Chalker, Jack L. – Well of Souls 06

The point was taken.

“Well, enough of this,” Nakitti said grumpily. “It’s good to see you all, but none of you have the enemy at your gates and a native population where most of them are so fat and corrupt they won’t even realize they’re conquered when they lose. We had military commanders who refused to test-fire coastal guns because it would make the guns dirty! Can you imagine such a thing? I tell you, if I had more time I know enough chemistry that I have a whole raft of nobles I could cheerfully poison in the old-fashioned Ghoman way! In­stead I’ve got the ear of the only man with common sense in the whole damned kingdom, and he and I have two weeks to come up with a defense against a concerted land-sea assault.”

“You seem convinced they are coming your way,” Dukla noted. “Others do not think so.”

“One look at the map and the composition of the enemy so far, not to mention all those shiploads of refugees passing through who now have established nice fifth columns in friendly other countries all over the Overdark region, and you’ll see it can’t be anywhere else. It’s far enough, and Chalidang so far has conquered only neighboring hexes, so others can’t see it. It is an ancient game, but very much in the traditions of great generals. Josich has her most dedi­cated forces. Now she takes control of all shipping on the world’s largest ocean. The few Well Gates here can’t handle but a trickle of supplies. Most of the high-tech hexes are so comfortable by now that they can’t even repair breakdowns. They import what they need. But they can produce massive quantities of gas-powered crossbows and ultralight machine guns and billions of bolts and bullets for them, so that semi-tech and nontech hexes don’t need to make them. Cut all that off, and everybody can be absorbed at will. Those who won’t, fall into line and embrace the new conqueror and yell ‘Comrade! Lover! I was always with you!’ Then, with their agents mixed in with the real refugees and now well-established, they can reach out to the mainland.”

“But why not just go the other way?” O’Leary asked. “In a sense there are more prizes to his west and to his north in particular.”

“Because Chalidang is a water breathing hex, for one thing, and most water breathing civilizations are the other way—my way,” the Ochoan replied. “But, as important, when you run the hexes and the Overdark trade through the com­puter here you see how interdependent the whole region has become and how self-sufficient, say, the water hexes to the west are. The only major worthwhile target there is Czill, and it would serve Josich just as well if she could simply blow it up and deny its knowledge resources to the world. The rest? Well, in time, but those will be continental land campaigns. A different sort of fight with real extremes. No, she’s going east because that’s the only logical thing to do. She’s practically advertised her moves and they still don’t see it!”

“And you do,” Ari commented skeptically.

Core shifted in its bath. “The Ochoan is correct. Do not confuse the utter insanity of Josich with the Hadun capa­bility to wage logical war. Even in Realm history, Josich’s campaigns were utterly ruthless, often genocidal, but bril­liant. His failure then was in not reading other histories of conquerors, particularly those of other races. When you show this kind of genocidal lack of regard, then those who might normally turn and join you, or at least not oppose you, will fight to the death because they have nothing to lose. He lost almost a quarter of his fleet because desperate people of many races and from many worlds hurled them­selves at them with total disregard for life or casualties. I believe he might have learned from that here, but it is diffi­cult to say. I can say, Ochoan, that I believe I can help you.”

“You! You’ve never been in a battle or off a fixed structure buried deep inside a mountain on an isolated and barren planet,” Nakitti noted. “What can you do for me?”

“I cannot explain how Josich knew this world or how to make it all work to advantage,” Core admitted, “but I can already see how he will try and conquer your land. It is absurdly easy if a major first step, the kind of step you would never plan for, works out. Now that I know the broad outline and consider it logical, I would need to do some research to tell you precisely how Chalidang will do it, but it is more a matter of knowing the enemy’s strengths and limits than the actual method. That is obvious.”

“Yes? And what might that be?” the Ochoan prompted, as skeptical of Core as Ari had been of her.

“A siege. They will take the center of the country, keep­ing out of range of your coastal defenses but ensuring that you do not harvest from the waters. With the center, they will control the Zone Gate. If you attack them, they will slaughter you. If you defend only, they will reinforce until they can reach your fortresses on the mountains and on the coasts from above. It will be ugly and cost them a terrible number of lives, but that was never a factor to Josich, and those who survive will be rewarded handsomely. You will not be able to afford even lesser losses. They will starve you and bleed you and then, when you are weak and out of ammunition and low on food, your water poisoned, they will conquer.”

