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A.R.Yngve DARC AGES _________________________ |
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![]() The Short One & the Tall One |
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Chapter 17
In the late morning the next day, Dohan checked the Sunray; before an hour had passed, he deemed it safe for immediate lift-off. When he received the flight clearance, Darc was ready to go. Mechao's large family and a few hundred villagers crowded at the shore to see them leave. His wife Amada kissed and hugged Darc, then Dohan, as if they were family members. "Be careful, my handsome ones!" she told them. "Promise," Darc replied, but resisted the temptation to wink at her. Discreetly, Mechao handed Darc the tubes of equipment he had asked for earlier, concealed inside a large thick cloak. "The microscope is fragile," Mechao instructed him in a low, serious voice. "Do not drop it. There are written instructions inside, too. The sample test tissue must be heated to at least halfway the boiling point, or the color reactions will not be visible. I have prepared it to react to the most important larger genes we discussed, but there are many genes which will not give any reaction." "I will return," Darc promised, shaking the old doctor's bony hand. Meijji, when it came to her turn, refused to let go of Dohan -- she followed him up to the plane, weeping incessantly. The two fire-fighter women, the first ones Dohan had encountered on Kap Verita, were the saddest members of the villager crowd. Patting each other's shoulders, they waved at the departing guests. "They'll never come back," the short one sobbed. "It's a jungle out there." "Knock up some women and leave," the tall one said stoically. "Just like those sailors used to do." Darc was soon settled in his cabin seat, waiting for the pilot. Dohan halted on the cargo ramp, holding Meijji tight. "I love you. We will meet again, I swear," he told her, wishing it would be possible to hold his promise. "You must. I shall think of you every day, every moment." He gave her a little golden figurine of the Goddess, a lucky charm he had worn since childhood. They kissed each other a last time, and parted. Dohan rushed to the controls, almost forgetting the safety belt. The islanders backed away; the Sunray rose up into the blue sky, whining so high the bystanders had to cover their ears. They kept watching until the ship turned to the north and roared off past the mountain ridge. "Is there a radio on board?" Darc asked Dohan, once his stomach had settled after the rough start. The vessel was up among the clouds again, speeding northward across the sea. He had to repeat the question before Dohan noticed. "What is a 'ra-dio'?" Dohan asked, his mind absent, brooding over Meijji. Darc clarified himself: "An electromagnetic machine that sends and receives messages. What do you use?" Dohan blinked out of his moody trance. "Oh, that... laser pulses, of course. We use the kind that are invisible to the eye, and they can reach very far, but the curvature of the globe sets a limit to how far, unless they pass through the way stations that are posted across Castilia." "Can you listen to the laser communication between other cities? Now, I mean? Then we might know what is going on back home." Dohan shook his head; Darc never ceased to say the strangest things. "How do I do that? A laser-beam is like a bundle of very thin lines. The sender must know the exact location of the receiving disk, or he will just send his pulses into thin air. What is good about this, is that the signals cannot be overheard on their way..." "I know, I know," Darc said with slight irritation. The boy's understanding of physics was abysmal -- as with most people of this time. "So you can communicate with Damon City?" Darc asked. "Not in the air, no -- it is nigh-impossible for me to get a reliable aim on a receiver, even on a steady course like this. The cities have an old static network for communication -- it is upheld by the ruling families." Darc thought he understood this: the city lords were secretive, and had long since given up radio waves since they were so easy to intercept. Then he thought about something else. "Dohan... I need to learn more about the people outside the cities, out in the wilderness. You know..." Dohan was silent for a few moments, then replied in a tense voice: "There are no... people... in the Wastelands." "The Lepers... who are they?" The young man turned to give him a quick glance – and Darc saw the blind fear behind Dohan's outward anger. "Don't say the word in here, it brings bad luck!" Dohan snapped. He added, only slightly less harshly: "We call them 'The Ones Whose Very Name Brings Disease'. They carry the Plague. They are evil, pure evil." "Have you ever seen one? Or a picture of one?" Dohan shook his head, almost like a spastic reflex -- and explained: "Lord Fache was the last Castilian in recent memory who saw them and lived. He drove away a great horde of them near his city, in the year 930. That made him our greatest hero. It is an honor just to be defeated by him in the Joust. During the battle, Lord Fache was lucky to stay so far away from them, that he could avoid contamination. They say he still has nightmares about it. "Once, when he was drunk at a celebration -- that rarely happens -- he talked about what he had seen. I happened to overhear him. He had been close enough to see them -- they looked like nothing human! Unspeakable hideousness! When he saw into their eyes, he almost died of fear! Some of his soldiers, and a relative of his, were captured by... by them. The defenders of his city could hear them scream for mercy for two days and nights!" Their aircraft suddenly lurched off course -- Dohan was so upset, that he had pulled one of the controls in the wrong direction. He adjusted the craft's position, and switched on the autopilot. Dohan was pale, and cold sweat was budding on his face. "Calm down, Dohan. I promise I won't mention it again." He let out a sigh, puzzled by Dohan's reaction. Defender of the city, indeed! Trained to fight an enemy he only knew from fairytales! Still, Dohan had shown the courage to face a witchdoctor; there was still hope that Darc could free him from his worst superstitions. Darc spent the rest of the journey studying the medical equipment Mechao had given him. He was especially delighted to examine