He thumbed the rotary safety to its middle position and squeezed the trigger again. A sunburst carved a crackling path through the air. The beam traveled several kilometers, though it dissipated in a foggy cone well short of the mountains. The gun recoiled hard, like a shotgun with heavy loads.
The sighting disk went black at the instant of discharge, but purple ghost images danced on the retina of the Colonel’s left eye. He’d have to remember to close it in the future, fighting a lifetime’s conditioning to shoot with both eyes open in order to be aware of his surroundings as well as his sight picture.
He turned the safety straight back, to its third position. He sighted, closed his left eye, and squeezed. His feet were braced and the butt was firmly against his shoulder. Even so the discharge rocked him backward.
The flash lit the entire vicinity. The Colonel had aimed well above the nearby vegetation, but it still exploded into flame. The weapon ejected a silvery tube from a port in the underside.
The Colonel lowered the weapon carefully; its muzzle was white hot. “All right,” he said to Krishnamurtri as the other troops capered behind him, thrilled by the display. “Do we have a driver for the air sled?”
* * *
The Colonel checked moonrise against his watch, then velcroed the field cover over its face. The fabric both protected the crystal and concealed the luminous dial. This was a bright night, but habit and the awareness of how often little things were the difference between life and death kept the Colonel to his routine.
He settled onto the right front of the vehicle beside Rao, the pilot. There were no seats. The Colonel’s stiff right leg stuck out the side at an angle.
“All right,” the Colonel said. “Take us up.” Krishnamurtri, squatting immediately behind Rao, relayed the order as a short bark.
Rao had circled the base camp alone to prove he could fly the air sled. As they staggered into the air with a full load of troops and equipment, though, the Colonel knew they were in trouble.
Because they weren’t rising as fast as Rao thought they should, the Telugu shouted at the vehicle and jerked back on the simple joystick control. The bow came up—too sharply. The sled apparently couldn’t stall, but it could slide backward if the angle of attack was too sharp. It started to do that.
Krishnamurtri pounded Rao on the top of the head. The troops in back babbled with surprise and fear.
The Colonel put his big right hand over the pilot’s and rolled the joystick forward. The stick slid in on its axis also. That in-and-out motion controlled the sled’s speed, as the Colonel realized when they slowed. They’d almost mushed out of the air before he hauled up on Rao’s hand and the stick.
The sled’s nose dipped. They accelerated in a rush toward the ground. The Colonel eased the stick back carefully, fighting Rao’s urge to haul them up hard. The vehicle lifted smoothly instead of crashing through the scrub, shedding pieces of itself and the men aboard.
They leveled out and started to climb gently. The Colonel took his hand away from the joystick. He patted Rao on the shoulder.
He turned toward Krishnamurtri. “Tell him that easy does it,” he said. “With a load like this it’s important not to overcorrect.”
Krishnamurtri shouted another string of Telugu abuse at Rao. The Colonel couldn’t do anything about that, but when Krishnamurtri raised his hand to hit the pilot again he caught the captain’s wrist.
“Stupid peasant!” Krishnamurtri muttered as he subsided.
The Colonel rode with his right leg sticking out in the airstream. His ion gun pointed at the scrubland, ready to fire individual bolts. Because of where he sat in the vehicle, he held the grip with his left hand. The right was his master hand, but he’d learned long ago to use either as circumstances dictated.
The Colonel had flown helicopters in the past. He’d never had formal training, just a quick-and-dirty grounding in the basics. There’d been time to spare and the pilot wanted somebody who could grab the stick if he was shot in a place that was incapacitating but not fatal. (The pilot didn’t care what happened to the bird if he’d already bought the farm.)