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Ochoans, who were intelligent, small, native fliers, not domesticated bugs
being steered by drivers, but it was like the machine gun versus the rifle.
You could hit something far better with a rifle, but if you could fire enough
bullets in the right general direction, you could do more damage. This wave of
rocket-launching bugs let go with twenty, thirty rockets almost at once, then
veered off and up. Again, several were knocked down, but it was daunt-ing to
see some explosions strike on or very near the things, who nevertheless kept
coming.
The two buildings were engulfed in smoke and flames, and outer walls shook and
crumbled. The columns of the Grand Hall began to give way, and with them the
flag deck above them as well.
There was now so much noise and smoke that it was impossible to tell what was
happening. There was a brief break in the smoke just off the now smoking and
battered palace, and a series of quick coded lights.
"Still function-ing," it said. "Most guns out, but they will have to dig us
out."
The Baron and his unit felt some strength and confidence from that, but it
didn't mean a thing in the end.
A large number of the great black carriers were landing just over the wall,
and on any ledges and smoothed-out areas they could. The smaller intelligent
bugs, the Jerminians, were almost certainly forming into formidable units
there and having no problems marching right up the sheer sides of the thing.
They knew, however, that unlike those damned transport bugs, Jerminians were
as susceptible to bullets and blasts as Ochoans were.
So far it was still playing out, but the Baron began to doubt the result. The
sight of so many Ochoans dropping from the skies, and of his two national
symbols being blown up and burned, gave him no comfort at all.
Were they all that confident still? They moved like it. Did they think they
had large forces pinned down in the castles and the rest sealed up here, or
had they suspected or seen what they should not, or had their spies tipped
them? Their allies in Zone certainly had it all figured out by now, prob-ably
earlier, but how could they get the message here? Did they have the way to do
it?
"In range!" somebody shouted. "Fire!"
The Baron didn't even look. He galvanized into action, put the sights on
maximum range and began a back and forth 180 sweep out there in the crater.
The other portable emplacements did the same, overlapping their fire, creating
a deadly curtain.
In what seemed seconds he was empty, and felt panic and confusion. His wife
was on it in a minute, throwing the old canister out and inserting a new one.
"Closed! Fire!" she screamed, ducking down.
They were not only firing now, they were getting return fire. It sounded like
a child playing with some musical toy as the bullets went ping ping PING
!
!
! all around and rico-cheted all over. The Baron felt a slight sting in his
left side but ignored it; he kept firing, firing, and finally, through the
smoke and haze, he saw the enemy advancing and the bright flashes of his and
the other's fire against their shell shields. He saw many of them crumple in
place and seem to collapse like a balloon with the air rushing out of them, to
be walked over by others in disciplined ranks. The hard rock was creating
deadly ricochets for them as well, and there were far more of them to hit.
His blood was up. He would never have suspected this feeling, this enormous
rush that for the moment put fear aside because there simply wasn't time for
it. "Gia! What's keeping the ammo?" he shouted, then saw her, slumped, eyes
wide open but seeing nothing, her pretty body bleeding from a dozen wounds.
"Gia!"
he shouted in anguish. You didn't die at that age, that pretty, with that much
position and wealth.
You didn't die save perhaps from accident, or you died ancient with your
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hundreds of descendants around you. People didn't die like this
! People he knew and loved didn't die like this!
Two of the runners reached up and pulled her body uncer-emoniously out of the
cage, and one of them leaped in and fed the next canister into the gun.
"Highness! You must fire!" she screamed at him, but he just stood there,
watching Gia's crumpled body below, like some horrible rag doll.
There were sudden explosions all around him, and one was so close it shook the
gun and almost toppled him. He started swinging around, unable to stop or
catch his balance. They were all above him, all around
him! These These things
!
One of the runners managed to catch the lower ammo feeder and they stopped the
merry-go-round, but more and more explosions were shaking them. At the far
end, a bomb from one of the dark shapes above struck a gun just like his and
he saw it rise into the air, as if in slow motion, and pieces of it and pieces
of
Ochoans flying all over, all over . . .
The runner reached up and used a wing to shake him. "Highness! We cannot
stand! You must retreat!
There is no purpose to your death at this point!" she shouted. Almost
immediately something shot from the advancing troops struck her and he saw her
chest almost explode as the projectile continued through her and opened a
horrible, fatal wound. Her blood splattered all over him, and he screamed and
was out of there.
As soon as the few surviving others saw the Baron leap out and glide down
almost automatically to the ground, unable to fly well, and literally run
right into the Well Gate, they abandoned their positions and followed suit.
An eerie, terrible clicking sound now began all around the Gate, echoing back
and magnifying itself as it hit the walls and bounced back again and again.
There were still some explosions, and some fire, but it was slowly coming to a
halt.
The clicking grew even louder, more rhythmic, coming from the great beetlelike
troops of the Jerminians.
A cheer of sorts, made with stiff flightless wings and hard man-dibles, a
terrible, mechanistic cheer . . .
There was some fighting, apparently fierce fighting, still going on in the
room-to-room conquest of the two great buildings on the inside walls, but for
the most part it was over.
The forces of the New Empire held the center, and the only escape route, of
the Ochoan nation.
At that news, one of the Jerminian officers left his position at the rear and
moved quickly up and toward the Well Gate. "We want a basic report from all
the units in immediate engagement here," he told his aides.
"As soon as possible, bring in the main supplies and fortify both this area
and the four points on the crater rim. Any dead bodies nobody wants to eat,
our or theirs, should be thrown into the Gate. Dead, they won't be
transported, they will simply be returned to energy. Move! I want you,
Captain, to go through the Gate and report as quickly as possible to our
ambassadors, who will be waiting there eagerly for your report."
"At once, Excellency!" the officer responded, and junior officers were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]