"Could they learn to accept us, do you think?" Luodine asked him.
Dan seemed puzzled. "Why should they have to? What do you mean?"
She indicated herself and Nyarl. "We are journalists from Chryse who are a little different. We've been reporting what is, not what's supposed to be—even if it has been causing us problems. We think our work is here. Suppose we wanted to stay. Could something like that be arranged, do you think?"
"I don't know. Maybe. . . . You'd need to talk to Rocco and Hudro tomorrow, when they get back."
Luodine noted the same edginess in Dan's manner that she had detected in Zak earlier. "Something is making everyone nervous tonight, isn't it?" she said. "I saw it in Rocco too. What's happening?"
Dan glanced uneasily at Zak, as if acknowledging that he wasn't sure this was the right way to be talking. "There's a lot of Glob activity everywhere. Air strikes, troop drops. This area has to be targeted. Rocco's got bad feelings about staging this mission tomorrow, but it seems like it can't be any other time. I'm not sure why."
"I think we already know," Luodine said.
Dan shrugged in a way that said he didn't need to hear. "My job is just to make sure you're all here, ready and waiting, when they get back."
It had been an eventful and arduous day, and the three Hyadeans turned in early. Just as she was drifting off into sleep that promised to engulf her in seconds, Luodine was brought back to reality by the sound of what could have been distant thunder coming in through the screen of the open widow, but with a sharper, more percussive bark. "What was that?" she asked into the darkness.
"It could be artillery fire. Or maybe an air attack somewhere," Vrel's voice replied.
The sound continued for maybe fifteen minutes, sometimes seemingly a little closer, then farther away. In the next room, Dan and Zak were engaged on a radiotelephone with others elsewhere. They sounded tense and agitated. Dan poked his head in around the door a few minutes later. "Sleep in your clothes and keep your boots near at hand," he told the Hyadeans. "We may have to move out in a hurry."
* * *
It was daylight when sounds of loud explosions accompanied by a shrieking roar tore Luodine out of a deep sleep. She sat up, struggling to integrate the impressions into some kind of coherence. Aircraft, passing low overhead. Bombs! Vrel and Nyarl were already tumbling out of nearby bunks, finding shoes and grabbing coats. The door was thrown open, and Dan entered. "We're under attack!" he shouted. "Glob forces moving in on the area. We're taking you back to the strip now."
They tumbled through into the large room where the table was. One of the two women was waving her hands at Zak and wailing something. The other was nowhere in sight. A guard stuck his head in from outside. "The truck's coming now," he called. Dan ushered the Hyadeans across to the door and outside. Smoke clouds were billowing skywards from somewhere not far away, where flames could be seen among the trees. A truck was turning off the approach lane from the road. As several of the guards moved out from the building to meet it, the sounds of approaching aircraft came again, followed by staccato chattering of gunfire. The guards threw themselves down into the undergrowth or beside the wall of the building, a couple under the truck.
"Down!" Dan yelled. Luodine stood outside the doorway, confused. "Get down!" She came to her senses, ran a few paces, and hunched herself awkwardly by Nyarl against the base of a tree. The roars grew to a screaming din overhead. Luodine covered her head with her arms. A series of jarring concussions came, numbing the ears, and then a sharper crack, followed by what sounded like a tremendous blast of hail slicing through the trees, shredding leaves and cutting branches. Fragments of metal pinged off the truck and embedded themselves in the wall of the building. Somebody screamed.
"Come! Now! We have to go!" Dan's voice shouted.
Luodine straightened up, dazed, her ears still ringing. Somebody grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the truck. Figures were already clambering aboard. Vrel was there. Nyarl appeared from behind her. Someone was reeling drunkenly, gushing blood from a partly severed shoulder. It was the second cook. Hands pulled Luodine up over the tailboard. The truck began moving.
