Iron master, p.43
Iron Master, page 43
Running along the path towards the workshops, Jodi and Kelso heard the women scream shrilly as they gave the alarm. It didn’t matter. A lot of other people were screaming and shouting too. By the time the nearest soldiers reached the garden wall, none of the servants would be in a fit state to tell them anything – and the soldiers would soon find they were short of breath too.
*
As Steve was about to press the first of the buttons that would destroy the aerobatic formation, the plane carrying Consul-General Nakane Toh-Shiba returned from its overflight of Ba-satana and began to circle above his official residence and the government-owned estate which surrounded it. The Consul had not changed his views about flying but, having overcome his initial terror, he had become fascinated by this new view of the world, and his eyes were fixed on the larger of the two islands in the lake which now lay almost directly below.
Everything looked so small! But it was down there, in the summerhouse surrounded by trees and a rock garden, that he had spent the most memorable hours of his life in the arms of his secret paramour; the beautiful alien creature who possessed that rarest of gifts – lustrous, sweet-smelling body hair. The thought of his next visit to her filled him with pleasurable anticipation; the realisation that it would probably be their last moment together made the feeling bitter-sweet. He had no inkling that it was not her death that was drawing ever closer, but his own.
His craft, gliding silently in a V-formation with its two escorts, was banking round in the direction of the Heron Pool when Steve blew the first five planes out of the air. The Consul’s pilot saw the fireballs blossom and fall. Signalling frantically with both arms, he managed to attract the attention of his wingmen. They drifted in until their wingtips were almost touching. The lead pilot shouted vainly to his colleagues, pointing repeatedly over the nose. The flaming debris had plunged earthwards, but the drifting trail of smoke that marked the formation’s fall was still visible. Both wingmen indicated that they understood. The Consul’s pilot gave the signal to fire the last of their five rockets and led them back towards the field.
*
On the ground, beyond the lines of horse- and foot-soldiers of the Min-Orota stationed to the left of the grandstand, the Herald Toshiro Hase-Gawa struggled to control his restive horse. He too had been stunned by the sudden disintegration of the five flying-horses, but since the blow had been delivered against known enemies of the state, he was not gripped by the general sense of horror. What had shaken him was Brickman’s ruthless efficiency and the power at his command. Beyond that, it was hard to think of anything except how to stay in the saddle and comport himself with the necessary degree of dignity in the midst of the almost total pandemonium that had engulfed the spectators in the stand and the troops on either side.
In the absence of any orders from above, line-officers and squad-leaders were simultaneously screaming at the other ranks to stay in line and watching the sky to avoid being hit by falling debris. The legless body of one of the pilots spiralled out of the sky and hit the ground with a sickening thud only yards away from the Herald’s rearing horse. As he hauled savagely on the reins and laid his whip across its neck, one of the sheet-metal rocket-trays planed down like a roof-tile torn loose in a storm and scythed into the wavering ranks of the Min-Orota, decapitating a foot-soldier and flattening a dozen more. Those around the point of impact scattered in all directions.
In the same few seconds, Clearwater, Cadillac, Jodi and Kelso reached the rear of the compound and paused to catch their breath in the passageway between the wall and the first workshop. Jodi glanced through the arch into the compound, then dashed across the alley and crouched down in the gap on the other side.
She and Kelso were linked to Steve by pocket-sized radios fitted with a plug-in earpiece and throat mike. ‘Steve! We’re at the back gate. No problem so far!’
His voice came back in her ear. ‘Okay. Get ready to move. I’m gonna hit it on three. One! And–’
Three Jap guards who must have been patrolling the compound when the formation blew to pieces burst through the arch and ran down the alleyway. They went several yards before their minds reacted to what their eyes had seen: four Trackers hiding between the back wall and the workshops. As they turned back, their eyes met Jodi’s raised pistol. Kelso was facing the other way, covering the arch.
‘Two – and –’
Chu-wittt-chu-witt-chuwitt! All three went down.
Kelso motioned Clearwater and Cadillac to join Jodi across the alleyway, then sent a gas grenade rolling through the arch into the compound.
