Rook had to laugh; either she knew what she was doing or she was one of those who got her kicks facedown. Rook had reason to believe it was the former, however. Yellow was set like an upsprung trap, her legs slightly bent, her fists clawed. At the same time, she was keeping an eye on the one she had already wounded and was more than ready for him when he pounced.
“You little witch!” the man snarled. “I’ll kill you!”
He moved in and swung a roundhouse left with little of the lightning that had characterized his first swing and none of the ambivalence of the second. But once again, Yellow was left untouched, and the momentum carried the man off the stage, practically into the arms of his henchmen.
“I’ve enjoyed our little dancing lesson,” Yellow joked, backing away somewhat. “But if it’s all the same to you, this place is paying me to sing” Her eyes darted right and left, plotting an escape if needed. “Of course, we can pick up where we left off after the show—you could sure use some work on your fox-trot, you know—and if you’re all nice boys, I’ll teach you to rumba.…”
The gang was closing in on her, and Rook was beginning to rethink her earlier evaluation of Yellow Dancer. Whatever happened now, she had some of it coming. Meanwhile the club owner had appeared on the stage to intercede. But Rook had to laugh again, grog making it up into her nose: Not only was the dude pushing seventy, but he began his little speech by referring to Yellow’s opponents as gentlemen!
“If you can’t control yourselves,” he continued, his white mustache twitching, “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave!”
You and what army, Rook said to herself, quoting the punch line of an old T’sentrati joke.
One of the toughs, a mean-looking little guy in a muscle shirt, had whipped out a throwing knife during the old man’s attempted reprimand. He gave the knife a backhand toss now, sending it whizzing past the owner’s head and straight into the plywood wall behind the stage.
“Mind your manners, Gramps!” the youth cautioned.
Rook sighed tiredly, swallowed the last two drops of her drink, and stood up from the table.
“Boy, you guys sure have guts,” she told the gathered gang members. They turned slowly toward her as she knew they would, looks of disbelief on their faces. “Think you can handle her all by yourselves?”
This brought immediate catcalls and challenges from the rest of the room. Rook smiled for the audience’s benefit and winked at the gang leader. She had been through scenes like this too often to count, and she knew the leader’s type as well as she knew herself. She was confident she could take him, and that would eliminate the need to go one on one with the others. All she had to do was go after the leader’s pride, and she had already made a good start in that direction.…
“Blondie, take my advice and stay out of this or you’ll be next,” he warned her.
Rook looked away nonchalantly. “Maybe if two of you held her down while the others ran for reinforcements … Then you might have a chance.”
The catcalls increased in volume and originality. Even the leader cracked an appreciative smile. He steadied his shades and gave Rook the once-over. “A comedian.” He sneered. “Too bad for you I’ve got such a poor sense of humor, ’cause I’m gonna make you sorry you ever walked in here.”
The nasty little knife thrower produced a second shiv, but the leader motioned him back. “She’s mine,” he told his boys, and launched himself into a charge.
Rook had plenty of time to prepare and position herself; plus she had already sized up the guy’s strengths and weaknesses. He was coming at her full force, yelling at the top of his lungs, his hands at shoulder height slightly out front. On the balls of her feet now, Rook dropped herself into a crouch and brought her right arm in front of her face, elbow pointed outward. When the leader was within range, she twisted back, then sprang up and took her shot, catching the man square in the larynx.
Instantly, he went down on his knees, hands clutching his throat. “You almost killed me,” he managed to rasp.
“Well, come at me again and let’s see if I can get it right this time,” Rook answered him.
The room was full of applause and cheers by now; even some of the gang members were laughing.
Rook heard Yellow Dancer say, “I think the baboon’s overmatched,” just before the leader growled and shouted, “Stop laughing!”
Then the knife wielder started to move in …
Outside the bar, two Cyclones were added to the long row of cycles and various hybrid vehicles that lined the town’s main street. Scott and Rand glanced at the cycles and at the bar and traded questioning looks.
“Shall we go in?” Rand asked.
