I lifted my foot from the accelerator for the downhill, and remembered to check the instruments. The ammeter was pegged on discharge. I swore and thumped on the instrument panel until it flickered over to the "plus" side of the scale. Idiot! Enough daydreaming: This was serious business.
It had taken the resistance two months to secretly distill enough alcohol to fill the crude auxiliary tanks for this run. The small-town doctor whose pride-and-joy this car had been would have been appalled at what we had done to his careful restoration job. At least, he would have if he hadn't been dead since the first week of the invasion.
I remembered the first time I'd seen this car, hidden in a shed on Van Duser's wheat farm. "Couldn't you find anything with a little more balls?" I'd asked. "In the Mad Max flicks they always had superchargers, nitrous... ."
Van Duser sneered at me. "Stupid, this is not a game. This car is small enough to hide easily, it's fuel-efficient, and it handles well enough to give you a chance of getting away from a Barbarian HK patrol."
I thought about how it would feel the plant a fist in the man's teeth, then suppressed the thought. We didn't have to like each other, just work together.
The Lodgepoles gave way to vine maples as I topped the Spring Creek saddle. Too soon, the road topped a slight rise and intersected the county highway. I switched off the motor and glided to a stop 500 feet short of the turn. I set the parking brake and grabbed the binoculars. Keeping to the edge of the road and overshadowed by the trees, I walked cautiously to the intersection and brought the glasses to my eyes.
Spring Creek meandered away to my right and crossed under the road through a half-crushed culvert. I could see part of the Andersen's alfalfa fields, and a corner of their lower orchard, well-overgrown. Where their farmhouse had stood was a pile of ashes. That was a shock: I remembered Ma Anderson feeding me cookies and lemonade in the kitchen that wasn't there anymore. I scanned for HKs and found the valley clear. Playtime was over, from here on it got dangerous, because the Spring Creek valley was garrisoned. The resistance in Brewster didn't know exactly where the barbarian overlord's camp was, but they knew it was between me and the goal.
I got back in the car and fired it up. There wouldn't be time for sightseeing anymore. I pulled onto the county road and started to accelerate. four and a half miles to the East was the cutoff to the back country. If I could make it over the ridge I'd be safe.
A mile from the cutoff I came around a corner and flashed past a party of peasants at the edge of an alfalfa field. They had one of a row of hives apart, harvesting honey, and I went cold all over. I knew they must be willing collaborators: What they were doing was highly illegal, and it had to be with the local overlord's knowledge. I floored the accelerator and heard a gunshot as I went around the next bend. half a mile to the cutoff. I hoped they didn't have a radio.
The tires squealed as I took the corner onto the bridge. I glanced up as I crossed, well exposed on the open span. The sky was still clear of HKs. Looking out front, I saw the barricade for the first time. I lifted the accelerator. Was the guard post manned, or not? It didn't matter, I mashed the gas pedal and steered straight for it. If I didn't make it through, I was dead.
My cell leader in the Spokane underground was a capable man, but with a lousy sense of humor. One of his favorite saying was "the barbarians are only human." Not many people liked the former history professor's joke, but in essence it was true: The average barbarian overlord was a private soldier, cashiered and given "forty acres and a mule": Some formerly human town or ranch. Typically he grew lazier, crueler, and fatter as time went on. Knowing he would never see his homeworld again, he brooded and occasionally took out his depression by torturing his human slaves.
This overlord was not fat. He'd stayed in shape, still in fighting trim. That meant that he was not only cruel, but actively sadistic. One of the sort that probably enjoyed dealing out high and low justice to his peasants personally, demonstrating the muscles that high gravity and evolution had given him. Someone cracked me on the back of the skull with a fist as the local master approached, and hauled me to my feet. "Show some respect, asshole!" Pain shot through my left ankle as I tried to stand. It didn't seem to be broken, amazingly, but I wouldn't be running anywhere.
"Sit down, rebel," said the master in his incongruous falsetto. I was pushed roughly and landed on my backside. While I waited for my breath to return I looked at the master's henchman. Nothing too special, a big man, like a fullback, about 35. The master squatted on a cushion hastily provided by one of his retinue. "Where were you going, rebel?" He asked me, then looked at his henchman.
The overlord gave a simulated sigh, and held out his hand. Another retainer produced a Mason jar and carefully dribbled raw honey onto his master's palm. The alien dipped a fingertip in the sticky liquid, then shoved it up his nose. He shivered as the powerful drug hit him. "Make it talk, Kurt," he shrilled to the henchman.
The back of a hand hit me across the face, and I fell onto my side. I noticed that my hands were tied behind me for the first time. "Talk to my master," said Kurt, in a south- central accent.
"Eat me," I snarled.
The master was watching his henchman instead of his prisoner, and chuffed in humor when I spoke. "All in good time, rebel," he replied.
Kurt had raised his hand for another blow. "Stop Kurt." Said the master. "He won't talk, he's been fixed."
the statement was true enough, but I wished the alien had expressed it differently. If it hadn't been a veterinarian who had performed the operation, I wouldn't have minded the choice of words as much.
"And, because I can't sense your thoughts, you are obviously guilty," the alien went on. "I'm also quite aware that the operation your fellow conspirators have performed make it impossible for you to betray them even under the most amusing torture."
It didn't, but I was glad that he thought so.
"Therefore, you will die. Comments?"
"Get on with it," I said.
The alien looked at Kurt when he saw my lips move. Unable to sense my thoughts, he was forced to read my reply from the collaborator's mind. Naturally his lateral lines were unable to pick up the vibrations of my voice in Earth's thin atmosphere.
"I am not an ordinary soldier," said the alien. "I am snokblatz." Special forces! "Because you are on a secret mission, I suspect that you also have special training," he said. "This makes me happy, because I have not been adequately amused by the local animals."
"You, however, will have training that should make for an interesting fight." The overload chuffed again, alien laughter. "Then, I will eat you."
The alien glared at me, tilting his head to bring his right eye to bear directly. "If you do not fight well though, I will give you to my females. They will eat you, but they will not bother to honorably kill you first."
Well, fighting the boss-man would be less painful and quicker than having his nonsentient wives strip the living flesh from my body. Since I had no training, I didn't expect to give him much of a fight, but I also expected to die quickly, once he got up his blood lust.
"I will fight well," I said.
"Good." chuff-chuff-chuff. "Kurt, prepare it."
Kurt signaled to the locals, and a woman came forward to strap my ankle.
"Tell me, animal snokblatz," said the alien, unsheathing a wicked-looking knife, "have you ever had a blade stuck in a joint, a knee, perhaps?" I shook my head.
"Pity, the pain is quite extraordinary." He gestured for more honey. "I did it myself once, when I was fighting on Zeemo. Our pickup was late, the rations were gone, and the local natives were poisonous. A most horrible planet."
"Since it is dishonorable to eat one's comrades, I started to remove a finger. I was almost finished when the pickup ship made contact on the communicator."
"It is my most honorable scar, observe it with reverence." He held out his hand in what would have been an obscene gesture for a human.