Imperial Bounty

by William C. Dietz

  Mara however was their secret weapon. In spite of Phil's repeated objections she had insisted on hiding in a pit about five hundred yards out from their make-shift fort. They'd used a roller bush to disguise the opening, and tied some more down as well, since they were usually found in groups. Nonetheless it was a dangerous place to be. Once they located her, the bandits could easily cut her off. On the other hand they wouldn't expect her to be outside the fort, and the combination of surprise, plus her mini-launcher might just do the trick. "Well, it oughta scare the hell out of them anyway," McCade told himself.

  Jubal grinned. There they were, just waiting for him to come along and scoop 'em up. How considerate! He pushed the stick forward, putting the plane into a long shallow dive. Up ahead he saw three dots which quickly grew into Nuags. They were spaced out to form the three points of a triangle. At first he thought they'd been hobbled that way. Then he realized they were dead. And someone had built a low wall between them too. Smart. But it wouldn't do any good. Flipping a switch on his instrument panel he activated both energy weapons. There was no point in getting tricky. Just strafe the area until everything was dead. Simple and effective. He grinned. Given the chance, Yako would no doubt waste a lot of time creating some fancy strategy to accomplish the same thing. Silly bastard. Now the ground was rushing up fast. Jubal released the safety and pushed the red button mounted on the top of his stick. Twin beams of lethal energy lanced down to cut parallel black lines across the ground below.

  The little plane came in much faster than McCade had expected. Instead of shooting back, he found himself diving for the ground, hoping he wouldn't get his ass shot off. The energy beams sizzled as they cut a deep trench through the Nuag's corpse. McCade spit sand and swore. At this rate their fort wasn't going to last very long.

  One after another the planes screamed over, their energy beams crisscrossing the compound, quickly reducing the Nuags to large lumps of charred meat. Try as they might, the three men found they could do little more than snap off an occasional shot. The little planes were just too fast and maneuverable.

  Yako kicked his right rudder pedal and banked left. By now both wings had made two or three passes apiece, and as far as he could see, all they'd done was cook a few Nuags, and waste a lot of gas. At this rate they'd soon be forced to land and fight on foot, something which not only reduced their advantage, but seemed somehow demeaning. Pilots should fly, not slog around on the ground. As usual Jubal was using brute force instead of brains. Of course you can't use what you don't have. Down below he saw the occasional wink of an energy weapon, but thus far their fire had been completely ineffectual. He'd counted three defenders so far. Yako frowned. Shouldn't there be four? According to the messenger, two men and some sort of an alien had been with Mara at Thirty Mile Inn. So where was number four?

  Mara peeked out from under the roller bush to see the planes buzzing and diving over the fort like motorized birds of prey. It was time to make her move. She'd forced herself to wait until the bandits were completely occupied with the fort. Ignoring the pain in her side, she eased the launcher up, until it was just barely sticking out from under the prickly vegetation. As she peered into the tiny sight the planes suddenly grew larger. She noticed half were red and the other half bright blue. Each had a number painted on its wing. A blue plane with the number one inscribed on its wings was circling the compound, apparently looking the situation over. "Good, number one. You can be the first to die." She squeezed the trigger, and there was a whoosh of displaced air as the heat-seeking missile went on its way.

  McCade looked up at the blue plane with the number one painted on its wings. The "blue one"! The one he shouldn't kill! And he hadn't told the others. They'd maintained radio silence for fear the Wind Riders would monitor their frequency, but McCade felt sure this was important, so he touched his throat mike. "The blue plane with the number one—whatever you do—don't shoot it down!"

  "What?" Mara demanded. "Why? Not that it matters because I just . . ."

  She never finished her sentence because at that moment the missile hit and exploded. Hot shrapnel flew in every direction, and by chance, a chunk of hot metal hit another plane's fuel tank and blew it out of the air as well.

