Treasure Of The Stars rb-29 Page 17

  Breathing shallowly, he took out one of the bombs, set both the time fuse and the booby-trap, then shoved it out of sight under one of the bodies. The radio station had to be completely demolished, otherwise someone might still improvise an emergency signal by hooking a portable radio to the big mast on the roof.

  The bomb was set. Blade flattened himself against the wall and crept back to the corridor. Voices sounded from the outer door. He pulled out a golf-ball sized blue grenade, armed it, and hurled it down the corridor. When the echoes from the explosion died away the voices were only fading moans. Blade got outside as fast as he could.

  A rifle went off overhead as Blade broke into the open. One bullet hit him in the shoulder but his body armor kept it out of his flesh. He ducked, searching for the rifleman and raising his projector. The two soldiers on top of the radio building were alert and one was firing his rifle in all directions. The other had the rocket launcher on his shoulder and was peering around in search of a target. The area in front of the building was dark now that the lights inside were out, and neither man could see clearly.

  Blade's night vision was a good deal better. He picked off the rifleman, then shifted aim to the soldier with the rocket launcher. The man moved just as Blade fired and the ray only burned off one leg. He screamed, hopped wildly about, then toppled off the roof, taking the launcher with him. Blade was about to dart forward and retrieve it when the bomb in the radio building went off prematurely.

  The bomb he'd planted was the equivalent of more than a ton of TNT. The radio building vanished in a hurricane blast of smoke, flame, and hurtling wreckage. Blade went down again as if he'd been hit by a truck. He lay in the mud as the wreckage pattered and crashed down about him. The radio mast wavered, leaned to the right, and toppled over. Before the scream of twisting metal died away, Blade was on his feet again.

  By now Blade had made enough noise to wake the dead, and everyone in Station Four had to be on the move. He sprinted back toward the fence, projector in one hand and a grenade in the other. Someone in a building to Blade's left foolishly switched on a light, silhouetting three helmeted figures. He hurled the grenade, heard glass smash, then the explosion and the screams.

  The streets and alleys of Station Four were rapidly filling with running men, some in uniform, some half-dressed, some in pajamas, one or two stark naked. Officers shouted orders which made no sense and which weren't obeyed even when anyone heard them. No one paid any attention to Blade. He was in Targan uniform, he wasn't moving any faster than most of the other men, and it was too dark to recognize the ray projector in his hand.

  Blade took advantage of the confusion to run even faster. Sooner or later even the half-trained and wholly panic-stricken Targan soldiers would sort themselves out enough to become dangerous opponents. The underground couldn't afford too many casualties among their attack group without fatally weakening the boarding party.

  All the clothed men seemed to be in uniform. That meant the scientific and engineering people were staying under cover. Good. Several of them were underground supporters with key roles in the plan, and the underground had no real quarrel with the rest. No civilian of any sort had a place in this sort of firelight in any case.

  Blade reached a spot where he had a clear line of fire to the perimeter lights and dropped to one knee. Sighting precisely, he picked off all the lights he could see, working from left to right. Eight-nine-ten-eleven-then the answering flare of hurd-rays blazed from the darkness beyond the perimeter. The rest of the attackers were coming in.

  Blade jumped up and ran back into the station. As he ran he pulled a white armband from his belt pouch and tied it around his left arm. Both sides would be wearing Targan uniforms, but the underground's people would have white armbands. Blade hoped that would be enough to prevent fatal mistakes.

  By the time Blade reached the center of the station he could hear a swelling battle roar from behind him. Hurd-rays crackled, rifles hammered, grenades thumped and crashed, men screamed in rage or pain. Blade kept running, leaped a drainage ditch, then slipped on the far bank and went to his knees.

  A few yards away stood a rough sheet metal building. Beyond it lay the far perimeter of the station, its lights still burning. Metal clanged and a motor whined. The door of the building slid open, but no one was foolish enough to turn on a light. A six-wheeled flatbed truck rolled out of the door and turned toward Blade. Two men sat in the darkened cab, the driver and a gunner. Two more rode on the back, hanging on to the mounting of a heavy laser.

