Fall of Angels (4 page)

  
"Friggin' pilot... not made of durall steel. .."

  
"Does ... best he can . .. wants ... to live, too ..."

  
"Don't apologize for an engineer, Desinada ..."

  
Nylan tried to match geographic landmarks with the screens, but the lander vibrated too much for him to really see.

  
The sweat beaded up on his forehead, the result of nonexistent ventilation, nerves, and the heat bleeding through the barely adequate ablative heat shields, and burned into the corners of his eyes, as his hands and mind worked to keep the lander level.

  
The buffeting began to subside, enough that he could see ocean far below and what looked like the tail of the fish continent ahead.

  
He checked the distance readouts and the altitude. He'd lost too much height. After studying the fuel reserves, little enough, he thumbed on the jets and flattened his descent angle.

  
At the lower speed, though, the effect of the high winds became more pronounced, and the edges of the stub wings began to flex, almost to chatter. With little enough power, the engineer could do nothing except hold the lander level, and wish ... He tried to imagine smoothing the airflow around the lifting body, easing the turbulence, soothing the laminar flow, and it almost seemed as though he were outside the ship, in a neuronet, a different neuronet, almost like smoothing the Winterlance's fusactor power flows.

  
The chattering diminished, and Nylan slowly exhaled.

  
Another hundred kays passed underneath, and he thumbed off the jets, hoping to be able to save some of the meager fuel for landing adjustments.

  
Far beneath him, the screens showed what seemed to be a rocky desert, a boulder-strewn expanse baked in the sun. Ahead rose the ice-knife peaks that circled the high plateau that was his planned destination.

  
He thumbed the jets once more, again imagining smoothing the airflow around the lander. Surprisingly, the lander climbed slightly, and Nylan permitted himself a slight grin.

  
The DRI pointed to the right, and the engineer eased the, lander rightward, wincing as the lifting body lost altitude in the maneuver.

  
All too soon, the high alpine meadows appeared in the screens as green dots-small green dots, but the southernmost one grew rapidly into a long dash of green set amid gray rock.

  
The lander arrived above the target meadow, except the meadow showed gray lumps along the edges, and a sheer drop-off at the east end that plunged more than a kay down to an evergreen forest.

  
From what Nylan could tell, the wind was coming out of the east, and he dropped the lander into a circling descent that would bring the lifting body onto a final approach into the wind. He hoped the approach wouldn't be too final, but the drop-off allowed the possibility of remaining airborne for a bit if the long grassy strip were totally unusable.

  
As he eased around the descending circular approach, the lander began to buffet. Nylan kept easing the nose up, trying to kill the lifting body's airspeed to just above stalling before he hit the edge of the tilted high meadow that seemed so awfully short as he brought the lander over the ground that seemed to have more rocks than grass or bushes.

  
He eased the nose up more, letting the trailing edge of the belly scrape the ground, fighting the craft's tendency to fishtail, almost willing the lifting body to remain stable.

  
The lander shivered and shuddered, and a grinding scream ripped through Nylan's ears as he eased the craft full onto its belly. The impact of full ground contact threw Nylan against the harness straps, and the straps dug deeply into flesh and muscle. The engineer kept compensating as the lander skidded toward the drop-off, slowing, slowing, but still shuddering eastward, and tossing Nylan from side to side in his harness.

  
With a final shudder, the lander's nose dug into something, and the craft rocked to a halt.

  
For a long moment, the engineer just sat in the couch. "We're down." Nylan slowly unfastened the safety harness, trying to ignore the spots of tenderness across his body that would probably remind him for days about the roughness of his landing.

  
"Did you have to be so rough?" asked Fierral. "Any emergency landing that you can walk away from is a good one. We're walking away from this one."

  
"You may be walking, ser, but the rest of us may have to crawl." The squad leader shook her head, and the short flame-red hair glinted.

  
"Are you sure he's done?" asked another marine. "We're done." Nylan touched the stud that cracked the hatch. There wasn't any point in waiting. Either the ship's spectrographic analyzers had been right or they hadn't, and there was no way to get back to orbit, and not enough supplies in the ship to do more than starve to death-especially since no one knew where they were and since there were no signs of technology advanced enough to effect a rescue.

  
The air was chill, almost cold, colder even than northern Sybra in summer, but still refreshing. A scent of evergreen accompanied the chill.

  
With a deep breath, Nylan stepped to the hatch on the right side of the lander and used the crank to open it the rest of the way, "It smells all right."

  
"I can't believe you just opened it. Just like that," said Fierral.

  
"We didn't have any choice. We're not going anywhere. We can breath it, or we can't." Because the lander had come to rest with the right side higher than the left, Nylan had to lower himself to the ground.

  
". . . can't believe him . . . kill us all or not..."

  
"... least he doesn't dither around . . ."

  
"Neither does the captain . . . probably why they get along ..."

  
Leaving the voices behind, the engineer slowly surveyed what was going to be their new home, like it or not.

  
The landing area was a long strip of alpine meadow, perhaps five kays long and a little more than two wide, bordered on three sides by rocky slopes that quickly rose into the knife-edged peaks that had shown so clearly on the screens. To the north was a ridge, lower than the surrounding rocky areas, almost a pass, through which he had brought the lander. The entire meadow area sloped slightly downhill from the northwest to the southeast, one of the reasons the landing had seemed to take longer than necessary, Nylan suspected. To the southwest, beyond the rocky slopes, rose a needle peak, impossibly tall, yet seemingly sheathed in ice.

  
"Freyja ... blade of the gods," he said quietly.

