by S. J. Ryan
She gulped and removed her dainty gloves. He gently took her right hand and lay the palm flat on the kid's chest. He placed his hand alongside. “Don't take your hand off until Ivan says so.”
“Yes, of course.” She mumbled, “I hate all of this.”
“I warned you that coming along could be dangerous.”
“I mean all the fighting. Why do people have to hurt each other?”
“Unfortunately, it's how we've been genetically programmed by evolutionary competition.”
“You mean, the Way of the Lords of Aereoth?”
Sometime soon he would need to have a heartfelt discussion with her about 'theology.'
“This boy,” she said. “There is a resemblance between him and you. Is this . . . the Star Child?”
“Don't say that to his face. But I guess he is pretty much the fulfillment of the messiah prophecy of the church's religion. Better than a messiah in my book. If it wasn't for him, I'd still be asleep in a dungeon, or worse, drooling mindlessly on a short leash. I owe him a lot for coming to rescue me. You can see right here how much he put his own life at risk by sharing with me so much of his implant's health resources.”
The kid's body arched and his mouth expelled a gusher of silted water. Gasping in spasms, he opened his eyes, pupils darting and focusing. Matt Four helped him sit up. The boy locked gazes and the wheezing subsided.
“Carrot!” the kid exclaimed, hacking. “We've got to – you! Where are we?”
“Easy, kid,” Matt Four said, patting him down. “You've been through a lot. To answer your question, you're in Britan. We're just north of your rebel base, aboard Good Witch.”
“Carrot! We've got to find her!”
“Kid, you're not going anywhere. You almost died in six different ways, and you need to rest.”
“You don't understand! Carrot – she's in danger! We've got to find her!”
Matt Four pushed him down, hard. “I'll find her, all right? You just stay right here.” He turned to Ada. “Keep your hand on him until Ivan says you can take it off. If he tries to get off this floor before Ivan says he can, do that trance thing.”
“On him?”
He read mortification in her reaction and sensed what her objection was. “Yes – on the Star Child. As the Star Wizard, I give you my blessing.”
Her only response was to gape.
Matt Four wobbled to his feet, caught his breath, strode into the forward compartment. Andra was holding the ship at altitude above the lake. Prin held the rifle pointed through the open window, aimed at an object directly ahead about a kilometer away.
“It's been flapping there out of range for a minute now,” Prin said. “This one seems larger than the others, but it hasn't attempted an attack.”
Ivan Four's telescopic vision was with Ada in the aft compartment, but there was another spyglass in the cabinet. Matt Four trained it on the apparition. It wasn't one of the enforcers he'd seen before. It was larger, long-necked and long-tailed. It was wearing a harness that looked like a saddle.
“The kid said he escaped from Nemesis by dragon,” he said. “I'm guessing that's the one.”
“Are you saying that it is on our side? What is it doing? Is it going to attack?”
“No, I think it's concerned about the kid.” He tilted his head. “When they bred these things back in Sol System, they would give them an implant so that it would be possible to communicate with them. Let me see if I can contact it.”
At his instruction, Ivan Four sent hailing signals. A few seconds later, a feminine voice responded.
“Greetings, Matt Four. I am Galatea, implant of Silvanus, friend of Matt. Is Matt all right?”
Matt Four placed the voice. It was that of the woman, Savora, who had been aboard Nemesis and had conducted them to Athena. That effect was a touch ominous, but he assumed there was a good reason for it. He decided that if the dragon and its implant had brought Matt safely to Britan, they could be trusted.
“Matt is recuperating,” Matt Four replied. “I understand that you rescued him. Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Is there anything that I can do to help Matt at this time?”
“No, he's – wait. He's been asking for a friend of his, by the name of 'Carrot.' Would you happen to know anything about her?”
“I flew her to safety. I can help you find her.”
“If you will.” He turned to Andra. “Please follow the dragon.” He nudged the rifle barrel down. “Don't shoot, Prin. It's on our side.”
