Outlanders 14 Hell Rising, page 18
Grant smirked. "You really think you can get that piece of shit running?"
"Why not? It hasn't lain here all that long. No rust on it anywhere."
"If you do get it started, it'll make the devil's own noise, advertising us to any dragoons for miles around."
"I don't think there are any dragoons between here and New London."
"Yeah," Grant said dourly, "but the people who overran this place might be."
"What's that phrase Lakesh likes to use—`the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?"
"Providing they let us live long enough to tell them we're the enemies of their enemies. Somebody with a half-assed sniper rifle could pick us off on that thing at half a klick and we wouldn't know what hit us."
Kane decided to drop his end of the discussion. Grant's foul humor was easing into one of his periods of intractable stubbornness, and he knew from long experience arguing with the man was a waste of time.
It took four kicks to get the BSA Lightning lit off, but once it was running, the big 700 cc engine sounded smooth and well maintained. When it was purring nicely between Kane's legs, he pushed the choke lever all the way open, squeezed the brake and clutched it into bottom gear.
The Lightning jerked forward a bit. Kane heeled up the stand, brought up the revs and popped the clutch. The bike leaped forward in a wheelstand. Grant sprang aside, yelling something profane over the engine roar.
The torque came on like rocket thrusters as Kane struggled to hold the wheelie, dirt and gravel spewing from beneath the rear tire, lashing Grant's coattails. When Kane eased up on the throttle, the front wheel dropped with such force he jounced with a spine- compressing jolt in the saddle.
The bike slewed around in an S slide, and with muscle-straining effort, Kane barely managed to keep from laying it down. He rode around the perimeter, getting the feel of the big machine, sorting out the gears. He changed through from bottom to top, then back down again. The Lightning possessed more power than he imagined, but was smooth, totally responsive.
Kane carefully gave the steel steed a workout, cutting a few doughnuts and figure eights. Downshifting, he wheeled back to Grant. "Nothing to it. A hell of a lot better than your mule."
Grant brushed dirt from his black coat and said tonelessly, "Hee-haw."
THE CLOUDS WERE white wisps, resembling cotton threads against the clear azure of the morning sky. With the sun shining down, the English countryside was the epitome of bucolic beauty. However, the blacktop road winding through the hedgerows and meadows was anything but. It went from bad to worse, and, very occasionally back to bad. Kane and Grant were pummeled, jolted, jounced and bounced.
With the engine thrumming purposefully, the BSA Lightning took every obstacle in stride, lofting around potholes and ruts. Even Grant's weight on the seat behind Kane didn't slow it or affect its performance.
Kane found himself enjoying the ride immensely, feet planted firmly on the pegs, leaning and swinging his body like a pendulum to control the vibrating metal horse beneath him.
Grant leaned with him, as Kane shouted over his shoulder to do so, but he refused to put his arms around his waist. More than once, when they were swerving around a split in the pavement, Grant- nearly took a nasty spill.
The terrain on either side of the motorway alternated from woodland to open fields, with gently rolling hills. When they followed the road on their first visit, they had been chained in the back of a Land Rover and unable to see much of their surroundings. They recollected the drive from the Wildroot garrison to New London had taken more than an hour.
The road climbed up a steep grade, and the faint odor of brine tickled Kane's nostrils. As the bike topped the incline, they saw to their right a large body of water glimmering through breaks in the trees. Both men recalled how Brigid guessed it was Cardigan Bay.
At the foot of the slope, the motorway abruptly forked to the east and to the west. Kane downshifted to neutral, the engine idling. He dredged his memory for the direction the Land Rover had taken more than half a year ago.
"East, I believe," Grant said loudly into his ear.
Kane thought it over for a few seconds and nodded in agreement, guiding the Lightning along the eastward fork. The roadbed became progressively smoother, obviously repaved within the past few years.
As the two men swerved around a wide curve, smoke blossomed from a wall of shrubbery to their left. An AT rocket scorched overhead, a quick darting streak that bloomed into a yellow flame flower in the tree line on their right. The crimping explosion compressed their ears, and the bike shuddered from the jar of the concussive shock wave.
Grant yelled, "I fucking told you so!"
Kane screwed the BSA's throttle down and leaned forward, belly tight against the gas tank. The big machine roared ahead at full revs. As they swung around a lazy curve, they saw two armored cars, like the Land Rovers they remembered, turned broadside to block the motorway. They saw no one around the wags at first, then within seconds, six figures darted around from behind them, moving with fumbling, panicked haste.
They didn't see the red hip jackets or berets of the Imperial Dragoons; but they did recognize the type of subguns all of the men held.
Chapter 18
From behind the barricading vehicles about two hundred feet ahead, the men began firing their H&K MP-5s immediately.
Kane jerked the handlebars toward the left side because he saw more room on the ground between the rear of the Land Rover and a shallow culvert. There were also only two blastermen covering that side, even if the weapons were semiautomatic.
Crouched as low as he could and still see, with Grant pressed tight against his back, Kane ran at the left-hand wag with the bike's wheels in the claylike mire on the shoulder of the road.