  That truck had to be stopped. If it wasn't, it would get way in the darkness and the rain, then move on until it had clear weather. Then the laser could reach out to a communications satellite or even the starship. The surprise the underground desperately needed would be gone.

  Blade aimed his hurd-ray and fired. The projector hissed faintly, glowed, then gushed smoke. Blade threw it down and reached for a grenade. He was rising to throw it when someone in the building flicked on all the lights. Suddenly Blade was painfully visible as he balanced on the edge of the drainage ditch.

  The driver of the truck jammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel. One of the men in back fired a pistol at Blade. The bullet spun him around as he hurled the grenade. It sailed over the truck and landed in the door of the building. All the lights went out but the truck kept going.

  Blade took advantage of the darkness to spring after it. He broke every world's record for the ten-yard dash and was scrambling over the tail before the men in back saw him. The pistol banged again, the second man tried to raise his rifle, then Blade was on top of them.

  He gripped the first man by his pistol arm, then wheeled to kick the second one in the groin. The second man flew off the truck, landed, and didn't get up. Blade twisted the pistol out of the first man's grip, then chopped him across the throat and threw his body after his comrade.

  The truck lurched to a stop just inside the rear gate. Blade smashed the butt of the pistol down on the driver's head as he tried to scramble out of the cab. The other man ran off faster than Blade could follow, but a hurd-ray blast from the darkness took his legs out from under him just outside the gate. Blade looked around and saw Riyannah stepping out of the shadows, putting a fresh power cell into her projector.

  «Good shot,» he said, and clapped her on the shoulder. «Now get back. I'm going to put a grenade under this truck.»

  Riyannah shook her head. «You can save it. There aren't enough soldiers left to do anything with it.»

  «Everything under control?»

  «Yes. We've got people in a truck out now, searching the area for runaways. The reinforcements are on their way in and-no, here they are now.»

  Propellers whirred overhead in the gloom. A searchlight cut through the base of the clouds, lighting up the two shuttlecraft. The light grew, then a troop carrier floated down out of the night to land between the two shuttles: Buildings cut off the view, but Blade knew that thirty more underground fighters would be scrambling out of the carrier to join the dying battle.

  Blade and Riyannah stood briefly hand in hand as silence fell over Station Four. Then they walked back toward the shuttles. Before they'd gone very far they met a working party-six soldier prisoners in their underwear, two underground guards in uniform. The prisoners were pushing a wheeled rubbish bin already half filled with bits of wreckage.

  «Moving on to the next stage already, I see,» said Blade. The next stage was cleaning up Station Four so as to leave few signs of the night's battle for satellites or planes to discover.

  «They'd better be,» said Riyannah. «All we have to do is get through about fifty hours' work in the next ten. Then everything will be all right, for a little while.»

  Chapter 21

  It actually took eleven hours to carry out the next stage of what the underground now called Plan Blade. They couldn't do anything about the fallen radio tower and the smashed radio building, but most of the other scars of battle were gone before dawn. The captive soldier
s worked hard after two of them were shot for trying to escape.

  Meanwhile the underground's space pilots and engineers were checking out one of the shuttles. This was a job that normally took several days. By cutting enough corners to make the pilots shudder, the job was done in six hours. The passenger compartment was fitted with seats and the boarding party's equipment loaded into the cargo hold along with a full shipment of legitimate cargo. At last everything was ready, down to the firing circuits for the solid-fuel boosters and the toilet paper in the zero-g bathroom aft.

  Blade and Riyannah left the engineers to get on with their work. Blade ran the boarding party through a final series of exercises while Riyannah supervised the last stages of the clean-up.

  A listening watch on the radio of the second shuttle detected no unusual or suspicious radio traffic. So far nobody seemed to have any idea that Station Four was in the underground's hands. That meant surprise was still with them. One of the engineers knew the appropriate codes and sent off periodic messages to make any listeners think Station Four was still alive, whole, and on the air.

