Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 24

The people threw themselves into preparing to fight the Looters with an enthusiasm that surprised even Blade. Part of it was their desire to please Mazda. More of it was the joy everyone felt at being able to strike a deadly blow at the Looters, a blow that might end their threat for good. This joy was all the greater because when the people's fighters rode out to battle this time, they would all be going. No one who could fight would be left behind.

This was perhaps the biggest gamble of the whole war. If the Looters did come to the battlefield with a strong force of war machines and were willing to risk using the purple ray, the people could be slaughtered. But without bringing out the whole three thousand fighting men and women of the people, there was no chance of inflicting a truly crushing blow on the full strength of the Looters. Blade wanted to smash the Looters-especially the mercenaries-not just defeat them.

Most of the people shared Blade's desire, but did not know all his reasons. Vengeance for their dead and a desire for peace in the future drove most of the People onward. Blade had another reason, one Silora gave him.

«If all the mercenaries are destroyed by your people here in Tharn,» she said, «Konis will be free of them. It can start on its own road back to civilization, and perhaps I can even go home.» Her eyes filled with happy tears at the thought.

Blade put his arm around her to console her but said nothing. It was a lovely fantasy-saving two dimensions for the price of one battle. But he suspected it was only a fantasy. From what Silora had told him, Konis was too far gone to have much hope of clawing its way back up to civilization, in spite of dimension doors and war machines. They had let the barbarians take over, barbarians they had created themselves. If there was any hope at all for them, it probably lay much farther in the future than it did for Tharn.

But it was obvious that Silora wanted to go home to Konis in spite of that, to take her chances there with her own people, to live and die there. Blade made up his mind that he would do everything he could to see that she got her wish, or at least everything that he could do without danger to the people.

A month passed, a month of furious training and making weapons and explosives, of stocking the refuge caves down in the Gorge, of packing up tools and seeds and written records ready to go. Three of the captured war machines were also hidden down in the Gorge. Their pilots were trained on them down there. One remained on the plateau, carefully disguised. Silora tuned its receivers to pick up the signals that would tell of the arrival of a Looter expedition. For the first few days she spent most of her time in the machine listening for that signal. She worked herself close to collapse listening, so Blade set up a regular rotating watch in the machine, reliable fighters trained by Silora to recognize the signal.

But it was Silora herself who came to Blade in the darkness one night to shake him gently awake.

«Mazda, the signal has come. The expedition is in Tharn. A large one, as we expected. I have never seen so many strong signals.»

«Where are they?»

«No more than two days' ride away, I think, and almost straight east.»

«Good.» Blade rose and started pulling on his clothes.

«Go quietly to the King's House and give them the message. Then join me at our machine.»

«I shall.» She rose on tip-toe to kiss him long and warmly, then vanished into the darkness.

They could have reached the Looter camp in less than twenty minutes by flying fast. But Blade did not want to fly quite that fast just a few feet above the plain on a pitch-black night. They had to fly low, to stay below the Looters' horizon for as long as possible.

Halfway there they landed and Silora crawled out onto the rear platform to arm the bomb. Blade was waiting until now for safety's sake. He was quite sure that Silora would not betray him and the people by setting off the bomb deliberately. But he was equally sure that she could make mistakes, and mistakes with atomic bombs can lead to rather impressive displays of fireworks. Blade wanted to be sure that any such fireworks were a good safe distance away from the people.

The clatter of tools and the scraping of metal sounded from outside for about ten minutes. Then a pale and perspiring Silora climbed back in, unreeling a long teksin cord. She handed the leather loop at the end of the cord to Blade, then closed the hatch, leaving only a two-inch opening. Blade carefully pulled on the cord to make sure it would slide freely back and forth through the opening.

Silora sighed with relief and sat down cross-legged on the cabin floor. «That's done, Mazda. Now all we can do is to hope everything works as we planned it to work and that the mercenaries have followed their usual camp plan.»

Blade nodded slowly. «If they don't-«It was time to face something he had not felt it necessary to mention until now. «Suppose we can only destroy the machines if we are willing to destroy your people, the Peace Lords, along with them? Will you stand by me even then, or would you rather be left here and picked up on my way back rather than see that?»

