My head was reeling and I felt nauseous, and wanted only to close my eyes. Abriara increased our speed to maximum, and the hovercraft rattled as if it would break as we bounced over the desert. The air was so clear we’d spotted the Yabajin at 30 kilometers. With armies travelling at full speed we had six minutes till we collided. My nostrils flared and I was suddenly terrified: We’d already lost 4000 men to the Yabajin in space; they’d managed to have an agent blow our defenses in Kimai no Ji. I didn’t know much about them, but I knew better than to believe we could surprise them, better than to under-rate them. Garzón had wanted to bypass them altogether—yet they had managed to block our path.
And here we were flying towards them at 120 kph trusting our ancient projectile weapons would surprise them. I couldn’t believe we’d get away with it. I couldn’t believe the Yabajin would wear nothing better than the thin armor meant to baffle heat weapons. My jaws clenched, and I tried to remain calm.
Abriara veered far to the left and took her place in the formation. Our 1000 ships formed a great wedge with the 400 craft that had received the Houser machine guns forming our front ranks. Those with Housers were both blessed and cursed: Their greater firepower would let them blow away almost anyone who got within range, yet they’d receive the brunt of the attack. I was glad our hovercraft hadn’t received such weapons.
In a protected position at the center of our V, I could see Garzón’s craft. Tamara’s wheelchair was there sitting next to a turret manned by the general himself, but Tamara was not visible. Someone must have laid her on the floor of the craft.
Over the helmet mikes the compadres in my squadron shouted bets—"Three to two that the de Cuzco team gets the most kills. Three to two!" De Cuzco’s team had taken the outside corner of the whole triangle—the most dangerous spot. In answer came, "Barzun down with a million on de Cuzco to win; Barzun for a million!" Then a deep voice, "Mott here, I’ve got two million that says de Cuzco will get fried. Two million says de Cuzco gets fried!" Then de Cuzco shouts over his mike, "I’ll take that bet!" and everyone laughed, since de Cuzco wouldn’t have to worry about paying if he lost the bet.
All the men were laughing and betting extravagant sums of money, fortunes that would have taken years to accumulate back on Earth. The Yabajin formed three fronts, each 200 meters behind the other, and their hovercrafts bunched in pairs, so we’d be forced into a crossfire when we went between them. Garzón ordered all craft to veer north, and we did so, then paired up hovercrafts so we were floating side by side so we could counter with a crossfire of our own. The Yabajin responded by shifting north. I made some mental calculations to figure how long we’d battle if we made our pass at top speed: Figuring a 200-meter range, and considering that we would be passing at 240 kph over a total distance of 800 meters, we’d be in range of their weapons for less than twelve seconds; this whole battle would last less than twelve seconds, even though we’d pass through three fronts.
I couldn’t imagine risking my life three times in twelve seconds. It seemed insane. Garzón ordered all craft back on course toward the Yabajin, and I exercised the state of munen, no mind.
The laughing and betting of my compadres continued but their voices seemed to fade into the distance. The Yabajin craft, that was what mattered. I watched them as a cat watches a mouse, ready to pounce. My jaw didn’t quiver, my teeth didn’t rattle. I felt calm and in control, and even though our own craft was twisting and bouncing as it encountered new slopes and angles in the desert floor, I imagined I could see a path that would lead us to the Yabajin. I imagined I could pick my target at will and the enemy would fall under my guns. I felt invincible, the way all good soldiers feel just before they die in battle.
We seemed to be rushing towards them slowly, too slowly. I watched their men in the distance as they drew close, in armor the color of the red sands behind them, and saw the sun gleaming off their teflex battle armor. Yet time did not stop for me. I did not achieve Instantaneity, that state of mind where eternity is found in a moment. Abriara claimed she and others had learned to attain that state at will, and with her elegant Eridani chemicals that may have been true. I hoped to attain that state of mind in this battle, believed her chemical patch had been on long enough to produce the effect; yet it did not happen for me.
I had no thoughts of life or death, victory or defeat. I desired only to do my part well, to aim and fire perfectly. I didn’t experience the fear necessary to catalyze Abriara’s drugs.
