Zzt grabbed the cable ladder rungs and started up. He looked up. It was not a short climb. The Mark 32 cut off the windstream quite a bit but it was still a strong blast. He paused, made sure his mask wouldn’t blow off, and climbed up the ladder.
3
Jonnie lay on the cross-members of the canister storage area of the drone, gripped in a nightmare. He was in the cage again, a collar around his throat, and a demon was crushing in the back of his skull. He kept trying to tell the demon he would shoot it if it didn’t stop, but he couldn’t get the words out.
He wrestled himself up from the nightmare. The roar of the huge drone engines beat against his head. He realized where he was. It wasn’t the collar: it was the neck lanyard of the revolver; the heavy weapon was hanging down between the beams. He painfully retrieved it. There was a small amount of light in here and he swung the cylinder open.
Just one shot left.
He reached to his belt to see whether he had reloads. He didn’t. The blast gun was lost.
Before he passed out he had opened the first aid kit and tied a wound pad over his head and under the face mask straps. That was all he remembered after he had shot the flashlight out of Zzt’s hand. He could see it gleaming still, bent over a cross-member. No, that wasn’t a flashlight. It was about four feet away and it seemed forty. What was it?
A mechanic’s mirror. So that was how Zzt observed him.
What had awakened him? How long had he been out? Seconds? Minutes? The back of his head felt like it had been staved in, soft to the touch. Fractured skull? Or was it just swelling and blood-matted hair?
He heard something clatter. Noise around the plane had awakened him.
With a sudden feeling of urgency he made the effort and retrieved the mirror. He slid along the crossbeam and put the mirror to the hole.
It was Zzt.
His first impulse was to dart out and use this one last bullet. Then he saw the ladder end. And the ore basket going up. They were refueling the Mark 32!
The sudden thought of what they could do with the Mark 32 back at the compound shocked him fully alert. He knew what he must do. Just now—wait!
That was the hard part. He kept drifting off into a murky black sea of unconsciousness. He could hold on for a while, but the wave would drown him again.
Zzt was on the radio. No, he was smashing the radio with the wrench.
Jonnie gathered himself up, tensing to dive out through the hole. He watched carefully with the mirror. Zzt went over to the ladder. He started up. He stopped with just his legs visible below the door.
In a wave of pain, Jonnie got out of the canister loading slot. There was a safety line on the floor plates. He grabbed it and gave it a tug. It was secured to his plane. In his condition he did not want to lapse unconscious and fall out that door. He rapidly swung the safety wire around his waist and secured it with a hasty loop.
Zzt’s legs were gone.
Jonnie checked the revolver to make sure the one shot was going to come up under the firing pin when he cocked it.
He swung himself onto the ladder. It was blowing outward from the drone. The bottom end was fastened inside the door but he was now out over empty space, protected from the windstream by the tail of his battle plane. He went up several steps.
Jonnie had a clear view of the Mark 32. The cockpit lights were on; the door was being held open by Nup’s foot. Zzt was a third of the way up to the plane.
For a moment Jonnie thought he was too late. He thought Nup had hoisted the fuel cartridges out of sight. But no. Nup had the caps off the fuel receptacles and was examining them. For numbers? And he had the whole ore basket in his lap!
Zzt was howling at Nup, something about opening the door wider and steadying the cable. Zzt climbed further. The ladder was protected by the angle of the Mark 32 but there was still a tearing wind. It was ripping Zzt’s jacket. He roared again something about opening the door, the words lost in the roar of the drone and the scream of the wind.
Jonnie cocked the revolver. The face mask protected his eyes. He could have shot either Zzt or Nup. He didn’t. He carefully allowed for wind and elevation. The already high muzzle velocity of a Smith and Wesson .457 magnum was increased by blasting caps in its cartridges. He must be very careful. Only one shot.
Nup kicked the door further open, the ore basket in plain view on his lap. Then Nup saw Jonnie and yelled and pointed, and Zzt looked back down.
Jonnie fired!
