Treasure Of The Stars

Chapter 20

A steady drizzling rain was falling. Water dripped from the trees above as Blade crawled through bushes on his hands and knees. Riyannah was close behind, moving almost as silently as Blade.

They came to the end of the bushes. A few scattered trees lay ahead, then open country fading off into the rainy darkness. In that darkness a string of lights glowed a pale orange. They were the lights of Station Four, Blade's target and the first step on the way to the starship.

Still on their hands and knees, Blade and Riyannah reached the nearest tree. No sight or sound of any alarm, and visibility was getting steadily worse.

That wouldn't be all to the good. It would make the fighting in the station confused and risky, if the guards didn't go down at the first rush. It could also delay the reinforcements needed to move on to the next stage of the plan.

On the other hand, the rainy night would be perfect cover. The first attackers would certainly be hard to see and hear until it was too late. The sentries would be thinking mostly of the rain trickling down the backs of their necks and squelching in their boots. Even the best of Loyun Chard's soldiers didn't care for bad weather, and these sentries wouldn't be among the best. As far as Chard was concerned, the underground was on the run, too crippled to be a danger even to isolated shuttlecraft bases like Station Four. So why waste good men guarding it, far off in land that hadn't been settled since the Great War?

The rain would also make Blade's own job a good deal easier. Station Four had to be taken completely by surprise and captured before any messages could reach the outside world. There were two ways such messages could go out. One was by laser beam to a communications satellite high overhead, the other was by radio. The rain and overcast would make the laser virtually useless, so Blade now had only one target. If he could smash the radio station before anyone gave the alarm, Station Four would be unable to call for help or send out a warning.

Slowly Blade stood up. He was wearing Targan uniform, with a major's insignia. On his back was a conventional Targan field pack with unconventional contents. It held several charges of Kananite explosive, each the equivalent of more than half a ton of TNT. It also held a compact hurd-ray projector, small enough to fire with one hand but powerful enough to burn through several inches of steel.

Riyannah also stood up, unhooked a Targan helmet from her belt, and handed it to Blade. He put it on and tightened the chinstrap.

«How do I look?»

«You look enough like one of those piles of dung to make me shudder,» she said. She was wearing Targan uniform herself, with a sergeant's insignia. She might even pass for a Targan as long as the rain kept falling and the enemy's soldiers were too busy to look closely.

«Good,» said Blade. «That should get me inside, and there's half the battle. All I need to worry about on the way in is meeting some officer with more rank.» He gripped Riyannah by both shoulders and kissed her. «Don't let anyone get too close while I'm knocking out the lights. It's going to be chancy shooting even with the projector.»

«We'll be careful if you will,» she said. Then Blade turned and strode out from behind the tree toward the light of Station Four.

The plan for destroying the starship Dark Warrior was mostly Blade's creation. With the information the underground gave him, he was able to work out a much better one than they'd been able to do. The underground people were brave and intelligent, but they didn't have Blade's years of experience against opponents far tougher than the soldiers of Loyun Chard.

Several basic facts shaped the plan. First, Dark Warrior was so heavily escorted that she would have to be attacked by stealth. No suspicious ship could hope to get within ramming distance or even missile range. That ruled out the simplest and most ruthless form of attack-a straightforward kamikaze mission.

So the attackers would have to slip a boarding party into the ship. Fifteen or twenty armed men with hurd-rays and explosives could wreck the ship beyond repair. They might even be able to escape afterward in the confusion. The problem would be getting them on board in the first place, then keeping them alive long enough to finish their work.

The Targans threw in an extra requirement that made things more difficult. They did not want Dark Warrior attacked while she was in orbit around Targa. They wanted the boarding party to wait until the ship was millions of miles out in space on her way to the asteroids. As one leader said to Blade:

«If we cripple the ship far out in space, she will never get home.» Neither would the boarding party, Blade thought, but decided not to mention that. «If we cripple her in orbit, the missiles and lasers will still survive. Dark Warrior will become a gigantic orbiting fortress, able to strike down from space at any point on the planet. Even if Chard can no longer threaten the Kananites, he will be able to threaten his own people. He may also turn Dark Warrior's weapons loose on our hiding places. If we lose too many more people, we cannot hope to do much even after Chard is overthrown. We will only be one fraction in a civil war, and not the strongest one either.»

In spite of these plausible arguments, Blade's first reaction was to tell the Targans, «You're all crazy!» Then he thought the matter over and realized they had a point. The starship had to be taken out of Targan politics as well as interstellar politics. The underground could not be asked to suffer more than it had already, and Targa could not be condemned to a long, bloody, and pointless civil war that could only leave the planet a wreck. Some of the Kananites might not mind seeing Targa dissolve in such a war, but Blade would have no part of that idea.