We floated toward the Yabajin as if sliding through a long dark tunnel. We came in upon their first line and simultaneously both armies began to fire. The beautiful and peaceful "whuft, whuft, whuft" issued from the Yabajin plasma turrets, like the sound a pigeon makes beating its wings while trying to hover. Our hovercraft rattled as it bounced over the ground and I bent my legs and balanced myself as I held my rifle poised. Super-heated air sparkled silver as the Yabajin fired their lasers. And we thundered our answer with Housers and flechettes and all before us the Yabajin hovercrafts seemed to rip apart in midair.
Splinters of armor flipped up like shingles tossed in a storm, and I saw the left arm of one Yabajin turret gunner rip away as if it were made of papier mache. A hovercraft before us became a fireball that engulfed two other Yabajin craft, and the drivers of the Yabajin zagged in confusion, trying in vain to retreat from our onslaught. I heard screaming that did not come over helmet mikes and realized the Yabajin were screaming in surprise and pain, and then we were into them—a hovercraft of startled men coming up on my right—a front turret gunner gone, flakes of red armor in the air as if he’d just exploded; a driver hunched over a burning control panel; a laser gunner staggering backward with a gaping bloodied wound in his shoulder as he fired off a burst; a man leaning on a plasma turret, shooting into the air over our heads—and then I fired into the laser gunner and the armor in his helmet splintered and exploded and a shell pumped into my flechette and I fired and the plasma gunner broke in two at the waist. A white flare blossomed on my forehead and my right eye closed down. That momentary touch would have fried the retina of a real eye. I rubbed my hand in front of it, swatting away some Yabajin sniper’s laser blast as if it were a mosquito.
The hovercraft of our compadres in front of us was taking heavy fire. The rear Houser gunner was spinning and the forward gunner had dropped. Perfecto went to his knees, plasma dripping from his chest plate—pinned to the floor for the duration of the battle. We were coming in on the second ranks and I didn’t have time to think: The oncoming craft veered to ram us and I fired two shots before I took out the driver. He veered left and hit reverse as he died, and his companion craft to the left didn’t have time to react to his maneuver: the companion craft slid in over the top of the wounded craft and rolled in the air like a badly thrown discus, crashing into the ground in front of us. It exploded into flames then we came in upon the last line of Yabajin.
They’d slowed and were turning to give chase some 400 yards behind their compadres. We opened fire at long range and kept it up, but they seemed to part before us like dandelion seeds blown in the wind and we fired once as we came parallel, then there were no more targets for me. They split away from our position on both sides, and we burst through their lines. Mavro reached back and tossed a packet of Mexican hair into the air, and it exploded behind us; thin blue flakes of steel floated on the wind. I unclipped my bomb from my belt and tossed it in a mad rush, and everywhere, men went for their hair bombs. A wall of black steel fibers raised behind us.
In front and to our left a soldier tossed a Mexican hair bomb—but he was too close to us, too close, and I knew we’d hit that hair before the Yabajin did.
Abriara veered right and cut her engines so the hair wouldn’t get sucked into our intakes; we soared and dropped. The bomb exploded almost beneath us, and the air crackled as with static electricity as wisps of steel spattered the skirt of our hovercraft.
Then we passed over the danger area and Abriara re-started the engines. Behind u
s some Yabajin pressed through the veil of Mexican hair and many of their engines burst into flames immediately. But some Yabajin soared around our barrier and gave chase at a distance.
I quickly surveyed the damage to our troops. Behind us several craft floundered under the hands of dead drivers, and hordes of Yabajin were attacking and overwhelming these unfortunate men. I counted fourteen combat teams going down in this manner. Even among the main ranks our hovercrafts took damage—burning bits of plasma ate through teflex plating like fiery serpents. Everywhere our gunners were hunched and sprawling as if dead. Yet almost to the man our gunners began to rise to their feet as if returning from the dead. We’d taken surprisingly few casualties.
