Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 22
Now and then he saw herds of wildebeest and cattle, and once there was a group of black men in long skirts and round red caps, walking single tile. They stopped and, their faces completely blank, stared upward solemnly as the Manta winged overhead, but they didn't run.
Looking toward the foothills of the mountain range, he saw buzzards wheeling but he wasn't inclined to find out what they might he circling. He felt a deep weariness. His thigh burned where the bedouin bullet had creased it and he wished he could catch a nap. But he felt a growing uneasiness, a disquiet that pinched at his nerves. He couldn't put his finger on the cause of his tension.
When his helmet resounded with an electronic buzz Grant almost chuckled with satisfaction. The sound was the radar-lock-on warning, piped from the forward sensor array into his helmet. Glancing out of the port side of the canopy, he glimpsed a brief flash of distant silver. It was high and moving as fast as the Manta. It grew larger until he caught the reflective glint of sunlight on the shimmering, domed surface.
Seeming to float in the air between his eyes and the visor, a column of numbers appeared, glowing red against the pale bronze. When he focused on a distant object, the visor magnified it and provided a readout as to distance and dimension. Now he focused on the aircraft soaring in from the general direction of the mountain range. It was a little under three nautical miles distant. Grant had expected airborne reconnaissance, if not a welcoming committee.
He knew from experience the Annunaki sky disks were good for high-altitude bombing and strafing runs, but he had often wondered how suited they were for low infighting or fast, tight maneuvering. He made up his mind to find out.
"Bogey at three o' clock," he said laconically. "Bogey?" echoed Brigid and Kane almost simultaneously. "Utu's ship?"
"More than likely," Grant answered. "Of course, it's problematical if he's aboard, but the thing is on an intercept course."
Brigid said tersely, "He probably just wants to observe us."
"We can't take that chance," replied Grant. "For all we know, he could blow out the rails and while the train is stranded, Laputara and his troops could surround you and take the collar...after butchering everybody."
"That's a good point, but Utu could just be watching our progress," Kane commented reflectively.
"There's only one way to find out...I'll go say hi." "You'll be out of comm range," Brigid argued. "Not a good tactic."
"Not knowing what Utu is up to is a worse one," Grant countered. "If there's any real shooting, I'll withdraw."
Without waiting to hear a response from his partners, Grant pulled back on the control stick and the lateral thrust smashed down on him, slamming him hard against the back of his chair. The speed-gauge icon scrolled with numbers.
He pushed the stick forward and then to the left. The Manta's velocity slowed and it banked to port. The LARC—or low-altitude ride control—subsystem fed him turbulence data. The controls automatically damped the effects of turbulent air pockets by the deflection of two small fins extending down from beneath the cockpit area.
The disk ship hovered motionless, looking like a featureless orb of alloy. Whoever was aboard it seemed unaware of the TAV's fast approach. Then, with a shocking suddenness it shot straight up, as if it had been jerked up by an invisible string.
The Manta whipped through the space the disk had occupied, and Grant tilted it starboard wing in a steep bank. A half second later, a stream of energy blazed through the air like phosphorescent threads and exploded against the ground.
Cursing, Grant put the TAV into a sharp climb. The disk zipped up and across his course. For the briefest of seconds, the TAV was outlined in his helmet sights, past the crosshairs, and he thumbed the trigger button on the control stick.
A missile flamed from its pod sheath on his starboard wing. He felt the craft shudder slightly with the explosive release of the projectile. The missile inscribed a fiery trail, bright against the blue backdrop of the sky. From the underside of the disk he saw the flare of incoming fire. The rocket exploded in midair.
Shoving the joystick forward, Grant dropped the ship in a sharp roll-away feint and came rushing up on the enemy craft from below and behind. The sensor scope targeted the disk and he launched two missiles. The sky was suddenly laced with a hellish web of pure energy, deadly beams stabbing out in a hellfire barrage. The missiles detonated in billowing clouds of orange flame and black smoke.
