Dawn was starting to lighten the eastern sky when Sandra Tregart strode from the tent pulling on her soft leather gloves.
“Move ‘er out!” the woman commanded loudly.
Exhausted looking workers pulled back the flaps of the next tent and a team rolled the Angel into view.
This air wag was noticeably different from the Demon in numerous ways. It had two cockpits, one behind the other. There was a line of letters and numbers along the side of the fuselage, once painted on and now embroidered in colorful threads. The fuel tank was inside the machine, not exposed on the top wing, and there was a squat and ugly predark rapid-fire attached to the cowling directly behind the propellers. A greasy belt of .50-caliber brass cartridges extended from the side of the weapon to snake down inside the biplane.
Testing the wind with a finger, Sandra studied the sky carefully. There was a storm coming, and a big one, but it wouldn’t hit today.
“Any word from our hunters?” the woman asked, walking alongside the air wag as the eunuchs set its nose into the wind. She knew that the Angel didn’t need that to assist a takeoff, but the less others knew about the operation of the machine the better.
“No word yet, mistress,” Carter said, fighting back a yawn. “And the lookouts say there is no sign of smoke in the sky.”
“Damn,” Sandra muttered, tying the scarf tighter around her neck. It was going to be a warm day, but in the air the temperature dropped fast, and the woman had felt like she was freezing to death on her first long ride. Suddenly she understood why the faded pictures of the predark pilots showed them in leather jackets, gloves and scarves. That hadn’t been a uniform, but a basic necessity.
Checking the blaster at her hip, and the two small derringers hidden under her arms, the woman ran a mental checklist to make sure everything was covered. Oil, tires, spare air pump, food, but no water. Men could use a bottle to relieve themselves while flying through the air. But that wasn’t possible for a woman, and so she had to deny herself any fluids for a good hour before a long flight.
“The fuel tank is topped off, my lady,” Carter said, shivering slightly from the morning chill. The crater was warm in the day, but cold at night. “And the bombs are loaded.”
“How many?” Sandra asked, checking for the butane lighter in her pocket.
“Ten fire bombs, two explosive. All the Angel can carry.”
She nodded. “Good enough.” Grabbing a guyline and stepping on the lower wing, the woman swung into the forward cockpit and strapped herself in tight. Nestled alongside the woman in the tiny compartment were a dozen mixed bombs, and on the dashboard was a crude map of the area sketched in white chalk. Major landmarks were etched in red to serve as guides to find the way back home if she lost sight of the Ohi River.
Turning the ignition key, Sandra got a reading on the battery, fuel, oil pressure and engine temp. All in the green.
“Have your people follow me for as long as they can,” she said. “Then when they lose sight of the Angel, just keep going in the same direction. I will find them.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“If I’m not back by afternoon, send out a search party,” Sandra ordered, placing the sunglasses onto her face. Lengths of ribbon dangled from the end of the earpieces and she tied the glasses tightly into position. Such things were considered useless trinkets these days, only she had discovered the hard way that the tinted glass was vital to seeing where you were going up in the air. This she had also learned from the photos of the old sky barons. The books had used another term—aviators—but she found it ugly and much preferred the commanding phrase of sky baron.
“I will lead the search personally,” Carter said, standing tall.
Yes, she assumed as much. “Oh, and do nothing to Stone while I’m gone,” Sandra said in a dangerous tone. “I haven’t yet decided his fate.”
The eunuch scowled, but nodded in acceptance.
“Clear the props!” she shouted, setting the choke and throttle.
The workers dashed away from the front of the biplane, and she hit the autostart. There was a revving noise and then the propellers started to move, slowly at first, then jerking into action, and the compact aluminum engine roared with power.
“Release the chocks!”
Carter pulled on the ropes removing the wedges of wood from under the wheels, and the Angel started forward in a rush of speed.
