

  Gus edged under the wagon train and glanced warily at the evil-looking jets on the sloping underside of the car which blasted out the super-heated steam. ‘What a way to go,’ he muttered. He rejoined Steve and together they walked around one of the huge wheels, inspecting the interlinked slabs of tungsten steel that made up the tread on the massive tyre.

  ‘Can’t be much fun getting run over, either,’ observed Steve.

  ‘Hey, you two!’ said a flat, hard voice.

  Steve and Gus turned to find themselves looking down at a stocky, tight-lipped girl in a blue wingman’s jump-suit. She had dark, close-cut hair, a smooth, oval, not unattractive, face; the peak of her cap was pulled down over deep set grey eyes that looked half closed but missed nothing. She wore the triple red stripes of a section leader on her sleeve. Above her left breast pocket was a pair of golden wings with five gold stars underneath; the printed tag over her right breast pocket identified her as 7571 KAZAN.J.

  ‘Finished your tour of inspection?’ asked KAZAN J. in a voice that meant business.

  ‘Yess-surr!’ chorussed Gus and Steve. They snapped rigidly to attention and saluted with synchronised movements. Kazan’s return salute rivalled theirs for zeal and correctness.

  As they stared blankly into the middle distance, Kazan read off their name tags and eyed them in turn. ‘White and Brickman… Ahh, yes… the smart ones.’ She walked a slow circle of inspection round them but could not fault their turnout. ‘Where’s Fazetti and Webber?’

  ‘We haven’t seen them, sir,’ said Steve.

  ‘They weren’t around when we booked in,’ said Gus.

  ‘I’ll tell you where they are,’ said Kazan. ‘They’re in the briefing room where the wagon master is about to deliver his pre-embarkation address!’

  ‘B-But sir,’ stammered Gus. ‘That’s scheduled for ten fifteen hours.’

  ‘It’s been moved forward thirty minutes,’ snapped Kazan. ‘Don’t either of you watch the screens?’ She pointed to the nearest overhead tv monitor. An announcement about the revised time was being flashed on the screen in sync with the usual red prompt light beneath the console. Ordinarily, there was no way either of them should have missed it.

  Steve and Gus stared at the monitor with embarrassment.

  ‘No, obviously not,’ concluded Kazan. She adopted an air of bitter resignation and shook her head. ‘Three years at the Academy and all you can do is behave like kids on a junior school tour.’

  ‘It won’t happen again, sir,’ said Steve. He allowed himself a brief smile. ‘I guess we were both kinda bowled over by The Lady.’

  ‘Save that pretty boy charm for barrelling squabs, Brickman,’ snapped Kazan. ‘And you can put away those teeth. If I see ‘em again, you’ll be picking ‘em up off the floor. Got that?’

  Steve’s face became a mask of stone. ‘Loud and clear, sir!

  ‘Good.’ Kazan drew their attention to the diagonal rank stripes on her arm. ‘See these? They’re to remind you of three things.’ She laid a finger on the top stripe. ‘First, that I’m your section leader. Second, when I shout, you jump. Third, I don’t take any shit – especially from wet-feet. Comprendo?’

  ‘Yess-SURR!!’ chorussed the two wingmen.

  Kazan dismissed them with a jerk of the head. ‘Okay. Get your asses over to Block Eighteen.’

  Steve and Gus gave Kazan another precisely synchronised salute and doubled away. ‘One of those,’ muttered Gus, as they ran.

  Kazan’s voice floated after them. ‘Yeah! One of those!’

  The two young wingmen reached Bl
ock 18 with one minute to spare. They paused outside the door to recover their breath, then walked in to join the crowd of nearly three hundred men and women that were settling down on the rows of chairs. Rick Fazetti leapt up and waved them over to where he and fellow graduate Webber had saved two seats for them.

  ‘We just met our section leader,’ muttered Gus. He rolled his eyes as he edged past them.

  ‘Did you see she had five stars?’ hissed Fazetti.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Steve. ‘One for each guy she’s eaten alive.’ Each star, in fact, represented one twelve-month operational tour. One more would earn her a Lucky Six – a double golden triangle on her lower sleeve – a call from the White House, and lunch with the President-General.

  As Steve sat down, Kazan walked in casually and took her place with the other section leaders in the front row.

  ‘How old do you think she is?’ said Webber.

  Gus White shrugged. ‘Five tours… she must be at least twenty-two.’

  Steve stared through the rows of crew-cut heads to where Kazan sat with her back to them. ‘Anyone know what the “J” stands for?’

  ‘Jodi,’ hissed Fazetti. ‘Jodi Kazan.’

  Okay, Jodi, thought Steve. You want to play it tough. We’ll see how tough you are…

  There was no doubt about the physical strength of the man who stepped up onto the platform at the front of the briefing room. He was a big, barrel-chested guy with hands big enough to squeeze your head like a lemon. He had a deeply tanned, aggressive face set on a powerful neck, yellow hair cropped close to the scalp, and he was dressed in olive drab fatigues with one broad diagonal red stripe on each sleeve, and a stetson bearing the star and bar badge.

  The crewmen fell silent as the man positioned himself beside the lectern with his feet apart, and his fingers round the ends of a short gold-topped switchstick. It looked like a deluxe version of the sticks carried by DI’s at the combat academies.

  The man surveyed the room. ‘So… we meet again. Mostly the same, tired old faces I see.’ He pointed his stick at a nearly bald-headed man sitting a few rows from the front. ‘Tino’s back again without getting his haircut–’

  There was a ripple of laughter from the veteran Trail-Blazers in the room.

  ‘- and the rest of you are still laughing at my tired, old jokes. Keep at it. Flattery’ll get you nowhere but there’s no harm in tryin’. However – since we have a batch of wet-feet shipping out with us for the first time, maybe I’d better introduce myself.’ He cast his eyes towards the back of the room and upped the volume a little. ‘The name is Buck McDonnell – sometimes referred to in the dead of night as Big D. I’m the Trail Boss on The Lady. The guy you come to when you’ve got problems. That’s why I’ve got such wide shoulders. I’ve had so many people cryin’ on ‘em.’

  His speech was punctuated by a hollow laugh from the veteran crewmen.

  ‘Play it by The Book and you’ll find me a very understanding guy. Get on the wrong side of me–’ He tapped his rank stripe with his switch-stick. ‘- and you’re liable to end up with a backful of these.’ McDonnell paused briefly to allow this threat to sink home. ‘My main job is to make sure that the orders of the wagon master and his execs are carried out – to the letter. And aided by your section leaders, I am also responsible for on-board discipline. Any wet-foot who thinks he can relax because he’s not shipping out on Big Red One had better think again. You won’t find a tighter train than The Lady, so keep your hoses clean and your wagons trim–’

  McDonnell caught a signal from a lineman standing by the door. He snapped his feet together, swept his switch-stick under his left arm and grasped the gold top between the thumb and palm of his left hand, fingers extended rigidly along the axis of the stick. ‘Wagon-train… READY!’ he boomed.

  Everybody jumped to their feet and braced their shoulders as Commander Bill Hartmann, the wagon master, entered the briefing room followed by his ten executive officers. All of them wore chrome yellow, long-peaked command caps and, with the exception of the Flight Operations Officer, olive drab fatigues.

  As they mounted the platform and Hartmann reached the lectern, McDonnell’s voice boomed out again, ‘Wagon tra-a-i-nn…’

  ‘HO!!’ chorussed the crew. The ground shook as the three hundred men and women thundered to attention and punched their right arm upwards in a clenched fist salute.

  McDonnell turned smartly towards Hartmann and brought his right arm up with jack-knife precision to the brim of his stetson. Hartmann’s acknowledgement had a touch of CFI Carrol’s famous fly-swipe about it. Steve felt reassured. He didn’t mind drills and the attendant bullshit as long as it was backed up by brains. It was hard to be sure at this distance but the grey-haired Hartmann exuded an aura of thoughtful intelligence. He was a couple of inches taller than McDonnell, with a lean, square-jawed face whose most arresting feature was a large white moustache. Standing alone, one would have judged him to be well-built but juxtaposed with McDonnell’s bull-necked bulk he looked positively anaemic.

  McDonnell turned to face the crew of The Lady. ‘Wagon train… EASY!’

  The men sat down, backs upright, their faces turned towards Hartmann. His execs formed two staggered lines behind him.

  Gus leaned into Steve. ‘They call him Buffalo Bill,’ he whispered.

