The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (43 page)

The first pass crippled the front leg, but
failed to break it free. Gieo knew they wouldn’t make the mistake
on the second pass of trying the beam weapons again. The fighters
covered their long turnaround for a return trip, still unable to do
any real damage to the crawler, but more than capable of drawing
clumsy fire away from the drifting airships.

On the second pass, Gieo lit up the target
again, directing all fire from all three dirigibles onto the
already damaged leg. The crawler had ground to a halt, no longer
able to pull the wounded limb up despite obvious attempts to. Gieo
knew the salvaged diesel engines they were using, likely robbed
from trains, couldn’t boast anywhere near the torque of a Slark
engine; what might have been a minor setback before the cascade was
apparently a debilitating wound with the inferior human technology
powering the crawler. Their fire found its mark, but so too did the
Slark retaliation. Rockets, provincial and not too dissimilar from
human designs, which were hardly used by the Slark in the first
contact war, struck home on the
Hard-Paw
. The airship
floundered, listed to the starboard side away from the formation,
caught fire, and descended to the quickly darkening eastern
desert.

“Fighter formations alpha and beta, forget
the cover for us,” Gieo shouted into the microphone cone, “go cover
the crash site against recon crawlers.”

The planes broke formation, circled back on
their path, and pushed hard to keep up with the already dwindling
fire of the descending airship.

Gieo pressed the attack still, coming in
close enough to use knives, wishing desperately that she had
included a weapon for herself, but trusting in her gunners to
finish what they’d started. Relief and elation washed over her when
she saw the leg pull free, broken on too many moorings, and finally
dropping from the crawler like a felled tree. They pulled away with
the clangs and knocks of solid fire weapons bouncing off their
armor. The
Big Daddy
drew most of the fire along its armored
underside, deflecting all attempts with a shrug and a puff from its
great bellows.

Gieo couldn’t see the crawler’s tumble. Her
focus was on the sky above, gaining altitude, but she heard it,
suspected people in Tombstone probably heard it. The sound was
unlike anything she could even have imagined. The crawler went over
face-first and sounded for all the world like a thunderstorm
comprised entirely of cars loosing its fury on rocky ground. The
creak and whine of metal failing compounded hundreds of times over
only being broken up by the hollow drums of minor explosions.

“Do we finish them off?” the captain of
Little Monster
asked.

“Not a chance,” Gieo replied. “We’ve knocked
them down and lost more than we could afford in the process.
Continue to target and let them choke on their defeat.”

The high of victory hadn’t remotely worn off
the crews of either of the remaining airships. Their jubilation was
tempered only by the loss of a third of their squadron and the
unknown fate of the four fighter pilots who had left to ensure
their possible safety. Only after the completion of their mission
could they even consider searching deep behind enemy lines for
survivors.

Bakersfield had suffered greatly during the
war not only for its proximity to the Air Force base, but also
because of the concentration of oil refineries it boasted. Only two
refineries remained intact and the Slark had apparently made good
use of both. The hellish red light of dusk, tainted by the smog put
out by the inefficient fuel refining process completed by the
inexact hands of the Slark, guided the airships in for the attack
on the major production plants of diesel fuel. Gieo could see the
Slark scrambling below, but heard no air raid chirping that served
as the Slark’s audible warning signal, nor did the popping of
antiaircraft shells greet them. The goliath crawler had been the
first, last, and only defense of their oil production and
processing with the estimation it would be more than enough. They
descended upon the Slark as Gieo had suspected they would—unlikely
conquerors flying improbable ships to attack an impossible target
once guarded by a nearly godly defender.

Gieo launched her remaining three biplane
fighters and watched the conflagration begin. The Bakersfield
refineries, likely the only source of diesel available to the Slark
outside of the weak Los Angeles production centers, dissolved under
the withering fire put out by the streaking biplanes. Explosions
rippled across the landscape, plumes of flame reached into the sky
to shocking heights, and the Slark fled their barely understood
fuel plants like rats from sinking ships. Gieo watched this all
from a safe height, waiting in a holding pattern in a ship of her
own design, satisfied that she’d finally finished what she’d
labored for years to accomplish.

“Impossible is a word to be found only in the
dictionary of fools,” Gieo whispered to herself, quoting another
unlikely diminutive military leader who had dared, like her, to
take on the world.

Chapter 28:
A final betrayal before the
storm.

Fiona’s time
without Gieo was spent sick with worry until she found some
consolation in the bottom of a bottle. Mitch was happy to pour for
her while Bond-O was happy to keep Shrimp Ramen busy with kitchen
scraps and wrestling gentle enough for a puppy.

Trouble boasted a smell for all the initiated
warriors of the world; this scent of impending turmoil came rolling
in, chasing the setting sun, as the bats were taking wing for their
dusk feeding. Fiona could feel it like the heavy air before a storm
and it brought her senses back from the brink of tequila oblivion.
She was up on her feet before she even heard the first engine. The
handful of hunters and Ravens in the saloon found their feet as
well, practically sniffing the air like wolves on the hunt. Engine
noises rang through the encroaching darkness.

Armed and ready, Colt in hand, Fiona made her
way to the front windows in time to see the first of the
motorcycles tear through the empty streets. They weren’t hunters
looking for Slark heads; they were marauders in search of more
complete prey. Before Fiona could stop him, Cork was out the front
door of the saloon, wading into the midst of the invading bikers.
Fiona moved to back his play, moved to pull him from the fire as he
had pulled her in the assault on the Hawkins House, but held at the
threshold of the still swinging doors. They knew him, stopped to
speak with him, and let him pass unmolested, out of sight in the
direction they’d come, on what were obviously important errands.
The betrayal stung Fiona initially, followed quickly by blinding
rage.