I removed the half-empty clip from my gun, and inserted a full one. The desert stretched before us, an open highway. We could have turned and slaughtered the few Yabajin that followed. We had the firepower, but they were only the first obstacle to our conquest of Hotoke no Za.
Garzón didn’t order us to attack.
The few dozen Yabajin could follow if they wished. It didn’t matter. Halfway back to Hotoke no Za they’d simply founder in the desert for lack of fuel.
I’d been holding my breath. My chest was tight and I noticed something wrong—our compadres were pulling away; the Yabajin behind us were gaining.
Oily smoke issued from under our hovercraft and the turbines in two intakes whined as if in pain. The whole hovercraft began turning left in a slow arc, meter by meter, and we slid out of formation in front of our rear-most gunners with their big Housers and across their paths.
"I can’t hold this speed!" Abriara shouted through her helmet mike.
Zavala’s helmet swiveled toward the dozen Yabajin craft closing in behind. "Don’t slow down!" he said.
We passed to the left of the last three gunners and they began pulling ahead of us. The whining of our damaged turbines grew to a whistle. This isn’t supposed to happen, I thought. In practice this never happens. Our crafts are invincible in battle. They never fall apart on us.
Perfecto shouted over his helmet mike, "We’re going to blow those two engines at this rate! I can only repair the damage if they don’t blow! I’m going to disconnect their fuel lines," and he got down from his turret, crawled on the floor up by Abriara, lifted some panels and stuck his head down under the craft. I noticed puck marks in his burned armor on the back of his legs, and took out some resin and began filling the holes for him. We continued in our wide arc, heading more northeast than east. The two whining engines suddenly stopped, while the other sixteen engines hummed. "Got them!" Perfecto said.
He crawled to his knees.
Some men in the other crafts noticed our predicament and began to chatter. "Sifuentes’ team has engine trouble. Give you six to one they don’t make it! Six to one!"
"Don’t waste your money, cabrón!" Mavro shouted. "Things aren’t so bad!"
I laughed at his joke. We rumbled up a small hill. "Compadres," Abriara said, "we cannot go on like this. We cannot keep up. I think we should cut away, head north for a while and hope the Yabajin do not follow—but it is a risk. I will not do it unless we all agree."
"Do it!" Perfecto shouted, and Mavro said "Sí" and I whispered "Yes."
Zavala said, "Let me think! Let me think!"
Mavro growled, "We don’t have time for you to think!"
We topped the hill. It dropped quickly into a wide but shallow gully. The hovercrafts before us were bouncing across it. The cement ferns grew tall here—six or seven meters high. The desert appeared flat and even, yet I’m sure it must have held many small gullies like this.
Abriara said, "Here’s our chance," and she veered into the gully and headed almost straight north, following the contours of the land. At top speed our hovercraft barely cleared the cement stalks of the ferns and actually knocked the tops off some while the leaves of others sucked back into the stalks. The depression deepened just a little ahead, enough so we could almost hide in the fold of ground till the Yabajin passed if we could maneuver over the taller ferns.
Zavala shouted, "Are you crazy? We can’t go in there!"
"Good," Abriara said, plowing into the ferns, "then the Yabajin can’t follow!"
If the Yabajin had been a kilometer farther behind, they would not have seen us split away, but the trail of quivering leaves gave us away. We watched the hill to our rear, and as the Yabajin came over the hill one man pointed at us and five craft split away to give chase. My heart sank.
"This is not so bad!" Mavro said, "This is not so bad! This is not so bad!" and he turned his turret so it faced the Yabajin.
"We’ll follow this gully for a few minutes, then we head back to the mountains, back toward Kimai no Ji," Abriara said as if speaking to herself. "We can beat them in the mountains. Everyone hunch down—help cut down the wind resistance!"
Perfecto squatted on the floor, then got out his resin pack and began patching his armor. Mavro hunched and pointed at my forehead, "You’d better paint that spot quickly," he said, "Before we meet the Yabajin," and suddenly everyone was patching their armor with resins. Abriara kept her attention on driving. I listened to the comforting chatter of our compadres heading for Hotoke no Za, but our little head mikes were not meant to carry signals over a dozen kilometers. Some time while we repaired our armor, the voices began to crackle and break up.
