Return To Kaldak

Chapter 9

The dim light in the tail of the antigravity sky-tug suddenly blinked twice. The sergeant in the bow of the balloon gondola unhooked the towing cable and let it drop away into the night. The whine of the tug's propellers died away, and the three balloon-loads of Fourth Battalion paratroopers were alone in the silent darkness.

«Count off,» came the word, in whispers. They were a good mile up and several miles from the nearest Tribesmen, so it really made no sense to whisper. A hundred-and-twenty Fourth Battalion infantrymen rode in the three balloon gondolas. Now that the tug had cast off, they were drifting before the wind.

If the wind cooperated, the balloons would drift toward an important Tribesman village. According to aerial reconnaissance, the village held much of the ammunition and weapons sent by the Doimari for the Tribesmen in the area. It might even hold a few Doimari advisers.

Parachuting from balloons drifting silently in the night sky, the Kaldakans hoped to surprise the village. The ammunition and weapons would be destroyed, the advisers captured.

Then the company would dig in and wait for a Kaldakan offensive against the Tribesmen between the village and the border. Faced with Fighting Machines and artillery, the Tribesmen would have to retreat. Their main line of retreat lay through a pass controlled by the village. They would be retreating right into the company's arms.

At least that was the plan, as Blade understood it from the briefing. He also understood how many things could go wrong with it, and how fatal some of them could be to the isolated company. Since he was supposed to be a new recruit, about to jump into his first battle with the Fourth Battalion, he kept his mouth shut. It wouldn't do for him to be caught thinking like a combat veteran and an officer.

At least he would be down on the ground, not up here with the balloon crews. Infantry combat was nasty, vicious, and dangerous, but you still had solid ground under your feet and usually some place to hide. The balloon crews would fight their battle high in the sky, hanging helplessly from a couple of million cubic feet of highly explosive hydrogen. Even if they took to their parachutes, they weren't necessarily out of the woods. They could land in wilderness and die of starvation, or land among Tribesmen and be tortured to death.

Even in the civilized lands, few lights showed on the ground at night. Here in the Tribal lands it was like looking down into a bottomless pit. Far away Blade saw what might have been a campfire, or maybe just the reflection of the half-moon on a pond.

Finally the order came to hook up. Blade clipped the static line of his parachute to the cable which ran around the edge of the gondola. Then he began to breathe slowly and steadily, to relax himself. He'd made more than forty parachute jumps, some in combat, but he still got a few butterflies in his stomach before each one. You were just as dead if your chute failed on the hundredth jump as on the first.

«Five-four-three-two»-by alternate numbers-«jump?» came the sergeant's growl.

Dark shapes began hurling themselves over the edge and plummeting out of sight. Moments later Blade saw the ghostly shapes of camouflaged parachutes deploying. The men were jumping alternately from the left and right sides of the gondolas, to keep them balanced.

The man to Blade's right was gone. Then the man opposite him followed. There was a hand on Blade's shoulder, and he heaved himself up on to the rim of the gondola. He was carrying sixty pounds of weapons and gear plus his chute. Then the hand was pushing into the small of his back, and he was stepping out into space.

As always, the fall until his chute opened seemed to go on forever. Once he was swaying under the canopy, Blade stopped worrying. It was an almost windless night at low altitude. He wouldn't be dragged helplessly across rough ground by a runaway parachute.

From somewhere off in the darkness came a long ghastly scream, dying away as the soldier with the faulty chute plunged to death. Blade swallowed and unslung his laser rifle. He might need to discourage a reception committee on the ground.

Nothing of the kind happened. Blade floated down to a standing-up landing in a meadow of long, sweet-smelling grass. By the time he'd got rid of his chute, three more men joined him. Two more came with a few minutes, one of them a female corporal from another platoon. Blade knew they were lucky not to be even more scattered and confused than this.

When it was clear that no one else was likely to show up soon, the corporal took command. She took her bearings and led her improvised squad off in what she hoped was the direction of the target village.

Blade rather hoped the corporal was wrong. If they did find the village, they might easily be hopelessly outnumbered by its defenders. Even if they weren't massacred, they would probably destroy the surprise and alert the Doimari advisers in time for them to flee. The Intelligence people would make life very difficult for anyone who wrecked their hopes of getting prisoners.

As they groped through the darkness, the ground underfoot began to slope sharply. Blade saw they were climbing down the side of a deep crater at least a hundred feet wide. It looked new, with only short grass and weeds growing on the sides. Blade stumbled over something hard, picked it up, and saw that it was a strip of worked metal. It was oddly light for its size and showed no signs of rust or corrosion.