  Chunks of wreckage crashed all around the fort sending up a cloud of billowing black smoke. Mara was still reloading when the blue plane with the number one painted on its wings dove out of the smoke and came her way. She hadn't hit it after all! Not that she could see why it made a difference. One of the other blue planes must have swung in front of it and been hit instead. Oh, well, better late than never, she'd nail him now. The plane quickly filled her sight, and her finger was resting on the trigger, when McCade said, "Don't fire, Mara! Let him go!"

  She dived for the bottom of her hole and swore when an energy beam sliced along one side of her hole splattering her with globs of melted sand. Suddenly her side began to hurt even more. Reaching down, Mara found her wound had opened up. She fumbled out a self-sealing battle dressing and slapped it on. "Damn you, McCade, you'd better have one helluva good reason for this!"

  "I do," McCade replied, "at least I think I do. I'll explain it later, when you're in a better mood. In the meantime perhaps you'd oblige us by cooking a few more of these bastards. Just leave number one alone."

  Twisting herself around in the small hole, Mara managed to gain her feet once more. Picking up the launcher she aimed it toward the wheeling planes and picked out another blue target. "All right, I'll try." She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. The bastard in the "blue one" had located her, and was coming in for the kill. She forced him out of her mind as she picked a target.

  Yako was shaking with rage. Two planes! Two pilots! He'd kill her for that. He could see her clearly. Her damned launcher was aimed toward the other planes. Why not him? Surely she must see him coming. Well, never mind. All he had to do was hold it steady and then fire. There was a puff of vapor, and he knew another missile was on its way. He knew he shouldn't look, but found he couldn't resist. Damn! The miserable bitch had done it again! Another blue plane exploded into a thousand pieces. Why didn't she aim at one of Jubal's planes? Suddenly he realized he'd already passed over Mara's hiding place, and there, right in front of him, flying like he didn't have a care in the world, was Jubal. Something deep inside Yako suddenly snapped. A wave of anger and resentment flooded through him. When he squeezed the trigger he did it without conscious thought. The twin beams of blue energy cut Jubal's plane in half. Both pieces spun into the ground with tremendous force and burst into flames. For a moment there was silence, as they worked to absorb what they'd just seen, and then there was chaos, as everyone tried to talk at once.

  "Did you see that? Yako just killed the boss! Let's nail the bastard."

  "Try it and you're dead meat," a blue pilot replied.

  "Oh, yeah?"

  And suddenly the sky was full of dueling planes. McCade looked on with amazement as the ultra lights wheeled, soared, and dived in a clumsy parody of air combat. In spite of the way the blue plane had blown the red plane out of the air, the dueling pilots didn't seem to be doing much damage to each other, although they were putting on a spectacular show. Even though McCade didn't have the slightest idea why the two groups were fighting, he felt sure it had something to do with the woman in his dream, and what she'd told him. And he knew it was going to save their lives. As the Sky Riders fought each other, they moved farther and farther away, until finally disappearing toward the west.

  Mara walked in, and one by one the exhausted defenders emerged from their hiding places to sit slumped in the shelter of a half-burned Nuag. McCade told them about the dream, and though Mara had seen the Walkers do even stranger things, she was still amazed, and said, "Then help is probably on the way."

  They all nodded, just happy to be alive, too tired to worry about the future.

  Eighteen

  McCade rubbed a bleary, bloodshot eye, and looked again. It was still there. Maybe he wasn't hallucinatin
g after all. Maybe there really was a big yellow sail coming his way. He'd been watching it for some time now. It had gradually grown from a drifting dot to a large splash of color. The sail was triangular in shape like those used on any planet with enough water to float a boat. But according to Mara's maps they weren't near any water, so the sail must belong to something else. The sail suddenly flip-flopped. Whatever it was had just tacked, and was now headed directly at him. The Wind Riders again? Coming to finish them off? Or some of Mara's friends—coming to the rescue. Which? There was no way to tell.