It was a terrible vision that stunned them. Finally, it was O’Leary who said, “So how are they going to take the center without a flying race? And seeing that the Ochoans are fliers, too, they’d be hard pressed to get a force down in the middle sufficient to fortify and hold. It doesn’t hold up, you see.”

“I believe it does and will,” Core maintained. “I simply need to do some more research to discover how it will be done. The races themselves are unimportant. Josich never could travel in air without a suit, none of us could be in space without an artificial environment, and we couldn’t get the resources to get at the Hadun for a very long time. Planetary invasions and planetary sieges were a part of his composition. He will do it. I simply need to fill in a few of the blanks. If, that is, the Kalindan government will allow me to do so.”

Nakitti looked at the High Commissioner. “I can use him, or it, or whatever. I don’t care about whether he has another agenda, he’s willing to look at mine, and I don’t have the time to be picky. I believe that bringing in an alien expert who knows Josich from before will carry more weight than I can, even if he winds up delivering my scripts. Can I have him?”

“I will see to it,” Dukla promised. “I know they will not like it, but after all, it is only here in Zone, and, of course, any attempt to go through a Gate will wind up with him back in Kalinda. It does not seem a great risk, and the Kalindan government is now demanding many resources to look into solutions for its problem, which is also serious. I believe a trade-off is possible.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ari asked Nakitti.

“I—I can’t see it. I could use you all back home, but not here. Bird Lady, do you see anything any of the others could do? Or any reason not to borrow this one’s mind?”

Jaysu was actually meditating, the discussion having gone into areas she found boring and of no interest to her or her people, but she came out of it when addressed and looked at them. “The issue,” she said, “is in doubt. It will depend on your people most of all,” she told Nakitti, then looked at Core. “This one can help but there is something very wrong with it. It is an enemy of Josich, as are we all, but beware. You can win a battle and have no effect on the war. You may win a war, and lose worse than that which you defeat. Things are not as clear as they seem. And you will win no war without the Avenger and all of us gathered, and we will not do this soon again. I will pray for you all. It is the greatest contribution I can make to you for now.”

“Then it’s settled,” Nakitti proclaimed. “For now, if I don’t get by the devil I know, the devil I don’t is irrelevant.”

Ochoan Embassy, Three Days Later

“there is your answer,” core told them, pointing to the computer screen. The Baron and Nakitti stared at it and their jaws opened almost in unison in surprise. They had been unnerved that the creature had learned their language well enough to be understood in about a day and a half, while working on the problem.

The screen showed a photograph of a huge creature, sleek, glossy black, with a proboscis and two enormous, padded for­ward eyes on a small, rounded head that receded to form a near perfect triangular shape.

“What in all the Hells is that?” the Baron asked him.

“It is called a zi’iaphod. It is a native of a hex called Hovath, and is not sentient in the sense of being a dominant race. It is, in fact, domesticated. The nontech hex uses them to fly people and freight all over. You cannot get scale here, but one could certainly place a four hundred kilogram supply container on them plus, oh, fifteen or twenty armed crea­tures the size of the Baron here with full packs. That is a very light but incredibly tough exoskeleton; my data sug­gests that while cannons would get them in direct hits, gunpowder-based rifle and machine-gun fire would mostly bounce off it. The eyes are a weak spot, as is the center of the proboscis, and a very small spot in the rear, but the like­lihood of hitting those before the creatures were down and their passengers and cargo disgorged is slim, and they cer­tainly have some kind of armor rigged to make that even harder. The zi’iaphods’ range is close to two hundred kilo­meters if the winds are right, and that would certainly be sufficient to carry them from ships’ decks to the Ochoan center. Indications are that the Chalidangers have essentially rented them and their drivers for the duration and much promised wealth to come, and that they have or will soon have—let me see—close to two hundred aboard specially adapted ships. They will eat most anything, so provisions for four or five days is not nearly as much a problem as simply transporting them.”

“They’ve got those things? And they can transport a couple of thousand soldiers with added supplies?” The Baron was aghast.

“I believe it is at least that,” Core agreed. “I also believe they know that some will be killed and in fact are counting on it. They win either way. Once dead, they have a tendency to sort of crack open. Pressure internally, perhaps. The frag­ments of exoskeleton will make excellent armor for tempo­rary fortifications, and if the invaders are Quacksans and Jerminians, as seems likely, the insides of one of these alone could feed a thousand for a few days. They are almost the perfect aerial assault device for this sort of operation.”

“It sounds like you’re saying they’re an invention, not a creature,” Nakitti noted.

