《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》10

'Sonofabitch!  This is it!"  crowed Gus.  He pummelled Steve's arm.

Buck McDonnell, the Trail-Boss straightened up from the table and
slapped Gus hard across the face.  The force of the blow snapped his
head sideways and rocked him on his heels.  Recovering, he leapt to
attention, his swelling lips drained of colour.  Steve braced himself
at the ready.

McDonnell poked the polished gold top of his switch-stick under Gus
White's trembling nose.  'This is the operations room of The Lady from
Louisiana, Mister - not some third rate base canteen full of
red-heads!

Don't ever let me catch you mouthing off like that again in front of
the Commander!  D'ya hear me?!"  he thundered.

'Loud and clear, SAH!"  cried Gus, in a cracked voice.

As darkness fell, the wagon train turned round on itself, parking nose
to tail with its sixteen cars forming a circle.

Secure behind The Lady's formidable defences, the crew pulled down
their folding bunks and went to sleep.  A small guard detail in the
front and rear command cars manned the tv screens linked to the wagon
train's electronic sensing devices.

Despite their sophistication, they did not reveal the presence of Mr
Snow and a large posse of M'Cail Bears studying the wagon train from
the stony ridge of the nearest ground.

Mr Snow turned to Motor-Head.  'The iron snake sleeps.

We will go south.  Bring Cadillac."

Motor-Head nodded silently and disappeared into the darkness with
eleven of his clan-brothers.

Taking care to avoid high ground, Mr Snow and the rest of the posse
made a wide detour south and then westwards until they picked up the
trail left by the giant steel-clad tyres of the wagon train.  They
found some cover and squatted patiently until Cadillac arrived with his
heavily-armed esCOrt.

Mr Snow took Cadillac by the arm and led him to the trail left by the
wagon train.  'This is the path of the iron snake.

Walk along it and search for a seeing-stone.  If you fred one the snake
has passed over, take it into your mind and tell me what you see."

Cadillac wandered up and down both sets of tracks.  Mr Snow followed at
a discreet distance.  After sighing heavily several times and throwing
up his arms in supplication and to express varying degrees of despair,
Cadillac found a seeing-stone.  He picked it up and showed it to Mr
Snow.

The stone, which had as far as Mr Snow could see nothing to distinguish
it from those around it, was about the size of a baby's head.  Mr Snow
examined it reverently.  'Is this really ringed with a golden light?"

Cadillac took the stone back.  'Don't mock me, Old One."

'I was never more serious,' said Mr Snow.  'This is a great power that
you have.  One that I have longed for all my life.

Let us hope that you will master it quickly and become skilled in its
use.  What knowledge does the stone hold?"

Cadillac knelt on the ground between the tracks.  He closed his eyes,
cupped the stone in his hands and placed it against his forehead.

After a while he lowered the stone, letting his hands rest against his
thighs.  'What knowledge do you seek?"  he asked in a far-away voice.

His eyes opened but they were blind to the outside world.

'I would know the iron snake,' said Mr Snow.  'Tell me how it is
fashioned.  Tell me what lies within its belly."

Cadillac closed his eyes and gripped the stone tightly.

'Many things,' he said, distantly.  'Strange things.  I have no words
to say what they are."

'llse the words you have,' said Mr Snow.  'The Sky Voices will help me
see beyond them."

Motor-Head and the posse of M'Call Bears split into two groups, one on
each side of the trail, and crouched alertly, their eyes and their
heightened senses, probing the enveloping darkness.

Cadillac stood up and retraced his steps up and down the track of the
wagon train, the seeing-stone clutched tightly in his hands.  Mr Snow
followed.  Cadillac stopped and looked upwards with unseeing eyes, lips
drawn back over his teeth, his face contracted with fear.  'The iron
snake passes over me.

It is full of hate ... death.  its belly is full of warriors who thirst
for our blood."

'How many warriors?"  asked Mr Snow.

'A great number.  They lie in every part of the snake."

