Battlefield Earth (52 page)

     Jonnie held the wrench in his hand. He hefted it thoughtfully. Certainly, in setting up this drone to fire, mechanics would have to get into something. And they’d have to service something if it were ever to be fired again.

Locked, armored preset box. Yes, but that was just a control box. He had seen nothing else that took a key.

He was finding it hard to think. It was cold! These ancient Air Force flying suits were supposed to be electrically warmed, but they had not been able to rig any batteries and the originals hadn’t been made for a shelf life of a thousand years. The blood from his cut forehead kept messing up his faceplate quite in addition to the way it kept misting. What was the temperature where they were flying? A power zoom to get up to freezing, that was for sure.

This wrench…

He caught a flicker of movement up toward the front of the ship and fired a warning shot.

Two problems. No, three. Zzt, Nup and a Mark 32 on top, and how to disable this drone!

Old Staffor used to say he was “too smart.” A lot of village people had thought that. He wasn’t feeling very smart now.

He knew he should get rid of Zzt. But firing shots in this armored interior was not just dangerous to Zzt. It was dangerous to himself. All these frames sent every shot madly caroming about, and twice now one had whistled past his own ears and another had hit his plane on rebound.

Suppose Zzt were a puma. How would he go about killing it? Well, one didn’t walk up to a puma; one waited for the puma to spring. No, now suppose Zzt were a bear in a cave. That was a more fitting example. Walk into a cave with a bear in it? Suicide.

He thought of setting a time fuse on a limpet and pitching it up there, getting in his plane, and depending on its armor to protect him. But there was a limit to the way magnetic grips held and he might blow up his own plane into an unusable state. He wished he had a grenade, but all the grenades they had found were duds and they hadn’t worked out how to use them. He even thought of taking one of the fuel or ammunition cartridges- of which he had plenty for the plane- throwing it up there, and shooting into it. It would explode, that was for sure. But one cartridge might not kill Zzt. Psychlos were very tough, very tough indeed. Zzt had once beaten Terl, he had heard, and Zzt truly hated him- in fact, had almost killed him once. No, he was not going to try any stunt of walking up there even with an assault rifle firing. He did not know how deep that recess was or even what recess Zzt was in, and Zzt might very well be armed still.

Nup he had nullified for the moment. Lord, it was cold.

One thing at a time. His job was not Zzt or Nup. It was to stop this drone.

He had better get awfully smart. Fast!

Because of his misting and blood-stained faceplate, he had not spotted the tiny mechanic’s mirror that watched him. He got busy untangling the problem of this drone.

Where Psychlos couldn’t use a molecular parting and resealing tool, they used nuts and bolts. And he was sure that this armor wouldn’t yield to a “metal knife,” as they called the tool in Psychlo mechanic’s slang. He had gathered from Zzt that this was molecular lamination, layer after layer of different but binding metals. Good. So somewhere here they had used nuts.

He caught a flick of motion and fired another shot. The bullet ricocheted three times and went whining out the door.

Maybe one of these floor plates… He laughed suddenly. Squarely in front of the ship, in a shadow the lights left between the skids, was a floor plate held down by nuts!

He reduced the jaw size of the wrench and got down between the skids. Another small adjustment and he had the size. There were eight nuts. They came off very easily- these had been removed recently. He put the nuts on one of the skid tops that had an inset groove. Heavy, they stayed there despite the roll.

One of the plane skids was on the far edge of the plate. He pounded it with the heel of the wrench and it loosened.

He pried the plate up with the lip of the wrench. He intended just to set it aside, but as it came loose the drone rolled and it went sliding out of his numb hands, through the door and into the screaming wind and emptiness. Who cared?

He got out a torch and shone it down into the blackness.

He was looking at the top of the main motor drive!

The housing was as big as a one-story house. It made him realize that the whole underside of the drone was motors and additional gas canister storage. What tons and tons and tons of lethal gas this carried! The canisters glowed like monster fish in the darkness. But the housing!

Jonnie knew these drives in miniature. They were space translation cubicles, mostly empty but served by an enormous number of points that jutted into them. Each point had its own coordinate message, and these points had to be cleaned.

There must be an inspection and maintenance plate on this housing!

With a wary look up the long passageway, he slid down and braced his feet on the structural support members of the housing. He played the light around.

