“Definitely safer in the Land Car,” Cenuij muttered.
“Excellent response time,” Dloan murmured.
“Recognise them?” Zefla said.
“No,” Dloan said as Miz and Keteo-limping heavily, face covered with blood-heaved the kitbag over the wall of the pen and then collapsed over it.
“Who we dealing with here?” Miz said, breathing hard.
“Just saying,” Dloan said. “Contract army; couldn’t recognise them.”
“Where’s Roa?” Keteo asked, wiping blood from his eyes.
Zefla looked over the top of the stones towards the wrecked half-track. “Can’t see him,” she said. She looked back at Keteo. “What about the radio guy?” she asked.
Keteo shook his head. “No more,” he said, then knelt, looking over the stone parapet. Miz was tearing the kitbag open, in between glancing up and around.
“What hit us?” Sharrow said.
“Down!” Miz shouted. The scream of a jet came almost instantly. The ground pulsed beneath them and rocks tumbled off the pen wall. They waited for the pattering debris to stop falling, then looked up. A crater had been blasted in the river bed twenty metres upstream; water was pooling into the steaming, smoke-shrouded hole.
“Shit,” Cenuij said, holding his leg.
“Debris?” Zefla asked him, sliding over to him.
Cenuij grimaced. He lifted his leg up, flexed his ankle. “I’ll survive.”
“Tank sensors…” Dloan said, his voice trailing off as he watched Miz pull a large gun out of the kitbag. Keteo went over and pulled another tube-shaped weapon out. Dloan joined them, eyes wide.
Sharrow shook herself; she opened her satchel and saw the HandCannon. She pulled the gun out and searched through the spare clips in the bottom of the bag. Her red-head wig was down there too, but she ignored it.
“Shit, here’s another one,” Cenuij said.
The plane swooped, barrelling straight towards them. Miz lifted the gun he’d found, trying and failing to make it fire. Sharrow found the HandCannon’s bi-propellant clip but it was too late. Something fell from the plane, tumbling. She fired up anyway as the plane tore overhead, the gun thud-thudding in her hand as the jet swept over. Something whistled through the air, just ahead of the zooming jet’s roar.
She hugged the ground. Detonations rippled through the earth and grass; a noise like a million firecrackers burst overhead. The debris was tiny and sounded metallic. She raised her head first. More detonations crackled downstream.
“Terrible aiming,” Dloan said by her side as he took up a large gun. He pulled a magazine out of the kitbag, then another and another.
“Cluster bombs!” Cenuij said, gulping as he looked at where a last few explosions were flashing and cracking down the valley. “Are they legal?”
Keteo banged the side of the tube-weapon he held, muttering.
“They become legal,” Zefla said. “When you do something like attack a Court-licensed Land Car.”
Sharrow threw the empty clip away and emplaced the bipropellant magazine. “Think they’ll stop bombing?” she said, digging for the other rocket clip in the satchel. “Those paras must be pretty close.”
Miz checked the gun he had. “You’ll be lucky,” he said.
“These rounds are all the wrong calibre,” Dloan said, digging through the kitbag. He sounded disappointed.
“Two more,” Zefla said, looking up the valley.
Two sharp, dark shapes turned against the fading evening light, then seemed to hover there, growing larger.
“We should have taken that box,” Cenuij said. “That black box. The Court-”
“Solo!” Keteo yelled. He pointed down the valley.
Sharrow saw two flashing lights; they rose into the air on two masts above a large dark shape. More lights glittered, and the dark shape became a large ACV, two-then, as it slewed briefly, four-large propellers visible above it.
Keteo whooped.
Dloan stared at the hovercraft. “How did they get that up here?” he asked.
“Rivers!” Keteo said cockily.
Sharrow looked back to the two approaching jets as they bellied down, each leaving two thin grey tubes of vapour behind them, curling from their wingtips in the humid evening air. Miz tried to fire at the planes, but the gun wouldn’t work.
“Shit,” he said. “This thing needs a fucking power pack…”
Dloan turned to look at the jets and put down the gun he was holding, watching the aircraft as a third shape turned in the air above the valley head and started on the same bombing run. He shook his head.
“No matter,” he said softly.
The planes floated closer. Sharrow held the HandCannon in both hands, ready. Two black shapes hung under each of the planes’ wings. The canisters detached and started to fall, tumbling through the air towards them.
“Aw, fuck…” she heard Miz say.
“Bye,” Dloan said softly.
Then both planes became cerise spheres. The falling canisters pulsed bright pink in the same instant.
The light was too bright. Sharrow closed her eyes, not comprehending. Dloan shouted something, then he thudded into her, on top of her, putting the light out. The world pulsed and quivered, shock waves hammering into her already ringing ears.
The weight on her lifted. She opened her eyes. Dloan was standing above her, eyes bulging, mouth hanging open.
“Dloan!” she shouted. “Get down!”
Dloan swivelled, mouth still hanging open. Keteo stood up beside him, his mouth open too. He was staring back towards the half-track. Sharrow got up on her knees beside Dloan.
The two jets had disappeared. Tiny glowing bits of wreckage were falling all about, landing smoking in the surrounding grass, hissing in the water and clunking into the stones of the animal-pen like some bizarre hail. Zefla yelped and brushed one red-hot shard off her arm. Echoes rumbled round the valley. There was a long smoking crater on the flank of the hill across from them, tattered wriggles of smoke guttered from a scatter of small fires downstream from the pen, and from the dip beyond a dark black cloud was rising on a shaft of smoke and flame, partially obscuring the view down the valley towards the Solo.
The third jet swept overhead, climbing and turning hard. It too became a vivid ball of light: the explosion shook the ground and the wreckage fell gracefully to the hill in a thousand fiery pieces trailing black smoke like some vast firework gone wrong.
Keteo leapt into the air. “Roa!” he yelled, flourishing the unused tube-weapon.
Sharrow went to the downhill parapet of the animal-pen. They seemed to be surrounded by pillars of smoke. Down-valley, beyond the rising column left by one of the crashed planes, the Solo was visible, stationary a few hundred metres below, engines droning.
The half-track sat, still burning in the gloom beneath the dark hill. Violet light sparkled just behind it. She turned and looked above the hillside where the wreckage burned. A dot in the distant sky burst with light.
“Roa!” Keteo yelled again. He grinned down at Sharrow, then looked slightly embarrassed, and shrugged. “Me, really,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Wow!” Dloan said, looking round at them all. “Wow!”
“That’s what was in that box,” Cenuij said crisply. He snorted. “The wonders of ancient technology.”
“Oh boy,” Zefla said. “Is that bozo Roa in trouble now.”
Light ridged the hilltop above the flaming wreckage of the third plane. Ricochets whined off the stones of a nearby wall as the sound cracked over them.
“Paras are here,” Dloan said, as they all ducked down again.
“I can see Roa moving,” Zefla said, peeking out of a hole in the wall.
Answering fire from the ACV echoed around the valley. More gunfire came from the ridge of the hill, pattering around them.