Taking the joystick in both gloved hands, the woman adjusted her trim and raised the flaps. The gauges on the dashboard fluctuated wildly as she gave the engine full power. With increased velocity, the Angel raced along the floor of the impact crater. The whole air wag was vibrating, the guylines started humming and the noise from the propellers abruptly changed pitch. Suddenly the ground was gone, dropping rapidly away as if she had gone over the edge of a cliff. An electric tingle surged through her stomach and she burst into joyful laughter. Yes! Flying! Not even sex could compare to the excitement of being airborne!
Swinging the Angel around in a wide gentle arc, Sandra kept the rising sun out of her eyes as she swooped low in the sky and skimmed across Thunder ville. The sec men on the wall gave crisp salutes, and the ville folk in the streets timidly waved, the smaller children hiding behind their mothers’ skirts.
A sea of upturned faces watched her sail by overhead, and then she was past the wall once more and crossing the desert. Leveling the wings, Sandra circled back to the airfield and started along the same flight path of the runaway Demon.
From this new vantage point, she could see far over the horizon, and there was still no sign of smoke. The woman growled at that. It meant that either her eunuchs hadn’t found the Demon, or else they were dead. Bad news either way.
Glancing behind, Sandra saw horses burst out of the wall of the crater and start to gallop across the dry ground, leaving a dusty contrail in their wake. She gave a tight smile at that, but then abruptly frowned as the wind shifted and began to force her upward toward the deadly clouds. Shoving the throttle to the stop, Sandra gave the ancient twelve-cylinder engine full power. Surging to top speed, she dropped the Angel until it was only flying above the ground at about a hundred feet. The sound of the props and motor echoed off the rocky sand below, sending a score of animals scurrying for cover.
Shifting her grip on the joystick, the woman laughed out loud at the sight. Let the whole world tremble in fear at her approach!
“Look to the heavens, fools!” Sandra shouted over the rushing wind. “Your master has returned!”
RYAN AWOKE WITH A START and instinctively reached for his blaster hanging from the back of a nearby chair. Sitting bolt upright on the bed, the man looked around the officer’s quarters, wondering what had disturbed his sleep.
Just then, the bathroom door swung open and Krysty came out surrounded by a cloud of steam.
“Morning, lover.” She smiled, toweling her arms dry. “It took a while, but the shower finally delivered hot water.”
“Good,” Ryan said, placing aside the weapon. “After last night, I could damn well use a shower.”
Standing, the naked man stretched royally, and Krysty enjoyed watching the play of hard muscles under his heavily scarred skin. The man was an unstoppable chilling machine in combat, yet he was also the most gentle lover she had ever been with. His brutish looks hid the fact that Ryan was very well read for these days, and what he hadn’t learned in the library of his father, Baron Cawdor of Front Royal, the man had been taught by the Trader or had picked up from Mildred and Doc over the years.
“Well, it had been quite a while since we last had some privacy,” she said, with a twinkle in her emerald eyes. “But you made the wait worth it.”
Giving a rare smile, the Deathlands warrior reached out to gently stroke Krysty’s beautiful face, and she nuzzled his hand in return. In silence, the couple shared a private moment, saying things to each other for which there were no words.
It had been a very busy night. After closing the blast door, the companions conducted a detailed search of the entire redoubt, checking every room, every body, for anything useful. They found a wide assortment of knives, a fortune in utterly useless cash, countless dead digital wristwatches, a hundred radios without batteries, a dozen M-16 assault rifles in decent condition, but only twenty rounds of ammo for the rapid-fires. However, a couple of the airtight foot-lockers in the barracks yielded a wealth of underwear, including bras, good socks, new boots for J.B., a little soap, a score of MRE food packs, and amazingly four boxes of assorted ammo and two precious grens.
It was a windfall of munitions, and the companions celebrated with self-heat cans of soup and MRE. The Mylar envelopes yielding something Mildred called lasagna this time, instead of the almost constant fare of military-grade beef stew and biscuits. It was a welcome change.
Concluding dinner, the companions hit the showers, and found they had quite a long wait as the pipes had a hundred year of accumulated sludge to flush out before the redoubt finally produced clean, hot water. Wearing towels and blasters, the people next used the washing machines in the laundry, and during the dry cycles Mildred gave everybody a haircut, except Krysty who only rarely cut her animated Titian tresses. It was an almost unbearable process.
