Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  That knowledge filled her with hope, but she knew the task she and Stampede had set for themselves was almost impossible. She wondered if it would be better if they just cut their losses and didn't try a rescue attempt.

  Even trailing the expedition in a tandem fashion exposed them to danger they might not see coming. Another group, possibly the Sheldons from the previous night, might discover the group and try to close in on them. The first thing they would find would be Hella and Stampede.

  If the new group found them, they'd try to kill them quietly to get them out of the way. Failing that, they'd just open fire and chase Hella and Stampede back into Riley's security team. The welcome there probably wouldn't be any less lethal.

  A rock and a hard place pretty much summed up the potential situation.

  Early that afternoon, a line of dust to the west drew Hella's attention. She pulled her binocs from her chest pack and studied the terrain.

  "Something?"

  "Dust to the west."

  "How far out?"

  "Maybe a couple klicks." As she watched the movement of the dust, the way it constantly hung in the air, Hella grew more confident and more afraid that the dust meant there was another group in the area.

  Stampede clambered atop a nearby stand of rock and took out his telescope. "There's someone out there. Looks like a sizable group."

  "A group that big, you'd think they were a trade caravan, but there aren't any trade routes there."

  "Could be another highwayman team."

  Hella tracked the potential forward progress of the group. Depending on the relative speeds of the unknown pack and of the expedition, one or the other would intersect. "One of them is going to cut the trail of the other. If the expedition gets there second, Riley will see someone else has been there and put his team on high alert. That's not a big deal."

  "But if the new arrivals are highwaymen, they'll read the tracks as a possible target." Stampede growled in the back of his throat.

  "That might work out for us. They won't be able to take the expedition all at once, so maybe we can use the distraction to get to the fractoids."

  Stampede snorted. "You say that like that wouldn't also be an invitation to get shot dead by one side or the other."

  Hella couldn't refute that.

  Hours later, the unknown group, which had been making faster progress than the expedition, pulled up and settled in. The dust tattoo they'd left in the air vanished.

  Hella studied the area through the binocs and grew frustrated with the thick forest that covered the group. She wasn't able to see the expedition either, but Pardot and Riley were known quantities.

  "Do you think they're camping for the night?"

  "Got an hour of sunlight left." Stampede stood beside her with his telescope to his eye. "Would you stop to camp?"

  "Depends on whether I was where I wanted to be."

  "How far do you think the expedition is from those people?"

  Turning her binocs back to the expedition, which would come within a half klick of the unknown group's position, Hella estimated the distance, the rate of speed, then the travel time. "Half hour."

  "Plenty of time for them to set up." Stampede snorted in disgust. "I'd say they're exactly where they want to be."

  "Do you think Riley or his scouts know they're running into a trap?"

  "They haven't altered course or slowed down. What do you think?"

  Hella didn't bother to answer.

  "Well, now. Who's ambushing who?"

  "What?"

  "Look to the west. Up in the clouds. You have to be careful looking into the setting sun."

  Gingerly, Hella shifted the binocs and scoured the sky. She caught a couple of bright spots that made her eyes sting then she spotted what Stampede had seen.

  Two zeppelins—no mistaking those cigar shapes—caught the sun and almost blended in as they sailed through the sky. Large fans on the tail assemblies and on the sides powered the aircraft.

  CHAPTER 27

  Hella stood frozen in wonderment. She'd read about the aircraft before and been fascinated, but she'd never before seen one. She'd heard they still existed, but no one in the Redblight used them, and no one had ever brought one there before that she knew about. Zeppelins were expensive to build and to operate, and unless whoever owned them had a secure place to keep them, they would have been primary targets for thieves.

  The zeppelins glided through the air as effortlessly as a minnow through shallows and looked as graceful doing it. The sleek hulls bore no markings, no claim of ownership.

  "You think those ships belong to Pardot?" Hella lowered her glasses. Once she'd fixed the locations of the zeppelins, they were large enough to be seen with the naked eye.

