He'd covered half the distance to the enemy before they saw him coming.
The attack was a complete surprise to Baliza. Before she'd recovered from the surprise, the first enemy lifter had plunged to the ground and exploded. Then she saw her father's lifter, plunging straight at the other two enemies.
«May the Laws protect us,» she breathed. She saw again the sight of the two Intelligence men, ramming the enemy at the cost of their own lives. She imagined her father falling down through the sky in a smashed lifter, his body crushed and charred but still horribly alive after it struck. She heard his screams-then let out one of her own.
«No!»
The Doimari would have both her and her father or neither of them.
She put her lifter's nose down and fed it power. At the same time, she was adjusting the controls on the main laser. Its power supply was fully charged.
She swept past the other two lifters, ignoring the staring faces at their doors and window. Out in front, she saw that the enemy was reacting to her father's attack. But would they react fast enough, and how? If they didn't break to the right and left, he would ram them. But if they did break, where would they go? She estimated distances and times, made a careful adjustment of her own lifter's course, then rested one finger on the firing button.
The two Doimari lifters broke, one hard to the right, the other hard to the left. A laser beam darted out of Blade's door at the one on the right. The one on the left swung out wide, precisely on the course Baliza had predicted. She stabbed the firing button.
Laser beam and lifter met in a perfect mating.
She must have hit the power supply, because the enemy lifter blew apart like a hand grenade. White-hot pieces arched down through the sky from a cloud of sparks and blue smoke.
The other lifter and Blade's were now too close together to let Baliza risk a second shot. She clenched her gun hand into a fist to keep her finger off the hutton.
Another blazing exchange of laser beams. Blade's machine was hit, and hard-it started to lurch downward toward the river. If it lost all lift this high-Baliza forced the thought out of her mind.
Then she saw that the last enemy lifter was wandering aimlessly in circles, its nose smoking, its pilot apparently dead or hurt. It showed no signs of falling.
It showed no signs of maneuvering, either, as Baliza got into position behind and lasered it. This one didn't explode, but it was a lifeless, smoking wreck as it plunged into the river in a cloud of steam.
The waves from the crash were still spreading when Blade's lifter made a slightly more dignified landing in the river. It promptly started to sink, but Baliza sighed with relief when she saw her father and another man climb out on the roof. There was also something small and blue riding on her father's shoulder.
She started down toward the river, while the other two raider lifters flew in circles above her.
The last air was bubbling out of the sinking lifter when Blade saw his daughter waving to him out of her cockpit window. She cut the propellers back and came to a stop almost overhead.
«You first, Ezarn,» he said. «Then I'll hand up Cheeky.»
Ezarn tossed the laser up into the open door and swung himself up. He was leaning over the edge to reach for Cheeky when the feather-monkey leaped. He sailed clear over Ezarn and vanished into the lifter. By then the water was up to Blades' knees. Baliza lowered her lifter another foot, and Ezarn yanked him in so hard Blade felt his arms and shoulders protesting. It was still better than an impromptu swim in a river which might hold anything, most of it mutated and all of it hungry.
As the lifter rose, Blade went forward. He looked carefully at the wounded Intelligence man lying on the floor of the cabin; he appeared to be safely unconscious. Each step seemed longer to Blade than the last, and the final step up to his daughter in the pilot's seat seemed the longest of all. Then Blade consigned the Dimension X secret to the devil, bent down, and kissed Baliza on the forehead.
«You're a daughter to be proud of,» was all he felt able to say. He was afraid his voice wouldn't stay steady for more than that.
«Sidas was afraid of you worrying about my safety,» said Baliza softly. «He didn't think I might find a time to be worried about-yours.» She raised one hand and wiped the back of it across her eyes. «Father. .»
«What's the matter, girl?» said Feragga with a chuckle. «That wasn't the way you greeted him the last time you met, I've heard.»
«Oh, shut up, you bawdy old witch,» growled Blade. «Or better yet, make yourself useful. Get on the radio-the Sky Voice-and listen to the talk between the Doimari lifters. That may tell us if anyone heard a call from the ones we shot down.»
«Yes, Sky Master,» said Feragga with sarcastic meekness.
Blade grinned. He understood now what Feragga had been doing-trying to keep him and Baliza from being completely carried away by their emotions. She'd probably been right, too. This far inside Doimari territory, they were a long way from being out of the woods yet.
Feragga listened for an hour without hearing any signs that the battle by the river had been detected. Apparently the Doimari commander had been acting on his own initiative and sent out no messages before he went down.
By then it was mid-afternoon. Blade started searching for a clearing where he could land and hide the lifters. He wanted to find it, get the lifters out of sight, and make camp before dark.
Chapter 27
Ikhnan himself and Shangbari were the only two of the Red Cats to go with Voros at dawn to the skymachines which would take him to the City of Kaldak. The rest of the Tribe, warriors and women alike, were too drunk or sound asleep.
Not that Shangbari would have called himself sober. There had been much beer drunk last night, and even some strong Kaldakan waters from Monitor Bekror's house. All wanted to celebrate the victory and the escape and give the spirits of the dead a proper start toward the Great Hunt. Voros the Wise drank as much as anyone, for he had won the victory but had his woman Sparra to mourn.
And the cunning of the escape! That was worth much beer all by itself. Flying so far into Doimar that no map showed where they were, then sitting in the forest for days while the Doimari looked for them in all the places they were not. Shangbari had fed them well during those days with his hunting skills, although some of the animals were strange even to him. He was as proud of how well they'd eaten because of his skills as he was of the Doimari he'd killed at the wizards' home.
No one would ever again doubt that Shangbari was the finest hunter of the Red Cats. And Shangbari knew he owed this also to Voros the Wise, a man of the City of Kaldak.
Clearly the gods had made many kinds of City men-and women.
Now Voros and Ezarn stood beside their machine, waiting for the chief and the hunter to come up. Cheeky and the Red Cat Fija were sitting face to face at their feet, like two human friends saying farewell.
«Farewell, Ikhnan, Shangbari,» said Voros. «If it is so willed, I shall return to do you more honor.»
«The greatest honor you can do is leading us again in battle, if there is a worthy enemy to be fought,» said Ikhnan. Shangbari nodded.
«That would be a pleasure, if it can be so,» said Voros. «I have never led better fighting men than the Red Cats.»
«I've never fought beside better, neither,» said Ezarn, although he looked at the ground as he said it instead of at the two Tribesmen.
Then Voros's face set hard. Cheeky jumped up on his shoulder, and he and Ezarn climbed into the sky machine. It rose, and the other three rose with it. Like birds flying away for the winter, they vanished over the treetops.