Something fairly large had fallen or exploded here, not long ago. A sky-tug, either a Kaldakan scout or a Doimari one bringing supplies to the Tribes? Probably. But was there enough energy in the power cells of even the largest sky-tug to make a crater this big? Blade wished it were daylight. Maybe after the battle he could slip back here and get a closer-

An antigravity lifter whined overhead, the biggest Blade had seen. Out here tonight it had to be Doimari. Blade froze. So did the men behind and ahead of him. The man at the rear of the squad panicked and ran for the cover of some bushes. His movement drew the eye of someone in the lifter. A green laser beam speared through his body. He screamed. The corporal ran back to pull him under cover. A moment later the screaming man disintegrated as another laser beam detonated his grenades.

Blade hit the ground in time to escape. So did the two closest men. The corporal was caught by surprise and also by flying fragments. She grunted and sat down, then doubled up, kicking frantically. After a minute, blood trickled from her mouth and she lay still. Blade crawled to where the other survivors could hear him and whispered.

«We've got to go forward. If we pull back, we'll be on open ground and that thing'll laser us down. If we go forward, we'll be under cover.»

«But the village must be alerted by now. They'll send out a patrol, and we won't have a chance.»

«Not a good one,» Blade admitted. «But better than if we try to outrun a laser beam.»

The others couldn't deny an obvious truth, even when they heard it stated by a new recruit. It was one of those situations where the first man to make sense inherits the leadership.

The three soldiers crept through underbrush which quickly turned into heavy second-growth forest. They couldn't move through it as quietly as Blade would have liked, but he also knew they would be completely invisible even if somebody did hear them. Maybe they could go to ground here after all? Short of burning down the whole forest, the Tribesmen would only find them by luck. The rest of the company should catch up before that happened.

Before long they saw light through the trees. Finally they thinned out, and Blade crept forward for a closer look at the source of the light. Half a dozen Doimari were bustling around a stack of plastic boxes and wooden crates. Four were hauling them into a large earth and stone shelter, while two mounted guard. Beside the first shelter stood a second. On the roof was a large fish antenna and several radio aerials. Half a dozen timber-and-thatch Tribal huts were scattered around the other side of the clearing. Blade could make out the main village about a quarter of a mile farther down a winding path. Beside the pile of gear stood a lamp on a pole, shrouded so that it was almost invisible from above.

Blade's companions crawled up to join him. «We're in luck,» he said. «We've stumbled on the ammo dump, they're not alert, and the village is a bit of a way off. If we hit them hard enough we can get the dump and a couple of prisoners before they wake up.»

One man's eyes widened. «You're crazy! They couldn't have missed the shooting back there.»

«No. But if the pilot didn't pass the word, they may not know what it was. They may think he was jumping at shadows.»

«They still outnumber us-«began the other man, but the first private put a large hand on his shoulder.

«Shut up, Grudi, or you're gonna be the first casualty. I guess Voros is right. We got a better chance if we get 'em running around and falling over each other.»

Blade grinned at his new ally. Private Ezarn was a huge ex-farmer, who took three men to handle him when he got drunk on payday. When he was sober in combat, he was worth half a platoon.

With only three men and no time to spare, Blade's tactics weren't fancy. He lasered out the light and, as darkness swallowed the clearing, threw four grenades as fast as he could pull the pins. The explosions started a fire in the pile of supplies, which lit up the clearing all over again. They also disabled most of the Doimari. Only two were on their feet when Blade and his comrades darted out into the clearing.

Ezarn and Grudi swung left. They were supposed to grenade the ammo dump before anyone inside could get the door shut. Blade shot one of the surviving Doimari, then swung right, heading for the huts and the path which led to the main village. He wanted to discourage the other Tribesmen from joining the fight for just a few minutes.

As he ran, he kept an eye out for the last of the Doimari. At last he saw the man darting from shadow to shadow, toward the shelter with the electronic array on the roof. Blade fired on the run, missed, and stopped for a better shot. This let the man make a flying leap through the shelter door and close it behind him. Blade swore. The man was probably going to either radio for help or blow up electronic equipment which Kaldakan Intelligence would be glad to have. He carefully aimed at the base of the dish antenna and fired, hoping to disable it.

He succeeded more thoroughly than he'd hoped. An electrical explosion flared blue-white, and pieces of half-melted metal showered down all over the clearing. Some landed in the dry thatch of the huts, which boomed into flames at once. Blade heard a woman scream from inside one hut. He headed for the cover of a tree on the far side of the clearing. It would let him cover the trail without being seen by the people who would certainly be swarming out of the huts in a minute.