  Hartmann laid his peaked cap on the lectern, placed a pocket video memo pad next to it, ran a hand through his silver grey hair and smoothed his moustache. ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ He paused and weighed up his audience. ‘I see we have what looks like a full house so it’s obvious we gave you more than enough home leave. I don’t know about you, but after two weeks I start to get the Trail-Blazer blues, after three I’m almost ready to volunteer for PD, and by the end of the fourth week I feel like calling in the bag-men.’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the audience.

  ‘Fortunately, that’s when I usually get the green line from the Tactical Plans Board. Once I get that roll-out date I’m as happy as a wet-foot with a head in each hand. But then–’ Hartmann paused and ran his eyes over the first few rows, ‘– you trail-hands have heard all this before. It’s the new generation who must be wondering just what the hell I’m talking about.’

  Hartmann glanced down at his video memo pad then aimed his voice towards the back half of the room. ‘I understand we have fifty replacement linemen and four new wingmen shipping out with us on this trip. I will have an opportunity to meet you individually later so, for the moment, I’ll just say to you all – “Welcome aboard”. Even though you’ve all undergone familiarisation training on simulators you will probably find things a little strange at first. You may know how it all works and where everything’s supposed to be but somehow even the best mock-ups can’t duplicate the feel of a real wagon train. They can never recreate the atmosphere for a start.’ The Commander’s face creased into a smile. ‘Three hundred horny trail-hands generate a lot of static – and it’s not the kind that can be simulated electronically.’

  This got a big laugh from the old ‘Blazers.

  Hartmann held up his hand. ‘The same goes for combat drills. You’ll find it feels a lot different when you’re actually faced with killing – and being killed – for the first time.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ muttered Gus. Steve, too, felt a sense of anticipation. Sitting there surrounded by the rest of the three hundred-strong crew he could feel an undercurrent of excitement flowing through the room; an electric force passing through their bodies, linking them together. Something that, in older times, had been known as ‘esprit de corps’.

  ‘I can see from your faces,’ continued Hartmann, ‘that you’d like to know where we’re going. So here’s the broad outline. The Lady will load and make fast in the next five days and roll-out on six, making a couple of supply runs to way-stations in Kansas and Colorado. These first two sorties – which will be load-out load-back – will provide the new crew-men with ample opportunity to shape up under operational conditions.
The second phase of our mission is where it gets interesting.’

  The whole room held its breath as Hartmann paused. Everybody was on the edge of their seats.

  ‘The Lady has been selected to make the first deep-penetration raid into Plainfolk territory. We’re going hunting, gentlemen – northwards into Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota–’

  ‘Yeee-hh-haaa!!’ The old rebel yell came simultaneously from three hundred throats as the crew of The Lady leapt to their feet, faces glowing. Steve, Gus, Fazetti and Webber stood up with them, their hearts pounding.

  Buck McDonnell stepped to the edge of the platform. ‘Who’s for The Lady?!’ he boomed.

  ‘We are – HO!!’ roared the crew. Three hundred right hands punched the air.

  ‘Are we ready and able?!’ boomed McDonnell.

  ‘YAY!!’ roared the crew, punching their right arms up again. ‘Lets GO-GO-GO!!’

  Hartmann and his execs responded to the men’s cheers with the same exultant clenched fist salute.

  The next five days passed quickly, night blurring into day as the entire crew of The Lady worked round the clock shifts; switching weapon cars for unarmed cargo containers; loading them with material, stores and bulk food concentrates for the way-stations; filling the overhead and underfloor storage bays of the other cars with ration-packs, equipment, ammunition and other supplies needed by the wagon train; checking and re-checking the range of on-board functions – communications, environmental, weapon, power, control and emergency back-up systems.

  Apart from their normal role in the above, the particular task of Steve’s section was to check the twelve Skyhawks – two of which were reserve airframes – before folding their wings and stowing them in the flight car of The Lady. In addition to the nine wingmen under her command, Jodi Kazan was also in charge of ten ground-crew whose primary task was to help erect, launch, retrieve, stow and maintain the aircraft.

  Like the other graduates from the Academy, Steve had been trained as a ground crew-man and flight engineer. He could service, repair or, if necessary, rebuild an aircraft. In the event of an emergency, he could also function in a number of other categories including ground-combat duties as a lineman.