Scott shrugged and removed his helmet. “What’ve we got to lose?”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” Rand started to say, but Annie was already off the Cyclone and heading for the door.
“Come on, Rand. I’m dry enough to spit cotton.”
Rand exhaled forcibly and dismounted wondering just how he had let things get so out of hand. Just one more town, he had told himself. A place where he could feel all right about leaving Annie and saying a final farewell to Scott. Then it was going to be back to solo riding and the open road. But that had been three days and several towns ago, not one of which suited his needs. Nor did he have especially good feelings about this one. Two rows of ruined high-tech prefabs split by the northern highway and squeezed between the stone walls of an arid canyon, the place had a filthy, forlorn look to it. It seemed as though the town had surrendered long before the Invid’s arrival.
“They could at least clean the place up,” Rand said to Scott now. “Bunch of lazy slobs.…”
“You country boys do things differently, I suppose,” Scott said in a patronizing way.
Rand scowled. “At least we have enough self-respect to keep our homes from becoming pigsties. You wonder why I’d rather live off the land, Scott? Well, look around.”
“Oh, quit arguing, you two,” Annie said, stepping through the barroom’s swinging doors. “This dump isn’t so bad. What do you think they do for fun around here?”
Inside, the first thing that greeted their eyes was a knife fight.
An attractive young woman in a red bodysuit was squaring off against a mean-looking youth wielding what looked like a hunting knife. Onlookers were cheering and offering words of encouragement to both parties. On the room’s stage, a tall, lean female and a white-haired old man yelled for the fight to stop.
Scott stopped short. “It’s her!?”
“Who?” said Annie.
“She’s the one who helped us out the other day—the girl on the Cyclone!”
Rand’s eyes went wide. “The girl on the Cyclone? Now you tell me!… Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go—”
“No, hold up a minute.” Scott put his arm out to restrain Rand. “I’m sure she can handle herself all right.”
“But they’ll kill her,” said Annie.
Scott shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Rand decided that Scott might be right. The woman moved like a dancer, dodging the youth’s every thrust and overhand, her blond hair twirling about her face. One of the other men in the crowd was urging the knifer on with threats of his own.
“Stop your prancin’ around! Stick her, man! Stick her!”
But the woman wasn’t about to let that happen. She backed away with calculated deliberation, turning and folding at just the right moments. Rand could see that the rogue was losing patience and getting sloppy with his cover; he also noted that this was not lost on the woman in red. She set herself, legs wide, and waited for him to come in. Sure enough, the youth tried an over-the-top reverse and left himself wide open; the woman spun out from under it and completed her turn with a roundhouse kick that nailed him across the face, throwing him against one of the tables. The knifer went down as the table collapsed under him, but a second man, a large, dark-skinned tough wearing an earflapped cap, caught the woman f
rom behind in a full nelson. She tried to struggle free but found herself overpowered. At the same time a third member of the gang sauntered in and took the knife from his fallen comrade. He tapped the tip of the blade menacingly against the woman’s cheek.
“You can say good-bye to that pretty face of yours, sister,” Rand heard the man say.
Scott was already stepping in, as was the female singer, who had started to grab for the knife stuck in the wall behind the stage. But Rand moved quicker than both of them: He swept up a heavy half-empty goblet from a nearby table and hurled it, knocking the knife from the gang leader’s hand. As the youth screamed and dropped, holding his struck hand, Rand yelled, “Duck!” and launched a second glass.
Rook saw this one headed her way and stretched herself thin in the larger man’s hold, arms fully extended as she slithered down. The glass hit the man in the face, and his hold on her collapsed; he was holding his nose and moaning when Rook brought her boot down onto his instep and turned away out of reach.
“I’m gonna kill you for that!” the man yelled. But when he took his hands away from his face, he found himself staring at Scott’s drawn blaster.
“Get moving—all of you!” Scott told them.
Weapons were a common enough sight in the waste, but a blaster was seldom seen. Taken by surprise, the gang members began to back toward the swinging doors. “You win this one, soldier,” the leader threw over his shoulder. “But the war’s not over yet.”
