Authors: Mack Maloney
A priest...
Deaux climbed out of the HVV and walked to within six feet of the diminutive monk.
"Are you lost, Father?" Deaux asked him snidely.
The priest just shook his head slowly. The wind was making his cassock crack like a whip.
"I am the one they choose to speak to you," he said.
Deaux handed the green flag to one of his security men and imperiously snapped off his gloves.
"So then, speak, Father. I'm a very busy man."
"This war is unnecessary," the priest told him simply.
"And why is that?"
"Because it's not your battle to fight," the priest replied. "You've been duped. Whoever is paying you has made a fool of you and your men and has been for centuries."
The wind began howling now. Smoke from the battle scene below was wafting up toward them, swirling in the mountain crosswinds. It was suddenly very cold.
"Father, I'm sure you are a more learned person than me," Deaux said. "So forgive me, but I don't understand what you are talking about."
The priest finally lowered his green flag to the ground.
"Answer me this," he began again. "When was the last time you were paid for this mission?"
Deaux didn't reply. Paid? He couldn't remember back that far.
The priest went on. "When was the last time you heard from your families? Or saw your superiors? You must have a command structure somewhere in the Galaxy. When did anyone from there visit you last?"
Again, Deaux could not reply. Besides Xirstix, he'd never seen any superior officers on the sentinel moon. For years the rumor around the base was that their superiors always visited in secret, which explained why they were never around. But Xirstix had once confided to him that it had been decades since the last real contact. Yet there was a reason for that: What they were doing out here was
so
secret, regular communication would have jeopardized the security of the mission. Or at least that's what Xirstix had been told.
"Don't you get it?" the priest asked him now. "Just like everyone else in this system, you're stuck inside a time bubble. You think you've been out here for just a few decades, but it's really been centuries. It is only noticeable to someone from the outside looking in. But take it from me, back where I'm from, those uniforms, those weapons, those little wings—they went out of date hundreds of years ago. The people who stuck you out here are probably all
dead
by now. Of old age, I'm sure. And that means there is
no money
waiting for you."
Deaux remained mute. His eyes darted back and forth, for him a sign that he was approaching something that passed as deep thought.
"I was told I'd be out here for fifty years," Deaux finally croaked. "I was told that it would be an isolated post, but I would be paid handsomely once my tour was done."
"Have you ever heard of Holy Blood, my son?"
Deaux shook his head no.
"It is a magical substance that keeps you alive a long time, so a friend of mine tells me," the priest said. "He thinks you were all given a bit of it and then sent way out here to serve for centuries, not decades."
"Nonsense!"
"Oh, really? Then why do you think they never came back to finish the other ninety-nine sentinel moons?"
Deaux was stopped dead in his tracks. He had no answer to that question.
"We could prove it to you, if you let us," the priest offered.
Deaux's face turned red. "I did not come up here to be educated by you," he snapped. "What you seem to forget here, Father, is, time bubble or not, I've got you at an advantage on the field—more than twenty to one! My job here is to crush you. That means you will be crushed."
"Even though there is a chance that what I've said here is correct? That you've in effect given up your lives out here? That your families are all dead? Your loved ones gone, assuming you even had loved ones? Think about it, man. It makes sense. Sure this is a secret place. Highly secret. It was built that way. And they didn't want anyone back there to know about it. They knew they had to keep their prisoners under lock and key, but they also had to keep the prison guards quiet, too. How best to do that than put them all in a time bubble and allow the years to pass like water dripping on stone. From that perspective, what's the point of all this?"
"What's the point?" Deaux roared back. "What do you want me to do? Just walk away, just on your say-so?"
"Yes! Exactly ... Just walk away. Leave this planet. Leave the system. Pop out of the bubble and go do whatever it is you people insist on doing. No one will even know you've gone. Not for decades—and that's only assuming they'll actually come out here looking for you again someday, which they probably won't."
Deaux had had enough. He was starting to think too much, and it hurt. He wanted to go.
