The air she’d beenpushing didn’t have pitch drives to slow it down so it kept going.There was a small group of humanoids on the top of the pyramid, oneof them tied to a hump of stone so that his chest arched up towardthe sky.
The blast of airhammered them down on their asses, all except for the one who wastied to the rock. It took hera moment to realize the string of bodies trailing down the steps ofthe pyramid hadn’t been knocked down by her arrival. The smears ofblood along the descending stone channels told a much darker story.
“Hotdog – Rascal.I’ve got a crude pyramid here and a pack of fanatics sacrificingpeople.”
“Sacrificing?”Hotdog blurted. “Sayagain?”
“They’ve gotsomeone strapped to a stone on the top. There are at least five deadbodies sliding down the front.”
She checked right andleft. “I’ve got a town down here. Looks pretty primitive.” Shelooked back to the front, seeing that the people she’d knocked downwere swaying now, waving their arms over their heads and chanting.
One of them, theone in the biggest headdress, moved to stand behind the victim on thestone. He pulled out a dagger withhis lower right hand andGabriella’s blood ran cold. “Waitone.”
She pushedforward, her sudden approach startling the creature with the knife.It backed away, lowering itsknife as she put her fighter into hover mode, just in front of thetop platform of the pyramid, and opened her canopy.
“Rascal!” Hotdogshouted. “What the hells? Do not get out of that cockpit!”
Maybe it was thefeeling of power, flying around with enough weaponry to kill acruiser. Maybe it was the sidearm attached to her armor.
Maybethe recent high-school grad was just sick of seeing people getbullied.
The muffled curse andthe click-whine of a sidearm told her that Porky was getting ready tocover her idiocy.
She sliddown her port sponsonto the stone surface and drew her pistol. “Let him go!” sheshouted over the hum and whine of her engines. Thepower-levels were at the bottom edge of flight-equilibrium.
They weren’tpulling up stones from the front stairs but there was a slightanomaly in the field-generation at low power. Itwas creating small voids in the air which appeared and collapsedintermittently, soundinglike linen being ripped insidea bass-drum.
Hotdogdescended to a point twenty feet away, angled in from the right wherehe could obliterate anyone who might get too close to her.
“Understand,Rascal, you’re putting those people in danger right now. If any oneof them even twitches in your direction, I have to kill the wholelot.” His voice held anangry edge.
None of thepeople moved. They stoodstaring at Hotdog’s menacing fighterand she cursed, using her left hand to pull out a knife. She slit thevictim’s bonds, sheathed her knife and pulled him off the stone.
The young hominid,two-armed unlike his captors and clad only in a white loin-cloth,gazed up at her in shock. I suppose if you were just about to besacrificed there’s not a lot of room left for anything else butshock, she realized.
Going to have to force him to move.“C’mon,” she urged in a language he wouldn’t understand butthe urgency of her tone had to count for something.
She put a hand underhis arm and got him on his feet. She pushed him toward the fighter,glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody was thinking aboutputting her on that stone as a substitute.
“Up!” shecommanded, waving her hand up the trail of steps sunken into thestarboard sponson. She patted a hand in the first step and tapped hisfoot with hers.
Sighing, she pushed himtoward the sponson. His hands went out, bracing himself against thenanite surface.
She took another lookbehind herself and then slapped her hand on the first two steps,tapping his feet each time with her toe.
He finally startedclimbing.
She took one more lookbefore mounting the steps herself. She looked up but then glancedaway quickly. Hope that loincloth covers all, she thought, butI’m not inclined to find out.
She reached the cockpitand shoved the young male out of the way of her chair. Porkay pushedhim down to a seated position, frowning at him since he couldn’tfrown at the second in line of succession. She reconnected and closedup her canopy.
“We’re leaving,”Hotdog ordered. “No argument.”
A chime signaled afollow algo for her fighter being activated. She sighed, knowing shecould override it but Hotdog would be even more angry than he wasnow.
They raced back to thetunnel system, shouldering the air aside in the Texan’sanger-fueled haste. It gave her time to think, especially now thather passenger had seen out the canopy as they flew.
Being trussed upfor sacrifice and then dragged off in a magical flying machine wastoo much for him. He was unconscious, lyingbetween her seat and the port consoles.
She’d ignored ordersfrom her flight leader. That was hardly commendable but what was shesupposed to do?
They were about to killhim. It didn’t get any simpler than that.
They emerged back intothe central void of the station and Hotdog called in to Luna,requesting a secure channel where they could talk without anyone,especially Gabriella, listening in.
It didn’t take a lotof conversation. Within five minutes, Luna was recalling thesquadron.
Within twenty minutes,they were all sitting on the road by her house, fuselages ticking andcreaking as they dissipated the heat.
Only Luna, Hotdog,Adelina and Gabriella had dismounted for the chewing out.
“Don’t even try topretend you didn’t hear Hotdog telling you to stay in your bird!”Luna’s face was inches from Gabriella’s. Her voice contained afury that threatened to break her composure entirely. “Youdeliberately disobeyed an order. That’s how you get people killed!”
It was the first timeshe’d ever been talked to like that by her aunt and it hurt. Lunamust have realized the same thing.
“This is yoursquadron leader talking to you,” she told her, “not your aunt.”She gestured angrily for HotDog to take over the conversation.
She’s probably shaken at the risk I took…as my aunt, Gabriella thoughtbut she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.
“You saved that guyin your cockpit,” Hotdog said, “but you nearly got the others onthe top of that pyramid killed. One dumb move from one of them andI’d have turned them all to burger-meat.”
She’d been mullingthat aspect over during the return flight
