by Mack Maloney
It was pitch black inside the massive cathedral. Tomm let his eyes adapt to the darkness as best he could. He had good night vision from all his years of flying in space, but this place seemed extra dark. He studied the altar, the walls, and the ceiling. He walked forward and started searching through the pews. Every once in a while he thought he detected a movement here, a glint of light there, but it always turned out to be his mortal mind playing tricks on him. He was not going to find what he was looking for by eyesight alone.
So he walked to the center of the center aisle and sat down on the very cold floor. Legs crossed, his hands up to his ears, he closed his eyes and began to listen.
It was hard to say just how much time went by. A few minutes? Twenty? A half hour? But then, finally, Tomm heard something. Off to his right, maybe about thirty feet away, in a pew up near the altar. He concentrated on the sound for a few moments, then smiled.
It was the sound of someone snoring.
Just what he was here for.
Tomm carefully regained his feet and started walking toward the sound. It was a light, hushed breathing. Even. Perfectly rhythmic. No surprise there.
He reached the pew and looked down. Below him, cuddled up tightly, snoring away, was a small white form.
"Typical…" Tomm murmured.
He reached beneath his collar and took out the brass cross he always kept hanging there. With its longest point, he reached down and gently jabbed the sleeping form. It stirred a bit but kept on snoring.
"It's not as if they've been working so hard," Tomm mumbled again.
He poked the form once more, and this time there was some more movement. It turned over, stretched, and went right back to snoring.
Finally, Tomm put his cross away and shook the form with his hand. Now there was a sudden flash of movement and bright light. In an instant, Tomm found a horrible, drooling, pus-filled face snarling and snorting not an inch from his nose. Tomm steeled himself and swatted the face away. There was another flash. Now a huge set of mechanical teeth snapped at him. Again, Tomm just pushed it away.
"Open yer eyes," Tomm yelled, his voice echoing around the empty church. "I don't have all day for you."
Tomm saw two large eyes appear in the darkness. Wide, dazed, but not the slightest bit frightened.
It was the poof.
"You… again?" she asked Tomm.
By the glow of the eyes, Tomm could see the poof as it really was. Not a hellion or a banshee, not quite a jester or a beatific vision. The poof looked mostly like a young, teenage girl. She was pretty, not glamorous, plainly dressed in a short tunic and white tights, her hair pulled all the way back to reveal slightly pointed ears.
The poof was miffed that she had been disturbed. "What are you doing here? How did you find me?"
Tomm just waved these questions away.
"The people of this planet are in trouble," Tomm told the poof. "And I know that you know what that means. If they are in trouble, then the Galaxy, the whole Universe, all of Nature is in trouble."
The poof wearily rubbed her eyes. "So?"
"So you have to help them," Tomm told her. "Them, and all the people in this star system."
She yawned. "What makes you think I would want to?"
"You helped us before," Tomm told her. "In fact, you've been helping us all along."
"I'm sorry." She sighed. "Whatever happens in the normal course of human events, I cannot affect, or—"
Tomm raised his hand and silenced her in midsentence. Her eyes were glowing brighter now. So were his.
"Please, we don't have time for that," he said. "I'm sure you can recite that 'normal course of human events' stuff in your sleep. But I know better. Did you really think nobody would notice that no one lost their lives when this system started shaking the other day? My dear, you are the normal course of human events."
She smiled, but she was still annoyed. "You seem to be an expert on me," she said. "Why? Just because you're a priest?"
Tomm looked her straight in her huge, glowing eyes.
"No, my dear," he said slowly. "It's because I know what you are."
24
Plain of Stars, East Wyoming
It was a shuttle craft known only as #555 that finally located the elusive American base.
The shuttle had been scouring its eleventh search pattern in forty-eight hours when they reached a place called Fire Rock Ridge just after dawn on the sixth morning of the invasion. Their dimensional distortion detection device had commenced beeping slowly as soon as they passed over the place. Something was affecting the natural dimensional fabric, something very close by.
The shuttle set down about five hundred feet from the lip of the ridge. The hundred special troops disembarked along with the crew and quickly made their way up to the edge of the cliff.
What lay below them was the vast expanse of Ghost River Valley. Long and flat, it stretched unbroken from north to south and beyond the horizon. This part of the valley was known as the Plain of Stars. To the west, not two miles away, was the foot of the Medicine Bow mountain range. Located about halfway between those mountains and Fire Rock Ridge, hidden inside a deep thicket of woods, was a huge military encampment.
Studying the base through long-range viz scopes, the scouts saw many structures, built low to the ground, constructed of melted wood and stone. Their roofs were covered with dirt and tree branches, blending them almost perfectly into the tiny, narrow forest. Barracks, gun emplacements, ammo dumps — the base was also hidden behind a wall of earthen fortifications, one that ran parallel to the western bank of the Ghost River and stretched for miles in every direction. The scouts estimated the encampment housed about fifteen thousand fighters. They had no electron-based weaponry, or at least none the scouts could see. Flying from a crudely cut post located in the middle of the camp was a flag of stars and stripes, colored red, white, and blue.
