Battlefield Earth

by L. Ron Hubbard

  And then Dwight landed nearby, startling the horse into frantic plunging that lifted the boy and the sword off the ground at every rear.

  Dunneldeen raced over to Dwight. “It’s gone now,” said Dwight.

  There had been no radio messages from the compound. Dwight, as arranged, had faithfully stayed on watch. He had waited for any break in radio silence and the end of the silence itself. The time period had ended, but pilots, not hearing from the compound and Robert the Fox, had not opened up.

  But something else peculiar had happened. Dwight had picked up a Psychlo conversation on the planetary plane band, very loud and clear. It seemed loud enough to be within a thousand miles or so, maybe more, hard to tell.

  “What did they say?” demanded Dunneldeen.

  “I got it all on a disc,” said Dwight. He started the disc. It said "Nup, you crap brain, wake up!”

  Dwight said he had at once sent the boy to tell Dunneldeen to scramble and then he himself had gone straight up. Yes, the sudden roar of Dwight’s own engines was there on the disc.

  The disc played on.

  “Drone?” said Dunneldeen. "Zzt? There was a transport chief named

  Zzt.”

  “Well, he was out there some place in a drone!” said Dwight. He had gone up as high as he could go. About two hundred thousand feet. As fast as he could go. “Almost tore my heart and lungs out with gravity,” said Dwight.

  Then he heard complete instructions in Psychlo about remanding on top of a drone in front of a door so Zzt could get out of the drone.

  “There is no drone that big,” said Dunneldeen. “Not that I know of.”

  Dwight had turned on every search instrument he had. The transmission had been coming from the northwest. He had sped in that direction. He had gotten it on his scope. It was traveling three hundred two miles per hour, a very positive blip. It was clear weather where the thing had been; this cloud cover and rain was ahead of it.

  He played some more transmission. Somebody named "Snit" was still in the drone but no explanation why.

  This was mad because drones didn't have pilots. But how could anybody fly anybody out of a drone? And then somebody was taking fuel out of the drone in an ore basket and the other Psychlo said he was leaving the drone.

  “Then why are you here?” demanded Dunneldeen, turning toward the passenger plane. “Why didn't you attack it?”

  “It blew up,” said Dwight. “I saw it visual, eyeball! It looked like thirty lightning storms! It curved down. It probably went into the sea. I scanned the whole area. There was a little blip left; probably when it sank it had some debris. And then that was gone. It just isn't out there anymore on any scope. So I came back here.”

  Dunneldeen played the disc through again. Dunneldeen pulled out the instrument recorders. They told the same story. Heat and then gone.

  Dunneldeen looked at the sky. “You better go back up there and patrol in that direction.”

  “There won't be any blip,” said Dwight. “And this overcast is high. The thing was flying at about five thousand feet and you won't be able to see a thing visually. The overcast goes up to at least ten. There's no blip,” finished Dwight.

  Dunneldeen turned and looked at the castle ruin, gaunt and very old in the morning rain and mist. Two miles away and it was drifting in and out of visibility.

  What was that all about? Had the battle of the compound been lost? What drone? And why had it blown up? The clan Chiefs would be assembling and he had a lot of things to do today.

  Chapter 5

  Jonnie drifted up out of a pit of black pain. He tried to orient himself. The drone motors were like shouting anger in his ears. His arms were hanging down into a gap in the floor plating. Blood had run along the sleeves and dried.

  With a start of alarm he thought of Zzt and reached for the revolver. It was gone, the lanyard snapped in the blast. The blast! Zzt was also gone and so was the Mark 32. And so was anything that would let this ancient monster be located on a screen.

  He lifted himself up with considerable effort. He was still tied with the safety line. He found it very hard to think connectedly, and he wondered for a bit why he was tied to the line. His back hurt, one more pain in a confused welter of it. He realized the safety line had pulled him back inside.

  It was awfully hard to think, and he recognized that he was getting worse, not better. He was nauseated. Hunger. It must be that he was nauseated from hunger.