  They had discussed the possibility of hiking to the next way station, but Mara had objected. She felt they were better off staying where they were. In her opinion McCade's dream proved that the Walkers knew where they were, and knew they needed help. Something about the way she said it made McCade wonder if she wasn't just a bit jealous. After all, she was a Walker herself, but for some reason he'd had the dream. Anyway they'd agreed to wait for a while and see if some help came along. Now somebody was coming . . . and the question was who.

  He pulled back the corner of the emergency tarp and touched Mara's shoulder. Rico woke in midsnore, and jumped to his feet, while the other two were still untangling themselves. "What's up, sport?"

  McCade nodded toward the plain. "We've got company."

  "Bandits?"

  McCade shrugged. "Maybe . . . maybe not. Let's see what Mara thinks."

  Mara had overheard, and wasted no time scrambling up onto the Nuag. She gave a whoop of excitement, turned, and slid to the ground. "I told you they'd help us! They sent a wind wagon. Grab your stuff and let's go. We'll have to jump it on the run. Once they stop it takes 'em forever to get going again."

  Each grabbed their weapon and a pack prepared earlier, slipping their arms through the straps as they followed Mara out onto the plain. In spite of her wound, Mara was way ahead of them. Phil had given her some kind of a painkiller and apparently it was working.

  The sail was closer now, and McCade saw it was supported by a metal mast, which jutted upward from a low boxy platform. Since the wind wagon was coming straight at them it was hard to see much more, but it was certainly fast, bearing down on them at twenty or thirty miles an hour.

  Phil frowned. "Aren't they going to slow down?"

  Mara laughed. "'They' are an 'it,' and the answer is 'not much.' Come on!" And with that she started running again.

  There was little the others could do but follow. As he broke into a run McCade decided he'd finally lost his mind. What a silly way to die. Run over by a landlocked sailboat on some rim world! Claudia would love it. She wouldn't even pay a bounty on him. That at least would have cost her something. It was close now, so close he could see the welds holding it together, and hear the big sail slapping against a stay. Just as he decided his only chance lay in falling flat and letting it roll over him, he heard a klaxon go off, and the machine began to turn. It was starting to tack!

  "Now!" Mara yelled, leaping for the short ladder which was welded to the hull. Three quick steps and she was over the top, turning to shout encouragement at the others. Phil went into partial augmentation. He took three giant strides and jumped. Huge paws caught the top edge of the hull, while powerful muscles pulled him up, and over. Rico, meanwhile, had managed to jump onto the lowest step of the ladder. He hung on with one hand, stretching the other out towards McCade.

  "Come on, ol' sport, you can make it."

  But McCade knew Rico was wrong. He was running as fast as he could, and he still wasn't going to make it. Bit by bit the distance between him and Rico's outstretched hand grew larger. Then he heard a crack of sound, and the sail started to flap as it lost the wind. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the heavy boom swinging toward him. He jumped, wrapped his arms around the boom as it passed overhead, and swore as it picked up speed. He'd have to drop off when it passed over the hull, otherwise it would throw him off when it crossed over the far side and was jerked to a halt. Everything was a blur, so he closed his eyes, let go, and hoped for the best.

  He landed on his pack. It broke his fall but knocked the wind out of him. The part of his mind not occupied with obtaining more oxygen suddenly realized that he'd lost his energy rifle. That wasn't exactly good news, but it was better than lying in the dirt, watching the wind wagon race away. He opened his eyes to find himself looking up at Rico. The wind tugged at Rico's hair and ruffled his beard. He wore a big grin. "Always showin' off. Maybe if you'd cut back on them cigars you could run a bit faster."

  Still unable to speak due to a lack of oxygen, McCade offered the other man an ancient gesture. Rico laughed and helped him up.