The scouts were ecstatic. The flag was enough proof for them. They called back to BMK headquarters in St. Louis and issued a one-sentence report: "We have found the enemy."
It was six a.m.
Twenty miles behind Fire Rock Ridge, in the next river valley over, advance elements of the BMK ground forces were approaching from the east.
The largest of these was a motorized artillery column; towing twelve Master Blaster arrays with a fleet of HVVs, a type of military hovercraft that rode a cushion of air about three feet thick.
Intentionally trailing behind the scout shuttles, this column was scheduled to reach the Ghost River area around ten that morning. But then the convoy's commanders learned that the enemy camp had been found just up ahead. This resulted in an acceleration of their original orders.
Their new instructions came right from Deaux's command staff itself. The artillerymen were told to get the twelve Master Blasters up on Fire Rock Ridge as quickly as possible. They were to set up and be ready to fire no later than nine a.m.
One hundred seventy-two miles behind them, was the main element of the BMK's Army Central. Two hundred ninety-four thousand men, they were equipped with heavily armored HVVs and several dozen smaller, single-tube blaster arrays.
They had occupied the city of North Platte, Nebraska, just the day before. The city and the surrounding area had been evacuated nearly a week before they'd arrived.
Having maneuvered west from St. Louis four days into the invasion, Army Central had not been in place in North Platte more than twenty hours when news of finding the American camp arrived. Stopping such a massive force had been no easy task. North Platte could hold fifty thousand people tops; at nearly six times that number, it had been a tight squeeze finding places to sleep and do chow all around. Getting the huge army up and moving again would be just as difficult.
When word reached the Army Central's commanders that the enemy's hidden camp was so close by — actually 190 miles to the west — the first reaction was surprise. They'd expected the crafty enemy to choose a location much more difficult to find. Perhaps among the m
ountains of the continental divide several hundred miles farther west.
Never did they expect the enemy to make a stand on the long, unprotected plain of the Ghost River Valley. What had just the day before seemed to be turning into a long, drawn-out, tiring affair now took on the light of an early finish. Vanquishing an underequipped, crudely formed enemy force many times less its size was a picture-perfect scenario for Army Central's field commanders.
Like all meres, they liked their battles to be quick, bloody, and final.
Two hundred miles to the southeast of Ghost River Valley, the BMK Army South was moving along the banks of the Green Tree River.
They, too, had received word of the enemy's location and now excitement was firing through the troops. Though the southern force was only one hundred thousand men, just a third of the Central force, many of the South's soldiers were mountainous terrain fighters. If the Central Army hit the enemy line full force, any enemy troops that survived would undoubtedly flee into the mountains beyond. Army South was perfectly suited to pursue these retreating troops and in essence, slaughter them in the hills.
The BMK South commanders didn't even wait for orders from BMK HQ. They began moving north toward the enemy with great haste.
Back at BMK HQ, still entrenched in St. Louis almost a thousand miles away from the impending battle zone, Deaux's command staff was in disarray.
The news from the scouts atop Fire Rock Ridge was golden, of course, and it really couldn't have been much better from a tactical point of view. The BMK had massive amounts of men and firepower in the area and were quickly closing in on the enemy position. What's more, the potential battlefield — the Plain of Stars — was flatter than the sea at its calmest.
The operation would be textbook. The enemy camp would be bombarded by the huge Master Blaster arrays already speeding toward their forward deployment. After some softening up, a massive ground attack would commence and would not stop until the enemy position was overrun. With only the mountains at their backs, the fleeing enemy troops would be trapped and destroyed long before they reached the first tree line.
It was an ideal situation, and everyone at BMK Headquarters knew it, except for the most important person: Supreme Commander Deaux himself.
Deaux was asleep when the first report from Fire Rock Ridge came in around seven a.m. He was asleep still. Deaux never rose before the sun and was rarely awake by midmorning.
This day would be no different.
By seven-thirty, the advance scouts atop Fire Rock Ridge had settled into their forward observation positions.
These were a line of trenches cored out by electron torches close to the edge of the ridge. Concealed in this manner, the scouts would be able to look down on the enemy position and gather intelligence while waiting for the main forces of Army Central to arrive.
The BMK scouts were equipped with the latest version TVZs — tactical viz screens. These allowed the scouts to breathe in real-time visual images practically right up to the front line of the enemy fortifications. They had three of these devices in the trench and, peering through them, the scouts could see many enemy troops anxiously adding to the ramparts. Like the base's structures, these were constructed primarily of melted stone and wood. If there were fifteen thousand enemy troops within the huge encampment, at least half of them were working on the fortifications. The line of soldiers digging, building, and hauling away dirt stretched for miles.
After observing the situation for twenty minutes, the advance scouts sent off their first report to BMK HQ. It was three simple lines: "The enemy is spread very thin. He has no large guns. His base is located where he has no means of escape."
The first shots of the Battle of Ghost River came at precisely eight o'clock atop Fire Rock Ridge.