There were also some real advantages to waiting. If the boarding party could lie low until Dark Warrior was within range of the patrol ships around the asteroid base, they might have help. The patrol ships might not be able to do much damage but they would certainly distract the starship's crew. After the fighting was over, the patrol ships could also take off any survivors of the boarding party.

Blade saw one more advantage of waiting that he didn't mention. If a dozen or so intelligent Targans saw the asteroid base, they'd know far more about the Kananites and the Menel. They'd know too much to let the Kananites go back on any further promises of technical assistance. Blade still didn't trust Kanan's War Council and he'd be glad to do anything he could to take matters out of their hands.

The Targans' idea of having the boarding party wait until Dark Warrior was deep in space would still have been suicidal, except for the way the ship was built. She bristled with lasers and missile launchers. She was also designed to carry more than two thousand soldiers and settlers to new planets, and huge cargoes of raw materials back to Targa. She had enough cabins to hold the population of a small town, and cargo holds large enough to swallow half a dozen smaller spaceships.

On the mission to destroy the asteroid base, the ship would be carrying only her fighting crew of three hundred men. Or so the underground had heard, from their spies in the space program.

«How reliable are these people?» asked Blade.

«Reliable enough so we're willing to risk the boarding party on their reports.» The underground's leaders seldom gave away unnecessary information, and Blade respected them for that. The man hesitated. «There may be more, but I don't think they'll be fighting men. The last report said that one block of cabins is being fitted up luxuriously, but it won't hold more than fifty or sixty people.»

It sounded to Blade as if some of the VIP's in Loyun Chard's space program and armed forces were inviting themselves along for the ride. So much the better. The boarding party could blow a large hole in the upper ranks of Chard's government as well as in his precious starship.

In any case, there would be plenty of room left in the starship's cabins and holds. If the boarding party could get on board without arousing suspicion, there was a good chance they'd be able to hide until the time came to strike. Blade doubted that the ship's crew would even know all the compartments and cabins aboard, let alone bother inspecting them regularly. A boarding party hiding itself snugly aboard their magnificent and invincible starship would be about the last danger the crew would think of.

So there it was: Blade's plan. Capture one of the ground bases for the orbital shuttlecraft. Fly a shuttle up to the starship, meanwhile covering their tracks on the ground. Get the boarding party and its weapons aboard the ship, then hide them. Wait however long it took, in whatever discomfort they had to endure, until the starship headed out into space. Wait a little longer, then STRIKE.

Very simple-until the time came to carry it out.

Blade strode forward, trying to move silently. He expected to be spotted and challenged but he didn't want it happening too soon. Some trigger-happy sentry might shoot before challenging. Blade was wearing body armor of Kananite woven metal under his uniform, so even the heavy Targan slugs probably wouldn't hurt him. Shooting would almost certainly give the alarm, though, and that would be worse.

The rain pattered on Blade's helmet and drummed on the soft earth. He slogged through mud and splashed through puddles. Once he stopped to adjust the sling of his rifle, another time he stopped to make sure the throwing knife up his sleeve moved freely in its sheath.

Suddenly a beam of light danced across the ground toward him, then leaped up to shine in his face.

«Halt! Who goes there?»

Blade wanted to laugh. The orders of sentries seemed to be the same in every army in every Dimension he knew. He called back:

«Major Harbo, Military Inspector's Office. Glad to know you're on the alert.»

There was a long silence. Blade used the time to spot the source of the light and walk toward it. As he'd expected, praising the sentry caught the man off balance.

Blade was only ten feet from the open gate when the sentry spoke again. «Sorry, sir. You'll still have to give the password.»

Blade lowered his voice. «Not so loud, you idiot. I'm doing a security inspection on this station. You've passed, but I won't appreciate it if you alert all the other sentries.»

«But — «

«Damn it, keep your voice down! You'll have all your friends thinking the underground is attacking!»

The sentry laughed-then died with the laugh stuck in his throat as Blade drove the knife into him. Blade held the man upright until he stopped kicking, then lowered him silently to the ground. He bent to pick up the sentry's flashlight, then stiffened as another figure loomed out of the darkness beyond the gate.

Blade knew he was caught red-handed and didn't even bother opening his mouth. He jerked his knife out of the body, caught it by the point, and threw. The approaching man reeled backward, rifle falling from his hands, the knife sticking out of his face. He started to scream, then Blade closed in and chopped him across the throat. Again Blade lowered a dead body to the ground and retrieved his knife.

