The Barsoom Project

The view was somewhere beyond wonderful. After a few minutes, the birds curved around and began to head toward a range of mountains so distant that they registered only as wrinkles on a far horizon.

This was the life! The air beating against his face was pleasantly cool. The strong, steady stroke of the Thunderbird’s wings was a heartbeat rhythm, as soothing as it was exhilarating.

He began to lose track of time, pleasantly mesmerized by the frozen vistas below. Endless stretches of glacial ice and snow-locked rivers passed. From time to time his mount would bank gently and then level out again, but on the whole the trip was hypnotically placid.

Hebert was the first to spot trouble. Max heard the man’s shout and followed his pointing finger, detected a flock of tiny black dots approaching from the eastern horizon.

“They’ve got wings,” Hebert bellowed, leaning far out around Trianna’s shoulder. “More big birds. Does it look to you like they’re coming right at us?”

“Could be,” Max said.

“I wish we could ask Snow Goose.”

Max wished he could ask Orson. The other Thunderbirds were lumbering along with slow, steady wing strokes, but they were too far away for a good shout. Again he scanned the horizon. The other flying creatures were disquietingly close.

More Thunderbirds? He doubted it. The line of wing and tail on these great golden eagles was a marvel of nature. The new figures were somehow… misshapen.

Hebert was checking his rifle. “Hope this’ll be more use than last time. Trianna, dammit-open your eyes!”

“I can’t! I’m scared!”

Max swore under his breath. “Well then, give me your rifle!” He reached back to try to tug it out of her hands, but she hung on like an alligator. “Shit!”

“No!”

He looked back again. The creatures were only a kilometer away, and now he could distinguish them more clearly. They seemed a melding of bird and beast. He could make out a gigantic, misshapen wolf’s head grafted onto the body of an enormous falcon. They weren’t as large as the Thunderbirds, but there were nine, make that ten of them.

Before he could say or think anything else, the creatures swooped to the attack.

He had a brief glimpse of wolf snout and falcon claw as his mount suddenly folded its wings and dove toward the earth. He gripped a handful of feathers for dear life, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Sun, earth, cloud, and white-speckled mountains merged dizzyingly. His stomach, and the fluid contents therein, sloshed every way but out and up. His Thunderbird swooped and dove, careened like a berserk roller coaster, striving to evade the two monstrous Wolfalcons which had set upon it.

Suddenly, and with a speed that left his spine somewhere back at the last loop, the Thunderbird doubled back on its own trail and caught one of the unholy hybrids. The beast screamed, but its scream was the scream of a wolf, and it was the wolf head which turned and set its teeth into the Thunderbird’s neck.

Feathers and skin came away as the Thunderbird shook its tormentor loose, and then savaged it to pieces. Max peeked around his mount’s shoulder, saw the Wolfalcon fight back, then go limp and offer no resistance. Its ravaged body plummeted toward the ground.

The second Wolfalcon swooped close. With the whoosh of wings Trianna Stith-Wood finally opened her eyes, and her gun almost flew into her hands. Hysterically she pumped bullets into the creature’s face.

That face exploded with crimson and it flopped away, vanishing into a cloud.

The Thunderbird wheeled around and dove back toward its family.

The eight remaining Wolfalcons fought demonically. One went straight for the Guardsman. He ducked and swung his war club futilely, then laughed hysterically when a second, dive-bombing, was snatched from the air by the vengeful claws of Max’s bird.

“Hey, Welles!” he yelled, hands cupped to mouth. “Missed me! Nyahh nyahh!”

Their mounts took terrible damage, and the aerobatics continued in dizzying flurries. Max was no longer sure which way was up. At last the final two Wolfalcons screamed in frustration. The cries were not those of beasts, but of men-men rendered inhuman by bloodlust and hate.

One of the two remaining enemy swooped close before it withdrew from the fray. There in its chest Max saw the face of a human being embedded among the feathers. It was the face of a man who lived to hate, fed on hate, felt no other human emotion. It was quite mad, the eyes alight with sufficient loathing to fry Max’s marrow.

Then both were gone.

Chapter Fourteen

THE AFTERLIFE

The girl on the couch was drowsy. Her head hung from an unsteady neck, and her eyes were defocused. The tranquilizing tabs Vail had placed on the skin over Michelle Sturgeon’s carotid artery had done their work.

The tiny holding room in medical central was adequate for a situation like this, but not particularly comfortable.

Vail stared at a computer screen. He cleared it, summoned up a new batch of data, cleared it again.

Griffin rapped the desk impatiently. “Well?”