  He got to his knees. The drone was no longer rolling. That was a relief. He turned and then stared.

  Through the door, bright tendrils of mist and fog were curling in. It was a storm. He was flying through a storm.

  Wait. It was light out there. Daylight. Well-advanced daylight.

  How long had he been out? It must be hours.

  He spun on his knees, thinking to see the gas canisters dropping gas. He had no way to tell that. Were they already past Scotland? Had the drone already done part of its work?

  He got to the door and tried to spot a brighter area in the storm that might tell him where the sun was. It was too thick. He wasn't thinking well; he realized he had reverted to being a mountain man. There were compasses in the plane. He opened the door and saw the havoc Zzt had made with the radio smashup. It distracted him. Then he realized he had opened the door to look at the compasses and did so. When he leaned over it felt like somebody was hitting his skull with a sledge hammer. He felt for the compress on his head. It was still there. No, the compasses. Look at the compasses.

  He was heading southeast. The course to Scotland would have curved over like that. He couldn't be sure. He went back to the door and tried to look down. He nearly fell. He couldn't see anything down there. All rain and mist.

  Then he remembered the ship had gas ports in the bottom. He crawled painfully to the floor plate he had removed and looked past the motor housings. No daylight was coming up.

  His air mask seemed to be suffocating him. He recalled it had been askew when he woke.

  Of course! The drone had dropped no gas yet. He'd be dead.

  Well, he wasn't dead. Pretty well on the way to it with this head, but he wasn't dead. Therefore the drone had not yet dropped gas.

  Chapter 6

  Not until then had Jonnie thought about what was going to happen to himself. He had a feeling that it didn't really matter. He knew his head was staved in. He had lost an awful lot of blood. But he ought to make a gesture, some rudimentary effort, just to say he had. Say to whom? He was out of radio contact. The drone was wave-neutralized to any screen. There was not the slightest chance of the drone being seen visually in this storm. Down under him would be sea or an even less friendly mountainside if the blast disabled his plane. Battle planes were pretty well armored, but firing his own guns in an enclosed space, plus the mines, plus the fuel of the drone, was going to make a pretty big bang.

  His jet backpacks were gone. He rummaged about in the back of the plane. Must remember not to lean forward. That's what blacked him out. A brief moment of hope. A life raft. He pulled it out. The automatic inflation cartridges were long since duds. It had a little manual pump. He started to pump it up. Orange colored. Some tinsel on it. Then he realized he was being stupid. If he inflated it he couldn't get it back in the plane. He knew the plane would sink. He wouldn't be able to get it out. The wind was tugging at the half-inflated raft. A wave of blackness came over him and the door draft casually flicked it out of his hands. It went away into the storm. Gone. It had all been a waste of time.

  He got into the plane. He had some blankets. He had been hurt in the earlier crash; the map case had not been enough. So he padded his knees and the windscreen with blankets.

  He realized he had not checked for loose objects. They were deadly. He took the blankets away and looked in the rear of the plane behind him. Littered! A backward jolt of the plane would have made them into projectiles.

  Wearily he got out and began to chuck things out through the door. Clip after clip of assault
rifle ammunition. A shovel, whatever that was doing here. A sample pick. Odds and ends. He snugged down the cable ladder and ore net equipment of the plane. He put the food bag and his own pouch under the seat.

  More nauseated than ever, he got back in the seat and restored the blanket cushions. He wrapped the oversized security belts around him twice and up so they would keep his head from snapping forward.

  All set.

  He reached out for the gun controls and put them on “Full Barrage,”

  “Flame,” and “Ready.” They were aimed at that box of blasting caps.

  Was the drone tilting or was he just dizzy? He couldn't tell with his dazed senses. He looked at the climb indicator of the plane. Yes! The drone was tilting, the door behind him lower now. Something had upset the coordinates. The magnetic fields of the limpet mines? But whatever it was trying correct, it was pointing its door down!

