The dome didn’t appear to have been damaged at all. It had ceased firing the long, dark pods into the sky, but it seemed otherwise unchanged.
Hudnee sank back into the hollow on top of the island, and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt like he needed a rest from it all. Most of the others stayed glued to the top of the slope, waiting for the next stage in the extraordinary show.
Far above the Barrens, Ayman hadn’t expected the barrage of super-dense slugs to have any effect on the dome. The waterspouts had been impressive, but hadn’t changed anything either.
It was frustrating. If he called on the Valkrethi they could bring down the protective shield in a moment, but then the trap would be sprung with nothing caught in it.
There was no sign of Reaper ships in the Aqua Regis system yet, but that was to be expected. A distress call would have gone out by sub-space comms as soon as the Javelins appeared, but it would be many hours before the closest enemy ships could respond.
The Javelins had a few smaller fusion missiles Ayman could use for a more spectacular light and sound show, but they wouldn’t have any effect on the mining base. Bigger ones would do too much damage to the islands of the Barrens, and probably not damage the dome either.
Apart from which there were Hud villagers down there. The Sea Anemone had picked up life signs on one of the islands, and Menona’s latest report said that some of the Shellport villagers had sailed to the Barrens to see the action.
Ayman shared Cagill’s frustration with civilians. They were another point of vulnerability, and they forced him to spread his defenses thinner than he would like.
These were no doubt part of the militia that had won the civil war against the local religious group – the Descendants of something. Then he remembered that the villagers had the same extraordinary reflexes that made the Hud pilots so valuable. Perhaps he could incorporate them into his plans in some way.
An idea began to form in Ayman’s mind. He had a number of strategies prepared for the next phase of the attack on the mining site, and one of them appealed to him a little more than the others. Incorporating the Shellport villagers would just need a little tweaking here and there.
“Shuttle crews prepare for landing at the Barrens,” said Ayman. “Hud pilots willing to be part of the landing force, report to the shuttles. Details of the landing will be downloaded to the shuttles shortly. Case out.”
That would stir them up, he mused. Every Hud pilot would immediately hand over to his number two, and prepare to take the shuttles down to the Barrens. The one or two trainees who hadn’t made it as pilots and were now training as comms or navs officers would be just as keen. Hell’s teeth, he thought, if it was my planet I’d want to be down there too.
The shuttles descended into the atmosphere on long, shallow glide paths that took them well away from the mining base. In the meantime the Javelins prepared a full salvo of low-yield fusion missiles and waited for Ayman Case’s command to fire them. When the shuttles were at their maximum distance from the Barrens, he told them to do so.
Bright fire engulfed the top of the dome, and a shock wave sent a blast of hot air over the villagers on the Teeth. Hudnee slid back into the hollow behind the ridge, rubbing his eyes. It was a while before the spots in front of him cleared. He looked around and found the others had deserted the top of the ridge as well.
“What in the name of the Prophet was that?” squawked Battrick, awe in his voice.
“Looked like the birth of the sun to me,” said a villager on Hudnee’s right. “If they keep this up the whole planet’s going to catch on fire!”
There was another massive explosion from behind them, and another blast of hot air shot over the ridge, some of it curling uncomfortably down into the hollow.
The villagers were looking worried, and Hudnee decided he had better put some sense into the situation.
“Menona has been talking to the pale strangers, and she said this would happen,” he reassured them.
“The Humans and the Invardii are powerful peoples, and you can see the white fire is trying to destroy the orange fire. Menona told the Humans we would be here, and they won’t do anything to destroy us, or the Barrens. They made that very clear.”
The villagers looked relieved. Hudnee thought to himself it might still be a good idea to retreat back to the Blood river – this was all getting a bit too much for him.
“What’s that?” said Battrick, looking back over the swamp toward the hills beyond. Another villager pointed, and then they could all see it. A strange white shape, like a small flying house, was coming in over the swamp toward the Teeth. Another blast lit up the Barrens, and the strange shape dropped, and then lifted again, as the shock wave hit it. They could see it was going to land by the three dooplehuel on the beach, cutting off their line of retreat.
Hudnee’s hand dropped to the short sword he carried. He regretted not bringing his metal fighting rod. He would feel a lot more comfortable with that if there was going to be a confrontation.
“Battrick, take your crew and go left. Leran, take yours and go right. The rest of us, let’s go see what this thing wants.”
Hudnee led the way down the hill, hoping fervently this was some machinery of the Humans or their allies. He knew that he and the villagers stood no chance against anything the Invardii sent. More gigantic explosions echoed round the island from the Barrens, though the villagers now had the island between themselves and the blasts.
They were halfway down the slope when the side of the strange flying house opened, and a number of people stepped out onto the dry, brown grasses of the island. Hudnee saw the solid, bronze shape of his countrymen and women, and felt a huge sense of relief. None of the villagers were going to die today, it seemed. At least not right now.
The new arrivals saw Hudnee first, then they saw Battrick and his crew approaching from the left.
“Well, oil me innards!” boomed a voice. “Is that you, Da?”
