Battlefield Earth Part 103

"And MacDougal?" said Jonnie.

"Well, that one is sort of bad. He had the station over by the old cage and the coffin was jolted out of the ground. We couldn't find his body for a while and that's what got us looking." Jonnie noticed Thor was holding a heavy package: he had steadied it against the table. "We had to start looking for corpses. They had been blown all around, most of the flesh burned off. We followed the blast line, thinking his body had been blown directly away from the platform, and we got into what was left of Terl's office- the whole top of it had been blown off. Four or five bodies from the platform edge had been blown into that area. We didn't want to leave anyone listed simply as missing so we were trying to identify bodies. We found MacDougal's body.

"And we found this." He was unwrapping the heavy package. "I know you will be relieved to have it. One of the corpses had all the flesh burned off and the vertebrae were exposed and this was sticking in them."

It was the pea-sized pellet of the unknown core material of the bomb.

"Brown Limper," said Jonnie. "Terl threw it at him. Like a bullet. Yes, I am very, very glad you found it!"

"We got the other package Terl handed to him," said Thor. "We gave it to Angus and he disarmed it. What does it do?"

"We don't really know," said Jonnie.

"But knowing Terl-'

"We got his whole recycling basket," said Thor. "We figured he'd try to use it and we cut the power off. It 's really full! It 's out here on a dolly if you want it. We had it in a radiation-proofmine sack, fortunately." He beckoned toward the door. "We grabbed it right after he left his office."

A gillie wheeled the dolly in. They had stacked the material neatly on it.

"Don't try to fire those a.s.sa.s.sin pistols," said Thor. "Ker put a plug in them so they'd shoot out of the back at the user. Ker said to tell you and that he'd fix them back."

They handed Jonnie some of the booklets and papers that had been in the false backs and bottoms of the cabinets. Jonnie had a lot of it already. His eye was caught by a pamphlet: "Known Defenses of Hostile Races and Surveys of Their Homelands." He thumbed through it. Lot of planets here. He looked under Tolnep: This planet is a planet of a double-star system. (See coordinate chart for location.) The system itself has only three inhabited planets, the seventh, eight, and ninth. The Tolnep homeland is the ninth planet. It has five moons. Of these, only Asart is important. It is used as the launch of major war vessels. No Tolnep vessel can operate in atmosphere due to the great inefficiency of its star energy drives which, being essentially reaction engines, use up too much of their power in atmospheres. After construction, such vessels are based on the moon Asart and their crews and material are ferried to them from planet surface. Since plans have been proposed from time to time to occupy and mine the Tolnep planet, and since usual offensive tactics are thought to be adequate in the event of such a war, the moon Asart has not been a.s.saulted up to the time of this writing.

Jonnie looked at the Psychlo date. It was only a couple of years old. The catalogue went on. Jonnie laid it down.

Another thud and ground shake.

Suddenly, Jonnie was aware of the underlying tension in all those who had come in. They were just trying to make him feel easy! Thor had received an urgent summons while he had been reading. And now a communicator rushed in with a sheaf of dispatches for Sir Robert and rushed out. Jonnie saw the frown flicker across Sir Robert's face as he read them.

"The situation is worse than you're letting on, isn't it?" said Jonnie.

"Naw, naw," said Sir Robert. "Dinna fret yersel', laddie,"

"What is the situation?" demanded Jonnie. Sir Robert never dropped into dialect unless agitated.

The grizzled old Scot sighed and recovered his university accent. "Well, if you must have it, we have lost the initiative. For whatever reason, the enemy has decided to attack in force." He tapped the reports.

"Singapore is holding so far and right now has tied down about three-quarters of their forces. But they won't be tied down there forever. The Russian base is getting the attention of planes from a large war vessel. Edinburgh is getting hit. Neither of the last two places have any armor cable coverage. And up there," he pointed, "is a huge monster of a battleship that has been sending planes and bombs down for several hours. It could also launch up to a thousand Tolnep marines and we aren't that well equipped to handle an a.s.sault force by land. So there you have it. It can only get worse, not better."

"Call Dr. Allen," said Jonnie. "I'm getting up!"

Sir Robert tried to protest but he finally called the doctor in.

Dr. Allen did not like it. "You're full of a drug we found called 'sulfa' that will prevent infection and blood poisoning. You'll feel dizzy if you get up suddenly. I don't advise it."

Nevertheless, Jonnie insisted. He knew they were doing all they could. But he wanted to look over the situation. He just couldn't sit still and be pounded to bits.

