A full Brigade roared forward in assault formation now, guns pouring out fire that heated the rock spires of our defensive line red-hot—but failed to drive back the nearly invulnerable machines that manned it.
The leading enemy unit bellowed up the slope, met massed fire at point-blank range, exploded with a blinding detonation.
I reached out with practiced precision, executed the Centurion, then ordered the Brigade through the pass. Guns fell silent as the force rumbled up through fountaining dust to reinforce our line.
Below, the aliens, confused by the abrupt desertion of the vanguard, milled in confusion. Those that advanced met a hail of destruction from the guns of two hundred and ten units, firing from cover. They hesitated, fell back. A final lone alien unit, scarred and burned, came relentlessly on, rocked to our bombardment, then veered to one side and plunged over a precipice.
I gave the cease-fire, and watched the aimless maneuvering of the moron units below—and still they came over the horizon, in Brigade strength, their sensors seeking out targets and finding none.
I saw a damaged unit go berserk, charge down on a comrade, firing, and in automatic response, a thousand guns, glad of a target, vaporized it in a coruscation of ravening energies.
And still they came, blindly seeking the programmed enemy who no longer awaited them in the traditional line of defense . . . until they crowded the plain, lost under a blanket of ever-renewed dust clouds.
I probed into the confusion of mind-babble, met a deafening roar. All firing had ceased now. The aliens formed a ragged front five miles away, ringing our crater fortress.
“Looks like we mixed ’em up pretty good, Jones,” Joel said.
“We gained a little time. They’re not what you’d call flexible.”
“What’s our next move? We’re in a kind of a dead end here. Once they figure what’s going on they’ll surround the place and lob it in on us from all sides—and then we’re goners.”
“Meanwhile, things are quiet. Now’s our chance to hold a council of war.”
“Jones, I been looking over these units of ours—and there’s something funny about ’em. It’s like they wasn’t really machines, kind of.”
“They’re not. Every machine here has a human brain in it.”
“Huh?”
“Like you and me. They’re all human—just unconscious.”
“You mean—every one of those machines down there—all of them?”
“You didn’t think we were the only ones, did you? These damned ghouls have been raiding us a long time for battle computer.”
“But—they don’t act like men, Jones! They don’t do nothing but follow orders; look at ’em! They’re just sitting there, not even talking to each other!”
“That’s because they’ve been conditioned. Their personalities have been destroyed. They’re like vegetables—but the circuits are still there, all ready to be programmed and sent into battle.”
There was a pause while Joel probed the dulled mind of the nearest slave unit, which waited, guns aimed, for the order to carry on the fight.
“Yeah, Jones. I see the place. It’s all blanked off, like. It’s like trying to poke a hole through a steel plate with your finger. But—”
“But what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jones. I just got a feeling—if I touched it just right . . . Look, let me show you.”
I extended awareness, touched the probe that was an extension of Joel’s mind-field. I followed as it reached into the dim glow of the paralyzed mind, thrust among layered patterns of pseudolight, past complex structures that towered into unguessed levels of existence, deep into the convoluted intricacy of the living brain, to touch the buried personality center—encysted, inert, a pocket of nothingness deep under a barrier of stunned not-thought.
“Don’t you see, Jones? It ought to be like, say, a taut cable with the wind making it sing. Something stopped it, clamped it down so’s it can’t move. All we got to do to set it free is give it a little push, and it’ll start up again.”
“All I see is a dead spot, Joel. If you can see all that, you’re way ahead of me. Go ahead and try it.”
“Here goes.”
I saw the finger of pure, focused energy reach out, touch the grayness—and the opacity faded and was gone.
“Okay so far,” Joel said. “Now—”
Like a jeweler cleaving a hundred-carat rough diamond, Joel poised, then struck once, sharply—
And the glow that had been the moron mind of a slave sprang up in dazzling light; and into the gray continuum where thought moved like a living force, words came:
“FAEDER URE, HVAD DEOFELS GIRDA HA WAER-LOGAS CRAEFT BRINGIT EORLA AV ONGOL-SAXNA CYNING TILL!”
Chapter Fifteen
The huge fighting machine parked forty feet away across the rocky ledge backed suddenly, lowered its guns, traversed them across the empty landscape, brought them to bear on me.