In a moment the sounds of revving and departing cycles filled the bar.
Rook looked disdainfully at her rescuers; she recognized them as the three she had saved from an Invid setup in Laako three days before. The redheaded one named Rand was eyeing her appreciatively.
“Why’d you have to butt in?” Rook said harshly, and left the bar.
“Guess there’s no pleasing some people,” Rand threw after her.
“Swelled head!” said Annie, making a face and gesturing.
“Well, I’m grateful for your help,” said a lilting voice.
Rand turned and nearly fell over: It was Yellow Dancer! He hadn’t recognized her before and could hardly believe his eyes now. “It can’t be,” he stammered, unable to control his excitement. “I’ve seen you at least twenty times, but I never thought I’d get the chance.…” He turned and made a desperate lunge for a napkin and shoved it toward Yellow. “I know it’s silly, but … it’s for my kid sister, you know?”
Yellow smiled knowingly. The bar owner took a pen from his jacket pocket and passed it to her. “To your kid sister,” said Yellow, chuckling. “As always …”
Annie saw Scott’s look of bewilderment and said, “It’s Yellow Dancer. Haven’t you ever heard of her?”
Scott smiled thinly and shook his head.
“Boy, you’re really out of it, Scott.”
Scott ignored the comment and turned to the owner. “That gang, who are they?”
The man shrugged. “The usual riffraff. Their kind seem to be just about everywhere nowadays.”
“Yes, but what about the local authorities—have you thought of asking them to do something?”
Rand raised his eyes to the ceiling in a dramatic gesture and turned away embarrassed.
The manager stared at Scott a moment, then said, “Mister, those are the local authorities.”
CHAPTER
SIX
Tirolian society—that is, the generation of Terrans that grew to manhood and womanhood under T.R. Edwards, Dr. Emil Lang, and to some extent (by proxy, as it were), Admiral Rick and Commander Usa Hunter—took a decidedly different course than its counterpart on Earth (under Chairman Moran, Supreme Commander Leonard, et al.). Thanks to Edwards’s chauvinism, bigotry, and undisguised misogyny, one would certainly have been hard pressed to encounter the likes of a Dana Sterling or a Marie Crystal among the Tirolian contingent … Scott Bernard had been raised in such a milieu, and there were things, as well as attitudes, on Earth that he had never dreamed possible.
Xandu Reem, A Stranger at Home: A Biography of Scott Bernard
Ringo and his boys roared away from the bar and regrouped at the edge of town. Their cycles, one outfitted with a sidecar, were well equipped with weapons, and it would have been simple to blast and torch the bar; but that wasn’t really an option: Pops’ had the coldest beer within three hundred miles. So they decided to turn their frustrations against any newcomers who might wander into town; a bit of the old ultraviolence, as it had once been called. Instead, however, they soon found an even more suitable target in the form of the ex-soldier named Lunk, who had been in town on and off for the past two months. More than once Ringo had attempted to goad the man into a fight with less than satisfying results. The attempts had increased in frequency once Ringo found out something about Lunk’s recent military past, but still he was unable to push the man into a hand-to-hand confrontation.
But now, after his humiliating run-in with the strangers in the bar, Ringo was in no mood for subtlety or verbal provocation. No sooner had Lunk’s battered six-wheel personnel carrier lumbered by the gang’s edge-of-town position than Ringo ordered his men into pursuit. There was nothing like a little manhunting to pick you up when you were feeling down.
Lunk was twenty-five, a huge, barrel-chested man with almost brutish facial features: a wide, prominent chin, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, and a broad, flat nose. He had let his hair grow long these past few months and kept it out of his face with a yellow elastic headband. His size alone would have given most men pause, but there was something soft and secretive about him that often allowed smaller aggressive types to feel they could have a free hand with him.
One look at Ringo’s impromptu roadside gathering and Lunk knew that he was in for it; he told his companion, Kevin, to hang on and began to push the ancient APC along the town’s main street for all it was worth.
