mould. Then we rose again, yawing to the left as the remaining turbofan screamed to the edge of its tolerance trying to gain some sort of lift. The engine-out alarm shrilled as the fan stalled, overcome by the pressure. We fell then, sideways, survived a headlong impact with an oak that crazed the windshield and slammed into the loamy earth, slithering a good fifty metres before we rocked to a halt on our side.
I didn't black out but the long silence following the crash made it feel like I had. I blinked, lying on my shoulder against the side hatch. Eleena
moaned and Aemos started coughing. The only other sound was the tinkling patter of the shattered windscreen scads gradually collapsing into the cabin.
1 got up and clambered over the seats.
'Eleena? Are you hurt?'
'No, sir… I don't think so…'
'We have to get out. Help me.'
Together we dragged the coughing Aemos clear and went back for Medea who was still, mercifully, unconscious.
The searchlights of the speeder lanced down through the hole we had made in the canopy, poking around.
Any moment now…
Eleena and I dragged the other two into the shelter of a hollow a good distance from the downed aircraft.
'Stay here,' I whispered to her. 'Give me your weapon.'
Silently, she offered me her stubby laspistol.
'Stay down/ I advised and ran back to the wreck, retrieving my staff and my sword. I tossed the runestaff into the undergrowth to keep it out of sight and drew Barbarisater.
The speeder was coming down through the upper branches, trying to pick out the flier with its stablight. I tucked the sword and pistol into my belt and lunged up into the lower branches of the gros beech that overlooked our crash site.
The tree was huge and gnarled. Grunting, I swung myself up into the main boughs and then further up into the web of thinner branches.
The speeder hovered into view, crawling slowly towards the smoking wreck, its searchlight playing back and forth. I could see the masked side-gunner in the open door, one hand on the yoke of the pintle-mounted autocannon, the other on the bracket of the lamp.
The speeder descended. I climbed higher, up into the lofty reaches of the beech, until I could climb no further and the hovering speeder was directly below me.
The pilot said something. I distinctly heard the crackle of his intervox. The door gunner replied and let go of the lamp, setting both hands on the cannon's grips, turning it to aim down at the crumpled flier.
The glade below me filled with flashes and booms as he riddled the airplane with his cannon fire. The valiant little Urdeshi craft shredded like tinfoil.
The door gunner stopped shooting and called down to his pilot.
Now or never.
I let go of the branches and dropped straight onto the roof of the speeder. It rocked slightly beneath me. I steadied myself, crouched down, gripped the upper frame of the door hatch and swung in, boots first.
The gunner was bent over with his back to the hatch, getting a fresh ammunition box from the wall rack. My boots connected with his lower back and shunted him face-first against the cabin wall. I landed beside
him as he staggered backwards, his hands clutching at his broken face, grabbed him by the arm and propelled him backwards out of the hatch. We were ten metres up.
The pilot gave a muffled grunt as he looked round and saw me. A second later, the muzzle of the laspistol was pressed against the corner of his jaw.
'Set down. Now/1 said.
I prayed I was dealing wim a mercenary and not a cultist. A mere would know when to cut his losses, and bargain to live for another day and another paycheck. A cultist would fly us into the nearest tree, gun or no gun.
Making his motions very slow and clear so I could be sure to read them, the pilot cut the speeder's main thruster, and sank us to the forest floor.
'Shut us down,' I said.
He obeyed, and the lift units hummed to a halt. The dashboard went blank apart from a few orange standby lights.
'Unstrap. Get out.'
He unbuckled his harness and slowly pulled himself up out of the pilot's seat as I covered him with the pistol. He was a short but well-built man in ablative armour and a grey flight helmet with a breathing visor.
He jumped down from the speeder's side hatch and stood with his hands raised.
I got down next to him. Take off the helmet and toss it back into the speeder.'
The pilot did as he was told. His skin was pale and freckled, his thinning hair shaved close. He regarded me wim edgy blue eyes.
'Unzip the suit.'
He frowned.
To the waist.'
Keeping one hand raised, he drew the zipper of the ablat-suit down, revealing an undervest and shoulders marked with old, blurry tattoos. The psi-shield was a small, disc-shaped device hung round his neck on a plastic cord. I snapped it off and tossed it into the undergrowth. Then I used my will.
'Name?'
'Nhh…' he growled, grimacing.
'Name!'
'Eino Goran.'
I nudged my mind against his. It was like rubbing up against something sheathed in plastic.
'Right, we both know that's an emplated identity. A rash job from the feel of it. Real name?'
He shook his head, his teeth clenched. Emplate IDs were cheap enough to buy on the black market, especially a fairly poor quality one like this. They were fake personalities, usually sold with matching papers, psi-woven over the subject's persona like a fitted dust cover on a piece of
furniture. Nothing fancy. If you had the money, you could buy fingerprints and retinas to match. If you really had the money, a new face too.
This one was like a false wall erected in a hurry to ward off casual minds. It lacked any sort of real history, not even vague biographical engrams. A mind mask as cheap and unrealistic as the carnival faces his comrades had worn.
But, though poor, it had been put in place with great force. I tried to shift it, but it wouldn't budge. That was frustrating. It was obviously false, but I couldn't get past it.
There was no time to worry at it now.
'Eleena! Aemos! Come on!' I shouted, dragging the limp man back into the speeder. I checked him for weapons – there were none – and then lashed his hands behind his back wim a length of cable from the speeder's pulley spool. By the time Eleena and Aemos reached me, carefully bearing Medea, I had the pilot gagged and blind-folded, and tied to one of the speeder's internal cross-members.
