Web of Fire Bind-up (40 page)

‘In these conditions? I'd say about twenty minutes. That's if we don't crash first.'

‘What's that?' shouted Skipper from the rear of the wasp.

‘I said, “That's if we don't crash first”,' yelled Brindle.

‘No,' said Skipper. ‘What's
that
?' She reached between
the seats and pointed at a small dial near the top of the control panel.

‘That's the radar,' replied Brindle. He leaned forward and took a closer look. Sam saw that a red dot was blinking furiously in the centre of the dial.

Brindle's face turned the colour of snow.

‘It's them,' he said. ‘They've found us.'

Then the cockpit exploded in a fury of glass and snow.

For a moment or two, Sam didn't know whether he was alive or dead. As his seatbelt mechanism disintegrated, something flew past him and he briefly experienced a floating sensation before slamming violently into the ceiling which had suddenly become the floor. With a sickening crack his knees smashed against his face and he groaned, tasting blood in his mouth. Then a hand grabbed him by the hair, yanking him back over the seats and suddenly he was lying on the floor as the wasp spun around like some crazy, out-of-control fairground ride.

Skipper's face was inches from his own, shouting something at him. He watched her lips moving, but couldn't hear a thing.

Nothing made any sense.

Everything was frozen, caught in some strange moment out of time.

Sam blinked and tried to shout.

Gradually, the world began to move again.

He saw Skipper raise her hand, watched it swing slowly through the air and felt a sharp pain as it struck him hard across the face.

There was a buzz, a whine and then the world came back again with a fast and furious roar.

‘Sam, you have
got
to listen!' Skipper screamed.

Sam shook his head in an effort to clear it and concentrated hard on Skipper's lips.

‘Follow me – OK?' she shouted.

‘OK!' he shouted back through the confusion.

The noise was deafening. From somewhere above the shrieking of the wind and the roar of the wing motors there came a tearing sound, like someone ripping a sheet of canvas in two. Sam turned and saw that the top of the wasp had been torn open like a tin can and a huge pair of jaws was thrusting and snapping at the packing cases, splintering them like matchwood. Two shining black eyes stared down into the broken wasp, searching them out. Sam remembered the hideous creature he had seen on the mountain side and realised that he was looking straight into the eyes of a robber fly.

Skipper quickly pulled out a small silver torch which Sam recognised as a cellular restructuring beam and pointed it at the side of the wasp.

‘Let's go!' she screamed.

There was a blue flash, a fizz as the side wall dissolved and then Skipper scrambled out through the hole and disappeared from view. Sam threw himself after her and found himself in the middle of a howling storm. He realised that the robber fly must have attacked them from above, clamping its legs around the wasp's body and using its powerful jaws to rip it apart. As they spun
giddily through the air, Sam briefly caught sight of the ground whirling beneath them before the blizzard closed in once more.

‘Quickly, Sam! Grab a leg!'

Skipper was hanging from one of the fly's legs and Sam quickly grabbed at the thick bristles, swinging himself up and away from the wasp.

It was not a moment too soon. As he pulled himself clear, the fly released its grip on the wasp and it fell away, spiralling uselessly down towards the ground. The fly accelerated away into the sky and Sam knew he wouldn't be able to hold on much longer. But he also knew that if he let go, a painful death awaited him on the rocks a thousand feet below. So with muscles aching and hands numb with cold, he grabbed hold of the coarse cable-like hairs and pulled himself upwards, inch by painful inch.

An icy wind howled in his face and he wrapped his arms around the leg, feeling the wiry hairs scratch against his cheek. Ice particles crystallised on his eyelashes like frozen sugar. Looking up, he saw that Skipper had reached the top of the leg and there was a blue flash as she made an opening in the fly's abdomen with the CRB. Seconds later, a rope ladder dropped from the hole and snaked past him. He tentatively stretched out a hand, but it hung several feet beyond his reach.

‘I can't get to it!' he shouted, only to hear his words disappear on the wind.

He pressed his face against the rough hairs and felt his muscles weaken.

Glancing up again, he saw that Skipper was climbing back down the rope ladder towards him. After a little way she stopped and kicked her legs backwards so that she was just hanging by her hands. Arching her back, she began to move her body back and forth, setting up a momentum that made the whole rope ladder swing.

Come on
, he told himself.
You either stay here until you fall off, or you move. No one's going to do it for you.

Taking a deep breath he slowly unfolded his fingers from their grip on the hairs. As he stretched out an arm towards the ladder he felt the clunk of a wooden rung against his fingertips and by leaning out a little further he was able to grab it and pull it towards him. Still holding tightly with his right hand and with the heel of his right foot hooked firmly around the fly's leg, he managed to slide his left foot onto one of the rungs.

This was it.

It was now or never.

Shifting his weight slightly, he stepped out into space and with a rush of freezing wind the ladder swung away from the leg like a pendulum.

As he swept through the air he could see the mountains circling the plain below him and far away to his left he could just make out the distant city of Vahlzi. With his heart pounding in his chest, he grasped the rung above his head and began to climb.

‘Well done,' said Skipper, rubbing snow from her hair as Sam fell gasping into the fly's underbelly. ‘You should
have been in the circus.' Pulling up the rope ladder, she pointed the CRB at the hole in the floor and it closed up again in a flash of brilliant blue light.

Sam struggled onto his hands and knees and stared at the brown, spongy floor. ‘Promise me we won't do that again,' he wheezed. ‘Ever.'

He sat up and looked around. Most of the insect's internal organs had been moved or re-engineered to enable it to carry more equipment, but he noticed to his disgust that a large, yellowy brown heart was pumping away in the corner.

Skipper grinned mischievously. ‘I think she likes you.'

‘Oh, ha ha,' said Sam. ‘Very funny.'

