by V. B. Larson
“You bastard! I can see that you don’t yet take me seriously. Doubtless, this is due to the fact that your kind could never contemplate suicide, such is the depth of your cowardly natures,” said Garth. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his hand and slowly began to increase the pressure his finger was putting on the trigger. When the trigger was depressed halfway to its firing point, the pain eased.
Stop mad-thing! You must not damage me! wailed Fryx. A wave of fear and rage swept over Garth, emotional spillover from his rider. He eased his grip on the trigger.
“Will there be further attempts to coerce me?” he asked. His feet had slowed from an odd jig to a slow shuffle. To stop his idle movements, he sat cross-legged on the granite boulder.
His mind was silent.
He again applied pressure to the trigger.
Halt! How can you so easily play with your life? demanded Fryx, in a frenzied state. What if the gun were to go off with fractionally less pressure this time than the last? What if the manufacture of the weapon wasn’t up to the specifications? How can you bet our lives upon the assumed competence of some unknown other? Do you realize what would happen if anything went wrong?
“Then we would die, here in the jungle, together,” said Garth with remarkable disinterest.
You are indeed a mad-thing. I can’t believe my fantastic misfortune in finding a host of your quality.
“Self-pity will gain you nothing.”
You must halt this game of death-threats. You are playing with higher stakes than you know.
“What stakes?” demanded Garth with sudden interest. He stood up again and jumped down from the boulder. He began to pace about the darkened camp, absently stepping over the cooling bodies of the dead skalds. “What is it that caused you to break our trust, to come forward from your meditations and take up the reins of my mind in such an intrusive manner? I know that this is not a pleasant thing for you.”
Indeed not. Unless it is in conjunction with communing with another rider, I find it most repulsive to expose my nervous system to your outer world of filth and pestilence. I came forward only out of the greatest need.
Fryx proceeded to explain at length that he had sensed a presence from the dark past, that of the Imperium. Seedships must have come home to Garm. Parents had landed and the Imperium had begun to pacify the world as had been done here a thousand years ago, he was sure of it. Only he and perhaps a handful of other riders were both old enough to remember the old wars with the Imperium and sensitive enough to detect the presence of the enemy.
In the end, as dawn broke over the steamy jungle campsite, the two came to an odd pact. Convinced that his rider was really heading for Grunstein, the capital of the colony, with vital news concerning the Imperium, Garth decided to travel that way. The huge effort that Fryx had gone to, so unlike he and his kind, made him believe. In any case, he had nowhere else to go, nothing better to do.
At the very least, the endless painful battles for dominance with Fryx would stop for a time.
Driving the inquisitors’ vehicle non-stop to Bauru, the skald and the rider worked together for the first time in days. Each of them slept in shifts while the mind of the other drove Garth’s body and the vehicle.
As evening closed over the jungles, a haunting figure arrived at the Bauru Colonial Shuttleport and purchased a one-way ticket to Grunstein Interplanetary. Wearing a black hat and matching black cape, both coated with dried stinking slime from the jungles, the man strode down the jetway and climbed aboard the shuttle. His neighboring passengers moved away with expressions of distaste, many asking the stewards for a seat in another section of the cabin.
Unconcernedly, Garth leered at them with wild, staring eyes. Settling back into the sparse cushions of the economy class, both the minds in his skull fell asleep, exhausted.
Sixteen
“The war is going badly, Chamberlain,” Mai Lee told the orchids. It was a nicer arrangement than usual today, full of crimson blossoms with accents of lavender. “The planet is being overrun.”
Mai Lee seemed calm enough, but beneath her placid surface raged a torrent of anger. The orchids wisely chose to remain silent.
On the huge holo-stage that dominated the room were displayed multiple battle scenes. All around the Slipape Counties other estates were in flames. Images of slaughter dominated the broken ruins of Castle Zimmerman in particular.
