Chapter 54

In the corridors of the Korozhet ship: alien, metal,
and remarkably like corridors anywhere.

Watching from the vehicles under their earth-coated tinfoil and stuck-on shrubbery, Fitz had the pre-strike tension all over again. The waiting was always the worst. Once you got going and the adrenaline kicked in . . . 

Of course, the assault might not happen at all. If the sacrifice of those rats and bats and the girl and her galago had been in vain—they'd pull back just as quietly as they came. Fitz peered at the tiny candy-striped vehicle standing in the ship's lightpool, again. Courage came in all shapes and sizes. But his task was to win this war. If this bold stroke failed, they'd reorganize and go on. And on, if need be.

Liepsich had provided a diffraction meter that indicated force-field states. Fitz watched it with one eye and the ship through the camouflage crack with the other. His driver sat with his finger on the keys. He hoped the vehicle started well from cold. They'd slowly pushed the vehicles forward from where they'd been towed to, with the pushers hiding themselves behind foil and earth shields. No fast moves, hopefully no infrared . . . 

Seventy yards to cover. The young reporter he had for a driver claimed his car could do zero to sixty in 4.2 seconds. If that was too slow, the lasers would take them out before they reached safety under the belly of the ship. There might be weapons there, of course. If one of the shields came back on they'd splatter. And then they'd have to stop, and not be hit by the other vehicles. Then there was the question of the doorway. One of the paratroopers behind him had the triggers to the bat-mines that would hopefully be placed on the door's works. After that . . . well.

No one knew. Not even Darleth, sitting behind him.

Why was it getting darker?

"It's a GO!"

Fuentes had been watching the diffraction meter, too. The sports car snarled into life. He floored it. The camouflage leapt away from the car as they hurtled toward the ship. Behind him, someone hit the bat-mine triggers.

It was a skidding halt . . . against candy-striped armor. But the one advantage of the convertible was that it had no roof in the way. The five of them bailed out over the top.

Even at a full sprint, Fitz could not keep up with the blue furred one. Or the shower of bats dropping in with folded wings.

"Begorra! I'd be thinkin' you timed this with military precision," said one huge bat, who nearly knocked him flailing off the ramp. "Come on, up the ramp, primate! Faster! Kill Korozhet!"

The air was almost solid with bats, now. "They're allies!" yelled Fitz, back at his squads, arriving with squealing tires and bumps. "Up!"

But the bat-mines that Bronstein and O'Niel had placed had not been effective enough. The iris door was still closed.

"Shamus Plekhanov!" bellowed the bat. "This needs you."

A bat with two bandoliers flapped out of the mass. "Eamon, now. You'd not be implyin' I'm a better sapper than you?"

"I'm saying that Longfang O'Niel said that you were the best in the Red Wing, and he places his shots better than I do. Besides, it's shaped charges we'll be needing and the Battybund don't use them as much as you do. 'Tis a bit sissy, we think."

The bat snorted, but went to work, motioning them all back.

Meanwhile, inside the ship:

The first reaction that Virginia got to "adjusting" her glasses, was that the huge Nerba guard dropped his weapon.

"Pick up!" snapped the Korozhet.

But the huge horned creature did not pick up the weapon. Instead, it lowered its head and backed off. Ginny noted that the other Nerba was looking at its weapon. The huge creature seemed puzzled, although it was hard to tell.

"I ordered you to pick it up."

Ginny had spent time with the rats. She could see lips sliding back over those red-tipped teeth. Not that those teeth, so deadly against Magh' or humans, would be adequate dealing with spiny-armored Korozhet. The creatures were fragile, true, when struck with heavy blunt objects—but rat-fangs were stilettos, not broadswords.

The creatures had toxic darts and secreted nitrous oxide, too. Back in the hopper, Ginny had a gas mask. It was at least thirty yards away.

The Nerba retreated again, until it was against the wall of the passage. It made an odd mooing sound.

The Korozhet shot it. Casually, it seemed to Ginny. Apparently, that was standard procedure with a disobedient slave.

Then the lights went out, just as the second Nerba lowered its head and charged the Korozhet.

What were obviously smaller emergency lights came on. A sound like a mixture between a rattle and a severe case of gas erupted from speakers.

The Nerba hadn't survived his impact with the Korozhet. But the Korozhet hadn't survived either.

"Get our kit and let's move in!"

The bats were already swooping on the hopper, snatching bat-mines. Ginny grabbed for the chainsaw first. Then clothes. The skirt she just stepped into, and she decided that the blouse buttons could wait. A girl had to dress slightly for success, even if a chainsaw was the finest in fashion accessories.

Behind her she heard a dull thump.

"Bat-mines. Too early, methinks. Let's move out, Ginny."

"Ay, señorita. Let's she roll and rock!" Fluff was back on his habitual post on her shoulder.

They headed into the unknown.

But they hadn't got more than five hundred yards into the ship, when the strains of "The Rifles of the BRA" overtook them. Bats flooded overhead in an almost solid stream, singing.

"I think we have air superiority," said Doc.

"If they've all been at the sauerkraut, we'll have wind superiority, too," said Melene, twitching her nose.

"Well, I think their singing needs the right instrumental accompaniment." Ginny gunned her chainsaw.

Fal took a swig from his bottle. "And get to some of these fretful porpentines, before the bats kill them all."