'Count them,' ordered Mr Snow.

Cadillac frowned.  'It is difficult.  I cannot -' 'Don't argue,' said
Mr Snow.  'Just do it."

Cadillac knelt again and pressed the stone against his forehead.  'I
can see nothing.  The stone is clouded with the blood of our southern
brothers."

'Wash it clean and start again,' said Mr Snow patiently.

He squatted down beside his pupil.

Cadillac sighed heavily.  He lowered the stone and held it level with
his waist, gazing at it fixedly.  After several minutes of silence,
punctuated by sighs of frustration, he said, 'The chief warriors sit in
the head and the tail of the snake."

'Find me the capo,' said Mr Snow quickly.

'I see him,' said Cadillac.  'He has pale hair under his nose."

'Fix his face and his soul in your mind,' said Mr Snow.  He moved
around on his knees until he was facing Cadillac.

'I hold him,' said Cadillac.

Mr Snow reached out and placed his hands on either side of Cadillac's
head.  'Give him to me.  Pass the image of his being into my mind."  He
closed his eyes and breathed deeply.  'Good.  Well done."  He dropped
his hands and gripped Cadillac's shoulders briefly.  'You have true
power.

Read the snake.  I would know more."

Cadillac's sightless eyes rolled up under his lids.  'The snake has two
bellies filled with pipes that roar with hunger and are full of
flame.

These are also at the head and tail of the snake where the chief
warriors live.  The sand-burrowers feed grey dirt to the snake.  It
turns into bad air and is sucked down the pipes through rows of red-hot
flashing teeth.

These flame-pipes are also its heart.  They send power through its
veins to make its body work.  A power like the white fire from the
sky.

It gives life to the snake, it makes its eyes see, and turns its great
iron feet."

'Wheels,' said Mr Snow.  'Probably powered by electric motors."

'I do not know of these things,' said Cadillac.

SMore words from the Old Time,' muttered Mr Snow.

'Don't worry about them.  Just keep going."'The snake has eyes on all
sides of its body.  Some for looking at things close by, some for
far-seeing - like eagles.

The sand-burrowers have many boxes of frozen water which show them
pictures of what the snake sees."  Cadillac paused to decipher a new
set of images.  'There are both men and women in the snake's belly.

The women are like our She-Wolves.

They also thirst for our blood.  They have.  strange sharp iron.

Things that throw bolts like our crossbows but filled with a great
wind.  Not bows.  hollow reeds that spit out bolts like iron rain.  At
the head and the tail of the snake there is more sharp iron.  Things
which send out long shafts of sunlight that burn like the white-hot
brands at the heart of a fire."

'Look again,' said Mr Snow.  'Do they use these things to make the
darkness like day?"

'No,' replied Cadillac.  'They have no need.  They have lanterns that
send out red light which we cannot see but which fills our body and
draws our image into their magic picture boxes."

Even though he knew many things of the Old Time, Mr Snow did not
understand Cadillac's attempt to describe the infra-red nightscopes
carried by The Lady.  Undeterred, he kept plugging away until Cadillac
had sent his mind's eye into every part of the wagon train and come up
with a head-count of the crew.

Three hundred sand-burrowers.  Mr Snow considered the problem.  If it
came to the crunch, the M'Call clan could field over a thousand Bears
and She-Wolves.  But that combined total would include everyone; from
fourteen-year-old fledgling warriors who had not chewed bone to the
elders aged fifty and over.  The courage of the very young would not
compensate for their inexperience and despite their agility,
Rolling-Stone and the elders would no longer be the equal, in
single-handed combat, to the warriors in the belly of the iron snake.

Pressed for more information, Cadillac described the deadly, invisible,
breath of the snake that hissed out of holes in its belly, and told Mr
Snow of the multiqayered hull, impregnable to Mute crossbow bolts.  The
hatches in the underbelly and sides were sealed from within and
protected by the all-devouring breath of the snake.  Mr Snow was forced
to admit that - as his Southern brothers had already found out - a
wagon train was a tough nut to crack.

