by Roland Green
She tossed a second grenade into the turret, and was about to toss a third into an engine hatch when the first one went off. It must have reached something electrical. For a moment, the firestorm looked like its name, flaring eye-torturing blue from every aperture. Jazra almost forgot to get down before ammunition started exploding, and orange flame replaced the blue.
The firestorm was still in its last throes, and the hull weapons had not yet reopened fire, when Jazra saw a line appearing on a comparatively undamaged section of Fworta's hull. No, four lines, forming a neat rectangle.
A hatch. A large one, no doubt the one used for the drones if they needed to be taken inside. Or for tanks, if they needed to go in or out. The hatch was large enough for a deathstrike.
A moment later, the entire rectangle swung down to form a ramp. A ramp as tough and thick as Fworta's hull, out of which it had been neatly carved—unlike much of the field improvisations the Director had carried out elsewhere.
The ramp was entirely tough and thick enough to support the weight of the metal monster now rolling slowly, but inexorably into the daylight.
The northern team had reached Fworta's bow and were climbing it, ready to work their way toward the center of the ship, destroying any defending weapons on the way. This done, they would enter the ship from the dam side, while Jazra led her people in from the south.
Ohlt now wore Soryega's helmet, with all its instruments, most of which he had only a vague idea of how to use. The binoculars came easily to a sailor, however, and he quickly saw that the dam was indeed cracked. Only a comparative trickle of water flowed through the crack, and the level of the lake was falling too fast for the crack to account for it. He only hoped that no dwarven caves were being flooded with tainted water.
After that came the long, throat-searing, sweaty ordeal of scrambling up Fworta's hull. Ohlt felt like an insect crawling along the trunk of a gigantic tree, whose iron bark had not kept it from shattering in places and twisting in others when some wind from beyond the world had flung it down.
Occasional blaster shots and bursts of magnum fire did nothing to improve Ohlt's spirits. He noted few grenades, and those explosive, rather than fire or gas. He wondered if the defenders were out of the last two kinds, or had simply given up hope of retrieving fallen enemies to be turned into Doomed.
They had found a reasonably secure fold in Fworta's hull when Zolaris came scrambling up from his post in the vanguard.
"They're sending out another deathstrike," he whispered, touching his helmet to Ohlt's. This let Ohlt hear without anyone else doing so, or either of them needing to use the radio. "And I'm out of heavy-striking rounds for the magnum."
Ohlt slid down to join Zolaris. Elda joined them, without orders, but also without protest. All three saw the deathstrike crawl onto the ramp.
"At least the weapons on the hull can't shoot once that thing is out in the open," Ohlt said.
Zolaris shook his head. "The firing inhibitors don't apply to deathstrikes," he said. "They're tough enough to laugh off anything an antipersonnel weapon can do."
Ohlt had to puzzle out the meaning of that last term. The thought of anything like a deathstrike being animate enough-to laugh was as nightmarish as anything the battle had yielded so far.
Orange fire flared under the ramp, in front of the ramp, and directly over the deathstrike, hiding it in flame, smoke, and flying dirt. Somehow, Hellandros had found the resources for more fireballs.
The tanks vanished for a moment. Before Ohlt had drawn three breaths, the deathstrike rolled off the smoking ramp and onto smoldering ground. Its massive turret—almost as large as a whole firestorm—swiveled, with the jutting weapons' mount making Ohlt think of a dragon's head seeking prey.
A screeching in his ear made Ohlt start and nearly snatch the helmet off. Zolaris grabbed his arm.
"That's the command frequency. If it's Jazra, put her through to me."
"How?"
Ohlt listened to a three-sentence course in using the helmet's radio, after which he at least knew which buttons not to push. Pushing the right ones took a bit longer, and all the while the screeching went on. It was a relief twice over when it faded, and Chakfor Stonebreaker's voice replaced it.
"Fireballs don't seem to work, eh?" the dwarf said. Ohlt could have throttled him for sounding so cheerful.
