It would be a race against the sun.
Valentine never got to test his contraption any further. He caught a whiff of the telltale ammonia smell on the clean night breeze and reached for the Steyr.
The hunter-gatherer rushed out of the night, grasping arms up and ready. Valentine had no idea where the vital spots were, so he settled for sending shot after shot straight down its centerline, trusting that the big-game 7.62mm shells would find something important.
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The bug collapsed, flipped forward in a weird imitation of the downed aircraft, continued to twitch with the three legs and the pinioned arm on one side of its body. Valentine reached for the bug prod, held the rifle at his hip in his right hand and the prod with his left.
The shots roused Hornbreed, though he grasped the flare gun rather than his pistol.
"Most-heeeeee!" a voice shrieked from the darkness.
Others took up the chorus. "Most-heeeee!"
A fast metallic rattle, either an imitation of a snare drum on some piece of aluminum or an attempt to re-create a rattlesnake's warning, broke out in the desert predawn.
"That can't be good", Hornbreed said, and managed to rise to his feet using the fuselage for support.
"I think I just committed blasphemy", Valentine said.
Something whizzed nearby and the fuselage popped near his ear. Stones!
"Inside", Valentine said, shoving the pilot toward the rear door.
Stones didn't leave a telltale muzzle flash to shoot back at. Valentine fired twice more into the darkness. He helped Hornbreed in, felt a sudden pain as a stone struck him in the leathers just below the shoulder blade. Valentine dived inside.
Stones and thrown spears rattled against the fuselage like a dying hailstorm. More yips and coyote howls broke out around the aircraft, along with a deeper drumming.
The banging grew louder. Voices just outside the fuselage shouted, and the clattering redoubled as the Jaguars banged on the overturned plane with hand weapons.
Valentine checked the lock on the rear cargo door, crept to the missing front door. A shadow loomed outside; Valentine marked a tangle of dirty hair held in place by a broad headband. He fired and the head disappeared.
"Fhway! Fhway! Fhway!" a voice shouted outside from just beneath the pilot's seat.
Valentine smelled woodsmoke. He went to the copilot window,
saw a figure with a flaming torch, and opened the window, but a hand grabbed the muzzle of his gun. Valentine jerked it back violently, shot through the fuselage at where the grabber must have been standing, then found his torch target was gone.
Hornbreed said something, but his words were lost in the hammering on the fuselage. They might as well have tried to converse on the inside of a giant drum. Valentine smelled more smoke, unsheathed his sword; there was nothing to do but go out the missing door. Otherwise they'd cook.
Hornbreed suddenly opened the door, stuck his flare gun up.
"No", Valentine shouted.
A knife blade stabbed in, glinting on the sudden illumination of the flare. Hornbreed fell back from it. Valentine brought the handy little carbine around and fired through the fuselage again. A hand appeared as one of the Jaguars tried to hoist himself in. Valentine discouraged it by severing a couple of fingers with the sword. He shouldered his gun again.
Thunderous pounding outside - How the hell are they making that noise? Then Valentine realized he was hearing the beating rotors of a helicopter.
Tracer lit up the pinkening dawn, bright shards of yellow rain from the sky. The hammering on the fuselage let off and Valentine saw the warriors scatter.
"It's the pickup chopper!" Hornbreed almost shouted. Hope had given him new strength.
Valentine looked outside, saw a big bulbous desert-tan fuselage, a greenhouse of glass at the front, red and green running lights, a uniformed gunner at an oversized door at the side. Valentine grabbed his clip light and used the signaling switch to blink three times at the craft. Three times again, three times again. They might not know the old Quisling Coastal Marine distress code, but the gunner swerved his crosshairs away from the flipped aircraft.
The faint popping of small-arms fire sounded. Hornbreed crawled to the rear cabin door and waved. Men tumbled out of the helicopter.
Valentine saw another prop plane roar overhead, turning tight circles around the crash site.