“They basically are. They were bred for this sort of thing, and variations are bred for all sorts of other things in their home hex. What they were like originally, only a study of fossil DNA of their ancestors would give us a clue. Still, there it is. Thousands of airborne troops dropping around and near the Zone Gate. Those that are not killed take off and bring in more. The first waves will be experienced and fanatical spe­cialists, the very best soldiers they have. Wager on the second wave to land in other areas and on other islands, generally above your forts. They will secure your food and force you to attack them or keep you from sending reinforcements to the center. If you pull back, they will attack from above and the coastal ships will come in. This is very efficient, and these are commanders who do not care how many they lose if they attain an objective. And they are not above accepting a sur­render and then eating the prisoners.”

“By all the gods! What can we possibly do against such creatures?” the Baron wailed, his despair all too evident.

“We wipe them out, of course,” Core replied. “The ad­vantage of knowing their entire plan cannot be overstated. I am not saying that you will not take heavy losses, but I can assure you that you can break and wipe out this center force. If you do, the mountaintop forces will be militarily irrele­vant and can be mopped up if they do not withdraw at will. Without the center, he has no siege. Without the land-based force pinning you down, he runs out of supplies for his ships, food for all those logistical and support personnel and the rest of the invading army, most of which will be land-based creatures. Then your position will put you in control. They will withdraw. One defeat of this force and it will galvanize others here who so far refuse any real aid or coop­eration. The same ones who would embrace Chalidang as inevitable winners will tell you that they were really on your side all along.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Nakitti commented. “What’s the plan?”

“Come. I will describe it to you in detail. Then you will take it to your people. In the meantime, keep getting all the ammunition, guns, anything you can from here. See if you can get hold of some ultra-high-pressure gas canisters and possibly some good rockets. There is also a useful weapon involving jellied petroleum. I will give you the specifica­tions and sources. Remember, you are still fighting in your homeland. They, on the other hand, have a very long supply line and cannot easily nor quickly replace what they lose. It is a gamble on their part that Ochoa will be ill-prepared, ill-equipped, ill-led, and will be totally surprised.”

Nakitti sighed. “Well, two out of three . . .”

Both the Baron and Nakitti stayed on an extra day and a half getting things set up. If Core was looking for redemption, which Nakitti doubted, it certainly was doing some good things so far. The plans, the assessments, were brilliant.

If, of course, the Baron and his concubine were correct that Ochoa was the target. If not, the Baron’s future was very bleak indeed in the social hierarchy he was bucking, which Nakitti knew would mean that her own future would be even less comfortable than his.

With the support of the High Commissioner, and with some carefully applied paranoia to both the King and the Premier, the Baron was getting his way and his budget, but his neck was all the way out.

The last day of the conference, however, helped him considerably. The Cromlin ambassador rose to speak in the con­current session that was maintained for the water breathers. They watched from the embassy on the video feeds as a creature that looked like a nasty cross between a clawed lob­ster and a giant scorpion faced the delegations and the cam­eras and launched into a more than two-hour diatribe of viciousness, hatred, and arrogance against the conference and all who took it seriously.

“One true incarnate god, one true family!” it concluded, giving the slogan of what it had called the “Movement to Restore the World.”

“This has been ordained from the start, that the children of this world would return from the stars to reassume their legacy and lead all who would have the intelligence and devotion to recognize truth and power to cleanse this world of its parasites and establish a new order, first throughout the world, then back to the stars, this time as the associates of the gods themselves! You are the weak, the decadent, who have forgotten how to struggle, have forgotten the glories of power that is taken, not accepted. Soon you will see the length of our claws and know that only by joining with us shall you attain eternal glory!”

“Lays it on thick, doesn’t he?” the Baron commented, unmoved.

“Well, he’s a half brother,” Nakitti noted. “You won’t find him in the first wave showing us the length of his claws.”

A buzzer sounded on a device in the main office, then began to print out a series of pages, very fast, written in the commercial language of the Well World. When it stopped, the Baron beat the clerk to it, read it, and seemed to gain strength and stature. “Ha!” he cried. “The idiots have saved me!” He rushed back into the quarters and wrapped his wings around Nakitti, then stepped back, almost dancing. She’d never seen him like this.

“What is it, Highness?” she pressed.

He pulled the papers from his belt and waved them in his right claw. “This message. It’s from our friend, there, the Cromlin ‘policy adviser,’ as he calls himself. He has given us seven days to join his glorious alliance or he will order the total genocide of the Ochoan race.”

She was appalled. In spite of the fact that she’d predicted it, to have the evidence right there made her sad and ner­vous. It meant war. “And this brings you joy?”