  
"It is, isn't it?" said Fierral from behind his shoulder. "How did you get us down?"

  
"It wasn't too bad."

  
Fierral glanced back to the west, along the trail gouged out by the lander. "That's not exactly a prepared runway."

  
"No." Nylan laughed. "Would you give me a hand? We need to set up the beacon for the others."

  
"They can land here?"

  
'The beacon makes it a lot easier. You can lock in a direction and rate of descent."

  
"I would get the hard landing."

  
"We're here."

  
"Wherever that is." Fierral wiped her sweating forehead and glanced around the high plateau. "At least it's not too hot."

  
Behind them, the other marines dropped from the lander.

  
Nylan looked at the track he had made. From what he could tell, most of the rocks were small, nothing that would create too many problems. Rising from the grass between the rocks were small purple flowers, shaped like stars, that rose on thin, almost invisible, stems.

  
Nylan forced his thoughts from the fragile flowers and turned toward the lander itself. From what he could see, the ablative coating on the belly had been largely removed by the shrubbery and rocks.

  
"We've got some work to do-quickly. We need to set up the beacon and see if we can move the lander a bit." He headed toward the lander and the emergency beacon it contained. Fierral followed.

  
One of the marines walked the several hundred steps eastward from the lander, pausing just short of the sheer dropoff.

  
"... frigging long way down ..."

  
Nylan nodded. They had come a long ways down. He just hoped that they didn't have to fall any farther.

VI

HISSL STUDIES THE images in the glass. Four rounded metal tents squat amid the late spring grasses that carpet the Roof of the World. On the high ground in the northwest corner of the grassy area, the silver-haired man hammers stakes in place in a pattern which Hissl cannot determine through the mists of the glass.

  
Thrap! At the sound, Hissl squints and the image in the screeing glass fades into swirling white mists that in turn vanish, leaving what appears as a circular flat mirror in the center of the small white oak table. He turns. "Yes?"

  
"Hissl, Jissek has recovered, and we are here."

  
"Do come in." The man in white erases the frown and stands, waiting, as the two other men in white step into the room.

  
Terek closes the door and smiles.

  
Hissl returns the smile and bows. "I am honored."

  
"What do you make of the people of the iron tents?" asks the rotund Jissek. "From where did they come, do you think?"

  
"From beyond the skies-that is certain."

  
"Why do you say that?" asks Terek.

  
Both Jissek and Hissl look at the older wizard. Terek looks at Hissl as if waiting for an answer.

  
Hissl takes a deep breath before he speaks, ignoring the frown his sigh evokes from Terek. "There are many signs. It would appear that the tents flew down to the Roof of the World-"

  
"Flew? Iron cannot fly."

  
"They flew," confirmed Jissek.

  
"The people who were in the tents look mostly like us, but they are not. I have never seen silver hair on young people or hair that is red like a fire. And they sweat, as if the Roof of the World is warm, as though it might be hot like in the Stone Hills or the high plains of Analeria in midsummer."

  
"That seems little enough. What else?"

  
"They are mostly women. Out of a score, only three are men. Their leader is a woman. At least, she is shaped like a woman. And all the women bear what look like weapons, though I cannot be sure."

  
"The angels, you think?" asks Jissek.

  
Hissl shrugs.

  
"Angels? Bah . . tales to frighten children with. That's all."

  
"Every wizard who can scree will see these women, and such tales will get passed, especially to those few who follow the black."

  
Terek pulls at his smooth chin. "Such tales ... that would not be good. Perhaps someone should travel west."

  
Hissl and Jissek exchange glances. Finally, Hissl, the youngest wizard, the only balding one, clears his throat. "Would it be... proper for us to undertake such a mission- given the concerns raised by Lord Nessil of Lornth?"

  
"That might work to our advantage," points out Terek. "Lord Nessil would not wish the example of armed women to be made known, especially to the Jerans. Their women ride with the men, and he has had some trouble ..."

  
The other two wizards nod.

  
"He would appreciate our concern, and he would be most intrigued with women of silver or fiery red hair."

  
"These ... angels... might not take to being taken," says Hissl.

  
"Have they shown weapons? Thunderbolts, or firebolts such as we can bring?"

  
"No," admits the balding wizard. "Not that we have seen used."

  
"Then fourscore armsmen should be more than enough."

  
"As you wish." Hissl inclines his head.

  
"I will recommend, of course, that you accompany His Lordship." Terek smiles. "Since you have discovered the strangers, you should share in the rewards. And one wizard should be more than enough. We would not wish to imply a lack of confidence in the abilities of His Lordship."

  
"No... no, indeed," murmurs Jissek, wiping his forehead.

  
"You are most kind, High Wizard." Hissl offers a head bow. "Most kind."

VII

THE LANDER SHELLS formed a square on the rocky upper slope of the alpine area, adjacent to one of the two small streams that wound through the grass and shrubs, and below the staked-out pattern that Nylan had made. One of the shells contained several body-sized dents, and plastic foam filled a long gouge on the left side. On the uphill side of the shells were several plastic-covered stacks-the disassembled sections of the landers' exterior removable parts.

  
The wind whispered in from the north, barely above freezing.

  
Nylan and Ryba lay together in the forward part of lander one, sharing the command couch, under the light thermal blanket that was more than warm enough for them.

  
Only the faintest light crept in through the short corridor from the hatch, but Nylan had no difficulty seeing. With the silver hair had apparently come some form of enhanced night vision that took in the objects around him in the dimmest of light. He looked at Ryba, short hair tousled, face calm in sleep-not quite relaxed, but he had never seen her completely relaxed.