"So it would seem," Ohlt said. He wanted to scream to Chakfor, Hellandros, or the gods for help, but he'd be cursed if he'd show less courage than the Rael and his comrades.
"I can try . . ." began a voice that was steady, but terribly thin. Hellandros sounded like a sick old man as determined to feign health as Ohlt was to feign courage.
"Hoy!" Chakfor shouted. "The enemy may have learned Common by now. Don't tell the world. Just do it!"
"I hear and obey," Hellandros said. "I also promise you a good itching spell after today's work is done."
The dwarf imitated an offended matron screeching in indignation. "How dare you?"
"Easily. Or you can buy me off with a few sapphires. White ones. You and Gregis be ready."
"1—" the dwarf's voice broke off in a gasp.
Ohlt raised the binoculars, and it was his turn to gasp. He could make out, on the far side of the valley, Chakfor Stonebreaker, Breena, and the Rael soldiers who made up the rest of Hellandros's bodyguard.
Hellandros seemed to have vanished into thin air. So had Gregis.
Ohlt was starting to scan the ground to the south of the ship when the hull weapons resumed fire. A blaster sprayed the lip of the fold where Ohlt, Zolaris, and Elda crouched.
Jazra felt grim determination at the first sight of the deathstrike. Then her emotions ran swiftly through fear that her people would be surprised, delight at the barrage of fireballs, and mingled disgust and horror when the deathstrike emerged from them unharmed.
While she was running this gauntlet of emotions, Gregis joined her. They were looking at each other, wondering how long the wrecked firestorm would be a safe hiding place. The big tank could, if necessary, push the smaller hulk over on top of them and crush them into the earth without firing a shot.
Instead, the deathstrike sent a salvo of six rockets down the valley. The entire landscape to the south disappeared in billowing clouds of flame-shot smoke, but Jazra thought her people were all clear of the target area.
The smoke and debris clouds seemed to inhibit another salvo, so the deathstrike began picking away at every fold in the ground with its light antipersonnel weapons. Jazra wondered if this would affect the targeting of the hull weapons, as Gregis took a bag from his harness. He began laying out its contents, then an apparently bodiless hand touched Jazra on the shoulder.
She neither jumped nor screamed, but her muscles were all taut, and her head seemed to weigh tons as she turned to face Hellandros.
"How did you get here?"
"Teleport," he answered. "I did it once, so I hoped I could'do it again. I could see where I wanted to go, which always helps in arriving at the right height."
"Did you teleport here to discuss techniques of magic?"
"No, I came here to bring you this. It was the only way I could do it in time. You have to use it quickly, though."
"This" was something that looked like a large freshwater pearl, but which was cool to the touch. "Is this one of those famous diamonds I'm not supposed to know about?"
"I used one to make it. But really, you must use it quickly," he warned. "It radiates intense cold. Cold that will radiate all over you if you're holding it when its time runs out."
Jazra noted that Hellandros seemed more concerned for her safety than for his own, in spite of being a middle-aged native wizard in the middle of a full-scale high-technology firefight. She stood up, and squeezed his shoulder.
"I won't waste it."
Her chance came almost before the words were out of her mouth. As Hellandros's nervous energy left him, and he half-stumbled, half-collapsed on top of Gregis, both the deathstrike and the hull weapon
s stopped firing. The Secondary Director, it seemed, still paid enough attention to the battle to keep the two sets of defending weapons from scrambling each other's targeting sensors.
Then a file of Doomed started down the ramp, with a spider drone carrying a grenade launcher covering them from the rear. Good. That would inhibit all hostile fire for a little while.
And a little while was all she needed.
Jazra was running when she emerged from behind the firestorm. She was running faster as she crossed the open ground toward the deathstrike. She felt blaster strikes on her armor, including one that burned, and saw smoke rise as blasters and grenades churned up the ground.
But she was still running faster than she ever had in her life as she crossed the bow of the deathstrike, and flung the pearly
cold-bomb toward the tank's engine's air intake.