When Perfecto had his own furrows filled, he inched forward and began working on Abriara’s armor. He suddenly shouted, "Abriara, you forgot to throw your hair bomb!" He unsnapped it from her belt.
"I was more concerned with other things!" she said. "Keep it. Throw it when it will do us the most good."
We continued down the gully for several minutes and watched for a place, any place where we could throw the bomb and be sure we could take out some Yabajin. But there was no such place. We didn’t have to turn back toward the mountains—the gully we followed wound back that direction. We kept dropping lower and lower, and the sides of the gully became steeper, like those of a bowl, and the ferns disappeared altogether. The Yabajin were slowly gaining. In ten minutes they closed to within half a kilometer. In another ten minutes they’d be sitting in our laps.
Abriara raced past rock formations at top speed. Ahead, stony red pinnacles seemed to spring from the ground in vertical cliffs. To hit one would be like hitting a wall. We crossed a ridge and dropped toward a broad but shallow brown river that meandered along the feet of the mountains. Pale grey trees and Baker’s native grasses grew along the riverbanks. The wind whistled across the folds of my helmet.
The Yabajin thundered out of the winding gully just 300 meters behind us. A laser gunner hazarded a shot, and a silver beam split the sky overhead. Abriara bolted through the trees till we hit the river, then followed it north over the sluggish brown water.
The Yabajin drew close, and there was no place where the river channel narrowed enough so our bomb would do any good. If we tossed it, the Yabajin would just whip around the danger zone. I watched the samurai, picking my targets. One hovercraft had only one gunner aboard, a turret gunner whose armor was shattered at the shoulder, and he kept himself propped against his turret. The craft behind it had two gunners.
Abriara shouted, "Lay down grazing fire in the water!" and I remembered our race down the valley in the snow. I reached under my seat and grabbed a laser rifle and fired into the water. Mavro and Perfecto began firing with their plasma turrets, and the water boiled behind us. A fine mist arose, but not enough to provide a smoke screen. The trick had worked in the snow at night, but the sun overhead pierced our thin fog.
The Yabajin were nearly within firing range. The three forward plasma gunners shot into the air at a sixty-degree angle as if firing at incoming aircraft, hoping the plasma would rain down on us. We twisted over the meandering river and watched plasma spatter behind.
"I’m going to throw this bomb," Perfecto said. "It won’t do any good, but I’m going to throw it!"
Mavro raised his own turret and
opened fire at the sky.
"Continue with the grazing fire—all of you! Wait until we get around this next bend!" Abriara shouted.
I glanced ahead: the bend ahead was wide, with a narrow rocky shoal. She cut into the inside corner of the bend like a racer, skirting a line of trees, plowing through a thicket of rushes, and the Yabajin followed.
"Now!" Abriara shouted.
Perfecto dropped the bomb into the thicket, then he and Mavro began firing into the air. I picked up the flechette. Perfecto’s bomb exploded, and the Mexican hair spread out near the ground and began to drift up. I opened fire on the driver of the first Yabajin craft, even though my shot wouldn’t penetrate his armor at that range, just to distract him.
The first two craft cut the corner and plowed into the Mexican hair and their craft seemed to dive nose first into the ground, splitting apart and bursting into fireballs. Two more craft came in behind, hugging the same corner, but they cut engines and dove while the last craft veered out over the water.
Mavro laughed and fired plasma into the air at them and shouted, "They will not be so quick to come in for the kill, now!"
He was right. The Yabajin slowed dramatically and for the next ten minutes followed at a discreet distance. We sped north till the river sharply twisted up into the mountains. It became nothing more than a path for river dragons—the banks were pushed up as if the creek had been dredged and every few hundred meters we’d find a pond. The banks were covered with tall, elastic trees with tiny blue leaves that fluttered nervously in the wind. The trees were so large a hovercraft couldn’t easily navigate through them, and the Yabajin were forced to follow in single file.
On My Way to Paradise Page 43
