Imperial Bounty (27 page)

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 from 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.

They climbed over the side and helped Mara snap the mooring lines to the large eyebolts sunk into the plain for that purpose. Otherwise the large vehicle could be blown away by a sudden storm. Once the wagon was secure they followed her toward town. The sun was dipping behind the horizon, now, soon to disappear.

The flatness of the plain quickly gave way to a gentle slope. Their path was wide and unpaved but rock hard from constant use. Up ahead McCade could see the dim shapes of the outlying domes and hear the shouts of those fighting the fires. Smoke swirled everywhere, irritating his eyes and making it hard to breathe. They came to a stop when a middle-aged man with a blackened face and a grim expression appeared out of the smoke. He nodded in Mara's direction.

"Hello, Mara. So you're here. The Walkers sent word to expect you." There was no welcome in his voice or his eyes. They were angry and resentful. He turned to the others. "My name's Nick. Welcome to Trailhead . . . or what's left of it. I don't know what this is all about, but I sure hope it's worth it." And with that he turned his back on them and started back up the trail.

McCade looked at Mara and she shrugged. Silently they followed Nick up the trail. It didn't take long to see why he felt the way he did. For all practical purposes Trailhead was a memory. Many of the low earthen domes had been crushed. Others were surrounded by flames fed by some sort of liquid that burned with intense heat. As they reached the top of the low hill Nick stopped and pointed wordlessly down into the center of the settlement below. McCade looked and found his worst fears had come true.

Sprawled across the small valley was the long broken shape of an Imperial Intruder. There was no mistaking the ship's lethal ugliness. Intruders were specifically designed for landings under combat conditions, but the Wind World had turned this one into a pile of useless scrap. The fires which burned around it, and reflected off its polished surface, made it look like a vision from hell. Muffled explosions could be heard as internal fires found and set off stored explosives. Rivers of flame were born deep inside the ship to flow out and between the domes. Here and there figures darted through the flames, searching for survivors, salvaging what they could.

Mara turned away from the destruction and placed a hand on Nick's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Nick. I know that doesn't help, but please believe me, it's more important than you can imagine." She hesitated for a moment as if considering her options, and then spoke in a low, urgent voice, quickly outlining what was happening and why.

When she'd finished, much of the anger had disappeared from Nick's eyes, leaving only sadness behind. He nodded. "Yes, I'll do what I can. You'll have to catch those bastards before they can reach Chimehome."

"Catch them?" McCade and Mara asked together.

"Yes," Nick replied, anger flooding his features once more. "Right after the ship crashed, a hatch opened and an armed crawler rolled out. An officer, Major Tell, Tellor—something like that—asked me for directions to Chimehome, and like an idiot I told him. Then they took off. Didn't even try to help their own . . . much less ours."

The three men looked at each other. Major Tellor! Here. It certainly sounded like him. All three remembered the enjoyment in his eyes as he'd left them to die in the coliseum. Their situation had just gone from bad to worse.

"All right," McCade said grimly. "They've got a head start . . . and we've got to stop them before they reach Chimehome. Is there anything around here which can match that crawler for speed?"

Nick thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, we've got a few tractors for pushing ore around, but nothing to match that military job."

Mara shook her head. "Even if there was, we'd be crazy to race them, that crawler won't make it even halfway to Chimehome."

Nick nodded his agreement.

Seeing the doubt in McCade's eyes Mara said, "The planet will stop them. That's why we don't use crawlers ourselves. This world turns unprotected machinery into junk faster than you can bring it in. All we have to do is grab a couple of Nuags and plod along. They'll be waiting for us."

McCade had his doubts, but Mara seemed certain, and from what Nick said there wasn't much choice. Of greater concern was what lay ahead. Assuming Mara was correct, something nasty would eventually happen to the Imperial crawler, and as a result, they would run into Major Tellor and an undetermined number of marines. And knowing Tellor, his troops wouldn't be sitting around reading poetry to each other. They'd either be hiking toward Chimehome on foot, a less than pleasant experience on the Wind World, or, more likely, laying in ambush, hoping to acquire some new transportation. Like a couple of Nuags for example. With us thrown in as a bonus, McCade thought to himself. It wasn't a very pleasant thought.

At some time during his long career Tellor had probably been more uncomfortable than he was right now, but he couldn't remember when. For almost half a day he'd been waiting. It was the sound that bothered him most: a low rumble, which rose and fell endlessly. Try as he might he couldn't get rid of it. He'd tried ignoring it, accepting it, and humming over it. Nothing worked.

Gritting his teeth, he stared at the point where the path disappeared around the bend, and willed some sort of transportation to appear. Anything. Anything that would get him up the path to Chimehome. Sweeping his powerful glasses across the land his eyes confirmed what his mind already knew. Had known even in orbit. Out here it was a long way between bars.

The space jockeys had provided a fairly decent aerial survey map showing all the major roads, settlements, and ground features for the area. The cloud cover had obscured a few areas, Chimehome among them, but all things considered it was a good map. One glance told him: One, this was wide open country with very little vegetation or other natural obstacles, in other words, tank country, and two, for some stupid reason all the roads meandered from place to place. Solution, ignore 'em. The quickest way from point to point is always a straight line. So Tellor laid his plans accordingly, but instead of a nice neat landing, the damn winds had smeared the Intruder all over the landscape.

