Battlefield Earth Part 53

Suddenly Terl got the combination! Both s.h.i.+ps' motors smoothed into shrieking agreement.

But Jonnie's combination was straight down and six feet under, hypersonic.

At an abrupt two thousand miles an hour, both s.h.i.+ps hurtled toward the earth.

In an instant, Terl apparently realized that this set of console coordinates was sudden death.

Jonnie could see him in the cabin, moving urgently.

With only five hundred feet to go, Terl frantically punched in the reverse combination. His s.h.i.+p motors went into a fighting howl.

The inertia of the ma.s.s carried it down to within twenty feet of the ground before the descent halted.

But the force on the hot motors was too great for them to overcome.

Both s.h.i.+ps burst into an orange ball of fire!

Terl's body hurtled out of the door and struck rolling.

The s.h.i.+ps struck!

With a swing of his legs Jonnie headed downward into a dive. With a thumb on the jet pack throttle, he guided himself to land about a hundred feet from the fiercely flaming wreck.

Terl was still rolling.

Chapter 6.

Jonnie shed his jet backpack. It was almost expended anyway. Not taking his eyes from Terl, he drew the belt gun and slid off its safety.

Terl had been on fire for a moment. He was not now. He had rolled it out in the damp spring gra.s.s. He was fifty feet away. He was lying motionless. He had a breathe-mask on.

Jonnie approached cautiously. This was a very treacherous beast. He walked within forty feet. Thirty feet. Terl was just lying there, inert.

A statement Robert the Fox had made drifted through Jonnie's head: "Plan well, but when battle is joined, expect the unexpected! And cope with it!" Terl's escape had scrambled their plans. The compound down there was without air cover. The lord alone knew what was going on. The sound of gunfire was rattling and thudding in the distance. The mutter of flames came from the burning planes nearby.

Jonnie didn't look. He had his eyes on Terl, watchful. He stopped. Twenty-five feet was close enough. He could not quite see through the faceplate. Terl was singed. There was some dried green blood on his jacket.

Suddenly Terl's hand blurred and a small gun appeared in it like magic.

Jonnie dropped at the first hint of motion and fired.

There was a flash as Terl's gun exploded in his paw. Then he was up and starting to run.

There were questions Jonnie wanted answered. His first snap shot had been lucky and had hit the gun. He drew a careful bead on Terl's right leg. "Here's one for the horses," flashed through his head. He fired.

The leg buckled and Terl went down. The foot stayed twisted in the wrong direction.

Jonnie walked over to where the exploded gun lay. It was a very slim weapon. Was this what was called an "a.s.sa.s.sin gun"?

Terl was lying there, motionless. "Quit shamming, Terl," said Jonnie.

Terl suddenly laughed and sat up. "Why didn't you die in the morgue?"

"Animal," said Terl, putting his foot right-way to but carefully sitting quiet under the menace of the gun twenty feet away. "I can hold my breath for four minutes!"

He was too cheerful. His leg was bleeding through his pants. He was singed. But he was too cheerful. Jonnie knew there was something else. He backed up.

Moving so that he could keep Terl in view out of the corner of his eye, he glanced around the plain. The compound was behind them, possibly twenty miles. Gunfire was coming faintly from that direction. He knew he should make some effort to help them.

Where were the girls? Probably they had gone on. No! There they were! Jonnie hadn't expected that. They were coming back. Riding at a slow trot, cautiously, they were coming back. They were about a mile away.

It hit Jonnie suddenly. The shock of not finding them in the cage, the fear that they were still in that holocaust down there, had stayed suspended. He was swept by a tide of relief. They were all right!

Jonnie waved his arm to signal them to come on in.

Still alert to Terl, Jonnie scanned farther a field. One of the pilots that had bailed out had come in this direction. He peered. Yes! There was somebody moving about four miles to the south- hard to see due to camouflage dress- but a trained eye such as Jonnie's detected by the motion of things, not only by contrasts.

Terl was laughing again. "You'll never get away with it, animal. Psychlo will be into this place in a swarm!"

Jonnie didn't answer. He waved the girls in. The horses were shying as they came around the burning wreck. Chrissie was mounted on Old Pork, Pattie on Dancer. The horses weren't blowing, so their earlier riding must not have been so fast.

