Planet America (38 page)

Most of the attention then was drawn to either end of the smoking parade of vehicles. In the middle, where the Master Blasters now lay stalled, the artillery soldiers were firing in vain every time the flying machine reappeared. One cluster of troops had just ceased a barrage when they turned around to realize a small army of enemy soldiers had suddenly landed in their midst. The enemy soldiers delivered a fusillade of blaster fire right into the crowded group of BMK soldiers. Dozens were killed, many more were wounded. In the confusion, more enemy troops appeared and started painting one of the Master Blasters with low-energy beams from their electron torches.

Once the weapon was completely enveloped by the bluish rays, there was a flash, and the huge tubed array blinked out. Stolen, just like that. This happened again and again, more than a half dozen times. The column's soldiers were helpless in trying to stop the raiders from stealing their huge weaponry. The enemy's quick dispersal of massive firepower in a confined area essentially walled off the weapon and its surroundings long enough for the raiders to swipe it by pushing it, end first, through an expanded Twenty 'n Six field. Once the huge gun was gone, the raiders would simply disappear through the field as well. Then it would close up, just like it was never there at all.

The attack on the convoy lasted not ten minutes. Eight Master Blasters were stolen; the rest had been destroyed by the passing flying machine, which never ceased its devastating strafing runs of the battle area. Even after all of the raiders had safely blinked out and the rest of the big weapons were destroyed, the aircraft continued to pummel the convoy until nothing was left. Only then did it leave the area for good.

Just a few dozen BMK soldiers survived the attack. Most were in shock. Many were wounded. There were no officers, no means of communication, and no way to get out of Wishbone Pass except to walk. Those that were able began doing just that, intent on reaching what they believed to be the nearest friendly position: the advance observation posts up on Fire Rock Ridge.

They finally woke Deaux around nine o'clock.

He immediately threw a fit, kicking the bed clothes off his hovering bunk and threatening to kill the two officers who had roused him by poking his feet with their gun butts.

But waking him had been necessary, the officers pleaded. There were some significant developments he just had to know about. The secret enemy camp had been found. It was in a valley out West that presented a perfect piece of terrain over which the BMK could attack.

Deaux's eyes brightened sleepily at this good news. Then came the bad: The convoy carrying the BMK's full complement of Master Blasters on the planet had been attacked and the weapons stolen or destroyed. There had also been trouble contacting the advance scouts who had spotted the enemy encampment in the first place. All of Attack Force Delta was awaiting Deaux's next command.

The first thing Deaux did was panic. To his way of thinking, the loss of the Master Blasters suddenly meant that he would not have enough troops to vanquish the enemy. That only raw manpower could make up for die deficit of not having any of the powerful multitubed weapons on hand. In a way, he was right. Though he still had almost a half million men on Planet America under arms, many were tied up occupying the empty cities the BMK had so dubiously conquered. Moving all of them west would take days.

What Deaux should have done was simply order half of the Master Blasters on Planet France to be transferred to America with all due haste, and then wait for the BMK troops already in the region of the enemy camp to converge and then attack.

But Deaux decided on another command instead.

His communique left BMK HQ shortly afterward. It was foolishly dispatched via a standard communication string with no encryption, no effort at all to make it scrambled. It was directed back at Moon 39.

The message was blunt: The BMK needed warm bodies who could fire a blaster rifle. Deaux was ordering that everyone left on Moon 39—techs, base security troops, space dock workers— be issued a weapon and shipped to Planet America immediately. This collection of primarily logistics troops would constitute yet another army of about seventy-five thousand men. But it would also leave Moon 39 virtually deserted. No matter, Deaux wanted the soldiers sent down anyway.

But there was another problem: All the available troop shuttles were either on America or Planet France. There was no way to transport these rear-area troops. "Deploy six of the moon's dozen space cruisers," the people back on Moon 39 were told. Each could hold about twelve thousand troops. Though it would be a tight squeeze for some of them, the voyage in would take less than an hour.