the miniaturized diffraction microscope -- no larger than his two fists, with its added optical function; Mechao had told him it came from one of the coastal cities of Awrica. And this proved that powerful technology was still being kept in memory, just waiting to be used to its full potential. With such power, Darc speculated, he just might turn the odds in his favor. He hid the equipment in the secret pockets of his cloak, before they arrived. From the air, they could see the signs of battle many kilometers away. Smoke was clouding the circular, giant fortress that was Damon City. Laser lines flickered in all directions; occasional explosions hit the outer walls and the central castle. Dohan could count at least two enemy aircraft circling the city. One of the Damon family's slow troop carriers was up in the air, trying to fend off enemy aircraft with little success. Darc was no coward, but the idea of suicide didn't appeal to him. "You're not going down there, are you?" Dohan turned grim; he was not so different from his father, after all. "Be quiet. Our artillery will recognize our insignia and give us cover. I will try flying in as fast as I can, attack an enemy craft and land at the top of the castle. My father is a better pilot -- I should be down there now, in my armor. You, man the turret, quick!" Darc unbuckled, grasped a side rail, and treaded back to the aft turret. It reminded him of old World War II bombers -- a fold-out seat, hanging suspended from the ceiling, mounted to a gun the size of Darc's two legs. Powered by servomotors, the gun pointed out through the hull by way of a small airtight porthole. He got into the gunner's seat and tested the controls. Fairly simple, he figured -- rotate the gun with the two handlebars, aim through the windshield, and fire. There were two crude, circular gauges under the gun sights -- for battery power, and gun temperature. Darc had done his military service, but that was years -- centuries? -- ago. Fear and tension were building up in his gut -- but there was no time to think it over. In the next moment, they were flying in. Red, green, and blue laser pulses blinked past the Sunray from the ground. But it was a strangely silent battle, Darc thought; no cracks of gunfire or machine-gun staccatos could be heard. Every now and then, a hit would snap against the ship's hull -- too weakened by smoke and distance to pierce it. Dohan closed in on a Pasko fighter craft as it swooped down over the city, toward the great castle. From the castle turrets, a barrage of red lines aimed at the enemy ships -- mostly missing their targets. The enemy pilot rolled and twisted his craft like it was a toy. Dohan fired at his rear, and hit once. The enemy craft climbed away from the castle, and Dohan went after it. The Damon troop carrier retreated to the tower hangar, badly hit by enemy fire. In the aft section, Darc fought down a beginning fit of airsickness -- his stomach lagged behind as they climbed. The castle complex rushed past his view -- then he saw the second enemy fighter approach them at their rear. He fastened his grip of the handlebars and tried to lock onto the rolling pursuer. Turbulence from outside and vibrations from the loud jet engines caused the gun to shake in his hands -- he fired twice, to try his aim -- and both pulses missed. The pursuer closed in, just a hundred or so meters away -- fired several pulses -- they missed, if only because Dohan made a sudden sharp roll and banked left. Darc struggled to get a proper aim, but the pursuer kept moving in and out of his narrow view. He scanned the sky, squinting at the sweat beads rolling into his eyes, humming nervously between his teeth: "I'm Popeye the sailor-man... come on, you bastard... I fight to the finish 'cause I eat the... Gotcha!" He squeezed the trigger, firing a quick burst -- one of the pulses seemed to scratch the pursuer, but it remained flying. The temperature gauge climbed up to the red area -- battery power was already down by half. "Damn!" The pursuing craft fired a long burst of green pulses. A shower of sharp cracks hit the hull. Darc was rocked in his seat -- Dohan put the Sunray into a rolling spin, pointing its nose to the ground. Dazedly, Darc noticed a burning sensation from the air around him -- and saw that there was a freshly burned hole in the aft port, close to his seat. Too stressed out to react, he waited for the downward spin to cease. Almost too late, Dohan broke the craft's spin and aimed its nose upward again. He turned it back on course toward the castle -- Pasko's pilots were simply too good for him. Darc took a few potshots at the enemy troops as the ground swept past him. The enemy soldiers were trying to get close enough to fire some kind of heavy cannons or grenade launchers at the outer walls -- but the artillery batteries on the battlements kept them at bay. He hit one of the enemy cannons with a pulse, and it blew up in a huge cloud of fire. Darc made a triumphant yell. One of the enemy fighters got on their tail again. Over his shoulder, Dohan yelled from the cockpit: "Cover us, Darc -- I'm going into the hangar!" Darc fired again and again -- but he seemed to miss by inches and hairbreadths each time. The second enemy craft came into view farther off. Darc hesitated for a moment; he had only seconds before Dohan would have to throttle the thruster jets, and use the keel thrusters to steer into the wide-open hangar. Before they reached inside, they would be sitting ducks -- unless the castle guns could shield them. A sudden explosion from outside jolted the cabin. "Are we hit?" Darc shouted. "They hit a castle turret!" Dohan shouted back. "Cover fire!" Darc aimed and fired, without thinking -- ignoring the battery gauge sinking closer to zero, and the temperature needle reaching the red area. He fired two more pulses -- and the gun went dead. Nothing happened! He shook the handlebars, stared out the windshield -- where did that second ship go? -- and nearly missed the sight of the enemy plunging down into the castle gardens. The thundering explosion echoed throughout the city. The remaining enemy craft veered off, ducking laser lines from the city defenses. Suddenly, the Sunray fell under the shadow of gray concrete walls, and it shook violently -- the keel thrusters were pushing against the hangar floor. They were saved. |
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