by Clare Bell
“Dear pilot,” said the forgotten voice on the radio, which had started to fade when Kesbe slowed her cranking, “are you generating a plan?”
She started, then brought the mike closer to her lips. “I am indeed, Mr. Mabena. I’ll give you the final details when I’m in the air. First, I’ve got to put a little ‘polish’ on it.”
“I may be able to borrow a neighbor’s stratocar,” said Mabena, after another short silence. “If you need my help, give me a set of coordinates at which to rendezvous.”
Kesbe gave them to him and added her lasercom frequency, thinking she might have a chance to use the thing if she got to altitude. “Watch out when you arrive,” she cautioned. “There may be a few sparks flying.”
“Caution noted,” replied Mabena dryly. “Over and out.”
She put the radio aside, went forward and peered out a cabin port, studying the C-47’s wings. Thank the ancestors, or someone, that she hadn’t decided to have them re-painted in the original drab and olive but instead had decided on a metallic finish. She saw more than a few oily smears and mud spatters, however. Kesbe tried to picture the results of interposing Gooney’s aluminum alloy wing into the beam of a propulsion-feed laser. Anything non-reflective would be incinerated. That oil streak across the middle of the left wing might well cost her half that wing.
She yanked out her toolbox, praising the presence of a battery-powered portable grinder and some buffing disks. With luck she could clean up at least the top side of each wing before she took to the air. Maybe also the tail and the horizontal stabilizer. The more dark material she removed from the aircraft, the better chance she would have of keeping it in one piece under the onslaught of the feed-laser for the evacuation craft.
She remembered an ancient photograph she had seen while researching the history of the C-47. It showed one of Gooney Berg’s contemporaries so riddled with shell fragments that the remaining metal of the airframe barely held it together. Miraculously, that plane had brought home everyone aboard. Gooney might just be able to do the same thing, but Kesbe had the feeling that her C-47 might have just about used up all its allotted miracles. She got busy with the power tool.
Kesbe gave herself a half-hour by the sun’s movement of her shadow to get the worst of the exhaust and oil-stains off the wings. She stood up on the left wing, mopped her brow and hoped it would be enough. If it wasn’t, she’d know soon enough, when the C-47’s aluminum skin was seared open by the feed laser.
Perhaps, just perhaps, she’d be able to talk the expedition leader into calling off his mission and there would be no need for her to risk Gooney. She squinted up at the sky. In the end, it would be her and the unique capabilities of her ancient aircraft against the highly sophisticated vehicles and equipment of the evacuation team.
Nonetheless, when Kesbe made her way to the cockpit after a thorough pre-flight walkaround, she checked to be sure her repaired lasercom system would operate. She felt a hard lump in her throat as she fired up the engines. Because of her own mistakes and misjudgments, the old plane had already been pitted against the forces of weather and treacherous terrain. Now she was asking Gooney Berg to face a technology that had raced on for three hundred years while the C-47 lay entombed in glacial ice.
Just one more miracle, Grandmother Aronan. Just one more, and I’ll never ask again.
The flash of sunglare on the wings as she pivoted the plane around for the take-off run dazzled her momentarily. Perhaps she’d managed to do enough. Perhaps her crazy plan would work after all. And then the engines roared in her ears and the acceleration pressed her down and back in her seat as Gooney Berg swept off the mesa into the morning sky.
She blessed the absence of heavy cloud over the Barranca and the clear air that allowed her to see for kilometers across the great canyon. She began a large patrolling circle with the Pai Mesa at its center. The sky was a light but intense blue. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the distant horizon with her electronic binocular.
At first she thought the tiny speck might be a flaw in her lens. Then the speck grew to a dot and another appeared with it. A faint line of crimson light seemed to tether each ship to the top of the sky and a stronger beam shot out the back. The propulsion feed lasers beamed from a geosynchronous satellite overhead.
Kesbe shoved her viewer aside and got on the lasercom. Among other things, Mabena had given her the rescue force’s beam frequency. She hailed the incoming ships with her call sign and identified her aircraft.