The people still on Moon 39 were told these reenforcements had to be above the Ghost River Valley battlefield before eleven o'clock that morning, now just two hours away. If not, Deaux would personally disintegrate the head of any officer found responsible for causing even a minute's delay.

25

By the time the surviving artillerymen arrived on foot
from the convoy disaster, the scene atop Fire Rock Ridge was total chaos.

Other scout shuttles had landed, and their occupants had found sixty-five dead comrades in the trenches and thirty-three shell-shocked ones in the woods. Deaux's own personal transport craft had arrived as well, along with another dozen shuttle-craft. The huge shuttles had flown west from St. Louis, carrying shock troops and equipment. They were disgorging themselves of cargo and soldiers, then quickly leaving the area and heading back East to pick up more troops.

The BMK's massive deployment west had begun. But as a result, there were now more than twelve thousand BMK troops along the ridge, including the few survivors of the advance scouting unit. The ridge was way too small to hold all these soldiers properly. They were crowded together so tightly, many could not see more than a few feet in any direction. Some were standing, others were sitting on the ground. Still others were asleep, and a few were even suffocating. Their officers didn't know what to do. With Deaux himself on the scene, all orders were coming from behind the sealed hatch of his private, very luxurious Shuttle #1.

It was now about ten o'clock, and Deaux had yet to emerge from his trailer.

No sooner had the artillerymen appeared on Fire Rock when the senior-most soldier was brought into Deaux's command vehicle.

The man was a sergeant major, and he had the unpleasant task of telling Deaux just how eight of the Master Blasters the BMK had been relying on for this battle had fallen into enemy hands, leaving the four others to be destroyed. Deaux did not take his report well.

The BMK leader finally stormed out of his command vehicle, dragging the artilleryman behind him. Against the advice of his security detail, Deaux pushed his way through the crowd of troops and marched the artilleryman right up to the lip of the ridge itself. Gazing down at the enemy's camp, they could clearly see the Americans setting up the eight stolen artillery pieces. Suddenly, an army that had previously fought mostly with ancient rifles and machine guns now possessed eight examples of the deadliest weapon in the Galaxy. Readings from a nearby TVZ scanner said the big ray guns would be operational within the hour.

Deaux was so infuriated, he drew out one of Xirstix's silver-handled ray guns, put it against the artilleryman's forehead, and pulled the trigger ... but nothing happened. Deaux had failed to hit the weapon's activation switch first. Otherwise the man's head would have disappeared in a cloud to subatomic particles.

Deaux's security troops were able to hustle the terrified man away, but not before Deaux called after them that this man and all of the other survivors from the convoy would be put up on the line, unarmed, for the inevitable BMK attack.

When the long march across the plain began, he said, these men would be right out front, human targets facing the same Master Blasters they'd been carrying to the battle just a few hours before.

Adding more confusion to the scene atop the ridge were the lightning-quick strafing passes still being made by the robot 33418.

The airborne clanker would show up periodically, sometimes approaching from the south or sometimes from over the top of the small mountain to the BMK's rear. He would streak over the BMK position, flying very low, dispensing short bursts from his very narrow-field destructo-beam. The ridge was so crowded with troops, the robot's lethal rays usually found at least a dozen victims with each pass and sometimes a piece of equipment, too. The loss of manpower from these attacks was not great, and Deaux's shuttle was being protected by a crude but effective energy shield (the only one in the BMK's inventory), so he was in no immediate danger. But the harassment factor from the clanker's hit-and-run attacks was tremendous. Those soldiers in the vicinity of the robot's last pass were obsessed with searching the sky, thinking they'd be next.

Yet there was so much confusion on top of the ridge that many of the other soldiers didn't realize their position was being attacked at all.

It was quickly clear that there were too many troops on Fire Rock Ridge and not enough down on the Plain of Stars itself.