Silora was silent for a moment. «I will fly with you all the way, Mazda. That is as it must be. But if the bomb must fall on the Peace Lords as well as the mercenaries, then-«Her voice failed her for a moment. She swallowed and continued. «Then when it comes time to drop the bomb, I want to go out on the platform and jump with it. It is better that the Peace Lords die than that Tharn and its people die. But if the Peace Lords die, then I must die with them. That is also as it must be, for I could not live long in that case.»

Blade was silent for quite a long time. He hoped she wasn't expecting an answer to that, because he honestly couldn't think of one. Finally he turned back to the controls and lifted the machine into the sky again.

The armed bomb now rode securely in a complex and rugged cradle of leather strips and teksin rods. A quick tug on the cord running in through the hatch and the whole cradle would collapse, letting the bomb roll off the platform of its own weight and fall free. It was fused to explode when it hit the ground. That would not give absolutely the best results, but with an atomic bomb who needed absolutely the best? It would flatten everything; for a mile in every direction, which was more than good enough.

They slid onward through the darkness, listening to the signals of the Looters grow stronger and stronger. About twenty miles out they saw a dim glow on the horizon ahead. It grew steadily stronger as they steered straight for it. At ten miles both of them shouted out loud in delight, as the glow began to separate into three distinct parts, the center one fainter than the other two. At the same time it became possible to distinguish three distinct signals on the direction-finder, each coming from a slightly different location.

Silora's face was one enormous glowing smile that seemed to light up the whole cabin. «They are as usual, Mazda. The Principal Technician of War has not thought anything new was needed against this opponent.»

Blade did not smile. He merely nodded and said, «He will be a very surprised man before too long. Which one is the machine camp?» Within, he felt a great relief. He had not been looking forward to returning home without Silora, after watching her leap to a death he knew she welcomed.

«The farthest one is giving off the usual signal of the machine camp,» she said.

Blade swung the machine to the right and started it on a long curve around the triangle of Looter camps. The one with the machine was at the opposite point of the triangle. If they could skirt the whole patrolled area, they could come up on their target without any warning.

But whatever else he hadn't done, the Looter commander had extended his patrols farther than usual. Five minutes later the radio crackled into life with a loud, harsh voice that completely drowned out the directional signals.

«Unknown machine approaching Sector Seven of Patrol Zone, identify yourself immediately.»

Silora switched the radio to SEND and replied, «Machine 576 returning to operations in control of Peace Lord Second Class Silora Jou after escape from natives. Repeat, this is Peace Lord Second Class Silora Jou. I have escaped from the natives of this dimension. I have-«

«Understand, Peace Lord,» said the voice sharply. «Identification insufficient. You are ordered to ground your machine immediately and await inspection. Failure to do so will lead to your being fired on. Repeat, ground your-«

Silora switched the radio back to SEND and made a rude noise into the microphone. As she shut off the radio entirely, Blade was at work on the power and the controls. The machine shot forward as he fed in the power, accelerating rapidly. When it was moving as fast as he dared to go this close to the ground, he shouted at Silora:

«Hang on!»

He put the machine into a steep climb, opening the power even wider. The machine leaped upward, its speed mounting rapidly. On the screens the plain began to spread out below them, an endless velvety black rug with moving sparks of light on it that were the patrol machines.

Now came the most dangerous part of the whole mission. Instead of using stealth they would have to use speed, hurtling straight down the center of the triangle of Looter camps and dropping the bomb by sheer guesswork from a high altitude.

Blade fed in still more power. The shriek and howl of the air rushing past outside blasted in through the open hatch. It sounded like a hundred madmen all screaming in chorus. Silora put her hands over her ears and Blade would have done the same if he hadn't been too busy with the controls.

They must have been doing close to five hundred miles an hour. The circle of lights that was the camp of the machines was a good fifteen miles away, but it swept toward them with frightening speed. Blade kept the machine lined up precisely on the center of the circle. He wished he didn't have to fly a straight course, but there was no choice. Otherwise he might miss the target, even with the atomic bomb.