“This is Commander Bridges from Canaback Search One,” replied a man’s voice. “We have been informed of your situation, Miss Temiya, and are proceeding as requested.”
“Canaback Search One, the situation has changed,” Kesbe replied. “Your assistance is not needed at this time.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Temiya. We may have misunderstood. Say again.”
Kesbe repeated her message, adding, “I made a mistake in judgment.”
“You reported via Tony Mabena that there are people living in the Barranca who are in danger from an alien species previously thought harmless. We have validated the first part of your report. Our on-board long-range bioscan has detected a habitation of human beings in this area. In addition, we have picked up an accompanying concentration of the aronan species.”
“Yes, it is true,” she answered, knowing now that she could no longer conceal the existence of the Pai Yinaye from the authorities. “But the rest of what I told you…was wrong.”
“We’ll find that out when we investigate,” said the voice, sounding a little gruffer.
“Please, leave them alone. If you want to punish or fine me for sending in a false alert, I’ll go with you to the base.”
“I regret we can’t do that, Miss Temiya. The fact is that you have discovered an unknown population that now needs to be brought under our jurisdiction.” The voice hardened. “It is also possible that either you’re lying or have been duped into cooperation with the target alien species. You may have also been drugged.”
Kesbe felt her temper flare at this bit of idiocy. “Drugged? How the hell could I be single-handing an antique C-47 if I were drugged? You fellows aren’t wanted and aren’t needed. I apologize. Now turn around and get your tails back to base.”
“Miss Temiya, the kind of aircraft you are flying has no bearing on this. In fact I suggest you land your anachronism and let us transport you back to base.”
“Let me tell you something, Commander,” Kesbe had to work hard to keep from shouting into the lasercom pickup. These people are not part of your so-called jurisdiction and never have been. They came here hundreds of years ago to escape your world and everything it represents. If you don’t call off this damned invasion, because that’s what it is, I’ll show you just what my ‘anachronism’ can do.”
“I don’t imagine it can keep you from facing charges,” said the voice mildly, but Kesbe had already turned away form the lasercom pickup and was executing a wingover that would put Gooney Berg directly in the path of the feed laser for the first ship.
She had a wild and ridiculous vision of herself in feathers brandishing a war-club. “Watch out, General Custer,” she growled as the C-47’s engines rose into a snarl, “Us Injuns are gonna do it again.”
It was surprise that gained her the advantage. The laser-driven craft of the expedition might have expected her to fire at them with whatever clumsy antique weapons her ‘anachronism’ had. The men might have feared she would try to ram them, but they had no idea she would climb above and then dive to intercept the power laser feeding their ships from the satellites above.
Intense ruby light shimmered on Gooney’s left wing. The beam supplying power to a ship immediately below lanced back into the sky. Kesbe heard the com channel squawk and then pour out an assortment of curses, both ancient and modern.
Tell Geosync Four that we are not receiving their beam,” said a voice on a channel not intended for her. She heard a pause, then, “I don’t give a cannister of aliencrap fo
r what Sync Four says they’re sending. The beam’s gone and our storage cells are draining…”
Kesbe had hit the beam too fast. The shimmering vortex of light slid off the trailing edge of Gooney’s wing even though she tried to dump airspeed with a power-on stall. She wheeled the big plane through a steep turn. Below one banking wing, she saw the stratocraft canted over to one side and the feed laser arrowing past it to be lost in the thickening air below. Through the curved windshield of the Canaback ship, she saw uniformed men looking up at her in amazement and shaking their fists.
“Canaback Search One to Canaback Search Two,” Kesbe heard Bridges say. “Temiya is intercepting our input laser. Give her a blast to scare her off, and if she doesn’t run, knock her out of the sky.”
Kesbe let the big plane stall and then rode her down in a steep dive toward Canaback Search Two. She saw the muzzle of an energy weapon poking from a dome on the ship and rotating toward her. She wasn’t going to give it a chance. She shoved the throttles forward, adding the power of the engines to the momentum of her dive. Canaback Two’s commander gave a yell.