Her anger was quickly interrupted by the
sound of rifle fire as the bikers got their first taste of Raven
tenacity. They had no doubt come seeking women, beautiful, supple,
young, and scarce in the desert, but had found the Ravens weren’t
easily captured or exploited, not when they had guns so close to
defend themselves. Fiona turned to find the remaining four hunters
in the saloon less focused on the boiling war in the streets but
almost entirely engrossed in what she was doing.

“Cork says not to hurt you,” one of the men
said.

“Sit it out, have another drink and we’ll all
just wait for the firing to stop,” another continued.

They were advancing on her with one hand on
their guns and the other held out like they were approaching a
spooked horse. Fiona glanced to Mitch, who stood in a state of
ambivalent hell, bottle at the ready, seemingly unsure of the plan
he’d signed on for once it came to actually enacting it.

“You aren’t one of them,” Mitch croaked
around a throat made dry from stress. “You’re one of us. Things’ll
go back to the way they were and it’ll be like it never
happened.”

“Like hell…” Fiona raised her pistol on who
she guessed to be the fastest of the lot. Her shot was spoiled when
the man sprung half a dozen holes and tumbled over a table in the
thrall of the machinegun victim’s dance. The other four struck
similar poses of surprise at being shot and fell as well without
Fiona or the four hunters getting a single shot off.

Stephanie stood on the railing of the second
level with two other Ravens, smoking assault rifles in hand. Fiona
turned her rage on Mitch. She stormed across the plank floor with
long-legged strides, her Anaconda brought to bear on the
bartender.

“Now, Red…” was all he managed to get out
before Fiona put two holes in his chest. The smoking wounds in his
shirt poured frothy blood while the bottles behind him caught the
escaping slugs and chunks of his ruined back.

“Get his truck out on the street,” Fiona
growled to Stephanie as the Ravens stormed down the stairs to join
her. “I’m done being burned by betrayal for the week and ready to
do some burning of my own.”

Out the back of the saloon, seeking out the
Kodiak’s hiding place, they heard the war begin in earnest. What
sounded like relatively little resistance initially seemed to have
hardened against the marauders the closer they got to the Raven
stronghold, no doubt clashing against Veronica’s defensive plans
that would allow a few hundred Ravens to holdout against a few
thousand invaders. But hold out for what, Fiona wondered.

Fiona and her group of Ravens found Mitch’s
truck hidden in the derelict store next door, but quickly learned
Gieo had already stripped bits and pieces from it including the
boiler, likely without Mitch’s knowledge. The gun would still work,
but without the truck to drive it about, they would need the
targets to come inside the building and stand against a wall for it
to do any good.

“Damn it,” Fiona grumbled.

“Bond-O push trucks for fun,” a meek, quiet
voice spoke from behind them. “Bond-O push truck for you.”

Fiona’s initial reaction was to tell him
absolutely not, to tell him to hide, but she knew that, without
Mitch, Zeke’s new rule wouldn’t be kind to Bond-O and he had every
right to participate in the fight for his own existence. She
nodded. Stephanie mounted the gun, hooking herself into the
familiar gyroscopes, and the remaining two Ravens took up defensive
positions on either side of the simpleminded fry cook at the front
of the truck.

The truck lurched, moving slow with the meaty
shoulder of Bond-O pressed against the front bumper and grill.
Finally, it nosed out toward the opening in the wall and began to
pick up steam toward the street. Fiona stood on the running board,
open truck door behind her, steering with her left hand, gun in her
right. They would be an easy target to find, but a hard one to
reach.

With the open street before her, Stephanie
didn’t want for targets. Motorcycles, ATVs, and trucks were pouring
into the city, bristling with weapons and hard men. Stephanie
started with the closest bundle and worked her way out. The quad
gun, meant for obliterating heavily armored vehicles from the
undercarriage of one of the medium-sized crawlers, ripped through
the marauder column like a chainsaw through tinfoil. Bodies and
vehicles alike exploded when the peculiar green shells struck
them—it was the bad old days of the alien invasion all over again
with deadly Slark technology obliterating effectively defenseless
men.

When she swung the gun to one side, the
Ravens shifted their focus to the other to cover her back. They
crawled down the streets, sweeping clean the invaders from Juarez
in a wash of Slark firepower. The truck’s initial speed, which was
barely above noticeable, continued to slow until Bond-O was finally
too tired to continue, leaving them stranded, still several blocks
from the Raven stronghold around the courthouse.

“Bring back help,” Stephanie shouted, never
leaving the trigger of the guns alone as she found target after
target. “We’ll hold here until help arrives. We can’t let them get
this gun.”

Fiona made it only a few steps away from the
stranded Kodiak before the marauders made their first successful
counterattack. Rocket propelled grenades struck first, missing the
heart of the gun platform but killing the two Raven guards and the
titan fry cook as well. Fiona found herself flat on the ground,
covered in dirt and shattered asphalt from the street. Her ears
were ringing and her mouth tasted like blood. She could hear the
rhythmic drumming of the quad gun, but little else. She turned her
head as though underwater, slowly to see the ruined bodies of the
two Raven guards and the massive, shrapnel-riddled corpse of Bond-O
at the burning front of the truck. She tried to stand, but couldn’t
keep her feet. A motorcycle shot past her from behind, nearly
clipping her in the process. She found her gun among the rubble of
the street and retrieved it.