The monowheel sped through the shattered iris of a door low in the foothills above the desert, then turned smartly and accelerated up the hillside, every traversed ridge and boulder a soft ripple of movement as its wheel flowed or its body leapt over the obstructions, leaving only a faint trace of dust behind, while its camouflage-skinned body flowed with constantly changing patterns and shades of ochre and grey. Air roared; the transparent cockpit-screen rose liquidly around her of its own accord, reducing the wind-blast.
She pressed the accelerator grip a little harder; the monowheel screamed still faster uphill, forcing her head back against the seat. She let the grip go; they coasted towards the summit of the ridge.
She braked the monowheel with the left-hand grip. The vehicle purred to a halt, then stood perfectly still and silent on its one slanted wheel.
The woman and the android looked down into the bowl of the desert. The battle was a great broad, slow column of smoke and dust over the centre of the depression. A dozen or so craters had been punched into the surface of the desert, each a hundred metres or more across and half that deep; smoke piled out of three of them.
As they watched, a grey shape rose quickly out of one of the other craters, twisted once in the air and powered away, climbing rapidly as it angled north-east and took on the colour of the sky. Its sonic boom sounded almost soft amongst the crackling detonations of munitions in the desert below.
She watched the aircraft go, its half-seen outline disappearing over the pink-lit mountain peaks, then she turned and squinted downwards. She dragged the Lazy Gun out of the footwell and pointed it over the edge of the monowheel’s cockpit, bringing its sights down to her eyes.
Perhaps six score bandamyions lay strewn across the desert, in small groups. A few of their riders were still firing, some of them using the bodies of their dead mounts as barely effectual cover from the armoured Huhsz troops.
She looked up to see Huhsz weapon platforms cruising above the killing ground, firing monofilament bi-missiles and cluster rounds almost casually into the fray, their every discharge turning a few more of the fallen bandamyions into chopped meat and killing a rider or two.
A couple of arrowhead shapes circled high above, black on blue. To the south, beyond a distant filigree of contrails, the sky sparkled sporadically. The Lazy Gun showed no more detail.
She moved the monowheel fifty metres along the ridge to where a dead bandamyion rider lay, crushed underneath his fallen mount.
She looked, frowning, at his out-thrown arm.
“They seem better armed,” Feril said.
She turned and caught sight of a last group of riders; just a few black dots against the cinder-grey of the hills four or five kilometres away. A Huhsz gun platform exploded in the air near the group of riders and fell smoking to the ground.
She looked through the Lazy Gun again, turning up the magnification.
The view wavered. The bandamyion riders were like ghosts against the trembling image of the barren earth of the mountains. The group of ten riders ascended quickly to a pass in the mountains, then stopped. One of them stood up in his saddle. Another raised something to his shoulder and a pink spark flamed, washing out the view in the Gun’s sights for a moment; she looked away and up and saw first one, then both of the arrowhead shapes high above blossom with silent fire against the blue, and start to fall.
She looked back through the Gun’s sights.
The rider standing in the saddle-outlined against the start of the sunset, body made thin and stick-like by the wash of pastel light behind-seemed to look down into the desert.
She thought she saw him shake his head, but the quivering image made it hard to be certain.
“That is, perhaps, your cousin,” Feril said quietly. “I might be able to contact him, if you like.”
She looked up at the android, then over to the rider crushed under his dead mount.
“No,” she said, putting the Gun down. “Don’t do that.” The group of riders at the pass in the distant mountains were barely visible dots, a tiny, dark flaw against the pale sunset light. “Just a moment,” she said.
The monowheel dipped millimetrically and made the tiniest of whining noises as she got down from it and walked to where the dead man’s arm stuck out across the dust from beneath the tawny pelt of the dead bandamyion. The rider’s gun lay nearby.
She lifted the rider’s cold, grey hand up; the sleeve of his tunic fell further back. She inspected the mark on his wrist.
“What do you see, Feril?” she asked.
“I see a patch of slightly abraded, calloused skin which I would guess extends to a two-centimetre wide ring round the dead man’s wrist,” Fenril said. “There are two immediately adjacent outer rings which look as though they formed the limits of a wider band of callusing in the past.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I see, too.”
She let the dead man’s hand fall back to the dust and picked up the light laser-carbine that had fallen from his hand.
She walked round the bandamyion, looking for anything else, and saw the Keep-uniformed body of a guard lying half-in and half-out of a shallow trench downhill. She turned him over; he’d been shot with a small-beam laser.
She tried to fire the guard’s gun but it only clicked.
She looked into the distance. “Mind Bomb,” she whispered.
She returned to the other side of the dead animal and looked up at the darkening blue vault above, then at the android sitting patiently to the rear of the perfectly still vehicle’s cockpit, the tilted monowheel itself curving out behind Feril’s slender body like a rounded fin.
“Do you know roughly where we are?” she asked.
“Only to within about one or two hundred kilometres,” Feril said apologetically.
“That’ll do,” she said. “Think this glorified monocycle could take me to Udeste?” She dusted off her hands as she walked back to the vehicle.
“Udeste?” Feril’s head moved back a fraction.
“Yes,” she said. “I was thinking of heading into the sunset and turning right when I saw the ocean, but maybe you can find a more direct route, if this thing has the range.”
“Well,” Feril said. “I suppose I could, and I suppose this could, technically. But aren’t there forces between here and there who might attempt to stop us?”
“There are indeed,” she said, swinging back up into the cockpit. She patted the Lazy Gun. “Though if we can get the lock off this, they won’t be able to stop us.”
“I am not sure that will be easy,” Feril said. “What if we cannot release the weapon?”
She looked into the machine’s sunglass-eyes, seeing herself reflected twice. She watched her tiny, distorted images shrug.
“If they get us they get the Gun too, and everybody gets to go with a bang.” She pushed the Lazy Gun forward into the footwell and sat in the seat, hauling on the harness. “To tell the truth, Feril,” she said, “I really don’t care any more.” She glanced up at the android. “You don’t have to come, though; just point me in the right direction. I’ll let you off wherever. You can say you were abducted; you’ll get home.”
Feril was silent for a second, then said, “No, I’ll accompany you, if you don’t mind. Given that you are prepared to risk your life, it would be lacking in grace of me not to gamble the loss of a week’s memories.”
She shrugged again, then looked towards the sunset, to the pass in the mountains.
The riders had gone. Before she looked away a single, large aircraft powered into the skies beyond and headed north-west, angling across the sunset and dispatching another distantly diving arrowhead shape above as though it was an afterthought.
The monowheel vehicle turned and rolled away down the far side of the ridge, picking up speed as it descended towards a dry valley, then accelerated smoothly away in a trail of chill, falling dust.