The plane flew lazily on up the centre of the fjord, maybe two thousand metres away now; the missile lanced out on an intercept course.
Dloan had stopped firing the cannon.
The missile was a kilometre away, then five hundred metres.
“Oh well,” Sharrow said to herself. “Just ignore it then, assholes.”
Light glittered around the nose of the flying boat.
The missile blew up; it flashed and disintegrated in the air, creating a thick black paw of smoke from which dozens of little dark claws trailed out and down, falling into the water in a flurry of tail splashes.
“Son of a bitch,” Sharrow breathed. The plane tipped towards them once more.
Dloan fired the cannon again, sparks arcing high towards the plane. The plane flew through the rising bulb of smoke left by their intercepted missile. It fired another two of its own.
Sharrow glanced at the AT. “Dloan!” she screamed. She saw him crouch down a little behind the cannon. He fired a last burst of shells, then sprang out of the hatch and ran along the top of the AT’s roof. Sharrow could have sworn he had a great big smile on his face.
Dloan jumped the three metres to the ground, rolled and dived into light cover a half second before the pair of missiles screamed into the ATs and blew them both to smithereens.
She must have ducked. She lifted her head to the smoke and the flame. Both vehicles had been obliterated. Hers lay on its back, burning fiercely. The other AT still seemed to be the right way up, but its body had been torn half off, lifted so that the three engines lay exposed between the flayed, burning tyres. What was left of it shook, crackling with secondary detonations; she ducked down again and watched the sea plane fly past a half-kilometre out and curving away from them again.
A line of black smoke curled from its starboard engine. It was losing height and it sounded rough and clattery. Somebody whooped from the trees.
She looked at her left hand, resting on the ground. It hurt. She pulled it away, peering at the blood, then shook it, cleaning earth away from the cut. It didn’t look serious.
“Yee-ha!” whooped the same voice from the trees. Dloan.
The flying boat laboured on through the air for another kilometre, gaining height; then it tipped and banked, turning and heading back down the fjord again, this time angling for the far shore as the black smoke behind it thickened and it dropped closer and closer to the water.
The air cracked and rang as more explosions sounded in the two wrecked ATs; smoke piled into the sky.
“Sharrow?” Miz shouted during a lull.
“Here!” she shouted. “I’m all right.”
The flying boat hit the water, bounced in a double curtain of spray and hit again, stopping quickly and slewing round as it came to rest facing them, fifteen hundred metres away.
She slung the satchel onto her back and crawled away from the shore-side rocks, staying in the cover of some smaller boulders until she was near the trees; then she got up and ran in a crouch to where the others were lying just inside the cover, watching the ATs burn and the flying boat near the far shore sink. Its glassy, complicated nose was already raised in the air; one wing float was canted out of the water, the other submerged.
She dropped down beside them.
“Okay?” Zefla asked her.
“Yes. Nice shooting, Dloan,” she said, wiping her bloody hand on the trousers of her fatigues.
“Thanks,” Dloan grinned. “Fancy missile-intercepting laser couldn’t deal with old-fashioned cannon shells.” He sighed massively, looking happy.
“Yeah, but now what do we do?” Miz said, looking at her. “Swim the rest of the way?”
“Oh,” Feril said, “look. What unorthodox camouflage.”
Sharrow looked.
Zefla squinted through the field-glasses. She groaned.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” she said. She handed the binoculars to Sharrow. “No, that’s not true.” She shook her head. “I do believe it.”
Sharrow watched through glasses; the faceted nose of the flying boat was tipped high up now, pointing at the sky. From doors just under the wing roots she could see perhaps three dozen or so small figures clambering into what she guessed were inflatable boats. It all looked a little confused.
Sharrow could make the figures out easily because they were dressed in shocking pinks, lime-greens, blood-reds, loud-violets and bright-yellows that were even more vibrant and obvious than the orange boats they were packing into. She put the glasses down.
“They really are mad,” she said, more to herself than anybody else. “It’s Elson Roa and his gang.”
“That maniac?” Miz said, eyes wide. He gestured at the sinking plane, its fuselage now vertical to the sky and submerged almost to the wings. Two bright clusters of colour were just visible to the naked eye, heading slowly away from the sinking aircraft towards the thick green blanket of trees on the far shore. “That’s him?” Miz said. “Again?”
Sharrow nodded slowly, setting the field-glasses down on the ground. “Yes,” she said. “Again.”
The ammunition in the burning ATs continued to explode for a few minutes, then the fires began to die and the detonations ceased. They ventured out from the trees and searched the wreckage scattered round the remains of the two ATs until they heard a series of quiet phutting noises and saw thin fountains in the water nearby.
“Machine gun,” Dloan said, looking towards the far side of the fjord. The air cracked and whined; little clouds of dust jumped off rocks around them. They retreated quickly into the forest.
They had one light emergency tent and survival rations in a small back-pack Zefla had rescued; Sharrow had her satchel, which contained the HandCannon, the two dials from the old bike, and a first aid kit. Miz had rescued a medium machine gun and a single anti-aircraft missile. They’d found some clothes and a few more ration packs while they’d searched the wreckage. Apart from that, all they had was what they stood in; fatigues or hiking gear, a pistol each, a couple of knives, one small medical kit and whatever else had happened to be in their pockets.
“I should have thought,” Sharrow said, banging the heel of her hands off her temples. She winced as her left hand hit; she had washed the wound in a stream and put a plaster on it, but it still hurt. Miz still wore a small bandage on his hand, too, and Dloan limped a little, just as she did.
We are coming to reflect each other, she thought.
They sat in a small hollow, round a smoky, feeble fire they had finally lasered alight. The late afternoon was made evening by the tall trees rising around them.
“I should have thought,” she repeated. “We could have got more stuff together to take out of the ATs while we were looking for a place to hole up.” She shook her head.
“Look,” Miz said. “We’re all alive; we have a tent, some food, and we have guns; we can shoot what we need to eat.” He gestured at the forest around them. “There must be plenty of game in here. Or there’s fish.” He patted one pocket in his fancy, much be-pocketed hiking jacket. “I’ve got hooks and some line; we can make a rod.”
Sharrow looked dubious. “Yes. Meanwhile, we’ve got four days to walk two hundred klicks,” she said, “for a rendezvous our brave captain probably isn’t even going to try to make.”
“We could leave somebody here,” Zefla said. She held her combat cap out on a stick in front of the fire, drying it. She sat loosely cross-legged, at her ease.-Dloan had his injured leg out in front of him. Miz had rolled up a rock to sit on; the android squatted on its haunches, looking skeletally sharp and angled. “Some of us could go on to the end of the fjord,” Zefla continued, “while somebody stays behind to meet the sub and tell them to come back later.”
“We’ve nothing to signal with,” Sharrow said, taking her pocket phone out of her jacket. “The dedicated comm stuff was in the ATs and these won’t work here.”