  That meant if he shot backward and fired he would be shooting himself toward the sea or the mountains.

  He better not delay.

  He kicked off the magnetic grips. The plane started to slide backward to the door.

  Hastily he hit his starter buttons. The plane was sliding backward faster.

  He slammed his fist into the gun-firing button.

  The battle plane fired full blast.

  But the result was far more than just gun recoil.

  Before his eyes the whole interior of the drone flashed a violent orange and green.

  The battle plane was catapulted backward into space like a projectile!

  The shock of sudden motion almost tore his head apart.

  He could still see, still register. The drone looked like an old rocket missile must have looked. It was soaring upward as though the door was the jet!

  Jonnie's hands fumbled over the battle plane console.

  He punched in coordinates to arrest his backward descent.

  With a jolt the plane slowed its rocketing, downward plunge.

  But something else was happening. There was no response from the right balance motor.

  In a slow roll, the plane began to rotate in the sky. The roll became faster.

  The left balance motor could not hold it by itself.

  Jonnie frantically battered the console keys.

  The plane was now cartwheeling through the storm!

  Chapter 7

  Badly shaken and feeling very ill, Jonnie tried to control the plane. There was a thin spot in the storm.

  It was extremely hard to think. If he shut off the left balance motor, maybe the stricken ship would stop rolling. He managed it. Then he realized the guns must still be firing. He got a wad of blanket out of his vision and reached up to push the firing button off. And as he did he saw it.

  The drone!

  Almost straight at him it was tumbling out of the sky. Spent flames were licking out of the doorway and a vast plume of smoke was trailing behind it.

  It was going to hit him if he didn't move.

  His hands hit the console. He felt the plane move.

  The drone went by so close the plane tumbled again in the air rush.

  Abruptly a geyser of water smashed upward into the storm, a column two hundred feet high.

  The battle plane spun about under the new impact.

  Water? Water!

  Jonnie felt a surge of relief. They were not yet over Scotland, still over the sea.

  Water! He would hit it. He knew that pressure outside the doors would keep him from opening them. This battle plane would never float.

  He brought a fist down on the window openers, both of them.

  He looked at the console. What could he press to arrest his own descent?

  The battle plane crashed into the sea.

  The jolt threw him back into unconsciousness. But in a moment a wave of the coldest water he had ever felt rushed in on him, revived him. Bitterly cold water, colder than ice to the touch. And it was hitting him in a roaring torrent from both sides.

  He fought with the huge, ten-pound Psychlo belt release. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. He unwound the belt from himself.

  The water was getting darker. The battle plane must be sinking very rapidly. Or he was passing out once more?

  The incoming rush eased. At least the plane was no longer spinning, he thought vacantly.

  A sudden surge of energy. He got to his knees on the seat and thrust a floating blanket out of his way. The futility of it struck him. There was nobody to save him. He couldn't live in water this cold.

  More by reflex than by intention he went out the window and began to rise to the surface. His air mask tanks were lifting him. Water was getting in the air mask, washing dried blood off the inside glass. The sea became lighter and lighter green.

  Then a spatter of rain hit his head. Rain! It was welcome.

  The sea about him, as he floated face-up, was a panorama of tossing, overwhelming waves, pockmarked with the rain. A wild scene.

  The cold was getting to the very center of his being.

  He knew he was going into a delusion again. As the waves covered and uncovered his ears he thought he heard a voice. They said dying men often heard angel voices calling them. He knew he was very close to death.

  More delusion. Hopeful thinking giving rise to false sights. It was what he would have dearly loved to see, not what was. But the water-blurred vision stayed there.

  Something hit him in the face mask. A line?

  He became more alert. It looked like Dunneldeen on a cable ladder not four feet away! A Dunneldeen who was being submerged and uncovered by the waves.

  Jonnie felt his arms being guided into safety line loops. Tension was being taken up on the line. His ears came free of the water and he could hear. It was Dunneldeen, a Dunneldeen who was smiling even though he was being doused repeatedly as the waves rolled past the cable ladder.