The girls were unable to believe it was Jonnie. Chrissie stayed mounted, some distance away. She was ghastly pale. Her neck was raw red from the collar now gone. "Jonnie? Is that you, Jonnie?" He looked different in the blue clothing. Pattie had no doubts. She sprang from the back of Dancer and raced to Jonnie and put her arms around his waist, her hair coming up to his pocket. "See? See?" she was shouting back to Chrissie. "I told you Jonnie would come! I told you and told you!"

Chrissie was sitting her horse and crying.

"You got the monster!" said Pattie, excited, pointing at Terl.

"Don't get between me and him," said Jonnie, caressing her hair but holding the gun on Terl. He should be at the compound; he must not dally here.

Jonnie didn't want the girls near him in case Terl moved. He had a sudden idea. "Chrissie! Look down to the south there about four miles."

Chrissie took a grip on herself and wiped her eyes. Jonnie wanted her to do something. She looked. She tried to speak, then cleared her throat and tried again. "Yes, Jonnie." She looked harder. "It's something moving."

"It's a friend," said Jonnie. "Ride down there as fast as you can whip up Old Pork and bring him back here!"

Chrissie straightened up. She guided Old Pork well around Terl and then lit out to the south, her hair streaming back as Old Pork raced away.

The gunfire was picking up in volume to the south. Being gentle with Pattie and walking sideways while keeping a gun on Terl, Jonnie got to a position where he could see the compound. They stood on a slightly higher rise than it.

In the clear afternoon air he could see it, in miniature, but vividly.

White water was spraying two or three hundred feet in the air. It looked like a waterfall in reverse. Then he knew what had happened. The automatic fire sprinkler system had let go.

Those Scots down there were fighting in a torrent of water!

What he was afraid of was that the Psychlos would get out a tank or some additional battle planes. He surveyed the sky. It was free of planes.

As he watched he saw a flash of fire and then the distant "boomp" came to them, the sound bazookas make. He was not sure the bazookas could get through a Psychlo tank.

They needed air support down there! And here he was twenty miles away!

There wasn't another single pilot in those a.s.sault teams. They had committed their all.

He s.h.i.+fted the gun impatiently. Terl was sitting there laughing again. By rights he should simply shoot him full of daylight. But he had a feeling Terl knew something, and was up to something more.

"How'd the girls get away?" said Jonnie to Terl.

"Why, animal, how can you doubt me? I promised you I'd let them loose as soon as you delivered the gold. I simply kept my word this morning. I didn't suspect you'd be so false you would..."

"Come off it, Terl. Why'd you let them loose?"

Terl laughed again, more loudly. Pattie had gone over to get Dancer who was wandering off. She was coming back. "I don't know why this nasty-old-awful-thing did it. But just before dawn, he cut off our collars and told us to get on the horses and ride away. We went about ten miles and hid, thinking maybe you'd show up. We had no place to go. Then this afternoon the whole place seemed to blow up, bang, bang, and we rode toward the mountains."

Suddenly Jonnie added it up. He spoke to Terl. "So you murdered Char, did you, and left him in the cage with that man-knife in him so that man could be blamed for his death. The question is, Terl, how were you going to wipe out the humans?"

Terl had been looking at his watch. He reached toward his pocket. Jonnie abruptly made him desist.

"Just two talons," said Terl, holding them up.

Jonnie indicated he could but was very watchful.

Terl plucked something that was about a foot square from his side pocket, moving very delicately and gingerly under the watchful gun. It was a large remote computer board. Thin. Familiar in machine operation but a bit bigger and dirtier than usual.

With a laugh Terl tossed it toward Jonnie, who backed up in case it exploded.

"You took the wrong remote off me, rat brain."

Jonnie stared down at it, not comprehending. The keyboard only had date, hour, and fire on it. It had no stop or correction tab.

"It's irreversible," said Terl. "Once punched and activated, the board is worthless. This morning before the semiannual, I used it up."

Terl glanced at his watch. "In about ten minutes now, you'll all collect your pay whether you messed up Psychlo or not!" He went into a gale of laughter. "You were after the wrong remote!"

The laughter made him sputter in his face mask. "And here you are," he finally managed, "twenty miles away and you can't do a thing about it. And couldn't anyway!"

He pounded his paws in the dirt, he was laughing so hard.

Chapter 7.

At that exact moment Zzt in the underground hangars was almost out of his wits.

Ever since that wild recoil had occurred at the end of the semiannual, things had been in chaos.

