damn communications kept failing.
A motion at the corner of his screen caught his eye. There, superimposed
on the glowing battle display, was a little manlike being perhaps six
inches high. Unlike the rest of the screen image it was in full color and
high resolution.
The thing turned toward him and pressed its face and palms against the
inside of the tube, as if it was looking out. It wasn’t an image, Craig
realized, there really was something inside his monitor!
The tiny being turned and gestured across the screen. Another manlike
little thing stuck its head around the edge of the screen and peered at
the world outside. Behind and around it the battle display scrolled on,
unnoticed by the gremlins or by Craig.
The first creature tossed a glowing ball into the air and batted it with
his free hand. The ball flew across the screen leaving a glowing trail
behind it. The second thing leaped up and deflected it before it could
touch the far side of the screen. The ball bounced off the bottom and
ricocheted toward the upper right corner, smearing a goodly portion of the
display. The first creature made a mighty jump and deflected it back
toward the bottom left. His opponent dived for it, but the ball bounced
over his head and off the side of the screen. The first gremlin chortled
and held up a single finger.
Craig watched helplessly as his screen filled up with the lines of the
ball tracks.
“Maintenance!” he yelled.
“He’s off this way,” Glandurg called back to his companions. “Down this
side shaft, now.”
No more climbing for a bit, Glandurg thought. That’s a piece of good news.
Although he never would have admitted it, he was just about done for. His
arms and shoulders ached from clinging to fingerholds in the ventilation
shaft and his calves and thighs were cramping from pressing his body flat
against the wall. It would be a relief to just walk for a while.
He didn’t know how far they had climbed; a league or more, perhaps. But at
last the arrow in the talisman had stopped pointing upward and was
pointing off to the side.
As he started down the horizontal shaft, Glandurg reached back to touch
the hilt of Blind Fury. Soon enough they’d be done with this climbing and
sneaking into honest battle.
He wondered if battle was as exciting as the skald’s tales made it out to
be.
It took nearly fifteen precious minutes for the maintenance robots to fix
the display on Craig’s workstation. By the time he was back in control the
situation had deteriorated even more. The last of his air force had been
swept from the skies, and with it all of his recon drones. Now he was
reduced to viewing the battle through the cameras and sensors mounted on
the castle itself. Two critical outposts had fallen and even as he
attempted to assert control a third one went.
In the southern quadrant the attackers were almost up to the last line of
defenses at the base of the castle walls. Craig turned his attention
there. Quickly he switched to one of the cameras on a forward emplacement
to try to find a weak spot. He still had a couple of squadrons of warbots
he could throw into the battle here, but he would have to command them
directly if they were going to be any good.
As he scanned the line of approaching men, a shadow fell over the camera.
He swiveled up in time to see a dragon diving straight at him. He flinched
and tried to bring a weapon to bear but it was too late. The last view
Craig had was of gaping jaws and an enormous golden eye as the dragon
crashed head-on into the emplacement.
Cursing, he switched to an alternate view only to get a jerky
low-resolution picture that barely resolved itself into blobs of light and
dark. Two more switches and he found a camera high up on the walls that
was working.
What he saw wasn’t good. Lines of dotlike figures, rendered tiny by the
distance, were converging on the gates of the castle. Many of them were