Kane caught only blurred glimpses of the blaster-men, but he could see they wore quilted vests of bright red over coarse homespun shirts of green. Red half boots of dyed, crudely stitched deerskin shod their feet. Most of them were bearded, unlike the clean- shaved dragoons.
The stutter of autofire was easily audible over the engine roar, and chunks of asphalt jumped from the road ahead and behind them. Bullets thudded through the air over their heads. Kane felt a jarring shock against his right forearm as a round just touched the dense fabric of his coat sleeve and was deflected.
The two men with the MP-5s scattered when they realized Kane wasn't going to stop and allow them to shoot him and Grant at their leisure. If they had just stood their ground, they could have riddled bike and men at point-blank range. The fact that they flinched showed Kane they had little practical experience as coldhearts. Although a rough-looking crew, they were disorganized.
The Lightning shot through the mud, the front wheel spinning on the lip of the culvert. Kane straightened out and slid close to the roadbed for the tires to gain solid purchase. Grant detached and unpinned a gren from his harness as they sped past the rear of the Land Rover, tossing the lethal egg directly beneath the vehicle.
The two men didn't see the maneuver. The high-ex gren detonated with a brutal concussion, rupturing the gas tank. The fuel ignited instantly, and the explosion lifted the back of the wag, engulfing the pair of blastermen in flames.
The shock wave caused the bike to wobble dangerously, but Kane quickly brought it back under control. He glanced back to see the men rolling frantically over the road, wreathed in fire. Their companions beat at the flames with their red vests, trying to smother them.
When the BSA rounded another curve, skirting close to a flat-stoned wall, Kane downshifted. Over his shoulder he asked, "You all right?"
"Yeah," Grant retorted, "but only because we were lucky and they were amateurs. Who were those slaggers?"
"Not dragoons, that's for sure," replied Kane. "They acted surprised as all hell to see us."
"Especially coming from the direction of Wildroot. It was more like they were blocking the way from New London, not to it."
Kane nodded, a cold realization creeping to the forefront of his mind. "Mebbe we should have talked to them."
"They started shooting first," Grant declared flatly. "With a rocket launcher no less."
"That kind of overkill really paints them as amateurs ...trigger-happy stupes playing guard, looking for any excuse to show off with their new toys."
Gloomily, Grant said, "One of their new toys may be a radio. I think we can pretty much expect another welcoming committee. Guess there's no way now to turn around and get back to the gateway."
"You said we wouldn't do that except at the first sign of a dragoon," Kane reminded him.
"Yeah," Grant snapped with cold sarcasm. "I guess there's no way these stupes can lay an ambush and catch us in a cross fire like those snake-eyes. We're perfectly safe." He paused, then added harshly, "Hell, for all we know, the road is mined up ahead."
Kane pondered Grant's snide remarks for a few seconds, looked to the left and right, saw a narrow break in the stone wall and cut the motorcycle's wheels toward it.
They bounced over fallen slabs of stone, over logs, splashed across a shallow stream and then hit a thicket that slowed them down. Grant didn't question Kane, not even when thorns and briars tore at their clothes and scratched their faces and hands.
The motorcycle burst out of the thicket onto a gently rolling grassy sward. A herd of sheep, unnerved by the racket of the machine, scattered across the fields, bleating and bawling in dismay.
Turning the Lightning in the general direction of New London, Kane steered along the edge of the tree line, paralleling the road. The strategy certainly wasn't foolproof since even if more blasterman lay in wait along the motorway, they could still hear their approach and rush through the thicket to intercept them. At the very least, this route reduced their chances of riding into a cross fire. Also, it was very unlikely the meadows had been mined since grazing sheep could set them off.
Kane couldn't pilot the BSA at a high speed because of the many dips and ruts in the terrain, but he managed to maintain a fairly steady pace. The sun climbed higher in the sky, fleecy clouds thickening around it. The day promised to be comfortably warm. A very distant thunderclap rumbled over the hills. Startled, Grant tilted his head back, looking at the sky. "I don't see any storm clouds."
Another boom followed the first. Kane eased up on the throttle, bringing the motorcycle to a full stop, letting the engine idle at low revs. Both men strained their ears. Within seconds, they heard a third echoing thump, overlaid by a flurry of cracks.
"Not a storm," Kane announced grimly. "Artillery fire."
From the far side of the range of hills a smudge of gray-white smoke arose. Kane put the machine back in motion, wrestling it across a drainage ditch then up the face of the slope.
At the crest he braked so sharply to a halt, the motorcycle stalled out. He didn't try to kick it back to life. He stood straddling the bike and gazing at the panorama of violence spread out across the valley field below.
The ground quivered with explosions, the staccato stuttering of autofire. The meadow floor blossomed with flame and smoke. Although the distance was at least three hundred yards, both Grant and Kane easily picked out the bright red jackets of the Imperial Dragoons.
Three armored vehicles formed a loose crescent in the center of the valley, and from between and behind them, the scarlet-jacketed troopers ran to and fro.