  "Know anyone else that could call them out there?"

  "They could be just sailing over."

  "Yeah. Want to bet on it?"

  Hella didn't. The cold realization that Scatter was going to be lost to them in a short time closed around her heart. She focused instead on the possibilities afforded by all the variables in play. "If Riley knew he was rolling into an attack, would he go there?"

  "I wouldn't. You wouldn't." Stampede shook his head. "But Riley? I don't know, Red. He and Pardot concentrate on their own vision of the world and expect events to just line up behind it."

  "The airships are probably armed."

  "I would hope so. Maybe they'll even have some armor. But they also make a huge target tor anyone who wants to bring them down. The question is whether the ambushers are after Pardot's expedition or the zeppelins. The real question is whether we want to take a chance and get involved."

  Guiltily Hella gazed down into her left palm. She thought about Scatter and the pain and fear she'd heard in his voice when he thought about losing his mate. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose someone who had been that much a part of her life, but she knew how much she missed knowing who her parents had been.

  And she knew how much she would miss Stampede if something happened to him. She closed her hand and hoped that would erase the guilt. It didn't.

  "I know, Red." Stampede's voice was soft. "I don't know what Pardot has in mind for Scatter, but I'm sure it's not good." He took a breath and let it out. "So are we going to do this thing?"

  Hella rode Daisy toward the intersection while Stampede loped behind her, using the mountain boomer's massive bulk to break the path for him. Branches lashed Hella's head and shoulders repeatedly. She lowered her head and peered under the uncertain protection of her arm, though occasional branches made it through her defense. Thankfully she kept everything out of her eyes, but her cheeks stung, and she'd gotten a bloody lip.

  Even moving as quickly as they could, they arrived too late. The ambushers rushed their trap, moving down to intercept the expedition ahead of the tall hill where the zeppelin pilots had chosen to approach from. The aircraft moved slowly. With darkness gathering, lights flared to life around the gondolas. The expedition had set up some of the camp, mainly the medical tents and food supplies. Evidently they intended to leave some of their equipment behind and had wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of and fed before the rendezvous.

  "The hill." Stampede raced ahead of Daisy then scrambled up a rocky promontory that overlooked the ambush area and sat adjacent to the zeppelins.

  Hella guided Daisy up the incline. The mountain boomer's long claws dislodged small avalanches of rocks and uprooted young trees and brush. Hella pulled the lizard up short, stopping her twenty meters from the site she knew Stampede would choose as their stand. Daisy snorted in protest, certain she was in a race with Stampede.

  "Not now, girl. Down. Lie down." When the mountain boomer did as she instructed, Hella patted Daisy on the neck then slid her rifle free and threw on an extra ammo rack from their supplies. She leaned into the incline and ran up the hill to join Stampede.

  He already lay prone, rifle aimed at the ambush area where muzzle flashes and lasers winked like fireflies. The
harsh reports of the weapons were muted and indistinct. He took up trigger slack and fired. "First we help out; then we try to scare the aircraft off. Leave the expedition stranded here. If they get Scatter into the air, we'll never see him again."

  Hella didn't respond. She found a good area for her rifle and sighted in. The range finder revealed that the distance to the targets was five hundred eighty-three meters. Her rifle was calibrated out to eight hundred meters. Stampede could shoot and kill at more than twelve hundred meters.

  His rifle banged loudly again.

  Sighting in, Hella dialed the night scope into play and watched as the world turned into myriad shadings of green. The hardshells stood out against the ragtag armor worn by the ambushers. She sighted on the head and shoulders of one man and squeezed the trigger. Not waiting to see the results of her shot, she moved to the next target.

  Before she could squeeze the trigger, the new man suddenly leaped into the air, and flames jetted from his feet. His hair caught on fire, and flames blazed in his hands. He opened his mouth and spit a conflagration over the hardshell in front of him.

