As the elevator doors opened on the top level of the redoubt, Ryan and Krysty saw that the garage was filled with row upon row of vehicles, all of them parked neatly within the painted lines on the concrete floor. Most were civilian wags, brightly colored cars, pickup trucks, vans, and about a dozen motorcycles. The bikes looked in good shape in spite of their flat tires.
On the far side of the garage some military vehicles were parked behind a wire divider that went from floor to ceiling. Ryan could see a couple of Hummers, several GMC 4x4 trucks, and even an armored half-track, the front tires flat on the floor, but the rear-looking treads seemingly intact. The half-track was armed with a .50-caliber rapid-fire, a belt of linked ammo dangling from the side. However, none of other vehicles showed any signs of damage.
“Odd,” Krysty whispered. “There doesn’t seem to have been any fighting up here.”
“Mebbe whatever caused the madness never reached this level,” Ryan said, sucking his hollow tooth thoughtfully. “Or—”
“Or this is where it started,” she finished for him.
“Yeah.”
A sharp whistle cut the air, and the two spun around, automatically taking a step to the side to throw off the aim of an enemy. Then they saw J.B. and Mildred coming out of the tool room near the fuel pumps. He was carrying a handful of road flares, and she was tucking a roll of duct tape into her open med kit.
“Any sign of Doc and Jak?” Krysty asked as their friends joined them, tucking away her weapon.
“Not yet,” Mildred said, tying shut the flap on her med kit. “But knowing that old coot, he’s probably grabbing a snack in the kitchen.”
“Hope so,” Ryan added, walking among the rows of wags. “We’re low on food. Only got a couple of cans left.”
“Find any MRE packs?” J.B. asked, tucking flares into his munitions bag.
Rattling the door to the pickup, Ryan shook his head. “Nothing. Even the armory was stripped bare.” Then he grunted in remembrance and pulled out the box of cartridges.
“Here you go, 12-gauge,” he said, tossing it over.
“Thanks,” J.B. said, making the catch and placing the ammo alongside the flares.
“Well, we found some soldiers wearing gas masks,” Mildred said, and then told them about the sandbag nest.
“But they went insane, too?” Krysty said, resting a cowboy boot on the fender of a car. In the bright fluorescent lights, the embroidered pattern of winged falcons could be dimly seen through the layers of dust and dirt. “So either they put the masks on too later—”
“Or else they didn’t work. Yes, exactly.”
“Gaia protect us,” the redhead muttered.
“Amen to that,” Mildred added grimly.
Stepping over a corpse in greasy coveralls sprawled on the floor, Ryan tried the handle on a sports car. Opening the door, he got hit by an exhalation of trapped air that sighed out carrying the smell of rotting leather and dust. He quickly closed the door. There was rarely much to scav in an ordinary wag.
Spotting the fuel pumps in the far corner, J.B. started maneuvering through the vehicles. If the pumps were still sealed, they might be able to get a few of these machines going again. If Doc and Jak didn’t find anything in the kitchen or galley, they would have to go hunting outside, and wags would let them cover more ground in shorter time. With luck, there might even be a ville nearby where they could trade with the local baron. A single working wag and a can of juice would buy more food than the companions could carry in a week.
“Hell of a lot of wags here,” Ryan stated, sounding suspicious. “It’s as if everybody drove inside, parked their cars, then went downstairs to go insane.”
“Come on, let’s check the mil wags,” Ryan suggested, getting back to business.
Going to a workbench, the three took some tools, then walked over to the wire fence. With a hammer and chisel, Krysty notched the padlock holding the gate closed, then Ryan easily smashed the lock open with a sledgehammer. The noise echoed loudly across the still garage.
As the chain snaked noisily to the floor, Mildred swung the gate open as Ryan and Krysty walked into the motor pool.
Separating again, the two circled the vehicles to make sure the area was clear, then started checking the machines. Choosing a Hummer, Ryan went to the back for the emergency kit. Sure enough, the box was there and still sealed. Forcing it open with his panga, he extracted a small first-aid kit, some road flares, a thermal blanket, three MRE food packs and a gun case. Opening the black plastic box, he found a Veri pistol coated with Cosmoline gel. The flare gun would need a good cleaning before it could be used, but it seemed in perfect shape, and there were six flares nestled in the soft gray foam cushioning alongside the pistol. Three of the aerial flares had split along the sides from age, but the others were intact, and the plastic tubes felt resilient when he gently squeezed. As a blaster, the flare gun was pitiful, but it made excellent trade goods.