“Of course!” he responded, carefully putting the papers back. “I go immediately to the Council and to His Majesty with this. We’ve been getting our way, but grudgingly, up until now. This—This is absolute confirmation. The gall of this—this—creature! With this it is I who will be able to replace the worst of them, and it is I who will ensure that a lot of corrupt and stupid cousins are in the front lines when the invasion comes! This is not bad news! This is salvation!”

Underwater Zone Gate, Later That Same Day

colonel general sochiz of cromlin was feeling cocky and arrogant as he left the embassy and made his way through the crowds toward the Well Gate, pushing aside anybody who did not yield and barely paying attention to the stares. He did not care what anybody thought of him, and his great claws could cut steel rods if he were so inclined.

Josich would be so proud of him! The way they had looked as he had spoken! The way they had simply melted away as he’d strode off the platform and through the hall and out. That was fear, fear of power, and it felt most excellent.

When it was clear who he was, the others along the route to the Well Gate gave way and no one, not even those who were larger and looked meaner than he, impeded his tri­umphal march.

He turned the corner and saw the utter blackness of the Gate directly ahead, its hexagonal shape unmistakable. He was almost to it when he realized that, for this last, short stretch, there was nobody in the corridor.

He stopped suddenly, suspicious. This was the way assas­sins worked. Well, let them come! Let them see he was not afraid of them!

A noise caused him to turn to the wall to his right, per­haps five meters in front of the Gate. It had no form at first, but then took a humanoid shape that seemed to extrude right out of the wall. It looked like nothing even research had shown him, like a moving idol from some primitive tribe, made completely of dull, rough granitelike stone, a car-toonish, idiotic, and simplified face carved into it. Only the eyes said it was something more, the burning fire-orange eyes in the tranquil water, and the fact that it walked to him.

“Who are you who would block we?” the Cromlin gen­eral shouted. Both of Sochiz’s forward claws went up. One snatched at the creature while the tail reared up and the syringelike point at the end struck at its head.

And broke off.

The creature reached up and, with a stony hand, held the claw immobile, then it grabbed the other as the pain of losing the stinger hit the Cromlin’s body, ripping off the right claw and discarding it.

“You know my name,” the creature said in a tone that could only mean it had a translator. “Let it be the last thing you or any of your brothers hear.”

“What name?” the creature screamed. “Who are you?”

“Jeremiah Wong Kincaid,” came the reply, just before the second claw was ripped away and the stone right hand of the idol-like creature punched through the face of the Cromlin right between the protruding eyes and extended antennae, and just kept going all the way into the brain.

It was a slow and messy way to die. The thing was still wriggling in its death throes long after Kincaid had stepped through the Gate and when the first of the curious traffic that had held up for now dared to look around and see what had happened, but not who the perpetrator might have been.

Ochoa, at the Zone Gate

IT WAS CLOUDY, NOT ONLY AT THE MIDDLE LEVELS BUT ACROSS the entire sky, casting a gloomy pall over the whole central island.

The island of Bateria was dead center in the middle of Ochoa, and appeared to be one massive volcanic peak. Even underwater, where it went down almost seven kilometers into the sea bed, the great mountain called Sochi Makin, or the “Yawning God,” resembled an ancient peak of the sort that truly created the others and occasionally created new ones. It came up into the air and rose across an almost sixty kilometer stretch to a collapsed crater twenty kilometers across. Inside was still a volcanic moonscape, colorful but desolate, baked in the hot sun of the day and plunging to icy cold at night, when the elevation alone controlled its tem­perature. In the center, though, was a single unnatural fea­ture, a hexagonal area planted horizontally inside the crater and resembling a bottomless hole, as indeed it was.

The Royal Palace had been hewn into the side of the crater facing the rising western sun. Its spires and colorful rock made it seem a part of the mountain itself, and it stretched several kilometers across the eastern wall and rose up above the level of the crater itself, in a departure from the Ochoan norm. The way up on that side was steep and rugged, and who would dare attack the residence of the King?

Opposite, on the western wall, was the Great Hall of the Council, where the elected representatives met a few weeks out of every year to decide what needed to be decided, and which was home to a surprisingly small bureaucracy that mostly issued permits and saw to it that fees for ships’ provi-sionings and for transit of goods were in order.

