Chicks - Chicks 'N Chained Males Part 10

Kyria paused, leaning against a tree, and tried not to think of how quickly an F-15-always a.s.suming the mists didn't materialize and bring it down-could overfly the ground that had taken them days to cover, always with scouts out and an eye to the weather. Apparently, those d.a.m.n mists were picky about when they appeared. If you were in the right place at the right time, you lucked out. The Amazons' collection of trophies drawn from across centuries showed they had been consistently lucky. If not, you waited around for the next attack of the mists and hoped your local enemies didn't pick you off first.

I still don't know what we're up against.

Did it matter? Waving aside the offer of a filled wineskin-unpurified water, wine,and badly tanned goatskin's not my drink of choice, she had a sip from her canteen. For her, the mists had acted like an electromagnetic field, sufficiently powerful to bring down a high-performance, high-alt.i.tude jet. How did the men s.n.a.t.c.hed out of time see it? As a flying carpet? A pillar of cloud?

With luck, I won't have to stick around long enough to find out. At least, the past few days, she hadn't been useless. Her survival vest carried snares as well as weapons and medical supplies: she'd earned her keep.

I could make a place for myself here, I know it. But it would be desertion. My first duty is to get home.

"Hurry!" Demetria urged them on. "The mists are coming. Can't you smell them?"

All I can smell is me. Hope any hostiles out there have stuffed noses.

From the youngest girls to pa.s.s their warrior trials to the gray-haired, scarred veterans, these women made Special Forces look like the Junior League. She'd like to have turned them loose on Special Forces, let alone the pilots in her wing. Now, if they only remembered what she'd told them a radio looked like.

Two of the Amazons gestured,Come on!

"We climb up to that spur next." A gray-haired veteran pointed to a rock spur that looked to be a thousand meters away, most of it straight up. "There's a clearing beyond it."

Kyria crouched in the cover of the rock spur, hearing searchers crunch through debris. The ground was blackened here. In some places, the rock was fused, gla.s.sy. She drew in a gulp of air that burned. They had climbed high enough that she could see clouds floating below her. Clouds that, with any luck, would form the mists she needed to get herself out of this.

Hope the radio survived impact,she thought. Hippolyta's hunting party had brought in sizable chunks of fuselage and said that the rain had prevented a total burnoff. It didn't make sense, but what around here did?

Past the rock spur, the ground flattened out to form the "clearing" she had been promised. She didn't think much of it. Granted, the helo pilots she knew bragged they could set down on a dime, but . . .

What's the difference between a fairy tale and a pilot tale?

A fairy tale begins "Once upon a time." A pilot tale begins "And there I was at 20,000."

They weren't at 20,000, thank G.o.d. Kyria thought she'd heard a story once of some Nepalese maniac ina chopper evacuating people off Everest at that kind of alt.i.tude, but she wouldn't want to try it herself.

She thought of taking something for her headache, then thought again. She had face to maintain. And supplies to conserve, in case the mist took its sweet time about showing up.

d.a.m.n. She didn't remember having alt.i.tude problems at the Academy.

We didn't have to worry about drill instructors with swords in Colorado Springs, she remembered.

"Alexa brought this in. Is it what you need?" Demetria, with her usual soundlessness, had come up around the rocks-what's a traverse of a hundred meters or so among friends?-and dropped down beside Kyria. She reached around and unstrapped the Amazonian equivalent of a backpack. What emerged from the swathings of scarred hide was . . .

Her radio.

Grabbing was rude. More than that: grabbing might antagonize Demetria, and that was counterproductive. Not to mention potentially suicidal.

"Two of the scouts brought this in," Demetria said. "Is it the talisman you wanted?"

"Point them out to me this evening," Kyria asked. "I'd like to thank them myself."

There must be something in her equipment she could spare: a knife, maybe, or maybe the penlight.

Or-the idea struck her the way the sunset struck the valley below, with the force of revelation: if I'm picked up, there's no end to the things I can give these people!

Unless, of course, her rescue party had heard of the Prime Directive. Which, considering the number of Trekkies in the Air Force, was all too likely.

She bent over the restored equipment, testing it out. Once she got it working, maybe she could lay out a landing field-or some kind of X-marks-the-spot-for a rescue helo.

And then, it would be time to hurry up and wait. For the mists.

Or for anyone else dependent on the mists to arrive.

It could be rescuers for her.

But it could also be hostiles. Bosnians. Croatians. Albanians. Or, seeing that the mist respected time as little as it respected persons, they might have to watch for anything from stray soldiers from Alexander the Great's time to crusaders to Ottoman Turks.

The more the merrier, or the more genetically diverse.

As long as the Amazons could continue to take them.

In, of course, a manner of speaking.

* * *The fire had died to a memory of smoke. Frost had formed on her sleeping bag. By the time the Amazons emerged, appallingly alert, from their sleeping pelts, dampness in the air had wakened Kyria.

You never did get much sleep at alt.i.tude, she recalled. Just as well. It would keep the guards awake and slow any potential attackers.

She gazed out over the rock lip. The sky was lighter, but if she was expecting a spectacular sunrise, she could forget it.

Already, the bowl that was the valley had filled.

With mist, ruddy from the sunrise.

Was this the condition they'd been waiting for?

She heard Demetria whisper a prayer. Odd to find that, at this end of time, the Amazon was as big a straight arrow as she.

How long would the mist last? The best Kyria had been able to get was: it lasts as long as it lasts.

Apparently, the weather-wise-mist-wise?-among the Amazons could sense when the mist was due to arrive.

Demetria lifted her head and nodded.Go . The Amazon gathered her own gear and soundlessly dressed.