‘Three!’ Steve detonated the buckets in the privy at the back of the guard-house.
Baa-BLAMMM! The blast shattered the walls and brought the roof down. It also pulverised the four gas-grenades taped to the explosive, mixing their toxic fumes with the rolling clouds of dust and causing would-be rescuers to collapse among the debris alongside the few stunned survivors.
*
Steve had engineered the guard-house blast for two reasons: to eliminate a possible armed intervention from that quarter and to create a diversion that would draw the workshop staff and ground-handlers up the alleyway and into the compound – away from the four aircraft now parked along the western boundary of the field.
The troops and spectators in the grandstand on the eastern side were still in a state of confusion. Before they could regroup and grasp what was happening, he intended to throw them into further disarray. He couldn’t do that until the crowd of Japs milling around on the field in front of the workshops had been cut down to size. Apart from some fifty ground-handlers, there were sixty-odd workshop staff and the twenty women packers from the ‘powder room’. Plus some friends and relatives who had sneaked in to get a better view.
They were now seeing more than they had bargained for. When the ground shook under their feet and they saw the smoke and dust rise above the back wall of the compound, some of the crowd had already started across the field towards the grandstand to help pick up the pieces. A few kept on going; the majority turned back towards their friends, who reacted as Steve hoped they would. Apart from a panicky handful who hung back uncertainly, they streamed up the alleyway towards the smoking compound.
Clearwater, Cadillac, Jodi and Kelso threw themselves down beside Steve as he hit another button, triggering the six charges spaced alongside the inside of the flanking walls.
B-B-B-B-BA-BAMM!
The double-sided blast tore through the walls and through the Japs trapped between them, and the six incendiary grenades that Steve had taped to the plastic spewed out a glutinous rain of fire in all directions. Seconds later, racks of timber, wooden workbenches and the rafters of the collapsing roofs were ablaze.
‘Shee-itt,’ breathed Kelso. ‘This escape plan of yours had better work. I’d hate to be here when they start figuring on just who’s gonna pay for the damage!’
Jodi pointed to the south-east corner of the sky. ‘Three on their way in! See ‘em?!’
‘Yeah, they’re next,’ said Steve. ‘C’mon!’
Grabbing Clearwater’s bundle, he motioned to her and Cadillac to follow him in a crouching run. They left the cover of the bushes and leaped into the ditch that ran behind the low grassy earth bank made from the outfill. The bank divided the western edge of the field from the smaller adjoining pasture. The ditch was calf-deep in water, but by moving along it they were able to remain hidden. So far, the only people who had seen them were dead, or too ill to talk about it.
When they drew level with the four planes perched on their launching trolleys, they flopped against the bank and peered over the top. Drawn up behind the four planes were two carts containing racks of the plump launch boosters and the thinner rocket tubes carried by the planes.
Steve drew Kelso’s attention to the handful of dinks who hadn’t been sucked into the alley and were now running around like headless chickens on the edge of the raging inferno. ‘Think you can frag them from here?’
Kelso weighed up the yardage involved. ‘Be easier to pitch it from behind that end cart.’
Steve patted him over the shoulder. Kelso slithered sideways over the bank and ran for cover.
‘I think we’ve been spotted,’ said Cadillac.
Steve looked up to his left. The approaching three-plane formation had broken up. Two were now descending in line astern along the northern edge of the field where he had taken his flying leap over the stone wall into the pond. The third aircraft had stayed high and out of trouble.
That would be the Consul-General. Yeah…Had to be.
The two planes made a wide sweeping turn behind them just as Kelso stood up and winged the first of two fragmentation grenades at the panicky dinks. Now only 500 feet up, the two-man crews could not miss seeing them crouched in the ditch.
*
The Herald saw the two flying-horses pass over the burning workshops and dip towards the grandstand just as the commander of the Min-Orota troops dispatched half his force across the field to tackle the blaze. Toshiro ordered the government troop detachment to stand fast. It was Min-Orota property that was going up in flames. Until called upon to help, he was not required to do so.
