D & D - Tale of the Comet

by Roland Green

  Ohlt turned to signal this to Jazra, then realized his hands would never pass the message. They were too close to the enemy to use radios, even if he had one.

  And where in the name of all lawful gods was Elda? She ought to be in sight, just beyond the edge of the little stand of dwarfed fir where she had gone to ground. Ohlt looked for her in vain, then studied the ground around the trees for the sign of a trail. Elda was no ranger like M'lenda, who left about as much of a trail as drifting thistledown, but on hard ground like this. . . .

  A lithe figure sprang up behind the grimlock, snatching one of the grenade-tipped spears from its back. The grimlock whirled to meet the attacker. So did the human. Their movements turned them toward each other, as Elda thrust the spear between them.

  The two bodies absorbed much of the grenade's blast and many of the fragments. Both of the Doomed were down when i Ida's companions ran up to her. She herself was holding her hands over her ears, and bleeding from half a dozen minor fragment wounds.

  Elda could walk, but not quickly. So, for the first time, Ohlt took her in his arms, then slung her across his shoulder. They were quickly clear of the little battlefield, and deep enough into the trees that they could stop to work on Elda's wounds.

  She had lost a good deal of blood, but the Rael medikit seemed to include remedies for that too, even if they involved curiously-shaped bags applied to Elda's arm. Otherwise, her injuries were slight, and Vorris was able to find and extract all the fragments except one.

  Jazra helped Vorris as much as she could, but finally her curiosity overcame her leadership. "You did splendidly—I think— but what did you plan to do?"

  "Plan? Oh, how 1 wanted it to come out?"

  "Go teach in the War Academy, Elda," Vorris said, pulling the empty blood-replacer bag off the woman's arm. "That's a simpler definition of a plan than I've ever heard. If they used it, maybe some officers would understand it. I beg your pardon, ma'am."

  "I grant it," Jazra said. "This time."

  Elda smiled, which pulled a cut in the corner of her mouth t ight and made her wince. "Simple enough. If I set off the grenade, it would look like an accident. Nobody could tell that anybody had done it to them."

  She frowned, which pulled at another cut, this one across her left temple, and Ohlt heard her stifle a little gasp. Without thinking, he went over to her and took her in his arms again.

  "You don't need to talk, my friend."

  "Only a friend?"

  "You are in no condition for anything more now—" Ohlt began, then, from Elda's grin and Jazra's cough, realized what he had almost promised.

  Rather to his surprise, he did not feel embarrassed or guilty.

  Jazra asked for no more explanation, but only asked when Elda would be ready to march. "In a moment," she said, over Ohlt's shoulder.

  Then she put her mouth to his ear and whispered, "I hope the grenade put them both down forever. The human Doomed was Captain Figul."

  Ohlt's embrace tightened, and after a moment, Elda returned it. They clung to each other for another, longer moment, as if touch would drive away the nightmare vision of one they had known condemned to the living death of the Doomed.

  Then Elda jerked herself out of Ohlt's arms, twisted away, and began to heave up everything in her stomach. Ohlt glared at Vorris.

  "Did you give her medicine, or more poison?"

  "Don't shoot anybody over this," Jazra snapped. "The vomiting clears out some of the poison."

  "What clears out the rest—?" Ohlt began. Then he understood, when he saw Elda dashing for the concealment of the nearest tree.

  • • •

  Night had come to the mountains where the company waited for the hour before dawn when they would attack. The companions sat in a tight circle around one of the Rael lanterns, shielding it with their bodies so that neither its modest heat, nor its modest light could escape. Jazra would have rather they sat and talked in darkness, but Ohlt said it was against human custom to swear potent oaths in darkness, and if Jazra doubted it she kept silent.

  "I am going Beyond," Hellandros said. "Through the gate, to the arcology of Kel-Rael, and into battle beside our comrades

  from Fworta, and their comrades in the arcology. I have sworn no oath that requires me to do this, but also none that forbids

  inc."

  "That's hoping you're alive after tomorrow," Chakfor Stone-breaker said. "The battle plans seem to have you in two places .ii once."

  "No, only where I can see both sides of Fworta, and cast .spells either way." He fixed the dwarf with a speaking look he-li ire saying, "Oh, and how many diamonds did Gregis make for yt >u ?"

  "You have all he gave me for the battle. Although if that ice-ball spell needs to be cast in front of what you're shooting at, bow are you going to cast it from up on the hill when the golem I muse—I mean, the tank—is down in the valley?"

  "I may find myself in the valley. If I do, I do not want to find myself lacking a diamond."

  "I said I gave you all the diamonds Gregis made for the l attle. I'm keeping one more, to buy Ithun a memory-song. We'll have to send outside the clan to have one properly sung, and that costs dear."

  Hellandros seemed about to speak, but even before anyone could cough in warning, he thought the better of it. Then he nodded to Ohlt.

  "I also am going Beyond," the shipwright said. "If I live through tomorrow, and the Rael open the gate. I spent years as a wanderer, and stopped wandering only when something more precious than new sights held me in one place. Then they died, and I took to wandering again. Now I can wander farther than ever a sailor voyaged.

  "But I will be leaving a family behind. Not one that needs me—"

  "Pardon, but I think you do yourself an injustice there," M'lenda said. Ohlt looked in surprise at her for saying what he bad half-expected from Elda.

  "Thank you. I was going to say that you can all live well without being part of this band of which I have become the leader only by a chain of accidents. So I have no cause to hold back from this voyage, but, likewise, you have none to follow me."

  Ohlt's throat was clogged, and he doubted that he could have gone on, or at least not as eloquently. This time Elda did come to his rescue.

  "I don't know about the rest of you," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She had told Ohlt that she was fit for battle tomorrow, and also what she would do to him if he argued the matter. She certainly had more color in her face than she had shown most of the way back to camp. "I am not bound either way, except to my brother, who I hope will fare with me as he has done so well all these years. 1 am going Beyond.

  "I would forever wonder what I might have missed," Elda continued. "Perhaps only death, perhaps marvels that no mage ever imagined.

  "And I would forever doubt my own courage, and my own honor. I owe the Rael anything they ask of me, even beyond tomorrow's battle. With that debt unpaid, I would not really be alive, however long it was before they buried me."

  "You will not go alone, sister," Brinus said.

  "There's been enough eloquence blowing around on the night wind to stifle a clan of grimlocks," Chakfor Stonebreaker said. "So 1 won't add to it. But Gregis had better watch his back if I don't have that new axe!"

  "Promise not to do anything to him that I can't heal," M'lenda said, with one of her rare smiles. Ohlt realized that the company was now complete, and thought briefly of a fine oath sworn on somebody's spear, sword, or staff.

  Then he decided that Chakfor was right. Their tongues could remain silent, both tonight, when their hearts had spoken, and tomorrow, when their weapons would speak still more loudly.

  Twelve

  Through the periscope Gregis had improvised, Jazra contemplated Fworta, and the enemy's defensive zone around it.

  The periscope allowed her to lie behind a rock that was solid enough to deflect blasters, grenades, and magnum rounds, while still giving her a clear view of the target. The tube, thanks to Chakfor's assistance, was made of bronze, wh
ich is nonferrous, so without a magnetic signature. The lenses had been cannibalized from a pair of Rael binoculars, and the whole thing was camouflage-painted so that it was barely visible from twenty feet away.

  So far Jazra had seen no sign that the enemy was alert, or even suspicious. The fuel plant and the replicator complex were working at full capacity. The sensors and sentries were still mostly concentrated downvalley from the ship.

  Almost in the shadow of Fworta stood three reconnaissance

  drones: one armed, one not, and what looked like a half-built transport. Among them wandered three spider drones, a firestorm with only half the usual armament, and several of the Doomed. If constructs and enslaved minds could be said to look bored, these did.

  From Fworta's upper hull sprouted a motley array of antennae that had to work better than they looked, which was like the result of an explosion in an electronics warehouse. The antennae were the first target of the attack. Jazra turned the periscope to her right, wanting to see her friends in position, but also hoping that she would not. What she could see, so could the enemy.

  The attack would be going in from three directions. One team was coming in from the north, against the replicator. The second was Jazra's, to push through the Director's southern defenses until they were inside Fworta, or had at least drawn most of the defenders' fire.

  The third, the one she was looking for, was less than the main attack, but much more than a diversion. No team that had both Gregis and Hellandros with it could be called a diversion.

  What it could actually be called was a way of keeping the indispensable technician and the indispensable wizard out of the line of fire. Neither of them would ever forgive Jazra if they learned her true intentions, so she had come to veiling even her thoughts when she was around them.

  Smoke puffed up, then a blob of orange fire lifted into the air, trailing more smoke. That was the signal for opening the attack. It was also a diversion. The simple solid-fuel rocket with its gunpowder warhead could hardly do much damage to the Overseer's armored weaponry.

  There went the alarms! Jazra could hear them electronically as she scanned Overseer frequencies, and also heard sirens and saw flares. Multiple blasters and the magnum cannon let fly, their fire aimed upward, coning around the rocket until a sudden orange flare marked its end.

  The fire ceased just as yellow fire sparked in half a dozen places inside the perimeter. Hellandros's first salvo of magic missiles had struck. It probably did no damage, and indeed was mostly another diversion, to switch all the defenders' attention I rum the sky to the ground.

  Before they could switch it back again, the first real attack went in. It was a crude, but powerful jamming device, powered by all the power cells the Rael could spare, and carried from its 1.mnching spot to Fworta with a levitation spell. Hellandros ■.aid he could only reliably cast one of those in a day, but from i he electronic chaos Jazra heard, it had been worth it.

  Sparks playing over Fworta's hull suggested that some of the an-icnnae were actually shorting out. Certainly the roars, whistles, and occasional broken signals, or attempts at signals, indicated that the Secondary Director would not be talking to its satellite lor a while, or controlling the flying reconnaissance drones.

  Short-range communications with the ground constructs might not be lost, or if lost would be restored quickly. If the at-i ackers moved still more quickly, that would not help much.

  Time to move. Since the ability to intercept Rael signals would be temporarily lost to the enemy, Jazra used her radio freely to signal her team. They were all Rael, the humans being with the northern team, and they swarmed out of their hiding places like possessed beings. Moving with skill and sureness, even those who had been civilians before the attack on Fworta rave at least the appearance of trained marines.

  As they reached the open, more magic missiles sprayed fire over the western end of the defensive perimeter. Hellandros bad said that he could no more cast fireballs all day than a spaceship could launch missiles; they were so powerful that his apply was limited.

  But a quick scan of the perimeter's sensors told Jazra that the well-aimed missiles had done their work. They had crippled many of the fixed defenses of the perimeter, leaving a gap that i be Secondary Director would have to either leave open to attack or plug with mobile assets.

  It would be convenient to wait and see if the mobiles started moving toward the hole in the defenses. It would also waste time they could not spare.

  All the defending fire was now scouring the ground where the missiles had struck. The ground was already black, where Jazra could see it through the bursts of flame, and clouds of smoke and debris. If this went on long enough, the ground would be too hot for either organic being or construct to cross.

  Jazra smiled briefly at the thought of a deathstrike rolling onto a lava bed, and miring down until the heat ignited its fuel or ammunition. It would be a grand sight. If seen from a safe distance.

  She clenched her fist and pumped it up and down, the old marine signal to "Hurry up!" Right now, victory depended on not staying at a safe distance from the enemy.

  As Jazra's team broke into a run, she saw steam and spray blasted into the sky from the flooded area northwest of Fworta. She did not wait to see the results of the rest of Hellandros's last fireballs. That he was firing them at all meant that Zolaris's northern team was close enough to the replicator to need cover.

