by E. E. Knight
"What the Kur's this?" Hornbreed gasped, batting weakly at the smaller, rat-sized bugs. Every move brought a wince.
Some of the Christmas tree ornaments above rocked as the roof creature shifted.
Valentine managed to slow his heart, retrieve his rifle. "Can you walk?"
"Lookit my back. It feels like there's about two kilos of flesh ripped out." Hornbreed came to one knee, turning.
Valentine saw a purpurant swelling at Hornbreed's right shoulder blade. He guessed that the welt was the size of a dinner plate.
"You got stung by one of these bastards." Valentine's body was back under control and he felt strangely calm and placid. The bugs weren't so bad, just little machines doing their jobs.
Or very big machines, like the one above ...
... and coming down.
Christ, it's as big as a whale.
Valentine flicked on the gun light, saw ring after ring of arms around a lipless, spiny orifice, a zeppelin of a body behind, long thin arms that couldn't possibly support that mass, froze up until his eye and trigger finger, acting perhaps for their individual preservation against an overwhelmed brain, fired up into it.
It accepted the bullets in silence. A few of the arms around the central orifice stiffened—
Before the cartridge casings even finished their tinny bounces Valentine grabbed Hornbreed by the shoulder, pulled him up and along, when he wasn't moving right got under the pilot's armpit, and half carried him in a stumble toward the exit, carbine in its sling bouncing against his plated leathers. Hornbreed screamed out his agony like a police siren.
Another hunter-gatherer entered, a coyote borne in its tonguelike front appendage, ignoring them and the chaos within. Valentine regretted the dropped prods, grabbed Hornbreed by the collar, and dragged him, shrieking in pain, like a resisting dog, through the low entrance aperture.
A hunter-gatherer's captured limbs darted into the crack, and closed on Hornbreed's leg. Valentine found the carbine's trigger and sent four bullets to the source of the limbs with the serene, observant corner of his mind trying to remember just how many rounds the little minidrum at the bottom of the carbine carried. But the legs let go.
Hornbreed was crying, blubbering to be left in peace, but Valentine got him up the shaft of near-vertical stairs, pushing from behind the whole way. He made it to the locker and retrieved another prod and was tempted to use it on Hornbreed to calm the pilot down. Instead he half carried him out of the cave and to his pack.
The cold night air and open sky acted on Valentine like a refreshing dip in a pool. His limbs tingled and his skin felt delightfully alive.
"My whole friggin' body's throbbing," Hornbreed gasped. "Sears like a hot frying pan. Put a bullet through my head, for Kur's sake."
Valentine retrieved his little razor-edged kidney puncher of a knife from his boot sheath and opened Hornbreed's bulging flight suit, a splotch of red marking the center of the bulge like a misplaced nipple. He tore open the cloth and took a breath at the blister the hunter-gatherer's venom had raised.
"You could be worse. Those things have two stingers. Hold on now."
A lot of liquid was trying to get out. Valentine held the sagging Hornbreed down with his knee and nicked the blister, eliciting a gasp from Hornbreed. Valentine squeezed hot, clear fluid from the wound, then dusted with antibiotic powder.
He gave Hornbreed two pain pills from the first-aid kit. Valentine recognized the odd little hexagonal shapes from his wisdom-teeth extraction courtesy of a Southern Command dentist, and wished he'd gotten morphine instead.
"Doesn't burn so bad," Hornbreed said, catching his breath as Valentine applied butterfly bandages.
They exchanged Valentine's canteen a couple of times. Valentine kept an eye on the cave mouth, wondering when the next hunter-gatherer was due to appear.
"I think we should get going," Valentine said. "Still want to be left to your fate?"
"I want a long, cool drink at the Mezcal," Hornbreed said. "Ice. A whole bagful."
"Better get back to the cactus stand."
About halfway down the mountain it occurred to Valentine that there'd been a yellow rubberized box or two in the locker at the cave mouth that he hadn't investigated. For all he knew, they contained electrical tools, but if the Kurians had some kind of antivenom, that would be the place to store it. But then it might be dosed for those big mountain Grogs....