It was hard to keep an eye on the corridor from this position, and he alternated looks at the housing with looks at the corridor. Maybe he really ought to work out how to get rid of Zzt before he went on with this. He had to duck down to see the housing.

But doing something with Zzt might put an end to himself and he reminded himself that too many lives- in fact the only human lives left- depended on him. Courage aside, he mustn’t risk his neck. Bear in a cave. He decided he could chance it and ducked down.

There it was!

A huge inspection plate.

Held down by four twelve-inch nuts.

But what an unhandy place. Handy maybe for a Psychlo mechanic to reach down with huge long arms. Not handy for him.

He banged off another shot up the passageway. He ducked down and adjusted the wrench. He gripped the first nut.

Yikes, it was tight. No one-hand job with this big wrench. Psychlos didn’t know their own strength when putting nuts on.

He inspected the corridor again. He had to lay down the assault rifle to do this. He made sure the place he put it braced it reasonably so it wouldn’t slide out the door. He still had his revolver in its holster.

He eased down and, with two hands on the wrench, legs braced, heaved on the nut.

It turned!

He had learned enough about mechanics not to just undo and take off one nut. He’d find the last one wedged tight. So loosen all four about half a turn each….

He had number two loosened. He was straining at number three. “What are you doing!” roared Zzt.

Jonnie came up. Zzt was still in his recess up there.

“You dimwitted, stupid slug!” roared Zzt. “If you monkey with those motors this thing will just crash!”

Thank you, Zzt, said Jonnie to himself.

“If you leave it alone, this thing will just land by itself in two or three days!” howled Zzt.

Actually, Zzt was getting panicky. There was something very peculiar about those shots the animal kept sending up the passageway. Right now the exhale valve on his breathe-mask had sparked slightly. For some minutes he had been aware of little tiny sparks around him. He had thought they were dust motes at first and then thought something was wrong with his eyes, that he was seeing tiny molecular flashes in his head. But this last exhale had actually sparked. Was there radiation around here? Was that animal throwing uranium dust around? Wait, were those slugs or was that gun he used operated by radiation?

He had decided he better act, regardless of consequences. Yes, there was another tiny flash when the mask exhaled spent breathe-gas into the air!

“You’ve got a mask!” roared Zzt. “This kill-gas won’t blow back in the drone. Just wait until it lands!” The stupid, filthy animal. Damn Terl!

“How about other people down there?” said Jonnie.

That shut Zzt up for the moment. He could not work out how something happening to somebody else had any bearing on what one would do for himself.

“Leave those motors alone!” screamed Zzt.

The Psychlo was getting hysterical. Maybe he would charge. Jonnie waited, rifle in hand. No, Zzt was not going to charge. He better get back to work on these nuts. He laid down the assault rifle and ducked. He took a full turn on nut number one. He came up to be sure Zzt hadn’t moved.

The fifty-pound floor plate, sailing in a deadly spin, traveling with the speed of a cannonball, struck a skid strut, glanced, and smashed into the back of Jonnie’s head.

The assault rifle flew from his clutching hand and went out into the dark. Holding somehow on to consciousness he fumbled for the revolver. There was nothing but darkness in front of his eyes.

-

     Part XIV –

-

They had the compound!

A final dive of Glencannon’s battered plane had blown the air-cooling through into the compound breathe-gas pumps, flooding all the underground areas with air.

Glencannon had landed the ship safely. A hidden gun battery had blown out his instrument panel and radio, but he had not been burned and his controls still worked and he got the ship back to the ravine.

Scots, howling with joy, had pulled him out and pounded him on the back until sternly reminded by the parson that the pilot had broken ribs.

A few more bursts of assault rifles had cleaned off some snipers.

The pipe major had cut loose with bagpipes. The other piper and the drummer had thrown aside their rifles and picked up their instruments, and the high-pitched wail and low drone of pipes skirled across the compound to the beat of the drum.

The last remaining Psychlos came stumbling out of the underground with their paws on high. Oddly enough, they soon proved to be top-flight graduates of the various company schools and their female assistants.

Breathe-masks had been in short supply, having been put on combat teams who were going out to fight. But as Robert the Fox noted, these top-drawer ones had had their own personal masks. There were about thirty of them left alive.