Smashing open a locked window with the butt of her blaster, Krysty was already checking inside the cab of the half-track as Mildred pawed through the contents of another Hummer.
“Anything good in the first-aid kit?” Krysty asked.
“No.” The physician sighed, tossing the open box back into the wag. “It’s all useless. Just too damn old.”
“Well, I found a few grens.”
Excellent! Any ammo?” Mildred asked.
“No.”
“Damn.”
Just then, the concrete floor shook with a low rumble.
“Is that a quake?” Krysty asked, looking over a shoulder, her hair flexing as if stirred by secret winds.
“No, too weak,” Ryan snapped as the sound increased in volume and strength.
“Mother of god…that’s the blast door!” Mildred gasped in astonishment, dropping an ammo box. It hit with a crash, spilling brass rounds across the floor. “Somebody is coming inside!”
The startled friends turned to stare at the front of the redoubt where a wide tunnel opened in the wall. The distant end of the zigzagging tunnel couldn’t be seen, but there was no mistaking the sound of the powerful electric motors hidden inside the walls as they started to cycle open the massive nuke-proof doors that lead to the world outside.
THE CRATER WAS blisteringly hot under the sun, the hard stone ground seeming to reflect the solar heat until the temperature became almost unbearable.
Carrying a small umbrella, Sandra Tregart relished the meager shade it gave as she watched the almost-naked eunuchs toiling under the harsh sunlight. The lean men were wearing only sandals and loincloths, their sweaty skin burned to a deep, rich brown. The eunuchs were crawling along the rocky ground, removing every bit of windblown trash or sharp rock from the volcanic ground. The predark tires of the Angel were heavily patched, and every bump threw off their balance and shook the plane badly. Sometimes, it was difficult for her to gain enough speed for take-off. Thus every obstruction, no matter how small, had to be removed. It was a dirty job, inching along the strip that served as the runway, but Sandra refused to have slaves do the job. Slaves always wanted to rebel, and couldn’t be trusted. The eunuchs were fanatically devoted to her, and so only they could perform the vital task.
That is, Sandra griped, unless the Demon worked. Then all of her prayers would be answered. After which…
From the tent that served as the eunuchs’ barracks, she could smell roasting meat and bread. After she had bombed Indera ville out of existence, her eunuchs had ridden the last few horses there to loot the ruins. In return, she gave them the first pick of the food. Naturally, the rest went to Thunder ville, but her men were fed before the ville folk. After all, they guarded her at night, and, what was more important, they protected the Angel. Although few enemies had ever gotten onto the impact crater that served as an airfield.
Jagged peaks of ancient lava formed an impassable barrier around the crater. There was only one break in the rocky walls, and it was closed with a barrier of tires filled with rocks and topped with rusty barbed wire. Flanking both sides of the small door were wooden sentry towers containing armed eunuchs who trained every day with their homie crossbows. They could ace a vulture on the wing at a hundred yards. Neither man nor mutie got close to the wall, and nobody had ever even touched the gate without her permission. Anything that headed in its direction was chilled on sight. Even her brother Edmund had been wounded once for coming too close. To her father and mother, Sandra had professed her most sincere apologies for the terrible accident. But in private, she had praised Digger for his marksmanship and promoted him to sec chief for the airfield.
Pausing on the barren field, Sandra frowned at the thought. Such a pity that Digger was gone. Perhaps Stone would take his place. After the teen had been properly altered, of course. She smiled at that, and continued her inspection tour of the airfield. Everything needed to be perfect this day. A lot depended on the success of her newest experiment. Black dust, the whole world depended on its success!
Glancing skyward, Sandra frowned at the orange and red sky, streaks of black ripping across the polluted heavens as endless lighting crashed amid the roiling death clouds. It was the same way almost every day. But on rare occurrences, the wind would shift direction and the cloud cover would break. That was when blue sky would show through, tempting her into the beyond, calling a sweet siren song of freedom. She turned and walked away. But it was a dream unfulfilled. No matter how quickly she got the Angel off the ground, the clouds would roll back in to the fill the momentary gap and steal away the blue once more. Her brother had often warned that even if she made it through to the clean air above, she would be trapped on the other side, maybe for days, or even weeks. Sooner or later her plane would run out of fuel and she would sail powerless into the roiling chem-polluted clouds to suffer a death beyond words. It would be unlikely that even her bones would make it through to fall upon the nuke-blasted soil below.