Bug prod ready against another appearance of a hunter-gatherer, Valentine traced a route that carried them well away from stands of bush and sandy washes (in Nebraska's cattle country he'd once been stung by a smaller creature that could dig, and he still wasn't sure exactly how the beasties hunted).
When they reached the cactus stand Hornbreed collapsed atop his survival blanket. "Enough ... enough ... I'm done," he said.
"I want to get farther away from that cave," Valentine said. He stomped hard next to a wandering scorpion, sent it scurrying back into the thorns. "Fifteen minutes, then we'll pick up and move on."
Hornbreed's breath left a moist wing on the reflective surface of the blanket. Valentine decided it was safe to reload, opened a box of shells, and fed them into the magazine. He decided to give Hornbreed a few more minutes and cleaned the barrel.
"C'mon, bud. Up," Valentine said.
Hornbreed moaned. He looked like a deboned fish, sweating and gasping. "Can't. Muscles won't work." He managed to drag an arm under himself.
Valentine sorted through Hornbreed's gear, took medical supplies and water, the flare pistol and signaling mirror. The rest he buried.
Hornbreed was a big man. Valentine could carry him, but he would have to stop and rest frequently, and a few hours would exhaust him utterly. His bad leg started up a preemptive ache at the thought. They'd never make the highway.
A drag might be possible, if—
The wreck!
Valentine felt the flier's pulse, which was regular but fast, picked Hornbreed up in a fireman's carry, and thanked creation that they'd be going downhill. He placed Hornbreed inside the rear cabin of the plane, closed the door, and went back for his pack.
With that done, he looked around the wreck site.
The fuselage was intact—if only one of the rear wings had come off, it would make a good sled.
Doors! The hinges were designed to come apart easily; all you had to do was pull a pin. Even better, a broken piece of landing gear could be used in an improvised wheelbarrow.
He tore up some cargo netting, clipped his light to the higher of the two wings, and went to work, careful to keep the Steyr within reach.
It was in the deep night of predawn by the time he finished. He dragged Hornbreed back out of the aircraft and tried him on the improvised wheelbarrow.
"It works!" Valentine said, though the balance left a lot to be desired. Hornbreed, wheezing and whimpering, managed a nod. Valentine lowered him gently and put the canteen to his lips. "We're out of here, Hornbreed."
It would be a race against the sun.
Valentine never got to test his contraption any further. He caught a whiff of the telltale ammonia smell on the clean night breeze and reached for the Steyr.
The hunter-gatherer rushed out of the night, grasping arms up and ready. Valentine had no idea where the vital spots were, so he settled for sending shot after shot straight down its centerline, trusting that the big-game 7.62mm shells would find something important.
The bug collapsed, flipped forward in a weird imitation of the downed aircraft, continued to twitch with the three legs and the pinioned arm on one side of its body. Valentine reached for the bug prod, held the rifle at his hip in his right hand and the prod with his left.
The shots roused Hornbreed, though he grasped the flare gun rather than his pistol.
"Most-heeeeee!" a voice shrieked from the darkness.
Others took up the chorus. "Most-heeeee!"
A fast metallic rattle, either an imitation of a snare drum on some piece of aluminum or an attempt
to re-create a rattlesnake's warning, broke out in the desert predawn.
"That can't be good," Hornbreed said, and managed to rise to his feet using the fuselage for support.
"I think I just committed blasphemy," Valentine said.
Something whizzed nearby and the fuselage popped near his ear. Stones!
"Inside," Valentine said, shoving the pilot toward the rear door.
Stones didn't leave a telltale muzzle flash to shoot back at. Valentine fired twice more into the darkness. He helped Hornbreed in, felt a sudden pain as a stone struck him in the leathers just below the shoulder blade. Valentine dived inside.
Stones and thrown spears rattled against the fuselage like a dying hailstorm. More yips and coyote howls broke out around the aircraft, along with a deeper drumming.
The banging grew louder. Voices just outside the fuselage shouted, and the clattering redoubled as the Jaguars banged on the overturned plane with hand weapons.