“All so quickly, my most pressing concern has shifted from Droad to this new assault,” she lamented. “With amazing speed, these aliens are destroying hundreds of years of history. They’re so easily wiping out enemies that I’ve struggled with for centuries. I find it all somewhat annoying. I’ve come to loathe most of my fellow aristocrats, but still, they were mine to loathe, if you catch my meaning.”
“Certainly, Empress,” said the orchids hesitantly. “Ah-there is another urgent call from the Zimmerman High Command.”
Mai Lee waved her hand imperially. “Display it.”
A red-faced older man wavered into being just to the left of the hummingbirds. His hair was in disarray and he carried a gun in his hand. “Mai Lee, I’ve retreated to the forests just north of your lands. You must come to our aid. Most of the kindred are dead. The Castle of my ancestors has fallen, but we can retake it with your troops, I’m sure of it.”
“Ah, so the great Zimmermans finally swallow their pride,” she said with an obscenely girlish giggle. She placed her fingertips together in a butterfly pattern and leaned back to bask in the moment.
“We must join forces! No one will be spared! They come right up from the ground, drop from the skies, hundreds of monsters,” Zimmerman looked down, shaken, reliving a recent memory. “They’re so fast!”
“But my fortress is stronger than yours.”
Zimmerman shook his head emphatically. “It doesn’t matter. You haven’t really prepared for an attack from beneath. Even though the hill you’re on is mostly rock, it won’t matter. They’ll come, they have good weapons now, and there are more of them every time. They’ll come and wipe you out as they did the rest of us.”
Mai Lee tilted back further, the picture of happy relaxation. It seemed that his every gloomy word gave her greater pleasure. Finally, she snapped upright. “I’ll take to the field, but not to save your precious plot of miniature forests and family treasures. I’ll take to the field if you’ll join me, if you’ll place your remaining vehicles and knights under my banner.”
Zimmerman glowered and blustered for a moment, his bushy white brows stormy with indecision. “Why would you leave your stronghold?”
“A painful decision, let me assure you,” said Mai Lee. “But a necessary one. I’ve studied these creatures and their tactics. Just as you pointed out, our fortresses were never built to defend against the kind of attacks they launch. They are serving only as traps for our forces, convenient concentration points for the aliens to destroy us.”
“All the same, what will you do in the field? Wait for them to come out and attack you? Before I commit my forces I must know how you plan to fight them.”
“My science staff has studied these aliens and concluded that they are a fast-growing, short-lived species. Genetically, all the different types are very similar, whether they fly, dig or march. It is my belief that they have a small number of queens, as would ants or termites. If we kill these queens, they will stop multiplying. We must carry our attack to the enemy, destroy whatever is generating all these appalling creatures. Just defending our lands is a losing proposition.”
“That’s all very well, but how do we find this queen?”
“Some days ago I captured one of these creatures and discovered that they use in-grown quartz crystals to communicate via radio waves. Triangulating carefully, we have located one of their nests, and I wish to assault it.”
“You’ll attack the nest, with our help? No hanging back at the last moment and using my knights as cannon fodder?”
Mai Lee snorted. “Your weaponeers are best used in
ranged combat, where their plasma cannons would be put to good use. I myself will lead my troops down into the nest.”
“Ah, so you will be marching in your battlesuit, I presume?”
Mai Lee looked startled, but only for a moment before regaining her aplomb.
Zimmerman laughed unpleasantly. “You aren’t the only one with spies in the field.”
She waved away his words irritably. “Is it a deal?”
“I’ll not relinquish all command, but I will comply with your strategies. You will be in overall command.”
“Done,” she said, smiling. “Meet me on the Moonbreak Heights at dawn.”
After she had cut off the connection, she sat brooding for a time, watching alien monsters ravage her neighbors’ lands. One of the sections of the holo-stage showed a detachment of several hundred aliens moving swiftly into position to the south of her fortress. She would have to move soon.
Disturbed by Zimmerman’s words about spies in her midst, she headed down into the darkest levels beneath her fortress and there found the battlesuit, parked in its cubical. Climbing inside, she curled up into the womb-like pilot’s webbing to sleep until it was time to march, two hours before dawn.
