Sword Empire (25 page)

“Maryam?” Kananda could hardly contain his excitement.

“Well, news of the ship that brought her here,” Jayna corrected herself slightly. “In the barracks food market, I listened to the gossip of a woman who is the partner of a Space Corps engineer named Caid. Her man was the ship's engineer on the space-cruiser commanded by Raven on his mission to Earth. Caid has spent the last week preparing the ship for a new mission. Raven has returned and the Council of Twelve has ordered him to take command of a task force squadron of five ships and return to the third planet. His mission is to capture your city of Karakhor and to deny the city and the planet to Alpha. If your sister is alive, and if she is still with him, then that is where you must now look. For us, there can be no return to the City of Swords.”

Kananda felt his initial elation being pierced by shards of doubt and frustration. The Gods were playing games with him and he had missed Maryam by a matter of hours. If she was still alive! Jayna had no confirmation of that fact, only that Raven had returned and was being sent back to Earth. And Maryam might never know how close he had come to finding her, or even that he had ever followed her to Ghedda. For one wild moment, he almost asked Zela to turn the sky-chariot around and take him back to the city, but no matter what his heart demanded he knew in his head that Jayna was right. It was impossible now to go back. Also there were now other things to consider, in addition to finding Maryam.

“We must return to Alpha,” he told Zela. “From there we must return to Earth. I have to warn my father and Warmaster Jahan. I must return to Karakhor.”

“All in good time,” Zela said grimly. “First we have another problem to resolve. We've got company.”

She was looking through the cabin window to the south and Kananda and Jayna twisted their heads to follow the direction of her gaze. Three flashes of light in a V formation low on the black horizon were heading straight toward them.

“I'll try changing course. It's just possible that they are on some routine flight and not looking for us.” She moved the controls and banked the sky-car to the left, setting a new course direct for Steel City, the second city of the empire on the coast to the southeast. It was a reasonable destination for an aircraft on legitimate business. However, almost immediately the three distant aircraft also banked in unison to turn onto a continuing course to intercept their new flight path.

Zela swore, spun the control wheel again and put them back on their original heading of northeast. She gunned the throttles to full power. The Gheddan pursuit continued across the harsh, starlit desert landscape, and slowly the three lights grew brighter and closer.

“They are faster than we are, but not by much.” Zela was trying to determine as much as possible from the speed and maneuverability of the three closing ships. “I guess that means we are probably out-gunned, too. This ship has medium-power lazer banks, good enough for pin-point shooting and keeping peace inside the city. Their fire-power will be heavier with extended range.”

“What can we do?” Jayna asked, and there was a knot of fear in her voice.

“Hope to get lucky,” Zela said calmly. “First they may be thinking twice about shooting down an expensive piece of City Guard hardware. They may try to force us down and keep the sky-car intact. That could give us an advantage. They will then be in range of our weapons, and I could spring a few surprises. In all probability, they are just standard air jockeys, and they have no way of knowing that they are chasing a skilled combat pilot.”

“And if they decide to just come in with all guns blazing?”

“Then we are dead,” Zela said flatly. She looked back and grinned faintly. “Buckle up, and strap yourselves in. Even if we don't die, it's going to be a rough ride.”

Jayna's face was pale, but immediately she wriggled into the seat harness behind her and began pulling the buckles tight. Kananda followed her example and strapped himself into the seat beside her. The following aircraft were now coming up fast behind them, clearly visible as three more rotary-bladed fliers, slightly larger and more formidable than their own.

A moment later a harsh voice thundered through the speaker mounted inside the cabin ceiling.

“Patrol car C-G-Five. Whoever you are, you will land immediately. Otherwise you will be shot down.”

Zela shrugged and switched on her own communicator. “Pursuit ship, I do not understand. We are a City Guard Patrol on legitimate business.”

“The City Guard has no legitimate business outside the city. You are criminals who have stolen the patrol ship. You will land now and be boarded, or be destroyed.”