Valentine checked the lock on the rear cargo door, crept to the missing front door. A shadow loomed outside; Valentine marked a tangle of dirty hair held in place by a broad headband. He fired and the head disappeared.
"Fhway! Fhway! Fhway!" a voice shouted outside from just beneath the pilot's seat.
Valentine smelled woodsmoke. He went to the copilot window, saw a figure with a flaming torch, and opened the window, but a hand grabbed the muzzle of his gun. Valentine jerked it back violently, shot through the fuselage at where the grabber must have been standing, then found his torch target was gone.
Hornbreed said something, but his words were lost in the hammering on the fuselage. They might as well have tried to converse on the inside of a giant drum. Valentine smelled more smoke, unsheathed his sword; there was nothing to do but go out the missing door. Otherwise they'd cook.
Hornbreed suddenly opened the door, stuck his flare gun up.
"No," Valentine shouted.
A knife blade stabbed in, glinting on the sudden illumination of the flare. Hornbreed fell back from it. Valentine brought the handy little carbine around and fired through the fuselage again. A hand appeared as one of the Jaguars tried to hoist himself in. Valentine discouraged it by severing a couple of fingers with the sword. He shouldered his gun again.
Thunderous pounding outside—How the hell are they making that noise? Then Valentine realized he was hearing the beating rotors of a helicopter.
Tracer lit up the pinkening dawn, bright shards of yellow rain from the sky. The hammering on the fuselage let off and Valentine saw the warriors scatter.
"It's the pickup chopper!" Hornbreed almost shouted. Hope had given him new strength.
Valentine looked outside, saw a big bulbous desert-tan fuselage, a greenhouse of glass at the front, red and green running lights, a uniformed gunner at an oversized door at the side. Valentine grabbed his clip light and used the signaling switch to blink three times at the craft. Three times again, three times again. They might not know the old Quisling Coastal Marine distress code, but the gunner swerved his crosshairs away from the flipped aircraft.
The faint popping of small-arms fire sounded. Hornbreed crawled to the rear cabin door and waved. Men tumbled out of the helicopter.
Valentine saw another prop plane roar overhead, turning tight circles around the crash site.
Hornbreed waved Valentine out the door. Valentine surrendered his gun, sword, and pack to a corporal. Another soldier, a businesslike submachine gun in his grasp, eyed Valentine. Three soldiers and a medic assisted the noncom, one of them openly gaping at the hunter-gatherer, still twitching at the extremities. Valentine heard one of the soldiers shouting something about a "salvage bird" into a headset.
"Rough night," Hornbreed wheezed at the medic, who helped him out the door and toward a litter. "Forget that. I want to get in the chopper with him."
He held out an arm to Valentine, and accepted a lift. "Max, help me on the bird of paradise. We'll be in Yuma in time for cocktails."
Chapter Six
Flying Circus, Yuma, Arizona: The old Colorado River steamboat stop grew up under three flags, Spanish, Mexican, and finally the Stars and Stripes after the territory was acquired in the Gadsden Purchase. Famous after the Civil War mostly for its territorial prison, it became an important military hub and storage center thanks to its dry climate, ideal for testing and storing hardware of various kinds, and the premier Marine Corps pilot training center.
Under the Aztlan Kur, an association of like-minded Kurians covering northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States called the "Confederation" by the locals, it's still a city that breeds pilots. The more mundane Aztlan Air Carriers shuttle Quisling dignitaries and churchmen from post to post and fly police patrols, but the much more colorful "Flying Circus" of airborne mercenaries, with their distinctive winged-rattlesnake insignia, is what people usually refer to when speaking of the fliers of the Southwest.
In typical Kurian fashion Pyp's Flying Circus is divided into three centers for better control. Most of the fliers and their families live in Yuma, in well-guarded gated communities. Their amenities are so plentiful that it's hard to recognize them as hostages to their good behavior. Airplane storage and maintenance is located at the famous aircraft graveyard at the old Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, now just called "Lucky Field" by the ground staff, thanks to the job security it affords, and "DM" by the fliers. Pyp's operational headquarters is in Tempe, where orders are received from the Kurians and planes are armed and staged for their various missions. No one group of officers, and no one Kurian, really commands the Circus, though all think of their titular figurehead commander as the unit's boss.