No assassin would find her easy prey tonight.
“Gi!” cried out the peasants in terror as the lumbering battlesuit marched swiftly onto a lifter in the great courtyard. Running for the shelter of the village, the peasants scattered. No one had bothered to tell them that a war was in progress. The predawn light was a pleasant pink tinge in the air. Sounds of heavy equipment filled the last minutes of the night.
Surrounded by six squadrons of her heavy troops in full battlegear, Mai Lee’s lifter rose up to join the others. In unison, the flotilla moved off, surrounded by a flock of escorting helicopter gunships.
Reaching Moonbreak Heights and meeting the Zimmermans, Mai Lee drove her battlesuit down the ramp and onto the granite mountaintop. She was thrilling inside, this entire experience was turning into a fantasy for her. Over the years of her incredibly long, dull existence she had come to enjoy nothing more than battle, but was too wise to put herself into most of them. Life had become extremely boring of late. Now, however, simply sitting back would no longer do. It was no longer the wisest, safest course. The aliens had forced her hand. She almost felt thankful to them for this rare opportunity to indulge herself. She looked forward to witnessing and participating in a great deal of carnage. Like a child in a sweetshop, she relished every moment of the experience.
“ZIMMERMAN!” boomed the amplified voice of the battlesuit. Mai Lee grinned as she watched the man take an involuntary step back from the blast of sound.
“Turn that damned thing down!” Zimmerman growled back, not easily intimidated even by a madwoman driving several tons of high-tech weaponry.
Mai Lee modulated the volume somewhat, but still left it turned up to a domineering level. “Report your strength, commander,” she demanded.
Zimmerman stood in battlegear with his aides and bodyguards surrounding him in a nervous knot. “Now wait,” he said, upraising his forefinger. “We have to get some things arranged. First-”
“There will be no further arrangements,” barked the giant figure of Mai Lee. The suit took a half-step forward, powerful claws gouging the mountainside. “Place yourself under my command, at least strategically, and report your strength immediately. There is no time for dickering. We must move at once.”
“I plan to comply, but-” began Zimmerman again, his lips lifting from his teeth. His knights were snarling among themselves. One man threw his computer slate aside and drew his sidearm.
“Comply immediately or I will withdraw,” came the booming response.
“Sir, we have no need of this witch,” the young man who had drawn his weapon hissed in his ear. With her amplified hearing, Mai Lee caught every word. She recognized the youth as Zeel, one of the new hotheaded generation of the Zimmerman clan.
For a moment neither of the leaders spoke. Around them gathered the simian-like giants of Mai Lee’s palace guard and the expertly trained blue-suited knights of the Zimmerman clan. Both sides eyed the other with distaste and an eagerness to fight.
“We will comply,” said Zimmerman. A wave of emotion swept the Zimmermans. “But, we will keep a separate unit command, and my men will not follow your orders without my approval.”
Hidden from view, Mai Lee grinned inside her battlesuit. The grin soon turned into a cackle of mirth. She calmed herself enough to activate the exterior voice circuit and accept his offer.
Things moved more smoothly after the issue of command control was settled. The group set up the battle computers under a dome on one of Mai Lee’s lifters and gathered there to organize their forces. Although the Zimmermans had taken casualties, several other related clans had also bolstered their numbers. All in all, their combined armies represented a formidable, fast-moving force.
“We have mobility on them, and air-power. Additionally, they have lost the element of surprise,” boomed Mai Lee. Still wearing her battlesuit, she ignored the jibes of the officers concerning her personal cowardice. Let them see in battle who would be counted as a coward. She swept a powerful mechanical claw to the south, toward the Polar Range. “There, in the mountains around Grunstein, resides the nest of our enemies. After some careful maneuvering and a diversionary attack, we will strike it hard.”
“Where will we strike?” demanded a cadet out of turn.
