Almost all of the attackers were over six feet tall. Their outer covering, which he had first taken for a mutie insect shell, on closer inspection looked more like some kind of synthetic full body armor. The black material was segmented to allow free movement of arms, legs and torso; the hands were protected by gauntlets made of the same stuff, the feet by overlapping plates. The smoke colored, wraparound visors on the fronts of their helmets concealed their faces from view. There was no way to tell whether they were norm or mutie. Their massive looking longblasters were a bullpup design, with a single claw toothed flash hider over the muzzles of the three barrels. The weapons either weren’t heavy, or these creatures were superstrong.
Doyal estimated there were at least seventy-five of the bastards. More than enough, considering their firepower and defenses. As terrifying as the light weapons were, it was their defensives that shook his mind to its core. Experience told him that bullets couldn’t be deflected without first striking a solid object, nor could LAW rockets for that matter. What he had seen with his own eyes made no sense.
As he sat there, trying to puzzle it out and failing, two more enormous black wags rolled up to the parking area. They towered over the attack vehicles. Their single trailers were longer than a triple semi, and their tractors were the size of earthmovers. The combined weight of the two trucks cracked the ancient pavement like a thin glaze of ice. As soon as the vehicles had stopped, some of the black creatures rushed over and began unrolling long hoses from them, which they then coupled to the parked wags and aircraft. Doyal concluded they were being refueled.
Without any apparent signal, the rest of the creatures began separating the captives into two groups at blasterpoint. A pair of them loomed over Doyal, looking closely at his injured hand for a moment before walking on. The slaves and sec men who had lost a leg or an arm, or who had been blinded or severely brain damaged, about thirty in all, were brutally dragged away from the others, to the far side of the parking lot. They didn’t go quietly. There was a lot of screaming; some of it from the pain caused by rough treatment, most of it from their abject terror.
When the prisoners had been divided, one of the creatures stepped between the two groups. It stopped in the middle of the parking lot and a disembodied, electronic sounding voice boomed forth, “I want obedience. If I don’t get it…” It made a sweeping gesture toward the wounded.
At the signal, four of the black monsters with tanks strapped to their backs undipped the nozzles on their hips and strode through the injured, squirting a creamy yellow foam over them.
The effect was horrific. The yellow foam dissolved both flesh and bone on contact. As it was heaped upon the feebly struggling wounded, it melted them like guttering brown candles, into so much sticky goo. When the foam stopped bubbling and shrank away, all that was left of thirty human beings was a slowly spreading wet spot on the asphalt.
“You will perform hard labor for me,” the monster in charge told the stunned captives. “If you meet your individual daily quotas, you will be given water. If you don’t, you will go without. If you fail to meet your work quotas three days in a row, you will be foamed.”
Sec men and agri-slaves knew a death sentence when they heard one. They began to weep and moan.
“Where is the baron of this place?” the creature demanded. “Is he still alive?”
Doyal’s stomach dropped. He had been hoping to blend in with the others, to avoid being singled out for some special punishment. He prayed that the others would say that he was dead.
All around him, his former supporters and friends somehow found the strength to raise their arms and point in his direction. He bared his teeth at them like an animal.
The talking monster loomed over him. “Stand!” it commanded.
Charlie Doyal rose shakily to his feet. He could see his own reflection in the surface of the opaque visor, his gray hair in wild disarray, eyes already pleading for mercy.