Luckily, about ten percent of his insertion team survived the crash, as did one of his five armored vehicles. Not good, but not bad all things considered. The idea of aborting his mission never even occurred to him. Duty first.

They had made pretty good time at first, slowed by the wind, but still burning up the miles. As the only surviving driver, Blenko had the con. He was a homely man, with raw asymmetrical features, stooped shoulders, and tiny little white hands. As he drove they darted here and there, uncertain and afraid.

The road was not a road in the conventional sense. No intelligence had planned and then paved it. It went where Nuags had gone for thousands of years.

Seeing no reason to follow the road's meandering course, Tellor ordered Blenko to ignore it. So the crawler cut across great loops of road doing in minutes what it took Nuags hours to do. It looked like they'd reach the settlement in time for lunch the next day. And then, just when things were going so well, it all came apart. They were rolling across the floor of a valley, heading toward the far slope, when disaster struck.

Looking left, Blenko saw a brown wall of wind-borne sand scudding toward them, and shrugged. No big deal he told himself, just another dust storm. Since leaving the ship they'd rolled through three or four small ones without a hitch, and no wonder, it takes a lot to stop an armored crawler. Blenko's flat brown eyes flicked over the gauges. All four intake filters looked good, both engines, okay, all systems go. Satisfied there was nothing to fear, Blenko slumped back, returning his attention to a well-worn fantasy concerning Sergeant Okada.

At first Tellor agreed with Blenko's superficial assessment of the storm, but as he watched it race toward them, he began to wonder, and wonder turned to doubt, and then doubt to certainty. Punching the port screens up to full mag be felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Sol! That thing was carrying more than just sand! It was picking up boulders and tossing them around like feathers! Other shapes were dimly visible within the brown mist too, including something which looked a lot like one of those big animals the local colonists used, and other stuff as well. Now the brown wall was only a mile away and moving with incredible speed. They'd never outrun it, and if the storm hit them broadside, those rocks would pound the crawler into pieces.

"Turn into the storm, Blenko! Turn left, damnit!"

Tellor could still see the vacant look in Blenko's eyes as the marine slowly turned his attention from a vision of Okada's naked buttocks to his commanding officer's urgent voice. Finally Tellor's words seemed to register, and Blenko's tiny white hands fluttered from one control to the next, slowly turning the crawler into the storm. Had he reacted faster they might have made it.

Thunderclaps of sound came at them as the storm beat the crawler like a gong, pushing it higher and higher, finally flipping it over altogether, and exposing its vulnerable underside to the full fury of the storm. Within seconds the rock bombardment had destroyed the crawler's drive-train, ripped off a track, and holed the main fuel tank. Ten minutes later the storm was gone, leaving three dead marines, a wrecked crawler, and a furious Major in its wake. Once he realized the storm was over Tellor grabbed Blenko from behind, with every intention of killing him. Unfortunately his hands encountered no resistance. The driver was already dead.

Salvaging what they could from the wreckage, the marines trudged to the nearest loop of road, and dug in. Tellor sighed. So instead of rolling into Chimehome, he was lying on some very uncomfortable rocks, trying to shut out the sound of the blasted wind. Even if the interference suddenly disappeared, their remaining com set wasn't powerful enough to reach into space, so help was out of the question, and the storms made continuing on foot impossible. So, all he could do was wait, and hope some transportation would come along and fall into his trap.

And then, as if in answer to his prayers, something moved in the far distance. Whipping the binocam left, he stopped, hitting the autofocus button, and marveling at his good luck. He certainly deserved some, and there it was, one, no, two of those beetlelike animals. Where were their heads anyway? They'd been included in the pre-drop briefing, but he hadn't paid much attention. Nugs? No, Nuags. All he remembered was people rode under them, instead of on top, and that Nuags refused to deviate from their ancestral paths. Well, it didn't matter. A ride's a ride. Carefully chinning his mic on he whispered, "Objective in sight. Range, two thousand yards. Hold for my signal."

Eight double clicks echoed in Tellor's ear as each member of his team flicked their mic on and off twice. Good. Everyone was awake and paying attention.

The Nuags were closer now. Just a few more minutes and he'd spring the trap. His troops would slip out of their hiding places quickly surrounding the animals. They'd call for the passengers to surrender, and if they refused, go in after them. Either way they'd have to die. On a mission like this one it's a mistake to leave enemies or witnesses behind you. Those were the rules—good rules—rules which had protected him for many years. After all, what if by some twist of fate Claudia lost her bid for the throne? His sponsor would be gone, along with her the legal protection he presently enjoyed.

Suddenly something hard and cold was jammed into Tellor's right ear. He knew what it was. A gun barrel. The damned wind had allowed someone to sneak up on him unheard.

"Move and you're dead." For a split second Tellor considered going for his blaster but didn't. The voice was as hard and as cold as the steel in his ear. He felt an expert hand remove his sidearm, combat knife, and the tiny backup needler strapped to his ankle. He still had a small knife concealed in his belt, but that wasn't going to accomplish much against someone with a gun. Best to wait, and see how things went.