"I didn't," Mara replied, grinning. "But you'll be pleased to know that it's only a hundred miles or so."
Six hours later, McCade tried to ignore the swaying motion of the gondola, and convince himself that a hundred miles was no big deal. Uncomfortable though it was, he consoled himself with the thought that if the viewscreens meant anything, it was much worse outside. Before departing Deadeye, Mara had placed heavy-duty vid pickups on the outer surface of the Nuag's armor. During the early part of the trip the pickups had provided a somewhat monotonous view of windswept plains. Now even that would be welcome. For the last hour or so all he'd seen was a brown mist of windblown dirt and sand.
Even though he couldn't see it, McCade knew Rico and Phil's Nuag was close behind, with still another animal bringing up the rear. In fact, he could have called them on the radio had he wished to. Although the storms made long-distance communication difficult, short-range stuff worked just fine. Nonetheless he resisted the temptation. They were probably sacked out. That was the weird part of traveling by Nuag. You didn't have anything to do.
Apparently early settlers had wasted a great deal of time and energy trying to train the Nuags like horses or other domesticated riding animals. Eventually, however, they noticed that each group had its own migratory paths, and that animals from a particular herd refused to walk any paths except their own. They also observed that Nuag herds were fairly well distributed across the surface of the planet. So, knowing when they were beat, the colonists quit trying to train the Nuags to go everywhere, and took advantage of the places they went on their own. Research stations and mines were placed along secondary paths, while major settlements were generally located where a number of primary walks came together.
Deadeye was a good example. Approximately one third of all ancestral routes passed through Deadeye. This was due to the plentiful supply of roller bushes pushed there by the circulating winds. It seemed all the Nuag walks had evolved from the eternal search for food. Like the Nuags themselves, their food also roamed around, searching for windblown nutrients. And because the major weather patterns were quite repetitive, the windblown food tended to end up in certain places, at certain times of the year.
So, while the colonists hadn't managed to train the Nuags, they had found ways to use them.
McCade had to admit that the system seemed to work. For hours their Nuags had trudged along without any sort of guidance. Still, he thought Mara's attitude a bit too relaxed, and was determined to keep a careful eye on the viewscreens. So he scanned them one after another, fighting the hypnotizing movement of the brown mist, completely unaware when he drifted off to sleep.
He awoke with a guilty jerk. The horrible swaying motion had stopped, Mara was no longer asleep beside him, and the door to the gondola was wide open. Glancing at the viewscreens he saw that either the storm had stopped, or they had moved out of it, and into an area of momentary calm.
He climbed down from the gondola, and thumped his fist against the inside of the Nuag's armor, just as he'd seen Mara do. The beast uttered a grunt of protest at this unreasonable demand, but grudgingly lifted its armor, allowing McCade to duck under and out.
Outside, a chill breeze tried to penetrate the stiff fabric of his seamless one-piece windsuit, failed, and whistled past, searching for easier victims. The sky was a dark gray color, and McCade imagined that somewhere above the clouds, the sun was nearing the horizon. About fifteen or twenty other Nuags dotted the area. Most were motionless, resting or asleep, almost covered by windblown sand. But others were awake, and pulling restlessly against whatever held them in place, eager to socialize with the newcomers. McCade looked around but there was no one in sight.
Hearing a noise, he walked around the nearest animal to see Mara feeding the third, with Rico and Phil looking on. The Nuag was grunting contentedly, as Mara pushed a roller bush under its mantle with the help of a short pole.
"So, sleeping beauty awakens," Phil said cheerfully. "It's about time." McCade noticed that due to his thick fur, Phil had seen fit to dispense with a windsuit, and wore only his traditional kilt.
"Hello to you too," McCade replied good-naturedly. "Where are we anyway? And why?"
Mara wrestled the pole away from a playful feeding tentacle, and gave McCade a smile. "We're at Thirty Mile Inn, which is where we're staying tonight."
McCade lifted one eyebrow as he pretended to scan the horizon. "I don't want to seem ungrateful, but at first glance the accommodations seem somewhat spartan."