She did not see what happened after Hellandros's creation began its work. She saw a fold of ground ahead, and dived behind it, curling up into a ball. She did not expect to get out of that ball alive—until she saw the magic begin its work.
The air intakes had extensive protective filters, but the filters i hemselves were several hundred degrees above atmospheric t emperatures. The sudden burst of cold sheared the filters' mountings, as well as the filter grilles themselves. A whole bin's worth of metal and ceramic debris sailed into the deathstrike's turbines before the automatic shutoffs could operate—and they were the next thing disabled.
The rest of the turbines lasted only moments longer. To those with a better view than Jazra, the whole deathstrike seemed to leap forward, as if propelled by the thrust of its engine spewing itself out the exhaust. Then, inevitably, hot chunks of turbine severed fuel lines, shorted circuits, pierced fuel tanks, and detonated ammunition.
The deathstrike took a long time to die, because of its superb internal compartmentation, but from the moment the filter shattered, it was like a soldier shot in the head. Death would come; the only question was when.
Meanwhile, Gregis waved the Rael forward. The Doomed tried to retreat for a last-ditch defense of the Secondary Director, but all three teams were now in range to catch them in a cross fire. Hellandros mustered the energy to use more magic missiles, powerful enough to destroy a spider drone.
The drone's exploding grenades cleared a path for all three reams to storm through the hatch into Fworta, and start clearing out the last defenders, compartment by compartment.
The Secondary Director did not wait until its last defender had fallen before self-destructing, along with its power plant.
Jazra was one of the last to climb the ramp, and she found that she needed to lean not only on Gregis, but on Hellandros as well. She was conscious of the embarrassment, and also of legs so shaky that if both men didn't help her, she would fall over backward and slide down the ramp headfirst. She shook off their hands as she entered the hatch. She was staggering all over again, as Fedor Ohlt embraced her from one side, Zolaris from the other, and Gregis and Hellandros from behind. The five-bodied being did a clumsy dance, until Jazra was dizzy from more than the aftereffects of the deathstrike's explosion.
She took off her helmet, ignoring half a dozen different stenches, burned flesh not least among them. She drank some water—in fact, she drank a whole canteen empty, and could have dealt with another without taking a deep breath.
Then she looked around at her fighters and her ship.
"We have the ship," she said, "and Fedor, you and your people have a world again. For a while, anyway.
"Now," she finished, her voice clear and strong, "let's see if we have a gate."
Thirteen
Jazra's patience had nearly run out before her question about the gate was answered at all. The answer made matters no better.
"We have three operational rings, although the Authority only knows how number four survived," Gregis said. "With the parts I have, and about two days' work, I can bring number two on line.
"The problem is going to be power. We didn't drown Fworta with the lake water, but we did everything short of that. There's not a single major power source left."
"What about the auxiliary cells?" Jazra asked, already knowing the answer.
Ships of Fworta's class had auxiliary power cells widely distributed, to provide emergency power for damage control and short-range weaponry. The cells had still been charged when
Jazra was flung into space; otherwise the Overseer's attack would have succeeded long before she could reach the pods. -
Gregis shrugged. "I've tested every one that 1 could reach that wasn't too badly damaged to hold any power. None of them have enough zip to run a gate."
"Then recharge them."
"With what? We still come back to no power. No fuel to drive anything that could charge the cells, so no charging the cells, so no gate."
Jazra called Gregis a son of a Thuvian, and several other unpleasant names. "Do you look forward to being marooned here for the rest of what will probably be a short and uncomfortable life?" she concluded.
The technician's glare was sufficient reply, but still he told her, "Ma'am, I won't fault you for temper. You've been carrying all of us for too long."
"Don't forget Fedor Ohlt," she said, "and Hellandros."
"I won't, but we'd never have followed them without you. You made us put up with them long enough for them to prove themselves."
"Thank you, I suppose." Her mouth opened, and she said, "Hellandros! Why not ask him? Maybe he could cast a spell to make lightning strike a rod feeding to one of the cells!"
Gregis fingered his Field Expedient Manual of Electronics. Jazra had yet to see him try a spell, but he carried the book on a thong around his neck, and had the habit of touching it when he needed help.