Hundreds of Psychlos had died in the fire fights and hundreds more in the air flooding. By eventual count there had been nine hundred seventy-six Psychlos in this compound.

Ker tried to get away by crawling through an exhaust vent and was captured alive.

They got the fire system water valves and shut them off. A team raced around checking for radiation with open breathe-gas vials and it was found that water had washed it down into underground drains. The area was relatively safe.

Chrissie had been spotted by the

Scots, and the news earlier rumored to that effect was now confirmed as she went about helping the parson collect wounded Scots on a flatbed that had been gotten running. She was a trifle taken aback by the enthusiasm that greeted her. She was not used to being a celebrity. And she did not realize that she had given the Scots an element called for in their romances. Everywhere she went, Scots, no matter what they were doing, rushed over to her, stared at her with glad eyes, and then rushed back to the work of getting the place handled. There was still a war on, but they could cheer and their pipes could skirl. And they could delight in the successful rescue of a fair maiden. But Chrissie, even though busy and very tender with the wounded, felt a suppressed terror that she masked. Jonnie was not here and she somehow knew Jonnie was not all right.

Scots under the direction of Angus were trying to get the tumble and jumble of forklifts operating. The whole hangar door was blocked solid with wrecked planes and they could not move any planes out. They told a worried Robert the Fox it would be hours before they could get forklifts running and get to work on that pile.

Terl tried to manage a last ploy. He got to see Robert the Fox by saying he had something urgent. They brought Terl up with hoist chains wrapped around him and held in four different directions by four brawny Scots while two others held assault rifles on him.

He told Robert the Fox that he had keys to the drone presets and would exchange them for a promise of an early teleportation back to Psychlo.

Robert the Fox said yes, if Terl could produce the keys. Terl thereupon asked for his boots.

A female Psychlo who said her name was Chirk had been found in a breathe-mask under the bed in Terl’s old quarters. So Robert the Fox went to her where she was being held under the spotlights of an otherwise wrecked mine car and asked her whether she was Terl’s secretary, and she readily said yes, she was. So Robert said he had a message from Terl for her to get the preset keys of the drone.

Chirk had had lots of time to think since Zzt sailed off on the drone for reasons of his own, and she had finally remembered about the keys. She got very cross and sent back the message that Terl must think she was very inefficient: he knew very well that he had given her a set of keys and told her to drop them in the recycling trash bin, and that had been ages ago and the keys were long gone, and if Terl was trying to blacken her company record by saying she disobeyed orders, she could do a little blackening on her own. There was something about promising her a huge home on Psychlo. She was very cross.

So Robert the Fox called for Terl’s boots and examined them and found a false sole. He removed from it a very thin, small blast gun.

Right now, Terl was chained up with four separate chain strands in a well-lighted field with an assault rifle on him. He kept snarling something about females.

The compound was a litter-strewn bedlam of lights and noise. There were hundreds of Psychlo bodies lying around in everybody’s way. Everything was soaking wet.

The Chamco brothers had gladly contracted for C 15,000 a year with a C500 bonus for each major job. They were a little apprehensive about a counterattack from Psychlo, but pay was pay. They were laboring with the team of Scots to get radios back into operation but it didn’t look like they would earn C500 right away. Water had saturated a lot of equipment and the transshipment area was a write-off. Nobody could get a plane out into the open where its radio could broadcast, and Glencannon’s ship radio was just fused metal.

Robert the Fox walked up and down, his old cape flowing. He answered where he had to and gave orders where needed. But his mind wasn’t on it.

The twelve-hour radio silence was up and he was out of communication on the planetary band. He could not order the ships that had attacked the remote minesites to go look for the drone. He had no ships to send.

He went over to where about twenty wounded Scots were laid out in a field, being handled by the parson and schoolmaster and four old women. And Chrissie.

His eyes and Chrissie’s eyes met. Robert the Fox felt very bad.

Jonnie had been right. It would not have done to wait for minesite-bound ships to attack the drone. They had left long before it fired and they knew nothing of it. And he could not even tell them.

He had a feeling Jonnie was in trouble.

Robert the Fox gave his head a slight shake. Chrissie looked at him steadily for a moment, swallowed hard, and then went back to work.