In one sense, the palace was the most vulnerable position of any important structure in the kingdom, but the Royal Guard was housed within the castle, and the National Guard—which primarily handled Customs duties, chased down disputes in­volving multiple districts, and the like, had received some military training and retained a military style structure—was headquartered in a village along the eastern slopes below the Grand Hall. Under normal circumstances, about 2,500 regular troops of the army and perhaps 1,500 of the National Guard were at hand, the largest single force anywhere in Ochoa and probably the only one that trained for the job.

Ochoans had fairly good eyes, but the Baron and Grand Duchess Comorro, General in Chief of the Royal Guard, as well as General Zaida, who ran the National Guard, wore special goggles with easily adjusted binocular lenses, and they could see quite well across the expanse of the crater. The Baron stood outside some small buildings just north of the Well Gate used for customs; the Grand Duchess was in full resplendent war paint and medals on the battlement atop the palace, the General on the flag court just above the entrance to the Great Hall. Each had a signalman with him or her, and each was in constant contact, all being more or less in line of sight.

A dark shape came in toward the palace below the clouds, only a few meters above the highest of the terrain, flew into the crater and landed on the Duchess’s parapet. About thirty seconds later the semaphore flashed, “The most reassuring thing about the enemy is that he follows our script.”

The Baron laughed. He wasn’t going to kid anybody that he wasn’t scared to death, but if they were forced into a fight, then so be it. The others felt the same way. In Ochoan culture it was the women who did the fighting, but he was determined that they would sing no songs of battles and bravery without his name included, even if he didn’t know whether he had the nerve to stand. The King sure hadn’t. He and half his entourage were cowering deep in the lava caves right now over on Island Biana.

He eased himself back into the special chair atop the cus­toms house and raised his feet, which were also for all intents and purposes his hands, and placed them on the con­trol bars and twin triggers of the rapid-fire, air-cooled machine gun. He’d had only a couple of days’ practice on one, and they ran hot and noisy and smoky and smelled awful, but he could say it didn’t take an expert to hit something with them when they put out a hundred rounds per second in a spread pattern.

The portable emplacement was similar to the permanent ones along the whole chain of castles and fortresses, de­signed specifically for the Ochoan anatomy and easily ro­tated a full 360 degrees with just a shift in body weight. In a smaller chair below him, but on the same pivot, Gia, daughter of the Lady Akua (and his) fifth wife, sat ready to feed the strips of ammunition along the belt, clear jams, and change and reload ammo canisters. Two others weren’t on the pivot but were on her level on a catwalk, and could jump in and help with any operation as needed or have new canis­ters ready.

There were no permanent emplacements here, in the royal center, but there were quite a number of temporary ones.

Baron Oriamin felt quite proud that the Lady Akua had not been one of those who’d refused the gun tests, but was now running the defense of their castle. It wouldn’t be an easy fight; although the castle was well-defended and ex­tremely well-provisioned, that beach and port below was a real prize, and he worried a lot about rockets. He’d seen now what they could do.

He wished he was there, where he felt he should be, defending his home and family and the islanders who con­sidered him their protector. He wished he had Nakitti here at his side, preferably at the next gun, but even as the partial architect of this entire plan, her status made it impossible for her to directly participate. She was only fifty meters or so away, and a matter transmission through the device called the Well Gate, it was true, but concubines did not fight. It simply wasn’t done.

“Bombardment of sixteen ports commenced,” came the word from the General’s position. Each time a courier came to either of them, the relevant news was put up as quickly as possible. “Extremely heavy fighting along the coast and in immediate inland waters. Flying creatures are being em­ployed as rocket platforms. Much loss of life. Most fliers not engaged by enemy.”

Damn! He wanted to be with his own! It was frustrating sitting here, hearing all that, powerless to do anything, un­able to know how much of his own holdings and how many of those he loved were still alive. He prayed that Castle Oriamin wasn’t one of those being engaged, but deep down he knew it was. The enemy had seen him all too publicly at the conference. But Nakitti and that bizarre Kalindan had been right. The key wasn’t in the castles nor on the beaches, the key was right here.

“Send to both positions,” he commanded his own sema­phore operator. “Any word from our aerial scouts?”

He knew that if there had been, they would have told him, but he just couldn’t sit there and do nothing!

“No, Highness. No reports, but they are circling just out and above us, above the clouds. The first one that sees or hears anything will report instantly.”

“I know that!” he snapped, then caught himself. “My apologies. I would rather they just show up than sit here and hear of others bleeding while we do nothing!”

They didn’t reply. They understood. They were feeling much the same way themselves, and had families no less close back there.