Jonnie couldn't see any clothes. A Coordinator showed up with an elderly, gray-headed Chinese man.

"This is Mr. Tsung," said the Coordinator. "He has been in charge of fixing up your room. He has been learning a little English so he can help you."

Mr. Tsung bowed. He was obviously pleased to see Jonnie but the thudding bombs also held some of his attention. He had a bowl of soup for Jonnie to drink and his hands shook a bit as he held it out. Jonnie would have laid it down but Mr. Tsung shook his head.

"Drink! Drink!" said Mr. Tsung. "Mebbe so no chance eat later."

Another communicator beckoned to Sir Robert from the door and the old Scot rushed out.

Mr. Tsung was getting his nervousness under control. The novelty of meeting Jonnie was wearing off, and now that he was doing something, the sporadic thuds of bombs seemed less. And then a conviction came to him that if anybody could do anything about this it would be Lord Jonnie. As he laid out weapons he began to smile with more confidence.

It was true what Dr. Allen said about being dizzy if he moved too suddenly, Jonnie discovered as he dressed. His arm was very sore and stiff. It was a bit hard to dress.

Mr. Tsung got him into the plain green uniform they all wore. He buckled the Smith and Wesson with the left-hand holster and a blast pistol with a right-hand holster around Jonnie's waist. He rigged a black silk sling for his arm and then adjusted it so that Jonnie could get the arm out of it fast and draw the Smith and Wesson if he had to. He made Jonnie check it to make sure he could do that. Then he gave Jonnie the plain green helmet.

"Now you shoot them," said Mr. Tsung. He made his hand into a pistol and fired it twice. "Bang! Bang!" He was very confident now, smiling. He tucked his hands in his sleeves and bowed.

If it were only that simple, Jonnie thought. But he bowed and thanked the little man. Good lord, he was dizzy. Made the room spin to lower his head.

An unusually large explosion shook the ground.

They were catching it.

Chapter 3.

As Jonnie left his room, he saw that the underground pa.s.sage also led past the hospital. Although his intention had been to go out to the cone where the platform was, concern about the wounded of the raiding party halted him by that door.

A clatter was coming from the place. The click of bolts being c.o.c.ked and the slap of slings? Arms? He stepped inside the door. There were about thirty beds and over half of them were occupied. But two Chinese, whose armbands showed they were from the armory, had a dolly with a.s.sorted weaponry, and they were pa.s.sing out blast rifles, AK 47s with thermit ammunition, and handguns to the wounded Scots.

A gray-haired Scot nurse came up to Jonnie. She obviously did not approve of this commotion in her ward. Then she recognized Jonnie and choked back whatever she was about to say, probably to tell him to get out.

Jonnie had been counting. "There's thirteen in here from the raiding party and two gunners. Are there any more?"

"The two lads with concussions are in surgery," said the nurse. "Dr. MacKendrick says their operations went well and they'll be fine. Are you supposed to be up, MacTyler?"

By now one of the injured Scots had seen Jonnie at the door and barked his name. Jonnie had been about to go from bed to bed with apologies. It appeared there were seventeen casualties out of the raiding party of thirty-one. No, eighteen including himself. Heavy! These men were badly bruised; black eyes predominated. Several broken limbs. He felt that better planning could have averted this.

But the other Scots had seen him and they began to put up a yell. Sounded like "Scotland wei heigh!" They were sitting up and yelling. Nothing wrong with their their morale! morale!

Suddenly Jonnie realized that these lads had slaughtered the Brigantes and settled the blood feud of Scotland. They were victors. Their injuries were badges of honor. They would be heroes to the whole Scottish nation.

No apologies needed here. He tried to shout into the din and then simply saluted them and, with a smile and wave, withdrew.

He could hear loudspeakers outside playing solemn religious music to prevent infrabeam surveillance.

He came out of the pa.s.sage from the bunkers and gazed into the bowl. The daylight was made murky from drifting smoke. The slight odor of the atmosphere armor at Stage Three mixed with charcoal's tang. The bowl seemed unusually crowded.

It was a thousand feet in diameter at the level of its floor. Before, he had thought that was a lot of s.p.a.ce, about three- quarters of a million square feet he had guessed. But it did seem crowded now.

The paG.o.da structure in the center extended well beyond the platform on all sides. All around the bowl, with the paG.o.da at its center, was a sort of wide paved road.