Mai Lee wheeled on him. She let him ponder the blue radiance in the mouth of Gi long enough to turn pale before answering. “Right here. The enemy is coming to us, even now. And we shall be waiting for them.”
She brought her titanium fists together with a resounding clang.
Before noon they mounted their first counterattack. Tunneling had been discovered beneath the Arden, a huge tract of forestland that separated the Slipape Counties from the polar range. The aliens were, in fact, building an underground highway between their strongholds in the Polar Range and the counties.
But the Moonbreak Heights, a natural formation of solid granite thrust up from the planet’s interior, formed a barrier to the tunneling. Too deep to dig beneath, they would have to either dig around the obstacle, or take the position and cross it in the open before tunneling on the other side. Mai Lee thought they would try the latter, more daring approach.
Shortly before noon the aliens proved her right by boiling up out of the ground at the foot of the heights. Culus and shrade teams discovered their positions, and were quickly eliminated by sniper fire. Simultaneously, Mai Lee ordered a heavy barrage of artillery fire to suppress the enemy pouring out of the tunnels. The tunnel mouths were quickly turned into a mass of molten craters, and then smoke hid the scene from view.
There was a lull in the fighting.
“Looks like we gave them something to think about,” said Zimmerman, staring into a holo-image enhancing set of lenses. “I can’t make out anything moving, just a lot of bodies.”
“We surprised them, but we haven’t stopped them,” rumbled Mai Lee. “Do you see any of the whale-like digging creatures?”
“Yes,” said Zimmerman. He paused to adjust his goggles. “At least two of them, or what’s left of them.”
“Good.”
“What we should do now is head for their nest immediately. We can hit them by surprise before they get any stronger,” said Zimmerman. “Let them dig their tunnels. Before they’re done we could take their nest. Our lifters move much faster than anything they’ve got.”
Mai Lee grimaced. The man had been whining about this for over an hour now. “That’s why I’m in command,” she stated bluntly.
Biting his tongue, Zimmerman returned his attention to the foot of the heights. “You were right. They’re down there, forming up ranks just inside the treeline to rush the slopes. They must have opened up more tunnels further back in the trees.”
Almost immediately, exhibiting the blinding speed of attack that was characteristic
of their tactics, a dark line of killbeasts rushed out from the treeline and began to climb the slopes. Without orders, the men along the ridge opened fire. Before they could reach cover, the alien line thinned and finally became ragged.
“We’re slaughtering them!” whooped the officers.
Then a wave of counter fire came up from the trees and the slopes. Rifles, plasma-weapons and laser carbines swept the crest of the ridge. Men screamed and were shorn in half. One of Mai Lee’s troopers, his helmet blown off and his head on fire, toppled from the ridgeline and rolled down the slope into the face of the enemy.
Covered by this hail of weapons fire, a new cloud of flying creatures rose up from the trees and zoomed toward the ridgeline. Mai Lee stabbed the intercom button, ordering her helicopters out of hiding. The gunships rose up from the heights and met the airborne enemy with heavy fire. Several culus squadrons diverted to attack the helicopters while others drove on to close with the men on the ridgeline. A great number of them were blasted from the sky to fall on the advancing line of killbeasts below in a rain of pulpy fragments.
Reaching the helicopters and attacking them directly, the crews found themselves in desperate hand-to-hand battles on board their own aircraft. Spiraling crazily, several of the gunships went down in roiling flames.
A handful of the flying demons reached the ridgeline and loosed their shrades. Men fought with knives and handguns. Screams echoed out over the Heights.
“Damn suicidal bastards,” cursed Mai Lee. She dented a battle-computer with a heavy blow from her fist. Fortunately, the machine was built to take such punishment and only flickered once before returning to accurate service.
“Look, they’re moving to flank us,” said Zimmerman, directing her attention to another screen. During the confusion of the culus and shrade attack, the killbeasts had taken the opportunity to rush further up the slopes. More and more dark knots of troops raced out of the treeline and took cover on the slopes. Fanning out, they maneuvered to gain the ridgeline on either flank of the humans.