Grant jerked back on the stick, but the ship shook stem to stern as the pieces of the missile casing struck the fuselage glancing blows.
He barrel-rolled the Manta away from the disk just as its plasma batteries blazed again. He felt the TAV shudder beneath multiple impacts before he was able to whisk the craft out of range. A pattern of scorch marks appeared on the starboard wing.
Grant threw his vessel into a corkscrew spiral dive, and the blazing volley of plasma energy missed him entirely. The disk veered away, looped and returned to engage him again.
Grant forced the ship into a sharp ascent and executed perfect vertical reverse. He sent the Manta plunging directly back toward the maddeningly elusive disk.
It arrowed away, back in the direction it had come. Only the inertial damping field kept him from losing consciousness during the high-speed, high-stress maneuvers.
As the disk flitted away, seeming to shrink to the size of a silver pinhead, he growled between clenched teeth, "Not this time. Not this time!"
Engaging the pulse-detonation engines, Grant ignored how dangerously the craft vibrated as it slammed across the sky, trailing a sonic boom. He depressed the trigger switch, and a missile sprang toward the disk, but a swarm of plasma beams surrounded it and the projectile vanished in a billowing cloud of flame.
Grant saw the fireball spreading out toward him and there was nothing he could do but grit his teeth and plummet through it. A grid of CGI hairlines glowed inside the visor of his helmet and a tiny bead of light, a digital copy of the enemy ship, zipped to and fro through the computer-generated opticals.
The terrain changed. The veldt rolled toward the line of mountains and became hillier. Beneath the two aircraft there were more outcroppings of rock lifting from the grassy plain like huge headstones, the stone gray and red and glittering with deposits of mica.
To avoid a thrusting spire of basalt, the disk climbed, putting itself directly in front of Grant's Manta. He didn't hesitate. Instantly, he lined up the ship in his helmet's crosshairs and thumbed the launch stud. The missile roared out of the starboard wing pod in a flare of flame.
It streaked in a straight line to impact against the disk's topside dome, exploding in a bloom of flame and metal fragments. The disk flipped into a crazed sideways rim-over-rim tumble, trailing streamers of smoke.
Grant's snarl of bloodthirsty jubilation turned into a wordless roar of disbelief when the disk recovered from its roll. Wobbling, it put on a burst of speed as it dived toward the rock formations.
The disk ship swerved to port, entering a canyon. Grant hesitated, then biting back a profanity, he tipped the ship up on one wing to cruise through the cleft in the rock. Flying through the canyon was treacherous— the ramparts of stone bulged out several yards in some places, and sharp shelves of rock stabbed out like giant sword blades. Grant's hands were constantly busy with the pitch, tab and trim controls.
He gazed at the computer-generated image of the landscape on the HUD. Data scrolled down the side of the display, reviewing and assessing primary areas of danger beyond his line of vision. Each boulder, outcropping and curve in the gorge walls showed in detail as they whipped by in a blur. The disk was nowhere to be seen.
The canyon suddenly opened up into a broad basin, or series of basins surrounded by jagged bastions of granite. It was a barren wilderness, a jumble of broken rock. Mist rose in a fine spray from a waterfall and beads of condensation formed on the Manta's canopy.
The cascade poured over a hundred-foot cliff, crashing into a turbulent, foaming pool. Pulling back on the throttle control to reduce his speed, Grant realized the signature of the disk ship had disappeared from his HUD.
Cold fingers of warning inched up his spine to tighten into a fist at the nape of his neck. His scalp felt as if it were pulling taut, and he realized he had just blithely flown into a trap. He sensed it the way a seasoned old tiger could sense a snare.
He also experienced a surge of anger, but it was directed completely at himself. He had allowed himself to lose his temper, to become frustrated and take off in a thoughtless rage like the greenest Mag recruit. The disk had lured him into a cul de sac.
Directing the Manta in a wide, parabolic cross turn, he sent the ship barreling back in the direction he had come. Before he completed the maneuver, the radar lock-on began buzzing like a hive of agitated bees. At the same time, his HUD flashed and crawled with a familiar signature.