*
Grasping the radio transmitter in both hands, Steve used his thumbs to press buttons six and eight.
Baa-bamm!
Both aircraft disintegrated as they angled across the path of the advancing troops – the first at a height of some two hundred feet, the second at barely a hundred. Their forward momentum caused the debris to arc down like a salvo of air-to-ground missiles upon the already jittery formation. The commander was swept from his horse by a charred, half-naked body. Discipline cracked; the soldiers turned tail and fled to the comparative safety of the access road beyond the eastern edge of the field.
Shouting above the tumult, Toshiro Hase-Gawa called upon the garrison commander to pull back his own small force. By the convoluted laws of protocol, he himself could not leave the field before the Consul-General, and he was thus obliged to remain astride his terrified horse. It was a parade animal, unused to being subjected to a rain of fiery projectiles, and was now circling restlessly, pitting its strength against his. Eyes rolling, teeth bared, neck arched, it tried its utmost to grasp the bit between its teeth, but Toshiro held the reins in a vice-like grip, drawing the horse’s foaming jaws against its chest. His own eyes were fixed on a more tranquil animal; the flying-horse now circling high overhead.
Come on, Brickman! What are you waiting for?
*
Steve had already handed the transmitter to Clearwater and the tip of her finger was, at that very instant, exerting a downward pressure on the appropriate button.
*
Having just witnessed the inexplicable destruction of his escort, the Consul-General’s initial terror returned. His fears had not been groundless. The kami had held back their anger, choosing to strike at a moment when they could inflict the greatest possible humiliation on the vain and foolish men who had dared, once again, to flout the divine plan!
They had been taught a richly deserved lesson. But he was an innocent passenger; his only error that of blind obedience to his sovereign liege-lord. And here he was in mortal danger of being consumed by a fiery thunderbolt from heaven!
Oh, Ameratsu-Omikami! Have pity on this unwilling trespasser who was driven by duty alone to set foot in your cloudy domain! If I must forfeit my life for this foolish act, then let me die an honourable death with a sword in my hand! I will face it unflinchingly this very day! This very hour! But let it be among men, with the ground beneath my feet!
Forcing his bulky body round in his seat, the Consul shouted to the samurai pilot. ‘I wish to alight! Go down! Go down!’
As the wind tore the words from his mouth, the pilot and the centre-section of the flying-horse was suddenly engulfed in an orange-white sheet of flame. The smooth forward motion ended with a sickening lurch and the Consul-General, the right side of his face now hideously seared and blistered, his sightless eye steaming in its socket and with the back of his robe on fire, found himself projected into a world where sky and earth revolved and became one.
He clutched desperately at the sides of the cockpit in an effort to steady himself, but the wooden structure around him came apart in his hands. The straps that held him to his seat slipped from his shoulders and he found himself floating on a cushion of air. Below him lay a patchwork quilt of red, brown and orange fields. The world had stopped spinning; had separated once more into earth and sky.
The shock of what was happening, the suffocating rush of air, numbed the shrieking pain and drove the terror from his mind. His education had not included the chilling fact that bodies in free fall accelerate at a rate of 32 feet per second until they reach a speed of 120 m.p.h. A velocity that is terminal in every sense of the word.
At 2,000 feet, with arms and legs outstretched, you still have a few moments left in which to feel you could fly for ever and that – if you only knew the secret – you could skim down like a bird in a graceful curve to alight gently on your feet. It is only when you pass through the 1,000-foot mark that you suddenly realise the ground is rising to meet you at a frightening speed and that it is all going to end quite differently.
Cowering under the canopy of their box and surrounded protectively by their bodyguards, Yama-Shita and Min-Orota watched with appalled fascination as the Consul-General plummeted to earth, arms and legs flailing like a deranged mechanical doll.
Whumm-ff!
Toshiro had long awaited this moment, but he still flinched as the Consul-General punched a six-inch-deep outline of his body into the ground and split open like an over-ripe melon. And so it ends… Seized by a sudden feeling of exhilaration, he forced his skittering horse to wheel, then galloped off the field as the remaining debris fluttered to earth around the smouldering corpse.