  This wouldn't fool the enemy forever, but it wouldn't have to. For another twelve hours after the shuttle took off, the underground fighters left behind would keep up appearances. Station Four would seem to be a busy part of Loyun Chard's space program, as far as anyone could tell from a distance. If any trucks or planes came in there might be problems, but no shipments were scheduled for another three days. That would be plenty of time.

  Twelve hours after the shuttle took off, the underground would evacuate the station, taking all the prisoners with them. Half an hour after that a series of explosions would completely demolish the station and thoroughly cover all signs of the night's battle.

  Then the enemy wouldn't just suspect that something was wrong at Station Four. They'd know there had been an all-out attack by the underground, successful and devastating. They'd be too sure of this to inquire further, equally sure there could be no connection between the raid and the shuttle which flew up from Station Four twelve hours earlier. All their attention would be turned to tracking down the underground raiders.

  This meant the underground people who stayed behind had nearly as dangerous a job as the boarding party. Their leader didn't seem to be worried. As he said to Blade:

  «We've had too much practice dodging Chard's armed clowns to worry much. Even if they catch us, they'll find they've caught a pack of bat-cats. And if they do wipe us out-well, they'll be killing all their own people we've got as prisoners along with us. Even for Loyun Chard, soldiers and engineers don't grow on bushes.»

  Blade nodded. He was almost sorry he probably wouldn't be around to see the meeting between the leaders of the Targan underground and the War Council of Kanan. Meeting? He suspected that confrontation would be a better word.

  Then it was time to load the shuttle. All twenty-five people in the boarding party changed into Targan Space Force coveralls and belted on Targan sidearms. Each one carried identification as a member of the staff or garrison of Station Four. The fake ID's wouldn't stand up under a real security check, so they'd still be better off if no one even knew they were aboard the starship. The coveralls and ID's were still a useful second line of defense, enough to deceive any casual observers.

  Each person carried a standard Space Force flight bag, and in it a hurd-ray projector, hand grenades, and an explosive charge. They didn't have all their weapons and equipment on hand, but they had enough to do considerable damage to the starship and its crew. There was no way Loyun Chard could avoid a painful defeat now, unless the escort ships blew the shuttle and the boarding party out of the sky before they even reached Dark Warrior.

  «That's unlikely,» said Riyannah. «We know that they're expecting a shuttle from Station Four some time in the next few days. So why should they suspect this shuttle's a surprise package for them?» She grinned wickedly at the thought, baring teeth like a bat-cat about to bite.

  Blade smiled. Watching Riyannah develop the instincts of a fighter and a battle leader was rewarding. He wondered if the Kananites would realize that she might be a better-than-average general if they needed one. He hoped the war wouldn't last that long, but if it did-why not General Riyannah?

  The chief pilot broke into his thoughts. «All right, everybody. Two minutes to go. Strap in and relax.» Shoulder and waist belts clicked into place and seats rattled back and forth as people adjusted them. Riyannah smiled. «No easy way out after this, is there?»

  «No.» Blade was glad she could smile about it. The boarding party was committed now, whatever happened. No easy retreat into the mountains or the forests for them, only a battle to the death. Twenty-five men and women, bearing the future of at least three worlds and perhaps more on their shoulders. Blade reached across to Riyannah and gripped her hand for a moment.

  «One minute,» said the pilot. Blade pulled his hand back and rested it loosely on the arm of his couch. He began breathing deeply to fill his system with oxygen for the high-g takeoff.

  «Thirty seconds,» said the pilot. Then it was twenty, after that ten, and after that:

  «Nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one-FIRING!»

  The roar of the solid-fuel boosters hammered in through the soundproofed hull of the shuttle. Smoke blotted out the sky beyond the pilot's canopy. The shuttle vibrated, lurched, and lifted. A giant got both arms around Blade's chest and squeezed hard. He forced himself to go on breathing and keep his head still, remembering that the rockets only burned for thirty seconds.

