“I want that Felisian dead!” Vash shouted to his warriors.
The Khandra raised their weapons and took aim.
What Makki desperately wanted was to turn around and mow them all down. But his first priority was to warn the regiment. So he hunkered down, turned the airbike, and continued heading toward the hangar doors—and the service entrance that had been left standing open.
Weapons fire accompanied Makki as the airbike shot through the narrow door and climbed into the sky. Hot energy tracers, bolts and beams whizzed past him, missing him by a whisker’s length and flying off into the fleeting clouds. Makki turned his head and looked up.
“Bloody hell!” he growled.
On the roof of the Khandra fortress, two cheetahmen were powering up the laser cannon, prepping the weapon for action. He had hoped to find the great weapon unattended, but no matter . . . he knew exactly what to do.
With a wicked grin spreading across his face, Makki steered the airbike toward the laser cannon and plowed into the cheetahmen. They tumbled from the roof of the fortress, screaming all the long way to the bottom. Then Makki circled around and landed the airbike on the roof.
Opening his medikit, he pulled out the Whistler Bomb he’d been saving.
The words of the holy beggar suddenly echoed in his mind.
“The Sybil has marked you for greatness, young warrior. Her light will guide your steps toward the path of glory.”
Realizing that his destiny was in his own paws, Makki pressed the bomb’s timer.
The glass lens lit up a second later.
“Eat this!” he yelled, tossing the bomb high into the air.
Snarling with pleasure, he watched the Whistler Bomb sail high into the sky, reach its arc and begin its descent.
Then he took control of the laser cannon.
444
The Marine convoy moved slowly into Jaipur Pass, still unaware of the squads of Khandra warriors lying hidden in the foothills, preparing to attack.
In her armored jeep, Colonel Dakota and her driver kept pace with the communications van, waiting for some response to the communiqué they had sent to the Iwo Jima.
“Anything yet, Corporal?” she asked, growing more and more anxious.
“Nothing yet, Colonel. The tech-heads say all transmissions are still being jammed.”
“Curse all technology!” she muttered.
A feeling of dread came over her, a feeling that took her stomach, flipped it upside down and turned it inside out. Her instincts warned her that something was terribly wrong.
The sound of an engine overhead caused her to look up. A skycar from the Terran Embassy in Tantrapur was heading toward the convoy. She ordered her driver to stop the jeep as the skycar landed only a few yards from them.
A wounded embassy guard emerged from the vessel and raced toward her.
“Colonel!” he cried. “The embassy is under attack! I was ordered to warn you. It’s the Khandra—they’re staging a coup!”
“I knew something was up,” Dakota said. “I felt it in my gut!”
She was about to order the convoy back to Camp Corregidor when an explosion of fireworks and shrill, whistling sounds—swiftly followed by a greater explosion in the sky above the pass, assaulted their ears.
“Colonel—we’re under attack!” said her driver.
Dakota leapt to her feet. “Sound the call to arms!”
444
Meanwhile, back inside the Khandra command center, the screeching of the Whistler Bomb ricocheted off the walls. Drakonian technicians and Rhajni workers rushed about in a panic as the second, more powerful explosion rocked the fortress. Khandra warriors on guard duty tried to maintain some sense of order.
Snark looked up from a computer screen as the main doors slid open.
Chanori and two Khandra panthermen armed with zapguns charged into the room.
“The prisoners have eluded all attempts to capture them,” said the Drakonian agent.
Chanori’s left fist smashed Snark’s computer to pieces. Circuits popped and sizzled as dark smoke filled the room. “By Azra’s whiskers! Contact my son—now!”
“Yes, my lord!” Snark obeyed.
While Snark contacted Vash, Chanori turned to a Tri-D visual display that showed him what was happening in the Giruda Foothills and Jaipur Pass. He licked his chops as he watched the Marine regiment roll through the pass and move into battle formation.
