by Джеффри Лорд
Metal clanged and crunched and sparks flew as electrical equipment died spectacularly. The turret ground to a stop. Blade backed his machine away, one hand on the controls and the other furiously pressing buttons to extend the tentacles. He hoped they still worked. For a moment he wished he had three or four extra hands.
The tentacles lashed out. The tentacle with the heavy sensor-knob at the end snapped downward at the bubble dome at the front of the other machine. The transparent material shivered and cracked under the impact. A second blow and it splintered and smashed inward.
The other three tentacles swept across the top of the Looter machine, ripping the tripod signal mast free and hurling it to the street. More electrical fireworks. Then Blade wound all three around the beam tube and jerked them sharply upward. The ten-foot tube bent upward into a curve, then ripped free of the turret. A tremendous cloud of smoke spewed out of both tube and turret, momentarily blanking out the screens.
Blade didn’t wait for the smoke to clear or bother retracting the tentacles. He drove the machine forward against the side of the other one, like a bull goring a farmer. The other machine slammed hard into the nearest wall. Bits and pieces showered down with clangs and thumps. Blade charged again. This time both the wall and the side of the other machine gave. Great slabs of wall crashed down on both machines. Two of Blade’s screens went dead, and metallic screeches sounded as tentacles were ripped out of their sockets.
A third charge. This time it sounded as though the end of the world had come, in a hideous, earsplitting din of metal twisting and crumpling and tearing apart. Something smashed into Blade’s turret hard enough to dent the armor and send most of the fighters sprawling. A purple glare filled the cabin as the beam-tube shorted out. Pungent smoke followed it.
Blade cut off the power. The machine dropped with a final crash six feet to the street. Everyone who had stayed on his feet until then went sprawling.
Blade unbuckled his seat belt and sprang to his feet. For a moment he felt a little unsteady on his legs, and hoped that all his teeth and internal organs were still in place. Then he drew his sword and pointed at the hatch.
«Up and at them, oh people! Capture them if possible, for they may tell us even more than their machines!»
Chara stabbed at the hatch button with the hilt of her sword. With squeaks and squeals the hatch slowly opened. Four people dove out through an opening Blade would have sworn was too narrow for one. No one was worrying about depriving Mazda of any honor now. They were all too eager to get at the Looters.
As Blade’s feet hit the platform outside, something went pfffuttt from the Looter machine and something else went spannnngggg! beside Blade. One of the men let out a gasp of pain and clapped a hand to his thigh. A small metal dart gleamed there, the blood just staring to well out around it.
But the Looter machine was less than twenty feet away. Before the Looter with the dart gun could fire again, the other attackers converged on a hatch that gaped open below the nose dome. One of the women flattened herself against the hull, then threw a wad of blazing cloth in through the hatch.
The black smoke of burning teksin oil poured out of the hatch. A moment later came a raw-throaty gurgling scream. A human figure stumbled out of the hatch and fell to its knees, clothing and hair blazing. Somehow it lurched to its feet, one hand holding a small tube out in front of it. The tube spat out another dart-and this one took one of the women in the throat. She dropped her sword, swayed, and raised both hands to her throat. Then slowly she folded forward to the ground, kicked for a few moments, and lay still.
For a moment a red haze seemed to flicker in front of Blade’s eyes. To bring the people so far, and now-! His breath stuck in his throat for another moment, then he charged forward.
He knocked two other fighters aside as he reached for the hatch. Both hands closed on the edge. It must have weighed two hundred pounds, but Blade ripped it free and hurled it away as easily as if it had been a playing card. Then he leaped through the opening, into the Looter machine.
Another dart clanged off the floor as Blade landed inside. He flattened himself against the forward bulkhead while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then he whirled around and sprang up into the cockpit. A glance told him that it was full of strange shapes and strange instruments. But for the moment he didn’t care about them. All that interested him now were the two remaining members of the Looter crew.
One of them was a woman. She was backing away into a corner as Blade entered. The other, a lean red-haired man, stood on one of the control consoles and aimed his dart-thrower at Blade with one hand while he drew a sword with the other.
Blade lunged forward and up. One hand chopped upward under the wrist of the hand holding the dart gun. Blade felt the other’s bones splinter under the impact, heard the man scream, saw the dart gun go flying. He pivoted and drove his other fist into the man’s stomach. The man doubled up and lurched forward off the console.
Blade caught him as he fell, grabbed him around the waist, and hurled him up and back as hard as he could. The man seemed to fly through the air, then jerk to a sudden halt. His mouth opened, letting out a scream and a spray of blood. His arms and legs waved frantically as he hung, impaled on the broken points of the canopy, then went limp.
Blade turned to the woman. She was still backed into her corner and had drawn a short sword. One of the people moved in with his own sword drawn. A flicker and a clack of teksin meeting metal. The attacker’s sword went flying. He dove to retrieve it. The woman’s sword slashed down at the back of his neck, and he jumped clear just in time.
Blade took a closer look at the woman. She was small and lithe, with curling brown hair piled on top of her head. Her eyes were wide, but with intense concentration on her opponents, not with fear. This was someone who meant to sell her life as dearly as possible.