Fed, clean and warm for the first time in weeks, the companions had taken over the officers’ quarters. With a bit of effort, they’d assembled six clean beds, and separated into groups: J.B. spending the night with Mildred, and Krysty with Ryan, while Doc and Jak set up bachelor quarters in the commanding officer’s private suite. The two men had unearthed some extremely well-aged Scotch from a locked drawer in a private liquor cabinet, an open wall safe that had been hidden behind an oil painting of the White House yielding a cornucopia of pornography suitable as trade goods, and the men spent a pleasant night arguing swords versus knives, and discussing the attributes of predark models. The other members of the companions enjoyed a more intimate evening behind locked doors. However, nobody mentioned the emptiness they all felt from the lack of young Dean Cawdor in their midst.
In the timeless depths of the redoubt, there were no alarm clocks to sound revelry, no sunrise at dawn to banish sleep, and the weary travelers slept their full, safe and secure in the armored bunker. If anything moved through the shadows of the redoubt, avoiding the bright lights of the fluorescent strips, they didn’t hear a sound behind their barricaded doors.
“Yes, it has been a very long time,” Ryan agreed as he moved closer. Krysty gave a small sigh and lowered her towel, the one-eyed man sliding a muscular arm around her trim waist. There came a loud knock on the door.
“It can’t be breakfast, because it’s my turn to cook today,” Ryan said, playfully patting the woman on her shapely rump, her red hair flaring in response.
“Now don’t start something you can’t finish, lover,” Krysty purred, completely dropping her towel.
Smiling, Ryan paused at the sight and pulled her close when the knock came again.
“Sorry to disturb you folks,” Mildred said from the other side. “But Doc found an airplane.”
“In the redoubt?” Ryan asked incredulously.
“No. Outside. In the sky. Somebody is flying an airplane.”
Their special moment broken, Krysty and Ryan shared a glance, then separated and grabbed their clothes, dressing quickly. The magic of the night already fading into just another memory.
Rushing down the corridors, the three took the elevator to the garage level, then headed into the access tunnel. At the end of the zigzag passageway, they found the exit portal wide open, the rest of the companions standing in brilliant sunshine as they scanned the clear blue sky.
“I thought it was a stingwing at first,” Doc said in greeting. “And started to duck back inside, but then I realized the truth.”
Adjusting the patch over the ruin of his left eye, Ryan didn’t blame the man for wanting to avoid a stingwing. They were the terror of the Deathlands. Flying almost too fast to see, their needle-sharp beaks would stab a man and drink his gushing fountain of blood. They were easy to chill, but a triple-bitch to shoot.
“You sure it was a plane?” Ryan demanded, rubbing his smoothly shaved chin.
Scratching the side of his nose with his ebony cane, Doc grimaced. “I should think so. No bird alive could have done that loop.”
“A what?”
“A loop de loop,” Doc answered, making a circle in the air with a finger. “Like that.”
“An Emmelman maneuver,” Mildred muttered. “That’s got to be a plane, all right. And one with either a very experienced pilot, or a foolish newbie who doesn’t know any better.”
“Why foolish?” Krysty asked, her red hair seeming to blaze like molten copper in the noontime sun.
“It is a very dangerous maneuver, to fly upside down like that. Fun, but dangerous. And as they say, there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots,” Mildred said, reciting from memory. “But there are no old, bold pilots.”
Lowering his binocs, Jak cackled. “Good one.” He grinned. “Will remember!”
“Well, I don’t see anything now,” J.B. said, reaching into his munitions bag. Shifting the new grens, the Armorer pulled out a brass Navy telescope and extended the antique to its full length. He had found the relic a few years back in the window of a pawn shop located in a deserted city. It didn’t have the range of military binocs, but it was a lot lighter and compacted down to the size of a soup can.
“Anything on the horizon?” Ryan asked, shading his eye from the sun with a raised hand.
“Nothing yet,” J.B. replied slowly, swinging the telescope around. “Seems to be clear…Hey.”
