Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series (20 page)

The two speedsters smashed toward the low cluster of prefabricated buildings that was the Musth headquarters.

Both pilots dimly noted blips on their screens — belatedly, the Musth were launching.

“Beta,” the commander said, and the two ships shot up to drop altitude.

“Five seconds.”

At the count, a bulbous object fell away from the lead ship, dropped, hit the ground and bounced high into the sky.

As it did, the second ship launched its bomb, more a rectangular case than anything aerodynamic. Lifters deployed, and the weapon fell slowly toward the ground.

The first bomb hit, blew, and the shock wave rolled across the Highlands, over the base. Trees, Musth aircraft, buildings shattered in the blast.

The second case detonated about ten meters above the ground. Again, a heavy charge, but these explosives had been packed amid scrap iron, glass — anything that would make lethal shrapnel.

The charge sprayed across the swampland, a murderous scythe.

Unfortunately, the first bomb had gone off short, on the edges of the Musth base, and the second exploded exactly where it should — a few dozen meters short of the first blast.

High-ranking Musth, including three of Wlencing’s aides, died, as well as a hundred of his warriors and pilots.

But Wlencing and most of his staff lived on.

Njangu’s dream of a single, war-ending stroke had failed.

CHAPTER
14

The exchange could hardly have been called a conversation. Even with hyperspace relay stations linking the three Musth, each signal took several hours to transmit back and forth. The three were Wlencing, Paumoto, and Keffa, Paumoto’s younger firebrand of a compatriot.

“Your progress is not good,” Paumoto began.

“I am aware of that,” Wlencing said. “I hardly need another to correct me.”

“I am not interested in correcting you,” Paumoto said. “I merely thought, since we frequently share a commonality of interests, you might appreciate being informed of some further changes within our worlds.”

“That cursed Senza,” Keffa added, “has been steadily pushing for a consensus calling for withdrawal, or at least an attempt to return to our further détente with Man.”

“If you had conquered Cumbre as quickly as you promised,” Paumoto added, “he would have been digging in an abandoned burrow. But as it is …”

“Circumstances became different and more difficult than we had anticipated,” Wlencing said. “Such is not uncommon in war.”

“Nor in politics,” Paumoto added. “But changes must be allowed for, and when unexpected events happen, new strategies, tactics, must be devised.”

“Why are you so concerned about my affairs?” Wlencing demanded.

The time delay gave Paumoto a chance to lose his temper, recover it, and make a politic response. Such was not the case from Keffa, whose ire could continue on for days. He blurted, “Because your affairs are a wedge for Senza against both of us, and our allies.”

Paumoto’s response was: “Senza has interested himself in Cumbre, and thereby created interest from others who previously were unconcerned or neutral.”

Wlencing had enough sense to control his response, and replied, in a tone that from humans might’ve been plaintive:

“But why does he scurry about my trail?”

“Because,” Paumoto answered, forcing patience, “your manner of thinking, of behaving, is one that he and his clan and their sympathizers have decided is wrong for the Musth, denying our true path, our destiny.”

“What does he want? To make an alliance with Man?”

Keffa growled inarticulately.

“That is almost precisely what he does wish,” Paumoto said. “His projections, his analyses, incorrect, certainly, suggest that the universe is large enough for both species, at least for a time. We should form alliances, temporary or for longer periods, that would be immediately beneficial to us, and need not concern ourselves with the long-range effects.

“In the end, Senza says the Musth will prove stronger than Man. In millennia to come, we shall conquer them, obliterate them peacefully, merely by our presence, and by the clear fact our destiny was predecided by our creator and they are nothing more than bumbling, lucky genetic sports.”

“Mystical wormshit!” Wlencing said. “Power goes to those who seize it and remains with them as long as they are strong enough to hold it. That is the only secret of the universe, and I cannot understand why Senza, for all his purported intelligence, cannot grasp that simple fact.”

“This is going nowhere at a rapid rate,” Paumoto said. “I have already spent more than a full day in this transmission room, and nothing has been developed save cublike pouting.

“I shall not dictate to you, Wlencing, for you are, as you say, a powerful and admirable being, if, at the moment, you appear somewhat thick-skulled.

