Cloud Warrior

by Patrick Tilley

  The suicidal attacks by small numbers of Mutes on the flank units continued. Harried by a constantly retreating enemy, the linemen were drawn further and further from the river bank. Captain Clay whose own small command group had been trying to coordinate the action while killing its own share of M’Call Bears was slow to realise that the lead flank elements had overshot the five hundred yard radius perimeter line ordered by Hartmann. Thus, when the main force of Mutes hit and overwhelmed the two eight-man up-river squads and swept down the winding muddy bed towards The Lady, the bulk of his force was spread all over the landscape.

  Hartmann, and his two field commanders, had not fully appreciated the danger of an all-out attack from this direction. The relief they had felt at having weathered the flash-flood combined with their unshakeable faith in The Lady’s impregnability had caused them to overlook the fact that, with The Lady lying curved across the riverbed, only the port-side gun positions of the first five wagons could be brought to bear on an enemy advancing downstream. But, of the ten revolving six-barrelled weapons pointing in the right direction only three possessed their normal field of fire. The movement of the other seven was partially, or totally, blocked by piled-up flood debris which had also collected round the port-side tv cameras. The other eleven wagons lay in a line down-river, close to the steep left-hand bank and below the level of the ground on either side. And because of the angle at which the front five wagons were tilted over, the guns in the turrets on the wagon roofs could only be depressed to within seven degrees of the horizontal and were, consequently, useless – as was the considerable firepower on the unaffected starboard side.

  Reacting with commendable swiftness, Moore, the Senior Field Commander, led the rest of his combat squads down the ramps and attempted to hold a line up-river of The Lady. Hartmann called up Clay and told him to fall back to the river banks where he could support Moore with enfilading fire, and cut off the Mutes’ line of retreat. Hartmann turned to his execs with an exultant smile. Once that was blocked it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  The port-side gunners in the first five wagons swept the river bed as best they could with continuous fire and managed to cut down several dozen Mutes. The merciless hail of bullets failed to stop the advance. Dozens more unscathed warriors jumped unhesitatingly over the fallen bodies and surged forward. As Colonel Moore’s linemen emerged confidently from under the train and fanned out, firing from the hip, the running, leaping, screaming wave of M’Call Bears burst upon them like the flash-flood upon the train.

  ‘Close the ramps!’ yelled Hartmann.

  The systems engineer responded instantly, sealing the belly of the train. In the whole history of Trail-Blazer operations no Mutes had ever succeeded in boarding a wagon train but it still remained a nightmarish prospect that filled every wagon master with dread. The trains, and their sterile, air-conditioned interiors were an extension of the Federation and, as such, were sacrosanct, inviolate.

  Captain Virgil Clay contacted his scattered combat squads on the east and west banks of the river and told them to fall back towards The Lady. The two South Side squads he had sent downstream had been pinned down by fire from hidden crossbow snipers and had then been badly mauled in hand-to-hand combat. Now down to half-strength it had, nevertheless, achieved a kill-ratio of at least fifteen to one. Clay called up The Lady and requested additional firepower to be sent down-river to cover the fall-back. The North Side had earlier signalled that they were under heavy attack and had broken off in mid-transmission. Clay had tried repeatedly to renew contact but his radio messages had remained unanswered.

  The M’Call Bears who had overrun and killed the two eight-man squads holding the line upstream did not have time to figure out how the Tracker’s ‘long sharp iron’ worked. Without Mr Snow’s help, it was unlikely they would have managed it in a week. To the warriors, the three-barrelled air rifles were nothing more than odd-shaped clubs. The machetes, however, were a real prize. The belts and scabbards were quickly stripped from the fallen linemen and clipped around the waists of their proud new owners – of which Motor-Head was one.

  The screaming charge down the debris-littered river bed was accompanied by the eerie howling noise made by wind-whips. Perforated strips of wood tied to short sticks which, when whirled at great speed, emitted a variety of chilling tones; others made harsh, dry clicking noises like cicadas. To the raw wet-feet in the combat squads, the first sight of the M’Call Bears with their bizarrely-clad, striped and spotted malformed bodies – the legacy of generations of mutant genes – was like a vision of hell. A gut-shrivelling eruption of primal savagery allied to mindless brute strength. A seemingly unstoppable threat to everything the Amtrak Federation stood for. The horror was increased, etched deeper upon the psyche by the sight of the severed heads of their comrades, still encased in their helmets, bobbing on the end of stakes above the advancing throng.