Blade knew he had to move fast now. He pulled the hurd-ray projector out of his pack and used it on low power to cut most of the wires around the gate. Now it could no longer be closed. Then he stalked in through the gateway, projector held ready to fire.

To his right towered the launching platforms for the shuttlecraft. Two of the platforms were occupied. The shuttle-craft looked very much like the winged-disk jet planes, but were three times as big. In their bellies they carried anti-gravity units and in their tails racks of solid-fuel rockets to kick them into the air. The Targans' antigravity was less reliable than the Kananites' and could not safely be used within fifteen thousand feet of the ground.

No lights showed in the cockpits of the shuttles. That meant no one aboard to send out signals over the shuttles' radios. If Blade took out the main radio station, that should do the job.

The station with its hundred-foot mast was on the left, just under two hundred yards away. Light spilled out through the open door, illuminating a wide expanse of grass and concrete in front of the station. Blade saw two soldiers standing on the roof, a rocket launcher lying between them. Fortunately they were looking the other way. He crept to the edge of the illuminated area, looked in all directions, and saw nothing suspicious. Then he sprinted toward the open door.

The thud of his feet alerted the men on the roof. He heard one of them shout as he came pounding up to the door. Then he was inside the radio building, pulling the door shut with one hand and raising the hurd-ray with the other. He was in a short corridor with doors opening off either side, leading to a large room filled with consoles and switchboards. Blade aimed the projector and fired a long burst, sweeping everything he could see. Metal cracked and melted, wiring shorted, threw sparks, and gushed smoke, heavy objects crashed to the floor, and voices started screaming, cursing, and shouting all at once.

Blade started down the corridor to catch the people in the room before they recovered from the surprise. A door to his right flew open and an officer with a drawn laser pistol popped out. The two men collided. The laser beam hissed past Blade and knocked a chunk out of the ceiling. Blade punched the officer in the stomach, then smashed the butt of the hurd-ray across the back of his neck. Blade leaped over the fallen man and charged into the main room.

Bullets flew past Blade as one of the radio operators swung in his seat and emptied a pistol. The bullets smashed more radio gear without touching Blade. Then the hurd-ray was sweeping along the consoles and all three radio operators slumped in their seats, two headless and one burned completely in two. Blade fired two more quick blasts to quiet the writhing bodies on the floor, then played the beam in a complete circle around him. By the time he'd finished, every recognizable piece of communications equipment in the room was half-melted junk. Blue and green smoke swirled like a fog and clawed at Blade's mouth and nose.

Breathing shallowly, he took out one of the bombs, set both the time fuse and the booby-trap, then shoved it out of sight under one of the bodies. The radio station had to be completely demolished, otherwise someone might still improvise an emergency signal by hooking a portable radio to the big mast on the roof.

The bomb was set. Blade flattened himself against the wall and crept back to the corridor. Voices sounded from the outer door. He pulled out a golf-ball sized blue grenade, armed it, and hurled it down the corridor. When the echoes from the explosion died away the voices were only fading moans. Blade got outside as fast as he could.

A rifle went off overhead as Blade broke into the open. One bullet hit him in the shoulder but his body armor kept it out of his flesh. He ducked, searching for the rifleman and raising his projector. The two soldiers on top of the radio building were alert and one was firing his rifle in all directions. The other had the rocket launcher on his shoulder and was peering around in search of a target. The area in front of the building was dark now that the lights inside were out, and neither man could see clearly.

Blade's night vision was a good deal better. He picked off the rifleman, then shifted aim to the soldier with the rocket launcher. The man moved just as Blade fired and the ray only burned off one leg. He screamed, hopped wildly about, then toppled off the roof, taking the launcher with him. Blade was about to dart forward and retrieve it when the bomb in the radio building went off prematurely.

The bomb he'd planted was the equivalent of more than a ton of TNT. The radio building vanished in a hurricane blast of smoke, flame, and hurtling wreckage. Blade went down again as if he'd been hit by a truck. He lay in the mud as the wreckage pattered and crashed down about him. The radio mast wavered, leaned to the right, and toppled over. Before the scream of twisting metal died away, Blade was on his feet again.

By now Blade had made enough noise to wake the dead, and everyone in Station Four had to be on the move. He sprinted back toward the fence, projector in one hand and a grenade in the other. Someone in a building to Blade's left foolishly switched on a light, silhouetting three helmeted figures. He hurled the grenade, heard glass smash, then the explosion and the screams.