“The crazy bitch is heading right for us! Collision alert!”
But Kesbe had no intention of sacrificing Gooney in a kamikaze attack. At the last minute, she jerked back on the yoke and roared across the top of the stratocraft. She hoped her passage had severed the feed laser from the second ship and that her propwash vortex had caught it. She swept around in a wide circle and was rewarded by the sight of Canaback Two bucking wildly in rough air.
An energy charge spat past her. Canaback One had recovered. Again she dived and swept past underneath the first stratocraft, again using air turbulence as an effective weapon. Her backwash sucked the light stratocraft behind her, then turned it loose, spinning it on its long axis. From the sounds she heard on the com channel, some of its occupants were having an abrupt and unpleasant introduction to the effects of motion sickness.
To prevent any rear-guard action on the part of Canaback Two, she gave it a dose of the same treatment and was satisfied to see the feed laser bouncing off the reflective metal of its fuselage as it spun wildly out of control.
“I can keep this up as long as I’ve got fuel,” she said into the com channel. “And Gooney Berg’s got big tanks. Anyone want to sign a peace treaty?”
She heard another round of ship-to-ship communication. “…no, I don’t know what the hell she is flying…more mass…creating those atmospheric vortices and disrupting the beam…I’m telling you we have never fought anything like this…she could ram us both and still come out in one piece.”
Kesbe cut in. “Gentlemen, this is a military version of a DC-3, known as a C-47. She has a few hundred years on her, but she has been known to tangle with better-built adversaries than your stratocraft and come out still flying.”
Commander Bridges got on her channel, threatening everything from planetary deportation to confiscation of her aircraft, Kesbe ignored him while climbing above the two Canaback ships in a spiral that allowed her to alternately intercept the feed lasers for both, causing more havoc.
The craft commanders sputtered indignantly, unable or unwilling to believe they had been bested by an ancient piece of junk. At last the outbursts got weaker and were interspersed with groans, retches and background warnings that the storage cells on both craft were weakening under the abuse.
“Are you ready to alter course away from Tuwayhoima?” she asked, and received a subdued reply. She circled above the two ships as they stabilized and retrieved their power beams. Then, off to the right, she saw another speck that rapidly grew into the form of another stratocraft. Her spirits sagged momentarily, then lifted as she trained her electronic binocular on the newcomer. It was a civilian, not military, configuration. In the front seat, beneath the plex dome of the little skycraft, she saw a familiar figure.
“Greetings to you, dear pilot,” came Mabena’s lilt over the lasercom. “I thought you might require assistance. However, you don’t appear to need it.”
“You missed the fun, Tony. But I may need a little moral support. Help me herd these jokers to the nearest landing site that’s not too rough for them and we’ll have ourselves a little pow-wow.”
“Lead on, dear pilot,” Mabena answered. “But please, try not to put any more disfiguring marks on the aircraft.”
Kesbe glanced out the cockpit window. She saw numerous scorches and blisters where metal had nearly-melted. She felt cold, knowing it had been a close thing after all. But she had turned the invasion away from Tuwayhoima, at least for now.
The commander of Canaback Search One stumbled from his craft, running a hand through rumpled hair. As Kesbe watched Tony Mabena scramble from his craft, she was relieved to see a heavy laser-rifle slung across his shoulder. Although corrosion stained its metal, Kesbe had no doubt that the thing was in excellent working order.
Commander Bridges noticed it too and Kesbe saw him make another swipe through his hair. She cleared her voice as she jumped down from the C-47’s cargo door. “Commander, I’d advise you and your men to leave all sidearms in the craft. This is meant to be a peaceable discussion. Tony?”
Mabena grinned and hefted the rifle, enjoying the role of enforcer. Bridges’ face was the color and texture of sour milk as he said, “Let me state again that you’re interfering with planetary police authority. You may have the upper hand now,” he glanced at Tony’s big gun. “but you’ll inevitably face charges.”
“Surrender now while you’re still feeling merciful?” Kesbe grinned. “No thanks.”