Prin sighed. “That creature is more frightening than the other two together! How do we tell which are friends and which are enemies?”
“That's something that can't always be done on sight.”
They followed the dragon from the shore of the lake, into the hills. A short time later, the dragon circled over a gulley. Matt Four aimed the spyglass, but all he saw were intervening tree branches.
“You're sure she's down there? I don't see her.”
“She is in hiding. She ran from Silvanus when she awakened, and I was unable to reassure her because Silvanus is not able to communicate audibly.”
Of course not; everyone back in Sol System had implants and so did dragons, so there was no reason for dragons to be genetically-engineered with a set of human-speech-capable vocal chords.
Matt Four explained the situation to Prin and Andra, and Andra said, “If we take the ship lower, it will attract her attention. She knows the ship and she will come out to greet us.”
He emphatically shook his head. “We are not going lower. Those woods must be full of soldiers and I don't want arrows puncturing our gas cells; we've already lost enough gas from all the jostling we've been through already.”
“Then how are we to contact her?” Andra demanded. “She's in the middle of all those soldiers! She could die if she's stranded down there.”
“I understand she's your friend. But she's just one person and there are four of us up here.”
Andra and Prin glanced at each other, and Andra said, “We are willing to take the risk for Carrot.”
“Well, I'm not willing to take the risk for those two kids in the back room. And neither are you.”
They were silent, but he saw the dismay on their faces. Matt Four remembered how frantic the kid had been about the girl, too. He chewed his lip and contemplated.
“Do you have a parachute aboard?” he asked.
Prin went to the cabinet. “Unless the police confiscated them as well – ah!“ He presented the pack. “Do you know how to use one?”
“Yes, I've skydived many times.”
Actually it was Matt Two who had gone through a daredevil phase, almost becoming Matt Three without having to cloneport. It had been a few centuries, though, and Matt Four hoped the muscle memories had carried over through the archiving.
He slung the parachute straps over his shoulders, then took the rifle from Prin and slung its strap on top. He indicated a small meadow near the gulley. Andra steered and hovered. Matt Four gave a firm nod and a little salute. He strode through the aft compartment. The kid was resting with his eyes closed and Ada still had her hand on his chest. She looked at the Elder Wizard's gear in puzzlement.
“That's a parachute, isn't it? Where are you going?”
“After 'down,' you mean. I'm going to contact his friend. I may need you to relay messages, by the way.”
He opened the door, stood on the platform, took a moment to gather resolve, and jumped. It was a short drop and he pulled the cord as soon as he was clear of the gondola. He expected his field of vision to light up with status indications like it always had during jumps back on Tian, but his limited partition had no skydiving application software. He had to depend on human skill alone, and rusty memories at that.
The breeze was light, the ground was level. He landed smoothly. Well – he twisted an ankle, but that was something that his current partition was equipped to handle. As soon as the chute was shorn and the throbbing went down, he wobbled toward the woods.
The girl was invisible in the shade and brush, yet somehow he intuited her presence.
He shouted: “Hello, Carrot!”
“Matt! Is that you?”
She emerged dirty and bloodied with hair a brilliant orange. She was holding a large sharp stick and poised as if ready to throw.
“You – you're not Matt!” she said. “You're – you're – “
“I'm his long-lost brother.”
“You look just like him!”
Except for the white hair, the beard, the wrinkles, he thought. But then, she was seeing him in low light, and maybe trying to be polite.
“We've brought your blimp,” he said. “Matt and Prin and Andra are aboard and they're worried about you. So what we'll do is get you out of these woods and find a place we can rendezvous safely – maybe back at the base – “
“No, no! If you have the airship, then all is not lost! We can still win this battle!”
The kid had mentioned that she could be stubborn. “Right now, we need to get you to safety.”
“Don't you see! Both we and the Romans are dispersed in the forests, but if I were to fly over them, the Leaf would rally to me and the Romans would flee!”