He could see four cycles in the carrier’s circular outboard rearview mirrors now; Ringo’s men were opening up with handlebar and faring-mounted weapons, toying with him as he swerved the heavy vehicle left and right.
“How many of them are there?!” Kevin asked in a panic from the shotgun seat.
“Too many!” Lunk yelled back as machine-gun rounds fractured the mirrors.
Two rockets exploded in the street in front of the APC, and Lunk braked hard, losing control. The vehicle slid off the roadway and crashed into an enormous pile of debris that had been ’dozed away from a fallen storefront. The impact left Lunk and Kevin momentarily stunned, but they quickly shook themselves out of it and scampered out of the carrier’s open top, taking careless and crazed giant strides down the back side of the heap.
Ringo and his boys threw their bikes into the pile with equal abandon, launching themselves over the top only to careen down the rear face, laughing maniacally all the while. Lunk and Kevin had taken an alleyway that led to the main street, so Ringo ordered his gang to split up, sending the sidecar cyclist one way and instructing the others to form up on his lead.
Lunk wasn’t aware of the trap until he saw the sidecar skid around a corner and head his way. Turning, he heard Ringo and the rest of the bikes behind him. He shoved Kevin toward the debris-strewn sidewalk, hoping they would be able to make it into one of the abandoned buildings, but at the same moment the sidecar driver gunned it and came down on them. One of Ringo’s gang—a dark-skinned dude every inch as big as Lunk—leaned out from the sidecar seat and made a grab for Kevin. Lunk flattened himself against the street, but Kevin sidestepped too late. Ringo’s man managed to get a handful of shirt and shoulder, and by the time Lunk looked up, Kevin was being dragged down the street by the cycle.
Lunk heard him scream for help but could do nothing; Ringo’s men were accelerating toward him now, shouting and yahooing. Lunk spun around and ran toward Pops’ bar. Halfway there, the sound of the cycles ringing in his ears, Lunk noticed that a group of men and women were gathered out front. And one of them was raising a weapon of some kind—
He dro
pped himself into a tuck-and-roll seconds before the weapon fired. The round impacted against an unbraced section of heaped-up vehicles and mecha parts and loosed some of it into a slide. Lunk heard shouts and the squeal of brakes behind him. One of the bikes went down, sliding uncontrolled along the street with a rasping, scraping sound. Lunk reached Pops’ just as Ringo’s cycle pulled up, but the gang leader found himself confronting the man with the weapon.
“You again,” Lunk heard Ringo seethe. “You’re really pressing your luck, robby.”
Hearing Ringo use the derisive slang term for a Robotech soldier, Lunk turned to study his rescuer. The man was straddling a Cyclone and wearing a uniform with patches Lunk couldn’t identify. Nor was the weapon familiar.
“Put your hands where I can see them,” the soldier told Ringo. “Now turn your cycles around and get out of here. The party’s over.”
Ringo adjusted his dark glasses and flashed one of his infamous grins. “Have it your way.…” He looked over at Lunk. “If you wanna see your friend alive, come on out to the ranch—if you have the guts, that is!”
The three cycles roared off, and the soldier asked about Lunk’s friend. Lunk quickly scanned the crowd: mostly locals he had seen before, but there were three or four he didn’t recognize. Two attractive women and some carrot-topped kid. Another Cyclone rider. They were staring at him expectantly.
“Stay out of it,” Lunk said, starting to walk off.
Spider stepped out of the crowd; they had ridden together previously, Spider, Lunk, and Kevin.…
“Hey, Lunk, you’re not going to just walk away?” Spider said to him questioningly. “We’ve gotta go get ’im, man. We can’t leave him with Ringo!”
Lunk stopped, hung his head, then resumed his heavy steps.
“With a friend like you, a guy doesn’t need enemies,” the soldier called out to the delight of the crowd.
Lunk spun around, ashamed but angry; Spider and the others were still waiting.
“All right,” the soldier was saying, strapping on some sort of pectoral armor. “Where’s this ranch? How far is it from here?”
Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 7