The attack had hit on the far side of the roadway. Smoke was pouring from the remains of several demolished buildings among the trees, which nearer the center of the blast area had been stripped practically bare. A vehicle was hanging upended in the branches; another lay on its side, surrounded by bodies, some moving. As the truck turned right onto the road and headed back in the direction of the landing strip, Luodine made out more figures crawling and staggering amid the smoke. The sound of the attacking planes faded, and the steadier, deeper drone of higher-flying aircraft became noticeable behind the engine noise and rattles of the truck, and the voice of Dan shouting into a hand radio. A series of muffled crumps sounded somewhere off to the left. "ATG," Zak said tightly. Luodine looked questioningly at Nyarl as they clutched the sides of the wildly bouncing vehicle.
"Air-to-ground," he supplied. "Missiles. Incoming."
"Troops are landing to the south and east," Dan announced. "They've already taken the main river crossing. Gonna sweep the whole area."
"Will Rocco's group have to call off the mission?" Vrel called from the other side of the truck.
"Too late for that. They left hours ago."
They drove past armed guerrillas hastily forming up, squads with packs running at the double along the roadside; vehicles being loaded, others racing in both directions. The background of explosions and gunfire was now continuous. At one point they had to drive off the road on a bypass flattened through the undergrowth around a truck and a car that had collided. Just past them was a blackened area, still smoking, everything flattened, where Luodine was sure she had seen a mobile missile launcher the day before. Exactly as she had wanted, she was right there in the middle of everything, and far sooner then she had ever expected. Yet she and Nyarl could capture none of it. They had left all their equipment in the flyer.
They arrived back to find the landing area in pandemonium. One entire side—fortunately, not where Vrel's flyer was parked—was a mass of blazing vehicles and storage sheds, while across the remainder of the area figures ran frantically to load what could be salvaged onto departing trucks and carry over the wounded. Two helicopters were wrecked, but another out on the open strip took off as the truck bringing the Hyadeans pulled up. Dan waved toward the flyer and shouted at Vrel, "Make it ready, whatever you have to do."
Vrel spread his hands. "What about Cade and the others? We were supposed to wait for them."
"I'm going to try and find out what I can now," Dan threw back, already running toward a frond-covered bunker protected by sandbags and logs, partly dug into the ground nearby. Vrel turned toward the flyer. Luodine followed after Dan, Nyarl close behind her. Inside the bunker was a map table and cabinets of electronics, weapons and kit slung along one wall, and a half dozen or so people, two talking into phones, two more following something on screens, one marking a map, a girl in a camouflage smock watching the scene outside through a firing embrasure in the bunker wall. Dan was talking tensely with a man in a peaked cap who seemed to be in charge. He waved for Luodine and Nyarl to wait a moment as they entered. One of the operators was calling into a microphone. "Emergency! Repeat, emergency! Divert! Do you read me, Yellow Fish? You must divert. The LZ is under attack."
"It's them," Dan told Luodine and Nyarl. "They're on their way here now. They've got Cade and the woman. But they can't land in this."
"Where will they go?" Luodine asked, daze at trying to take it all in.
"I don't know. They'll . . ." Dan's voice trailed off as the operator became alarmed.
"Hello? . . . Hello, Yellow Fish. . . . Yellow Fish, come in. . . ." He waited, looked across, and shook his head. "We have lost contact. They were taking fire."
"Jesus! What's this?" Eyes turned to the girl watching the outside. A peculiar violet light was coming in through the embrasure. Dan and the officer in the peaked ca
p stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, then moved toward the entrance, practically pushing the two Hyadeans out ahead of them. They emerged to find the surroundings bathed in a strange radiance of an eerie, electrical quality.
"What is it?" the officer asked, bewildered.
Dan shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen anything likes it."
Then, abruptly, it was gone. Their eyes took several seconds to readjust to normal illumination. Then Dan touched the officer's arm and pointed across the open stretch of landing strip. The violet had shifted to an area beyond the far tree line and was now revealed as a pencil of light coming down from the sky. Even as they watched it shifted again, as if probing. Then the column flickered briefly in several pulses that turned it brilliant orange, and the entire area surrounding the base of the beam erupted into a fireball expanding above the trees. Moments later, a concussion wave swept across the landing area, followed by a blast of wind that bent the treetops, sent a storm of leaves, sand, and pieces of wreckage swishing across the open ground, and toppled Luodine over a wall of logs fronting the entrance to the bunker. A rain of torn branches and debris began falling over the entire area.