  The wind wagon had come about, and was making good time back across the plain. Now that he was on his feet McCade saw the hull was a large metal triangle. The sides were low but strong. The mast was made of metal, and was located about halfway down the wagon's length. A quick glance over the side confirmed his original impression that it was equipped with three wheels. Two were located on either side of the stern, and one in the bow, which was used for steering. The hull was about fifty feet across at its widest point, and seventy or eighty feet long. A network of wire stays supported the mast, while a host of lines snaked down through pulleys and power winches, to disappear into a sealed metal box. Since there was no crew in sight, and nowhere for them to hide, McCade assumed the metal box housed some sort of a computer, which controlled the ship via sensors and servo motors. The whole thing was scarred and pitted from countless collisions with windborne debris. Almost every square foot of sail showed signs of repair. The whole thing worked nonetheless.

  "Well, what do you think?" Mara asked, gesturing toward the rest of the machine. McCade's reply was forestalled when a sudden gust of wind hit the sail, causing the left rear wheel to leave the ground, and throwing them off their feet. A few seconds later the computer made a minute correction and the wheel thumped back down.

  McCade looked at Mara, and they both laughed until Mara grabbed her side, and said, "Enough . . . it hurts when I laugh."

  As they helped each other up McCade said, "It's a bit treacherous, but it sure beats walking."

  "Or watching Nuags rot in the sun," Mara agreed, brushing herself off. "Apparently this was the best the Walkers could come up with on short notice."

  "I won't even ask how they knew we needed it," McCade said, looking around. "What are these rigs normally used for anyway?"

  "Ore carriers," she replied, gesturing toward the bow. "And," she continued, "once you've built a wind wagon it's cheap to run. As you can see, they don't need any crew, and the computer's solar powered. Besides catching the wind, the sail also acts as a solar collector and, even with all our clouds, puts out more power than the computer can use."

  "So why the Nuags then?" McCade asked, leaning back to look at the huge sail. "Why not use these babies instead?"

  Mara smiled. "They're great out on the plains, but completely worthless in the hills and mountains. Which by the way is where we're headed." She pointed toward the distant horizon.

  By squinting his eyes, McCade could just barely make out a dark smear above the plains, and beyond that a vague darkness that might have been mountains.

  Hours passed, interrupted only by the hooting of the klaxon each time they tacked, and a somewhat spartan meal of emergency rations. Like the others, McCade passed the time by taking short naps, and then getting up to see how much progress they'd made since the last time he'd looked. Finally he stood to find that what had once been a dark smear had now resolved into low rolling foothills, and the darkness beyond them had indeed turned into mountains, which though rounded off by a million years of wind and rain, still reached up to hide their peaks in lowlying clouds. Now the sun was low in the sky, throwing softly rounded shadows out beyond the foothills, making even the Wind World's harsh landscape seem pretty.

  "Is that smoke?" It was Rico, pointing off to the right.

  McCade looked out beyond the bow, and sure enough, smoke was pouring up f
rom the edge of the plain. Now Mara joined them and eyed the column of smoke with obvious concern. "It's coming from Trailhead, a small settlement, which also happens to be our destination. I can't imagine what's burning. The whole place is made out of shaped earth, reinforced with rock."

  McCade noticed the smoke went straight up for several hundred feet before strong winds whipped it away. He had a pretty good idea what could have caused the smoke, but he hoped he was wrong. He'd seen smoke like that before. A glance in Rico's direction told him the other man had similar thoughts. They'd know soon enough.

  Twenty minutes later the wind wagon's klaxon sounded three short blasts. There was a whine of servo motors and the clacking of winches as the computer started to lower the sail. At the same time the boom began to rotate, winding the sail around itself, creating a neat cylinder of fabric. Meanwhile the wagon slowly coasted to a stop. There were three similar craft moored a short distance away, and beyond them McCade could see the outskirts of the settlement. Low rounded warehouses and the like mostly, the kind of buildings that go with light industry. Behind them smoke billowed up to fill the sky and the crackle of flames was clearly heard. Now McCade was almost certain this was no ordinary fire.