William Dietz - A Hole in the Sky

“Yeah?” Unver said suspiciously. “And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to lie here, let the stinks pass by me, and shoot them in the back.”

Unver grinned. “I like it. But you’d better find some cover. Start looking. I’ll handle the rest.”

And the teacher was as good as his word. While Capelli worked his way sideways, careful to keep Rowdy in close, Unver opened fire with the BAR. The M1918A2 was firing armor-piercing .30-06 rounds, which produced an ominous roar as Capelli settled in below some bushes and pulled the dog in next to him. The firing stopped as Unver got up, paused to make sure the stinks had seen him, and turned west as projectiles kicked up dirt along the crest of the hill. Then he was gone and hidden from their sight.

Capelli was lying on his back. By raising his head slightly he could look left and right. That was how he saw four Hybrids top the crest of the hill and head downslope. The Drones arrived a second later, and as luck would have it, one of them passed directly over Capelli’s position. He could hear the thrumming sound, see the scratches on the bottom of the machine, and smell the stink of ozone as a wave of heat washed over him. Rowdy barked madly, but the Drone was loud enough to obscure the sound.

Then Capelli was up, carbine to his shoulder, firing from only yards away. The pilot’s back was exposed and the Hybrid jerked convulsively before it fell to the ground. And with no one to hold the throttle open, the Drone drifted to a halt.

What happened next was the result of an impulse rather than a carefully conceived plan as Capelli dashed down the slope. Thanks to the height advantage the hillside gave him, he was able to enter the Drone and occupy the just-vacated seat. The vehicle bobbed and sank slightly as Capelli’s hands sought the controls. It took him only seconds to figure out that the joystick on the left was used to steer the Drone—and that the grip on the right controlled the machine’s speed.

Then Capelli was off. And not a second too soon, as a ’brid fired a burst of rockets at him. They passed through the space he had occupied moments before and slammed into the hillside. The battle could have ended there and then had the other Drones been able to gang up on him. But Unver was in position by that time. And every time a ’brid pilot turned its back on the schoolteacher it risked being shot.

That limited what the Chimera could do and gave Capelli a much-needed advantage as he guided his vehicle in behind one of the stinks and fired the Drone’s automatic weapon. A steady stream of projectiles tore into the enemy pilot and its mechanical mount. The Drone exploded. Pieces of flaming debris flew in every direction. There was a clanging sound as a piece of metal struck the front of Capelli’s machine and bounced off. Capelli put the vehicle into a tight turn and went after the third Drone.

But it, along with all of the remaining Hybrids, had already fallen victim to Unver’s lethal BAR. The pilot was slumped forward against the controls as its machine drifted two feet off the ground. “We did it!” the ex-schoolteacher shouted exultantly, as he dashed upslope. “We killed every goddamned one of them.”

It was the last thing Unver ever said, as a row of ten Stalkers appeared to the west. All of them opened fire at once and missiles rained down out of the sky. Capelli was spared as columns of soil soared into the air—but Unver vanished as if he had never existed.

Capelli swore bitterly as he turned the machine towards the east and opened the throttle all the way. There was only one thing he could do, and that was to keep going. For Unver, for Susan, and ultimately for himself.

Well, I’ll be damned , the voice remarked. You listed someone else first .

Susan Capelli was sitting upright in the trunk of a 1953 Cadillac, peering out through the four-inch gap between the lid and the car’s rounded body. She was wrapped in a blanket, leaning against her pack. The vehicle was sitting on four flat tires in a small parking lot. To her left, about three hundred feet away, stood a water tower. She could see the lookout stationed up on the walkway. The pimply-faced youth wasn’t a day over eighteen. Too bad he was going to die.

The hill, and the tunnel concealed within it, lay beyond. After circling around and approaching from the south, Susan had been able to infiltrate the area the night before. The car, and the cover it gave her, were a godsend. Two regulators had passed within fifteen feet of the vehicle earlier that day without giving it a second glance.

Now, as the pale yellow sun began to sink towards the western horizon, she saw little activity in the area. The exception being the lookouts posted on the flanks of the hill itself. She couldn’t see the north side, but knew where the sentries located in front of her were, and planned to kill them as soon as Joseph arrived. If Joseph arrived—which, as the hours crawled by, seemed less and less likely.

But he’s a Sentinel , she told herself. Possibly the last Sentinel. And Sentinels are hard to kill . The thought provided her with a momentary sense of comfort. But that feeling soon fell prey to the unresolved doubts which had gone before. The result was a persistent uneasiness that, combined with the nausea she’d been experiencing, made Susan feel ill. Please, God , she prayed. Please keep him safe. And deliver him to me .

Moments later, as if to mock her, three Chimeran fighters roared over the hill. Susan’s initial reaction was to view the aircraft as a bad omen. Then she realized that the fighters might portend good news. What if her husband’s efforts had been successful? What if he was closing in on Tunnel-Through from the west? That would explain the presence of enemy aircraft.

Susan felt a sudden surge of adrenaline, checked her weapon for the umpteenth time, and wished more members of the alliance were present. But they were needed at home, where she was supposed to be. Capelli would be furious with her for coming. Susan knew that. But she wasn’t about to let the regulators or the stinks kill her man.

It was difficult to sit there for hours on end, and her butt was starting to hurt. So she was about to shift her weight when the Cadillac shook slightly and a series of muffled explosions were heard. The Chimera were coming! And that meant Capelli was alive.

That was all the information Susan needed. After hours of careful observation she knew exactly where Tunnel-Through’s lookouts were—and she knew Judge Ramsey would be counting on them to provide him with a constant flow of intelligence. So if she could blind the bastard, and cut him off from the outside world, it would be a big help to the stinks. And ironically enough, that was what she wanted to do.

So with the efficiency of a woman determined to protect what was, and what could be, she shot the teenager in the head. As his body fell away from the tower and plummeted towards the ground she was already swinging the Fareye towards the hill beyond. The second target was located behind a bush she had marked earlier. Having heard the shot, the regulator was on his feet, binoculars to his eyes, looking for her.

She had to raise the barrel slightly due to the distance involved—and there was a westerly breeze to consider. With the crosshairs centered on a point slightly above and to the left of the lookout’s head, she applied pressure to the trigger. The man went down as if poleaxed. The battle for Tunnel-Through had begun.

Capelli could have flown faster, and would have had it not been for Rowdy, who was loping along below the Attack Drone as they headed east. Capelli felt an unexpected sense of elation as a dozen regulators charged out of a copse of trees to intercept him. Because rather than turn and run, as he had been forced to do recently, Capelli could tackle the horsemen head-on.