  There was a fleeting moment when time stood still, when the brain froze, then the months of rigorous training, the years of indoctrination from cradle to combat academy came on stream, transmitting red-alert signals to brain, eye, limb and trigger-finger; sending adrenalin surging through the system to line the stomach with steel; flooding the heart with cold, implacable hatred. What the linemen saw then were deranged travesties of humankind; the despoilers of the blue-sky world, whose poisonous presence filled the air with lingering death. Nobody faltered. Nobody flinched. Wet-foot and trail-hand gave vent simultaneously to an exultant rebel yell and charged forward into battle.

  Deafened by the buzz of chainsaws and the noisy clatter of a small, tracked excavator, Barber and the sixty-strong party working under the rear wagons did not hear the chilling battle sounds made by the advancing Mutes. The first warning they had that fighting was about to engulf The Lady was an over-the-shoulder glimpse of Colonel Moore’s linemen charging down the ramps of the wagons on either side of the flight section. The next sign that things weren’t going too well was the reappearance, on the river bank, of Captain Clay and what was left of his perimeter force. Clay’s squads had been obliged to fall back over open ground harassed by sporadic fire coming from both front and rear as Mute crossbow men, positioned behind the main force fired at them from the cover of the river bed. Barber kept levering away at the flood debris clogging the drive motors but, like the rest of his men, he found it difficult to concentrate when it became apparent that the four squads which had doubled downstream were covering the retreat of the force despatched earlier. His concentration was further diminished when the driver of the excavator was blown out of his seat by a bolt that went in under his right armpit and came out between the collarbone and shoulder blade on the other side. Barber threw down his crowbar, grabbed his rifle and took cover behind one of the huge, steel-clad wheels. The rest of the damage-control party did likewise.

  Buck McDonnell ran under the length of the train to where Barber knelt and drew his attention to the pitched battle he had just left and which was raging less than a hundred yards upriver of the lead wagons. The Trail Boss pulled the empty magazine from his rifle, threw it aside, clipped in a new one then checked the reserve air pressure. The short bayonet fixed under the barrel was smeared with fresh blood. ‘These lump-heads are a bunch of real ballsy guys,’ he breathed hoarsely.

  Barber’s fingers flexed nervously around his own rifle. ‘Is Moore going to be able to hold them?’

  Buck McDonnell replied with a grim smile ‘If he doesn’t, we may end up with stiff necks.’

  This grisly reference to the Mute’s habit of carrying the severed heads of defeated Trackers on stakes wasn’t really the kind of thing the First Engineer wanted to hear.

  Looking back downriver, Barber and McDonnell saw Clay’s men on either bank launch a counter-attack against a Mute force that was hidden from the wagon train by a bend in the river. They saw the orange flash from exploding flame-grenades and the rising plumes of black, oily smoke. Three wounded linemen stumbled back up the muddy river bed towards T
he Lady. One of them sank to his knees and pitched forward face-down in a shallow pool. The Trail Boss tapped three men and led them downstream, covering them while they picked up the prostrate lineman by the arms and legs and ran him back towards the cover of the train.

  As they reached the rear command car, a Mute warrior leapt into view on the right bank, sighting down his crossbow. McDonnell, his reflexes honed by twelve years of overground combat, whirled round and dropped the Mute with a single triple volley. When the wounded had been passed up through an emergency escape hatch into the hands of The Lady’s paramedics, McDonnell rejoined Barber in the shadow one of the huge wheels. ‘I had a feeling when I woke up this morning that it was going to be one of those days.’

  Barber was not in a mood to take things so lightly. ‘This is murder. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Well, these guys shouldn’t be sitting here on their asses, that’s for sure,’ growled the Trail Boss.

  ‘But we can’t clear this shit while we’re under fire,’ protested Barber. ‘It’s impossible!’

  McDonnell shook his head. ‘Not impossible. Just difficult. If we can free this tail end back to the flight section, we can roll right over these bastards.’ He pointed to the small excavator that had run driverless halfway up the steep slope of the right-hand bank before stalling and slapped Barber on the back. ‘You drive, I’ll ride shotgun.’