“I really don't like the idea of having the ship fly over a battlefield – “
“There won't be a battle! I promise, the Romans will flee! I'm sure of it! Please, there is no time to spare. I need to be on the airship now!”
Her eyes were pleading, but he was about to insist again that there was no way he would allow the ship to come down to pick her up over a battlefield. Then it occurred to him that there might be a way to meet her desire with no danger to the ship.
“All right,” he said. “Follow me.”
They returned to the meadow. He contacted Galatea, and the dragon swooped toward them. The girl started to bolt for the woods, but he grabbed her arm. She was strong, but a reassuring look and nod settled her as the dragon alighted.
“Climb on her back,” Matt Four said. “She'll fly you up to the ship.”
Carrot returned a dubious look, but saddled as instructed. Wrapping the dragon's reins tightly, she asked, “How do I control her?”
“Just hang on. She knows what to do.”
Matt Four subvocaled instructions to Galatea. As soon as Carrot was secure, the dragon padded about, flapped its wings, and launched into the air, clearing the trees in an ascent toward the airship.
“For purposes of clarification,” Galatea said inside his head. “Silvanus the dragon is male and I, Galatea his implant, am female.”
“Sorry.”
He watched the dragon come toward the ship from behind. He expected some difficulty in the transfer, but the girl was apparently a natural at gymnastics and jumped from dragon's back to the ship's platform with a precision that he thought that only hypermode allowed. The girl climbed onto the platform and went inside. He imagined that she was talking with Matt and was surprised when she emerged a moment later with Prin. He operated the winch and she was lowered on the cable to a distance about ten meters below the ship. Unfurling a red scarf and attaching it to the branch she'd brought from the ground, she swung below the airship as it turned and headed east over the hills.
The dragon flared onto the meadow in front of him. Galatea said, “Do you wish for Silvanus to fly you to the ship as well?”
He eyed the slithery neck and flimsy saddle-harness. Well, wasn't there a pouch too? That seemed even more unnerving.
“I think I'll stay down for now.”
“It is not safe for Silvanus to be on the ground here. We will be nearby. Call if you need us.”
The dragon hopped and flapped away. Matt Four looked about at the surrounding dense woods and wondered where the thousands of soldiers who'd fought at Ravencall were at the moment. He contemplated how he didn't have his sensory array, he didn't have hypermode. All he had was a half-loaded weapon whose design dated to the previous millennium.
He remembered the last time he'd been alone in the woods with just a crude gun and no special implant abilities. That hadn't turned out well.
The Good Witch flew a rectangular pattern over the hills, while the girl waved her scarf at the soldiers hidden among the trees. Matt Four thought he heard shouts and cheers from below. At last the airship pivoted east. He decided to climb the nearest hill to watch. Status indications warned him to go lightly on his bruised ankle and he was puffing by the time he reached the crest.
Due south was the base. The Good Witch was tracking the road eastward. About a kilometer ahead and a few hundred meters north of the road on flat open terrain, the wreckage of the Roman airship was belching flames and billowing black smoke. A few kilometers away, the road bisected what appeared to be a makeshift base, an encampment with rows of tents forming a small city.
Beneath the airship flowed thousands of men, waving spears and axes and clubs as they marched eastward along the road, following the girl who swung on the cable and waved a scarf at the end of a branch like a makeshift flag. As the Britanians approached the encampment, a barrier of interlocking shields formed before their path.
Matt Four raised the spyglass and swept the line of shields. So these are Romans, he thought. They certainly looked like something out of an historical epic, what with all their ornate armor. The helmets with plumes, he supposed, were the officers. The higher ranking officers apparently got capes as well.
He started to ask Ivan for a crowd count, then realized his current partition probably couldn't do it any better than he could. As a rough estimate, he figured that both sides numbered in the thousands, and were about equal in size. The Romans had the edge, however, if shininess of weapons meant anything.