The flyer, already moving from its parking spot, lurched visibly and then steadied. Dan pulled Luodine to her feet. Nyarl was holding onto the top of the log wall. "What about the others?" Vrel called from the doorway of the flyer as it neared, at the same time turning.
"They're down somewhere!" Nyarl yelled. "We have to go! Now!"
"Go where? We have no plans."
"It doesn't matter! Just GO!" Dan shouted, pushing Luodine toward the flyer. Vrel heaved her in, Nyarl followed with the door closing, and the flyer began accelerating toward the open ground. Then it was under the strip of sky, airborne, climbing. It rose to skim the treetops. Smoke and fires were everywhere, with aircraft dotting the sky in all directions.
"That light. What was it?" Luodine gasped as she buckled into one of the seats.
"Orbital bombardment maser," Nyarl said. His voice sounded strained. "Ours. Area obliteration weapon. I didn't know we were using anything like that here."
* * *
For a while they flew north toward the main basin of the Amazon, away from the combat zone, debating what to do. Returning to Tevlak's seemed risky, with no idea of the situation there. Vrel had lost his Terran phone somewhere in the confusion. Nyarl was reluctant to use the flyer's system, since incoming calls to Tevlak's would probably be monitored and could be traced back. In the end, Luodine remembered an Indian tribe that she had spent some time with as part of putting together a program on Terran cultural diversity. They lived in a remote area north of the main river and had no interest in worldly affairs. And they were friendly—not to each other, especially, but they were to the blue-giant aliens, to whom they apparently attached a religious and mystical significance. Nyarl found the location in his records, and in less than two hours the craft was descending toward a forest clearing showing leaf-thatched huts scattered around a stream, watched by an awed crowd of brown-skinned figures and children, most of them barely clothed. They remembered Luodine well, and greeted her and her companions with laughter, much excited chatter. A spicy meal was arranged for the evening, attended by the whole village and accompanied by dancing apparently put on for the aliens' benefit, despite their exhaustion, and the presentation of gifts ranging from a sweet fruit preparation to a necklace made from flowers, beads, and the dyed shells of nuts. The arrivals fell asleep in the hut provided for them, still too numbed by events of the day to be capable of discussing any further options objectively.
* * *
When morning came, the whole situation had changed. News via the flyer's system brought the staggering announcement that the Western part of the U.S. had seceded and declared itself a sovereign federation governed from Sacramento. As fugitives on an alien planet, by no means sure where they stood with their own authorities, none of the Hyadeans was sure of the implications or what they should do. The easiest and perhaps safest choice seemed to be simply to stay on in the village, making the best of the peace and seclusion it offered, get the rest that they all needed, and give things a couple of days to see what happened. The villagers and their headman had no objections, and the children found the blue aliens fascinating, following them everywhere.
But before they had finalized any plans, an even stranger thing happened. A call came in over the flyer's system, forwarded by Luodine's blue-and-yellow flyer, still landed far to the south in Bolivia. It was routed via Chryse, but had been sent by the Hyadean girl that Hudro had returned to Brazil to collect before joining Rocco's force for the attempt to free Cade and Marie. Her name was Yassem. The operation had succeeded, but the helicopter bringing them all back to Segora had been shot down. As far as Yassem knew, she and Marie were the only survivors. She was relieved to learn that all three Hyadeans had got away safely from Segora. Right now, Yassem and Marie were at a Brazilian military base on the southern side of the Amazon basin. For the moment, they were managing to pass themselves off as affiliated with the security forces under a story that Yassem had dreamed up, but that cover could only last so long. Using codes obtained from registration records on Chryse, Yassem had located the blue-and-yellow flyer down in Bolivia. She wanted to use it to get them away. Now that they knew where Luodine and the others were, she and Marie could fly there and join them. Nyarl was worried about surveillance risks. That was okay, Yassem assured him. Military communications was her job. She would take care of that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
PINK LIGHTS FLASHED PAST the open gun-hatch; then came the jolting of objects hitting the helicopter's structure. Yassem, crouched on the floor in front of where Marie was sitting, put her helmet on and secured it. Rocco shouted back instructions from the front, and one of the men clambered up to man the machine gun, while another hooked up the ammunition belt. Marie and Cade braced their arms on the sides and tried to steady themselves against each other as the pilot went into evasive maneuvers. And then a giant fist seemed to slam the helicopter, bursting the wall behind them inward and tearing Cade away from her grasp.