  Lieutenant Commander Barber swallowed hard, tightened his grip on his rifle, and doubled across to the excavator with McDonnell on his tail. They climbed aboard, the big Trail Boss bracing himself behind the driver’s seat, rifle at the ready. Barber brought the excavator’s motor back to life and reversed down the slope. The tracks churned up the mud as he worked the levers to bring the machine round to face The Lady. It took him a couple of minutes to get his act together then he lowered the shovel and trundled forward to clear another load of sawn tree sections and boulders.

  McDonnell raised his visor as they neared the wagon train and waved vigorously at the linemen crouching underneath. ‘Okay, come on! Everybody back to work!’ he bellowed. ‘Let’s put some life in this Lady!’

  Responding to their example, the linemen laid aside their rifles, picked up crowbars, shovels, machetes and chainsaws and set about clearing the rest of the debris.

  Up in the saddle, Hartmann, the wagon master, fought a silent battle to clear the mental sludge that had clogged his brain since rising at dawn. He had no doubt about the ultimate outcome of the battle. The Lady would emerge the victor even if she lost most of the linemen now committed to battle. She would triumph because the Mutes did not possess any weapons that could cause her irreparable damage. The crew inside merely had to sit tight and ride out the attack with the aid of the wagon train’s own defences.

  ‘Sitting tight’, however, did not form part of the Trail-Blazer’s combat philosophy. The most favoured posture was one of aggressive pursuit of hostiles in which the wagon train acted as a mobile fire-base giving close support to its linemen on their overground sorties. Ideally, the combat squads were used to flush out hostiles from unfavourable terrain, like beaters putting up game, and for mopping-up operations. The Southern Mutes he had dealt with hitherto usually avoided pitched battles and whenever a stand had been made, he had always been able to bring the fearsome firepower of The Lady to bear.

  It was for this reason that Hartmann was unhappy about the jam The Lady was in. The wagon master was convinced that the clan now attacking them possessed a summoner. The storm had been too swift and, like the cloying mist, too localised for it to be part of a larger weather pattern. There was also another disquieting factor. The tactical movement of the Mute warriors showed an unnatural coordination. From the secret talks he had had with other wagon masters, Hartmann knew of only one explanation for this: the Lady’s attackers were being controlled by an over-mind – the mark of the highest known grade of summoner. If so, he was facing an intelligent and highly dangerous opponent able to summon up immense and totally unpredictable forces.

  It was this last thought that prompted Hartmann to order the Skyhawks to make the planned attack on the Mute cropfields and forest hide-out. The dawn raid, delayed by the weather, would create a diversion that would sap the morale of the attacking Mutes and might even cause them to break off the engagement – giving Hartmann’s men a much-needed breathing space in which to right the battered wagon train. There was the further possibility that the attack might incinerate the summoner who was orchestrating the movement of the Mutes and was responsible for The Lady’s present perilous condition.

  The klaxon sounded in the two wagons that made up the flight section. Everybody turned towards the nearest overhead tv monitor. The head and shoulders of Baxter, the Flight Operations Officer appeared on the screen. ‘Ryan?’

  The senior wingman who was now acting section leader hit the button which put him on camera. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Okay, hear this,’ said Baxter. ‘We have a green on the strike planned for this morning. Prepare to launch eight aircraft. You will lead the first group – consisting of Caulfield, Naylor and Webber – against the forest. I will lead the other group and fire the cropfields. Get Murray to rig and load one of the spare ‘hawks for me.’

  Murray was the grizzled crew-chief. He nodded and indicated to Ryan that it would be no problem.

  ‘I want the first plane off the ramp in fifteen,’ concluded Baxter.

  ‘Loud and clear, SIR!’ snapped Ryan.

  The flight section erupted into a controlled flurry of activity. Ground crewmen hurried to ready the aircraft for lifting onto the flight deck; the crew-chief ordered a detail to prepare a Skyhawk for Baxter, then called up the rear power car and asked for steam to power the catapults. Steve and the other wingmen grabbed their helmets, made sure the folded maps in the clear pockets on their thighs showed the correct section of terrain, checked that their holstered air pistol was secure, that their combat knife was firmly clipped in its scabbard on the outside of the right calf, and that the zips on the leg and chest pockets holding their emergency water filter and survival rations were properly closed.

