Planet America s-2

by Mack Maloney

  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.

  In the midst of all this, some of the engineers saw something else. Through the smoke and fog of war, a strange craft popped in, just for a moment, above the battlefield. Unlike just about every other spacecraft in the Galaxy, this craft was not shaped like a triangle or a wedge. Instead, it was shaped like a saucer. It hovered high above the river for just a few seconds, wobbling a little bit as if whoever was inside was watching the battle and not quite believing what they were seeing.

  Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the saucer-shaped craft blinked out.

  All of the firing died down after that.

  More than a minute of silence passed before the first few brave CEs dared to climb up and look over the riverbank to see what had happened.

  Most would wish they hadn't.

  What lay before them were the remains of Army Central's infantry divisions. Three miles in both direction lay piles of bodies, horribly shot up, among small hills of salt. Salt was also blowing in the wind.

  No one was moving; only a few muffled cries could be heard. Smoke covered most of the battlefield, but behind the enemy's stone and wood lines, the glint of thousands of rifles still pointing eastward was quite evident. Five of the Master Blasters were on fire and smoking heavily; only three had survived the battle between them and their smaller cousins. The killing field was also littered with hundreds of crashed HVVs.

  From what the engineers could see, not a single BMK soldier had made it to within ten feet of the enemy line.

  The eerie astonishment of the scene was just as quickly broken by the sound of another muffled thunderclap. The engineers turned around to see another wa
ve of BMK soldiers running right for them. It was Army Central Two, the eight reserve divisions that had been hiding behind the hill.

  Eighty thousand soldiers, stretched along a seven-mile front, hit the ion bridges seconds later. The firing went up full roar again. The engineers fell back into the water. After all, this is where they were supposed to stay. In a replay of the carnage just minutes before, the flash of blaster beams and the rumble of gunfire mixed and rose as one into a deep, monstrous growl. The air was thick with spent cordite, disintegrated atoms, fresh blood.

  This time, the bodies weren't piling up near the edge of the river as they had when the first wave charged into oblivion. Did this mean the reserve soldiers were going farther and possibly beginning to overwhelm the enemy's fortifications? Not one of the engineers dared stick his head up to find out.

  There was no reason to look into Hell if you didn't have to.

  At this moment, three miles away, the advance elements of Army South entered the Ghost River Valley. These soldiers were hardened veterans of numerous bloody campaigns, many of them on tough, mountainous planets. But they had never seen anything like this. The wreckage alone on the Plain of Stars seemed to stretch right up to the sky. Bodies and white splotches of burned salt were everywhere. Flames and smoke were so thick, they blotted out the sun. A death pall covered the east side of the valley.

  To the west, over the river, was the enemy encampment and a fierce battle in progress. The Army South commanders trained their TVZs on the action. The BMK strategy was clear: The first wave of BMK soldiers had been essentially sacrificed to wear down the defenders. Then the reserves were thrown in, further weakening the American line. The reserve divisions were battling close but were not yet on the enemy's fortifications.

  The Army South commanders knew this only meant one thing. They had arrived at precisely the right time.

  They started rushing their troops forward. Troops normally used to marching into war were now stuffed onto overcrowded HVVs and sent speeding toward the battle. Somewhere up in the mountains to the east, they knew Deaux was looking down on them. First there was Army Central. Then Army Central Two. Now came Army South. One hundred thousand men hitting the line at just the right moment.

  Of such things are victories won.

  The first wave of Army South soldiers hit the wavering front line just seconds later. The wave of overcrowded HVVs streaked over the last of the reserve divisions and penetrated the enemy line itself. But there was a surprise waiting for them here. The American trenches were empty. The remaining Master Blasters were in flames, wrecked on purpose. The last of the American army was going over the hill to the west.

  "Pursue them!" Deaux bellowed now from his position on high, his voice carrying over the battlefield via a sonic bell. "We've finally got them on the run!"

  It was, of course, Deaux's hubris that had him send his army after the Americans.

  None of them had any idea what was on the other side. The location of the American encampment had been selected just for that reason. The topography was such that there was no line of sight from the battlefield on the Plain of Stars to what lay beyond the hill.

  What was on the other side was an old, abandoned highway bridge, about a half mile long, which crossed a large ravine. Its roadway then flowed down through a narrow pass and ended in a canyon known as Carson Sink. The canyon was about a half mile square.

  Just as the first Army South soldiers reached the east end of the highway bridge, the last of the American soldiers were fleeing into the pass. The Army South troops charged across the bridge, many on HVV hovercrafts, many on foot, some officers literally pushing their soldiers through the gap. Once this massive pursuit was set in motion, there was no quick way to stop it or even slow it down. Obsessed with the high-speed movement of troops, it would be Army South's final undoing. They'd managed to move nearly one hundred thousand troops two miles over rough terrain, across a long bridge, and into the open area beyond in an astoundingly short amount of time.

