The explosions continued. There was nothing we could do but watch and hope. The billowing cloud of smoke and dust grew larger. I wondered how much longer it would be before the klees blasted a wide enough path to send their army through.
“Look!” Boon yelled.
A gig blasted out of the clouds, headed our way. It was definitely one of the big helicopters we’d seen in the tree hangar. This thing was armed for bear. There were missiles strapped to either side and beneath. There was no doubt now, the klees had developed missiles and could launch them from gigs. Or maybe they’d been shipped from the helicopter factory on Third Earth. Didn’t matter. They were here, and the klees knew how to use them. My heart sank. What possible chance did the gars and the exiles stand against such a sophisticated attack from the air? I was about to find out.
The gig charged forward, high over the valley. “Why are the gars not firing on it?” Boon asked nervously.
“Hang on,” Courtney said calmly.
A quick look and calculation told me its destination. It was headed for the waterfall that protected the tunnel into Black Water… directly beneath us. This killer chopper’s mission was clear. It was about to start the second phase of an assault that would open up a highway for the klee army, giving it access to Black Water. I held on to the railing, bracing for the moment that it would launch its missiles. I feared that the faint tremor we felt during the attack on the far mountain range would be nothing compared to what would happen once the missiles starting hitting the rock below our feet. I stole a quick look at the walkway that snaked over the backbone of the mountain and wondered if it would come crashing down, with us and every gar up there along with it. I felt like this was the beginning of the end.
“Patience,” Courtney whispered to nobody.
I heard a faint whistling sound. Suddenly the oncoming helicopter spun sideways. More whistling followed. The large gig started twisting, as if it were being hit by stiff winds that came from different directions.
“He’s done,” Courtney said with total confidence.
Turned out she was a lot less nervous about what was happening than I was. The helicopter spun wildly. It was out of control and headed down. This chopper was being targeted the same way that Kasha and Boon and I were when we first flew in.
“We’ve got cannons positioned all over the valley,” Courtney explained. “This is the kind of attack we’ve been ready for.”
I couldn’t tell where the radio cannons were being fired from. The two-person weapons were portable, which meant they could hide anywhere in the trees below. Wherever they were, the shooters knew what they were doing. Their aim was perfect. The helicopter pitched and spun and finally slammed into the ground. This crash was a lot more spectacular than ours was, thanks to the unfired missiles it had on board. As soon as the gig hit the ground, ka-boom. Multiple explosions erupted from the point of impact, shooting flames and debris high into the air. As much as the klees were the bad guys here, I hoped that the pilots were dados. Seeing the huge explosion, I realized that there wouldn’t be anything left of them to figure it out one way or the other. The gig hit just before it reached the lake in the center of the crater, but the explosion was so huge I could feel the heat from as far away as we were.
“One down,” Courtney said. “Bring ‘em on.”
As if following her orders, two more gigs flew out of the cloud of dust and smoke, headed for the Black Water waterfall. Both were loaded with missiles. Both met the same fate. Two more spectacular crashes followed, creating multiple infernos on the valley floor.
“Listen,” Kasha called out. “The explosions have stopped.”
I had been concentrating so intently on the gigs that I didn’t realize the distant thunder from the explosions on the far mountain had ended.
“What do you think that means?” Boon asked. “Were the other gigs taken down too?”
Courtney put her finger to her ear to listen to her link radio. She smiled.
“Seven gigs down,” she reported. “Including the three that made it into the valley. The spotters went back and took them down. Unbelievable. You want to talk about bravery? Those guys had to fire on the gigs while all hell was raining down on them.”
“Are there more?” I asked.
Courtney listened, and shook her head. “No. They’re done. We got them all. Wait-”
It wasn’t time to celebrate. Courtney’s dark look told me that much. She listened intently to the report that was coming in over the link radio. As she concentrated, I looked to the far mountain. The smoke was starting to dissipate. It wouldn’t be long till we would see how much damage the klees had done before their helicopters were put out of business. Kasha and Boon joined me at the front of the platform. We all gazed across the valley floor, straining for a glimpse of what the gig attack had accomplished.
“Question is,” I said, “did they finish the road?”
The wind picked up, blowing away the rest of the debris in the air. What we saw made my mouth go dry. There was a very clear, wide gap cut through the mountain. In the few short minutes that the klees had been targeting the mountain, they had succeeded in blasting out a wide chasm. I now realized why the second wave of gigs had started across the valley. It wasn’t to escape the gars who were firing on them from below. It was because their destruction of the first mountain pass was complete.
“They’re coming,” Courtney declared. “The klee army is on the march. We don’t have enough gar shooters over there to stop them. They can’t protect such a wide entryway.”
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked lamely.
“Yeah,” Courtney answered. “We can hope that the rest of the klees are dados.”
How twisted was that? The last, best hope to save Black Water would be if the klees had blundered and sent a dado army to attack. The gar radio cannons could stop them. What they couldn’t stop were flesh-and-blood klees. As much as the gars had anticipated and prepared for a battle, they never expected that the klees would be able to flood so many warriors at them at once. They were hoping to pick them off one by one as they came through the narrow pass. But the pass wasn’t narrow anymore. It was wide enough for thousands of klees at a time to march through.