He sat back heavily against the curved wall of the fly's abdomen. ‘I don't remember anyone mentioning anything about rope ladders,' he said. ‘I thought the plan was to go straight up through the fly's belly when it latched onto us.'

‘Well that
was
the plan,' admitted Skipper. ‘But it all happened a bit fast. Poor old Brindle nearly wet himself.'

‘Brindle!' exclaimed Sam. ‘He must have gone down with the wasp!'

‘Don't worry,' said Skipper. ‘I saw him eject just before the wasp hit the ground.'

‘He must have stayed in until he knew we were out safely,' said Sam. ‘He's a brave guy.'

Skipper nodded. ‘He's got a bit of a hike ahead of him, that's for sure. It's a long way back to the base.'

Sam remembered that Brindle had always been
notorious as a hard nut and survival expert who loved nothing more than a difficult challenge. He imagined him trekking through the blizzard with a big smile on his face.

‘I don't s'pose he'll mind too much,' he said.

‘Are you kidding?' replied Skipper. ‘He probably thinks it's his birthday.'

She swung the rucksack on her back and pointed upwards. ‘OK, Sam. Time for a change of aircrew, I think.'

Flypilot Grinx was still smiling about the way they'd busted that damn wasp right out of the sky. Most of the other pilots had stayed on the ground, but there was no way Grinx was going to let a little bit of snow keep him from doing what he loved best. And what Grinx loved doing best was killing things.

At weekends he took his rifle out and went hunting. His friends went hunting for rabbits, deer, anything they could bring home and put on the dinner table. But Grinx wasn't bothered about the eating part; he just shot anything that moved. Nothing beat the thrill of playing God, deciding whether another soul should live or die. Nothing else came close.

Not that there was ever much of a decision to make, of course.

If something wandered into his rifle sites, Grinx blew it away.

For the past year now, Grinx had been flying robber
flies. And there was no doubt about it: if you liked killing things, it was the best job ever.

He grinned at Mersh, his co-pilot, who grinned back.

‘You got the old bloodlust going on there, Grinx?'

‘Oh yeah,' said Grinx. ‘You'd better believe it. Come on, Mershy boy. Let's go kill something else. That last one was real sweet, wasn't it?'

‘
Real
sweet,' agreed Mersh. ‘That sucker never even saw us coming.'

A sound from the rear of the aircraft made Grinx turn around. To his amazement, a small blonde-haired girl was sitting on the floor with her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking and she sounded as though she was crying.

‘Hey!' shouted Grinx. ‘Who the hell are you?'

The girl looked up and Grinx saw that her lower lip was quivering. She seemed very upset. It was then that he noticed the flying jacket and the blue jumpsuit.

‘Well, I'll be …' said Grinx. He dug Mersh in the ribs. ‘Hey, Mersh. We gone and got ourselves a Vahlzian kid!' He undid his seatbelt and leaned over the back of the seat.

‘I don't know how you got in here, little girl,' he said in a low, threatening voice, ‘but whatever you're crying about now – well, it ain't nothing compared to what Grinxy's going to give you to cry about. See, the thing is, there ain't no big strong Vahlzian boys to protect you here. How's that feel?'

He leered at her and slowly climbed over the seat into the back.

Robber fly

‘Is that a flying suit you're wearing?' he asked.

The girl sniffed and nodded.

‘Hey, Mersh,' sneered Grinx. ‘The kid likes to fly.'

Mersh laughed unpleasantly.

‘Reckon we can arrange that for you,' he said. ‘You reckon we can arrange that, Grinxy?'

‘No doubt about it,' said Grinx. ‘You listening, little girl? Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna open up the side of this thing and then we're gonna let you be a li'l birdy. That's right, honey. You gonna fly! You gonna fly all the way down to them rocks down there. How do you like that, hmm? You like the sound of that?'

The girl began to cry more loudly.

‘Aww, I think she's frightened, Mersh,' said Grinx. ‘Ain't that right, sweetheart?' He was up close, now, the stench of his stale breath in her ear. ‘Are you crying 'cos you're scared?'

‘No,' sobbed a little voice. ‘I'm crying 'cos it's b-b-broken.'

Grinx smiled. He loved it when they got scared. He was really going to enjoy this.

‘There ain't nothing broken,' he said, grinning and running his tongue across the front of his yellow, decaying teeth. ‘Not yet, anyway.'

‘The s-s-safety,' stammered the girl. ‘The s-s-safety catch is broken!'

Grinx was getting annoyed now. Maybe he'd slap her about a bit before he killed her. Make it more fun.

‘What the hell are you talking about?' he snarled, seizing
her roughly by the shoulder. ‘There ain't no broken safety catch!'

‘Oh, but there is,' said the girl, and as she stared up at him with her baby-blue eyes he noticed two things: firstly, that she wasn't crying at all, and secondly, that she was pointing a gun straight between his eyes.

‘Mersh!' he squealed. ‘She's got a gun!'

‘Yes, I have,' said Skipper calmly. ‘It's a big one, too.'

There was a click as she pulled back the firing mechanism.

‘And here's the thing, Mersh –
nice
name by the way – the safety catch on this gun is well and truly broken. So I guess you'd better fly pretty straight and smooth from now on, or your friend here might just get his brains splashed all over the cockpit.'

Grinx cowered in the corner with his arms draped over his head.

Skipper winked at him. ‘What's up, Grinxy? Not
scared
are we?'

She turned and pointed the gun at the pilot.

‘OK, Mersh. I've seen how you like to whack wasps with this thing. Now let's see if you can land it.'

‘How about if I refuse?' Mersh sneered.

Skipper pointed the gun back at Grinx and tightened her finger around the trigger.

‘How about I redecorate your cockpit?'

‘Just do it!' screamed Grinx. ‘Do what she says!'