"Father, you are dulling my senses, and I have to be sharp for my victory celebration tomorrow. So my best to you and your Heavenly Creator or whoever, but I have things to do...."
The priest just shook his head sadly.
"Hear one more thing then," he said. "Honor binds me to tell you that my friends will have a secret weapon if and when you clash again. They will not hesitate to use it on you if you persist. This secret weapon will kill many of your soldiers. So many, that at the end of the day, it just won't be worth it for you."
"If your secret weapon is that flying maniac," Deaux retorted angrily. "We'll get around to destroying him eventually. I won't lie and say that his attacks haven't been ...
noticed
. But he can't do it alone."
A very dark moment came now. "That flying machine is a weapon of awesome standards," the priest replied sternly. "But that is not the secret weapon of which I speak. This is something more brutal, and for your men, unstoppable."
"
Please
," Deaux sniffed. "I have nearly a half million men still under my command. You have fifteen thousand, tops. Now, really, I thought you wanted to talk—not bluff."
"It is not a bluff. We want to make a deal. You and your army go back to where you came from. You leave us alone. We leave you alone. We never have to meet again."
Deaux couldn't help it; he laughed in the priest's face. Even his security guards were laughing.
"You're bold, if anything, Father. I have to give you that. But your friends have sent a fool in their place. No matter what mumbo jumbo you want to fill my head, the facts are still these: Your friends have the smaller army, it is
their
planet that has been invaded. Their cities are under
our
domination."
He signaled for the HVV to come and pick him up.
"I have more important things to do than stay up here talking to a delusional priest," he said.
The HVV appeared, and Deaux climbed aboard.
The priest called after him, "Just think of the lives you could save, my son.
Please
..."
But Deaux was already gone.
27
They mere called
whistles
.
They were an ancient device that would produce a shrill, piercing sound when manipulated by breath. Every BMK field commander carried one; so did every officer down to the rank of captain. Through the centuries, their predecessors had discovered that if one blew hard enough, the whistle's song could be heard above all types of battle.
At precisely six a.m. that following morning, just as the fog was rising off the Plain of Stars, more than four thousand whistles went off at once.
It was enough to wake the dead.
Several good things had happened for the BMK during the night. The three hundred thousand-man Army Central corps had arrived. They'd encamped on the other side of Silverine Peak and had infiltrated onto the Plain of Stars throughout the night. The one hundred thousand men of Army South were just a few hours away as well.
It was also reported that the enemy's flying machine had been attacking targets over on Planet France for most of the night. The respite had been a help. It had allowed the fresh BMK troops to consolidate, get into position, eat a little, sleep a little.
Their main infantry troops, Army Central's sixteen divisions of foot soldiers, were now arrayed all along the Ghost River Valley, hidden behind the mountains of wreckage from the day before. The wreckage actually worked to their advantage, too. It had perfectly masked the assembling points for the soldiers throughout the night.
Set within Army Central's rank was a division of combat engineers. They would go out first, just before the main attack began, their goal being to reach the river and start zipping up their mobile field bridges. Leading the engineers across the wreckage-strewn killing ground would be the hapless, unarmed artillerymen.
On either side of the main line was the mounted infantry, combined about forty thousand strong, riding in heavily armored HVV hovercrafts that glided three feet above the ground. Behind them, a line of small single-tube blaster arrays, sometimes called Faster Blasters because they fired 0.983759 quicker than the big arrays. They, too, were towed on hovering platforms and could be ready to fire in seconds. Behind all this, eight more divisions—eighty thousand men—were held in reserve on the other side of the hill.
The blowing of the whistles meant troops forward.
The foot soldiers of Army Central beat their chests once, creating a thunderclap that echoed up and down the river valley. Then they started walking, slowly at first, but with each step picking up speed. The combat engineers broke ahead of their ranks and, pushing the unlucky artillerymen before them, scrambled through the still-burning wreckage, heading for the river. On the flanks, the motorized infantry began to move as well, the slight whirring made by every HVV creating a sound like the wind rushing through trees.
