Coyote Rising (28 page)

C
AMAEL
, G
ABRIEL
75
C
.
Y
. 06/0849—P
IONEER
V
ALLEY
, M
IDLAND

A storm had passed over the valley during the night, leaving behind
six inches of fresh snow. In the cool, clear light of morning, it lay thick upon the forest, an occasional gust of wind blowing tiny flakes off the branches, the bright sun causing them to scintillate like fairy dust as they drifted toward the ground. The snow muted all sound, turning the valley into a silent winter cathedral. Save for cakes of loose ice gliding along the half-frozen river that meandered between the mountains, nothing moved.

At the river’s edge, a large brown form bobbed upon the cold water like a giant cork. Sunlight reflecting off glass caught Carlos’s eyes. Training the binoculars upon the floating mass, his right forefinger found the autofocus; the image became sharper, losing its fuzziness. Even from a hundred yards uphill, he knew exactly what he was seeing: a Union Guard patrol skimmer, a flat-bottom hovercraft with a 30mm chain gun mounted above the glass hemisphere of its forward cockpit. The top hatch between its two fans was open; as he watched, a soldier climbed up through the hatch, looked around, then disappeared into the vehicle once more.

“Can you see ’em?” Marie whispered. She lay on the ground next to him, belly down behind the boulder that hid them from view. “How many are there?”

“Wait a minute. Still looking.” The skimmer was floating next to the shore; he could hear voices, unintelligible yet distinct nonetheless. Carlos panned the binoculars toward the ramp that had been lowered from the craft, but there were too many trees in the way for him to make anyone out.

He lowered the binoculars, raised himself carefully into a kneeling position, and made a low chirping sound between his lips:
too-too-sweet, too-too-sweet
, the mating call of a grasshoarder, innocuous in the woodlands unless one knew that the small birds went into hibernation during winter. Most Guardsmen were too new to Coyote to be aware of such things.

The signal caught Barry’s attention. Thirty feet to Carlos’s left, he raised his head from behind the fallen trunk of a rough-bark where he and Lars were crouched. Carlos pointed to his eyes, then pointed down at the river, then traced a question mark in the air:
How many do you see?
Without hesitation, Barry raised an open hand, then added two fingers.

“Shit.” Carlos settled back behind the boulders, turned to his sister. “There’s seven . . . and that’s just what Barry can see. No telling how many are still aboard.”

“Seven? I don’t think so.” Frosted air drifted around Marie’s mouth. “Gimme that,” she said quietly, and Carlos handed the binoculars to her. She raised herself up on her elbows, took a brief look at the skimmer, then came back down again. “He’s wrong. There’s only six.”

“How do you . . . ?”

“That’s an Armadillo AC-IIb,” she said, much as if she was reciting the table of elements in Bernie Cayle’s science class. “Pilot, gunner, and four infantry in the back. Can’t carry more than that.” She caught the look in his eyes. “Sure, I’m sure. I know this stuff.”

“I believe you.” And it was a little scary that she did. Not so long ago she’d been a little girl playing with dolls; now her idea of fun was being able to reload a carbine in less than ten seconds with her eyes closed. That worried him; this wasn’t supposed to be fun. . . .

Not a good time to reflect on such things. This was the first Union patrol anyone had ever seen in the valley. The skimmer had doubtless come upstream from the Great Equatorial River. It was a long way from home . . . and much too close to
their
home for comfort.

Another birdcall, this time from behind and to the right. He glanced back, spotted Garth crouched behind a faux birch about ten feet away, rifle in hand. Damn it, he’d told the kid to remain with the shags where they had left them farther uphill. He should have known better,
though; the Thompson brothers were still new to the outfit, and wherever Lars went, Garth wasn’t far behind. And neither of them was good at listening.

“Stay here,” he murmured, then he crawled away from Marie, careful to keep his butt down and his rifle out of the snow as he made his way to where Barry and Lars were hiding.

“I was wrong,” Barry murmured as he joined them. “There’s six . . . five on the shore, one on the skimmer.”

“I know. We figured that already.” Carlos reached over to tap Lars’s arm. “Tell your brother that when I give him an order, I want it obeyed,” he said, switching to Anglo so Lars could understand him. “Got that?” Lars nodded, started to raise a hand to his jaw. “Not now! They might be on your frequency!”

“Sorry. Forgot.” Red-faced, Lars lowered his hand. The Thompson brothers had subcutaneous implants that enabled them to communicate with each other. A little piece of twenty-third century tech that the kids from the twenty-first century didn’t have. But the soldiers down there would have the same thing; birdcalls and hand signals might not be as efficient, but they were less likely to be intercepted.

“Think we can take ’em?” Barry asked, speaking in Anglo as well.

Good question. Five against six. They had the advantage of surprise, along with better knowledge of the terrain; he and Barry had hiked nearly every square mile of the valley ever since they moved there almost three Coyote years ago, with Marie joining them as soon as she was old enough to go out with Rigil Kent. Yet this would be the first time they’d try taking on the Union Guard, or at least in broad daylight. Before, it had always been guerrilla skirmishes, nighttime hit-and-run raids upon Liberty and Shuttlefield with darkness to hide them. This time it would be out in the open. And the chain gun on that skimmer intimidated him. . . .

“We can do it. No sweat.” Lars pointed down the gentle slope; even without using the binoculars, Carlos could now make out the soldiers. Five figures, standing in a circle on the riverside. A couple of cases lay open between them; two of the men were kneeling, doing something he couldn’t see. “The three of us come in on this side,” he went on, “and the other two come in on the other side. Box ’em in, take ’em down. . . .”

“Let me decide the plan, okay?” But he had to admit that it was a good idea. If they came in from both sides, with any luck they might be able to catch the soldiers by surprise.

