The Empty Warrior (17 page)

He could have easily parked elsewhere, away from the storm, as
Talon
was more than adequately protected against any detection devices the aberrants were capable of fielding, but it was always possible that one of the flying machines that
Talon
was on the lookout for might approach on a course that would eventually bring them close enough to spot the cutter visually. Then he would have to evade them and find a place to hide anyway. Besides, he was a perfectionist, particularly in regard to his flying skills, so taking every possible precaution was as innately natural to him as a heartbeat.

There was also the fact that he loved the little cutters. He did not want to take the chance, however remote, that some damage might be inflicted to one of them. The aberrants were notoriously touchy about intrusions and had been known to send armed craft in pursuit of completely innocuous drones any time they were lucky enough to stumble across one. At least that was what Lindy had heard. He had no firsthand knowledge as this was the only time he had been anywhere near Sol Three. But whatever the truth was, the lunatics that lived here were not going to as much as put a scratch on his ship.

Normally, he would have been upset to be lazing around doing nothing, angry that he had not been chosen to fly first on a sortie of such importance. But this time he was relieved to be sitting in this chair rather than Deckar’s. This time, had he been assigned to Deckar’s seat, he would have been looking at a long quarantine when he got back to
Vigilant
, just for having been in close contact with the members of the acquisition team. The barge had been specially outfitted to serve as living quarters for the team during the return home, and even back in the Union Deckar would still be secluded with them at an unnamed medical facility. That would have meant months away from Cyanne had Lindy been in his place. Plus Deckar was a friend, a damn good pilot, and
had
been next on the duty roster. That was not to mention that flying first would have put Lindy at the controls of the
Albatross
. The barge was a nice enough ship, with its big antigravs and powerful engines; but it was still just a fat, round barge. The cutters, on the other hand, were winged and stiletto shaped; much like smaller, thinner versions of
Vigilant
. They were quick and extremely maneuverable, a pilot’s dream. Even on as boring a hop as this one, flying a cutter was infinitely preferable to piloting the barge. Lindy was as happy on a cutter flight deck as he was anywhere. Well, maybe not. There were the times when he was alone with Cyanne.

His mind started down the path of an erotic daydream before he chastised himself and pushed the pleasant visions away, forcing himself instead to scan his instruments. His gaze flowed over them as a vain fop might inspect his visage in the mirror. Lindy was always acutely aware of even the subtlest imperfections or insignificant deficiencies in the automated controls of the various ships he was rated for, deficiencies that few other pilots would have even noticed, much less had the temerity to attempt to correct. And now, despite the computer control that kept
Talon
relatively stable inside the storm, several minute inadequacies in the craft’s performance, made evident by the duress placed upon it by the maelstrom outside its skin, glared at Lindy from the panel like insults. Quickly he made slight adjustments manually, scowling as he did so and updating the programming as he went. He made a mental note to download the changes to
Talon’s
sister cutter, the
Raptor
, as soon as he was back shipboard. Satisfied, for the moment at least, at the performance of his ship, he leaned back in his chair once more to enjoy the impressive light show that still rumbled about the cutter on every side.

There was a reason he was alone on the flight deck, and that reason was there was only a skeleton crew aboard. That was normal on a ship flying second, for if some unlikely accident or equipment failure grounded the
Albatross
on the surface,
Talon
would need the space to pack in those who would otherwise be stranded. If the occasion arose, every square meter of deck space would be precious. Besides himself, there were only two others aboard: a med tech and a payload specialist, or p-spec as they were often called, neither of whom Lindy was acquainted with closely. He had passed them in the corridors of
Vigilant
from time to time, but that was the extent of his knowledge of either crew member. Both of them were stationed below. He had not bothered to leave the cockpit to speak with them, and they would never dare to show their faces on the flight deck. Lindy considered himself to be an outgoing, hospitable man, and he very much enjoyed parties and other social gatherings, but as a pilot he had a reputation for professional detachment, a detachment which bordered on aloofness. If you had no job to do in the cockpit, everyone knew their presence there would not be welcome. Lindy’s viewpoint was that the cockpit was the pilots’ personal domain.

He was sure that both members of his current crew privately considered him to be arrogant in the extreme, but neither would venture to say so out loud because he was a pilot—their pilot, one of the best in the business—and their lives were in his hands. They stayed below decks at their stations, did what they were there to do, and didn’t impinge on his privacy.

So Lindy was alone and took the communication himself when the warning came in. Three Vazilek ships had entered the system, with one vectoring directly toward the aberrant world above which
Talon
was now suspended. Lindy’s first thought was that neither the
Talon
nor the
Albatross
were armed, hardly the perfect scenario with a raider inbound. Within seconds he was on the line with Deckar. “You get the news?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Deckar replied, apparently unruffled. “I’ve got everybody double-timing it now, so we should be okay. I’ll be off this rock in seven minutes, tops. After that I think we should stay atmospheric, use what weather we can find for cover and try to keep the planet between us and them until the ship is close enough for us to make a run for it.”

“I agree. But I’m going to stay here on station until you get airborne. So hurry. I don’t want to get cooked over nothing more than the literature stolen from an insane asylum.”

“Neither do I, brother; believe me.” With that, Deckar signed off.

Lindy was no longer entertained by the lightning splitting the clouds. He was too worried to even think of the storm now. He made a quick announcement to his meager crew over the ship’s intercom, explaining the situation, and then fidgeted nervously at the controls while ignoring the clamor exploding outside. Five minutes came and went. Two minutes after that Deckar had still not checked in. Lindy waited another anxious sixty seconds before opening a com link.

“Are you leaving or not?” he asked.

“We’ve a problem Willet.” Deckar’s tone was dead serious, and every muscle in Lindy’s body stiffened at the gravity in his voice.