In response, Mara reached into the cargo pocket on her right thigh, and pulled out a small black box. It had only two buttons and a short antenna. She thumbed the top button, and McCade heard a crunching sound to his right, as a thin crust of dirt and rock parted, making way for a metal shaft. It rose from the ground with a whine of hidden hydraulics. The shaft was about six feet square, had one large door, a lot of smaller hatches, and a pointed top. A number of cables led out of the smaller hatches to disappear under the sand. As it ground to a halt, a sign lit up above the door, welcome to the thi ty mile inn.
"Don't tell me, let me guess," McCade said. "The Nuags always stop here for the night . . . so this is where they built the inn."
"Like I said before," Mara grinned. "There's no fooling you. Now, if you gentlemen would give me a hand, I'd sure appreciate it."
She led them over to the metal shaft and opened three small hatches. Behind each door was a power lead. Pulling one out, she handed it to Rico. "If you'd be so kind, sir. You'll find a connector mounted on the rear of your gondola. Just plug it in and flick the mode switch to charge. That way your gondola will have a full charge by morning . . . plus your Nuag will still be here. They tend to drift a bit if you don't tether them, and I don't know about you, but I don't need a mile hike first thing in the morning."
"Yes, ma'am," Rico replied cheerfully. He trudged off toward his Nuag, dragging the power lead behind him. McCade did likewise, quickly discovering that after a few feet the cable got damn heavy.
Meanwhile Mara and Phil headed for the third beast, which though equipped with a cargo gondola, still required power for various passive systems. The big variant used only his thumb and two fingers to haul the heavy cable. It was hard to tell if Mara was impressed or simply amused.
A few minutes later they all met in front of the metal shaft. Mara palmed the lock and the door whined open. A gentle blast of warm air hit them, bringing with it the faint smell of cooking, and the less pleasant odors of stale smoke and beer.
It was crowded inside the small elevator, but their journey was soon over. Apparently the inn was just deep enough to keep it out of the wind. After all, McCade thought to himself, why dig any deeper than necessary?
As they got off the elevator, it became quickly apparent that the management of the Thirty Mile Inn never did anything they didn't have to. Where Momma's place was squeakily clean, and therefore the exception to rim world bars, this one was all too typical. The metal grating under McCade's boots just barely managed to keep him up out of the muck below. The walls of the corridor were bare earth, and what little light there was came from some tired chem strips dangling from the ceiling.
"How quaint," Phil growled. "Sam always takes us to the nicest places."
"Yeah," Rico agreed, "I wonder what time the string quartet performs."
Just then the corridor opened into a large open room and McCade knew they were in trouble. As they entered, the normal buzz of conversation suddenly stopped, leaving an unnatural silence broken only by the steady drip of a leaking faucet. Tension drifted with the floating smoke to fill the room and dim the light.
Nine heavily armed people stood with their backs to the bar. None of them looked too friendly. Especially the three hardcases Mara had faced down back in Deadeye. They stood at the very center of the semicircle. One of them, a weasel-faced man with short black hair, wore a shit-eating grin. When he spoke there was a general scraping of chairs as noncombatants scrambled to get out of the way. "Well, bitch, say whatever prayers the Walkers taught you, cause you're about to die."
McCade couldn't believe it. The idiot was a talker. One of the stupid-scared ones that always have to explain how tough they are before they beat up some old geek, and take his drinking money. After a while they get in the habit, and eventually they wind up talking when they should be shooting. Weasel face died getting his next sentence ready. Mara's blaster bolt drilled a neat hole through his chest, hit the full tankard of beer behind him, and turned it to steam. Suddenly all hell broke loose.
Rico and Phil had already spread out right and left. Phil went into full augmentation ripping off the first burst from his machine pistol before McCade had even pulled his slug gun. Two men were still falling, their bodies riddled with Phil's bullets, when McCade's gun leaped into his hand and roared four times. His first shot kicked a leg out from under the woman in the middle, the other three punched black holes through the guy on her right, slowly climbing until the last one erased his face.
Out of the corner of his eye, McCade saw Mara stagger and spin as she took a hit, and saw Rico nail the man who'd shot her. Then death plucked at McCade's sleeve as someone opened up with a flechette gun. Picking them out of the crowd, Phil roared with rage, and leaped across the intervening space to bang two heads together, dropping the limp bodies like so much dead meat. Limp fingers released the flechette gun and it clattered to the floor.