Breaking out of the wreckage, the trembling artillerymen unwillingly leading the way, the engineers were the first to see the enemy, waiting behind their lines, about a mile away. The glint of several thousand rifles pointing in their direction grew stronger with each second in the rising sun; meanwhile, the Master Blasters towering over everything had an illumination all their own.
Most of the wreckage from the day before had fallen close back to the ridge. The engineers would have preferred it if the debris led right up to the riverbank; the artillerymen heartily agreed. But, it was more or less a clear sail now up to the river— about five hundred feet of open ground. A perfect killing ground for the enemy troops. Crossing it would be a chore.
The engineers surged on, pushing the artillerymen in front of them, expecting the worst at any moment. Yet nothing came. The enemy did not shoot at them. This was strange. Certainly they could see them. Were they saving ammunition? Why? Master Blasters rarely ran out of power. And a single electron torch could produce a couple thousand bullets a minute. Why then were they holding their fire?
Whatever the reason, the engineers took advantage. They pushed the artillerymen aside now and ran full out for the eastern bank of the river. There were more than ten thousand CEs; each one seemed to reach the riverbank at the same time. Some dove right in the water, not quite believing they had made it this far without so much as a scratch.
Behind them was the tremendous noise of almost one hundred thousand soldiers now running at close to full speed, breathing in and out as one, racing for the riverbank just as the engineers had done before them. Many of the artillerymen were trampled to death in this stampede. Others just fell down, covered up, and hoped for the best.
The engineers crawled to the river's edge, now, about a six-foot drop from either bank. They quickly began unzipping their bridges. Basically, these were structures made of ions, which assembled themselves in a kind of hovering runway about twenty feet wide. Both ends of the near-invisible structure could move back and forth, absorbing as many soldiers as quickly as possible and carrying them across the divide. The engineers were able to deploy about four thousand bridges in a matter of seconds. Just seconds after that, the first of the infantry reached the riverbank and went charging across.
And that's when the Americans opened up.
It was the engineers, still lying low near the water's edge, who had the best look at the battle.
No sooner had the Army Central troops hit the bridges when all eight Master Blasters and thousands of rifles and machine guns opened up on them at once. The Americans' fusillade hit the BMK foot soldiers point-blank, head-on. The Master Blasters disintegrated all soldiers found within their beams. There were no bodies to trip over, just tiny piles of salt. But for those soldiers hit by the ballistic piece of metal called a bullet, death could be a horrible thing. Severed arms, legs, arteries. Hearts exploding, throats torn away, skulls blown off.
The roar of weapons and death quickly reached a crescendo and stayed there, nearly overwhelming everything else. The engineers remained below the riverbank, staying in place as ordered, and thankful for it. But then the bodies of those BMK soldiers hit by bullets just coming off the bridges began falling back into the Ghost River. Soon so many dead and wounded soldiers were hitting the water, the sound of their splashes almost overcame the ear-splitting blast of the enemy's multitubed master arrays.
Through all this, the CEs could hear other noises as well. The whooshing sound made by the 33418 danker strafing the length of the plain back and forth once again. Above that, the unmistakable screech of the enemy's magical flying machine. It had suddenly appeared overhead as well. The engineers could see it streak over the riverbank, back and forth, its nose blaster always open, always spewing six bright red beams. Sometimes flying right behind it, lower, slower, was the robot, destructo-rays from its eye blasters bouncing in every direction.
Five minutes, six minutes. Seven...
The BMK infantry kept coming, and the Americans kept firing. The dead soldiers were not falling back into the river so much any more only because a large wall of bodies was preventing the corpses from flopping backward any farther. The engineers could also hear the oddly calm whir of the HVVs. The hovercrafts would streak right over the river in formations of twos and threes, their smaller Faster Blasters firing full bore. But soon after the CEs lost sight of them, they would hear the sound of the hovercraft either being disintegrated or simply shot out of the sky.