Battlefield Earth

by L. Ron Hubbard

  The group apparently had some wounded and were caring for them and their attention for quite a span was not on security. The console was sitting there, plain as day.

  Finally six marine attack battle planes flew in and landed. There was heavy air cover over this group quite in addition to the landed planes.

  The small gray man kept his eye on that console. They finally shrouded it and moved it into one of the marine-attack planes.

  The Hockner super-lieutenant suddenly said, “Wasn't that a transshipment console they transferred from truck to plane? I’m playing back my screens.”

  The small gray man sagged. He had not wanted them to see that. He had hoped they wouldn't recognize one if they did see it.

  Vain hope. “It is.” said the Hockner.

  It took them quite a while to load down there. Some of the marine attack planes were quite empty; two were very fully loaded. The small gray man looked up capacities. Yes, two marine attack planes could handle that entire party.

  The commanders were now chattering at a great rate. Some had seen pictures of such consoles. There was a rising tide of excitement, a rising vision of sharing in two hundred million credits of reward money.

  Then the group down there abandoned the flatbeds and pumps and a crane and what might be a couple of coffins. Six marine attack planes took off.

  And then they did a very puzzling and confusing thing. Instead of assuming an orderly formation, they began to crisscross each other's bows and circle and dart. It was quite impossible even on a screen playback to tell which marine attack carrier was which!

  Four of them landed again. Which four? Which were the loaded ones?

  The commanders really chattered over this. They were playing back screens, looking for identifying marks. Not possible in this static.

  Abruptly the Hockner solved it. Two of the planes, with only a small part of the additional air cover, took off at a leisurely pace– only a thousand miles an hour– on a northeasterly course. The other four and the remaining but majority air cover planes stayed at the river.

  “It’s a lure!” cried the super-lieutenant. “They want us to follow that northeast group!”

  They watched, plotting the course of the northeast group. It would pass over this side of the pole and, unless it stopped before that, would wind up at that pagoda place in the southern hemisphere and at that speed would get there in about nine hours.

  As if to confirm the Hockner's suspicions, the remaining four marine

  attack planes and the rest of the air cover suddenly streaked away on a course slightly to the west of north. They were traveling at two thousand miles an hour.

  A hasty extrapolation of their course gave their only possible destination as an ancient minesite near a place which had been called “Singapore.”

  “That does it, old fellow,” said the Hockner. “There is a report here that there has been heavy activity in that area and some sort of platform being laid out. They're taking that console to 'Singapore'!”

  The quarter-admiral tried to disagree. As the senior officer he had a right to be obeyed. He explained that it must be the pagoda. The reason was that he hated all religions. Religious people were zealots and upset governments and always had to be crushed. This obviously was a religious revolt and they even had evidence of it. A religious order had upset the government of the planet and had now stolen a console. This planet was the one and he ordered them all to head for the pagoda objective.

  His order did it. The combined force streaked into controlled motion, in full cry after the Singapore-bound group.

  But the mighty Terrify-class battle-plane-launching capital ship Capture did not follow them.

  Egged on by Roof Arsebogger into independent action that would make better copy and by a scathing hatred of all religions, Quarter-Admiral Snowleter turned his ponderous and overwhelming ship, with its belly full of battle planes, toward Kariba.

  Chapter 2

  Jonnie awoke with a start of alarm. The ground had shaken! A woman nurse who must have been at his bedside left the room.

  He stared around him, for a moment unable to place the unfamiliar surroundings. Then he recognized them. It was the bunker room at Kariba that the Chinese had fixed up especially for him at the inner edge of the hollow of the firing platform. They had ringed the inside hill with deep bunkers and even tiled some of them. They were lit with mine lights.

  This one was tiled in yellow. It was furnished with a bed, chairs, and a wardrobe. They had even done a portrait of Chrissie in the tiles, taking it from a picto-recorder shot– it looked quite like her except that they had slightly slanted her eyes.

  The ground jolted again. Bombs?

  He was just about to swing out of bed when Dr. Allen came in and soothingly pushed him back. “It’s all right,” said Dr. Allen. “They have things under control out there.” He was taking Jonnie's pulse.

  Sir Robert showed up in the doorway. He had a bandage across his nose which Dr. Allen had set. He was obviously waiting for Dr. Allen to finish.

  “You had a nasty one,” said Dr. Allen. “But your pulse is normal now. That prevention shot of serum you had handled some of the venom reaction. But you really owe it all to Sir Robert: he got the poison out and even gave you a few drops of serum.”

  Jonnie's huge Psychlo wrist watch was lying on the sidetable. He stared at it. He had been asleep for eighteen hours! Lord knows what had happened in that time.

  Dr. Allen anticipated him. “I know, I know. But it was necessary to put you on an opiate to slow your heart down.” He had a stethoscope on Jonnie's chest. He listened. Then he folded it up. “I can't detect any heart damage. Hold out your hand.”

  Jonnie did.

  “Ah, no tremble,” said Dr. Allen. “I think you're fine. A few days in bed-'

  At that moment the ground jolted again. Jonnie tried to get up and Dr. Allen pushed him back again.

  “Sir Robert!” called Jonnie. “What's happening?”

  Dr. Allen nodded to Sir Robert that it was all right and then left. Sir Robert came over to stand beside the bed. He was not answering Jonnie's question. He just stood there beaming down at Jonnie, glad to see him alive. The lad even had color in his cheeks.

  “What is happening?” said Jonnie, spacing each word.

  “Oh,” said Sir Robert. “That's a Tolnep ship up there. It 's at about two hundred miles but it keeps sending down planes to bomb this place. We have air cover. Stormalong is here and directing air defenses. So far the enemy is giving Singapore its main attention.”

  Angus was at the door. Jonnie called to him, “Have you set up the console?”

  “Oh, aye,” said Angus. He came in. “That's why they didn't disturb you.” He pointed a finger up. “With all that firing, our antiaircraft outside the screen, and the motors of our own planes, we wouldn't dare use the firing rig. It 's all connected. The Chinese set that place up very nice.”

  “The next firing position of the switch is down," said Jonnie.

  “Yes, Sir Robert told us that. It 's all ready to go if this firing ever stops! Get a rest.” Angus left and passed Thor.

  Thor said, “How do you feel?”

  Jonnie waved his hand negatively. “Unimportant. The last I remember was being in the dome. You better bring me up to date.”

  They told him what had happened and what they had done.

  “A recoil that bad!” said Jonnie. “Worse,” said Thor.

  “How many men did we lose?” said Jonnie.

  “Andrew and MacDougal," said Thor. “But we have fifteen of them here in this little hospital they have. Couple of concussions, broken arms or legs. Mostly bruised, very badly bruised. The lead of the coffins protected them. No radiation burns. Andrew was badly bayoneted by the Brigantes and couldn't fasten his coffin lid from inside, and it blew open.”

  “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 g
round. 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 assassin 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 assaulted 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 assault 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 passage 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 cocked 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 assorted weaponry, and they were passing 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 y
ou 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 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 passage 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 space, about three– quarters of a million square feet he had guessed. But it did seem crowded now.

  The pagoda structure in the center extended well beyond the platform on all sides. All around the bowl, with the pagoda 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 passage 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 pagoda roof, the Chinese had hung tribal shields representing the remaining tribes of Earth.