The companions waited, squinting skyward for any sign of danger.
“Nuke me,” J.B. stated in awe. “It is a bastard plane!”
“Impossible.” Mildred snorted, stepping closer. “No way in this hell of a world that a jet fighter could get airborne. Just to make the fuel…”
“I said a plane, not a mil jet,” J.B. replied curtly, lowering the telescope. “Here, see for yourself. You know these things better than us.”
Because I’m from the past when air travel was a simple matter of buying a ticket and hoping there was good movie on your flight across the world. Mildred swept the sky where J.B. indicated and soon found the moving speck. She wasn’t sure what it was at first, then it banked into a turn and she got a good glimpse of the four wings.
“It’s a biplane,” Mildred said at last. “I’ve seen them on television and in the movies.”
She worked the length of the Navy telescope trying to get better focus. But then it was gone, hidden behind a rocky mesa. “It’s a biplane, probably an old crop duster from some farmer’s barn. Not much more than cloth and wood.”
“And fly?” Jak asked, brushing back a cascade of white hair. “Bull.”
“You remember the paper plane,” she replied, passing the telescope to Ryan.
Jak scowled. Yeah, he did. It was in a redoubt where they had found nothing but tons of what Mildred called office supplies. Paper clips, pencils, files, envelopes and other items. Utterly useless. No food, ammo, or even decent blankets. What a shithole. But that night over the evening campfire, Mildred had performed a miracle and folded a piece of stiff paper into a sort of little arrow and sailed it across the room. Young Dean had been delighted, while the rest of them immediately turned their talk to war planes, and what they could do if they found any. Mil wags…No, that was the wrong word for them. Warbirds—yeah, that was it—were too complex to survive skydark. They took crews of dozens of techs to keep them operational, fancy electronics, special fuels. They finally decided that it simply couldn’t be done. Air travel, such as it had been, was impossible.
Except that now, somebody was doing it.
“If this holocaustian Icarus should learn the secret of making more of such biplanes…” Doc said thoughtfully, his voice trailing off.
“Air wars,” Ryan added grimly. “And the world would soon have a new emperor. A baron of all barons. A sky baron.”
“Millie, I know how to make black powder—” J.B. started.
She cut him off. “No good, dear,” the physician stated firmly. “Even in my day, planes were difficult to shoot down. And even if we had working Stinger missiles with heat-seeking warheads, they wouldn’t be able to track a cloth airplane. Just not designed for the job.”
“Take lotta lead,” Jak said.
“To put enough holes in it? Damn straight. During which the pilot would be dropping bombs on you.”
Bombs from the sky.
The teenager shuddered. Sky bombs. It was a curseword that few people used these days, a hundred years after skydark.
“We could leave,” Krysty stated, looking toward the opening to the redoubt. The interior of the base was clean and warm, so completely different from the harsh world outside, it seemed foolish for them to ever leave. But she knew the fallacy of that thinking. There weren’t enough supplies to keep them alive.
“No, lover, it’s not smart to leave an enemy running free behind you.” Ryan growled, collapsed the telescope and put it away. “A plane like this could easily destroy Front Royal, Zero City, or even Haven. Nobody could stop it from smashing apart every friendly ville in America. How do you stop bombs falling from the air?”
“The villagers would panic, the sec men revolt, and then outlanders would start to attack everybody,” J.B. said knowingly, swinging his Uzi in front as if for protection. “Dark night, it would be a feeding frenzy for the stickies and howlers!”
“Be the Mutie Wars all over again,” Krysty said through clenched teeth. Then she softly added, “Only this time, we may not win.”
“Yep,” Jak agreed, staring hatefully at the clouds. “Gotta ace.”
“But my dear Ryan, we do not know that this pilot is in fact our enemy,” Doc pointed out.
“Or a friend, either,” Ryan agreed. Walking around a pile of predark rubble, he looked at the empty sky stretching into the distance. The dark storm clouds were already starting to build. Soon they would blot out the sun and cast the world into shadows once more.
“So I think we better find out,” Ryan declared.