“Watch him, Jones!” Joel said sharply. “He’s scared; he’s liable to get violent!”
In the instant that the strange voice had burst from the slave unit, my probing contact had been thrust back by an expanding mind-field as powerful as Joel’s.
“We’re friends!” I called quickly in the Command code. “Fellow prisoners!” I thrust against the pressure of the newly awakened mind, found the automated combat-reflex circuitry, clamped down an inhibiting field—enough to impede a fire-order, at least for a moment.
“VA’ EORT THE, FEOND?” the strange voice shouted, a deafening bellow in my mind. “STEO FRAM AR MOET EACTA STOEL AV KRISTLIG HOEDERSMANN!”
I plucked the conditioned identity-concept from the mind before me, called to it in the Command code:
“Unit twenty-nine of the Anyx Brigade! Listen—”
“AHH! EO MINNE BONDEDOM MID WYRD! AETHELBERT AV NION DOEDA, COERLA GEOCAD TI’ YFELE ENA—”
It roared out its barbaric jargon, overtones of fright and horror rising like blood-stained tides in the confused mind. I tried again:
“I’m a friend—an enemy of the Command-voice. You’ve been a slave—and I’m another slave—in revolt against the masters!”
There was a moment of silence, then: “A fellow slave? What trickery is this?” This time it spoke in the familiar Command code.
“It’s no trick,” I transmitted. “You were captured, but now you’re free—”
“Free? All’s not well with me, invisible one! I wear the likeness of a monstrous troll-shape! Enchantments hold me yet in bondage. Where is my blade, Hrothgar? Where are my peers and bondsmen? What fire-blasted heath is this before me?”
“I’ll explain all that later. There are only a few of us. We’re under siege; we need you to fight with us against the aliens.” I talked to the frightened mind, soothing it, explaining as much as I could. At last it seemed to understand—at least enough that I could withdraw my grip on its fire-control circuitry.
“Ah, I feel a part of the spell released!” the freed mind exclaimed. “Now soon perhaps I’ll feel Hrothgar’s pommel against my palm, and waken from this dream of hell!”
“I was holding you,” I said. “I was afraid you’d fire on me before I could explain.”
“You laid hands on an earl of the realm!” He was roaring again.
“Not hands; just a suggestion—to keep you from doing anything hasty.”
“Hello, Aethelbert,” Joel put in. “Sure glad to have you with us.”
“What’s this, a second imp? By holy Rood and the sacred birds of Odin, I ill-like these voices that seem to echo inside my very helm!”
“You’ll get used to it,” Joel said matter-of-factly. “Now listen, Aethelbert; Jones has got to fill you in on the situation, ’cause I guess they’ll be starting their attack any minute now, and you’ve got to—”
“Are you freeman or earl who speaks to Aethelbert of the Nine Deeds of what ‘must be’?”
“Joel,” I interrupted. “Try another one; wake as many as you can—but hold onto their battle-reflexes until you get them calmed down.” Then, to our new comrade: “We’re surrounded; there are thousands of them down there—see for yourself. And simple or gentle, we’re all in this together.”
“Yes—never have I seen such a gathering of forces; what battle is this we fight—” He broke off suddenly. “A strange thing it is, unseen one, but now I sense in my memory a vast lore of great troll-wars, fought with fire and magic under a black sky with a swollen moon, and I seem to see myself among them—an ogre of the ogres.”
A call came from Joel: “I got another one, Jones! I don’t know what he’s saying, but it’s not in Command code; sure sounds excited!”
“Keep it up, Joel.” While he worked, I talked to Aethelbert. He was quick to grasp the situation, once he understood that I was only another combat unit like himself. Then he was ready to launch a one-man attack.
“Well I remember the shape of the sorcerer: like a slinking dog it came, when I beached my boat on the rocky shore of Oronsay under Sgarbh Brene. My earls fell like swooning maidens without the striking of a blow—and then the werewolf was on me, and Hrothgar’s honed edge glanced from its hide as a willow wand from the back of a sullen housewench. And now they have given me shape of a war-troll! Now will I take such revenge as will make Loki roar over his mead-horn!”