Sandra had quickly learned that flying was a matter of staying high enough so spears couldn’t hit the Angel, yet low enough to avoid the deadly sky. It was a balancing act, but the results were worth the terrible risks involved. The freedom of flying! The incredible power!
Just then, an eruption of steam caught her attention, and she headed toward a group of swearing men. They were working around an iron van set on top of a brick hearth. A couple of bare-chested boys were shoveling scraps of wood into the banked fire under the vat, while a second group adjusted pressure valves. Coming out of the top of the vat was a large coil of copper tubing that arched downward to dribble a clear fluid into a fuel container. As it was filled, a man capped it tight, and slipped another container under the end of the tubing without spilling a single drop. Nearby, a lone man with a horribly scarred face was chopping up cactus plants and piling the juicy innards into a plastic bucket. With every burst of steam from the pressure valve, the disfigured man flinched as if to protect his scars.
Forming a semicircle around the still were eight large tents. One was for Sandra’s ground crew to take shelter in during an acid rain storm, the floor raised high with rocks and old sheets of plastic to protect them from the runoff. The next was her home, with a bathtub for washing and a lockbox full of weapons and precious ammo. Two more tents were the workshops, another contained the Angel, and the rest were what Sandra called her lab, miscellaneous parts and bolts of cloth salvaged from ruins across the land. The last tent held the Demon.
“How is it going, Carter?” Sandra asked, stopping a short distance from the still. Between the crackling fire and the hissing steam, she couldn’t understand how the men survived the awful heat. That was how Karl had been disfigured. He’d fallen asleep from the heat and caught a steam blast in the face. Incredibly, he’d lived, but never spoke again, and flatly refused to work the still again.
“Good afternoon, my lady,” Carter said in a squeaky voice, grinning widely. Sweat poured off his hairless chest as if he were standing in the rain. “We just finished a new batch of shine. And Karl harvested enough cactus for a second batch. We’ll start it fermenting tonight.”
“Excellent,” she said, mopping her forehead with a cloth. Already her white shirt was soaked, the thin material clinging to her skin. None of the men seemed to notice. “Take ten gallons and fill the tanks on the Demon. The wind is good, and I’m going to try again while we still have sunlight.”
“But ten gallons is barely a quarter tank, mistress,” Carter began in his child’s voice. “How will you know if the Demon can be trusted until you fill the tanks completely?”
From under the shadow of her umbrella, the woman stared in growing anger at the giant.
“Yes, of course, you’re right. Ten is more than enough,” he burbled, cowering slightly. “I’ll get them myself.”
As the colossus lumbered away, Sandra allowed herself a private smile. She knew that Carter meant well, but the man was overly concerned with her safety. He was so large many believed him to be part mutie. The man stood almost seven feet tall, his wide barrel chest rippling with hard muscles. Yet his face was as smooth as a newborn infant’s, his body completely without hair. Castrating the men working on the airfield had been her father’s idea. And she knew that the main purpose of the mutilation was merely to keep her safe from the lustful advances of the sec men and to safeguard the ville throne from any bastards. But it was her mother who suggested using boys too young to notice her figure and face. Sandra had decided to do both, and the sexless youths grew utterly devoted to their female master.
Many years ago when she had first dragged the Angel to the crater, a coldheart had leaped out of hiding in a mountain pass and clubbed her to the ground. As the man started to rip off her clothing, the eunuchs leaped upon the man and literally ripped him apart with their bare hands. The story soon spread to other villes, and nobody had ever bothered Sandra again on her many journeys across the Deathlands.
Once, long ago and far to the east, she had found a graveyard of hundreds of predark planes, along with dozens of other things, machines that looked like soap bubbles but with rotors on top. Sandra had no idea what those could be, and so ignored them. She almost could have believed that the soap bubbles were also flying machines, except for the fact that they had no wings, nor anyplace for a wing to be attached.
Now, most of the planes in the junkyard had only been rusted skeletons, but a few of the machines stored inside a crumbling building were still intact, and one seemed repairable. Unfortunately, the yard was infested with some mutie form of millipede. With no other choice, Sandra had set fire to a forest to cause a stampede of animals through the yard. The millipedes attacked, eating everything that came their way, and in the bloody carnage, she and some eunuchs had been able to steal the Angel.