“You are in error,” Zela said calmly. “But we will comply and land the ship as you have ordered. Then we can discuss this face to face and you can apologize for your mistake.”

She reduced the throttles and tilted the blade controls to slow them onto an angle of descent. The three pursuit ships took up stations, one on either side, and one above and behind their own. In close formation, all four ships began a long slow glide toward the sand dunes below. Carefully, Zela teased the throttle controls, reducing their speed more and more.

“They should reach stalling speed before we do,” she said softly for Jayna's benefit. Kananda had no idea of what she was talking about, or what she might intend to do.

They drifted lower toward the desert floor. To Kananda, the dunes were like the frozen swells and waves of a darkened yellow sea and he watched, mesmerized, as the higher crests reached up toward them. Dust swirled off the crests in great plumes, but he was not sure whether there was a strong wind blowing down there, or whether the commotion was caused by the downdraught from their own slow whirling blades. There was the sound of the night air slipping past their steel flanks, and the steady
swish, swish
of the blades. It was all like a slow motion dream, or nightmare.

Abruptly everything changed. Zela pushed the throttles fully open and as the patrol ship surged forward, she heaved into a tight, circling turn to the left. Beams of lazer fire slashed through the spot where they had been seconds before as all three of the Gheddan pursuit ship pilots hit their firing buttons. The larger ships had been brought down to a slow engine speed that made them sluggish and clumsy and Zela was turning back into them before they could kick their motors fully into life and fix their target sights again. She had the momentary advantage and the skill to use it. The ship that had been on their left was now directly in their path and Zela hit it square amidships with her own lazer fire. As the pursuit ship exploded in a hot ball of flame and flying debris, she heaved back on her control wheel. They soared through flame, smoke and heat, with scattering shards of metal crashing and ricocheting off their own hull, and then they were through, unscathed except for a multitude of dents and scorch marks. It was kill or be killed, and without hesitation, Zela flung the ship around again in search of her next target.

Kananda and Jayna were thrown helplessly left and right in their restraining harness straps, and Jayna screamed with the fresh pain to her already bruised and battered body. Kananda gasped and felt as though his head had been half-wrenched from his shoulders. Through horrified eyes, he stared over Zela's shoulder and through the front cockpit window. The Gheddan pursuit ship that had been above and behind them was now dead ahead, looming up with incredible speed on a direct head-to-head collision course.

Zela fired a second burst of lazer fire and the cockpit of the approaching vessel and the terrified blue face of its pilot all disappeared in a cascade of shattering glass. Zela heaved their patrol ship upwards again, and mercifully the last act of the dying Gheddan had been to plunge his ship into a dive. For a moment, it seemed as though the whirling steel blades of the other ship must slice through the helpless underbelly of the patrol ship, and then they were clear and over. The Gheddan ship fell momentarily out of sight. Its death dive continued and buried the second pursuit ship into the side of a giant, rearing sand dune, where it exploded into another holocaust fireball, spewing sand and debris upward from the impact.

Zela could not avoid the upward blast and the patrol ship was flung another hundred feet up into the sky. It careered round in another floundering half circle which this time was unintended. Zela had lost track of the third pursuit ship, but a stream of lazer fire slamming into their extended tail marked its position. The shock reverberated through the cabin which was suddenly spinning round in helpless circles as Zela completely lost control. Her luck and their short moment of advantage had run out.

The night sky whirled around them, a vortex of stars and leaping horizons gone insane. Then abruptly, the third ship reared up in her vision. It was banking hard to the left, trying desperately to get away from the risk of another collision. Zela hit her firing button again as it passed through her sights, an almost blind shot that was as much a scream of defiance as a survival instinct. The patrol ship's lazer blasted out in one last hot white beam that seared through the rotary column supporting the blade wings of the last ship. With the blade section severed, the fuselage beneath dropped like a stone.