Cadillac pulled more pictures from the stone.  This time of the
arrowheads; the twelve Skyhawks, neatly racked with folded wings in the
flight compartment and, in the adjacent car, the ten cloud warriors and
their ground crewmen.

'It is strange,' said Cadillac.  'Their faces are shrouded in
darkness.

All except one.  Him I see.  His face and heart are strong but Death
sits on his shoulder.  Is he the cloud warrior the Sky Voices
prophesied?"

'He may be,' replied Mr Snow.  'If you have been shown his face when
those of the others around him are hidden, the vision must have some
purpose.  Mark him well, then break your bond with the seeing-stone and
return to the time of this present earth."

Cadillac appeared to make an extra effort of concentration then his
head sagged backwards.  His fingers opened limply; the stone rolled
forwards over his knees onto the ground.  Mr Snow picked it up and
examined it again but could see nothing.  He tossed it aside with a
frustrated sigh, stood up and hauled Cadillac to his feet.

Cadillac's eyelids fluttered open.  He seemed unable to focus on his
surroundings; his legs were like rubber.  'What happened?"  he gasped,
making an unsuccessful attempt to stand upright.

Mr Snow got his shoulder under Cadillac's left arm and held him around
the waist.  'You did well.  You drew many pictures from the stone."

Cadillac smiled unsteadily.  'Truly?"

'Why do you keep asking me that?"  snapped Mr Snow.

'When you were a child, you accepted everything I said without
question.  Now you believe nothing and you make me repeat myself.  At
my time of life I don't have time to fill my mouth with empty words."

'I am sorry, Old One."

'And don't start saying "sorry",' grumped Mr Snow.

'That's an even bigger waste of time."

'My tongue wanders, Old One.  The stone has loosened the bond between
my mind and my body."

'It happens,' said Mr Snow.  He patted Cadillac on the back.  'Take it
easy.  For the first time out that was a good trip but you are going to
have to work on it."

'What must I do?"  asked Cadillac, sagging in Mr Snow's arms.

'Well, it's no good waking up and asking me what happened,' said Mr
Snow.  'I may not always be here.  You're the one that sees the
pictures.  From now on you're going to have to try and remember
them."

'It is difficult,' said Cadillac.

'It's never been any other way,' replied Mr Snow.

Motor-Head strode over to them.  'It is time to run, Old One.  The sun
wakes under his grey sleeping furs by the eastern door."

'Okay, let's move,' said Mr Snow.  'Can you carry your clan-brother?"

Motor-Head hoisted the unprotesting Cadillac into the air and dumped
him over his shoulder like a side of beef.

'The stone has drained his strength,' explained Mr Snow.

Motor-Head snorted disdainfully.  'Magic ...!"  'Don't knock it,' said
Mr Snow.  'If that Mother in the sky delivers, it may save your
gravelly, hide."

When Steve and the other wingmen woke with a tingle of anticipation to
the electronic bugle blast at six am, they found that there had been a
radical change in the weather.  In contrast to the clear, heat-laden
skies of the previous weeks, the temperature had dropped sharply
overnight.  A heavy mist now surrounded the wagon train cutting
visibility to less than thirty yards.

Hartmann unwound The Lady, parked her in a straight line ready to begin
the advance north then called Kazan and the Flight Operations Officer
up to the saddle.

'What do you think, gentlemen?"

Jodi Kazan grimaced.  'It's not good, sir.  I've been up on the flight
deck.  You can't even see the front and rear command cars from the
middle of the train.  It's really weird.

I've seen mist this thick but never at this time of year.  On the other
hand ' '- we've never been this far north before,' said Baxter, the
F.O.O.

'Local variation, perhaps?"  suggested Hartmarm.

You weren't supposed to shrug in response to questions from the wagon
master but Kazan let one .slip.  'It's just possible that it could be
some kind of off-beat temperature inversion.  But ' 'Weather is
weather, right?"  said Hartmann.