“Keffa and I are doing what we can to keep the situation from deteriorating, and will continue to do so. Again, this is a matter that suits us, suits our interests. If you fail, there is a great chance we ourselves shall lose a portion of the power we wield.”

“So what do you wish me to do?”

“Win,”
Keffa said. “Win handily, win rapidly. It does not matter what it takes. We are prepared to send selected clansmen to reinforce you, if that is needed.

“But you must emerge victorious. Otherwise, you may well have made me, and possibly Paumoto, into your enemies.

CHAPTER
15

Ben Dill hit bottom, let himself stay there for a minute as he reflexively hit the dropper quick-release tabs.
Rather not be drowned by my own rig, and it’ll be a long swim back to the surface
, and he pushed up hard, swimming, and realized he was standing in thigh-deep surf.

He felt a complete fool for an instant, then a breaker knocked him spinning, and he went underwater again. Once more he picked himself up, and this time felt the straps of his dropper brush his chest. He grabbed it, not sure what he could use the damned thing for, but anything is a potential tool to a crash survivor.

He ate another wave, stumbled, but kept his feet. That gave him the direction of the shore, and he waded for it, knocked down twice before he reached the beach, gritty under his feet.

It didn’t look, in the darkness, like much of a beach, no more than a few meters before the jungle rose.

He was sandy, out of breath, bruised from his pin-wheeling fall, but by somebody’s gods, still alive.

Forgetting himself, he yodeled in glee.

Mrs. Dill’s favorite boy is still in the game!

Something roared back at him from the jungle. It sounded close, bigger than Dill, and hungry.

Dill cursed — silently — and began trying to figure what to do next.

The roaring came again, and Dill squatted, just at the waterline, and looked around. To one side, not far distant, something black rose. He made for it, found a nest of rocks, and crept into their midst, grateful for some kind of shelter.

Damned glad I didn’t try to do a landing fall on top of those friggin’ boulders. Now all I have to do is live until dawn.

He thought of his survival packs, took them out of his flight suit’s pouches on either leg. Small pistol. Good. A very small sort of pistol when he wanted a rocket launcher for that howler in the darkness. But still good. A folding knife with several blades. Good. A flare-pencil. He considered launching one, decided against it. Finally, his SatPos fumbled out. He turned it on, swore. The small panel light must have broken. Never mind. In the morning.

He remembered the light he’d seen. He scanned darkness, thought he saw a dying glimmer. He chanced going outside the rocks to find a bit of driftwood, and positioned it firmly in the sand, hopefully above the high-tide line, pointing at the light. Tomorrow, that’d give him a track to follow.

Now ail he had to do was wait until dawn.

He found a nice solid rock to put his back against, held the ever-more-tiny pistol in one hand, the knife in the other, and waited.

The roarer roared three times more over the hours.

Eventually, after approximately fifty-six hundred E-years, the sky lightened and dawn came. It was gray, overcast, muggy, rain threatening.

Dill considered his surroundings. Thick jungle ahead. A narrow, curving beach of black sand stretching to either side. Behind him … Dill grimaced.

Long lines of breakers smashed over rocks toward him. If he’d landed in that …

“I am living
right,
” he said confidently. Now for a little rescue, a good meal, and some sleep before getting back to the war.

He found his Search and Rescue com, and it looked and acted no livelier than the one in his
aksai.
Dill muttered about technology, then took out his SatPos.

It, at least, was functioning. He touched the
LOCATE
button, and it
dit-dit-ditted
at him. Then the screen lit:

Wondering what the hell could go somewhat wrong with bubble circuitry, Dill grudgingly tucked away another bit of failed electronics with the rest of his high-technology world, in an ankle pocket where it wouldn’t get in the way.

He wondered why his survival kit didn’t have an old-fashioned compass, though the way his luck was going, he probably would have sat on it. But Dill decided, when he hiked home, he’d make some changes to the pack before he got shot down again.

He finally decided to go the way his stick from the night before pointed. Then the overcast lightened, and he had another option.

He stuck a twig in the sand, noted the dim shadow it cast, then checked his watch finger for the time. Before the clouds obscured the sun again, he hastily scribed an old-fashioned analog clock in the sand, with fourteen hours, a bit more than half a day on D-Cumbre.

He positioned the current hour at the twig, numbered around as evenly as he could. Between fourteen and that hour was, roughly, south.

