As the missile completed its turn and headed back, Sam was surprised to see the Dragon head straight for it. Was it mad with pain? Just when Sam thought that collision was inevitable, the beast belched forth flame to lave the oncoming missile, then twisted violently to the side. The missile burned past, once again singing the beast’s feathers. Bereft of its sensors and control surfaces, the missile followed a straight track down into the earth. Its warhead detonated, sending a geyser of rook and dust skyward.
“Get it?” Begay asked.
“No.”
“Frag it!”
The Dragon hadn’t stopped moving, turning sharply to slip over the ridge toward the panzer again. Its maneuver was too fast for Sam to warn Begay, but the rigger had anticipated. He was firing the chain gun as the serpent cleared a domed mound. For this pass, Begay used the main cannon as well. The big gun wasn’t suited for firing against an aerial target of the Dragon’s maneuverability, but one shell would be enough to blow the beast into hamburger. Unfortunately, the creature wasn’t giving Begay any such opportunity. Its flight was a masterful aerial ballet of twisting, sinuous flight. Avoiding the fire, it rushed in under the guns, and before the rigger could switch to the antipersonnel armaments, it swooped low over the panzer. One black-taloned claw caught the chain gun turret. The Dragon’s mass and momentum tilted the panzer over, while the vehicle’s own supporting thrust helped slam the Thunderbird into a rock face.
The Dragon beat its wings and gained altitude, fanning away the cloud of dust raised by the panzer’s impact. Sam saw the Thunderbird half-buried under a small landslide, with a thin strand of gray smoke or steam rising out from a rent on the engine deck. The barrel of the chain gun was gone.
“Begay! Begay!”
For a moment, the only reply was hissing static. The rigger’s words came in small, breathy rushes. “Get out, Twist. You get close to the worm and you’re history.”
“I could distract it while you shoot it.”
“Don’t be a fool.” His voice cut off as he was wracked with coughing. “The guns are gone. You’re lucky to be out there. Walk in beauty, Twist.”
The serpent swept into sight again. Wings fanned forward with feathers at maximum spread for braking. The neck arched back into an S-curve, and the jaws opened wide to belch forth flame.
Sam thought Begay still safe from that sort of attack. Surely he would have heard screams if the Navaho had been exposed to the flame? Sam looked down to see the comm light cold and dead.
Below him, the flames found a ruptured seal on a fuel tank. The side of the panzer blew out, sending a fireball with an oily black smudge of a tail into the sky.
The serpent beat its wings and gained altitude. It circled lazily, drifting in and out of the smoky column. As it rose, Sam recognized its markings. This was Tessien, the feathered serpent that worked with Hart. Drake must have sent it after him. Now Drake would have to answer for yet another life.
After what the Dragon had done to the panzer, Sam had no illusions about what would happen if the Little Eagle tangled with it. He banked away, seeking a thermal to take him up and away from the scene of carnage.
33
When an hour had passed, Sam was sure that Tessien was not following him. The Little Eagle was still headed north and the badlands had given way to flat prairie. He was not moving in the optimal direction, but the need to conserve fuel forced this course upon him. He needed to cover ground, and the further the Eagle could take him, the better. Because of the craft’s limited endurance, Sam took every advantage of the prevailing winds to glide as much as possible. All the while, he looked for a landing spot where alternate transportation might be available. Otherwise, he’d be walking once the Eagle landed. On the bright side, he was out of Sioux territory.
By now, though, he was physically drained, his head aching from interfacing with the Little Eagle’s sensors as he sought to evade pursuit. He wanted to rest, to stretch out somewhere and close his eyes for a while. The cramped confines of the drone offered no solace on the first count, but the autopilot would let him rest for a bit. He fed the Little Eagle’s computer the parameters necessary to maintain gliding flight and to take advantage of any thermals, and instructed it to signal any significant change in the prevailing winds. He didn’t trust the dog brain to pick a suitable course once the wind shifted. That done, he jacked out. Even confined and cramped as he was, sleep came fast. Dreams came, too.
Sam wandered in a Stygian darkness. To either side, black walls loomed over him and stretched away into the pitchy distance. A sound tapped regularly at the edge of his awareness like a distant clock, or was it a heartbeat? He felt a cold pressure against his back, but when he turned and stretched out his hand, he found nothing. And when he tried to take a step in that direction, he could not move his foot. Turning back, he took a few steps, and stopped again. The pressure returned, and a second attempt to walk in its direction met the same result. He took another few steps in the permitted direction before trying once more. Failure, again. He shrugged and walked on the only way he could. He continued for a ways, occasionally stumbling over unseen obstructions that evaporated just as he touched them. Resigning himself to barked shins, he pressed on while gradually noticing a dim light ahead. As he approached, the illumination resolved itself into a face. Janice? Maybe not. Hanae? He wasn’t sure. He needed to know, and began to run toward the image.
But then he was brought up short and almost fell. Looking down, he saw shackles around his ankles. Each band was linked to a heavy chain of gleaming steel links that stretched away into the darkness. Bending closer, he noted a small cloth label sewn to the metal. The inscription read, “Made expressly for Samuel Verner.” He laughed. It was ridiculous to find a custom clothes label on chains.
He resented the restraints and that resentment flared up into rage. Who had the right to shackle him? He bent to the chains and found no fastenings. When he pulled at them in frustration, they proved to be stiff and immovable, he beat at them with his bare fists. He needed a tool to smash them or to let him slip free of the bindings. He howled in fury.
Somewhere in the darkness around him a dog howled, too, echoing his outburst. No, the sound was too wild and lonely to be a dog. He was in the prairie; it must be a coyote. The plaintive voice was calling… calling. Calling him? No, that didn’t seem right. Calling…
Thunder rolled across the sky, shocking Sam awake. A look out the cockpit told him what he didn’t want to know. The boiling storm front seemed to fill the sky to the southwest. The thunderheads were too high for him to climb over and their leaden gray front was moving too fast to outrun. He knew enough about small aircraft to know that the Little Eagle would not withstand the fury of storm winds.