“What if they’re not dados?” Kasha asked.
Courtney shrugged. She looked grim. “We have one last chance after that to keep them in the valley. If that fails and they break through into Black Water, I know the gars will fight until the end, but I don’t think they’ll stand a chance. Both the gars and the Yanks are dedicated. Confident, even. They believe that they will be able to stop anything that is thrown at us, but I think that’s more bravery speaking than common sense. If the klees get into Black Water, it’ll be a bloodbath. We’ve got to stop them right here.”
The wait was killing me. It all came down to this. When the klee army emerged from the newly formed passage into the valley, would they be sending dados or klees? It felt odd to be rooting for dados.
The smoke cleared entirely, giving us an unobstructed view of the valley below. The three gigs burned where they’d crashed. I didn’t see a single survivor. I also didn’t see any gars on the valley floor. I assumed they were all in hiding, waiting for the klee army to appear. It was tense as all hell. I couldn’t imagine how the gars who were waiting below felt. They had no way of knowing this, but they were not only going to fight to protect Black Water, but this battle would determine the future of all existence. It was just as well they didn’t know.
I wondered how many of the defenders below were exiles from Second Earth. The Yanks. It didn’t surprise me that they had put in with the gars and were all working together to protect Black Water. These were the people who had stood up to Alexander Naymeer and his Ravinians on Second Earth. They paid for their beliefs by being sucked into a flume and banished from their home. They could have landed on Eelong and given up. Instead, they rallied and created a new and better Black Water. It was no surprise to me, knowing the kind of peop
le they were, that they were willing to put their lives on the line to protect it. Uncle Press explained to us that it was their spirit that was keeping Solara alive. Seeing the work they had done, the sacrifices they had made, and the bravery they’d shown here on Eelong made me understand it fully. These people were special. I truly believed they could be the foundation upon which Halla would be rebuilt.
If they survived.
“They’re here,” Courtney said softly.
She held up her binoculars to get a better look at the wound in the mountain. She didn’t have to bother. We could all see it plain enough with the naked eye. At first it seemed like a wave of red blood flowing out of the cleft in the mountain. It took only a few seconds to realize what it really was. Moving forward, filling the width of the gap, was an army of klees carrying red Ravinian flags. There were hundreds of the flags, snapping in the wind, headed into the valley as if in triumph. I was amazed at the bold move. They weren’t being defensive. It didn’t look as if they even had weapons. Did they seriously think the battle was already won?
The wave continued. Line after line of klees marched forward in lockstep, flags waving as they descended into the crater that was the valley of waterfalls.
“We’ll know soon,” Courtney announced. “If they’re dados, they’re walking into a kill zone. If not-” She gave me a grave look.
The mass of flag-bearing klees ended. They were followed by klees wearing the uniform of Leeandran soldiers. These guys carried the weapons I had seen the foragers use. From far away they looked like they were carrying flagpoles with no flags, but I knew they were the wooden staves that would be used to crack heads. They would also have the three-stone bolas that they threw at gars to tie up their legs. The sick thing is that they weren’t coming in to obliterate the gars. This was a roundup. Sure, gars would go down, but I believe their mission was to capture as many as possible. Those trucks we saw weren’t carrying weapons. They were here to take the gars back to Leeandra for the klees’ barbaric feasts. I wondered what their orders were. How aggressive were they going to be? There was no way that the gars or the exiles would go without a fight.
“What have the gars been told?” I asked Courtney. “I mean, if it comes to a close-in fight, what will they do?”
“You mean what’s going to happen if it looks like we’re losing?” she asked.
I nodded.
“There will be no prisoners,” she said with certainty. “One way or the other, this will be a fight to the death.”
As fatalistic a thought as that was, it made perfect sense. If I had to choose between dying in battle or being rounded up and put into a cage and held until I was slaughtered for food, I know the decision I’d make. Surrender was worse than suicide.
The four of us stood on that platform, watching as the klee army emerged from the destroyed mountain.
“Is there no end to them?” Kasha said, thinking out loud.
I thought back to the view we’d gotten of the army from the sky when we flew in the day before. There were thousands of them. Multiple thousands. There was no way that a guerrilla force of gars and Yanks would stand a chance against them.
“When you met with the gar defenders last night, did you plan for this possibility?” I asked.
“You mean did we figure out what to do if the klees got in and they turned out to be dados?” she asked. “Yes. We put together a rough plan.”
“How rough?” I asked.
“Well, considering we didn’t think this would really happen, not a whole lot of thought went into it. But it’s not complicated. The plan is to lay back with the radio cannons, wait until the klees enter the kill zone, then give the order to unload on them.”
“How precise are the weapons?” Kasha asked. “Does each dado have to be shot separately?”
“Yes,” Courtney answered. “The throw of the radio cannons isn’t very wide. But we’ve got the best marksmen in charge. All they need is the order to fire.”