She reached over and tested the radio one last time. It had survived impact. Would it survive this too?

She checked and loaded the flare gun.

Last night, she'd marked the clearing herself for a helo landing. She was running on a lot of a.s.sumptions here: a.s.suming the mists held long enough to call in a recovery mission. a.s.suming it could see the landing field, such as it was.

a.s.suming it was an Air Force helo.

Hippolyta had taken one h.e.l.l of a risk sending her up here. A risk she'd been glad to take in the hope that Kyria would be able to do something for the tribe that had taken her in.

And that might be the rashest a.s.sumption of all.

"Let's do it," she muttered to herself and began transmitting.

She sensed when the number of women at her back began to diminish. There'd be hunting parties out today for certain. Amazons hunting men; men hunting Amazons.

Over the centuries, they'd had to have built up a certain amount of blood feuds that made twentieth-century backlash look like a love-in.

From the corner of her eye she could see Demetria slipping from point to point, talking to the various scouts. Which ones were set to watch her?

Possibly none, Kyria thought.Hippolyta trusts me, after her fashion . AndI gavemy word . And I'm just going to go off and leave these people, aren't I? Hardly seems right.

Neither did involving the Air Force in their survival strategies-or the Amazons in twentieth-century style ethnic cleansing.

I'll think of this tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day. And possibly, another century.

She bent over the radio, searching from frequency to frequency. From time to time, she picked up noise . . . chatter . . . something . . . but nothing that told her that this clearing on a desolate mountain peak in ex-Yugoslavia had any connection to her own time and place. The mist thickened below them, reaching up to lap about them. d.a.m.n! How could a chopper spot her in this kind of limited visibility, let alone make pickup?

It would have to wait until the mist started to dispel. a.s.suming she could raise an Air Force unit.

a.s.suming they hadn't called off the search. a.s.suming . . . oh d.a.m.n.

What was that?

Electricity crackled across the miles, accompanied by crisp words, made almost incomprehensible with static. She could take those words, take them and twist them into a rope, a lifeline.

Swiftly, she bent, whispered her own message in answer to the demand she heard.

"They're coming!" she hissed at Demetria, who had returned from briefing her scouts. She nodded. And checked the positions of her staff, her bow, and her arrows. At least the sword was sheathed. For now.

A scout, scarcely more than a girl, rushed up to them, crouched over. Demetria hissed something that brought the scout's eyebrows up in surprise.

"We've got visitors," the warrior said.

"How're they armed?"

Demetria shrugged. "The usual. Bows. Arrows."

Kyria supposed that was better than, say, a detachment of Serbs.

Still, arrows had been known to pierce plate armor. A lucky arrow-and a particularly strong archer-might be able to puncture a helicopter's fuel tank. She could hear an icon out of her childhood intoning in the familiar deep voice, "I would calculate the odds against that at . . ."

How do you like those odds, Kyria?

Not one bit.

She glanced down at the valley. The mist was thinning. Ominous sign, really. If she could see out, people could see in.

Could see her, and attack.

She had a few spare clips for her side arm. After that, she was down to the local weapons-bows andarrows, knives and swords.

And after an endless time of waiting, of eating whatever was put into her hand, preferably without looking at it, of nature calls, and watching the mist evaporate as the sun climbed toward noon, she heard thethwock-thwock-thwock of a helicopter. What was that painted on the fuselage? A sea lion? It wasn't just rescue, then, but some of her own come to bring her home.

She fired the flare gun before Demetria could grab her wrist. Fire launched into the sky, signaling her presence.

Demetria pushed her down. Maybe Hippolyta hadn't been that trusting after all.

"Those are my people!" Kyria protested. There was no way she could reach her revolver.

"That doesn't look like your chariot," Demetria observed.

How could she tell, from a crash site?

"It's mine. Same emblem, see?" Right now, that helicopter couldn't have been any more beautiful if it had carried the Angel Gabriel.

Click your jump boots together three times and say: There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

"It flies lower, yes. And can land here."

Now came the part that was really risky.

She stood, dressed again in her flight suit rather than something out of a sword and sorcery epic, scurried into the center of the improvised landing strip, and waved her arms. Her instructors at the academy would kill her-if the archers didn't. She suspected the Amazons gave points for bravado. Or, if the phrase applied, sheer b.a.l.l.siness.

An arrow whizzed by her, d.a.m.n near bouncing off her helmet.

Just the way I came in. d.a.m.n!

Now, she could hear more arrows-the bronze age version of covering fire-and battlecries. She drew, dropped, and set off the smoke end of another flare to confuse things thoroughly, and wriggled back to the rock spur the way she'd learned-knees, elbows, chin (ouch!) in basic training. Granted, there was no barbed wire and no one was using live ammo.

But you could get just as dead from an arrow, and the idea of one hitting her in the . . .

By the time she got back under cover, the radio was squawking hysterically.

"Yes, that was me. And we've got ground action," she said. "I don't think they've got guns."

The squawk rose in pitch.

"Bows and arrows!" she cried. "No, I'm not seeing things. And I don't inhale." She spared a look into the valley. The air was clearing fast now; she could make out individual trees.

Yes, and individual fighters emerging from the forest to engage each other. Ugly. Even as she watched, four Amazons tackled what looked like a warband and brought them down. She threw another flare, gushing orange smoke, to break things up.

Unfortunately, up above the treeline, far too close for her comfort, someone wearing what looked like boiled leather, had an Amazon down on the ground, was raising a sword overhead . . .

Kyria snapped off a shot. Lucky! The man fell with a howl, clutching his leg.

Thethwock-thwock-thwock grew louder. The air darkened as the helo broke through what remained of the cloud cover and loomed overhead.