Джеффри Лорд - Return To Kaldak

Blade didn't know how much fuel the main dump held, or what kind. He was pretty sure it was a lot, and potent. If it all went off at once-but that was why he'd time the charges at the dump to go off after the raiders were airborne again.

He looked around at his raiders. Everyone who was going to be back was back-twenty-eight of the forty in the two lifters here, some of the wounded. «Get everybody into the second lifter,» he told Ezarn and Ikhnan. «I'll take the one with the laser turret.»

«It's going to be tight,» said Ezarn.

«No worse than it was coming out, with twenty people and the explosives,» said Blade. «With the second lifter flying light, I can maneuver it more easily. That could be important, if there's anybody left around here with some fight in him.»

Loaded to capacity, the first lifter took off. As Blade, Cheeky and Ezarn got into the second, they saw the third lifter heading toward them from the top of the cliff. Then Blade was too busy getting his lifter airborne, while Ezarn strapped down a heavy Doimari laser he'd acquired somewhere.

Once they were in the air, Blade breathed easier. He'd been afraid to the last moment that something would break one of the germ cylinders. Unless Kaldak's scientists had been able to turn the formula into a usable serum, that could mean a horrible death for-

It was like the sun coming up from deep inside the earth. A monstrous ball of orange fire rose where the main fuel dump had been, carrying with it slabs' of concrete, clods of earth, and parts of buildings weighing many tons. With deceptive slowness, the fireball swelled, swallowing everything in its path. The shock wave reached the guardhouse and tore it apart, but before the pieces could go far the flames caught up with them.

Then the shockwave hit the lifter, tossing it like a leaf in a gale. Blade was even busier than before, and not quite sure he was going to be able to stay in the air at all. Ezarn clung to anything which offered a handhold, and cursed the Doimari, lifters, air travel, rockets, and his own folly in letting himself be talked into coming along on this raid.

At last the air quieted down and the smoke cleared away enough to give Blade a good look at the damage. Where the main fuel dump had been was a smoking crater. Around it for a mile in all directions lay blackened wreckage. The base couldn't have been much more thoroughly wrecked with an atomic bomb.

«We could have done the whole damned job with that,» said Ezarn. Looking over Blade's shoulder. «Saved a lot of good men, too.» He seemed to be expecting Blade to say something then added, «Well, I don't care what shape the Tribesmen's ears were. They were damned good. Damned good.» He muttered that several more times as he went back to the laser turret and started strapping himself in.

Blade grinned, at more than Ezarn's newfound tolerance. They could stop worrying about the fever germs now. The blast must have fractured every cylinder-but the wall of flame on its heels must have sterilized their contents as completely as a bacteriologist could have asked for. There would be no fever let loose on this Dimension, even by accident.

The three lifters met over what was left of the main blockhouse. With propellers throttled back so that they hung in the sky, the men in them could talk back and forth without radio. Blade didn't want any Doimari eavesdropping.

«Sparra is dead, Voros,» said Shangbari. «We brought away her body, so that she might lie among her own people.»

Blade swallowed. Sparra dead. He would think about it later. At least she'd been a volunteer who died with a gun in her hand, not an innocent victim of somebody else's madness, like Moshra.

«Does anyone know what happened to the Seeker Detcharn?» he asked. No one seemed to. Blade was about to give orders for the course home, when a sudden rumble and roar drowned out the whine of the propellers. Everyone looked around wildly, fearing some unknown form of attack-then stopped to stare at the cliff.

Slowly but steadily, the whole cliff which held the laboratory complex was collapsing. Pieces of stone the size of Seekers' mansions were sliding down or falling freely, landing on top of other pieces, throwing up explosions of dust and gravel. Blade saw flashes of sunlight on metal, as laboratory equipment, steel beams, and elevator shafts tore loose and fell with the stone. Blade thought he saw human figures also falling, arms and legs flailing wildly.

There must have been a geological fault in the cliff, which had finally fractured under the hammering from the explosions. It was a more thorough destruction of the Seekers than Blade had planned or even wanted, but now it didn't matter if Detcharn were dead or not. Most of the Seekers and their laboratories were gone, their power in Doimar was smashed, and their city's technology would surely fall behind Kaldak's.

Considering how the stones were flying, it was time to get out of here. Also, by now the Doimari in their main city must have learned of the attack on the rocket base, and would have sent out lifters to apprehend the raiders. «Follow me,» said Blade. «We're heading straight for the city of Doimar.» They all stared and he explained. «That's the last direction they'll expect us to go. By the time we get to the city, all the lifters will be on their way out here or to the border. Then we'll go to ground beyond Doimar and cross the border at night.»

They obviously thought he was crazy, but then he was Voros the Wise, who'd led them to victory and vengeance over the Doimari. Also, if they thought he was crazy, the Doimari would probably think the same.

Blade hoped he was guessing right. He also hoped that Feragga wouldn't take a hand in guiding the search for the raiders. She just might; now that Blade had carried out her plans for stopping Detcharn. After all, Blade was primarily helping the Kaldakans, her age-old enemies, and even though Feragga said she wanted peace, she certainly wouldn't hesitate to apprehend the raiders in order to make examples of them. This would be just like Feragga, and it could just mean the end to Blade, for she was the one person in Doimar who knew how his mind really worked.

Baliza was walking along a sandy beach by the ocean. She'd never seen the ocean, but somehow she knew that the blue water stretching to the horizon was just that. A powerfully built man was walking beside her. He looked somewhat like Voros, but she knew that this was her father, the Sky Master Blade.

Either he was a giant, or she'd shrunk. She'd just realized that neither was the case, that she was a little girl again, when she heard the waves starting to whisper her name.

«Baliza, Baliza.»

«Go away.»

«Baliza!» This was no wave, but a human voice. She turned to ask her father what to do, but he was no longer there. Then the beach and the ocean faded away, and she felt the blankets of her bed in Doimar over her. Someone was shaking her.

«Baliza?»

It was Kandro. «What is it?» she muttered, still half-asleep and more than half-angry at being awakened from a dream she thought might have answered so many questions.

«Something's happened. Something big. I think there's been an army mutiny. Soldiers are all over the place.»

«Lifters, too?»

«Yes. Whole balloon trains, too, heading for the border.»

Baliza snapped wide-awake in a moment. She also cursed under her breath. It would be just her luck, to have Voros-she still could not call him «her father» — stage his raid on the rocket base now. She couldn't think of anything else which could be causing this kind of uproar and troop movements.

She would have a few words for her stepfather, Sidas, when she got back to Kaldak-if she got back. He'd refused to time her carrying off Feragga with the raid. He'd said that would endanger the secrecy of both projects. He'd even refused to let her inform the three Intelligence people who were helping her in Doimar. Again, the excuse was secrecy. What they didn't know, they couldn't be tortured into telling.