Oil his what? thought Hudnee, hurrying down to meet them. Then he recognized Battrod, Battrick’s son, and stopped in surprise. He couldn’t get over the changes in him. How long had he been away from Hud – a year, maybe more?
Battrod had filled out, but he was still lean by Hud standards. He had grown taller than average for his people, which seemed to compensate for his slighter build. But the authority in his voice now! He had gone away as a youth lacking confidence, one who seemed to have no real future on Hud. But he had come back with the unmistakable presence of a leader about him.
Hudnee watched as Battrod spoke quickly to those around him. They listened attentively and went off to the tasks he had assigned them. Then Battrod strode towards his father. Battrick was still able to embrace his son and lift him clean off the ground, to Battrod’s great delight.
It was a heart-warming reunion, and one of Hudnee’s crew found a brother who had left as a Hud trainee too. The new arrivals did some strange things to the flying house they arrived in, which Hudnee thought of it as feeding and watering the strange thing.
Then the mixed company of 21 men and women of Hud sat on the dry grass, while Battrod explained what his team were doing there. He waited for another of the prodigious explosions from the inner Barrens to die away, and kneeled to talk to them.
“You know that scouts from Shellport have led the Valkrethi to the caves at Spitzbergen,” he began.
“That was Menon and Metris,” interjected Battrick.
“Ah, Menon would be in the thick of it, I’m sure,” said Battrod with a smile.
“The Alliance force is up there,” he continued, pointing skyward, “as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. They’re behind the attack on the mining base. The problem is the Reaper ships, the Invardii – our enemy – will take nearly half a day to get to Hud in response to the attack.
“We have to make them think this is a major, prolonged, action, and convince them to send many of their ships, maybe even some of their flagships.”
Hudnee a
nd the others looked blank at the foreign word, but Battrod hurried on to finish his story. “We have to do all this so the Valkrethi can inflict huge losses on the enemy ships when they arrive. Are you with me so far?”
The crews of the dooplehuel nodded their heads.
“What we want to do now,” said Battrod, “is attack the mining base where it’s under the water.”
The villagers looked at each other. Fight under water? Hudnee didn’t like the sound of that.
CHAPTER 22
________________
Battrod continued his explanation. “You can see that everything the Alliance throws at the Invardii base is being stopped by the orange shield. But we know that the shield doesn’t go down into the water. We should be able to move in along the sea bed, and set explosives on the base.
“Shuttles have landed on other islands as well, so we’ll be attacking from several sides at once.”
“What’s an ex-po-sav?” asked the villager on Hudnee’s right.
“Small packages, like this,” said Battrod, pulling one out of a box behind him. “Small packages that will make white fire, like the white fire that you’ve seen attacking the dome already.”
“No one can swim that far, carrying those things,” said Hudnee. “Certainly not all the way to the mining base, not if they go underwater!”
Battrod laughed.
“We’ve brought machines to help us do that,” he said. “We can get to the mining base, set the explosives, and return here, I guarantee it. Whether the Invardii will be waiting for us at the mining base I don’t know.”
That was sobering news.
“Menon left one of the Invardii-stoppers with us,” said Hudnee. “Do you know it, the rod thing you twist?”
Battrod looked up, startled. “I’ve heard about that. Matsu only made one. The pressure of work at Prometheus is enormous, and his team were diverted back to working on sub-space pulses before they could make another one.”
“The sub what?” said Hudnee, looking perplexed.
“Never mind that right now,” said Battrod. “The thing is you’ve got that rod, and it might save us all if the Invardii turn up. Don’t know if it’ll work under water though.”
From there the company divided into teams, and the Javelin pilots taught the Hud villagers what they needed to know. How to wear the head gear, ride the mechanical torpedo units, and work the re-breathers that took oxygen out of the water.
It was late afternoon when the teams slipped into the water, three to each of the torpedo units. Hudnee found it all nerve-wracking, but he took slow, deep breaths, as he’d been told.
The re-breather worked perfectly, and his confidence grew. He took a firmer grip of the handholds on the torpedo as its speed increased, and the water pressure threatened to drag him off. One of the villagers rode on the other side of the machine, and one of the Javelin pilots was steering from a control panel between them.
There was little to see on their journey in. The water in the Barrens was devoid of life, and rather murky. The bottom under them had been visible at the start, a descending plain of sludge with an occasional decaying bush or half-buried log, but that vanished after a while. They had the island on their left until they passed into the inner sea, then struck out for the mining base.
Hudnee knew when they passed under the edge of the shield. Flickers of orange light reflected down through the water, and he felt strangely exposed, as if the Invardii might be watching them. The fact he had Menon’s rod that turned them into an inert state comforted him. Finally, the pilot rapped a signal on the torpedo, and he knew the outside wall of the mining base wasn’t far ahead.
The torpedo units on either side of his one veered off to their own destinations, and were soon lost to sight. Hudnee marveled to think that teams from other shuttles were also closing in on the mining base. They should all arrive at the exact same moment.