  “Come on now, laddie,” Dunneldeen said. “Just hold on and they'll pull you up to the plane. 'Tis a wee bit cold for a swim.”

  Part XV

  Chapter 1

  Fleeting impressions, half-seen through a wall composed of darkness and pain. Dim consciousness of being in a ship and landing. Of someone spooning broth at him. Of being carried in a stretcher with rain on the blankets. Of a stone-walled room. Of different faces. Of whispered conversations. Of another stretcher. Of another plane. And a pain in his arm. He sank back into darkness. He thought he was in the drone again. He opened his eyes. He saw Dunneldeen's face. He must still be in the sea. But no, he was not cold, he was warm.

  “He's coming around,” said someone softly. “We'll be able to operate soon.”

  He opened his eyes and saw boots and kilts. A lot of boots and kilts standing beside what he was lying on.

  A plane's motors? He was in a plane.

  He turned his head a little and it hurt. But there was Dunneldeen's face.

  Jonnie saw that he was on a sort of table. He was in a plane, a passenger plane. There was a tall gray man in a white coat on his left side. There were a lot of older Scots on his right side. Four young Scots were sitting on a bench. There was another table with some shiny things on it beyond the doctor.

  Dunneldeen was sitting beside him and there was a tube and a sort of pump connecting Dunneldeen's arm with his own.

  “What's this?” whispered Jonnie, indicating the tube or trying to.

  “Blood transfusion,” said Dunneldeen. He felt he should be very careful about what he said. He was smiling but he was worried and felt very bad. Keep a bright face on it. “Laddie, you are singularly fortunate. You are getting the royal blood of the Stewarts, no less, which puts you into direct line, after me, of course, to the throne of Scotland.”

  The doctor was signaling Dunneldeen to take it easy. They all knew that Jonnie might die, that there wasn't a thirty percent chance of his recovery, not with those two severe skull fractures and other injuries, as well as shock. His respiration was too shallow.

  In the underground hospital where
they had operated for centuries, in a land where skull injuries were common, the doctor had seen too many die in less injured condition than this one. He was looking down at the big, handsome lad with something like pity.

  “This is Dr. MacKendrick," said Dunneldeen to Jonnie. “He'll handle you all right. You always overdo things, Jonnie. Most would be content with one skull fracture. But not you, laddie, you've got two!” Dunneldeen smiled. “You'll be right as rain in no time.” He wished he could believe it; Jonnie's face bore the gray of death.

  “Maybe I should have waited for you in the drone if you were so close,” whispered Jonnie.

  The older Scots let out an incredulous gasp. Chief of Clanfearghus stepped forward. "Naw, naw, MacTyler. The foul thing crashed just a mile north of Cape Wrath! 'Twas almost upon us!”

  “How did you find me?” whispered Jonnie.

  “Laddie,” said Dunneldeen, “when you light a beacon fire to gather the clans, you don't do it halfway! The drone went up to ten thousand feet like a flaming rocket and like to have lit the whole of Scotland. That's how we spotted you.”

  The Chief of the Argylls grumbled, “That wasn't what your companion told us, Dunneldeen. They said your what-you-call-it detected a small object in the water and then got a look on a plane and then saw the fire.”

  Dunneldeen was very composed. “It makes a better story that way and that's the way the historian will write it. He lit a beacon fire in the sky!”

  The other Chiefs nodded firmly. That was the way it should be.

  “What day is this?” whispered Jonnie.

  “Day 95.”

  Jonnie felt a bit confused. He had lost a day, two days? Where had he been? Where was he? Why?

  The doctor saw the puzzlement. He had seen it before in head injuries. This young man had lost track of time. “They had to wait for me,” he said. “I was not in Aberdeen at the moment. And then we had to type your blood and find someone with the same type. I’m sorry it took long. But we also had to bring you out of shock, get you warm.” He shook his head sadly. “I should have gone with you all along. I’ll help the others when we get there.”