The streets and alleys of Station Four were rapidly filling with running men, some in uniform, some half-dressed, some in pajamas, one or two stark naked. Officers shouted orders which made no sense and which weren't obeyed even when anyone heard them. No one paid any attention to Blade. He was in Targan uniform, he wasn't moving any faster than most of the other men, and it was too dark to recognize the ray projector in his hand.

Blade took advantage of the confusion to run even faster. Sooner or later even the half-trained and wholly panic-stricken Targan soldiers would sort themselves out enough to become dangerous opponents. The underground couldn't afford too many casualties among their attack group without fatally weakening the boarding party.

All the clothed men seemed to be in uniform. That meant the scientific and engineering people were staying under cover. Good. Several of them were underground supporters with key roles in the plan, and the underground had no real quarrel with the rest. No civilian of any sort had a place in this sort of firelight in any case.

Blade reached a spot where he had a clear line of fire to the perimeter lights and dropped to one knee. Sighting precisely, he picked off all the lights he could see, working from left to right. Eight-nine-ten-eleven-then the answering flare of hurd-rays blazed from the darkness beyond the perimeter. The rest of the attackers were coming in.

Blade jumped up and ran back into the station. As he ran he pulled a white armband from his belt pouch and tied it around his left arm. Both sides would be wearing Targan uniforms, but the underground's people would have white armbands. Blade hoped that would be enough to prevent fatal mistakes.

By the time Blade reached the center of the station he could hear a swelling battle roar from behind him. Hurd-rays crackled, rifles hammered, grenades thumped and crashed, men screamed in rage or pain. Blade kept running, leaped a drainage ditch, then slipped on the far bank and went to his knees.

A few yards away stood a rough sheet metal building. Beyond it lay the far perimeter of the station, its lights still burning. Metal clanged and a motor whined. The door of the building slid open, but no one was foolish enough to turn on a light. A six-wheeled flatbed truck rolled out of the door and turned toward Blade. Two men sat in the darkened cab, the driver and a gunner. Two more rode on the back, hanging on to the mounting of a heavy laser.

That truck had to be stopped. If it wasn't, it would get way in the darkness and the rain, then move on until it had clear weather. Then the laser could reach out to a communications satellite or even the starship. The surprise the underground desperately needed would be gone.

Blade aimed his hurd-ray and fired. The projector hissed faintly, glowed, then gushed smoke. Blade threw it down and reached for a grenade. He was rising to throw it when someone in the building flicked on all the lights. Suddenly Blade was painfully visible as he balanced on the edge of the drainage ditch.

The driver of the truck jammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel. One of the men in back fired a pistol at Blade. The bullet spun him around as he hurled the grenade. It sailed over the truck and landed in the door of the building. All the lights went out but the truck kept going.

Blade took advantage of the darkness to spring after it. He broke every world's record for the ten-yard dash and was scrambling over the tail before the men in back saw him. The pistol banged again, the second man tried to raise his rifle, then Blade was on top of them.

He gripped the first man by his pistol arm, then wheeled to kick the second one in the groin. The second man flew off the truck, landed, and didn't get up. Blade twisted the pistol out of the first man's grip, then chopped him across the throat and threw his body after his comrade.

The truck lurched to a stop just inside the rear gate. Blade smashed the butt of the pistol down on the driver's head as he tried to scramble out of the cab. The other man ran off faster than Blade could follow, but a hurd-ray blast from the darkness took his legs out from under him just outside the gate. Blade looked around and saw Riyannah stepping out of the shadows, putting a fresh power cell into her projector.

«Good shot,» he said, and clapped her on the shoulder. «Now get back. I'm going to put a grenade under this truck.»

Riyannah shook her head. «You can save it. There aren't enough soldiers left to do anything with it.»

«Everything under control?»

«Yes. We've got people in a truck out now, searching the area for runaways. The reinforcements are on their way in and-no, here they are now.»

Propellers whirred overhead in the gloom. A searchlight cut through the base of the clouds, lighting up the two shuttlecraft. The light grew, then a troop carrier floated down out of the night to land between the two shuttles: Buildings cut off the view, but Blade knew that thirty more underground fighters would be scrambling out of the carrier to join the dying battle.

Blade and Riyannah stood briefly hand in hand as silence fell over Station Four. Then they walked back toward the shuttles. Before they'd gone very far they met a working party-six soldier prisoners in their underwear, two underground guards in uniform. The prisoners were pushing a wheeled rubbish bin already half filled with bits of wreckage.

«Moving on to the next stage already, I see,» said Blade. The next stage was cleaning up Station Four so as to leave few signs of the night's battle for satellites or planes to discover.

«They'd better be,» said Riyannah. «All we have to do is get through about fifty hours' work in the next ten. Then everything will be all right, for a little while.»