Akaku'akanene's wide eyes fixed on my face, and I could feel her fear and horror. She croaked something in Hawai'ian. I'd never heard the phrase before, but her tone of voice made the translation a no-brainer: "Oh, holy fragging crap…!"
I knew we were in even deeper drek before it happened. If Akaku'akanene was talking to me, it meant she wasn't talking to the spirits or whatever that apparently wanted to geek us. The Merlin staggered in the air as something slammed into its right wing. The right engine screamed like a speared devil rat, and then something blew up. In my peripheral vision I saw the flash of flame to my right, then shrapnel tore into the fuselage. Aft, I heard someone shriek in agony.
The right wingtip dropped instantly, and this time I couldn't hold my balance. I slammed into the right wall of the flight deck, and I howled as something went gruntch in my right shoulder. The impact was enough to defocus my vision and knot my guts with nausea. I could have let consciousness slip away right then, but somehow I clung to it, holding back the darkness. Frag, if these were going to be my last moments alive, I wanted to be awake for them.
We were in serious drek, I knew that even through the throbbing disorientation in my head. The Merlin was going down, and it was going down fast. Somehow the pilot had managed to get the right wingtip back up, but there was no way he'd be able to keep the crippled bird in the air much longer.
For the last time the copilot glared at me with his glowing eyes, and ordered, "Get back there! Strap in!"
This time I didn't feel any urge to argue with him. I struggled to my feet, dragging the almost inconsequential weight of Akaku'akanene with me. Back through the door into the passenger compartment I lurched. I pushed the old woman down into my old seat, the one beside Alana Kono. "Strap her in," I told the gillette.
The Merlin lurched, and I knew I wasn't going to make it to a seat myself, not in time. The seat Akaku'akanene had vacated was way aft toward the rear of the fuselage. With the bird pitching and rolling the way it was, there was precisely zero chance I'd be able to negotiate the legs and gear blocking the way and strap myself into the four-point before we slammed down. Instinctively, I glanced back over my shoulder. Through the flight-deck canopy, I could see the broken, rocky ground rushing up toward us. Frag, I had even less time than I thought…
Somebody else recognized it, too-one of the young, spit-and-polish troopers, the guy sitting next to Louis Pohaku. With a fist he pounded the quick-release on his four-point harness and was on his feet in an instant "Sit!" he yelled at me, then reinforced the word by literally flinging me into the canvas sling chair. My fingers fumbled with the straps and buckles, trying to lock the harness closed across my shoulders and chest. Firm hands pushed mine away and finished the procedure much faster than I could ever have done it In the dim light I looked up into the trooper's face. Just a kid, he was, maybe twenty at the outside. Keen and eager. He smiled as I tried to thank him.
And then we hit.
25
I don't know how long I was unconscious. A couple of seconds, maybe as long as five. The back of my head felt pulped where it had slammed against the fuselage, and the four-point was applying agonizing pressure to my injured shoulder. Still, I was alive, that was what mattered. My benefactor, the fresh-faced trooper…
Well, he wasn't alive. With nothing to brace him he'd been flung forward when we hit, smashing against the bulkhead. He lay like a broken doll, his back bent the wrong way, blood masking his face. I looked away, swallowing bile.
The pilot and copilot hadn't fared any better, I saw. The Merlin's nose had slammed into a house-sized boulder and crumpled on impact. The flight deck looked like a scene out of Splatterpunk VI, the crewmen splashed out of all human shape.
Toward the back of the fuselage one of the troopers seemed to have gotten himself under control. An older man, he looked, on his feet with weapon in hand, yelling at his charges. (A sergeant? Or did some other rank run squads in the Hawai'ian military?) "E hele!" he bellowed. "Go, go, go!"
Around me I could see military training kicking in. The young troopers must have been almost as shaken up as I was, but when a ranking officer yells at you, it doesn't take much intellectual skull-sweat to obey. Ingrained reflexes take over. Troopers were punching themselves free of their harnesses, leaping to their feet, and checking their weapons. Pohaku and Kono, too. The only people not responding were me, Akaku'akanene, and the dead trooper crumpled against the bunkhead. The sergeant bellowed again…
And my own training kicked in, coming out of the past like a ghost. Not military. Lone Star, but the next best thing.
I popped my own harness and my reflexes fired me to my feet. I looked around for the exit. There was just the single door in the side of the fuselage, the one we'd boarded through. That didn't make a frag of a lot of sense, did it? How were you supposed to debark combat troops-possibly under fire-when all you had was one piddling little hatch?
A concussion I felt through my feet and in my chest answered that question. I hadn't paid much attention to the rear of the cabin. I'd noticed the metal floor angled up at about 45 degrees immediately behind the last seats, but I'd written that off as a consequence of the fuselage design and given it no more thought. Now I understood. The up-sloping metal wall had become a down-sloping metal ramp, blown free from the remainder of the fuselage by explosive bolts. Before the echoes had even faded, the troopers were double-timing it down that ramp, boots pounding on the metal plate. Pohaku and Kono were on their heels, the woman stopping just long enough to shoot me a "today, today" look over the shoulder.
Across the fuselage Akaku'akanene was struggling to extricate herself from her four-point. With a sigh I crouched down and helped her unlock the harness and pull the straps clear of her narrow shoulders. "E hele," I told her, and she nodded. As she hurried aft toward the ramp, I retrieved my Ares HVAR from under the seat. I started to follow her, but another thought struck me.
The troopers had loaded out with their own assault rifles, but many of them packed other weaponry as well. Considering that things had just gotten a little nastier up here in the House of the Sun, didn't it make sense to pack along anything that might even up the score for me?
It was tough to overcome my queasiness, but I managed to force myself close enough to the broken-backed trooper to see what he was packing. Lots of hand grenades, I noticed, but I left those well alone. (I'd never been trained in their use, and to tell the truth, "personal explosives" scared the living drek out of me. I found it much too easy to imagine pulling the pin and then panicking… and throwing the pin instead of the grenade. Boom.)
There was something that looked more my speed, however. In a specialized holster on his right side, he was packing something that looked like the world's biggest-bore pistol. I pulled it out and turned it over and over in my hands. It was a grenade-launcher pistol; what the frag else could it be? Behind the pistol grip was a magazine, and the digital display on the weapon's mainframe told me I had six rounds ready to fire. Wiz. I made damn sure the safety was on, before cramming it under a strap of my assault vest. I picked up another magazine of grenades and shoved that deep into a pocket. Then I jogged down the ramp after Akaku'akanene…
And out into the middle of some beetle-head's worst chip-trip. Above me the black clouds roiled like liquid, churned by a hot, dry wind that tugged at my hair and clothing like invisible hands. Shattered rock shifted and rolled under my feet as I tried to keep my balance. The entire volcano seemed to thrum with a deep, almost subliminal vibration. My bowels cramped, and it was all I could do not to drek myself. Not from fear-frag, sure I was afraid, but that wasn't it; it was like the sound itself was churning my guts into a pit of diarrhea.