Which was approximately the direction his stick of the night before pointed, which meant Dharma Island was over there somewhere to the east-southeast, across the heaving sea, gray as the sky. Just a hair westerly of south would be the direction of the secret base, deep in the jungle. So all he had to do was hike south until some convenient god told him where to cut inland to find the base.

That was for later, he thought. He found dry rations in the survival pack, which needed only fresh water for them to be edible. Unfortunately, he didn’t see any fresh water.

Let’s go look for that light first, although with the way
things are going, it’ll be some scrap metal reflecting something or other I didn’t notice.

The dropper’s pack was seven-eighths charged. Not knowing what he’d do with not quite enough antigrav to lift him, but just ease him down slowly, but also not wanting to discard anything possibly useful, just as he’d been taught, he slung the pack over one shoulder and started up the beach.

He followed the beach through two small bays, and was beginning to think he was chasing after some sort of illusion when he saw the
aksai.

It was the one he’d downed in the dogfight — missing half a wing, some of its tail section, weapons pods, and the canopy of the pilot’s pod gone. Dill was hoping the pilot had successfully ejected when he saw something … someone … dangling out of the cockpit, still held in by shoulder straps, its head about half a meter above the incoming tide.

Ben Dill, in spite of having killed his share and some, never had much interest in collecting scalps, ears, pictures, or any other trophy connected with corpses, thinking such association could be contagious. He was about to hurry on when the body moved.

Still worse, something else moved just beyond the breaker line, something dark and tentacled that wasn’t an illusory rock.

Shit, shinola, and little green apples
, he thought, dumped his dropper, and waded out toward the
aksai.
The tentacled one, still not showing anything except black ropes Dill knew would be slimy and strong, edged closer.

There was matted dark fluid on the Musth’s fur that he guessed was their equivalent of blood. A wave came up, splashed the pilot’s face clean, and Dill recognized him, as the Musth opened his eyes.

It was Alikhan, Wlencing’s cub.

Alikhan saw the pistol, dwarfed in Dill’s paw.

“Good,” he said. “To go now is better than to wait to die.”

“Shaddup,” Dill said, sticking the gun in a pocket of his flight suit, taking out the folding survival knife, and spring-opening a saw blade. “Don’t worry about me, but about Ol’ Ropy out there.”

He looked for the harness quick-release, saw it had been bunged up in the impact, and started cutting at the harness.

“Is anything broken?”

“Not that I am aware of,” Alikhan said. “But I have been dangling here for some time, and am numb, so don’t know if, in fact — ”

The last strap broke, and Alikhan dropped onto Dill’s chest, and both of them fell into waist-deep water. Spluttering, Dill surfaced, just in time to feel a tentacle, as slimy as he’d expected, tentatively stroke him.

Remembering a childhood cellar full of slimy things that bit, Dill’s mind yammered, while his hand clawed the miniscule pistol out of his flight suit. He pointed back over his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and a surprisingly loud blast came. The tentacle whipped away, and Dill, through salt-water-filled eyes, saw something big and black submerging as it swam away.

Then he was on his feet, muscling Alikhan up.

The Musth was hissing in amusement.

“Very goddamned funny,” Dill said. “It wasn’t you Slitherpuss was trying to add to his larder.”

“I was merely pleased by seeing two such great pilot-heroes as ourselves stymied by something simply animalistic.”

“On an animal’s turf,” Dill said, “always bet on the animal. Now, you got anything in this busted-up ship that could keep either of us, preferably me, alive until we reach civilization?”

“A few things,” Alikhan said, paw moving smoothly toward a pack clipped to the remains of his seat. Dill had the pistol aimed.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Keep your hands away from that.”

Alikhan obeyed, and Dill grabbed the pack.

“Anything else? Just point, and Daddy will get.”

“Nothing. I did not assume I was going to lose the engagement,” Alikhan said.

“ ‘Kay,” Dill said. “Now let’s get our asses on dry land and we can debate what happens next.”

He waved the pistol, and Alikhan waded ahead of him to the beach. Dill, keeping one eye on the Musth, opened the pack and found one of the small ultra-acid pistols, and three wasp-grenades.

“No food, just weapons, huh?”

“What did your supporters pack for you?”