Zela did not even see the third ship crash. She was too busy fighting the controls and trying to keep their own crippled ship in the air. They were still supported by the miraculously undamaged blades, but with the tail section gone she had no means of controlling their height or direction. She could only attempt to slow the ship and hope for a less violent ground impact that would not kill them all.

“Brace yourselves,” Zela screamed. “We're going down.”

The patrol ship was spewing out fuel from its ruptured tanks and Zela tensed herself for the inevitable explosion. It only needed one spark, but it didn't happen. The tanks vented themselves and then the motors groaned and came to a stop. The blades above them continued to whirl of their own momentum, but they were slowing and the ship dropped faster. The sand dunes rushed up to meet them.

If they had hit a dune square on, it would have killed them, but instead the falling ship clipped the top of one of the dune giants, tilted forward, and then slithered in a continuing but braking rush down the long slope into the valley between the dunes. The blades snapped off in huge thunderclaps of sound, and then the fuselage was rolling free. They rolled over and over, ploughing a gigantic furrow in the sand. The glass windows shattered and great clouds of sand drove violently into the cabin. Slowly, the slide leveled out, and stopped with the cabin of the ship buckled but still intact, although every extremity had been stripped off her.

Kananda was hanging sideways in his harness, his weight on top of the limp body of Jayna who had been knocked unconscious again. In front of him, Zela was slumped forward in her harness, but groaning softly as she touched tentative fingertips to her bleeding face and temples. Kananda pulled himself away from Jayna and struggled out of his shoulder and waist straps. He had seen two of the Gheddan pursuit ships explode into fireballs and so he knew instinctively what could happen to their own crashed ship at any moment. His fingers tore at his buckles, almost in panic, and then he was free.

One cabin door was below him, flat against the slope of the sand. The other was buckled and refused to open. Kananda wriggled himself down to brace his shoulders against the rear seat and then kicked powerfully at the door with both feet. It took several massive double kicks, using all his strength, before the cabin door finally yielded with a tearing screech and burst upward.

Zela was dazed and only half conscious, but she had managed to unfasten her straps and turn herself toward him. Kananda got both hands under her armpits and heaved her up over her seat and half way through the open door. She struggled then, resisting his efforts to push her all the way through.

“Jayna,” she said weakly.

“I will bring Jayna,” he said hoarsely. “Go.”

Zela realized that she did not have the strength to help him, nodded, and then allowed him to push her free. She fell out onto the soft sand and slid helplessly for a few yards, choking on the gritty dust that rose up to clog her mouth and nostrils.

Kananda turned to unfasten Jayna's straps, then hauled her up and pushed her in turn out through the door. He climbed after the two women, found a grip on Jayna again, and dragged her clear of the wreckage. Zela crawled along beside him and they struggled along the valley floor between the dunes. Finally they stopped at a safe distance and leaned against each other, gasping for breath. After a few more moments, Jayna groaned and opened her eyes, which meant that at least they were all alive.

But for how long, Kananda wondered. They had survived, but they had no food, and no water. They also had no way of knowing whether or not any of the three ships they had just defeated had found the time to radio back to their base and report their position.

Their situation was desperate. They had no choice but to try and walk out of the desert. They could only hope to reach the swamps or the northern tree line before they starved to death, died of thirst, or were caught by the next wave of Gheddan pursuit.

 

 

 

About the Author

Robert Leader has been a merchant seaman, a retained fire-fighter and a tireless traveller. Twice he has undertaken the overland trip to India and the Far East and has crossed Africa from Tunis to Capetown by Land Rover. He has also found time to run his own business and take a degree in philosophy, social anthropology and politics at the University of East Anglia.

Under other pen names he has published thriller and adventure novels exploring the worlds of crime, terrorism and espionage. Robert Leader lives in Bury St Edmunds in England and regularly publishes photo feature magazine articles on the heritage, places and events of his home counties of East Anglia.

To learn more about Robert Leader, send an email to
[email protected]