Grant glanced out of the canopy and saw the silver disk ship bursting out from behind the cascade with an explosive spume of water, liquid glistening on the translucent hull. He realized the tactic employed by the craft and he muttered wearily to himself, -You're getting too old for this shit, pal."
Then he reached for the instrument panel.
Chapter 28
Brigid Baptiste studied the rolling landscape, noting the increasing rockiness of the terrain and the position of the sun in the sky. Red-tinged clouds shrouded it as it began its long descent. The foothills ahead were tinted a pale purple.
The railroad tracks inclined toward a gentle upgrade, wending toward a pass cut through solid rock. Signs of habitation sprouted from the veldt—irrigation canals, neat fields of crops, a scattering of huts and even windmills pumping up water from wells.
Old 88 had stopped at such a well an hour before to take on water. Following Inkula's instructions, Kane and several of Pakari's entourage formed a bucket brigade to quench the thirst of the panting locomotive.
During the twenty-minute procedure, Brigid scanned the sky in all directions for any sign of Grant's Manta or even Utu's disk. Peering through her binoculars, she saw only dark, distant specks she assumed were birds.
Coming to stand beside Brigid, Reba DeFore murmured, "Keep in mind that Grant—all of you—have been one second away from being declared dead a lot of times. So many, I can't even worry about it any more."
Lowering the binoculars, Brigid favored her with a wan smile. "Liar."
The medic chuckled uneasily. "He'll be along... sooner or later, he'll be along."
Pakari had smiled at both women encouragingly, but not offered any words of comfort. Neither had Kane. He covered his concern with a facade of impatience, irritated that Grant had violated their security protocols but with the unspoken assumption he would return in short order to have vituperation heaped upon him.
Brigid supposed that both Kane and Grant had been through so many harrowing experiences both as Magistrates and after, that life-threatening situations no longer upset their emotional equilibrium. But she knew her assessment was a false one, despite the fact that they were hardened veterans of dozens of violent incidents. They had been raised to be killers, after all—to kill anything or anyone that threatened the security of Baron Cobalt. Most people who lived in the villes feared the Mags, but they relied on them to prevent a return to post unification chaos.
Now all of Cerberus relied on her, Grant and Kane, and although she wasn't entirely comfortable with the arrangement, she in turn relied on the two men.
Brigid Baptiste had always led something of a solitary life. The only person she had ever considered a friend was her mother, Moira. But when she inexplicably vanished from the flat they shared in Cobaltville some fifteen years before, Brigid had withdrawn into herself.
All her mother left behind as a legacy was a photo of herself taken when she was about Brigid's age, and of course, the unique sunset color of her hair. That was one reason she had never cut it.
For a while, Brigid had taken some comfort in the possibility that her mother was associated with the Preservationists and was off somewhere working to reverse the flood-tide of ignorance. When she learned the Preservationists didn't exist as such, but were only a straw adversary manufactured by Lakesh, even that small hope had vanished.
After her mother disappeared, Brigid had withdrawn from what passed as a social life in the villes. However, to withdraw completely would have aroused suspicion, so she entered into shallow relationships with a few fellow archivists.
Like her, the men were ville-bred, raised much like herself—fed, clothed, educated and protected from all extremes. And their colorless, limited perspectives, their solemn pronouncements regarding their ambitions, had bored her into a coma. Centuries before they would have been classified as dweebs.
It wasn't until Magistrate Kane had stumbled half-drunk into her quarters and handed her a mystery to solve that she came to realize not all ville-bred men were the same. Of course, solving that mystery had earned her a death sentence and a new status as both exile and outlander, but she had long ago come to terms with it. She knew Kane still felt guilty about dragging her into his own private and illegal investigation, not to mention involving Grant in her rescue.
But she often wondered if that was the first time he had rescued her. She distinctly remembered the jump dream in the malfunctioning gateway unit in Russia that had suggested that they'd lived past lives, each of their souls continually intertwined with the other in some manner, never knowing romance. Morrigan, the blind telepath from the Priory of Awen, had told her that she and Kane were anam-charas. In the Gaelic tongue, it meant "soul-friend," but she was never sure what to believe.