He tried to duck back inside an instant after the shot. He was not quite fast enough.
Enough fuel and ammunition for twenty battles not only went up, it also flashed down into the open fuel and ammunition receptacles!
The roar and almost instantaneous concussion hit Jonnie like a sledgehammer. He went outward over black space.
The safety line held and snapped him back inside the door.
In that confused instant, as though it were a still picture, he saw Zzt on fire just starting to fly out into space. He saw the whole Mark 32 leap in an exploding ball high in the air.
Jonnie hit the floor plates just inside the open slots so he wouldn’t slide back.
The concussion had been too much for his head and he was passing out again.
An idiot phrase passed through his mind just before a deeper darkness blanketed his senses. “Old Staffor was wrong. I’m not too smart. I just cost myself the only target search beams can pick up.”
The drone was not rolling now that it had been relieved of its unstabilizing weight.
The body on the icy floor just inside the door did not move.
The lethal cargo soared onward toward Scotland and the rest of the world, its goal the final obliteration of the remainder of the human race, the ones it had missed a thousand or more years ago.
4
The small boy sped on feet of fire through the underground passages of the dungeons of the castle. He was soaked with the rain that fell outside. His bonnet was askew. His eyes were glowing with the urgency of a message he had carried for a two-mile sprint through the dawn twilight.
He identified a room ahead and tore into it, shouting: “Prince Dunneldeen! Prince Dunneldeen! Wake up! Wake up!”
Dunneldeen had just settled down in his own room, in his own plaid blanket for a nice comfortable snooze, his first in quite some time.
The small boy was wrestling with excited hands to light a candle dip with a ratchet flint device.
So it was “Prince” Dunneldeen now. They only called him that on feast days or when somebody wanted a favor. His uncle, chief of Clanfearghus, was the last of the Stewarts and entitled to be called king, but he never made anything of it.
The light was burning now. It shone upon the sparsely furnished stonewalled room. It showed the rain-drenched, excited black-eyed boy, Bittie MacLeod.
“Your squire Dwight, your squire Dwight ha’ sent a message, who he say is mos’ urgent!”
Ah, this was different. Dunneldeen got up and reached for his clothes. “Squire” Dwight. Probably Dwight had used that because “copilot” would be an unknown word to this child.
“Your gillies are afoot asaddling a mount. Your squire ha’ said ’twas most urgent!”
Dunneldeen glanced at his watch. It meant that the twelve-hour radio silence was over, that was all. Probably a babble of news. Dunneldeen had no idea at all that things had gone other than successfully at the other minesites or that they’d succeeded at the compound. He got back into his flight clothes. No hurry. He took his time.
What a busy night it had been. His and Dwight’s plan had been to bring the chiefs across the sea to celebrate the victory. They had landed both ships on a flat place two miles off so as not to shock the people, and he had borrowed a horse from a startled farmer he had known and ridden in.
He had gotten his uncle, chief of Clanfearghus, out of bed, and gillies had flown to light the fires on the hills to gather the clans to hear the news. The minesite in Cornwall was no more. They would be free to roa
m the whole of England!
The chief was very fond of his nephew Dunneldeen who was, in fact, his heir. He liked Dunneldeen’s style. A true Scot. He had listened enraptured as Dunneldeen had given him a thumbnail but torrential account of all their doings. And if Dunneldeen were a bit incautious, the chief gave his attention while making very sure to reserve judgment and act in a wise way on the general scene, without spoiling Dunneldeen’s flair. So he had ordered the beacons lighted. He was cautiously thrilled.
Dunneldeen had then gone to see a lass and had asked her to marry him, and she had said, “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Dunneldeen!”
That attended to, he had come home for a nice snooze.
Bittie seemed to be trying to remember something else. He was hopping from one bare foot to the other, squinting up his eyes, wiping at his nose. Then the boy seemed to abandon his effort. Dunneldeen was almost dressed.