Blade didn't move fast enough. A hut door flew open, and a young man dashed out. «You idiot!» he screamed at Blade. «Your fools with their fire weapons-«He broke off to look at one of the burning huts, turned pale, and screamed, «Klana!» Then he took a closer look at Blade, turned even paler, and drew his sword.

Blade slammed the butt of his rifle across the man's wrist. He howled, dropping the sword, but looked ready to leap on Blade with bare hands. His ears were twice normal size, pointed and hairy. «Get your wife and the others out of here!» Blade roared. «This isn't your fight. I won't hurt any of you unless I have to.» He raised his rifle.

The young man gaped at Blade for a moment, his ears twitching, apparently wondering who was crazy here. Then he decided that he had nothing to lose and dashed into the nearest of the burning huts. He led out several people, one of them a woman even younger than himself with a baby at her breast. All the people had the same pointed, hairy ears, and they were coughing and rubbing their eyes. The baby was squalling loudly. The young man pointed off down the trail, and the people ran without a second warning or a backward glance.

The man stayed behind until the last of the people from the huts were gone. «I am Ikhnon, Chief of the Red Cots,» he said to Blade, but then a laser beam from across the clearing nearly parted his hair. A second would have hit him, but just then the ammunition dump exploded with a deafening roar. The blast knocked Blade and the Tribesman chief flat and completely ruined the rifleman's aim. Twigs and birds' nests rained out of the tree; the young chief jumped up and ran. He was out of sight before the last rumble of the explosion died.

Blade turned to see Ezarn staggering toward him. He was half carrying Grudi in one hand and a heavy Doimari laser with a sack of power cells in the other. He was as black as a coal miner, but his teeth-flashed white in a cheerful grin.

«Lots of stuff in there I hadn't seen before, but I couldn't figure how to use it. So I took a piece I knew. Figure we might have to do a little more fighting. That fellow you ran off, he'll be back with his friends.»

«Maybe,» said Blade. He looked down the trail, hoping to see signs the village was being evacuated. If the people got enough of a head start, the Kaldakans probably wouldn't bother chasing them. They'd have to abandon their livestock and everything else they couldn't snatch up in a hurry, but-

The Doimari lifter came whining in over the clearing. Blade and Ezarn dove for the nearest cover. Laser fire crackled wildly across the clearing, doing nothing except setting another hut on fire. Then the lifter settled down in the middle of the clearing. A hatch on top opened, and a man holding a laser rifle stuck his head out.

Before he could scan the clearing, Blade fired. The man slumped down, half out of the hatch. Blade and Ezarn dashed across the clearing, avoided the still-turning propellers of the lifter, and scrambled up on top of it. As they did, the door of the electronics shelter opened. A cloud of green smoke poured out, and so did several Doimari.

Blade and Ezarn flung themselves down among the Doimari. Blade was an expert at most forms of unarmed combat, and Ezarn was large and tough. In less than a minute all but one of the enemy sprawled unconscious on the ground. Ezarn shot the last one as he ran toward the village, while Blade cut his way through the locked side hatch of the lifter with his laser.

Inside he found the pilot struggling with the controls, trying to lift off but so panic-stricken he'd forgotten which buttons to push. The lifter was just beginning to lift when Blade clubbed him across the back of the skull with a rifle butt. He dropped back into his seat, and the lifter dropped back to the ground.

A moment later both Blade and Ezarn had to run for their lives as the Kaldakan sky-tug swooped in with its lasers blazing away. They barely got the unconscious Doimari under cover before the captured lifter blew up. Blade swore again.

The explosions woke up one of the Doimari. He looked at the flaming shambles around him and laughed hysterically. «You think you've won tonight, Kaldakan. You think you've won. But rest assured: we'll have our vengeance. Your city will look like this. Your own precious foolish Kaldak with no Sky Master to save youuuu-unh!» as Exarn knocked him unconscious again.

Blade and Ezarn looked at each other. «Wonder what he meant by that?» said the big man, rubbing his knuckles. «They maybe got some new kind of Fighting Machine?»

«I think he must have been hysterical,» said Blade, sounding calmer than he felt. He remembered that crater with the metal shards and the electronic antennae on the hut. But if the Doimari were testing a secret weapon, why would they put their test station way out here in the Tribal lands, so far from their city and so vulnerable to enemy attack?

Blade was still trying to puzzle out the mystery when the rest of the paratroop company started to arrive, guided by the flames and the indignant radio messages from the sky-tug. It didn't help the commander's temper to discover that while he was trying to find his objective, the newest recruit in the company had won the battle almost single-handedly.