The rumor had been flying about that it was humans out there. Men! Zzt knew better. Those silly slugs could do nothing. It was undoubtedly Tolneps, landing in here from their system. Zzt, although his thinking was interrupted every few seconds by curses at Terl, had it all worked out. The Tolneps had b.u.g.g.e.red up the teleportation bands to paralyze counterattack and were in here after the still not inconsiderable mineral content of this planet. There had been trouble with the Tolneps before and the last war with them was inconclusive. They were short, about half the size of a Psychlo, and they could breathe almost anything. And were immune to Psychlo gas barrages, worse luck. Therefore he was rigging a Mark 32 low-flying ground strafer, the most heavily gunned plane in the hundreds of planes in these hangars.

And d.a.m.n and blast that Terl, was supposed to be in charge of defense! And where were the standby, alert battle planes? Out in the weather. And where were the tanks? Snug and rusting in the underground tank park! And where were the reserves at other minesites? Pulled in here!

d.a.m.n Terl! There was no fuel cartridge or ammunition supply inside the compound. Zzt was illogical in blaming Terl for this, since it was against company rules to store them inside a compound. They were nearly a half-mile from here, and two parties of Psychlos that had tried to get to the dump had been slaughtered. And that was another thing that proved it was Tolneps. The Psychlos who had been hit simply exploded into a pale green flash. Only Tolneps could invent weapons like that!

So he had to scavenge in the old planes and ground cars for half-used cartridges and ammunition charges. Oh, there was quite a bit to be found, but it couldn't be depended on.

He had come to physical blows with the two Chamco brothers, blast them. They were readying up a heavy armored tank. Two tanks that had gotten out that violent afternoon had been blown to cinders. So the Chamcos were rigging one of the old brutes of the Basher cla.s.s: "Bash Our Way to Glory." Nothing could penetrate its hide and its guns wrecked things for miles. The Chamcos were salvaging fuel and ammunition cartridges for it, and they had the nerve, the twisted metal nerve, to maintain that the attackers were Hockners from Duraleb, a system Psychlo had completely whipped two hundred years ago.

The battle had been over who got the cartridges, and that pompous midget Ker had come down and given them both half. Another Terl mess!

The cartridges didn't fit the Mark 32. Zzt had spent valuable time machining a false case around them to get them into the tubes. d.a.m.n Terl!

He had told his men to move that d.a.m.ned drone two hours ago. d.a.m.n Terl!

Now here he was. He had found a copilot: one of the executives in the draft that had just arrived, rated combat on a Mark 32, named Nup; a dimwit- but that's what you got on an out-of-the-way planet like this- who thought it was a typical Bolbod attack, based on a rumor he had heard in the kerbango shops lately in the imperial City that a conquest of the Bolbods was intended.

Zzt had collected a combat breathe-mask, gotten a shoulder bag of extra vials, gotten his sidearms, put spare rations in his pocket, and last but not least put his favorite wrench into the side of his boot, a wrench that sometimes came in handy in any kind of fight or situation.

The Mark 32 motors turned over easily. It purred. In no time at all he would be out there and that would be the very positive end of this attack! d.a.m.n Terl!

Zzt let off the skid grips and taxied the Mark 32, "Hit 'Em Low, Kill 'Em," toward the firing door. Mechanics leaped to get out of his way. The place was in a turmoil of Psychlos trying to get planes ready with nothing. And that d.a.m.ned drone was still standing there.

Ordinarily you could fire three planes at once through that door. It was high enough even to add a fourth. But that ancient relic of a gas drone was so wide and so tall it was blocking the whole door. Just what he'd told Terl. d.a.m.n Terl! There was noway he could get the Mark 32 past it.

Zzt leaned out the door and screamed for the s.h.i.+ft foreman. He came rus.h.i.+ng up. Zzt almost bit him. "Move that d.a.m.ned drone! Two hours ago l-'

"It won't dolly," panted the foreman. He pointed. Four dolly trucks had been trying to push it away. "It won't move!"

Zzt gave his equipment bag a hoist onto his shoulder and sprang down. "You imbecile crunch! The only inside control that thing has is its mag-grapnels. Why haven't you let it off! Those big skis are magnetically locked to this platform! Why don't you learn-'

"It's a very old drone," chattered the foreman, his wits starting to crumble under Zzt's glare.

Zzt rushed to the door of the drone. It was a huge door, big enough to load a dozen gas canisters at a time.

Somebody had put a rolling ladder there and Zzt ran up it, his equipment clattering, and pried at the door. It was locked! An armored door itself the size of a plane.

"Where's the key?" screamed Zzt.