The boy’s eyes caught the sword on the wall. It was a claymore, used in battles and for ceremony. It was a real claidheamhmor, five feet long, not just a basket hilt saber. Bittie was gesturing at it, indicating the prince should wear it. Dunneldeen shook his head to signify no, he wasn’t going to take it this time.
When he saw the eagerness die in Bittie’s eyes, Dunneldeen relented. He took it down and handed it to him. “All right, but you carry it!” The sword was a foot taller than the boy. Worship, awe and joy sprang up in the boy again as he draped the hanger around his neck.
Dunneldeen checked his gear and went out. The castle passages and halls were aswarm with gillies. They had Lochaber axes in their belts and were bustling around with a hundred chores in preparation for a gathering of the clans. Dunneldeen had really thrown a firebrand into the scene. Nobody had been briefed. They didn’t know what was going on. Dunneldeen had come home. Orders had been given. Somebody said the Psychlo minesite was no more. There was an awful lot to do.
The ancient ruin had remained a ruin above ground so as to attract minimal attention from drones that had gone over for centuries. Some said the place had once been the seat of Scottish kings. Its dungeons had been expanded and it was a fortress in itself.
Two gillies had Dunneldeen’s own horse saddled and it was prancing about. The gillies were smiling broad welcomes to Dunneldeen.
He mounted, and at a signal they tossed the boy up behind him, claidheamhmor and all.
It was raining. A storm apparently had moved in. It had been clear when they landed but now the dawn was thick with overcast.
It was at that moment that Bittie MacLeod remembered the rest of the message. “Your squire,” he said to Dunneldeen’s back, “also say to ‘squiggle’!”
The boy’s accent was thick, not the accent of an educated Scot. “To what?” demanded Dunneldeen.
“I misremembered, I couldna think of the word,” apologized the boy. “But it did sound like ‘squiggle.’”
“Scramble?” asked Dunneldeen. The word that meant emergency takeoff.
“Ah, so ’twas, so ’twas!”
Dunneldeen was off like a shot and two miles were never eaten up so fast by a horse.
They came plunging to a stop on the flat-topped knoll. Dunneldeen looked wildly about. Only the passenger plane was there. He flung himself off the horse and flung the reins to the boy. He opened the door and leaped into the passenger plane, reaching for the radio.
And then Dwight landed nearby, startling the horse into frantic plunging that lifted the boy and the sword off the ground at every rear.
Dunneldeen raced over to Dwight.
“It’s gone now,” said Dwight.
There had been no radio messages from the compound. Dwight, as arranged, had faithfully stayed on watch. He had waited for any break in radio silence and the end of the silence itself. The time period had ended, but pilots, not hearing from the compound and Robert the Fox, had not opened up.
But something else peculiar had happened. Dwight had picked up a Psychlo conversation on the planetary plane band, very loud and clear. It seemed loud enough to be within a thousand miles or so, maybe more, hard to tell.
“What did they say?” demanded Dunneldeen.
“I got it all on a disk,” said Dwight. He started the disk. It said “Nup, you crap brain, wake up!”
Dwight said he had at once sent the boy to tell Dunneldeen to scramble and then he himself had gone straight up. Yes, the sudden roar of Dwight’s own engines was there on the disk.
The disk played on.
“Drone?” said Dunneldeen. “Zzt? There was a transport chief named Zzt.”
“Well, he was out there someplace in a drone!” said Dwight. He had gone up as high as he could go. About two hundred thousand feet. As fast as he could go. “Almost tore my heart and lungs out with gravity,” said Dwight.
Then he heard complete instructions in Psychlo about relanding on top of a drone in front of a door so Zzt could get out of the drone.
“There is no drone that big,” said Dunneldeen. “Not that I know of.”
Dwight had turned on every search instrument he had. The transmission had been coming from the northwest. He had sped in that direction. He had gotten it on his scope. It was traveling 302 miles per hour, a very positive blip. It was clear weather where the thing had been; this cloud cover and rain was ahead of it.