444
The Khandra gun emplacements in the hills opened fire. Needles of green tazers and blue zapper bolts tore up the ground. Violet beams of deadly energy from blasters ripped into the regiment’s vehicles and the bodies of Marines as they sought cover and returned fire.
The regiment’s laser tanks advanced and fanned out, blasting the hills on either side of the pass with a continuous volley of searing white and crimson light. Marines rushed in and took cover behind the tanks, laying down a barrage of yellow machine gun fire and salvoes of incendiary shells launched from Primo-2000 mini-bazookas. Sizzling red laser beams stitched the hills, lacerating earth and rock, and burning Khandra troops by the score. Electronic mortars and photon hand grenades tore gaping holes in the enemy’s defenses and vaporized numerous squads of Khandra soldiers.
444
Cursing under his breath, Chanori was nevertheless confidant that his forces would reign victorious before noon. He turned to another visual display and tapped a few computer keys with his sharp claws. Moments later, the main hangar doors of the fortress slid open. Three squadrons of Drakonian fighter jets took off a few seconds after that.
He roared with pride: His son was in command.
Then, another monitor projected an image of Makki at the controls of the laser cannon.
444
Jaipur Pass had quickly become an inferno of battle and carnage as the Devil Dogs charged the foothills, blasting the Khandra with a steady onslaught of energy beams. Tattoo Annie, Fatty Russo and Pretty Boy Steele raced into battle, weapons blazing.
“Let’s dance, you Devil Dogs!” Pretty Boy shouted.
The Khandra returned a blistering firestorm of tazer and blaster beams, and hot zapgun bolts. A laser tank exploded and flipped over. Marines died bravely, caught in the flash pulse of flames and hot, metal debris. Tattoo Annie’s legs were burned away below the knees. She screamed in horror and agony as the battle raged around her.
“Oh, God! Corpsman! Corpsman!” she shouted as she died.
White photon beams and red lasers fired from the regiment’s artillery scorched the foothills and the Khandra gun emplacements. Explosions tore up dirt and pulverized stone. Khandra bodies hurtled through the air. Blood and body parts smeared the whole area.
444
High atop the Khandra fortress, Makki manned the laser cannon, zoomed in on his targets and then activated the firing mechanism. Two short bursts of crimson light shot into the sky, and a duo of Drakonian fighter jets burst into balls of blue, red, and yellow flames.
Makki whooped with joy as the wreckage of the jets tumbled into the pass below. He sighted three more targets and took them out with an equal amount of laser blasts. But the Khandra hangar kept breeding Drakonian warships like a Zaturan termite giving birth. Makki never ceased firing as the jets took to the sky and flew off to attack the regiment. But his time spent with Cortez on the simulator was paying off: he knocked off one jet fighter after another.
“Makki!”
He turned his head and saw Chanori and four Khandra panthermen emerge from the stairwell and race toward him.
“Kill him!” Chanori shouted.
The panthermen drew their zapguns and started firing.
Makki ducked as the zapper bolts hissed over his head. Then he swiveled the laser cannon and fired back at his attackers.
Chanori hit the deck barely in time as the laser blasts whizzed past him. The panthermen screamed as the hot streaks of pure energy turned them into a glittery spray of atoms. One laser beam sailed over Chanori’s head, hit the stairwell and blasted
it into charred wreckage. There was no other way down from the roof.
Chanori drew his zapgun and fired.
A sizzling blue bolt tore into Makki’s shoulder, almost knocking him off the cannon’s platform. Crying out in pain, he fell against the controls.
Chanori leapt to his feet, ran forward, and seized Makki by the throat. He set the snout of his zapgun against Makki’s head.
“Time to join your family,” Chanori said.
Makki snarled and showed his teeth. “Go bugger yourself, ya heathen swine!” he said, knocking Chanori’s arm aside the way Akira had shown him.
The zapgun flew out of Chanori’s hand and tumbled from the roof.
Chanori slammed his fist into Makki’s face.
The young corpsman groaned and dropped to his knees.