Over the next few years she had gone back twice more for spare parts, cloth and engines. But on the last raid, Sandra lost five eunuchs to the millipedes and still carried a nasty scar on her arm where one of the bugs had attached itself and started burrowing into her flesh before she’d doused it with shine and burned it off.
Someday, when she had a large enough army of sec men, the woman planned to return to the junkyard, slaughter the bugs and build a wall around the yard and make it her private ville. But that was for the future. This day, she had to worry about the Demon.
Heading for the last tent, Sandra heard a pervading hooting. Inside one of the tents to her left was a row of iron cages with stickies inside, bowls placed underneath to catch the natural gluelike resin they oozed when tortured. A red-hot knife could get her more glue than boiling the bones of a hundred horses. And the bones of people produced very little glue, even if they were red-raw and fresh.
Entering the last tent, Sandra lowered her umbrella and savored the delicious drop in temperature. The roof of the predark tent somehow blocked most of the sun’s heat, and a cooling breeze from the nearby river ruffled the edges of the cloth along the ground. Wonderful.
Using stiff fingers to fluff out her hair and help it dry faster, Sandra emotionlessly studied the Demon resting in the middle of the tent. A humming man was energetically polishing the wooden propeller while another worker checked the pressure on a tire with a patched hand-pump.
Trailing her fingers along the wings and tail, the woman slowly walked around the machine, marveling in its complexity, and simplicity. According to the old books she had found, this was called a biplane because of the two wings. Blasters were just machines, dead lumps of metal that killed. She snorted in contempt. A rock can chill a person. But planes flew! Something that wonderful desired a name. The first air wag she found was called the Angel, but all of the planes she had built were called Demons. Mostly because the damned things wouldn’t work.
More than a dozen times, Sandra had launched an experimental plane, so lovingly duplicated from the Angel. But the craft always crashed, usually within only a few yards. One burst into flames from a leak on the rubber fuel lines. The wings buckled on the second because the wood had been too heavy. The cloth ripped off the body on another, making it veer into the rock rim of the crater. The propeller came off on a fifth, slicing a startled eunuch in two, and the next two simply failed to take flight. The engines roared, the propellers spun, but they simply rolled impotently across the ground like tumbleweeds.
But Sandra was grimly determined to build more of the air wags, and would keep experimenting until she learned the secrets of flight. Then an aerial army of her planes would expand across the Deathlands, stealing ammo and food and slaves for Thunder ville until it was the richest ville in the world!
“That is,” she muttered, “if I ever get one of these to fly.”
The eunuchs heard the remark, but said nothing and concentrated on their preflight tasks.
Obviously something was wrong with the design, and after a lot of tests, Sandra thought that she finally had the answer. The plane needed a less rigid body. Flexibility was the key. So she had stripped off all of the armor-plating, and left the stretched cloth of the body exposed. The weight of the air wag seemed to be a critical factor, which was one of the reasons why the Demon was only receiving a quarter tank of fuel, and had no weapons installed. Hopefully, that would do the trick. She was running out of options, and patience. She would rather die than abandon flying, but the Angel was in poor shape, and she dared not make major repairs to it until she knew exactly what the alterations would do.
This was the newest version of the Demon, a carefully built copy of the Angel, and to the naked eye the machines seemed identical. The cloth was strong, the wood frame solid and the wings perfectly curved. The predark nuke batteries never ran out of power, the oil had been filtered clean, and the fuel tank could hold enough shine for her to fly for eight hours. Eight hours, the length of daylight, that was how long she could fly. How the ancients found their way along the invisible highways in the sky the woman didn’t know, but she needed light to spot landmarks to find her way home again; the Ohi River, Iron Hat mesa, the rad pit that resembled a star, the northern forest, the eastern ruins. Flying in the dark, she would easily get lost, and could fly smack into the side of a mesa, or try to land in the middle of the forest. Sometimes, she awoke from a nightmare of that happening.
Shaking her head to dispel the unpleasant memories, Sandra took hold of a guyline stretched between the two wings, stepped onto a recess in the fuselage and slid down into the snug cockpit. The dashboard was empty, the slots of instruments only gaping holes waiting to be filled. Aside from not wanting the meters and gauges damaged in a possible—All right, she admitted privately, likely crash—their absence also saved a little more weight. Besides, the woman had plenty of spares. Most of the instruments she’d modified from the ville wags, oil pressure, engine temp, gas level. Only the airspeed indicator was beyond her abilities to duplicate.
