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Pepper cut loose. Sizzling with energy, he thrashed through the crowd and cut the legs of anything with a high enough rank. He was a silent, methodical blur amidst the colored confusion. Acolytes simply died, not worth the energy of saving. Pepper killed and maimed and cut and slashed until all he was left with were shapes in the bloody mud, shapes that groaned and cried out to their gods. He looked like one of them, now. Blood ran down his shoulders. His shirt dripped with it. It streamed off the edges of his trench coat and matted his hair. He couldn't blink through the gore on his face. The mongoose-men stood and looked at him. "Fire the flare," Pepper ordered. "Bag them." They had mere minutes before the warriors came. He could hear them. He blinked, blind, as the actinic green of a flare filled the clearing. Ma Wi Jung banked out of the sky and flew in over the treetops, making them shake so madly it looked as if they were dancing. The starship dropped over the pyramid, smashing it with shrieks and groans, and opened the bay doors. Half the mongoose-men dragged priests unceremoniously to the ship while the others brought up the rear. Pepper stalked back toward the Ma Wi Jung . He looked around, suddenly aware that hundreds of eyes watched him through the bars of the pens erected around the pyramid. Nanagadans waiting to be sacrificed. Thirty seconds before the first warrior burst out at them. Pepper looked over at the mongoose-men. He could see some sidling toward the pens while trying to cover their comrades hauling half-unconscious priests. "Open the pens," he said. "I'll cover." He reached under his sticky trench coat for more rounds and reloaded the Nanagadan handgun. He'd dropped the rifle somewhere. Once loose, the Nanagadans would be slaughtered by the Azteca. But they didn't have room for them in the ship. Maybe some would survive, and at least they would die on their own terms, not at the hands of some priest with a knife. Better to go down fighting than be slaughtered like a cow. In the forest several Azteca arrived. He could see body heat signatures in the cool, dark jungle, waiting to gather enough numbers to attack. "Gentlemen." Pepper picked up a mace slick with fresh blood from the nearest mud-caked body and walked toward the forest. CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX As the Azteca pushed into the clearing, John watched Pepper sprint back into the Ma Wi Jung . John shut the doors and took off. He flew the Page 177 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Ma Wi Jung around the peninsula over the water and landed in Capitol City. They disgorged their bloody, half-unconscious cargo onto the wharf without even landing. From outside it would look like a miscarriage from a giant, silvery bird. Inside the ship Pepper forced his way through the wounded mongoose-men into the cockpit to face John. The stench of death on him was overwhelming. He looked horrific. His bloody footsteps meandered back down the corridor. "How many more of these trips do you want, John?" "As many as we can," John said. When he dropped them off on the second one, John circled around and kept a camera on the scene. He saw Pepper moving around the pyramid clearing and cutting the priests off again. The flare went off after three minutes. John dropped down again. Again the mongoose-men dragged bloodied priests into the hold. This time Pepper came with a net of his own. A large grublike figure struggled inside. "Teotl." Pepper dropped it at the mongoose-men's feet. "Adapted for nonphysical activity." He smiled. "Helpless." And he winked at John. Just like the old days. Blood in the air. And something in the back of John's mind almost had him wink back. John closed his eyes to it all and took off again, dodging around the sky, watching the blimps in slow motion, and dropped off the captured cargo. He opened his eyes again as they touched down onto the wharf. Pepper had lost forty or fifty pounds easily. His face looked thin now. He didn't loom over the other men. He couldn't keep that up much longer, John thought, dropping in for attack number three. The cargo bays dropped open, John took the Ma Wi Jung back into the sky. They were doing what they did best, what they had modified their bodies to do. John flying, his mind interfaced wholly with the ship, Pepper an efficient killing machine on the ground. Just like the old days. John came in carefully, watching the trees in all spectrums. The ground crawled with Azteca. The dark forest lit up with the firefly blinks of muzzle flashes. The hull was pockmarked with bullets. He dropped into the clearing. This time only thirty-nine mongoose-men climbed back aboard with their cargo. Pepper leaped into the right front air lock at the last minute. Cameras picked him up, half-naked, bullet holes oozing blood. The blood on his skin sizzled like a grill. Pepper grabbed the wall to keep his balance. "Water," he demanded. John gained altitude, paused to reorient the starship, and the whole craft rang like a bell. Smoke poured into the corridor, and emergency foam followed it. They lurched back toward the docks as John coerced the ship to tell him what damage they had taken. It didn't respond. John got the sense it was focusing all its attention on trying to repair itself. He wobbled them down toward the docks and waited for Pepper while some of the mongoose-men unloaded more bloodied nets of Azteca priests. Two mongoose-men sat in the cockpit, holding their guns nervously. Pepper stumbled forward to John. "We're hit." Pepper had lost even more weight, burning it up as fast as he could speed around and kill. John could count his ribs. "That is it, now. We can't risk any more damage. Let it go repair itself. We're done." John opened his eyes, losing in his head all the ship's visions of the world Page 178 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html around it. "One last compound." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |