by Ryder Stacy
The gases of the volcano had collected high in the atmosphere and were creating hypnotic rainbow effects, as if a sheen of oil had been sprayed across the heavens. Luminescent purples, blues, greens, and golds shimmered and meshed with one another in an almost living undulation of color and shape. All along the river a line of steam rose up, creating a hot wet fog that covered the vegetation for miles, not killing most of it, but wilting it, drooping leaves and flowers so they looked as if they were drunk, and in their intoxication had fallen flat.
Twelve
The gases of the volcano formed an immense brown hemisphere of soot that covered the land for twenty miles around the spouting center. Twelve hours later Rockson and his party could still see the fountain of burning rock gushing into the sky as if trying to reach the beckoning fires of the sun ninety million miles away. Rock had decided to make a wide circle around the perimeter of the gas. Everyone on the team had already breathed too much of the stuff—and they were all looking a little green around the gills. It would add a day to their journey to Fort Minsk, but they were ahead of schedule by nearly two days and could afford the delay.
So they headed east for half a day and then north again. The land grew thick with vegetation, small ponds, and animals—unicorn deer, poison-quilled porcupines, flying squirrels with feathered wings—all moved in nature’s harmony around the weary fighters. Toward night they bagged a big buck and roasted it over a spitfire, cutting off huge chunks and wolfing them down like savages. Rock had okayed the feast. The men needed a rest—some good food—and the nurturing warmth of a fire. They were smack in the middle of nowhere—between prairie and the next mountain range—with no Red forts for a hundred miles. It would be safe. It would have to be. One couldn’t go on endlessly without some sort of respite, some relief.
They slept under the trillion-starred sky, Rona and Kim continuing to lie on each side of Rockson, but far enough away so it didn’t appear that either of them was on the make for him. It was just accidental that their sleeping sacks ended up there. A biting wind from the north made them all burrow deep into their synth/down bags—but it also cleared away much of the sulphur and other gases that the earth had regurgitated.
By morning, after a night of breathing the clear frosty air, everyone—even the ’brids—was alert, bright-eyed, their lungs cleaned out. The attack team broke camp and headed out. Rona and Kim, since they were feeling their oats, went at it almost instantly once they hit the trail.
“Darling, had the most frightful dream about you last night,” Kim said, turning her small blond head toward Rona, whose ’brid trotted happily along a yard away, ears up.
“Oh really? How fascinating,” Rona said, tossing her flaming red hair back around one side of her head as if it really wasn’t particularly intriguing at all—but quite boring.
“Yes, you turned into a giant spider and were waving all these hairy legs at everyone.”
“Hairy legs—I would think that would be more in your department,” Rona said with a stifled yawn, referring to the fact that her rival didn’t shave her legs, although her downy blond covering was hardly noticeable. Rona, on the other hand, always the female, brought razors along even on military expeditions, stripping the fast-growing dark hairs on her own calves every few days. “Didn’t try to eat you, did I?” Rona laughed with a cold quick giggle. “Spiders do eat little weak fruitflies.”
“Oh, you tried,” Kim smiled, “so I had to shoot you. I felt terrible about it, apologized to everyone. But there it was—you had turned into a giant, ugly spider—it wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh, little one,” Rona said icily, “in a million years, if every second of them was your lucky day, you couldn’t take me with a howitzer in each hand. I’d split your sweet head open with one chop. Of course, only in a dream.”
“But darling, I left my howitzers at home,” Kim answered immediately. “Prefer to use one of my bear stoppers here.” She glanced down at her shining .45’s sitting on each hip, waiting for the next battle that would bring them to life.
“Come on, you two,” Rockson said, leaning around in the saddle and looking sternly at the two women he loved. “No one in my outfit talks about doing someone else in—no matter how much they’re playing around. Okay? Keep your barbs friendly.”
“Of course, Rock,” Kim said, looking genuinely abashed. She didn’t want to appear bloodthirsty in her lover’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Rona smiled in her most come-hither look at the Doomsday Warrior, who broke into a broad smile. He still had no better way of dealing with either or both of them but to grin idiotically and say nothing. He crossed his fingers. Somehow the thing would work itself out. Thank god they had a war to fight.