'Right,' agreed the F.O.O. He knew what Hartmarm was getting at.

Three hundred years of meteorological data had been fed into COLUMBUS
since overground operations began.  The computer's vast memory bank
also contained a pre-Holocaust model of global weather patterns.  By
observation of the terrain and the prevailing atmospheric conditions it
should always be possible by reference to the stored data to come up
with a reasonably accurate forecast.

Experience told them that heavy morning ground mists at this time of
the year usually burned off as the sun's heat built up.

'We'll give it an hour,' grunted Hartmarm.  He told the First Engineer
to hold the turbines at tick-over, ordered a half-watch and put the
rest of the crew on make-and-mend.

Steve, and the other new wingmen, all of whom had been unable to sleep
properly because of the excitement, fretted at the delay.  Gus White's
face now sported an ugly bruise where McDonnell's back-hander had
caught him.  The old hands in Kazan's section quietly checked their
survival equipment.  The ground crew tested the operation of the racks
fitted to either side of the cockpit that would each carry three
canisters of napalm.

An hour later, The Lady was still enveloped in thick mist.

Steve and Gus went up onto the flight deck with Jodi Kazan.

The air was cold and damp on their faces.  There was no sign of the
sun.  The wagon train was enveloped in a leaden grey nothingness; the
camouflaged metal hull was coated with a thin beaded film of moisture
which ran in dark rivulets down the steeply sloping sides.

Kazan put on her visored crash helmet and adjusted the mask inside the
chin guard so that it fitted comfortably.

Wingmen's 'bone-domes' resembled the helmets worn by pre-Holocaust
racing drivers and motor-cyclists.  All that had been added were
earphones, two small mikes inside the chin guard and an anti-radiation
air filter.  Like the others, she was dressed in black, brown and red
camouflaged flight fatigues and lightweight combat boots.

On the forward section of the deck, her Skyhawk stood hitched on one of
the two steam catapults with its engine running.  A three-barrelled
high-velocity .25 calibre air rifle that could be switched from triple
volley to full auto, hung from the flexible mounting above the
cockpit.

A ground-crewman checked the two racks inside the cockpit filled with
180-round magazines, that Kazan had loaded herself.  It was a tradition
among wingmen.  That way, if you got a jammed round at a vital moment,
you had nobody to blame but yourself.

Kazan fastened the neck strap of her helmet.  'I'm just going to check
how thick this crap is.  If it's half-way fl.vable, we'll put up a
forward patrol."  She jabbed a finger at Gus.

'Tell Booker and Yates to stand by."

Gus snapped to attention.  'Yess-SUR!"  He saluted then leapt off the
deck into one of the duck-holes - the balconies built into the sides of
the flight car around the access hatches.

Booker and Yates were two of the five wingmen already serving aboard
The Lady when Steve and the other 'wet-feet' had joined it at
Nixon-Fort Worth.

Kazan caught Steve's questioning look as she turned towards the
Skyhawk.  'What's bugging you now, Brickman?"

'How will you fred your way back?"

Kazan pointed fore and aft.  As if in response to her gesture, a
pencil-slim shaft of red light shot vertically upwards from the roof of
the lead command car; a similar beam of green light appeared from the
roof of the tail car.

'Soft lasers,' she explained.  'They go up to twenty-five thousand
feet.  All you have to do in bad weather is head owards 'em and spiral
down around till you hit the deck."

'Got it,' said Steve.

Half an hour later, Kazan hooked on to The Lady and reported to
Hartmann.  The blanket of mist wrapped around the wagon train went up a
couple of hundred feet.  Above that was a heavy overcast; the cloud
base was down to four hundred feet.  Kazan had climbed to three and a
half thousand feet before breaking out into clear sky.  Climbing
higher, she discovered that the area of mist and low cloud extended
over a ten-mile radius around the wagon train.

Beyond that, the sky was clear and the weather conditions matched those
of the previous days.