Impressions kaleidoscoped together of bodies tumbling and hurtling about the interior, cries of pain and fear, a blast of wind. The figure that had been at the hatch was gone. Everything was turning. A force pinned Marie with her face and chest to the wall, unable to move. Yassem rose from somewhere and then fell against her, entangling them. Past Yassem's shoulder, Marie saw Cade caught in the side webbing, blood pouring from his head and down the back of his jacket, and Rocco nearby, clinging to the edge of the hatch. The helicopter hit the ground to a cacophony of screams, objects crashing against the sides, and the shriek of metal rending and buckling. Marie heard herself cry out as Cade and Rocco collided and disappeared. The helicopter carried on sliding downhill, slewing, and coming apart, spilling bodies, equipment, and debris. A limb of a tree reared up through pieces of disintegrating cabin and floor, and Marie was pitched forward onto a headless body that gushed blood over her face and chest. There was a wrench that felt as if she were being pulled apart; sudden light; leaves and branches rushing and tearing at her. . . .
She was underneath a section of what had been the fuselage, ensnared in foliage among pieces of wreckage. Her face felt on fire. Her whole body ached. She became aware of guns firing, sounds of aircraft, explosions. They had come down in the middle of a battle. She tried to move, and winced as every muscle and joint protested. But there was no other way out of this. Testing herself warily, she concluded nothing was broken. Then, gathering her breath, she bit her lip against the pain and forced herself to move, first freeing the thorns and vines from her clothing. The activity seemed to help. She extricated herself gradually, straightened up, and took stock. The headless corpse was doubled grotesquely over a seat attached to part of the cabin wall. The only other figure in sight was in Hyadean military garb, lying facedown and motionless on a section of buckled flooring. Marie hauled herself across and turned the
helmet to reveal a flash of yellow-orange hair against the blue skin. It was Yassem. She was breathing. There was no sign of Hudro. Marie could smell smoke and burning. Forcing herself onto her feet, she turned the Hyadean's body over and secured a grip under the arms. Yassem was spattered with blood too, but there was no way of telling if it was hers. There were no obvious gashes in her clothing. Gritting her teeth and straining, Marie dragged her inch by inch clear from the wreckage.
They were on one side of a sloping, rocky-sided ravine filled with dead trees. The rest of the helicopter was in parts farther down, with seats, pieces of rotor, parts of the tail assembly, and more bodies strewn in between. Flames were licking around the largest section. Somehow, Marie pulled Yassem's inert form through the thickets of dead branches and thorn bush to the rocks higher up the ravine side, where she collapsed with her burden into a hollow. A dull whoosh sounded as the wreckage ignited, and black smoke curled upward from below. The crackle of small-arms fire was coming from very close, interspersed with bursts from a heavy machine gun. At one point, Marie heard voices shouting. She lay still, too numbed with delayed shock to know what she should do. Time passed. She nudged and tried to shake Yassem. The Hyadean groaned but wouldn't stir. Marie located the water bottle on Yassem's belt, unscrewed the cap, and pressed it to her lips. "Yassem, can you hear me . . . ?" This time Yassem reacted, feeling for the water bottle and holding it to her mouth. "How bad does it feel?" Marie asked. "Does it hurt anywhere?"
Yassem gulped and took in a series of long breaths. "Hudro?" she whispered. "We were hit. Is he here?"
"Don't worry about that now. We have to move."
Like Marie, Yassem was torn and bruised but seemed otherwise uninjured. After waiting perhaps a half hour for her to orient herself and collect her strength, they began moving, stopping frequently for rests. Marie had no clear plan. Her vague thought was to find a river or creek and follow it downstream. Water led to habitation. Yassem seemed too dazed or perhaps overcome by grief to object or offer anything more constructive. The sounds of fighting drew farther away. They carried on, movement still painful, making slow progress over the rough, forested, hilly terrain.
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