Both were back at it again within minutes, unable to resist the nasty temptation like a moth flying closer and closer to the flame, playing with itself, testing its wings to see what it will take to stroke them into fire.
“Little one,” Rona began this time, a syrupy tone in her voice. “No one on the team has the nerve to say it—but when are you going to wash those fatigues? They’re starting to—well—smell rather strong.”
“Wash them—oh yes, I had planned to back at the river, but a volcano so rudely interrupted me,” Kim said in a frost-coated tone. She cast a wicked glance at her rival, this time stung by one of Rona’s many attempts to icepick her way through Kim’s defenses. It was somehow ironic that the very characteristics each possessed were what they attacked in the other. Rona, who was always going after Kim’s small stature and girlish qualities, was herself intensely female and played it to the hilt. She prided herself on her body and dressed in skintight clothing, both to be appreciated and to permit quick movement of all her limbs, since she was highly skilled in a number of martial arts. Kim, on the other hand, who needled Rona for her largeness and masculine strength, clothed herself in half-torn combat fatigues and an olive-green field jacket with pockets stuffed full of ammo and food. To disguise her own small size and lack of male strength, she dressed the part of a jockey-sized combat vet, disheveled, unbathed—and if she’d had whiskers, unshaven. It made her feel tougher, a little more able to cope with the unrelenting pressure of being in a man’s world of death and blood.
“I guess your clothes keep fresher longer,” Kim said, looking over at the form-fitting spandex combat bodysuit that her rival was wearing. “But then, there’s a need to emphasize the body parts that prove your masculine body is really female, so it’s no wonder. I think you need a few repairs, though—you’re busting at the seams in a few places there. Guess they couldn’t take the strain of that buffalo bottom and those elephant thighs.”
“Listen, you grape-chested little twit,” Rona hissed back through compressed lips, restraining herself with every ounce of her will from lashing out with a punch. It would be easy, she thought, just one lousy punch. But then whoever struck the other first would lose points with Rock.
“Hold it,” Rockson said suddenly, his voice cutting through the air with the commanding tone of a bullet. “Hear something.” He held up his hand, signaling a stop, and the rest of the team fell in behind them, patting their restless ’brids to keep quiet. They had entered a long lush valley with treed slopes rising several hundred feet on each side. Rockson thought he heard the clatter of a bunch of animals nearby. He looked sharply around the hillsides covered with little islands of thorned bush and up to the treeline along the top ridges. It would be the perfect place for an ambush—the thought went through his mind with an intensity that made him think his sixth sense was picking up on something.
“Battle status,” the Doomsday Warrior said out of the side of his mouth to the rest of the fighters, who had come to a half circle behind him. They unhitched their holsters, and .45’s and Liberator rifles came swinging around as nervous eyes searched for an unseen enemy.
“There, ahead,” Rona yelled out. Rockson pulled hard on Snorter’s reins and the big ’brid spun around as if on a dime. Rock stared down the center
of the valley, in the direction they had been heading. He had to resist the urge to rub his eyes. For standing in their way, mounted on twenty palomino hybrids, was a war party of American Indians. They sat impassively, frozen like statues atop their equally motionless steeds. Their faces and arms were covered with stripes and designs, slashes of red and blue and green that crisscrossed over their bodies, giving them a fierce and demonic appearance. On their heads sat feathered headdresses with rows of multicolored feathers from at least a dozen different species, falling over their broad copper shoulders and down their backs.
“Indians,” Detroit said, his eyes bulging out of his sweat-covered black face. “I can’t believe it. No one’s seen ’em since the war. They were thought to be extinct, except for the Crazy Alligator tribe.”
“These look like the real thing,” Rockson said, his sixth sense buzzing away like a broken alarm in the center of his skull.
He remembered the fires he had seen up on ledges in his travels, the smoke signals rising into the sky in puffs of communication between mountain ranges. He had always known someone was out there besides trappers and mountain-men.