The prediction had been that there would be concentrated attacks on the castles and positions controlling the best ports, leading to the set-down of enemy special military teams above which would establish siege lines. As messages came in, this appeared to be precisely what was happening, which was why the Duchess seemed so pleased. If they were operating as predicted, then the rest would develop, too. It was deviations from that prediction that would cause serious problems.

There were sudden sounds from above, reverberating across the crater.

“Sounds like thunder,” his wife commented, looking up. “I think I can see some lightning over there.”

At that moment, toward the north wall, three black shapes fell out of the clouds and plummeted to the ground.

“That’s not thunder!” the Baron shouted. “Everybody to posts! Stand by! Those were some of our scouts up there dropping dead for us!” To himself, although he was never much of a religious man, he muttered a slight but fervent prayer and then thought, Here we go!

To have seen the pictures, and even the few training pic­tures taken at great risk from enemy ships and their mon­strous bugs, was one thing. To see massive, shiny black triangular shapes bigger than houses drop out of the sky in vast numbers was terrifying.

“They’re all around us!” somebody screamed. “By the gods! How many of those monsters are there?” It was a cross between total fear and a lament.

There were whole squadrons of the things, each arranged in triangular groups of five, and they started coming in from both the north and south, cleverly skirting what they antici­pated would be big guns on the main buildings. The light artillery, however, had managed to turn the guns and were opening up all along the ridges on both sides of the Baron’s position. They had a fair range and seemed to be having some effect; a few of the formations still descending sud­denly saw one or even two creatures wobble and then drop out of formation. Some began crashing to earth inside the crater. Most of the occupants appeared either stunned or dead, and when the big insects hit they blew up like gigantic bombs, the shells shattering pieces in all directions.

But for every one they hit, three or four landed, their sol­diers and cargo containers coming off with amazing speed and forming up into larger units as more and more landed.

Now, from the Grand Hall’s entryway and the castle battlements, soldiers from both units took off, low, letting the cannon try for the creatures above the crater walls while they concentrated on the ones unloading. The Baron could see they had underestimated the efficiency of these troops and that ground time was amazingly short, but it was ground time, and that allowed the waves of Ochoans to swoop down with great speed and accuracy and each fire two small rockets down into the landing areas. Most missed, and the first troops to organize down there were already providing a withering covering fire for the others landing and disem­barking, but the rockets blew up with a lot of fire and smoke, and whenever they hit one of the monstrous trian­gular bugs the resulting explosion was worth five direct hits by the rockets themselves. Whatever was inside those things was under tremendous pressure!

“What’s our range?” the Baron shouted to anybody lis­tening over the now ferocious din.

“They are still too far!” his wife screamed back at him. “Why not try shooting a single pass in each direction and seeing if we can’t make our own target?”

He saw what she meant and cursed that neither he nor any of these military “experts” had thought about simply paint­ing the range in.

The pattern kicked up a lot of dust at about fifteen hun­dred meters. Not a bad range, but then he realized that when they got within his range, he was probably within range of at least their best marksmen.

“They’re bombing the palace!” somebody shouted! “Oh, and the Great Hall, too!”

They were surprised and more wounded than they had anticipated by the coordinated fire and the rocket bearers. Somebody had gotten back up and given a signal to bring some of their own flying rocket platforms in.

The attacking force was far more ungainly and not nearly as accurate as the Ochoans, who were intelligent, small, native fliers, not domesticated bugs being steered by drivers, but it was like the machine gun versus the rifle. You could hit something far better with a rifle, but if you could fire enough bullets in the right general direction, you could do more damage. This wave of rocket-launching bugs let go with twenty, thirty rockets almost at once, then veered off and up. Again, several were knocked down, but it was daunt­ing to see some explosions strike on or very near the things, who nevertheless kept coming.

The two buildings were engulfed in smoke and flames, and outer walls shook and crumbled. The columns of the Grand Hall began to give way, and with them the flag deck above them as well.

There was now so much noise and smoke that it was impossible to tell what was happening. There was a brief break in the smoke just off the now smoking and battered palace, and a series of quick coded lights. “Still function­ing,” it said. “Most guns out, but they will have to dig us out.”

The Baron and his unit felt some strength and confidence from that, but it didn’t mean a thing in the end. A large number of the great black carriers were landing just over the wall, and on any ledges and smoothed-out areas they could. The smaller intelligent bugs, the Jerminians, were almost certainly forming into formidable units there and having no problems marching right up the sheer sides of the thing. They knew, however, that unlike those damned transport bugs, Jerminians were as susceptible to bullets and blasts as Ochoans were.

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