As the distance between the armies closed to less than a kilometer, Matt Four wondered if he had condemned thousands of men to slaughter. The girl had promised there would be no battle, but she was likely to be impulsive like all teenagers and also the product of a primitive, barbaric culture. How well could barbarian hordes fare against disciplined soldiers under skilled commanders?
As he surveyed, he was struck by a sense of deja vu, which puzzled him because he couldn't recall being involved in a battle between armies before. Then he remembered: he'd once watched an historical documentary about the legendary warrior queen, Boudica. Sans airship, what he was witnessing was a replay of Boudica's final battle. According to the documentary, Boudica had attacked an entrenched Roman position, been repelled and subsequently annihilated.
Yet – the native army in the documentary's cgi re-enactment of Boudica's last battle had been a screaming, stampeding mob. This native army was marching silently in columns, with cadence. Maybe things would be different this time. He still expected heavy losses on the Britanian side.
At half a kilometer from the Roman line, the airship halted. The girl waved her scarf at her army below. Matt Four thought he heard – of all things – wood clacking against wood. The rebel army spread across the fields into a line parallel to the Romans.
She's going to get them all killed, he thought. And it's my fault for trusting her.
But when the airship started moving toward the Roman encampment, the Britanian line held stationary. As the Good Witch puttered toward the Romans, an inverted rain of arrows arched toward it. They fell short; the ship was maintaining a safe altitude. Still, what the hell was she doing?
The ship flew over the Roman shield line and came to a halt directly over the encampment. The archers ceased firing, for their arrows were having no effect and were only falling back on their own people. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. The scene was as motionless as a picture: the airship hovering, the girl dangling, the armies tensed.
Then the ship began to spray.
As to what it was spraying, Matt Four could only guess. The ship had water ballast and a fuel reserve; it looked like they were dropping everything. It was falling from the gondola and as the girl was underneath the platform to the rear of the gondola, she wasn't being inundated. The
Roman encampment, however, was directly below.
And so were the Roman troops – who promptly scattered. Matt Four watched dumbfounded as their resolute line vanished in chaos to avoid the mostly-harmless misting liquids emanating from beneath the airship. Abandoning their positions so quickly that they dropped shields and weapons, the Romans dispersed north and south into the woods, leaving the field to the Britanians and the road to their encampment clear.
“What the hell?” Matt Four asked aloud. Then he realized: They think it's poison gas! The Romans had dumped gas on the Britanians, so now they feared it was being dumped on them!
He chuckled. “The girl's a freakin' military genius!”
The Britanian army wasted no time. They quick-marched into the emptied Roman camp. Matt Four expected looting, but with a signal from the girl and the sound of wood on wood below, the Britanians about-faced and formed a new line perpendicular to the road just outside the western edge of the encampment.
Soon, Roman soldiers emerged from the woods in the west, streaming along the same segment of the road that the Britanians had marched only moments before. These Romans were as well-equipped as their counterparts at the camp had been. However, it took only a cursory glance to determine that they numbered several times more. She'd better hurry, Matt Four thought.
Instead, the Britanians held firm. The girl, meanwhile, was winched back up into the airship platform. She went inside the gondola, came out with a parachute on her back. And then she jumped.
She pulled the cord almost too soon. She flailed and almost tangled the lines. She had trouble steering and landed well away from the road, which was her apparent intent. She landed hard and fell and was dragged by the chute in the breeze before she slipped free. But as she limped toward her men, they cheered and waved spears and banners. Even the Romans had halted to watch the spectacle.
Then the Romans resumed – a slow, steady march, formed into line after line that stretched the length of the field from north to south. The Britanians didn't budge. Less than a minute, he estimated, and the blood would flow.
The Britanians parted where their line was bisected by the road. The girl emerged with a coterie of soldiers, bearing a white sheet tied to a long spear. She stopped on the road in front of her men and stood fast. The Romans for their part stopped as well, just out of arrow distance. The armies were in a standoff. As the seconds dragged into minutes, Matt Four would have had a heart attack had his implant let him.
