Return To Kaldak

Chapter 26

Far off on the horizon, Blade saw the towers of the city of Doimar. The sight actually made him breathe easier. They were now as close to the enemy's heart as they were going to get. They still hadn't met opposition or even suspicion.

Blade would have breathed still easier if there hadn't been quite so many lifters in the air. So far none of them were asking awkward questions, but if somebody did get suspicious, he could quickly call up strong reinforcements.

However, the Doimari would hardly sit quiet and twiddle their thumbs in the face of the raiders' victory. It was inevitable that they would be rushing around both on the ground and in the air, like ants from a kicked anthill. As long as they weren't any better organized, Blade thought he and his people had a reasonably good chance of getting out. They'd done their work, no matter what happened now, but Blade didn't like unnecessary kamikaze missions.

Ezarn had finished checking out the turret laser and pronounced it «tight and ready.» Now he sat cross-legged beside Cheeky, doing the same check on his captured Doimari laser. With both side doors open, Ezarn could fire out either one, and the laser was powerful enough to hurt a lifter.

Doimar and the bee-swarm of lifters over it sank below the horizon. The raiders were alone over countryside that was mostly farms, with patches of forest. Slowly the patches of forest grew larger, then grew together. In another few hours they would be outside the area which Doimar tried to control. They could go to ground in a forest which would hide them like a haystack hiding a needle, and wait until the hunt died down. Then they could swing far to the south and head for home. It would not be too different from the route Blade had used in escaping from Doimar with Kareena, except that they would be flying instead of using a hovercraft.

«Voros,» said Ezarn quietly. «We're being followed.»

Blade shifted position so that he could see out one of the side doors. Ezarn was right. A Doimari military lifter was overhauling them quickly. From its nose jutted the muzzle of a heavy laser. In a fixed mount, it wouldn't be as easy to aim as the one in Blade's turret, but it would be much more powerful. It could knock one of the raiders' lifters out of the sky with a single hit, or at least kill everyone aboard it.

Baliza had just discovered the big laser mounted in the nose of her lifter when she saw the three other machines a mile ahead. She mentally kicked herself for not having done a more thorough inspection of her prize long before this. Here she was facing Doimari she almost certainly would have to fight or outrun, and she hadn't even checked out her main weapon!

She was starting that overdue check when she saw something familiar about one of the lifters ahead. It had a turret-mounted laser forward just like one of the machines sent to Voros. And all three lifters were smoke-blackened and scarred, as if they'd recently been in a fight-or near an explosion ….

Baliza fed power to the propellers and put the nose of her lifter down. With gravity aiding thrust, she rapidly caught up with the three machines and slid under them. Down here the turret of the landing machine couldn't bear on her, and nobody could lean out far enough to shoot without risking a fall.

«What Law-forsaken rat's in your brain, girl-?» began Feragga. Then Baliza pulled her machine up to fly parallel to the leader and only a few yards away.

«Well, I'll be buggered with a file,» said Feragga softly. «Fine place for a family reunion this is, I must say.» They both recognized the Sky Master Blade at the controls of the turreted lifter. For a moment which seemed to go on for hours, father and daughter stared at each other through the windows and across the empty air.

Then Blade seemed to shrug, smiled, and raised one hand in an open-palmed signal of greeting.

When Blade saw his daughter at the controls of the lifter alongside, and Feragga strapped in her wheelchair, his breath went out with a whoooosh. The secret of his identity and probably the Dimension X secret were so far up the spout they'd probably never get back down again. The idea of Feragga not telling Baliza the truth about «Voros» was too ridiculous to contemplate.

So that question was settled. But-what were Baliza and Feragga doing out here in the same lifter? Was his daughter kidnapping Feragga or rescuing her? Rescuing, probably-Blade now saw the hefty laser in Feragga's lap. And her grin as she recognized him didn't look like a prisoner's, either.

Time to settle that question when they'd landed and he and the others could get off and talk quietly. He'd be damned if he was going to reveal his identity over the radio hundreds of miles inside Doimar! The secret was out, but maybe he could still keep it from getting too far out.

He signaled that Baliza should take position at the rear of the line. She nodded, and her machine started dropping back. As it did, Blade saw Ezarn staring hard at him.

«Voros, that was Baliza, wasn't it?»

«Unless she's got a twin, yes.»

«And the other woman, the old one. That was Feragga, wasn't it?»

«As far as I can tell, yes.»

«Wonder how far that is, Voros. Wonder if you are really a-Voros, in fact.»

Ezarn wouldn't do anything violent or dangerous even if he wasn't told the truth. But he'd been too good a soldier and too loyal a friend to be told anything else. He deserved the truth more than anybody in this Dimension except the young woman who'd already found it out.

«I am-«he began then Ezarn shouted:

«Look out!»

A laser beam ripped past. It came from below and off to the right. As Ezarn sprang into the turret, Blade spotted the Doimari lifter rising from behind a clump of tall trees in the forest below.

So did Ezarn. The turret lazer went tsssrrpppp! and a piece of the other lifter's hull glowed, then peeled away. It slammed against the trees, but its own laser was also turret-mounted. In spite of the unstable platform under him, the turret gunner shot back. Smoke, hot air, and bits of molten metal sprayed back at Ezarn as the enemy beam took off the barrel of his laser.

Ezarn fell back into the cabin, coughing, cursing, and beating out burning spots on his clothes. He was making so much noise that Blade was fairly sure he wasn't badly hurt. Cheeky squalled in rage and alarm but had the sense to stay out from underfoot.

Then Blade saw two more lifters rising from the bank of a small river. He didn't know if the detachment's commander was trigger-happy or if he'd been warned somehow. If he was attacking on his own initiative and his detachment was wiped out, the raiders might still escape.

Not if Blade used his radio, though. He'd just have to trust to Baliza's good sense, to make her pick sound tactics. «Ezarn, get your own laser and stand ready by the doors. I'm going down under them.»

«Right, Voros!» Ezarn scrambled into position so fast that Blade stopped worrying about his being hurt. He concentrated on the controls, putting the lifter into a dive with the propellers wide open.

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.