“Miss Temiya, you’re obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty.”
“I’m not sure this is your duty,” Kesbe said slowly. Bridges’ hand slid from his hair to the back of his neck and rubbed hard. “And I’m not sure the authority you represent does have legal jurisdiction in this situation.”
“The planetary government of Oneway…” Bridges began.
“Is made up of a bunch of ex-squatters who think because they got here first, they own the planet.”
“Miss Temiya, if you would study the history of Oneway, you would see that you’re mistaken. This world was legally opened for colonization in 2223 and the government was set by the first settlers.”
“The first settlers did not come in 2223,” Kesbe said. “They came in 2064. On the basis of first claim, the Pai Yinaye have possession of this planet. They are not in your jurisdiction. If anything, you are in theirs.”
“You have no evidence to back up your story,” Bridges tried.
“It won’t do, Commander. You can’t say that the people don’t exist—your ship’s scanners detected them. And they are living in the same place where the supposedly ‘lost’ colony was founded.” She paused. “I can prove that the Pai Yinaye are descendants of the Blue Star colonists. I’ll do it in court if I have to.”
Bridges folded his arms. “All right. Why don’t you just accompany us to this village, or whatever it is, and let us assess the situation?”
Kesbe eyed him. “I don’t trust your way of assessing things. Even if I did, I know that the Pai don’t want any interference from outside. The fact that I came has upset things enough.”
“These people are going to have to come to grips with the fact that there is another world around them. I think you’re trying to be too protective.” Bridges said.
“That may be,” she answered. “However, if you know anything about history at all, Commander, especially Terran history of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, you know that the opposite is more often the case.” She paused. “I am Pueblo, like the Pai. My tribe was destroyed by the intrusion of the ‘other world around it.’ You are right that the Pai will eventually have to accept the existence of our civilization. But I am determined that it will be done on their terms, Commander.”
Behind her, she heard Tony Mabena chuckle softly. “Gentlemen, she is immovable on that point. And I agree.”
Bridges and his men squinted at
her. “Someone will find this hidden village of yours eventually. You’ve only delayed the inevitable.”
“That’s enough for me, and for them,” Kesbe answered. “Your part in this is over, Commander. Get in your ships and go.”
Bridges’ men looked at him and began to grumble. He shrugged his shoulders and stalked toward Canaback Search One.
“Tony, you have my leave to singe some tailfeathers if you think anyone is dragging their ass,” Kesbe said, loud enough to be heard over the mutter.
The crew were soon aboard their ships and as soon as both craft had recovered their feed laser beam from the geosync station, they rose and sped away across the great canyon.
Kesbe leaned against the sidepanel of Tony’s craft. She felt the shakes coming on, as they always did after an adrenaline high. She felt a hand steady her and looked up into Mabena’s tattooed face.
“You are a warrior, dear pilot,” the soft voice said. “The ones you are fighting for are lucky to have one such as you to champion them.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten very far without your extra hardware,” Kesbe answered. “Thanks for the help.”
He said something she didn’t expect. “I would like to meet the Pai Yinaye, if possible.”
She bit her lip. “I think you will, Tony, but not immediately.”
He nodded. “Unfinished business?”
“You might say that.” She was thinking very hard about Baqui Iba.
Chapter 22
Leaving Tony Mabena in Gooney Berg, Kesbe ran down the mesa path to Tuwayhoima. She took the path to Aronan House and rushed in past the startled door-warden only to find that Baqui Iba was not there.
“We saw it last the previous night when it left its perch after the Rain Star had passed zenith,” the boy told her. “It has not returned.”
Kesbe felt despair welling inside her. She walked down the path from Aronan House with dragging feet, wondering where Baqui Iba might have fled in its pain and betrayal. It had borne the loss of one partner already. She had wounded it again by the betrayal of another. She flung back her hair, feeling the wind dry the sweat on her scalp. If Baqui Iba was lost to her now, why stay? Her role in the fight to save the Pai Yinaye would take place not here in the Barranca but in the records offices and courts at Oneway’s governmental center.