• • •
"Lightning?" Hellandros said.
They were in the tilted, spacious, and largely undamaged cabin that had become a lounge common to all races. The major visible differences were that the Rael had decorated one wall with strips of tenting, and the humans had used rawhide.
The wizard's tone made Ohlt wince, then wait for an ill-timed, overlong lecture. Since the capture of Fworta, the wizard had been given much praise for his courage in teleporting, but little useful work to keep him busy.
"Is there a problem?" Gregis asked. The Rael technician seemed to Ohlt to have gone from expecting nothing of magic to expecting everything, but that was doubtless only Ohlt's weariness. None of the other humans had been sparing themselves from work, if only as unskilled labor under Rael supervision.
"Three problems, actually," the wizard said. "First, I do not have the spell for conjuring lightning memorized, and it is complex. Second, it helps to have a thunderstorm already producing lightning naturally. We cannot rely on the weather's help."
"Every soldier knows that," Gregis said. "What is the third problem?"
"Can your cells take the power of a lightning bolt in one— ah, gulp? Or like an overfed baby, will they hurl most of it back up?"
"What do you know about babies?" Breena snapped. Elda looked ready to kick Hellandros in the shins for his tactless reference.
"My foster parents had four children of their own bodies, three younger than I," Hellandros said, unaffected. "I have had a baby I was feeding vomit all over my books. One of your cells doing the same might undo all of our work."
"Then do you have any suggestions?" Jazra asked. She sounded as close to frantic as Ohlt had ever heard her. Having always been thin by human standards, she now also looked half-starved, but did a share and a half of any heavy work around. This kept Ohlt on his mettle too.
He had not been so lean, fit, and sleeping soundly at night since he came ashore.
"I have had a thought or two," Hellandros said. "Whether they are to any purpose depends on answers to a few questions."
The Rael looked ready to conjure answers out of thin air if it would keep Hellandros offering hope. The wizard coughed.
"As I understand it, the engines of the
deathstrikes, and their like, are driven by hot gas, produced through the ignition of an inflammable form of air. Is that correct?"
Gregis nodded. "We call them gas turbines, and the 'inflammable air' is a compound rich in hydrogen."
Hellandros looked as if he would have gladly asked several questions about hydrogen. This time, both Ohlt and Elda coughed.
The wizard hastily continued. "Are any of these turbines lying about, fit to use?"
"There's at least one brand new firestorm engine in a locker where they had their repair shop," Gregis said, "but that doesn't solve the fuel problem."
"Perhaps, perhaps not," Hellandros replied, tilting his head to one side. Perhaps he thought being obscure was humorous. Ohlt thought it might lead, in the next moment, to a dead wizard.
Hellandros read the eyes around him and stood up, then began to pace up and down. "If the inflammable air produces a hot gas that drives these turbines, what about some other kind of hot gas? I am thinking of steam."
"A steam turbine!" Jazra exclaimed.
Gregis nodded. "They used to put them in ships—water-borne ships—back before spaceflight. I don't think there's one outside a museum anywhere in Rael space now, but yes, a steam turbine . . ."
His face fell. "How do we generate the steam?" Gregis asked the assembly. "It takes heat to boil water. Heat requires energy, and producing energy takes fuel that we don't have!"
Hellandros looked positively smug. "I can generate and sustain heat under a container of water, and keep it boiling for hours. All you have to do is give me enough phosphorous, and no other work, and of course find—"
"Yes, yes," Gregis said hastily. "Find some way of feeding the steam into the turbine, and hooking the turbine to a generator, and the generator to the cells. A lot of work with cutters and
welders, 1 suspect, but nothing we can't handle."
Breena prevented further questions by bursting into tears, and falling on Hellandros's neck. With surprising tenderness, he held her as he would have held a grown daughter. He even stroked her hair while she murmured about seeing her children again.
She was a full head taller than Hellandros, so the pose looked a trifle odd, but no one seemed even tempted to laugh.