“What kind of a problem?”

“An injury. A bad one. We’re loading her aboard now. We’ll be up in a minute.”

“Should I come down?”

“No. By the time you get here, we’ll be gone. And if I were you, I’d be on the move. That Vazilek has got to be closing in.”

“No kidding. But I’ll wait for you.”

And wait Lindy did. He waited until he could wait no more. He waited until the sensors on the cutter, which had a limited range under the best of circumstances but were absolutely constricted by the interference from the storm, picked up the Vazilek ship approaching. “Deckar,” he nearly screamed into the com. “They’re here! I’m tracking them now. Get that bird off the ground!”

“I’ve got one man still out,” Deckar replied. There was a momentary pause before he spoke again. “Okay, he’s aboard. And we’re flying. I’ll see you back at the ship.”

You better firewall those engines, Deckar
, Lindy thought. The Vazilek ship was close, close enough that Lindy could raise a visual on his panel. He watched as the raider streaked through the atmosphere directly toward Deckar and the
Albatross
, paying no attention to Lindy’s craft. Whether that meant they could not detect him hiding in the storm or that they simply did not care about his presence he did not know, but he made no attempt to flee.

The Vazileks’ entry angle was steep, steep enough to make the leading edges of the ship’s stubby wings glow fluorescently in the night. Safety was apparently of secondary concern to them when compared with destroying the barge. They were on top of Deckar in seconds. The
Albatross
had only a few moments before begun to fall away from the surface on its antigravs. The mains had hardly engaged when the Vazileks fired their plasma cannon. A fearsome ball of power lit the darkness, followed immediately by a tremendous explosion as the barge disintegrated. The raider swept away in a smooth upward arc, heading for space, and
Vigilant
.

Lindy clamped his eyes shut to keep out the sight of the flaming debris that had a moment before been
Albatross.
When he opened them there were only bits of spinning fire in the night, spiraling toward the ground below. Despair wracked his heart and he hugged himself tightly with both arms, but still he made no move to leave the clouds. He kept
Talon
hovering in the center of the storm, waiting until the Vazilek ship was well out of the atmosphere before acting. When he thought they were far enough out and could see they were accelerating away he opened the intercom again.

“Buckle up, boys,” he said. “Deckar just bought it. We’re going in to search for survivors.” With that he cut the antigravs, engaged the engines, and pushed the cutter over into a powered dive toward the surface. The dampening systems, as good as they were, had never been designed for such maneuvers and the G forces pressed Lindy heavily back into his seat.
Talon
screamed downward through the base of the clouds, into the pounding rain and then out of it, braking only at the last possible moment to come to a slow glide only feet above the mountain lake that had been the rendezvous point.

“What have you got..,” Lindy paused, searching his mind for a name, and abruptly finding it. “Rast?”

The med tech was slow to answer. Having been convinced that Lindy was either going to fly the cutter into the ground or tear off her wings, he was still coming to grips with the reality that he yet lived.

“Scanning,” was the only word he could muster, but the truth was that he was only now activating his equipment. However, Rast was fairly good at his job and recovered quickly. In seconds he was deftly searching the area for any sign of life, or even an intact cranium that could be kept in stasis until they were home, until a new body could be either shipped in or grown for the casualty.

“Got one,” he finally said. “Floating on the water. A couple of hundred meters abaft. Transferring coordinates. It looks like the rest of them are all gone though.”

Lindy’s eyes flitted to the monitor that would show him exactly where the survivor was. Almost as soon as his focus settled on the screen, a red dot appeared behind the yellow outline that symbolized
Talon
. He brought the trim craft about and expertly maneuvered it over the water until the rear hatch was just to the left of the survivor, with
Talon’s
hull hanging less than a meter above the surface of the lake. He punched up a visual. What appeared to be a man hung sideways in the water, kept afloat by a mangled mass of half melted foam and burnt orange fabric that had somehow become entwined around his right shoulder and armpit. A warning light appeared on the instrument panel, indicating that the hatch had been opened. Below, Rast flipped a switch and a ladder extended from the hatch to a point where its lower rungs were beneath the water. Lindy could see the base of it in his visual.

“I don’t think he’s one of ours,” Rast said several seconds later. But even over the com link his voice sounded uncertain.

“What do you mean?” Lindy asked, perplexed. “Who else would he be?”

“Well, my guess is he’s an Earther. He appears to be completely intact, but I’m still not getting a transponder signal. And I mean no signal at all. I’m knee deep in the water here with the receiver six inches from this guy’s back, and I’m getting nothing. What should I do?” he asked woefully.

“Get him aboard,” Lindy snapped, thinking the answer should have been obvious. “I’m coming down.” He set
Talon
for station keeping before spinning in his chair and standing in movements that were as fluid as the lope of a cheetah. His act of rising segued into an easy jog that took him to the rear of the flight deck where the access hatch recognized him and slid aside at his approach. He was down the short stairwell, through the crew’s quarters, and into the payload bay in a matter of seconds. Rast and the p-spec were still struggling to pull the survivor into the bay when he arrived. Lindy reached down to help them pull the man up, but when he grabbed an arm, a fist full of charred clothing and skin came off in his hand.

“Great blazing suns!” he cried, while the urge to puke filled the back of his throat. “He’s burned to a cinder! Is he still alive?” As Lindy spoke, the p-spec, who had grasped the survivor under both arms, finally pulled him up into the cutter while Rast, who had been wedged between the man’s legs, lifted himself into the ship and sat heavily on the side of the open hatch. Water streamed from his uniform and spread over the deck around him.

“Oh, yeah,” Rast said. “He’s alive all right. But not by much and not for long.”