At least they would be hard to hit at this speed. Hitting them with a ray or a rocket now would be like hitting a flying mosquito with a pistol shot. It could be done, but it would take good luck as well as good shooting.

The target leaped toward them out of the night at the rate of more than a mile every ten seconds. Blade checked altitude, remembered wind conditions on the ground, did a quick set of mental calculations, wished for a pocket calculator, let alone a bombsight. Now the machine camp was about to pass below. Blade saw the perimeter lights reflected from scores of humped and curved and flat metal shapes in a dozen different sizes spread out in a circle a mile across. As the nearer edge of the circle passed across the center of the forward screen, Blade jerked on the leather loop at the end of the bomb-release cord.

He felt the machine give a little jump as it suddenly became half a ton lighter. A black finned cylinder swept across the rear screen, plunging downward, appearing on the down-looking screen. Blade didn't pay any attention to it. He nosed the machine over into a dive and pulled the hatch shut. The madmen's howling of air outside died to a distant mutter and moan as the machine plunged down through the miles of air, heading for the relative safety of low altitude.

So far, there was no sign that anyone on the ground had even noticed them, let alone fired at them. That was just as well. Blade knew they would have to stay closer to the Looters than he liked until after the bomb went off-or didn't go off. He had to watch what happened and then return to the people to tell the tale. If the defenders would just stay asleep until the bomb woke them up, that was all right with him!

Blade had guessed it would take the bomb roughly two minutes to reach the ground. Before the first minute was past they were racing through the patrol line. On one screen Blade saw a distant flash of purple as one of the patrol machines let loose with its ray. A desperate shot at them, or was the enemy firing at some ghost sprung from his own surprise and nerves?

One minute. One minute twenty seconds. One minute forty seconds. Two minutes. Two minutes ten seconds. Damn it, was the bloody thing going to take forever to fall? Or had it already hit and smashed itself to bits instead of going off? In another min-

Then there was no darkness anywhere, as the sun seemed to rise behind them. Silora screamed and clapped her hands over her eyes as the rear screen dissolved into a searing blaze of blinding white light. Blade shut his eyes and fumbled for the button to cut off the screen. When he heard the switch click over he opened his eyes again.

The plain still showed up with almost daylight clarity in the other screens. Blade nosed upward, so that the shock wave would not slam the machine against the ground.

The shock wave caught them a hundred feet up, throwing the machine nose down and tail up until Blade thought it was going to turn a complete somersault, end over end. Then the roar and rumble was past, spreading out into the darkness that was slowly returning to the plain.

Blade cut in the rear screen again. The fireball was almost gone now. Where it had been a terrible glowing gray white pillar of smoke loomed miles high in the night. The top was already reaching the stratosphere and beginning to spread out in the high winds and thin air many miles aloft. Around the base of the pillar were scattered hunched dark shapes, some of them giving off their own clouds of smoke.

Blade swung the machine around and raced back toward the base of the pillar. Three miles out he stopped. That was close enough to see clearly, not close enough to risk catching too much fall-out or being an easy target if some Looter was somehow still alert and on his feet.

Blade did see clearly, and what he saw was enough to make him turn away again. Not a machine in the whole machine camp could have been more than a mile from ground zero. The ones that hadn't been vaporized completely or melted into slag would never fly or fight again. Less than a hundred yards away a full-sized war machine lay on the ground, flung three miles through the air by the blast, half-buried and half-crushed by the impact of its landing. On one blackened metal side a pale man-shaped silhouette stood out with startling clarity. That was doubtless the shadow cast by a Looter, a Looter who had been standing between the machine and ground zero, a Looter who now formed part of the cloud that towered ten miles above the plain.

A crack Royal Air Force bomber crew might have dropped the bomb more precisely. But any more precision than Blade had managed would have been wasted. Blade's eyes and reflexes and instincts had done all that was needed.

Blade let out a sigh of relief as he turned the machine homeward. He could return to the people bringing word that the first part of their victory had been won this night.

He could also return bringing Silora with him. He could not say that he loved her as he had loved Zulekia. But he could say that he would not have been at all happy to leave her behind as part of that monstrous cloud-pillar.