The morning brought with it a shadow in the form of Gemini-II, repaired and refit after the battle at the night haunt nest. It carried fuel and supplies, and a few-dozen more stowaways. Lura watched it with a pensive attitude. I’m pretty sure she was starting to suspect that the tribe was much larger than she had expected—even with our advanced artifice. If we weren’t a match for the Dawn’s Light now, we soon would be, and her threats would be meaningless.
But I’m a goblin of my word, and for that reason alone I’d have kept my side of the bargain. Lura’s sense of mischief was the reason my tribe had enough food in their bellies to keep growing. I wouldn’t soon forget that. I watched one of the fast-movers do orbits over the camp, the orc pilot learning to fly the ramshackle jet. When I had gotten my pilot certification, it was 40 hours for my private pilot license, 200 before I was a certified flight instructor, and only then did I step into a turbo-prop plane. I was somewhat jealous of the orcs ability to borrow from the Goblin Tech Tree to learn to fly the advanced aircraft with proficiency in just a few hours time—and in fact, with their higher level and improved coordination and handling skills, they were better pilots than any of the goblins save for Chuck and myself.
My human pilot side itched with the need for structured learning to pass on the knowledge and skills necessary for Earth pilots, but Lura nixxed that idea.
“I tire of watching these iron hawks draw circles in the clouds,” she grumbled. “What was the word you used to describe a hunting party on the wing?”
“A sortie,” I said.
“Yes, a sortie. One team to strike east, another south. By 3 and 3, we shall lay eye upon our quarry and return. Come, little brother king. You and your guardian, desire I, to man my armaments.”
I looked south. “Is that wise?” I asked. “You said this thing is pretty dangerous. What if it’s not keen to let us report back? If the sky-devil fights us, three fighters aren’t going to be enough.”
“Then lead it on merry chase, we shall. ‘Til it tires or sickens of the sight of our arses.” She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “What worry have you? A thousand lives you have, worn as armor. Tis I who ought be yet worried. Do you witness me fret?”
Lura definitely shared a little too much of my cavalier attitude. I wasn’t used to being the voice of reason in misadventures. Not one to be left in the dust, I whistled for Armstrong.
“Have Air Delivery get 5 more orc fighters prepped. We’re going up.”
“Onnit, boss!” he said, excited. I watched the hobgoblin dash off to the flight line. Lura and I took our time in getting there, to be greeted with a frenzy of activity as fuel was pumped into bladders on the heavy, twin-engine fighters. Lura took the lead aircraft, which had been painted by the sparkers with the visage of a whistler smashing through a stone pillar. Oddly appropriate.
Eileen ran up to me as well, puffing from the sprint. “Boss, we oughta be ready to take the big jet up, too. Keep up comms, yeah?”
“I know you just want an excuse to fly. But it’s a good idea,” I said. “Make it happen.”
I scrambled up the ladder behind Lura, tumbling into the comparatively roomy cockpit, and then down the hatch into the nose turret. The orc fighters had a pair of twin self-cycling guns at the pilot’s control, and the turret underneath had a pair of recoilless rifles that could be aimed independently of the nose. Out either side of the nose turret, I could see three rockets hanging from each wing. Six more goblin crewmembers stumbled aboard, including a sparker, an igni to work on the engines, and my boglin technician who was now looking a bit shriveled in the dry heat of the salt flats.
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I donned the heavy gloves for loading the recoilless rifles as Armstrong slid into the aiming seat. The turrets on the orc fighters were like old bomber turrets, spinning on motorized tracks that were supplied with mechanical power from their own small engine below the fuselage. Pipes ran from the backs of the recoilless rifles, venting the exhaust gasses out of the aircraft. I stepped on a switch, and a panel above me slid open to reveal the magazine full of recoilless rifle rounds. Letting off the pressure slid the spring-loaded door closed again.
Lura ducked her head down into the turret.
“All is ready?” she asked.
I gave her my best salute. “All yours, ma’am. Don’t crash us.”
“I promise naught but excitement, little brother. Keep engine stoked and eyes toward the horizon. We’ve a devil to catch, and we’ll make for its hunting grounds near the City of Brass.”
Lura disappeared. I looked over at Armstrong, who was pulling on his flight goggles and grinning.
“Proper lark, this’ll be,” he said, and checked that the shims keeping the turret stationary for launch were in place.
“Shouldn’t you be more concerned with my safety?” I asked.
Armstrong shrugged. “You’ll be right between my irons, boss. Easy enough to keep an eye on. Ain’t like the nest where you was up fighting in the sky while I was stuffed in a cave with the noblins, issit?”
“I suppose not,” I said.
To either side, the turbine engines rumbled to life. When they didn’t explode right away, I figured we were in good shape. One of Eileen’s traffic controllers waved flags at us on the ground, but I doubt Lura understood them any better than I did as each controller seemed to have their own code they were incapable of explaining. It got out of the way fast enough when Lura let off the brakes and we started to roll forward. I settled back against Armstrong’s shins as we rumbled across the salt flats. The engines rose in pitch, and we hit that subtle backwards tilt of the nose lifting from the ground. Then we were up and climbing.
Lura kept the nose straight and steady until we built up speed and altitude. Then she turned us into a high-G bank and I was pushed against the floor of the turret. The bank turned into a barrel roll, which stopped at exactly a wings-level attitude. Lura was a natural, of course. She was leading the Dawn’s Light because of her skills and cunning. Piloting simply added another layer to her mount handling.
I spotted our wingmen pulling into a tight formation to the sides. The other scouting squad was further out, maintaining altitude and drawing greasy black contrails in the sky a kilochoom or so away. I pulled on my headset so I could listen in on the chatter. The orc fighters had actual radio receivers, not just sparkers catching stray signals.
“How vast this desert falls ‘neath our wings. All we see ‘afore us is…”
I pulled the headset off again. Orc poetry. Maybe there was wisdom in using the keepers to communicate for the Stampede.
We turned south. The hard flat salt plain of China Lake turned to mounting dunes, rising and sinking like cresting waves. I hadn’t seen the deep desert yet, but if Rufus was to be believed, it harbored some of the most dangerous wildlife on Lanclova. But it was also a place of unbelievable beauty.
I stopped. System?
In all my time on Rava, System had only addressed me by my real name on one other occasion: when I was being repeatedly killed by the Javeline hunting party. The enigmatic hand behind the voice showed itself only rarely, and seemingly only in times of great danger. I looked over at Armstrong, who had his own headset on and was tapping his leg in time to the cadence of the orc poetry without a care in the world. This message was only for me.
Are you warning me about the null devil?
Are we in danger?
System?
System?!
I’d never seen the System struggle this much. It was like something was interfering with whatever quantum field it used to impose its own brand of logic on the universe.
Armstrong was sitting up in his seat now, with a hand cupped to his ear piece. I took my own headset and slipped it on.
“Be lively and true of aim, lads! Spotted a devil, have we! It lays siege to the City of Brass.”
I shaded my hand against the glare of the sun on the dunes. Sure enough, a faint, bronze beacon glowed in the distance. And above it, a black dot that seemed to darken the sky around it.