“They, uh, don’t look too friendly,” Rona said, nervously fingering the trigger on her Liberator. “I think that stuff on their faces isn’t just for cosmetic beauty.”
“No—it’s war paint, definitely war paint,” Rock said. “And something tells me we’ve been picked to be the guys on the receiving end. But hold your fire. Maybe they’ll let us pass—”
The Indians suddenly unfroze and lifted rifles to their shoulders, sending down a fusillade of slugs toward the halted resistance fighters, who slid down against the back of their ’brids in a flash and then sat up again, returning the volley. The sheer firepower of the Freefighting forces sent the Indians on the run as they ripped their ’brids around and hightailed it along the valley floor.
“Freefighters attack!” Rockson yelled as Snorter shot forward, head down, nostrils flaring. The force took up pursuit of the whooping Indians who rode bareback, facing around toward their pursuers, firing with both arms. One of them stood up on the back of his galloping ’brid and sighted up Rockson. But the Doomsday Warrior had also spent years firing from atop a running animal and made his arms rock-steady, his shoulders rising and falling like shock absorbers from the pounding hooves of the ’brid. Rock pulled the trigger at the same instant the standing Indian did and their slugs passed within inches of each other, cutting whistling trajectories toward their targets. The Indian’s slug caught Rock’s ’brid just along the shoulder, but the thick-hided animal barely felt it as the bullet only dug in about a half an inch, exiting again immediately. Snorter didn’t even notice it. Rock’s .9mm bullet found a home for good, in the Indian’s nose, disintegrating it on contact into a bloody spray, before heading into the brain where it ground up everything it touched.
The Freefighters’ ears were suddenly inundated with the sound of a thousand war cries as the ridges on each side of the valley were filled with horse-mounted warriors holding rifles high in their arms. They stretched in long lines on both sides, two hundred feet above Rockson, who took in the scene with cold eyes, realizing they had been tricked. He remembered a film about General Custer, starring Errol Flynn, that he’d seen back in Century City. The cavalryman had been suckered in exactly this way and then surrounded by thousands of braves. And he and his men had been massacred.
One of the younger chiefs, identifiable by his immense feather bonnet rode down, holding a war staff high in the air. He came down the slope at a slow even pace, not batting an eyelash as if he didn’t care whether the men below fired at him or not, whether he lived or died. Several of the Freefighters sighted through their scopes, but Rockson barked out a quick “No!” and they lowered them again. With what must have been at least a thousand of the painted braves on every side of them, Rockson didn’t feel like throwing their lives away. Maybe a quick tongue could save them.
The Indian, with his own distinctive cosmetic coloration—yellow, green, and white stripes running parallel from temple to chin—rode right up to the Doomsday Warrior, stopped, and spat down at the ground near Snorter’s foreleg.
“Friendly guy,” Detroit muttered, clenching a grenade tightly in his right hand, ready for release at Rockson’s command.
“Ease up, everybody,” the Doomsday Warrior said, gritting his teeth. “Don’t make a move, act relaxed. And smile.” Rockson remembered the lectures of the now-deceased Professor Perkins and the anthropology people back at Century City. How, when one first encountered strange races, even those of the most savage-seeming nature, the first thing to do was act friendly—and smile. So all the Freefighers put on huge, false, lip-stretching grins and stared at the poker-faced Indian.
The chief, or whatever he was, began sending out a torrent of angry words at them, sneering and spitting again every few seconds for punctuation. Rock called up Nielson, whom he had chosen for his knowledge of languages and communication skills as well as for his fighting talents.
“See if you can figure out what the hell he’s jabbering about,” Rock said to the intense ruddy-cheeked linguist.
“Sure Rock, I’ll give it a try—but I ain’t promising.” Nielson began making a variety of sign-language signals with his hands—a language the anthro boys swore was an exact rendering of the 1800s Indian sign-language. The Indian looked on in scorn at first, but then, recognizing a sign here and there, responded with various fists, arm arrangements, and finger patterns. Within a minute the two men were exchanging rapid sequences of silent signals. To Rockson, the gestures seemed a lot like the ancient Buddhist mudras he had studied.
