The orbital glided back from the village and hovered over Doug. Lipton popped the hatch and poked his head out. “Got a load, all the kids and some women. Jahk refused to go, though ннн he wants to stay and fight.”
Doug nodded. “Didn’t really expect him to go, did you?”
“Not really.” He waved.
Doug waved back.
Cromwell took a moment out from his heated argument to yell at Lipton. “You bring that thing down here at once!” He fired a round at the orbital, the slug bouncing off the heat shield with a dull thunk. Lipton hurriedly closed the hatch and send the craft into the sky, heading toward the coast.
Cromwell turned the gun on Doug and fired. Doug lunged back and away from Cromwell, putting the coneнshaped top between them.
There was a loud thud and the sound of someone hitting the ground, and he thought, Goddamn, he killed Janet! He peeked over the cone and saw Janet standing over Cromwell, who was face down on the ground. Janet was holding a large rock.
“Do what you have to do,” she called up to him. “I’ll make sure I haven’t killed him.”
“Why don’t you just hit him a few more times,” Doug said.
“That would be murder.”
Doug shrugged, and resumed his task.
By the time he had dismantled the entire defense system and transferred it and a spare energy supply over to the village, Lipton was back with the orbiter for another load. “The skikes are close,” he told Doug. “They’ll be here before I’m back again.
How’s it going here?”
“I’m having problems. I can’t mount the guns as solidly as they should be, so the targeting is going to have to continually recalibrate itself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s going to be slow and inaccurate.”
“Well, it’ll be better than nothing.”
Doug shrugged.
Somebody called out a warning. Doug and Lipton swung around, saw a skike just outside the village fence. It was quietly walking along the perimeter. Colonists were running toward it with their crossbows, and Lipton was going for a rifle. Doug muttered, and hurriedly tried to finish what he was doing. The next time he looked up the skike had retreated off into the jungle with several arrow shafts sticking out of its legs. Testing us, he thought.
Seeing if we’ll strike it with lightening.
There was more yelling from another side of the village.
Several more skikes were strolling along the outside of the fence to the west. Lipton went running across the village but Doug waved him down. “Don’t worry about it!”
“What?” Lipton said.
“Get the rest of this load in the orbiter and don’t worry about it.”
Lipton nodded, and ran off.
Doug hurriedly finished up his connections and then climbed down the tower. Next he had to hook up the power supplies and get the computers going. A few of the colonists yelled as one of the skikes, angry about being pelted with arrows, began digging under the fence. “Lipton!” Doug yelled.
“What?” Lipton was helping several pregnant women into the orbiter’s hatch.
“There’s one over there have to worry about.”
Lipton wordlessly picked up his rifle and ran. A few minutes later heavy booms rolled across the village. There were screams.
Doug looked around and saw that there were several more around the fence, on all sides. Many of them were digging. Doug looked at his rifle which was on the ground a few feet away, but he decided against it. He couldn’t shoot all of them. He had to finish what he was doing here and now.
Jahk, the warrior, blasted away at one of the beasts with the rifle Doug had given him. Kinjon was on the other side of the village, blasting away. They were blowing holes in their village fence as they aimed for the skikes beyond. Doug forced himself to look down, to concentrate on his work. It was impossible, he kept on looking up.
One skike broke ground inside the fence about 40 meters away from Doug, and it was immediately surrounded by colonists. It sliced several of them to pieces as Doug watched. He couldn’t stand it anymore, he grabbed his rifle and ran out to it. It followed several of the colonists as they ran, and then turned and seemed to study Doug as Doug aimed the rifle. Then it jumped, and Doug blasted as it hurled at him in midнair. He had to jump to one side to avoid it landing on him. He shot it again to make sure it was dead, then ran back to the tower and the computer system underneath.
Five more connections and it was done. Now it needed to be recalibrated. The skikes were attacking too soon! There wasn’t time. Doug turned it on, and set it to recalibrate on anything that moved. At the last moment he realized it would be firing on the colonists as well.
From the top of the tower came a rapid staccato of stunning blasts, and dirt and fire sprayed out from the impact points, killing at least two warriors and wounding a skike. Doug shut it down and shouted, “Run toward me! Run for the center of the village! Run, now! Now! Move it! Mooove your f***ing asses!”
More skikes were breaking through the ground. Some of the colonists understood and ran, some didn’t. Doug couldn’t risk leaving it off any longer, the skikes would overrun the village.
He turned it back on and watched, grimacing. The weapons system blazed and thundered, rapid fire, and he saw Lipton leap for cover. There was a burst near him, but it didn’t hit. Thank god it wasn’t calibrated, Doug thought. He began working with it, pointing out to the computer the differences between skikes and men, and with more and more accuracy it began shooting at only the skikes, and hitting them too.
It took a while, but Lipton managed to crawl back to the orbiter. He tried to shout something to Doug, but Doug couldn’t hear it above the blasts. Over the next few minutes the firing slowed as it ran short of targets.
“The orbiter!” Lipton was shouting. “Will it fire on the orbiter?”
Doug shook his head. He’d already locked that out of the computer.
Lipton stuffed as many more women that would fit, ran out of women, then stuffed in a few of the younger men. The orbiter was jammed. It was never meant to hold that many people. Lipton waved at Doug and closed the hatch. The defense system paused for a moment as the orbiter lifted into the sky, then resumed with new energy as a hoard of the beasts charged out of the jungle and, piling one on top of the other, crushed the fence. The computer control was more accurate than Doug expected, it killed the skikes as fast as they could show themselves. For ten minutes the skikes poured in and died, then another charge came from another direction, and those skikes poured in and died. Fortyнfive minutes later they pulled back, retreating, and for the first time in almost two hours the defense system fell silent.
Doug checked the power supplies. They were taking up most of the flyer’s deck space ннн the flier was floating alongside the tower and moored to it like a boat at a dock. The supplies were drained all the way down to 23%, but were recharging. Thank god they retreated, Doug thought. Another half an hour and the guns would have stopped firing for the lack of power.
The sun slowly sank out of sight, and Doug took two of the flier’s emergency flair globes and released them into the sky. It was enough to cast everything in a pale glow for most of the night. Next, he hooked the flier’s power supply in line with the others to help speed up the recharge. He really didn’t have any other choice.
The defense system fired. Doug jumped, startled, and looked in the direction it had fired. At first he didn’t see anything, but then he realized he was looking too far away. Ten meters in front of him there was a hole in the ground. The defense system had caught a skike coming up from a burrow. This far in? he thought. They can dig right up to the base of the tower!? Goddamn it!
Jahk was not far away. He was looking at the hole too.
“They’re digging up underneath us,” Doug said to him. “Get everyone up on the roofs of your huts, and get as many up into the tower as you can.” Jahk nodded and started yelling orders.
Lipton returned in the orbiter and picked up another load. He was fitting more in than he or Doug thought they would, but the flight was taking longer. “That island is beautiful,” Lipton said.
“It’s a wonder why they didn’t settle there in the first place.”