  Quite a feat — but that area beyond, Carson Sink, was surrounded by high cliffs. And as soon as the last BMK soldiers had streamed into it, the flying machine appeared overhead and bombed the pass, sealing the canyon.

  It was a trap. And Army South had fallen right into it.

  When Deaux arrived in the canyon in his customized shuttle craft, his officers greeted him with worried expressions and much nervousness. They knew they'd been fooled. The withdrawing Americans had simply rushed through their Twenty 'n Six field portal again, leaving the BMK soldiers in one of the most indefensible situations imaginable.

  These officers had to explain this now to Deaux, but even before the words could come out of their mouths, there was a collected gasp from the thousands of troops milling nervously around them.

  Everyone was looking up, pointing to the canyon ridge that surrounded them. Dark figures were appearing atop this high ground, groups of twos and threes popping in all along the line.

  The daylight was still dim — it was not yet 7:30 in the morning — so it was nearly impossible to make out just who or what was staring down at them from these highlands. They appeared to be soldiers, but they weren't the ragtag American fighters. They were long gone. These soldiers were bearing huge combat weapons, and they themselves looked enormous.

  And there were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. And more were popping in with each passing second.

  Finally, Deaux was able to get a working TVZ scope and focused on the ridge closest to his position. That's when he realized these weren't soldiers at all. Not typical ones, anyway.

  They were robots. Combat robots. The TVZ was telling him there were more than a half million of them encircling the canyon.

  "So that's why the Americans didn't destroy the bridge," Deaux mumbled now, stepping back into his shuttle with a small coterie of security troops. He gave his shuttle pilot two thumbs up.

  The pilot got the message right away. He engaged the shuttle's controls and they quickly lifted off, leaving nearly one hundred thousand BMK troops behind.

  Clanker 33418 was standing at the top of the highest peak above Carson Sink, looking down into the canyon.

  He was facing east. The sun was reflecting off his visor. He was slightly larger than the battle robots; he stood out among them all. On either side of him were two smaller, thicker 'bots. One was green, one black.

  They were, of course, the dead souls of Myx, the ancient robots called back to life again and transported here by purely magical means. But this time they had been resurrected not to fight each other — a simple adjustment of the aggression programs — but those soldiers now caught in the canyon below. They were just waiting for the word to proceed. His chest whirring with all kinds of sounds now, 33418 lowered his head and did one final scan of the canyon. There were 99,416 individuals down there.

  Every one of them had to be destroyed.

  Clanker 33418 turned to the robot on his left, lifted his visor slightly, and sent a red beam into the smaller 'bot's viz lens. That robot shuddered a bit, then turned and transferred the same red beam to the robot on the right. This robot sent it on to two more. And they sent it to two more, and two more, over and over and over again, until in a chain reaction of red beams, the entire army of robots had been given their final orders.

  With no ceremony, no hesitation, they began marching down into the canyon.

  Pater Tomm and the poof popped in where 33418 had been standing moments before.

  The battle below was just beginning. The robots were wading into the terrified soldiers, most of whom were too afraid to even raise their weapons and fire. Now the soldiers were being crushed, trampled, shot, electrocuted, and disintegrated in a disturbingly methodical manner. If for some reason one of the robots was hit just right by blaster fire and disabled, it took just a few seconds for it to rebuild itself and come back to life again. The robots had been designed for eternal combat. There was no stopping them. The BMK soldiers
never had a chance.

  Looking down on the bloodbath, the poof became quickly disgusted.

  "To be involved in such an enterprise goes against my privilege as an eternal soul," she said. "And it is your fault, Father. I broke just about all the rules of Nature getting these gas cans here for you. And now they are participating in a slaughter."

  "Think of it as a cleansing," Tomm told her. "Or the misery the people of this Galaxy will not have to endure now that these dark souls are being dispatched. 1 gave them their chance. I warned them of our secret weapon."

  He took a drink from his flask. It contained only coffee, his new jones.

  "Some things are just necessary, my child," he concluded.

  The poof put her hands on her hips and began to glow red. She was wearing her jester's costume today.

  "First of all, you can spare the 'child,' stuff from now on," she hissed at him. "I'm older than you by at least a couple eons."

  Tomm just smiled. "Don't be so sure of that," he told her. "I stopped counting long ago."

  They watched in silence for a few moments as the ring of robots closed in tighter around the shrinking mass of helpless soldiers. The physical aspect of the battle was overwhelming, with thousands of men and robots moving at once. The screams were bone-chilling, the crunch of robot steel against flesh and bone unnerving. Most of the BMK officers had fled to the center of the crowd, prolonging their lives by just a few more minutes but giving them witness to the slow horror that would eventually reach them, too. Some took their own lives instead; some shot comrades and then themselves. Some even dug holes in the ground and stuck their heads into them, one last act of madness.

  The canyon's dusty surface was now soaked with blood.

  "This deed will soon be done," the poof said. "But the demons we have let out of the bottle here will be impossible to stuff back in."