There's an air of ringmaster flamboyance to their beloved "Pyp." Patrick Yenez-Powell is the sort of man who stands out in a crowd, not always an advantage that leads to survival in the Kurian Order. With his round-brimmed, black felt Navajo hat, river-guide sandals, gold earring and necklaces, often grease-stained denim flight suit, and elaborately beaded shoulder rig for his ivory-handled peacemaker, he's easy to pick out in a crowd. Though on the ugly side of fifty, he still moves with a spring in his step, and he's hard to follow, as he changes direction the instant he spots anything from flaking paint to litter to a misplaced tool; an adjutant usually carries a bag for such trash that blows across Pyp's transom, which will then be upended on some unfortunate lieutenant's desk.
David Valentine met the mind behind the odd wardrobe and energetic body on a hot April afternoon in Yuma.
* * * *
The long trip, begun in the noisy vibration of the helicopter, was briefly suspended at a refueling stop at a service strip, where they shoveled down a quick meal of eggs and sausage. After breakfast they were both dusted with some kind of disinfectant/insecticide. Then it was back in the beater until another landing at the sprawling air base in Tucson, where they switched to a tiny, cramped prop plane for the final leg, which left Valentine tired and disoriented. Other than his astonishment over the distance they'd traveled in just a few hours, he also felt nauseous with fatigue.
He wanted cool and darkness when they arrived at Yuma. The soldiers threw their dunnage in a propane-powered flatbed and whisked Hornbreed, Valentine, and the medic with a clipboard full of notes off to a white building with the traditional red cross painted on its roof and walls. Valentine surrendered his weapons again to a pair of desert-camouflaged men with sidearms and blue-banded helmets. Hornbreed whispered into one of the military policemen's ears, but said little else until they reached the triage room, where he refused any attention until the MPs showed up again and looped a laminated ID card around Valentine's neck. Then Hornbreed allowed himself to be put in a wheelchair and taken to an operating room.
Valentine fell asleep on the paper-covered table of an examining room. A thin woman who looked like a hat tree in a lab coat, stethoscope over her shoulder, woke him and checked his eyes, lymph nodes, pulse, and temperature. She asked him how he felt and where he'd traveled in the last month and he answered h
onestly.
"Drink lots of water," she advised, and turned on the tap in the washbasin. "If you want to get cleaned up, you can use the showers in 'E' corridor—just follow the signs. You can read, right? Wear your ID at all times, even in the shower. There's a staff commissary in that wing too—eat a couple of bananas." She signed a piece of paper and handed it to him. "You're on unlimited rations for three days, so enjoy. Don't skimp on the veggies."
She went to an intercom by the door. "Room three is cleared," she said.
"What about Equality?" Valentine asked.
"Wing Leader Hornbreed's doing fine. He's staying here for observation overnight. Check with the base security by the admitting door and they'll find you a bunk. You'll probably be here until we release the wing leader."
Valentine cleaned himself up using the washbasin, and felt better but still bleary when he presented himself to a potbellied example of base security. They looked him over as though wanting to arrest him on general principles, but eventually informed him that his reward was being arranged.
"Old Pyp's on the way," the corporal explained. "He wants to see you and the wing leader."
Valentine wondered if there was a "Young Pyp," or if the phrase, with its poetic evocation of Tempus fugit, indicated some measure of endearment.
"Mind if I grab a meal first?"
"Just don't be long about it," the desk sergeant barked. "He's a busy man and we don't want to be running around looking for you."
The corporal took him to the cafeteria, whistled at the food prescription. "Enjoy. We've been on ration cards for over a year."
Valentine winced. "I know what that's like."
He piled a tray with some dubious-looking meat in gravy, potatoes, fruit, and rice buns. The servers examined his piece of paper at each station, even the woman who poured him a glass of juice.
The corporal settled for a thick slice of bread smeared with "protein paste," and water.
"Hope that tastes better than it looks," Valentine said.
