"Von Schlichten, right overhead. That you, Major Falkenberg? Nice going, major; how are your casualties?"
"Not too bad. Twenty or thirty Kragans and loyal Skilkans, and eight Terrans killed; about as many wounded."
"Pretty good, considering what you"re running into. Get many of your Kragans mounted on those hipposaurs?"
"About a hundred; a lot of "saurs got shot, while we were leading them out from the stables."
"Well, I can see geeks streaming away from the labor-camp, out the south end, going in the direction of the river. Use what cavalry you have on them, and what contragravity you can spare. I"ll drop a few flares to show their position and direction."
Antic.i.p.ating him, the driver turned the airjeep and started toward the dry Hoork River. Von Schlichten nodded approval and told him to release flares when over the fugitives.
"Right," Falkenberg replied. "I"ll get on it at once, general."
"And start moving that mine-equipment up into the Company area. Some of it we can put into the air; the rest we can use to build barricades. None of it do we want the geeks getting hold of, and the equipment-park"s outside our practical perimeter. I"ll send people to help you move it."
"No need to do that, sir; I have about a hundred and fifty loyal North Ullrans--foremen, technicians, overseers--who can handle it."
"All right. Use your own judgment. Put the stuff back of the native-troops barracks, and between the power-plant and the Company office-buildings, and anywhere else you can." The lieutenant nudged him and pushed a couple of b.u.t.tons on the dashboard. "Here go the flares, now."
Immediately, a couple of airjeeps pounced in, to strafe the fleeing enemy. Somebody must have already been issuing orders on another wavelength; a number of Kragans, riding hipposaurs, were galloping into the light of the flares.
"Now, let"s have a look at the native barracks and the maintenance-yards," he said. "And then, we"ll make a circuit around the Reservation, about two-three miles out. I"m not happy about where Firkked"s army is."
The driver looked at him. "I"ve been worrying about that, too, sir,"
he said. "I can"t understand why he hasn"t jumped us, already. I know it takes time to get one of these geek armies on the road, but...."
"He"s hoping our native-troops and the mine laborers will be able to wipe us out, themselves," von Schlichten said.
There was nothing going on in the area between the native barracks and the mountains except some sporadic firing as small patrols of Kragans clashed with clumps of fleeing mutineers. All the barracks, even those of the Rifles, were burning; the red-and-yellow danger-lights around the power-plant and the water-works and the explosives magazines were still on. Most of the floodlights were still on, and there was still some fighting around the maintenance-yard. It looked as though the survivors of the Tenth N.U.N.I. were in a few small pockets which were being squeezed out.
There was nothing at all going on north of the Reservation; the countryside, by day a checkerboard of walled fields and small villages, was dark, except for a dim light, here and there, where the occupants of some farmhouse had been awakened by the noise of battle.
Then, two miles east of the Reservation, he caught a new sound--the flowing, riverlike, murmur of something vast on the move.
"Hear that, lieutenant?" he asked. "Head for it, at about a thousand feet. When we"re directly above it, let go some flares."
"Yes, sir." The younger man had lowered his voice to a whisper.
"That"s geeks; headed for the Reservation."
"Maybe Firkked"s army," von Schlichten thought aloud. "Or maybe a city mob."
The noises were growing clearer, louder. He picked up the phone and punched the wavelength of the military airport.
"Von Schlichten; my compliments to Colonel Jarman. Tell him there"s a geek mob, or possibly Firkked"s regulars, on the main highway from Skilk, two miles east of the Reservation. Get some combat contragravity over here, at once. We"ll light them up for you. And tell Colonel Jarman to start flying patrols up and down along the Hoork River; this may not be the only gang that"s coming out to see us."
The sounds were directly below, now--the scuffing of h.o.r.n.y-soled feet on the dirt road, the clink and rattle of slung weapons, the clicking and squeaking of Ullran voices.
The lieutenant said: "Here go the flares, sir."
Von Schlichten shut his eyes, then opened them slowly. The driver, upon releasing the flares, had nosed up, banked, turned, and was coming in again, down the road toward the advancing column. Von Schlichten peered into his all-armament sight, his foot on the machine-gun pedal and his fingers on the rocket b.u.t.tons. The highway below was jammed with geeks, and they were all stopped dead and staring upward, as though hypnotized by the lights. It was obviously a mob. A second later, they had recovered and were shooting--not at the airjeep, but at the four globes of blazing magnesium. Then he had the close-packed ma.s.s of non-humanity in his sights; he tramped the pedal and began punching b.u.t.tons. He still had four rockets left by the time the mob was behind him.
"All right, let"s take another pa.s.s at them. Same direction."
The driver put the airjeep into a quick loop and came out of it in front of the mob, who now had their backs turned and were staring in the direction in which they had last seen the vehicle. Again, von Schlichten plowed them with rockets and harrowed them with his guns.