«Don’t kill her!» shouted Blade. The woman might not want to be taken alive, but she was the last chance for a Looter prisoner. He drew his own sword and moved in. The woman thrust, fast and well, but his own down-cut was faster and delivered with a much stronger arm. It beat down the woman’s guard. Blade thrust high, aiming to smash the flat of his sword into the woman’s head and stun her.
Instead she dropped under his thrust and came up with her sword darting at his groin. The point drove into his teksin loinguard and was held there for a moment. Blade’s left hand chopped down at the woman’s sword arm. She jerked it back from under the chop just in time. Blade’s hand came down on the sword itself, knocking it out of the woman’s hand.
Instantly she dropped into an unarmed-combat stance. One small booted foot darted out at Blade’s chest in a high kick. He pivoted so that it struck his left shoulder. Then he clamped both hands on the woman’s ankle and twisted, hard. The woman screamed but had to turn over on her face to keep her ankle from being twisted apart. The moment she did so, Blade lunged forward and brought the edge of one hand down across the back of her neck, just below the hairline. He struck with only a fraction of the force he could have used. The woman went limp, but a quick check told Blade that she was unconscious rather than dead.
Blade quickly stripped off the woman’s belt and tied her hands tightly behind her back. He lifted her across his shoulders easily-she could not have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. Then he turned to the fighters behind him.
«Two of you go and bring our comrade with us. We shall not leave her. But we must get away from here as fast as possible, before the smaller machines come.»
The five nodded. Blade shifted the woman to a more comfortable position and led the way out into the street.
Chapter 21
Blade led his survivors into the nearest deep cellar. He would have liked to sit down and spend hours or days with the command machine and the prisoner, digging out secrets. But to do that he and the others would have to live through whatever attack the three machines on guard outside Miros might still launch.
They stayed down there in the st
ifling, dusty darkness for a good two hours. After perhaps half an hour they heard the sound of three distant explosions, one after another. Then silence. After the savage violence that had thundered through its long-dead streets, Miros seemed to be returning to its former peace and quiet.
Blade realized that he was more exhausted than he had realized, both physically and mentally. His throat was as dry as the dust lying inches deep on the cellar floor around him. It got drier every time he breathed. His skin was caked with sweat and grime and his wounded hand sent a dull, continuously throbbing pain up his left arm to his bruised left shoulder. In the darkness Blade could not see the others. But their silence suggested that they were too stunned by the terrifying violence of the past few hours to even realize they had won a victory, let alone rejoice over it.
After the two hours had passed, Blade stood up, brushed off as much dust as he could, and gave his orders.
«It’s time we got back on the streets and out of Miros. If the smaller Looter machines were going to move in, I think we’d have heard them by now.»
«This is true, Mazda,» said Chara. «But what if they have gone off after our comrades?»
«Then we go on managing as best we can ourselves,» said Blade. «We have done that all this day and so won our victory. We can go on doing it as long as necessary.» He bent and lifted the Looter woman onto his shoulders again.
The first living things they met in the streets of Miros were not Looters, but a party of six of their own scouts on horseback. These broke into a gallop when they saw Blade’s party, and came pounding up in a cloud of dust. In the lead was Anyara. She sprang down out of her saddle and ran up to Blade.
«Mazda, the Looters are gone from here, all of them.»
«The other three machines?»
«Half an hour after the battle in the city ended, they exploded with much flame and smoke. They are nothing but pieces of black metal now, harmless to everyone.»
«Good.» No doubt the machines had been programmed to destroy themselves if they lost contact with the command vehicle. The Looters had realized that it was not wise to let their enemies capture their machines. «Are the four machines we captured in the first battle intact?»
«They are.»
«Good again. Let them be brought into the city. I want to examine the machine in which the Looters themselves rode. There may be heavy things in it we want to take away, too heavy for our horses to carry.»
«Mazda has spoken. And-the prisoner?» She pointed at the woman still slung across Blade’s shoulder.
«She should not be harmed for now. If we treat her well, she may tell us much about the Looters and their machines.» Blade was determined that the woman should be well-treated at all times and never tortured. But the people would not accept this attitude toward an enemy even from Mazda unless he gave them some good reason.
Anyara’s eyes wandered past Blade to the two men carrying the dead woman. Blade shook his head. «The prisoner did not do that. It was one of the two men with her. They are both dead. The woman is the only one left, the only one who can tell us anything.»
«Only three of them?» said Anyara, wonderingly.
«Yes. Their machines still did most of their own thinking. These people only gave them orders when the machines could not figure out what to do on their own.»
«It didn’t help them much, did it?» said Anyara with a grin. «They lost just the same as they did the first time.»
Blade nodded. He did not point out how little they would still know about the Looters if the woman refused to talk. That would only start Anyara thinking of torture again.
Instead he said, «Three or four of the scouts ride out and take word of our victory to the others. Have them come here and bring the captured machines with them. Everyone else start making camp. We will stay here for tonight, and study the big Looter machine.»
There were uneasy looks around the streets where smoke still lay thick over piles of rubble and around ruined and mutilated buildings. Obviously no one cared for the idea of spending the night in the devastation that had been the city of Miros. But no one ventured a protest. Once more, Mazda had spoken.