Again, a logistics problem had emerged. All of the available troop shuttles were in service carrying soldiers over from St. Louis and Chicago. So a quick airlift down to the valley floor would not be possible. When told of this, Deaux lapsed into one of his dark moods. He ordered his field commanders to have the troops climb down the ridge to the valley below. This would be no easy task; the ridge sat about eight hundred feet above the plain, and its western face was practically sheer rock all the way down. When informed of these dangers, Deaux issued another decree. The first men to climb down should be officers and key sublieutenants only. This way, when the bulk of the troops reached the valley floor, the officers would already be in place to command them. Deaux's field commanders knew this was foolishness, but they had no other choice than to carry out the orders. No matter who went down the cliff first, the purloined Blasters would be operational very soon, and any large deployment after that would be disastrous.

So the commanders gathered what units they could and had their officers step out. They were briefed on the new plan and told to use their electron torches to fashion thick ropes of steel weave. Several hundred of these lines were produced in just a few minutes. The steel ropes were then secured to the top of the ridge by melting their fibers into the cliff rock itself.

Then the BMK officers began the long climb down.

It was just about this time when a message from space came in.

At first, it seemed to carry some good news for the BMK position. One of the space cruisers dispatched from Moon 39

had already arrived in orbit, a full thirty-four minutes ahead of Deaux's deadline. It was carrying 11,500 third-tier trqpps, fully armed and fitted for combat. The five other ships were on their way in as well.

Deaux was delighted upon hearing this news. Army Central was reported moving quickly to the front, and Army South was approaching, too. Now that the Moon 39 troops were on hand, Deaux believed he'd overcome the loss of the Master Blasters by providing more fodder for them to shoot at once the ground attack finally began.

He ordered the huge space cruiser—it was nearly a half mile long, and shaped like a gigantic wedge—to come down on the Plain of Stars itself to dispatch its troops. With the handful of cruisers right behind it, if all went well, the BMK would have more than seventy thousand soldiers—though not top-notch ones—on the ground within the next few minutes. The ship reported that it would begin its descent immediately.

By this time, the first elements of the BMK officers climbing down off the ridge had reached the plain below. There were more than five hundred steel ropes hanging off the cliff, and the officers were descending at a fairly quick pace. Once on the ground, they could clearly see the Ghost River about a mile and a half away. Two thousand feet beyond that was the enemy's first line of fortifications. When the BMK finally began its advance and its troops reached the river, they would be able to quickly construct bridges with their electron torches to carry them across the two hundred-foot-wide stream. Once they reached the other side, the ground attack would begin in earnest.

Several BMK officers fell to their deaths trying to climb down the sheer rock face. Their bodies were routinely disintegrated after being stripped of their weapons, equipment, and valuables. For the most part, though, the descent went well. Soon there were several hundred BMK officers right where they were supposed to be: on the Plain of Stars, waiting for the rest of their troops to climb down.

Suddenly, the sky above the valley floor opened up.

Even though it was a clear day, a huge bank of black clouds appeared, and a lightning bolt went shooting across the sky. Emerging from the cloud was the first space cruiser dispatched from Moon 39. This made the officers on the valley floor breathe a little easier. The ship was carrying more than eleven thousand men. Once they were put on the ground, the BMK force in the immediate area would almost double in size, with more to come.

But just then came a terrible noise. It was louder than the crack of thunder caused when the space cruiser popped in. This screech was loud enough for the troops down on the plain to drop their equipment and cover their ears. Looking up, they saw a speck of silver falling out of the sun. It was trailing a long plume of white smoke behind it and was twisting through the sky at a very unnatural rate. It was down near the ground in less than a second. Only then did the BMK troops realize this was the enemy's red, white, and blue magic weapon that had been inflicting huge casualties on the Bad Moon Knights ever since they'd landed on this planet.

This time it had announced its arrival with a tremendous sonic boom.

The craft streaked right over the plain, then turned upward, creating another massive boom. Then its nose opened up in a blinding flash, and six blaster beams shot out of it. Their intended target was the space cruiser, which had just come into view. The BMK troops on the plain and up on the ridge watched in horror as the small flying machine began mercilessly blasting away at the suddenly vulnerable starship. There was no way the cruiser could shoot back; it didn't carry any defensive weapons. Nor could the troops on the ground fire at the attacker. It was moving way too fast.