At last the Indian stopped and let his arms fall to his sides, once again looking at Rockson with utmost contempt, as if he were a bug that should be squashed. Nielson turned to the Doomsday Warrior, a solemn look on his usually jovial face.
“Rock,” Nielson said, looking down at the ground as if he didn’t want to be the messenger bearing the bad news. “The situation is, more or less, either we surrender to them—they’re Sioux—immediately and throw down our weapons—or they’ll slaughter us to a man. I tried all kinds of things on them, even bribery—but these guys got their minds made up. I mean—look around you.”
Rockson didn’t have to. He had seen war parties from other kinds of tribes, other societies. They didn’t go home empty-handed. He quickly juggled the odds in his head. He and his men had some heavy artillery—their Liberators, grenades, McCaughlin’s .50 Cal packed away on one side of a supply ’brid, but instantly usable. Yet . . . He surveyed both hills again, not even able to see the end of either line of screaming braves, some of them shooting off wildly into the sky, impatient to begin the attack. There was no way in hell he and his men would come out victorious. It would be another Custer’s Last Stand, another massacre. He sighed, remembering a book he had read about esoteric Comanche torture skills. But what could they do?
“We’re surrendering, folks,” Rock said softly, looking around at his people, the lives he was responsible for.
“Rock, no!” Detroit and Chen exclaimed simultaneously as Archer looked on, fiddling with his crossbow that was loaded with an explosive arrow, ready to be launched into the Indian ranks. A thousand-to-fifteen odds were okay with Archer.
“Yes,” Rock said firmly and louder this time. “Keep any hidden weapons you have on you. But drop the Liberators and pistols. It’s certain death to shoot it out here. We don’t have to prove our heroics—there’ll be a second chance, I promise you.” The men were loathe to give themselves up to the war-striped braves who surrounded them. God knew what their fate would be—better to die in a pool of hot blood right here than be tortured, mutilated. But Rockson was their leader—and though it turned their guts to do it—the Freefighters unstrapped their weapons and let them fall around them to the weed-covered ground.
The chief who had been conducting the sign language held the war staff to the sky and waved it slowly back and forth. Its streamers,
made of blue feathers, swung in the wind like wings trying to fill with air. The braves on the valley slopes screeched out victory cries and fired their rifles in unison. They descended, a blanket of thousands, covering the valley slopes, and completely surrounded Rockson and his party until they were lost inside a circle of painted faces and impenetrable brown eyes looking at them like the merciless dead stare of the moon.
The younger warriors jumped down from their mounts and collected the discarded arms. They held the powerful Liberators up in the air, looking at the clips and the streamlined features with fascination. They had apparently never seen that kind of weapon before—most of their own rifles were old hunting models—Winchesters and Brownings left over from the long-ago war. Then they proceeded to bind the Freefighters roughly with leather thongs, which the Indians tied behind their backs, and lead them away atop their ’brids. Now that they had taken the enemy prisoner, the Indians seemed to relax a little, laughing and joking with one another over their easy score. Rock prayed that he hadn’t made a mistake—that they wouldn’t just be butchered immediately—or worse. He saw many a brave eyeing Rona and Kim.
Thirteen
Buffalo-hide teepees stretched off in long uneven rows like pine cones fallen from winter branches as Rockson and the Freefighting expedition were led into the Sioux village. Squaws carrying babies suckling at their breasts came out to greet the returning heroes and jeer at their captives. The smaller boys shot mock arrows from unstrung bows, practicing for their later roles as hunters and fighters. The Freedomfighters were paraded through the entire camp in and around just about every cone-shaped, hairy-hided tent in the damned place.
“Probably don’t get too many prisoners around here,” Detroit whispered through his teeth to Chen, who rode behind him, trying to work his hands free of his bonds. “So they want to get every bit of mileage out of it they can.”