It began as a dull screech coming from somewhere to the north. The BMK advance scouts were so intent on their mission they paid it little mind at first. But then the air itself shook all around them, and the strange noise grew louder and louder. The scouts finally looked up and saw that an airborne object had risen out of the northern hills and was coming right at them.
The scouts didn't know what this thing was. Their top-secret premission briefing had spoken of the enemy's magic weapon, a flying machine that had absolutely nothing in common with anything the BMK had ever flown. The magic weapon was a relatively small aircraft with the power of a space cruiser; this was the only way the BMK commanders could describe it. The strange aircraft had shot down a number of the BMK landing vehicles during the first day of the invasion. It had been attacking targets, both in America and on Planet France, nonstop ever since. This news had been kept secret from the vast majority of the BMK troops. But the scouts were higher in security class, and now they had a need to know.
Oddly enough, though, this wasn't that aircraft.
It was over their position just a few seconds later. Streaking by not fifteen feet off the ground, making a noise loud enough to make one's ears bleed. It was going fast, but not so fast that the scouts couldn't make it out.
It was a robot. A very large robot. It was flying along at high speed, arms tucked back, head up, propelled by miniature rocket burners on the soles of its boots. A thick red beam was flashing intermittently from behind its eye visor. The beams were being directed at the scouts' shuttlecraft, which had been left unattended in a gully five hundred feet below the ridge.
As the scouts watched helplessly, shuttle #555 was rocked by six staccato explosions. The destructo-beam emanating from behind the robot's visor had cut a swath right through the vessel's midsection, and in seconds it was a flaming wreck. Just like that, the scouts had lost their only means of transport off the ridge.
The robot looped around at fantastic speed, then dove on the scouts themselves. This was not typical warfare for these soldiers. They'd been bombarded long range from space before, but they just weren't used to being shot at from machines flying so low. As the robot streaked toward them again, its visor raising itself in anticipation of another volley of destructo-beams, some soldiers panicked. About a third of the hundred men left their positions and fled into the woods nearby.
Those that didn't move, sixty-five soldiers who stayed true to their posts, were all vaporized by 33418's next pass.
By this time, the advancing artillery column was just seven miles away from Fire Rock Ridge, following a narrow dirt road known as Wishbone Pass.
They had been in communication with the advance scouts atop the ridge, and if everything went according to plan, they would soon be using the scouts' shuttle craft to hover-lift each of the Master Blaster arrays up to the cliff.
The commanders of the one hundred-vehicle column were anxious to reach the front. They were well aware of the monetary significance of the upcoming battle. They wanted their part in it to be secure. To do this, they had to reach the ridge and commence the bombardment of the enemy camp as quickly as possible. The more they could pound the enemy before the main forces arrived, the more credible their claim would be that the enemy was in fact subdued by their long guns, and the ground operations were just elaborate mop-ups. This would result in a bigger paycheck for the artillery commanders. Some were predicting the conflict would be over by noon.
Once the column came within five miles of the ridge, the commanders ordered their communications officers to contact the scouts again and get the shuttle-lift operation going.
But this message would never be sent. Not that it would have made much difference; there was no one on the other end to reply, anyway.
The communications vehicle exploded into trillions of little pieces, courtesy of the six blaster rings installed on the nose of the flying machine. It had come out of nowhere, the comm truck no doubt its first intended target. It was moving so quickly that just as soon as it departed to the north, it was coming at them again from the south. It was frightening, strange. The flying machine made no noise, not until it went by you. Then the screech was enough to crack open a skull.
Thi
s time, its nose opened up about five miles out. Six blind-ing red beams shot out in a quick flash. Three headed straight for the lead truck in the convoy; three did a deflecting maneuver and veered toward the last truck in the column. Each triplet of beams hit its target, utterly obliterating them and blocking the access road irreparably in the process.
The column was now trapped.
Their superiors had told the convoy commanders that if the flying machine appeared overhead, they should order their troops to shoot at it. This decree was not based on any evidence that ground fire could actually stop the aircraft. It was more along the idea of giving the troops something to do before they got blasted into salt.
After the machine completed its second pass, it disappeared off to the north yet again. It was gone just long enough for the column's commanders to order their HVVs to the ground and for the troops within to dismount and prepare for action.
These troops were mostly drivers and gun operators. They were not real terrain combat troops. Yet each was armed with a blaster rifle and a ray gun as a side arm.
The mystery aircraft appeared once again and, as ordered, the troops began firing at it with their blaster rifles. There were about, two hundred soldiers in the column. Many now used their landed HVVs as cover. The combination of two hundred blaster rifle beams going up at once made for a spectacular sight. The morning sky was suddenly filled with wild green streaks everywhere.
But it was all for naught. The pilot of the flying machine simply twisted and turned his way through the columns of lethal rays, using what appeared to be a minimum of effort and not losing even a foot of altitude. The six beams erupted from its nose again. Once more, three landed on vehicles at the head of the column, three landed to its rear. Massive explosions resulted as the aircraft again left behind another bone-jarring screech and departed, this time off to the west. From all indications, its pilot was intent on destroying the convoy from its farthest points inward, and there was nothing anybody on the ground could do about it.