When he had seen it before, it had almost been deserted. Over there to the right were two It alian-Swiss electricians rigging more wires into some bunkers. A German and a Swiss pilot were sorting out a dolly load of air masks. Near to hand a Scot officer was giving some instructions to a Russian soldier. Way over to the left a group of Swedish soldiers were sorting out ammunition on a dolly. There, just coming out of a pa.s.sage which must lead outside, were two Sherpa hunters pushing a dolly load of African buffalo meat toward what must be a kitchen. Here and there a Buddhist communicator was moving with a floating walk from one bunker to another. And scattered all about, along the inner bank, were Chinese families and their children and belongings. On one of the big posts which held up the paG.o.da roof, the Chinese had hung tribal shields representing the remaining tribes of Earth.

A truly international scene- the peoples of Earth.

Jonnie was about to move on when a voice speaking Psychlo sounded behind him and to his right.

"I am so sorry." It was Chief Chong-won, head of the Chinese tribe and princ.i.p.al architect of this place. "We had to bring in all the people from the village by the lake. The lake is so broad, the cable protection is thin in the center, and some bombs have come through above the dam. Waves from the explosion have made the village unsafe. And the smoke from cooking fires does not escape through the screen."

He was bowing. Jonnie nodded. "But see," continued Chong-won, "my engineers are digging air ducts through the hill under the cable."

Piles of dirt and rock on either side of the bowl showed where the Chinese were using spade drills to cut a channel to the outside air.

"They will use intake fans in one and exhaust fans in the other. They will be curved so no bomb blasts come through. I am so sorry for the oversight."

"I think you have done splendidly," said Jonnie. "You say bombs fall in the lake above the dam. Is there any dam injury?"

Chief Chong-won beckoned a Chinese engineer and they chattered for a moment in Mandarin. Then Chong-won said to Jonnie, "Not so far. But some have sent water over the top of the dam and they have put in the flashboards to reduce the spillway. If the lake were to drop in volume, we would have no electricity."

The whole lowest floor of the "paG.o.da" was wide open on all four sides. The paG.o.da was really just a fancy roof. The metal transshipment platform was in plain view. The Chinese had polished it until it shone even in the subdued light.

Jonnie walked under the high roof to get a better look at where they had put the all-important console. Then he smiled. Over on the other side of the platform they had built a stand with sides in the shape of a huge, savage-looking, winged beast!

Angus was there at the console and he waved. "It's something, isn't it?" said Angus.

Yes, it really was. A huge head, two wings, a curling tail. Armored metal. Painted gold and red.

"A dragon," said Chong-won. "Once it was the emblem of Imperial China. See, it is laminated molecular armor."

Not only that, but it had a top! The console was set into the dragon's back and a cover was made of dragon scales so the operator could work the console without anyone's observing what he was really doing. There were two stools on the raised console platform and a side shelf for papers and a computer. And all armored. Nothing was going to hurt that console. Or see what was being done with it either.

Such a far cry from the materialistic Psychlo, who was without paintings or art. And what these Chinese could do!

"See?" said Chief Chong-won. "It is the same as those other dragons." He pointed to a dragon that formed the roof point of the paG.o.da nearby. Each corner had one. And then the chief pointed to some unfinished work over by the bank. "Each bunker was supposed to have its dragon over the entrance. We have not had time to put them up." They were much smaller dragons, made of baked clay and painted in gold and red.

The console looked fine under the protective cover. Angus had a copy of the coordinate book there and was drilling himself without punching anything. He was figuring how to convert the figures in the book to this moment of time and the console b.u.t.tons. "I've got it pretty well," said Angus. "It just takes quite a bit of time to do the calculations. There are eight separate movements listed for each planet and you have to pick where on the planet. But it is not too hard."

Jonnie looked up. Another bomb had just hit somewhere. "If all that would stop, we'd be in business. I don't have any idea when it will or exactly what we can do with this console yet."

Chief Chong-won was pointing at the inside of one of the huge posts that held up the paG.o.da roof and protected the platform and console from rain. They had rigged mine spotlights on each post so that they spotlighted the platform center. "At night," he said, "they won't shine outside."

Jonnie wanted to go over to the operations bunker, but the chief detoured him into a large underground room in the side wall of the bowl. It was nicely tiled and had a platform at the end for a speaker. It had chairs and would hold about fifty people. Very nice.

Then Chief Chong-won showed him a sample of thirty little apartments they had made for guests and visitors. They were in addition to pilot and personnel berthings. These Chinese engineers could certainly build in wood and tile and stone, particularly when a.s.sisted by Psychlo machinery.

Jonnie was interested in gun emplacements all around that could cover the platform and the bowl interior. Given troops, the place could really be defended. But they did not have all that many troops.