Then the wall of the mining base appeared out of the murk, and the torpedo unit coasted to a stop beside it. The three passengers spread out along the wall in the murky water. The sea floor was somewhere way below them, and Hudnee looked nervously around as he fixed packages to the structure. Battrod had some sort of device that would set the explosives off when they were done, and they would be back on the island when he did that.
The Javelin pilot beckoned him back onto the machine, and he swam clumsily over the short distance to reach it. When the other villager also returned, their transport turned and headed back the way it had come. The other units were waiting directly under the orange shield, and they stuck together as they returned to the island. Hudnee began to relax. Perhaps the mining base didn’t have any sort of underwater defenses.
It looked like that was the case all the way across the inland sea, until they turned between the islands of the Teeth to head back for their starting point. Then the pilot rapped on the casing of the torpedo unit to get their attention.
He pointed at his instruments, then pointing back toward the mining base. Hudnee got the message at once – something was following them. The unit veered sharply right, and picked up speed. Hudnee saw the other units vanish into the gloom. He figured they were splitting up to confuse whatever was behind them.
Hudnee tried to visualize where they might be headed for now. If his mental map was correct, they would arrive at the same island they’d left, but opposite the next island in the ring of the Teeth rather than round the back of it.
As if to confirm his theory, the sea bottom came into view, and the water became rapidly shallower. The unit grounded shortly after that, and another unit grounded beside them. The passengers emerged onto the shore, and looked back at the narrow strait between them and the next island. One of the torpedo units had grounded opposite, and had been closely followed by a many-legged contraption that Hudnee recognized from Menon’s description. It was an Invardii war machine.
The Javelin pilot on the unit opposite had managed to scramble up the slope and was now disappearing behind a rocky outcrop. The machine that had followed the unit towered over the two villagers who remained. They seemed pinned to the ground by some sort of force field.
The Javelin pilot from Hudnee’s unit ran for the shuttle in the distance, moving at tremendous speed as his system went into overdrive. Hudnee grabbed the other one. “Show me!” he demanded, pointing to the nearest unit. The pilot restarted it, and showed him how to control the throttle. Pitching wildly, Hudnee drove the machine at its maximum speed along the surface toward the opposite shore.
The Javelin pilot who had run for the shuttle returned, holding long tubes with handles and smaller, solid tubes attached, one in each hand. He handed one to the villager that had ridden alongside Hudnee, and they took aim at the Invardii war machine.
Two solid impacts from heavy slugs slammed the machine forward. It steadied itself, and a large cylinder dropped from it, turning instantly into one of the tall, orange plasma shapes.
More slugs ripped through the arms and legs of the humanoid shape, but nothing hit the cylinder running up the middle of it.
It strode forward, and crushed the life out of one of the villagers. The two shooters switched their attack to the legs of the machine, and shot out several of them in quick succession. The orange shape paused at this new attack, but the machine righted itself on its remaining legs. There was a flash of light from the crippled machine, and the ground under the shooters exploded skyward, throwing them off their feet.
The orange shape, its plasma body crackling with heat, made for the other villager.
Hudnee drove the torpedo unit up the beach and rolled off, coming to his feet and continuing at a run. He knew the rod only worked if it was close to the hybrid creature, but how close was that? The orange shape lifted a foot to crush the neck of the second villager, and Hudnee figured now was the time to find out if he was close enough.
He twisted the ends as he ran, and the orange shape abruptly vanished. It was replaced by a long cylinder lying on the ground. Lines
of marking scrolled along its sides, and it swelled to a thicker middle section. The war machine above it stopped moving, and Hudnee guessed at least one more of the hybrid creatures had been inside, controlling it.
Battrick looked up from the ground at Hudnee, and got shakily to his feet.
“I owe you one,” he said, unsteadily.
Hudnee grinned, and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’d have done the same for me,” he said, happy to see his old friend unharmed.
They turned to the crushed corpse on the ground, and their faces darkened with anger.
“We have to do something about these sea scum,” said Battrick.
“Oh, we will,” said Hudnee. “We are, and we will, and we won’t stop until we’ve driven them off our planet.”
They ferried more of the explosives packages over to the inert war machine. Battrod set the charges and attached the last one to the cylinder on the ground. Then he heaved it inside the machine. Once they were back at the shuttle they gathered the 20 remaining members of the company around them, and explained what had happened.
“This is for someone who died today doing good work,” said Battrod, and tapped in the activation code. The charges around the war machine detonated, and then the ones at the mining base.
The Invardii war machine simply disappeared. A white bubble formed around it before the bubble imploded on itself. A gray ash was all that was left on the ground.
Moments later they heard a dull rumble as the charges at the mining base formed the same sudden creations of smoke and fire, displacing fountains of water, and ripped holes in the walls.
The sea rushed in through the holes, and the orange shield above it flickered, but then it held. Hudnee cursed vigorously, but Battrod put a hand on his arm.
“The base automatically sealed off the flooded areas,” he said, “and I was expecting that. The main thing is we keep the pressure on them, and convince them to send Reaper ships to save the base.”
Hudnee nodded resignedly. The next thing was to bring the body of the villager over the strait and bury it next to the shuttle.
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 32