Hartmann exchanged a loaded look with his chief exec and ordered Kazan
to launch a forward patrol.  She told the F.O.O. that she would go up
with Booker and Yates.  Like her, both wingmen had considerable
experience of bad-weather operations.

As two more Skyhawks were lifted onto the flight-deck, Steve and the
other new wingmen listened while Jodi Kazan briefed Booker and Yates.

When she'd finished, Steve jumped in with a question that had been
bothering him.  'I heard one of the guys say that you don't allow
wet-feet to fly if the cloud-base is below four hundred feet.  That
still gives us plenty of air space - so how come?"

'It's because of the danger from Mute ground-fire, said Jodi.  'The
field reports from the forward way-stations in South Colorado indicate
that at least one in ten of the Plainfolk Mutes may be armed with a
crossbow.  In some clans it may be as high as one in four.  That's a
lot of sharp iron.  One of these days, we're going to find out where
they' re getting them from.  They're too dumb to make 'em on their
own.

But until we get a lead on that, we stay high - especially you
silver-wings."

'You mean unless the terrain allows us to fly low with an element of
surprise,' said Steve.

Jodi eyed him narrowly.  'What I mean, Brickman, is that you follow
orders.  If I catch you pulling any stunts, I'll have your ass in a
sling.  And it'll be me that'll put it there.  I don't need Big D to
keep you guys in line.  These Mute crossbows may have a lousy rate of
fire but in the hand of a skilled marksman, they're deadly.  Don't ask
me how they do it but the best of 'em can shoot a barbed ten-inch bolt
with pinpoint accuracy up to a range of a thousand feet."

'Is that why we were told not to fly below fifteen hundred?"  asked
Steve.

'Yeah,' replied Jodi.  'But don't think you can sit back and enjoy the
scenery.  One of those bolts is still travelling fast enough to kill
you at two thousand feet - if it hits you in the right place."

'Thanks,' said Steve.  -'Shouldn't you have told us this before we set
out?"

Jodi grinned as she stepped past him.  'I didn't want to spoil your
trip."

Kazan's Skyhawk was catapulted into the clammy grey blanket of mist.

Booker followed seconds later from the starboard catapult, then Yates's
aircraft was rolled forward and locked onto the port ramp as steam
hissed through pipes and vents, building up the pressure that would
launch him into the air at forty miles an hour.

Watching the screens in the command car, Hartmann saw Yates's Skyhawk
lift off and fade into the mist as he passed overhead.  The NavComTech
manning the radio established contact with Kazan.  Hartmann gave the
command 'Wagons ROLL!'; The Lady moved off in a north-westerly
direction past the now vanished site of Laramie, towards Rock River and
Medicine Bow.  Like Laramie, they were just names on the map; nothing
more than reference points for finding one."s bearings.

After travelling fifteen miles, The Lady was still enveloped in dense
mist.  Kazan, Booker and Yates, circling at five thousand feet around
the line of advance reported that the pancake-shaped blanket of low
cloud and mist had moved with the wagon train.  The NavComTech
acknowledged Kazan's message, routed it through the voice-print
convener and keyed it through to Hartmann's signal screen.

The wagon master read the signal and hit the relay button which put it
on the station screens of the executive officers positioned round the
saddle.  Buck McDonnell was the first to swing round and meet his
eye.

The others were quick to follow.

Hartmann surveyed their tense faces.  He knew what they were
thinking.

'Interesting,' he said.  'Anyone got an explanation?"

Nobody said anything.  Nobody dared.  They realised, as Hartmann
realised, that there was only one explanation for what had happened.

The Lady was facing a clan a reed with Mute's secret weapon - magic.

The Mute's ability to manipulate natural phenomena was something that
the Federation refused to acknowledge.  Indeed, any public reference to
the subject was a punishable offence.  Yet everyone facing Hartmann
believed that the mysterious summoners did exist and were, reportedly,
to be found among the Plainfolk.

'Do you want to put up more Skyhawks?"  asked the F.O.O.