“Just one more reason to go back to the junkyard,” she muttered, moving the joystick as if airborne. Out of the corners of her eyes, she noted the wing flaps correctly moving in harmony to the control. Good. The new bushing made of polished bone had really made a difference. That had been Digger’s idea. Triple damn the man for wanting to recce Indy ville before her strike! Did it matter what their defenses were? When the Angel came screeching out of the sky, people screamed and fled.
“Here is the fuel, my lady!” Carter announced, stepping into the tent. The giant carried the ten-gallon can tucked under a thick arm as if it were a pillow.
“Give it here,” she commanded, and took the heavy container from him. The gas tank was on top of the overhead wing, gravity helping it feed into the engine. However, that meant it could only be refilled from the cockpit. When she was done, Sandra screwed the lid tight on the fuel tank and heaved the empty container over the side. It landed with a crash near a table full of tools and her single roll of sticky gray tape.
“Let’s go!” she ordered, standing in the cockpit, her arms resting on the top wing.
Rushing to obey, the two eunuchs untied the anchor ropes and spread wide the side of the tent. Meanwhile, Carter scouted under the Demon and yanked on a rope to remove the wedges of wood tucked beneath the wheels.
“Clear!” he shouted, raising the wedges high for her to see.
“Then start pushing!” Tregart directed, sitting again.
As the three men lifted the rear of the biplane and walked it carefully out of the tent, the woman set the choke and throttle, and locked them in place with a piece of gray tape.
On the airfield, the rest of the workers rushed to lend assistance, and soon they had the biplane aligned with a gap in the crater’s southern rim.
Wetting a finger, Sandra tested the wind. “Two steps more to the left!” she directed.
The men gingerly lifted the rear of the ultralight biplane and shifted it slightly.
Now the wind blew directly onto the air wag, the wing flaps fluttering slightly from the pressure.
“Set the chocks!” she ordered, partially climbing out of the cockpit and lashing the joystick into position.
Carter disappeared beneath the plane, only to reappear a few ticks later. “Ready, my lady!” he announced, the rope tight in his fist.
In the distance, the door in the wall opened and Stone entered the crater. His hair was soaking wet, and his clothes looked clean and damp, as if the teen had washed wearing them. But the canvas bag over his shoulder was dry, and riding proudly at his hip was a badly frayed gunbelt and a well-oiled blaster. Spotting the crowd of people around the biplane, Stone stood straight, and started their way.
Setting the choke and throttle, the woman wet her lips before taking hold of the ignition switch.
“Get ready…contact!” Sandra cried, just as the old manual directed, and twisted the handle.
There was a painful whine as the propeller slowly rotated, then the engine sputtered and coughed a few times, faltered, then came back strong and built to a controlled roar as the propeller spun into a blur. With the wind whipping her loose hair around madly, Sandra waited as the vibrating plane settled down and strained to be released. Blood of her fathers, was this time going to work?
“Set her loose!” she yelled, backing away from the Demon.
Using both hands, Carter pulled on the rope and the chocks came free. Incredibly the winged machine just sat there for a few ticks, and Sandra started to turn red in the face. Then the Demon finally started to roll forward.
“Come on you, beautiful bitch,” the woman muttered, clenching her fists as the biplane moved across the flat ground. “Come on…that’s it…yes…oh, yes….”
Accelerating constantly, the machine lifted slightly into the air, and the workers gasped at the sight. Stepping toward the biplane, Sandra was suddenly holding her breath as the Demon touched down again, only to lift once more.
An anguished cry rose from the men as a shift in the wind made the machine veer slightly off course. Sandra braced herself for the inevitable crash. Nuking hell, she had been so close this time!
Then the world seemed to go still as the cloth-and-wood machine leveled off and rolled smoothly up the sloped wooden ramp at the far end of the strip and sailed majestically into the air.
“Yes!” Sandra screamed, tears on her cheeks. “Look at her go!”
The workers erupted into wild cheers as the Demon stayed up past the ten-foot mark, the twenty, the thirty! From the milking tent, the frightened stickies started hooting madly at the unfamiliar noise. But then there came the crack of bullwhips, and the muties went quickly silent.