*
Incredible, thought Jodi. She glanced at her digital watch – one of three AMEXICO had thoughtfully provided to help co-ordinate their getaway. So much death and destruction, but less than eight minutes had elapsed since Brickman had blown up the first plane and they had begun their run from the pavilion. She saw Cadillac rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. His face was streaked with tears.
Steve waved them forward over the bank. ‘Okay, c’mon! Let’s go for it!’
The four of them scrambled on to the field and ran towards the parked aircraft. They joined Kelso under the tail of number twelve. He was holding the end-plate – a safety device the dinks had begun fitting over the nozzles of the five rocket tubes to prevent accidental ignition or damage whilst aircraft were being manhandled – and he was ashen-faced. ‘This one’s not tubed up!’
Steve stared at him, thunderstruck. ‘Not-’
‘The rocket tray’s empty! LOOK!’
It was true. Steve’s stomach turned over. ‘Shit, shit, SHIT!’ He seized Jodi and Cadillac by the shoulder. ‘Check these next two! I’ll do Nine!’
The boosters were fitted to the launching trolley, but the tray was empty. They all were. Some idiot dink had stuck end-plates on all the trays – presumably because he thought they looked better that way. Jodi and Cadillac joined up with him as he raced back to Kelso. ‘What a jackass!’ He punched his thigh angrily. ‘And they were there, right in front of us all the time! Jeez!
‘At least we’ve got a cartload of rockets,’ said Cadillac.
‘Yeah. And you can thank Mo-Town they’re already primed! Start emptying your pockets!’ Steve hurriedly divested himself of most of his grenades and spare magazines. Cadillac did the same, passing them to Jodi and Kelso.
‘We’ll load, you two cover us!’
‘We’ll never make it,’ said Kelso.
‘We’re gonna have a damned good try! But maybe we’ll have to go with three tubes instead of a full–’ Steve suddenly realised that Clearwater wasn’t with them.
*
Clearwater had left the others as soon as she realised they needed more time to put right whatever it was that had gone wrong. She did not understand the workings of the flying-horses, but she knew that only she had the power to hold back the warriors on the far side of the field. She could sense their mounting wrath and knew they would soon rally. They must not be allowed to strike at the cloud warrior. If he and Cadillac were overwhelmed, all would be lost. But she also had another task: to avenge the Plainfolk.
*
Steve and the others paused for an instant and watched her run towards the middle of the field.
‘What the eff-eff does she think she’s doing?’ cried Kelso.
‘She’s going to buy us some time,’ murmured Steve. He moved towards the rocket cart.
‘But she’s not even armed!’
‘Armed?’ Cadillac gave a contemptuous laugh as the sense of belonging welled up within him. It was like meeting a long-lost friend. ‘Watch and take heed, sand-burrower! You are about to witness the real power of the Plainfolk!’
*
When the first five flying-horses had been inexplicably blown out of the sky, the two domain-lords had assumed the catastrophe was either an accident or the work of some malevolent deity. But when an explosion in the compound had been followed by several more which had reduced the workshops to a blazing heap of rubble, both realised the Heron Pool was under systematic attack.
But from whom? Before anyone could begin to search for an answer, two more flying-horses had disintegrated dangerously close to where they stood and the Consul-General had been hurled from the skies – half-digging his own grave in the process. Where was this invisible enemy? Lord Yama-Shita feared the divine wrath of the kami like all Iron Masters, but the Heron Pool had not been struck by sky thunderbolts. This was the handiwork of ruthless men!
It was at this point that the first glimmerings of an answer came. The observer from the second escort plane which, with its sister craft, had been attempting an emergency landing when they were destroyed, had not been killed outright. The wreckage in which he was trapped had hit the ground at a shallow angle, splintering and tearing apart as it slithered towards the grandstand. Although almost every bone in his body was broken, the dying samurai had somehow found the strength to gasp a few strangled words to the nearest of those who knelt over him.