What then? Shoot them down? Carlos felt a cold knot in his stomach. As much as he despised the Union, the notion of killing six men had little appeal for him. It was different for Lars and Garth, of course; the memory of the battle at Thompson’s Ferry was still fresh for them, and they had payback coming. Carlos glanced at Barry, saw the reluctance in his friend’s eyes. They’d seen death a few times, too, but unlike the brothers, they weren’t eager to repeat the experience.

“All right,” he murmured. “You and Barry come in from the right. I’ll take Garth and Marie and circle around from the left. When we’re in position, I’ll get Garth to com you.” It was risky, but once they were closer the soldiers might get wise to any birdcalls. “One more thing,” he added. “Hold your fire until I give the signal. I want to take ’em alive if we can.”

“You’re crazy.” Lars regarded him with disbelief. “There’s a half dozen guys down there. You think they’re just going to . . . ?”

“I’m not kidding. We give ’em a chance to surrender first.” Carlos stared him straight in the eye. “That’s the way it is”

For a few long moments, the two of them gazed at one another, until Lars finally shrugged and looked away. “You’re the chief,” he mumbled, as if resenting the fact. “But if they start shooting . . .”

“If they start shooting, we fire back. But not until.” Carlos hesitated. “That skimmer’s going to be a problem, though. If the pilot gets to the gun . . .”

“Let me handle the skimmer.” Barry’s voice was low. “I’ll circle wide, come in from the beach. If he tries anything, maybe I can pick him off first.” He grinned. “And I’d love to get my hands on a skimmer, wouldn’t you?”

Barry was a dead shot, and he knew how to sneak through the woods without being heard. And, Carlos had to admit, bringing home a Union Guard skimmer would be a major coup. “You got it. Are we set?” Barry gave him a thumbs-up; Lars shrugged again, his eyes on the soldiers gathered at the river’s edge. “All right, then. We roll on my signal.”

Carlos crawled back to the boulder, spent a few seconds explaining
the plan to Marie and Garth. As he expected, Garth was just as reluctant as his brother to give the patrol a chance to surrender; he insisted upon joining Lars, until Carlos pointed out that he needed to keep them separated in order to facilitate communications between the two halves of the team.

“I’m going with Lars.” Marie started crawling over to where the other two were waiting.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Carlos snagged his sister by the hood of her parka; it pulled back, exposing her dark brown hair, tied into a bun behind her head. “You’re sticking with me.”

She angrily swatted his hand away. “If Barry’s going after the skimmer, then Lars is going to need backup. Either you do it, or I will.”

Marie was right; Lars couldn’t handle his side alone. Carlos didn’t like it very much—he was reluctant to leave his sister in a firefight—but the other reason he wanted to keep the Thompson brothers apart from each other was that they were bloodthirsty. Thompson’s Ferry had been a massacre; none of the Union soldiers who’d raided the settlement had come away alive. Perhaps they had it coming, but then again . . .

“Okay. But no firing until I say so.” Marie grinned, then scuttled away, keeping low to the ground. Carlos watched her go and prayed that he hadn’t made a mistake.

Another exchange of
too-too-sweets,
then he and Garth began to advance down the hillside, moving single file on hands and knees, remaining behind trees and large rocks as much as possible. The deep snow muffled the sounds they made, and they were careful to avoid putting any weight upon dead branches their gloved hands found beneath the drifts. Once again, Carlos found himself impressed with how well Garth handled himself; the kid was only fifteen, but it was as if he’d been practicing this sort of thing his entire life. Perhaps he had; his uncle was a former Union Guard colonel, after all, before he’d decided to resign his commission and bring his nephews to Coyote in search of a new life.

Carlos had been Garth’s age when he’d arrived here with his own family, but he’d been very much a boy then, still thinking all this was a great adventure. His childhood ended two days after the
Alabama
party set foot on New Florida, when his father and mother were killed by a
boid. That was over thirteen Earth-years ago, and everything had been different since then. He doubted that Garth had much of a childhood, either. No one got to savor adolescence very long on Coyote.

The voices gradually became louder. Hearing someone laugh, he froze in place, thinking that they had been spotted. As he peered through the underbrush, though, he saw that the soldiers’ backs were still turned toward him. The group was only a few dozen feet away, gathered around the two men kneeling on the riverbank. It appeared as if they were assembling some sort of instrument on a tripod. The three men standing carried rifles, but they were still hanging by their shoulder straps; the two kneeling on the ground, he noticed, weren’t wearing Union parkas, but instead catskin jackets. Civilians? What were they doing with a Union Guard patrol?

Carlos glanced back to make sure that Garth was still with him, then he motioned toward a clingberry thicket at the bottom of the slope, not far from the group. Garth nodded, and Carlos began creeping closer. They could hide there for a moment, wait until Marie, Lars, and Barry were in position. Then they might be able to . . .

A shout from the skimmer. Once again believing that they’d been seen, Carlos dropped flat to the ground. Hearing footsteps against metal, he raised his eyes; the skimmer pilot was walking across the ramp, swinging a canvas bag by its strap. He was about to hop down onto shore when there was sharp
bang
like someone pushing a pin into a balloon, and the pilot suddenly twisted sideways and toppled off the gangway, falling into the shallow water below.

Damn it! Who fired? Carlos didn’t have time to wonder. The men on the riverbank were already reacting to the gunshot, the soldiers reaching for their weapons, the two civilians scrambling for cover. More semiauto gunfire, again from the other side of the riverbank. One of the soldiers brought up his carbine, began firing wildly in that direction. The two civilians threw themselves to the ground, knocking over the tripod as they covered their heads with their hands.