Anthology - From the Street

I took the chip from her. "Well, at least the paracritters shouldn't bushwhack us."

I couldn't see her face with her silhouette backlit, but I could tell that it had twisted into a frown. "What do you mean by that?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing." Clio's suddenly suspicious tone set off an alarm in my head, so I put on my best poker face.

Clio climbed out of the hatch to look at me. Her head cocked to one side as she tried to read me. "No, it's not nothing. What do you mean that the paracritters 'shouldn't bushwhack us'?"

I continued to keep up my stone-faced look. "Nothing. Phil told me about how Gonzales got geeked, but I don't think we have to worry about something like that happening again."

"Mmm hmm." It didn't sound like Clio believed that, but she didn't press the issue. She turned back and descended back into the turret. "We take off again in an hour. Make sure you're ready to leave by then."

Phil's voice cut in over the whine of the turbines. "I got something showing up on thermo."

"Yeah," I responded as I shifted restlessly in the pilot's seat.

The ork apparently wasn't reassured. "Hey, Jo-girl, don't go to sleep on me."

"I'm not." That much was true. Although it was way past midnight, I'd been jacked in for the past seven hours, which messed up my biological clock so I couldn't sleep if I wanted to. In fact, I was so keyed up I was flying on manual, with only the minimal simsense to keep us from ramming into the mountainside.

"Well, you want to do something about it, or should we just let it walk up and say 'hi'?" Phil was getting annoyed.

I glanced at the sensors. The contact was radiating in the far-infrared spectrum, not hot enough to be a vehicle. That must mean that it was a paracritter, and judging by the sensor feed, a pretty big one, too.

I reached up to my flight helmet and clicked on the mike. "Looks like a critter, Phil. I'm not getting a good fix on sensors, though. Can you scout it out on astral?"

"No probs, Jo-girl." As Phil's voice cut out, I felt a brief shiver up my spine and noticed a slight distortion in the forward visual sensors, probably Phil's astral form shooting forward and passing through me and the sensor dome. While technology and magic don't mix, I've always noticed some distortion whenever I watched magic through sensors, centered around the spellslinger. Not enough to interfere, but still enough to notice.

While Phil was having his out-of-body experience, I decided to slip into mine. I reached forward with my left arm to press a simsense-generated button floating in front, and the darkened view of the cabin interior dissolved into the green-tinted Low-Light view of the surrounding landscape. I could feel my pulse quicken slightly as the simsense translated the engine activity into bodily sensations.

I reached out with a virtual hand and called up the communications window. "Speedy Delivery, this is Angelfire. We got a contact on long-range, possibly a biological. Ghost Rider's checking it out on the astral. Over."

"Roger, Angelfire. Check it out and advise. Out." As Johnny's radio cut out, I dove forward as the engines kicked on the afterburners.

"Awww, frag!" Phil's voice suddenly cut into the intercom as he snapped back into consciousness. "Bad news, Jo-girl, it's a thunderbird. Actually, two thunderbirds. And I mean bird, as in feathers, wings, and bad attitude."

"What?" I looked at the scanners again. He was right-there were two signatures, so close together that they only looked like one at casual glance. "Can't be right. Even two birds don't create that big a thermal signature."

"Look, Jo-girl, I ain't drekking ya," said Phil. "Maybe they got SURGEd or mutated to grow big, but those are definitely thunderbirds. One of 'em almost tagged my astral form with a lightning strike."

"Oh, crapola." Thunderbirds are a kind of Awakened giant eagle that generate lightning storms around them. If a thunderbird hit our Banshee with its lightning bolts, it could fry the rigger control module and generate nasty ASIST spikes that would turn my noggin into hot Sloppy Soy.

"Looks like they're heading our way," I noted. "You didn't attract their attention, did you?"

"No," denied Phil, "I think they're just hunting for dinner. Thunderbirds are dual-natured, so I probably startled them when I showed up in the astral. I zipped out of there after that."

"Well, they're definitely heading our way," I observed. "They're still a ways out, so we can probably just alter course and take evasive action."

"Good idea, Jo-girl," agreed Phil. "Critters generally leave you alone if you leave them alone, and I've already seen too many dogfights on this trip."

I keyed the communications window and radioed Johnny. "Speedy Delivery, this is Angelfire. Confirmed the biological as two giant thunderbirds. Probably SURGEd or something. Suggest we break off and take evasive action, over."

There was no reply from Johnny. "Speedy Delivery, do you copy? Over."

I glanced back to make sure Johnny was still there. Not only was he there, he was gunning his engines to catch up. "Johnny, did you hear me? We should break off and leave them alone. Over!"

As Johnny's t-bird closed on mine, his turret turned on us and opened fire. Giant sparks flew, and the aircraft shuddered slightly to the right as the autocannon slugs strafed down the left flank. I felt a sharp pain in my left arm as one of the slugs penetrated through the armor on the canard and struck a circuit box.

"JOHNNY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?" I screamed. Phil swung the turret to return fire, but his shots went low and whizzed underneath the belly of the Banshee.

"I can't get a good fix on 'im, Jo-girl!" yelled Phil through the intercom. "His ECM must be jamming our sensors!"

"He damaged one of the control circuits for the port flaps, but it's not serious." I fought to keep the t-bird under control. I could keep flying straight, but right turns were going to be a slitch. "Phil, if I can get behind him, think you can disable his engines and force him down in one piece?"

"I'll try, but it's gonna be- what's he doing now?!?" As Phil shouted out in confusion, the turret on Johnny's t-bird snapped forward and let out a long burst at the two thunderbirds. The flurry of rounds flitted through the air between the two critters, but the t-bird made no effort to walk the fire towards either one of them. As soon as it had their attention, the t-bird launched a flare, momentarily blinding my Low-Light vision. Although I couldn't see, the radar tracked the craft as it ducked into a side valley and hightailed out.

"He hosed us, Phil," I said. "He riled up those two thunderbirds and then popped a flare to screen his escape. Those two birds will think we shot them and come after us."

"Jo-girl, look out!" One of the thunderbirds swooped above the aircraft. The tip of one wing brushed against the side, and sparks flew from incidental contact. I yelped in pain as a simsense spike shot through my head.

The other thunderbird rose high into the sky and joined the tips of its wings together. Lightning bolts crackled from the wingtips as an electrical aura began to form around the bird. As the bird parted its wings, the aura burst, and a torrent of lightning roared towards us.

I tensed as the lightning storm overwhelmed the craft. Many of the bolts crackled harmlessly past. One struck us, but the electricity seemed to wash over. Little sparks popped as the lightning crossed over some rough surfaces, and I felt sharp pinpricks on random parts of my body as ASIST spikes pulsed across the simsense. As quickly as the electrical torrent had arrived, it passed us by.

I blinked in surprise that we survived mostly unscathed. "Phil…?"

Phil was breathing heavily into the mike. "Spell defense. Never tried that against a critter. Get us outta here-I need to catch my breath."