444
Drakonian fighter jets swooped down out of the sky, wing-guns blazing hot death as they strafed the Marines in Jaipur Pass with blaster and tazer fire. Marines howled, riddled with burn wounds or sliced to bloody ribbons.
“Come on, you poor excuses for monkeys!” Corporal Baim shouted. “You wanna live to a ripe old age?” She hit the dirt just as two cobalt beams of pure energy flashed over her head.
“Rock on, brothers and sisters!” Fatty shouted.
Then he and Pretty Boy Steele were zapped by tazer fire. They went down screaming, still firing their weapons as they died.
Peppering the hills with a spray of electrified bullets from her Eddy, Corporal Baim caught a zapper bolt in the arm that spun her around and knocked her down.
Nervous Ned riddled the hills with quartz bullets from his own Eddy. “Corpsman! Corpsman!” he cried—right before a volley of incendiary fire blew him into Kingdom Come.
444
Chanori pounced on Makki like a housecat attacking a mouse. His fists were hammers pounding away at the corpsman. But Makki blocked each blow with his forearms. He danced back and forth, and from side to side as smoothly as a heavyweight champ in the ring.
“Felisian vermin!” Chanori growled.
“Furry freak!” Makki roared.
Faking a right jab, Chanori battered Makki’s jaw with a mean left hook. Makki grimaced in pain as his jaw shifted to one side and his teeth ground together. Then Chanori hit him again with a right cross, followed by a left jab to the kidney. With the breath knocked out of him, Makki groaned, doubled over and staggered backward.
Chanori charged in, his fists ready to batter Makki with a steady rain of blows.
Makki caught his breath and summoned all the strength he could muster. He managed to block both of Chanori’s oncoming fists, whack him in the throat with the side of one paw, punch him in the breastbone, and then kick him in the kneecap. Bones cracked and cartilage snapped. Chanori went down, gasping for breath and clutching his shattered knee.
Makki turned back to the laser cannon, took careful aim, and then poured on the heat at the Drakonian jet fighters that darkened the morning sky like a swarm of bees.
Two more jets exploded in mid-air. But one looped around and headed back toward the Khandra tower, effectively evading Makki’s heavy barrage. Blasts of tazer fire tore chunks of stone from the walls of the fortress and chewed pieces of tile from the rooftop.
444
Cortez and O’Hara, still carrying Akira between them, emerged from the mouth of a cave in the foothills behind the fortress. From their vantage point they could see Makki high above them on the roof of the Khandra stronghold, manning the laser cannon.
“Sweet Mother Mary!” O’Hara shouted, crossing himself.
“Makki—hit them hard, my friend!” Cortez yelled with pride.
Akira, fearing for Makki’s life more than she worried about her own, cried out softly, mumbled a prayer, and then slumped in the arms of her buddies.
444
Unable to get up, Chanori watched Makki work the laser cannon with expertise. Makki zeroed in on the approaching fighter jet and retaliated with a volley of shots that streaked across the morning sky. The Drakonian jet took a laser hit. Its left wing burst into flames. Then the craft flipped over and over, but maintained its course—still heading straight for the fortress.
Makki abandoned the laser cannon, hopped on the airbike, revved it up, and took off.
Chanori struggled to rise, but his shattered knee wouldn’t let him. He watched Makki’s airbike soar into the sky and away from the fortress.
“Makki!” Chanori shouted in anger and frustration.
The fighter jet belched fire and smoke, and then nose-dived with its wing-guns flashing one last time. Makki’s airbike shuddered and swayed from side to side as a tazer blast nailed its tailfin. The small craft began to lose altitude.
The burning fighter jet rolled in the air and plunged from the sky.
“No!” Chanori screamed.
He fell to his knees as the jet fighter hurtled toward the Khandra stronghold.
444
Inside the command center, Snark turned to the viewport, and then squealed in terror as a burning jet fighter drew closer and closer to the fortress. Rhajni and Drakonian personnel began to flee in panic, screaming and shouting at one another to get out of the way.