“And who gives that order?”
Courtney looked at me and gave me the confident smile that I had seen so often. “That would be me.”
Of course it would. She’s the one who introduced the concept of dados to the gars. Why shouldn’t she be in charge? Courtney trained her binoculars back down into the valley. The hordes of klees continued to pour into the valley. There seemed to be even more than we’d seen from the air, but I think that was because they were more concentrated from having come through the gap.
“Are there enough cannons?” Boon asked nervously. “There are a whole lot of targets down there.”
“More than enough,” Courtney answered without taking her eyes away from the binoculars. “With plenty of power to fire several charges from each weapon. The trick is to get our shooters close enough to be able to target the klees, but not so close that, if the cannons are ineffective, they would be in the way of our counterattack.”
“Counterattack?” Kasha asked.
Courtney didn’t answer. She was focused on events down below. The flag-carrying klees were a third of the way through the valley, headed for the waterfalls. They were about to pass by the thick stand of trees that grew along one shore of the lake. I had no doubt that the gar shooters were hidden among those trees. Courtney held the binoculars with one hand and lifted her link radio with the other.
“Stand by,” she spoke into the radio.
Her voice didn’t betray the tension I knew she was feeling. Were the klees dados? Would the radio weapons be effective against them? We would know in a few short seconds.
“Wait for my command,” Courtney said softly, as if she didn’t want her words to be overheard by the klees below.
The army marched on. The first line reached the stand of trees. How long would Courtney wait? Was the hurried plan they hatched being put into gear? Were the gar shooters in position?
“On my command,” Courtney finally said.
I didn’t know what she was waiting for, but this was her show, so I wasn’t going to comment.
“Five… four… three… two… one… fire!”
The first line of klees froze in their tracks. That one reaction was all we needed to know.
“Dados,” Courtney growled in triumph.
The dado klees dropped their flags. The red stars of Ravinia fell into the dirt. In seconds, multiple hundreds of klees were lying on the ground, lifeless. There was no doubt. They were dados. Wave after wave hit the ground. I heard the faint sound of the whine of radio waves rising from the valley floor as the gar shooters unloaded on them. There must have been hundreds of weapons down there, all firing incessantly. That’s how many dados fell.
“They aren’t klees!” Boon shouted with joy. “They can be stopped!”
Within a minute the bodies of a thousand dado klees littered the valley of waterfalls. It looked like total victory. At first I thought that the only reason the klees to the rear weren’t falling was because they couldn’t get past the sea of bodies and enter the kill zone. I figured it was only a matter of time before word got passed back and the remaining dados beat a quick retreat.
That didn’t happen.
“Why are they continuing to march forward?” Boon asked. “They must realize they have entered a trap.”
The first hint of doubt crept into my head. Every last klee wearing the red uniform of Ravinia was dead. Or deactivated. Or whatever. They were joined by many more who wore the uniform of soldiers from Leeandra and wound up dead as well. But there were many to the rear who kept moving forward, crawling over the bodies, continuing the assault.
“Something’s wrong,” Courtney announced. “Could the gars be out of ammunition?” I asked. “Maybe,” she said ominously. “Or maybe the rest aren’t dados.”
The truth suddenly seemed obvious. The radio cannons had knocked out the dados, but there was more to this army. Much more. The dados were sent in first, perhaps for this very reason, to draw out the radio-cannon fire. Coming up from the rear were flesh-and-blo
od klees. Most of the army had been wiped out, but there were still plenty of living klees to bring the battle to Black Water.
Courtney kept her eyes down on the valley. If she was scared, she didn’t show it.
Kasha said, “You said something about a surprise?”
“Yeah,” Courtney replied. “Now or never.”
The klees clambered over the fallen dados effortlessly. After all, they were cats. They dropped to all fours and continued moving forward. It was almost as if they had practiced this maneuver. The first ones over the pile of dead dados advanced several yards and then stopped, waiting for the others to make their way over and assemble. It was hard to tell how many were there. Five hundred? A thousand? More? The army had been cut down considerably, but there were still plenty of living klees left to do some damage.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“This isn’t the Black Water you knew, Bobby,” Courtney explained, sounding way too calm for the situation. “Much of the change has to do with the Yanks, who helped the gars advance. It was clear that if the klees ever decided to attack, the gars wouldn’t stand a chance. So they had to come up with unexpected ways to defend themselves. Creating the radio cannons was one of those ways.”
“But there’s another, right?” I asked hopefully.
“The theory is there,” Courtney answered. “We weren’t able to fully test it, for reasons that will become obvious, so I guess you’d call this a ‘trial by fire.’ It’s either going to work, or Black Water is done.”
The remaining klees assembled beyond the mass of dado bodies. Several klees on zenzens rode to the front of the pack. I figured these must be the officers. They had been lying back, safely waiting for this moment. Now they were about to lead the charge into Black Water. One officer rode to the front of the klees, raised his arm as a signal, and motioned for the waterfall. Moving as one, the mass of klees began to make their way toward Black Water.
The Soldiers of Halla tpa-10 Page 37