“Hey!” Mildred exclaimed. “Did you see that?”
“Where?” Dean asked.
Mildred pointed to the left of Main Street. “A brilliant green flash, over between the big houses,” she said. “Just there for a second, bright as day, then it was gone.”
“Like stun gren flash, no boom,” Jak agreed. “I see.”
The Steyr firing a third time brought everyone’s attention back to the heart of Moonboy. The gunshot echoed off the walls of the ridge. The five in black armor remained standing, like statues in the middle of the street.
Another miss.
“See where the slug skipped?” J. B. said. “That guy can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Kind of humorous or mebbe pathetic.”
“Pathetic is more like it,” Mildred said. “He’s probably got the oozie shakes so bad he can’t keep the sights on target.”
“If our cannibal colleague is not cautious,” Doc said, “he will anger those black-clad folk.”
“Already has, Doc,” Dix said. “One of them’s moving.”
Ryan watched the figure in black climb up on the trailer and disappear into the windowless aircraft.
After a few seconds, its rotors began to turn. First the rear one, then the one on top, both spinning faster and faster, until a dust storm began to fly in the street.
“Got a real bad feeling, Ryan,” Krysty said.
“Mebbe we should pull back.”
“You seeing anything?” The one-eyed man asked. His concern was real. He’d had enough experience with her mutie premonitions to know they had to be respected.
“No,” she said. “That thing just scares me.”
“It’s not after us,” J.B. assured her. “Not yet, you mean,” Doc said. “Perhaps we should take a lesson from our flesh-eating friend down there. Discretion is the better part of valor, John Barrymore.”
Below them the cannie sniper, valorous or not, was sprinting across the rubble field with the Steyr.
Before the companions could retreat from the edge of the cliff or the fleeing cannie could make good his escape, the aircraft lifted off the trailer.
“Well, I’ll be fireblasted,” J.B. muttered as it shot up to the level of the ridge top in the space of a couple of heartbeats.
Browning Hi-Power in hand, Dean stood gaping as the unnatural flying thing hovered high over the ville. His eyes widened in amazement as it abruptly wheeled and dived on its prey like a mutie war eagle. At the climax of the screaming dive, a bolt of light shot from the weapons pod in the nose and cut a fiery trench across the earth, a line that seemed to graze the running cannie. A graze was all it took to put him down.
“What was that?” Krysty asked. “It gave off the same green flash I saw before,” Mildred said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was some kind of a laser beam.” For Krysty’s benefit, she added, “A laser’s a high-energy light that can cut through plate steel like butter.”
“This one chopped through solid rock,” Ryan said.
“If it was a laser,” Mildred told him, “it was a good ten thousand times more powerful than any we had before skydark. None of the really powerful ones back then, the ones that could generate enough energy to create nuclear fusion, could fit into something as small as a helicopter. Took a complex the size of Moonboy to do the trick.”
“So you’re saying what?” Ryan prompted.
“I’m saying we didn’t have the technology to make something like that in 2001. Somebody, somewhere has been pushing the research envelope. Contrary to reports, science isn’t dead, after all.”
“Lightning without thunder,” Doc said, clucking his tongue. “My dear Ryan, this development does not bode well. Sadly, my fear that we are overmatched seems more and more justified.”
The aircraft figure-eighted to come around again. The cannie lay sprawled on the ground and showed no interest in getting up. To Ryan it looked as if he’d dropped the Steyr, and he hoped it wasn’t badly damaged. The aircraft made a low pass over the unmoving figure, checking for signs of life, then with a roar of its engine and a blast of dust from its propwash, it rocketed back up to ridge-top level. Hanging in the air directly over the center of Moonboy, it turned a slow, clockwise pivot.