“My lady,” Carter said, turning to her with shining eyes. “You have done it. The heavens are now yours to command, sky baron!”
The woman broke into a laugh at that. “Well, I do like the name sky baron,” she admitted with a smile, but then it melted into a frown and she spit a virulent curse.
“Black dust!” Tregart screamed, starting after the biplane. “No. Stop it. Stop it, you feebs!”
Still rising higher than any previous Demon, the charging machine jerked slightly as it reached the end of the tethering line, and the old rope snapped. Now unfettered, it rose majestically upward and sailed over the jagged peaks of the crater rim.
“Shitfire!” Sandra snarled, drawing a blaster only to holster the weapon once more. Gone. It was gone. For a split second, the woman thought she might be asleep and having a nightmare, but as the air wag droned onward and began to vanish in the distance, Tregart knew this was no dream. Gone. And it could land anywhere. Anywhere at all. A shiver run down her spine at the thought that the sky might become a battleground instead of her private domain.
“Carter, get the Angel ready for an immediate flight!” she commanded, breaking into a run for the tents. “I’ve got to find that thing before somebody else does!”
“B-but, my lady, the Angel is having its engine serviced,” Carter cried, grabbing hold of her arm. “It will take hours to get it back together! And by then it will be dark.”
Almost beside herself, the woman stared at the man in unbridled rage and reached for her blaster. The suddenly pale eunuch let go, but stayed in front, blocking her way.
“You cannot fly at night, my lady,” he said softly, splaying his arms. “Let us go, instead.”
Sandra started to bark a laugh at the ridiculous concept of one of them flying a plane, but then realized that wasn’t what the big eunuch meant. She hated to admit it, but the giant made sense.
“Karl, René!” Sandra barked, facing them. “Take two of my best horses and chase after the Demon! Find it and wait for me to arrive at first light.”
As if embarrassed, Karl touched the disfigured side of his face. “But, how will you find us…” he started.
“Light a fire and toss green wood on it, feeb,” the woman said impatiently. “I’ll follow your smoke.”
“Take lanterns, and longblasters,” Carter added, crossing his arms. “And plenty of ammo.”
Sandra frowned at that, annoyed she had not thought of it herself. “Longblasters and handblasters,” she added to cover the slip. “If there’s trouble, burn the air wag. But save the engine. Carter will bring a cart to haul the machine back.”
The eunuchs bowed. “Yes, my lady,” they chorused.
“Move, you idiots!” she screeched, pulling her blaster and firing a round into the air, making them jump. “The nuking plane gets farther away every second! Get moving and find the Demon, or I’ll chill you in ways not even invented yet!”
Swallowing hard, the seminaked men turned to race across the airfield for the horse corral in the distance.
“Here,” Sandra said, tossing over a set of keys to the chief eunuch. “Get them bolt-action longblasters, and a wheelgun from my tent.”
Carter made the catch. “Very wise, my lady.”
“Then get the Angel back together. And I want it ready before dawn, and carrying a full load of firebombs.”
“Bombs?” He blinked in confusion, hugging the keys.
“If anybody other than my men find the air wag, I’ll have to destroy it myself.” And their ville, too, if necessary. Nobody controls the sky, but me!
Just then, a rumble of thunder from the dark clouds overhead heralded a strobing flash of sheet lightning.
Sniffing hard, she detected no trace of sulfur in the wind and scowled in frustration. An acid rain would have solved all of their problems this night. Now the downpour would only hinder the search. Recovering the Demon was a task for her eunuchs. And nothing would save them if they failed.
Angrily, Sandra started for her tent, then changed direction for another. Carter stayed by her side, keeping his stride short to match her smaller steps.
“Shall I send the new boy to you?” he asked salaciously. “We will be too busy tonight to make him one of us.”
Now there was an idea. But she had a better one.
“No, have Stone stand a post on the wall tonight. I’m going to handle the repairs on the Angel myself,” Sandra said, unbuttoning a cuff to roll up a sleeve. “Then put all of our people on starting to make another Demon. No, four of them. Use all of the cloth and glue there is in stock.”
His eyebrows went up. “All? Er, yes, my lady.”
The clouds rumbled again, but this time Sandra looked back defiantly. “We know the secret now of how to make air wags,” she said, doing up the other sleeve. “So there’s no reason to delay building more warbirds, my army of sky raiders!”