As a trained archivist, Brigid knew misinformation often began with half truths, then grew into speculative transitions as someone worked to record the event. No information was sometimes better than half information. The primary duty of archivists was not to record predark history, but to revise, rewrite and often times completely disguise it, using misinformation as a springboard.
The political causes leading to the nukecaust were well known. They were major parts of the dogma, the doctrine, the articles of faith, and they had to be accurately recorded for posterity. The Cerberus database contained unedited and unexpurgated data, and having access to it was one of the few perks Brigid found in her life as an exile.
Life in Cobaltville had been predictable and she sometimes missed the monotony of routine. She knew Grant and Kane often longed for it as well. Their whole lives, from conception to death, were ordered for them, both at work and at home. Ville dogma, ville upbringing, convinced them how lucky they were to live on the bounty of the baron and not to have to scratch out a starvation existence in the Outlands. As long as they obeyed the maddening and contradictory volume of rules, they had security, medical and even retirement benefits.
It was the life Brigid had led, Kane and Grant had led, the only life they had known. Now they were forced to live with prices on their heads, which any so-called citizen could collect just by giving information about them. All because they had sinned by trying to learn a truth and develop a concept of a larger destiny. Reaching for the larger destiny had put them in the forefront of a covert war to free humanity, not just from the harness of slavery, but from the instilled belief they were no better than slaves.
After replenishing the boiler with water, Old 88 got under way again, with Kane still making the cab of the locomotive his duty station. The influence Inkula seemed to wield over him struck Brigid as odd, since Kane usually showed a marked disinclination to associate with self-professed holy men, especially if they were old and sarcastic.
The locomotive labored noisily against a steeper upgrade and at its crest Brigid saw the peak of Magebali Kwa Belewagi, the rim of the world, bulking up from a range of rocky foothills. She estimated it was only five miles or so ahead.
Old 88 chugged between bulwarks of stone, craggy outcroppings that formed a labyrinth bordered by huge boulders and low cliffs. Lizards, some over two feet long, stubbornly sunned themselves on the rocks, refusing to be alarmed by the passage of the train. The puffing and chuffing of the locomotive's drivers echoed and rebounded from the gorge walls as it navigated the long narrow channel.
Leaning out from the side of the passenger car, Brigid peered ahead, trying to see what lay beyond the end of the pass. Raising the binoculars to her eyes again, she saw the high spurs of rock rising from a broad gravel plain that marked the base of Magebali Kwa Belewagi.
Pakari joined her, saying in a reverential tone, "There it is, the rim of the world. My pilgrimage is almost complete."
Brigid was not impressed by her view of the mountain. The treeless summit was only a dome of dark, buttressed rock, slashed through with deep, shadowed crevices. Squinting through the eyepieces, she barely discerned a natural trail snaking up across its face. It looked treacherous and dangerously steep, disappearing into a trough of shadows.
"I don't see any apes," Brigid commented offhandedly. "Or any reason why they would be hanging around up there."
"That's just a legend," Pakari replied. "If you look closely, you'll probably see rock formations that resemble apes. I'm sure that's where the tale comes from."
Brigid did as she suggested, and to her mild surprise identified a pair of rocks that roughly resembled apes sitting in slouched postures just beneath the peak. But then, she reminded herself wryly, they only looked like apes after Pakari mentioned it.
Pakari continued serenely, "To the music of horn and drum, we will make our way in a joyous procession to the rim and there—"
The girl's voice was abruptly drowned out by an eardrum-slamming detonation, easily audible over the clank and clatter of Old 88's progress. Just as the locomotive emerged from the pass onto the open plain, a blaze of hell-hued light erupted on the track less than fifty yards ahead. A geyser of yellow-and-red flames gushed out amid clods of earth. Smoke boiled upward in a black, mushroom-capped column.