  Jazra muttered ancient, half-forgotten appeals for good luck. Right now, the northern team could do more irreparable damage to the Overseer's assault on this planet than the other two teams combined.

  e « «

  When the attack began to the south and east, the northern team was already waterborne. They rode, or rather clung to, a pair of nearly submerged logs, which supported them and their equipment. Four Rael: Zolaris, Vorris, Chemuk, and Soryega rode one log. Ohlt, the Ha-Gelhers, and M'lenda rode the other.

  To steer them toward the replicator, each log had a small power cell driving what the Rael called a propeller. It looked like five fans fastened to a rotating shaft, and when the motor

  turned it, the logs actually moved through the water faster than a man could swim.

  M'lenda had suggested elven canoes, which were faster, not to say drier, but Zolaris pointed out that the canoes would be too visible a target. When M'lenda remembered that elven canoes were never intended to carry folk of human or Rael size, to say nothing of ponderous weights like the magnum cannon, and three drums of heavy-striking rounds, she let the matter fall.

  None of which made going into battle through the filthy, murky, chill water of the deeply flooded ground they had come to call "Lake Fworta" any more pleasant. Like all the humans, Ohlt wore Rael armor and a helmet without a working radio. It was said that there had been no time to train the humans in their use, and indeed it was more armor than Ohlt had ever worn into battle before, but he had never before gone into a battle with so much at stake beyond his own life, either.

  Now the battle was well begun. The smoke, noise, and general uproar to the south of Fworta should be drawing all of the Secondary Director's attention, and most of its mobile constructs. It was even possible that resources would be diverted from the north to the south, as well as vigilance.

  However, it was still a relief to Ohlt when three fireballs struck t he water, raising an immense cloud of steam. Hellandros was using the fireballs rather than wall-raising spells for either fire or mist, because the wall of fire would be too short, and the wall of mist too cool. A spreading cloud of hot steam would baffle not only the mechanical eyes of the replicator's defenders, but those other devices that saw an enemy by his heat.

  The enemy was also capable of lowering into the lake devices that listened for underwater sounds, such as propellers. Though the noise of the fireballs, and the bubbles afterward would deafen such devices, Hellandros had decided in favor of an additional precaution. He had cast a sphere of silence around each propeller, which would make them totally ina
udible for what should be long enough to reach the replicator.

  Ohlt had decided when he arose this morning that today he could do one of two things: He could waste time wondering how much truth the Rael were telling about their arsenal, distract himself, do the wrong thing, and probably get himself killed.

  Or he could assume that the Rael, having begun with a fair portion of the truth, were now telling all of it. Then he would do as the Rael advised him, use the arsenal properly, fight with a single mind, and perhaps survive to taste victory.

  The first course seemed not only fatal but likely to make his friends embarrassed to mention his name, if indeed it did not kill them as well. So Ohlt decided in favor of the second.

  Zolaris signaled Ohlt to increase the speed of his log, and turn it toward the replicator. Ohlt obeyed, and found himself getting his first close-up look at the replicator complex.

  With no way to judge its size, it might have looked like a battered tin box, suitable for holding a child's toys, or perhaps a sailing master's lodestone. However, seeing it with five spider drones beside it, Ohlt realized that it was the size of a large temple.

  Other constructs in various stages of assembly stood, sat, or lay around the replicator. The five spider drones seemed to be fully battle-ready, however, as they were swiveling their heads about, trying to sense the nearest source of danger.

  Elda lifted her blaster out of the water, and started undoing its waterproof sack. Her brother shook his head. "Not until they already know we're here," he whispered.

  "By then they'll be shooting at us," Elda said.

  The enemy settled the argument in the next moment. Heavy blaster fire suddenly churned up the water behind and to the left of the attackers. It also raised such a cloud of steam that by sharply turning, both human and Rael were able to avoid the next bursts, aimed where the enemy thought they had gone.