Expendable - James Alan Gardner [123]
“We don’t have any sun today,” I told him.
“There might be a break in the clouds. Or,” he muttered in a lower voice, “there might be a nuclear fireball of apocalyptic proportions.”
“Oh,” I said. “I better close my eyes.”
“Nah,” he answered with an airy wave. “Just hide behind your girlfriend. She’ll soak up the rads better than forty meters of lead.” Then before I could respond, he told the plane, “Up. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Boom
The eagle rose straight up on its wing-jets, a smooth vertical liftoff. “Keep track of that X mark,” Tobit said to the plane, “that’s our target. Fly to a safe range, then blast it.”
The plane banked away neatly, then angled into a steep climb on a straight line course away from target. Acceleration squashed me lightly between Oar and the back of my chair, but not painfully so. A small distance short of the cloud ceiling, the eagle leveled off and continued on the same heading, cruising comfortably short of Mach 1.
“Can you still see the X?” Tobit asked.
I turned around. The entrance was now far behind us. In the overcast light, I could make out the rocky area where we’d fought Jelca, but not the X itself. “The plane must see better than we do,” I told Tobit. “Telescopic sights or something.”
“Bet you also believe admirals are your friends,” he muttered.
I opened my mouth for a retort…but at that moment, the plane rolled sideways, wing over 180 degrees, and we were abruptly dangling upside-down in our safety straps, our heads pointing at the ground. A moment later, the eagle’s beak pushed itself sharply upward: up and around in a buttonhook maneuver that ended with us right-way up again and now pointing toward the target.
“Cute,” Tobit said with a quaver in his voice, “but it should give us warning when it’s going to—”
The plane shuddered as a missile launched.
I thought the eagle had been flying at good speed. No—the eagle was virtually standing still compared to the missile. It cracked the sound barrier as it lanced out, riding a plume of smoke that pointed straight toward the target. For a second, all we could see was the smoke, not the missile itself….
“Shield your eyes!” Tobit yelled, and I closed them fast, ducking behind Oar’s lolling head in case that really offered some protection.
The flash was still visible through my eyelids.
Into the City
When I opened my eyes, there was a smoking hole in the mountain. Not a crater—a hole straight into the city, with glass buildings visible below. The blast site was circular, a hundred meters in diameter and remarkably well-contained. That pleased me; I preferred not to kill too much wildlife if I could help it.
“Eagle,” Tobit said to the plane, “see that nice hole? That’s where we’re landing.”
I stared at him. “You’re taking the jet into a glass city?”
“The hole’s big enough,” he answered. “And I suspect the elevator’s not working at the moment.”
The elevator was not even visible—the whole mechanism was simply gone, unless it was part of the surprised cloud of smoke that drifted in shock around the site. The automatic repair systems would clock a lot of overtime in the next few weeks.
“All right,” I told Tobit, “into the hole, then head for the center of the city. Just watch out for the killer whale.”
“The what?”
“Your ride home,” I answered. Then I tried to explain what was happening.
Not Dead Yet
After slipping and weaving around the skyscrapers, we touched down in the main square, not far from the whale itself. The noise of our engines should have brought Explorers flocking around; but only a handful ventured away from the whale to greet us.
One was Ullis. She stared at me for a moment, then smiled wearily. “I never believed you were dead.”
“Who said I was dead? Jelca?”
Ullis nodded. “He’s gone crazy. He used loudspeakers to send an announcement all over the city. You had attacked without provocation and he’d been forced to kill you.” She looked at me stonily for a moment. “Why would he say that when it wasn’t true?”
“To stop you sending out a search party,” I replied. “I know something he wants to