He finally got to the ops room. It was a busy place. It was a miniature of the one they had found in the American underground base. A huge map of the planet was in the center. As reports came in from the adjoining communications office, men with long poles were pushing about small lead models of planes and the war vessels in orbit. Enemy vessels were red with tags. Their own planes were green with tags.

Stormalong was there in his white scarf, leather coat, and oversized goggles. He had two Buddhist communicators on either side of him and they were talking into close-to-the-mouth microphones that excluded any speech but theirs. Their shaved heads gleamed under the too-large headphones they wore.

Jonnie was told they were operating a planetary battle channel- used by Stormalong-and a planetary command channel used by Sir Robert. The Scot War Chief had a thirteen-year-old Buddhist boy operating his channel.

n.o.body had to brief Jonnie. It was all there on the big operations board. Singapore was really catching it. There was a lot of antiaircraft being used at the Russian base. Dunneldeen was flying air cover for Edinburgh.

Thor was flying air cover for Kariba. Nothing was happening at the Lake Victoria minesite or any of the rest. But where it was hot, it was very hot.

Jonnie listened in to the babble on both battle and command channels. It was all in Pali which he didn't speak.

There was a third station, manned by a Scot officer, that was monitoring enemy traffic.

Down at the end of the room where there were some spare desks, Glencannon was hunched over a pile of pictures. Jonnie glanced at them. They seemed to be viewscreen runoffs of an air battle. The one he had when the Swiss was killed? Glencannon had another stack, apparently just taken. They were of the huge monster overhead.

Glencannon seemed very agitated, his hands shaking. He had not really recovered from that courier run, seemingly, for Stormalong didn't have him flying. He didn't answer when Jonnie spoke to him.

The operations board was not good, but Jonnie did not have anything to contribute. It was simply a slugfest. He wondered how long places not protected with atmosphere armor cable could hold out. Edinburgh was particularly vulnerable. A worry about Chrissie pa.s.sed through his mind. He hoped she was safe in a bunker under Castle Rock. Sir Robert answered his question. Yes, they were all in bunkers up there. It was mainly antiaircraft that was protecting the place. Dunneldeen was taking care of strafing planes that tried to come in. The antiaircraft was taking care of bombs.

Jonnie thought he had better look at this antiaircraft they had here. He had never seen the Psychlo guns in action. Not up close.

He went out. Chief Chong-won had vanished, attending to other duties. Chinese families with their children and an occasional dog were sitting about, mostly in and near rifle pits. They looked a bit worn, a bit worried. Some of the children were crying. But the parents smiled broadly, and got up and bowed as Jonnie pa.s.sed. It made him hope their confidence was not misplaced.

The exit from the bowl was a curving underground pa.s.sage under the cable so it wouldn't have to be turned off each time anyone went in or out. The curves were to prevent bomb flash and fragments from getting in.

He went to the first antiaircraft gun emplacement. The gun was shielded. The two gunners were in Russian bulletproof battle dress. A Scot officer saw him and got out of a pit.

"We don't have enough of these," said the Scot, pointing at the gun. "We can't cover the lake. It 's all we can do to cover this bowl."

Jonnie went over to the gun. It had computer sights that zeroed in on anything moving. What one had to do was. .h.i.t a trigger and the gun calculated the speed and direction of a moving object, sent a blast concussion into its path, then found the next moving object and hit that.

He looked up. An enemy plane at about two hundred thousand feet was barely discernible. Jonnie knew the range of this gun was short of that by about fifty thousand feet. So did the enemy apparently.

That plane was dropping bombs.

The gun bucked five times rapidly. Five bombs exploded in midair, direct hits by the gun. The explosions up there came back down to them.

"The ones you feel land," said the Scot officer, "go into the lake. They're beyond our sector. And of course the ones that fall way out in the woods. We don't bother with those."

Jonnie looked toward the woods. Seven or eight miles away there was quite a fire going. No, three separate fires. Every animal within fifty miles must have left the country. The African buffalo the Sherpas had was probably killed by bombs earlier. Well, the woods wouldn't burn very long. It was pretty wet just now.

He looked back at the gun. What havoc one of these things would have made with their attack on the minesites over a year ago if the attack had not been a total surprise. And if security chiefs like Terl had not let the company defenses go neglected.

Another bomb hit on a hill about ten miles away, and even from here one could see the geyser of smoke and trees. That battleship up there was dropping pretty heavy bombs. If one hit this cone, he didn't know whether the atmosphere screen would repel it.