That's when the man on Phil's right brought out a ten-inch blade and prepared to ram it into the variant's back. McCade fired twice and the man toppled backward, landing in a pile on his own guts.
For a long moment there was silence in the bar, interrupted only by the groaning of a wounded man, and the whimpering of a female bystander. Then, as though coming out of a trance, the room gradually came back to life. Rico and Phil gave Mara some first aid, simultaneously chewing her out for scaring them half to death. Phil breathed a sigh of relief when he found the slug had only creased her side.
Meanwhile McCade methodically searched the room. Others' eyes met his, but saw only death, and slipped away to look at something else. Satisfied that the immediate danger was past, McCade felt the adrenaline start to ebb away, and cursed the twitching in his check.
Thirty minutes later the bodies had been hauled away, and the worst of the gore had been mopped up. At Mara's insistence they took seats at a circular table, and waited while a nervous old man placed drinks in front of them.
McCade watched Mara as he slowly rotated a cigar over his lighter. "Maybe you'd better tell us what this is all about."
She shook her head regretfully. "I'm really sorry you got caught in the middle of it. I didn't think they'd make a move this soon. The three in the center were Wind Riders; the rest were just local muscle, waiting for the next caravan out, and eager to make an easy credit."
"Who are these Wind Riders?" McCade asked.
"Basically they're bandits. The name stems from the powered hang gliders they use to attack settlers."
"Wait a minute," McCade interjected with a wave of his cigar, "I thought atmospheric flight was supposed to be impossible here."
"Dangerous and inefficient, yes," Mara replied, "but not impossible. Although long-distance point-to-point flight is so difficult, it's just about impossible. However, that still leaves localized flight outside the storm zones, or on the edge of them, and that's what the Wind Riders specialize in. They use ultra-light aircraft to make aerial attacks on Nuag caravans or settlements. They take great pride in their skill, and rightfully so, because they're very good at it."
McCade sighed. Great. Now in addition to Claudia, they had a bunch of flying bandits to contend with. He tapped his cigar in the general direction of the floor, and said, "OK, the Wind Riders are in the robbery business, but why are they so fond of you in particular?"
Mara shrugged, and then winced slightly as the motion pulled on her wound. "It's not me so much as it is the Walkers. As a group we oppose the Wind Riders, and encourage the settlers to do likewise. So, when I'm not running supply convoys in from Deadeye, I spend a lot of time helping the locals fortify their homes, and organize commandos."
Phil nodded proudly. "That would piss 'em off all right. No wonder they tried to take you out." Then he turned to McCade with an expression which seemed to say, "So there. You were wrong. The woman's a saint."
"Excuse me, noble ones . . ." The shaky voice belonged to the old man who had served them earlier. He'd watched the fight from the safety of a dark corner, and now he was scared, positive that the people sitting at this table must be even worse than the Wind Riders. His rheumy eyes darted this way and that, like frightened animals trying to escape a trap. "Is one of you noble gentlemen named Sam McCade?"
"Yup," Rico answered, waving his drink in McCade's general direction. "Sam's the ugly one."
Terrified that McCade might resent Rico's joke and take it out on him, the old man began to shake. "I . . . have a message for you . . . you, sir. It . . . It just came in from Deadeye. They picked it up from a ship . . . ship in orbit."
"Once in a while Deadeye can use high-speed transmission to squirt something through during a moment of calm," Mara explained. "They never know exactly when that moment will come, so they record the message, and if it's important enough, broadcast it for days at a time." She turned to the old man. "Take it easy, old one, we won't hurt you. What was the message?"
Relief washed over the old man's face as he fumbled a piece of fax out of his pocket, and read it in a quavering voice. "'An open message to the citizens of Wind World, from Her Royal Highness, Princess Claudia, Empress pro tem of the human empire. Greetings. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that a fugitive from Imperial justice has taken shelter among you. Do not believe his lies. Aid him at your peril. He is guilty of murder, treason, and flight from Imperial justice. His name is Sam McCade. I will pay fifty thousand credits for his body—dead or alive—no questions asked.'"