He played some more transmission. Somebody named “Snit” was still in the drone but no explanation why. This was mad because drones didn’t have pilots. But how could anybody fly anybody out of a drone? And then somebody was taking fuel out of the drone in an ore basket and the other Psychlo said he was leaving the drone.
“Then why are you here?” demanded Dunneldeen, turning toward the passenger plane. “Why didn’t you attack it?”
“It blew up,” said Dwight. “I saw it visual, eyeball! It looked like thirty lightning storms! It curved down. It probably went into the sea. I scanned the whole area. There was a little blip left; probably when it sank it had some debris. And then that was gone. It just isn’t out there anymore on any scope. So I came back here.”
Dunneldeen played the disk through again. Dunneldeen pulled out the instrument recorders. They told the same story. Heat and then gone.
Dunneldeen looked at the sky. “You better go back up there and patrol in that direction.”
“There won’t be any blip,” said Dwight. “And this overcast is high. The thing was flying at about five thousand feet and you won’t be able to see a thing visually. The overcast goes up to at least ten. There’s no blip,” finished Dwight.
Dunneldeen turned and looked at the castle ruin, gaunt and very old in the morning rain and mist. Two miles away and it was drifting in and out of visibility.
What was that all about? Had the battle of the compound been lost? What drone? And why had it blown up? The clanchiefs would be assembling and he had a lot of things to do today.
5
Jonnie drifted up out of a pit of black pain. He tried to orient himself. The drone motors were like shouting anger in his ears. His arms were hanging down into a gap in the floor plating. Blood had run along the sleeves and dried.
With a start of alarm he thought of Zzt and reached for the revolver. It was gone, the lanyard snapped in the blast. The blast! Zzt was also gone and so was the Mark 32. And so was anything that would let this ancient monster be located on a screen.
He lifted himself up with considerable effort. He was still tied with the safety line. He found it very hard to think connectedly, and he wondered for a bit why he was tied to the line. His back hurt, one more pain in a confused welter of it. He realized the safety line had pulled him back inside.
It was awfully hard to think, and he recognized that he was getting worse, not better. He was nauseated. Hunger. It must be that he was nauseated from hunger.
He got to his knees. The drone was no longer rolling. That was a relief. He turned and then stared.
Through the door, bright tendrils of mist and fog were curling in. It was a storm. He was flying through
a storm. Wait. It was light out there. Daylight. Well-advanced daylight.
How long had he been out? It must be hours.
He spun on his knees, thinking to see the gas canisters dropping gas. He had no way to tell that. Were they already past Scotland? Had the drone already done part of its work?
He got to the door and tried to spot a brighter area in the storm that might tell him where the sun was. It was too thick. He wasn’t thinking well; he realized he had reverted to being a mountain man. There were compasses in the plane. He opened the door and saw the havoc Zzt had made with the radio smashup. It distracted him. Then he realized he had opened the door to look at the compasses and did so. When he leaned over it felt like somebody was hitting his skull with a sledgehammer. He felt for the compress on his head. It was still there. No, the compasses. Look at the compasses.
He was heading southeast. The course to Scotland would have curved over like that. He couldn’t be sure. He went back to the door and tried to look down. He nearly fell. He couldn’t see anything down there. All rain and mist.
Then he remembered the ship had gas ports in the bottom. He crawled painfully to the floor plate he had removed and looked past the motor housings. No daylight was coming up.
His air mask seemed to be suffocating him. He recalled it had been askew when he woke.
Of course! The drone had dropped no gas yet. He’d be dead.
Well, he wasn’t dead. Pretty well on the way to it with this head, but he wasn’t dead. Therefore the drone had not yet dropped gas.
Part of his trouble was that his air bottle was out of air. He got new bottles and put them in place. It made him feel a little less lethargic. He got a grip on himself; he was just dawdling around. What had he been at when he had been hit with whatever it was?
Maybe he didn’t have very much time!
His industry faded when he recognized he didn’t have the wrench anymore. He made himself think, to come out of his pain. He climbed down and checked the nuts on the inspection plate. They were loose but it would take an age to unscrew each one: the threads were too many.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 49