“One gun, a knife, a day or so’s worth of dry rations and a bunch of beep-boops that didn’t work, plus other junk,” Dill said.

“I suppose they think after a day a good pilot lives on the purest oxygen and courage?”

“Knock off the humor for a minute,” Dill said. “We’ve got a pecking order to establish.”

“I do not understand, not having a beak?”

“I mean, who’s in charge.”

“You have the gun, do you not?” Alikhan asked.

“Yeh,” Dill said. “But sooner or later I’ve got to get some sleep, and I’d just as soon not have you jump me the minute I nod off.

“So let’s start at the beginning: I’m the ranking badass, right?”

“I assume you mean that since you were lucky enough to shoot me down, you make the rules.”

“Lucky my left testicle,” Dill said. “You flew right into my missile, so I guess that makes me the winner.”

“This time,” Alikhan said. “But there will always be another.”

“That’s what we’re discussing,” Dill said. “Do you Musth recognize parole? That’s when you give your word, your promise, not to either try to bash my head in or escape until I release you from that promise.”

“That is an amusing concept,” Alikhan said. “Why would you not promise an enemy anything he wants?”

His back fur ruffled a bit.

“I can finish the thought,” Dill said. “Until you get a chance to drygulch him from the rear.”

Alikhan inclined his head. “You understand well. Musth are not in the habit of taking prisoners. However, there are exceptions. For instance, you did me a service by not permitting that unseen beast to pull my head off, or do whatever disgusting thing he had in mind. We Musth recognize a debt such as that.

“So if you wish to have that debt repaid by me giving this parole, then I shall. And I shall honor that promise.”

“We’ve got ourselves a start,” Dill said. “Now. Who’s gonna come looking for you? An
aksai
… I don’t know if it was the last one we’ve got flying or one of yours … did a flyby on me last night, while I was hanging in the dropper. Suppose it was yours?”

“It probably was not,” Alikhan said thoughtfully. “You killed Yalf, which means the pilot coming past you would have been Tvem. He is constantly talking about wanting to destroy all humans, so I assume he would’ve killed you as you hung there.”

“You’re not thinking he had a bit of mercy for a helpless being?”

Alikhan moved his paws from side to side, discarding the improbable concept. “Perhaps he was out of ammunition.”

“Let’s say that was the case. And let’s say this Tvem knew you weren’t killed. Will your people send out a search party?”

“I would not think so,” Alikhan said, “unless they saw me land safely. We Musth, especially one who is Wlencing’s cub, are meant to die nobly when we die, but we certainly
must
be dead, not fallen into the enemy’s hands. Already four of my den brothers and sisters have gone on,” he said, and Dill thought he could detect a bit of mournfulness in the Musth’s voice.

“So Daddy won’t come looking,” mused Dill. “So suppose that was Jacqueline flying that heap. She sees I’m alive, and goes back to the Force, and they start looking for me.

“Only problem is, they’ll come looking from … from somewhere you don’t need to know about, and will have to wait until you folks aren’t hanging about. Which could be today, tomorrow, or next week.

“Which means neither one of us have got our nursies screaming around the bushes looking for us wandering babes. So we might as well take a hike, God helping those who help themselves and so forth.”

“We might as well,” Alikhan agreed. “Which way?”

Dill pointed.

“We follow this beach long enough, and we’ll be able to see Dharma Island, over … there. Then either we get help from my friends, or else we build a raft and put to sea.”

“You actually think we can survive this experience?” Alikhan said. “That we shall not leave our bones bleaching on this forgotten strand?”

“Who taught you Basic?” Dill demanded. “Edgar Poe Allan? Of course I don’t. Hup-ho. Let’s hike.”

• • •

The beach, unfortunately, didn’t continue forever, and was interrupted by streams, mudflats, and headlands twice. Each time the two had to cut into the jungle until they could pass over or through the obstacle. Intermittent rain made the going more difficult.

When they made it back to the ocean, the first order was to sluice off the mud and insects.

“You know,” Dill observed as he waded out of the surf, “next time around, I think I’ll arrange to have a tail, even a stubby one like yours. Makes life easier when you’ve got to toddle through the tules.”

“You have that option?” Alikhan managed. “Why hasn’t your race arranged for that before?”

“I was making a joke,” Dill said. “Not a very good one, but the best I can manage under the circumstances.”