  Wreathed in flames, the hardshell jerked back and tried to beat the fire from his body. He managed only a few stumbling steps before the heat, burns, or the lack of oxygen claimed him.

  "That's Silence." Hella struggled to pull the pyrokinetic into her sights, recognizing the profile. "Trazall is behind the ambush."

  "Find the roach if you can." Stampede slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon. "Kill him when you do."

  Hella squeezed the trigger and rode out the recoil. She kept the scope on her target. She spotted a brief flare only a few centimeters from Silence's body and knew that his fiery aura was hot enough to act as armor. Her bullet had vaporized before touching him.

  In the next instant, several other bullets vaporized as well. A hardshell narrowly missed Silence with a laser, and that instantly drew the pyrokinetic's attention. Shifting in midair, Silence spit another stream of incendiary death. The hardshell with the laser rifle spun away, covered in fire.

  The green-haired man, Jack Hart, gestured toward a four-man squad of hardshells. Wavy, purple-black force, almost invisible, spread outward from his hand movement. In the next instant, the hardshells jerked sideways as if their servos had suddenly gotten corrupted. Then the men fell, arms and legs splayed helplessly as increased gravity pinned them to the ground.

  Hella put her sights over Hart's chest and squeezed the trigger. At first she thought she'd missed. Then after three more shots, she knew she couldn't have missed every time. She noticed one of the purple-black blossoms around Hart and realized that his power was pulling bullets to the ground before they reached him.

  She shifted her attention to the normal thieves among Trazall's crew and punched bullets through them as quickly as she could. When she exhausted one magazine, she plugged in another.

  "The zeppelins are closing in." Stampede rolled to one side, and a bullet cored through rock where he'd been. "And one of Trazall's snipers has a bead on our position. It won't be long before others do too."

  Glancing back toward the airships, Hella saw they were moving toward the quagmire of fighting men. She rolled to a fresh position as well just ahead of a shot that notched the rock she'd been using as a rifle stand. "Did you see Trazall?"

  "No. You?"

  "No."

  "That scans. Trazall is usually the one behind the scene. He's not there when things head south."

  A moment later, Hella peered back down her rifle. Movement through the brush drew her attention. She used her peripheral vision against the darkness and spotted two men racing toward their position. "We've got company incoming."

  "Where?"

  "Three o'clock. Do we hold or move out?"

  "Pull back. Take up a new defensive line. And keep Daisy out of the fire lines. We go to your right to intercept those gunners. We need to keep this hill clear as we can."

  Hella checked her rifle. "Ready."

  "Go."

  Turning, Hella rose to a half crouch and ran to the right. She used her right hand to vault over a large boulder then hunkered down low as the brush again. Tracer-equipped bullets sliced through the brush after her. "They see me."

  "Go to ground. I've got one of them."

  Hella dived to the earth. Rock kissed her cheek hard enough to break the skin. She stayed flat, her heart beating frantically, as bullets combed the brush for her.

  The familiar basso bark of Stampede's rifle rolled over her. Thirty meters away, a shadow jerked suddenly sideways and fell in a loose sprawl. The shadow didn't get up again, and the second rifleman quit firing and faded into hiding.

  "Flush him, Red."

  Shoving her right arm out, Hella blasted the trees where she'd seen the first man fall, gambling that the two hadn't wanted to get separated in all the confusion. Her bullets scored white scars on the tree trunks and chopped down branches and bushes.

  The second man broke cover, heading back the way he'd come and managed two steps before Stampede fired. The heavy caliber bullet caught the man from behind and pitched him forward. He didn't move again.

  Stampede pushed himself up from the ground. "Let's go."

  "Where?"

  "Get closer if we can. If we can't, we hold back and hope we can pick up the pieces."

  Hella gazed at the two approaching zeppelins. "If Pardot manages to get aboard the airships, we're going to lose Scatter."

  "If we get killed, we're going to lose Scatter anyway. We do what we can, Red. That's how we've always worked it."