  Then the altimeter needle passed twenty thousand feet.

  The rockets burned out and fell back toward the forest below. The roar was replaced by a faint hum as the antigravity cut in. Normal weight returned, and through the canopy Blade saw the sky turn from blue to purple. Then it turned black and the stars came out as the shuttle soared up into space.

  Dark Warrior loomed in the shuttle's canopy, a fat cylinder slightly pointed at each end and covered with an eye-searing mirror finish to reflect laser beams. Blade stood between the two pilots, watching the starship grow steadily larger. No, «large» wasn't an adequate word to describe Dark Warrior. Neither was any other adjective that came to Blade's mind. Loyun Chard's starship was so huge it was hard to believe she'd even been built by human beings.

  Blade had spent days with the ship's plans. He knew she was a mile long and a thousand feet in diameter amidships. He still found it hard to see a speck perched on the hull near the stern like a fly on a cow's rump and realize the speck was a hundred-foot shuttle like the one he rode.

  Can twenty-five people really hope to do anything against that monster? Blade couldn't keep the thought out of his mind for a moment. He suspected that everyone else had exactly the same feeling. Then another thought replaced the first one.

  Can twenty-five people be found in that monster if they're determined to hide? That was much more encouraging and made just as much sense. Part of that mile of steel was engine rooms and weapons bays, but there would still be enough space to swallow up ten boarding parties. Finding them would be rather like finding nests of mice in a twenty-room mansion when you didn't know what a mouse looked like.

  Ten miles out, one of the escort ships challenged them. The pilots gave the shuttle's base and identification number and did not stop or slow down. One of the escorts flew formation with them for several minutes, then rejoined its comrades. Not one word of protest came over the radio.

  Dark Warrior now stretched halfway across the sky ahead, blotting out a steadily growing number of stars. Another mile or two and they actually could ram her before the enemy could react. Security up here wasn't just lax, it was practically nonexistent. The secret of Station Four was being well kept.

  Four miles out, and the escort ship came back on the radio:

  «Shuttle M 675, this is Green Patrol Leader. You are authorized to land and unload in Bay Two. Over.»

  «Acknowledged, Green Leader, and thank you. Over and out.»

&
nbsp; Three miles, two miles, one mile. There was no sky or stars left ahead, only the huge ship. The radio crackled again.

  «Shuttle M 675, this is Dark Warrior Cargo Chief. We are illuminating Bay Two for you. Do you have your own cargohandlers? We're a bit short-handed right now.»

  The pilot managed to keep a straight face as he replied, «M 675 to Cargo Chief. Yes, we've got our own people. Over and out.» He cut off the radio, then he and Blade and Riyannah all laughed.

  Now they were covering the last mile, and the starship became a vast wall of metal, both ends out of sight. A constellation of red and green lights winked to life around one of the hundred-foot square hatches amidships. The pilot made slight adjustments to the shuttle's course, then cut off its drive. Operating it within range of the starship's internal gravity field could burn out the generators.

  The shuttle drifted in toward the hatch. The pilot pushed a button and a metal ring popped out of the nose. A jointed arm with a hook on the end reached out from one edge of the batch and caught the ring. Blade gripped the back of the nearest couch as the cabin tilted around him. Slowly the shuttle was drawn down to the deck of Bay Two.

  Chunnnnggg! The shuttle struck the deck and the arm lifted away. Jointed sections of deck folded themselves around the shuttle's belly, surrounding the hatches and sealing them off from the vacuum in the rest of Bay Two. Blade heard a rumble and a hissing as air was pumped into the newly-formed passageway. Then the radio came on again.

  «Cargo Chief to M 675, you can start unloading at your convenience. Deposit cargo in Compartment 55GZ and leave the list on the door. One of my people will be around to pick it up later. Do you have any perishable cargo aboard?»