Before sunset the rest of the expedition appeared, bringing all their gear and the captured machines with them. A foraging party to the lakeshore brought back firewood. Campfires crackled and sparked among the tents, driving back the darkness and some of the gnawing fear. But no one sang, no one cracked a joke, no one slipped off into the shadows to make love. This was not a time for laughter or joking, and the shadows were unfriendly.
Blade worked through the night, examining the wrecked command machine. It was one marvel after another, and he learned much. He knew that he would have learned much more with the woman helping him. But the woman still sat unsmiling and unspeaking in her closely guarded tent. She took food and water when it was given to her, and showed no sign of fear or panic. But she said nothing, and her alertness never slackened. Blade hoped she would decide to speak soon. Otherwise he would have trouble persuading Anyara and the others that she should not be tortured.
Like the other Looter machines, the command machine was obviously old, perhaps centuries old. The design and construction were such that it would not wear out for a long time unless it was very poorly maintained. But it was also obvious that for some years at least it had received very little of the maintenance it needed.
Blade suspected that the woman and the two men were of two different peoples. The woman was small and slender, with a dark complexion. The two men were both tall, large-boned, heavily muscled, pale under their tans. Their curly hair was reddish brown. They also had the callused hands and feet of men accustomed to hard work-or handling weapons-and hard walking. A people of scientists and a people of soldiers or workmen? The woman knew, certainly. But the woman wouldn’t say anything! Blade felt like pounding his fists against the walls of the command machine.
He had just reached that point of frustration when he found something that made him forget it and the woman alike in a single moment. In a heavy locker sprung open by the damage the machine had taken, Blade found a long, finned cylinder. It was about eight feet long and two feet in diameter, with an unmistakable fusing mechanism at one end. On its gray metal flank was the even more unmistakable symbol of an atom, in luminous red.
This had to be one of the Looters’ atomic bombs. If the woman would only talk about it-!
Blade had taken the basic nuclear weapons course at the British Army’s Royal Engineer school, and all atomic bombs were more or less alike. They had to be. But the same wasn’t true for booby traps or fusing mechanisms. The woman might save his life, and she would certainly save him weeks of tedious and perhaps dangerous work, by revealing the secrets of the bomb.
There was no way around it-the woman would have to speak. Anyara would be more than happy to try direct and drastic methods. Blade himself had to admit that a time might come when it would be a choice between torturing the woman and risking the existence of the people of Tharn.
But he would try other methods first. He would start by getting the woman away from the nightmarish ruins of Miros. Why not get her away from the rest of the people entirely, while he was at it? With no witnesses, he could be as gentle as he wanted to be with her. He suspected that if the woman responded at all, it would be more to gentleness than to threats or abuse.
Fortunately, he had the perfect excuse. The atomic bomb weighed nearly half a ton, far too heavy to be carried back to the lands of the people on horseback. To send for wagons or chariots would take weeks. But if the bomb could be loaded aboard one of the captured machines, Mazda could fly it swiftly back to the New City of the People. And if Mazda wanted to take back the prisoner as well, since she was almost as important as the bomb, who would object?
No one objected. Before dawn the next morning, twelve strong fighters carried the bomb to the rear platform of one of the captured machines. Then Blade carried the Looter woman, carefully bound hand and foot, into the machin
e.
He took off and circled three times over the battered city, watching the people in the camp below wave and brandish their weapons. He was very conscious of the burden he was carrying. It was not only the atomic bomb and the prisoner, but perhaps the whole future of the people of Tharn.
He hoped he would not stumble while he had this burden on his shoulders.
Chapter 22
Blade flew straight west at low altitude for several hours, politely ignoring the woman. She lay quietly on the furs spread across the cabin floor, still not speaking a word. But Blade had the impression that his flying away with her was not what she had expected. Perhaps she had been expecting the torture Anyara would have inflicted? Perhaps. In any case, she was surprised-too surprised to be able to completely hide the fact.
As the plain rolled past beneath them, the woman began to relax. She stretched out as much as her bonds would let her. She stopped staring continuously at Blade as though expecting him to attack her or turn into a monster at any moment. Finally she quietly drifted off to sleep. Blade left the controls long enough to spread a fur over her, then returned to his seat. The woman would need that sleep, whatever happened to her in the next few days.
About four hours out of Miros, Blade spotted a small lake to the north. This was as good a place as any to land and begin his «interrogation» of the woman. They were hundreds of miles from both the people and the Looters, as alone for the moment as Adam and Eve.
Blade landed the machine without waking the woman. Still without waking her, he carefully locked away all the weapons except his own sword, then disconnected the main controls. He tied the hatch key, the locker key, and the sword to his belt. Then he sat down beside the woman and gently rested one hand on her shoulder.
She came awake in an instant, eyes widening and body going rigid. Her eyes never blinked or left Blade’s face as he drew his sword. But he could see her teeth biting into her lower lip until beads of blood appeared and a trickle crept down her chin. She was seeing death in that drawn sword, and she was determined to face it and endure it without a cry or a moment’s loss of courage.