“Evacuate! Evacuate!” Snark yelled needlessly as warriors and technicians abandoned their posts. When the Drakonian agent turned to flee, he was knocked down and trampled to death by scores of frightened personnel running for their lives.
444
The sky reverberated with the thunder of screeching engines as two squadrons of Comanche AEVs dropped down out of the clouds. Like majestic war eagles they locked in on their prey and zoomed in for the kill. Both squadrons flew in tight, V-shaped formations.
The first squadron hit the Khandra gun emplacements in the foothills, laying down a suppressing barrage of photon missiles and laser blasts that smashed their foes to atoms. The second squadron veered off and chased the Drakonian jet fighters, flying hot on their tails. Laser and Eddy machine gun fire crippled many a jet and sent them hurtling into the hills and the pass below. Explosions rocked the pass, belching smoke and spitting fire into the air.
A number of Drakonian jets shot upward in a graceful arc, looped over and down, and then came up behind the AEVs with guns blazing. Five Comanches exploded into flaming wreckage. But then the first squadron swooped in, blasting enemy aircraft out of the sky.
444
Seated at the controls inside the cockpit of his burning fighter jet, Vash fired one last round of tazers at Makki’s airbike. But his shots went wild and completely passed over the already damaged little flier. Then he tried desperately to steer his jet out of its roll and alter its course—but the controls were unresponsive.
Vash cursed the Maker when his controls suddenly short-circuited. Sparks, smoke, and fire exploded in the cockpit. He screamed as flames crawled up his arms and toward his face.
Below him, the Khandra fortress loomed closer and closer.
The last thing Vash saw was Chanori, struggling to stand.
“Father!”
Vash screamed and threw his arms over his face as his disabled fighter jet slammed into the stronghold’s viewport.
444
In the hills behind the fortress, Akira, Cortez and O’Hara saw the Khandra fortress explode in a dense mushroom cloud of smoke and flame. Chunks of stone and metal debris rained down upon the floor of Jaipur Pass.
A moment later, Makki’s airbike hurtled from the sky, trailing smoke. He leapt free, curled himself into a ball, and hit the ground as the airbike crashed and burned. The three sergeants raced toward the crash site. Makki landed on his paws and ran to greet his friends.
Akira was the first to see Corporal Flix emerge from a cave in the hills behind the burning fortress, holding a zapgun as he snuck up on Makki.
“Makki—behind you!” she shouted.
Akira tried to free herself from Cortez’s and O’Hara’s supportive embrace. At the same time, the two men brought their tazer rifles into play—a second too la
te.
Makki turned around just as Flix fired his zapgun.
“Flix—ya bloody swine!” Makki said as a burst of zapper bolts knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling to the ground.
Cortez and O’Hara fired their weapons.
Flix screamed as green tracers cut him in half.
Akira broke free of her two buddies and limped toward Makki. Cortez and O’Hara joined her and knelt at the corpsman’s side. Akira scratched her friend behind his ears. Cortez held onto his paw. O’Hara choked back tears as he cradled Makki’s head in his lap.
“You okay?” Akira asked Makki, struggling to hold back her tears.
“As right—as rain,” he replied in a whisper.
“Easy now, lad,” O’Hara said. “You’re gonna be all right.”
Akira knew the truth of it. She exchanged glances with O’Hara. He shook his head.
Makki smiled at his friends. “Was the—” He coughed up blood. “Was the Colonel warned in time? Was the—regiment saved?”
“Yes, Makki,” Akira said. “You did it. You saved the regiment.”
With a surprised look on his face, Makki said, “Did this mewling,” he stopped, swallowed, and then continued. “Did I do this thing?”
“You and no one else,” O’Hara told him.
“Si. A most excellent job, Corpsman Doon,” Cortez said.
“Tell Sheel . . . Semper fi,” Makki said.
Then he drew his last breath and his eyes glazed over.
“Semper fi, Makki-san,” Akira said, burying her face in her hands.
O’Hara closed Makki’s eyes and made the Sign of the Cross over his body.
Three Against the Stars Page 20