  In the dark sky, the zeppelins suddenly opened fire. Machine guns and small cannons pounded the earth and the ambush party. The devastating onslaught created a line between the ambushers and the expedition. The no-man's-land created by corpses and pieces of corpses widened from a few meters to nearly twenty in as many heartbeats.

  Scatter's face lifted from Hella's palm to the air. "Hella."

  "We're here." Hella ran to cover behind a tree and knew it would be poor cover against one of the zeppelins' cannons.

  Sadness pulled Scatter's face down heavily. His face shook. "This is too much. I do not want you and Stampede to die."

  "We're not dead yet." Blood trickled down Hella's cheek as she peered around the tree.

  "The two of you should go somewhere else. Be safe."

  "If we have to, we will. Dead heroes don't do anybody any good." That was another one of the sayings Stampede had first taught her, but it sounded really dumb saying it to Scatter. She just didn't know what else to say.

  The zeppelins cruised closer then hovered over the battleground a couple hundred meters up.

  "They're idiots getting that close." Stampede shook his head. "If Trazall brought any—"

  A rocket streaked into the sky atop a chemical burn tail. When the rocket first crashed into the zeppelin, Hella thought nothing was going to happen. Then a secondary round exploded inside the bag and ignited whatever gas had been used to fill it. A series of successive detonations ripped through the bag.

  Almost instantly, a pool of fire hung in the night sky then began the long fall to earth. The gunners aboard the second craft fell silent, obviously overcome by what had happened to the other ship.

  Hella wondered if the zeppelin crews had ever before been in battle, and she thought again of the perfect world Riley had taken pains to describe to her. They weren't living in peaceful times. Stampede had taught her that. He'd trained her to be a warrior because that was the only way she would survive. He'd trained her to be a scout because being on her own was safer than trying to exist within the shifting allegiances of towns and trading posts.

  The wreckage of the first zeppelin hit the ground ahead of flaming bodies as survivors of the explosions tried to escape. The mass indiscriminately killed Trazall's people as well as the expedition members while they fought. Another rocket launched and narrowly missed the second zeppelin, though Hella had no idea how a target that big could be missed.

&nbs
p; Evidently the commander of the surviving vessel had decided on discretion as the better part of valor because the airship started pulling away. Before it got more than fifty meters away, a third rocket slammed into it amidships and burst it open in a fiery gush. As the zeppelin fell, ammo cooked off in a hail of bullets and rockets. Fiery debris lay spread across the treetops.

  Eyes stinging from all the smoke and smarting from the bright explosions, Hella looked around for Stampede. He stood behind a copse of trees with the big rifle held before him. Flames wreathed the trees behind him.

  He nodded. "I'm fine."

  "I'm going to look for Scatter." His visage had disappeared again, and the silver film covered her left palm.

  "We'll go."

  "No. You'll stand out." As far as Hella had seen, there wasn't another bisonoid in either of the two groups. "I'm depending on you to cover me."

  Stampede hesitated. "In and out. Don't try to get cute with this."

  Hella plunged through the trees and brush before he could change his mind.

  Chaos spread out as far as Hella could see. Fire cast uncertain light and weirdly twisting shadows. Smoke poured in all directions and stayed low in the brush rather than rising above the trees. She ran and even after only a short distance felt her lungs, throat, and nasal passages burning from the smoke-laced chemicals. She hoped she wasn't breathing anything lethal.

  Skirmish groups still battled. Gunshots rang out singly or in rapid-fire bursts as she vaulted over dead bodies. She thought of Colleen Trammell and hoped the woman was still alive. Of everyone in the expedition, Colleen had seemed the most kind.

  One of Trazall's warriors strode out from behind a flaming tent. He was barely visible in all the smoke. Hella raised her left hand and fired into his face. The body was still falling when she sprinted past him. She knew time worked against her. Eventually one side or the other would claim supremacy on the battlefield and she'd stick out.