Some of the Skilkans were trying to get over the high fences on either side of the road--really stockades of petrified tree-trunks. Others were firing, and this time they were shooting at the airjeep. It took one hit from a heavy sh.e.l.losaur-rifle, and immediately the driver banked and turned away from the road, heading back.
"Dammit, why did you do that?" von Schlichten demanded, lifting his foot from the gun-pedal. "Are you afraid of the kind of popguns those geeks are using?"
"I am not afraid to risk my vehicle, or myself, sir," the lieutenant replied, with the extreme formality of a very junior officer chewing out a very senior one. "I am, however, afraid to risk my pa.s.senger.
Generals are not expendable, sir."
He was right, of course. Von Schlichten admitted it. "I"m too old to play cowboy, like this," he said. "Back to the Reservation; telecast station."
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw eight or ten more flares alight, and the ground-flashes of exploding sh.e.l.ls and rockets; the air above the road was sparkling with gun-flames. Jarman must have had some contragravity ready to be sent off on the instant.
While he had been out, somebody had gotten a TV-pickup mounted on a contragravity-lifter and run up to two thousand feet, on the end of a steel-tough tensilon mooring-line. The big circular screen was lit, showing the whole Company Reservation, with the surrounding countryside foreshortened by perspective to the distant lights of Skilk. The map had been taken up from the floor, and a big terrain-board had been brought in from the Chief Engineer"s office and set up in its place. In front of the screen, Paula Quinton, Barney Mordkovitz, Colonel Cheng-Li, and, conspicuously silent, Jules Keaveney, sat drinking coffee and munching sandwiches. Half a dozen Terrans, of both s.e.xes, were working furiously to get the markers which replaced the pink and white pills placed on the board, and one of Captain Inez Malavez" non-coms, with a headset, was getting combat reports directly from the switchboard. Everything was clicking like well-oiled machinery.
On the TV-screen, the Residency area was ablaze with light, and so were the ship-docks, the airport and s.p.a.ceport, the shops, and the maintenance-yard. On the terrain-board, the latter was now marked as completely in Company hands. The ruins of the native-troops barracks were still burning, and there was a twinkle of orange-red here and there among the ruins of the labor-camp. Much of the equipment for the Polar mines had already been shifted into defensible ground. The rest of the circle was dark, except for the distant lights of Skilk, where the nuclear power plant was apparently still functioning in native hands.
Then, without warning, a spot of white light blazed into being south-east of the Company area and south-west of Skilk, followed by another and another. Instantly, von Schlichten glanced up at the row of smaller screens, and on one of them saw the view as picked up by a patrolling airjeep.
The army of King Firkked of Skilk had finally put in its appearance, about three miles south of the Reservation. The Skilkan regulars had been marching in formation, some on the road and some along parallel lanes and paths. They had the look of trained and disciplined troops, but they had made the same mistake as the rabble that had been shot up on the north side of the Reservation. Unused to attack from the air, they had all halted in place and were gaping open-mouthed, their opal teeth gleaming in the white flare-light.
In the big screen, it could be seen that Colonel Jarman had thrown most of his available contragravity at them, including the combat-cars that had already started to form the second wave of the attack on the mob to the north. Other flares bloomed in the darkness, and the fiery trails of rockets curved downward to end in yellow flashes on the ground.
The airjeep with the pickup circled back; the troops on the road and in the adjoining fields had broken. The former were caught between the fences which made Ullran roads such deathtraps when under air-attack.
The latter had dispersed, and were running away, individually and by squads; at first, it looked like a panic, but he could see officers signalling to the larger groups of fugitives to open out, apparently directing the flight. By this time, there were ten or twelve combat-cars and about twenty airjeeps at work. In the moving view from the pickup-jeep, he saw what looked like a 90-mm. rocket land in the middle of a company that was still trying to defend itself with small-arms fire on the road, wiping out about half of them.
"The next time they"re air-struck, they won"t stay bunched,"
Mordkovitz stated. "A lot of them didn"t stay bunched this time, if you noticed. And they"ll keep out from between the fences."
In the large screen, a quick succession of gun-flashes leaped up from the direction of the Hoork River; sh.e.l.ls began bursting over the scene of the attack. The screen tuned to the pickup on the airjeep went dead; in the big screen, there was a twinkling of falling fire. Almost at once, thirty or forty rocket-trails converged on the gun-position, and, for a moment, explosions burned like a bonfire.
"They had a 75-mm. at the rear of the column," somebody called from the big switchboard. "Lieutenant Kalanang"s jeep was. .h.i.t; Lieutenant Vermaas is cutting in his pickup on the same wavelength."
The small screen lighted again. In the big screen, a cl.u.s.ter of magnesium-lights then appeared above where the Skilkan gun had been; in the small screen, there was a stubbled grain-field, pocked with craters, and the bodies of fifteen or twenty natives, all rather badly mangled. An overturned and apparently destroyed 75-mm. gun lay on its side.