Exactly like a mouse when you stomped on it with a boot, Thomas thought in confusion. Almost exactly the same effect, wasn’t that odd.
“They did it,” a guard gasped, fumbling to reload his longblaster in the darkness. “They aced the shields. But you and the other elders told us nobody would ever do that!”
The cry brought the elder out of shock and back to reality. “Silence fool, and keep shooting!” Thomas snarled, backhanding the man across the face.
The much bigger cannie barely reacted to the blow, then turned to stare at the elder with eyes filled with hatred. His hands twitched for a second on the stock of his blaster. For a moment, Thomas thought the guard was going to attack, but then the sec man nodded in obedience and turned to shoot at the oncoming wags.
Dark clouds of dust were thrown into the air behind the thundering war machine, then two more appeared from behind the northern dunes, their studded rows of tires chewing paths of destruction through the sandy land. The Blue Devils scattered at the approach of the war wag and reformed to the rear of the machine to snipe from behind its protective bulk.
Then a door was thrown open in the courtyard, admitting a wealth of bright golden light. Scrambling from the armory, a swarm of sec men rushed to the fallen gate and started firing big bore longblasters, the heavy rounds ricocheting off the side of the lumbering war wags to no effect. In return, machine guns rattled from every side of the three enemy vehicles, the heavy rounds hammering the outside of the wall and doing no real damage, but cutting down the men in the gateway.
Mebbe that was it, Thomas thought in delight, shooting at the big machines. The Trader had only those few missiles. The gate may be open, but the elders could win this fight yet!
“Man the cannons!” he shouted through cupped hands, clouds of blaster smoke drifting over the ville. “Fire them instantly!”
“Move or you’ll feel the lash!” another elder added, two sec men holding a woman by the arms to keep her standing. Her right leg was gone, the stump tied off with a belt and some rope. “Kill them all and cut out their beating hearts!”
A rallying cry rose from the sec men and they moved with a will, racing toward the cannons along the eastern wall and hauling moaning bodies of cannies and slaves out of the way to reach the breech. At the third cannon, the sec men had to gun down the slaves as one tried to thrust a burning torch into a barrel of black powder. The man fell, but crawled onward still striving to reach the powder until his dangling chains caught on some wreckage and he was trapped, only feet away from his goal. As the guards converged on him with their knifes, he threw the crackling firebrand, but it missed the open wooden barrel of powder and fell uselessly over the edge of the wall and into the night. The death cries of the slave echoed throughout the chaos of the battle, but only for a moment.
Then a strange, piercing sound rang out from the front war wag and the bikers stopped shooting to cover their faces and turn away. Perplexed by the sight, Thomas saw the rest of the people behind the windows and weapon blisters do the same as the odd horn sounded twice more in warning. Purely on impulse, he copied their posture, daring to peek between the clenched fingers.
Then the outlanders stopped attacking as something cycled up from the roof of the lead transport, a bizarre blaster with cables and thick hoses hissing snowy clouds. As a sharply pitched whine built to painful levels, there was an audible crackle of power. Blue electric sparks flashed between contact points, and the muzzle of the weapon spewed forth a shimmering energy beam of blinding brilliance that swept along the top of the wall setting fire to everything it touched. Bathed in the lethal radiance, the sec men’s clothing and hair burst into flames, and they started to scream. Then the beam touched the barrels of black powder and powerful explosions rocked the walls, sending cracks along its entire length.