Spear points of fire flickered in a rippling sequence from the H&K subguns in their hands. Kane guessed there were around twenty of them, although more could be inside the heavy-metal walls of the wags. Something about the way the dragoons moved suggested exhaustion, as if they were a squadron worn out by long days and nights of fighting.
They saw a two-wheeled L-6 WOMBAT recoilless cannon hooked to the bumper hitch of the middle wag. A dragoon manned the cannon, yanking the lanyard. Smoke and thunder gouted from the long barrel.
The shell screamed across the length of the field and impacted at the mouth of an overgrown draw between two bluffs.
"What the hell are they shooting at?" Grant grated, winging off the motorcycle. He squinted to see through the rising umbrella of dust.
From behind the brush came a sequence of little puffballs of white smoke and thudding reports. Mortar rounds burst among the huddle of dragoons and wags. An explosion lifted the center vehicle into the air and dumped it on its side, taking the WOMBAT artillery piece with it. The split gas tank vomited a torrent of orange flame.
The men who had used the wag for shelter dashed behind the remaining pair. The dragoons had placed their vehicles far enough apart so the explosion of the fuel tank didn't start a chain reaction. Still, their firing tapered off to sporadic crackles as they regrouped.
In that handful of seconds, the tangle of shrubbery between the two bluffs drew apart and a light assault car lunged out onto the floor of the valley. An erect figure wearing a brass helmet and a red vest over a green shirt stood behind a roll bar—mounted box-fed machine gun. A crest of feathers waved from the top of his headpiece. On his left arm he carried a round, brass-embossed shield. Grant and Kane realized they had seen a similar shield before.
Behind the wag trailed a column of similarly attired men. All of them were heavily armed with swords, assault rifles and subguns. The canopy of drifting smoke obscured their numbers, but Kane lost count at thirty anyway.
"The Celts," he said. "They've risen up against the Imperium."
Grant intoned, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You hope."
A line of explosions from the concealed mortar emplacements in the draw ripped open the earth in front of the wags, making it impossible for them to fire their own weapons with any degree of accuracy.
The assault car emerged from the pall of smoke, and the helmeted man gave intricate arm signals to the column running behind him. They instantly spread out in a horseshoe formation, forming an ever-widening circle. The discipline displayed by the green-and-red garbed men was impressive. They paid no attention to the mortar rounds arcing over their heads. A blinding barrier of fire, smoke and pulverized turf arose around the dragoons' wags.
The valley filled with the hammer of raking autofire, as well as screams and yells, both of pain and battle fever. A brief but concerted volley from the dragoons dropped half a dozen Celts but didn't slow the overall advance.
The helmeted man in the assault car took hold of the pistol grip of the mounted machine gun and held down the trigger. He swung it on its pintle in short left-to-right arcs, a tongue of fire lipping from the long, perforated barrel.
The rounds struck the heavy metal chassis of the wags with semi-musical clangs and little flaring sparks. Puffs of dust mushroomed up around the wags. Tires blew and two dragoons were slapped off their feet in tumbling, limb-twisting tangles. Other dragoons returned the fire.
The driver of the car clutched at his chest and slumped behind the wheel, but miraculously maintained a straight and steady course. He drove the vehicle toward the opening between the burning wag and the one on the far left. The gunner on the roll bar continued with his jackhammer drumming, the machine gun's cartridge belt writhing like a brass serpent, spent shell casings spewing from the ejector port in a glittering rain.
A dragoon sprang from cover, putting himself directly in the path of the onrushing car, the butt of his MP-5 jammed tight against his hip. Rounds from the heavy machine gun clawed open his torso from sternum to groin. The nose of the assault car smashed into him broadside, tossing him into the flames billowing from the undercarriage of the tipped-over wag.
The force of Celts swirled around the dragoons, the arms of the horseshoe meeting and closing in a circle. The wags and the crimson jackets disappeared behind a green-and-red wall of flesh and blood. The blasterfire built to a frenzied crescendo.
"That pretty much writes fini to that," Grant observed sagely.
Before Kane could reply, Grant suddenly uttered a gargling cry, half grunt of pain, half bellow of outrage. Flinging his arms out wide, back arched, he catapulted forward and nearly off the crest of the hill. He fell heavily, catching himself on his elbows.
Kane twisted swiftly on the Lightning's seat, looking behind him and down. Four men in green and red raced across the grassy sward toward the base of the slope. One of them shouldered a longblaster outfitted with a telescopic sight. As he ran, he clumsily worked the bolt action, cycling a fresh round into the chamber.
Snarling wordlessly, Kane flexed his wrist tendons and the Sin Eater filled his hand. A triburst roared from the barrel instantly. The range was too great for a handblaster so the rounds didn't find targets, but they came close enough. The men scattered, two of them dropping full-length to the ground.
Grant struggled to his knees, gasping for air. His hand probed the center of his back. Kane didn't see a hole in the coat. The tough fabric had deflected the rifle bullet, but the kinetic shock had knocked the wind from Grant's lungs.