  Ryan called them to attention. ‘Okay – Webber, Caulfield, you’re number one and two to go. I’ll follow, with Naylor on my tail.’ He turned to Steve, Gus White and Fazetti. ‘Baxter will give you the line-up. Meantime, I want you and as many guys as Murray can spare up in those duckholes ready to pump lead. This could be tricky.’

  It was. Webber and Caulfield were both hit in quick succession as their Skyhawks sat poised on the catapult ramps. Oblivious of the danger from the hidden Mute marksmen, Steve and fellow-graduate Fazetti leapt up onto the flight deck and aimed repeated volleys of fire up over the river banks while Murray and three of his ground-crew freed the two pilots from their safety harnesses and lifted them out of the cockpit pods. The seventeen-year-old Webber had been killed outright. Caulfield was not so fortunate. A bolt had entered the side of his helmet just behind his left eye, driving the barbed point through his head and out through the matching spot on the other side. When the crew-chief lifted Caulfield’s visor to check if he was still alive, Steve glimpsed the full horror of what had happened. The shock wave generated by the bolt’s impact had blown his eyeballs out of their sockets. While the battle raged around them, Caulfield sat, silent and uncomprehending, his grotesquely dislocated face streaked with blood. It was only when the ground-crewmen attempted to move him that he began to kick and scream.

  Steve helped hold Caulfield down while the crew-chief tied his arms and legs together then lowered him over the side to Gus White and the three medics sharing his duckhole. ‘Get him to the surgeon-captain,’ shouted Murray. He returned dragging Webber’s limp body. ‘And put this one in a bag.’

  Undeterred, Ryan climbed into the cockpit of Webber’s Skyhawk and quickly satisfied himself that the controls were undamaged. Naylor, the remaining wingman in the first wave tried to restart Caulfield’s plane but failed. One of the ground-crew found a vital lead that had b
een severed by a second bolt.

  Naylor jumped out and helped pull the disabled aircraft off the catapult. ‘It’s good to know they miss now and then!’ he said, with a quick, edgy laugh.

  Crouched on the deck to Ryan’s right, Murray signalled to him to wind the motor up to full power then swept his arm forward as the catapult was released. The Skyhawk soared into the air, climbed steeply to the right, then rolled on its back at about two hundred feet and went into a corkscrew dive. The sickening crunch of Ryan hitting the ground was obliterated by a muffled boom as his load of napalm exploded. Steve and the other people on the flight-deck winced with horror but watched with morbid fascination as a searing burst of brilliant orange fire ballooned outwards from the point of impact then rolled in on itself and lifted to become a mushroom cloud of black smoke, leaving the mangled carcass of the Skyhawk silhouetted in the middle of a circle of blazing grass.

  Steve made an effort to swallow but his throat was dry. He was not squeamish at the sight of blood, or ruptured flesh, and was confident of his ability to kill when the time came but he could still not get used to the frightening rapidity with which someone like Ryan, a living, thinking human being, who had been there talking to him only moments before, could be transformed into an unrecognisable lump of charred meat. Jodi, Booker, Yates, Webber and now Ryan. He recalled, with a flash of anger, his sister’s words back at Roosevelt Field – ‘don’t start telling me how dangerous it is to be out there fighting Mutes’. Roz should be here now, prizing what was left of Ryan out of the smouldering, twisted cage of struts up there on the river bank. She would realise that Trail-Blazer expeditions were not the ‘cake-walk’ she had claimed them to be.

  Hartmann, the wagon master, who had seen the slaughter on the flight deck and Ryan’s death dive on the battery of screens in the saddle quickly decided that to have three wingmen taken out of the air in under five minutes was an unacceptable loss-rate. He put himself on the visicomm system and faced-up with Baxter. ‘Put the airstrike on “hold” and call everybody in off the flight deck. We’re going to try and break up this attack another way. Stand by to launch two and two. You’re to stay on the ground. With the kind of luck we’ve had so far today I’m not prepared to risk the whole of my air force.’