Down in the energy section, with an enemy laser gun and heavy alien bucket, Chip Connolly prepared to go down fighting. Or at least breaking things.

And then he heard it. A far-away sound. And never was bad singing so sweet.

"Charlie Connolly goes to die on the bridge o' toon today . . ."

If that wasn't tuneless O'Niel leading that singing, then he was Henri-Pierre's mustachioed mummy. Grinning like a madman, swinging his bucket, Chip advanced towards the noise.

"Oh I've been a wild rover for many's the year . . . and I've spent all me money on whiskey and beer. . . ."

Bats swept in, in a triumphal flutter. "Connolly, you inartistic dog! You've ruined O'Niel's song by not being dead," said Bronstein, her claws digging into his shoulder.

Then, panting, Ginny ran in. The chainsaw fell to the floor, as did the bucket.

" 'Tis quick work," said Pistol. "Undressed already, and Ginny half so, you puffed and reckless libertines."

"I've got a chainsaw," said Ginny, picking it up, but keeping one hand on Chip. "No one tells a lady she is undressed while she still has her chainsaw."

"And I have a bucket. No man is undressed with a bucket." Chip brushed away Ginny's tears with a caressing hand. "I don't even have a handkerchief . . ." He touched his temple. "But I do have a soft-cyber implant, Ginny. They made me a slave, and I betrayed all of you. But I did manage to break their force field."

"Begorra!" said O'Niel in a fine imitation of disgust. "Why did I bother to come? No job to do, no drink, no strawberry yogurt—and me fine lyrics are purely ruin't."

"Just burning love," said Pistol. "Thank you very much."

Fitz, Van Klomp and the rest of his force were beginning to feel like spare parts. The bats were going through the ship like a flying tide. Even the various aliens they encountered were too busy trying to kill Korozhet to pay much attention to the newcomers.

Then it started becoming apparent that some of the Korozhet were releasing their nitrous oxide. Sheer speed and unexpectedness, particularly of the bats, had ensured that many of the Korozhet had died first. So had thousands of the slaves turning on the Korozhet—a totally unexpected thing. But, in the upper parts of the great globular ship, there were a few Korozhet who had had enough time to try and fight back. And nitrous oxide had incapacitated enough of their prey in the past.

So, now, human soldiers with gas masks from the local chemical plant finally had a job to do. Part of that job was getting the alien ex-slaves out of the ship. Now that the ship was at least partially disabled, Fitz had sent a radio op back to the entry portal calling hundreds more human soldiers in, along with medical teams. Troops without slowshields—but with shotguns—soon began proving that human buckshot was superior to harpoons.

Fitz met a recognizable alien in the upper passages. It was the blue furred one, Darleth. She'd said that she could hold her breath for up to twenty minutes, as an aquatic species. The Jampad's homeworld was apparently vastly tidal, and thus Jampad needed to be able to both swim and climb with equal facility.

Only this wasn't her. It wasn't the same blue, and it was wider.

"High-spine chamber up here." It pointed with one of its arms. "Have many lasers inside."

The gas got to it finally, and it staggered.

"Abbas. Simmons. Carry it out and get it to the medical teams."

The Jampad had known about the gas. It had made a deliberate decision to tell them about the danger ahead. Fitz had already come to trust one Jampad; he decided to trust another.

They'd worked out how to work the spiral iris doors by now. Opening it slightly, while lying on the floor, Fitz gave the occupants inside a grenade. With the hiss of laser fire coming through the door, his soldiers followed it up with two more. And then another two for luck.

The High-spines inside the chamber would never see another instar. The paratroopers opened the iris further, and filled the room with buckshot.

After that it was little more than mopping up.

Half an hour later Fitz came out of the ship. Van Klomp was already there, using his loud voice in lieu of translation skills. So far there were just car-lights lighting up the scene, but someone was stringing wire and setting up spotlights. He saw Fitz on the ramp.

"Ja, boykie. We're moving them back into town. Away from the ship, with a bat to each squad of ten as a translator." He pointed to the alien forms and oxygen tanks. "Just as soon as the medics say they're okay. You should hear the band-aid mechanics bitch about alien physiology, and trying to stop those dumb big things with the horns from going back into the ship as soon as they can stand. We thought we'd have to shoot them to stop them until one of the teams brought a bunch of cute fluffy puppy things out of the ship. You've never seen such a fuss."

He took a deep breath. "Fitzy, that blue furred fellow. The one Sergeant Abbas says you found and told you there was some sort of ambush waiting. He showed us something."

Conrad Fitzhugh was uneasy. Van Klomp did not speak quietly unless he was deadly earnest. "Tell me, Bobby."

"Ariel's body. He was told to dump it in the incinerator. He didn't. I've got it over behind the aid station."

Tears had already started in Fitz's eyes. But his voice remained steady. "Take me to it, Bobby. I need to see her. I need . . . to pay my last respects. I never got that chance."

Van Klomp put a large hand on Fitz's shoulder. "Better not, Fitzy. She's been badly mutilated. Her head . . . down to about mid-chest has been split. Yetteth, that's the Jampad-fellow, says they do that to take out the soft-cyber. We'll bury her with honor. But best you remember her as she once was."

Fitz shook his head. "No," he croaked. "I need to see her. To tell her I loved her. No matter what she looks like."

So Van Klomp took him to where he'd laid the little body. And, at Fitz's request, left him to his grief.

Robert Van Klomp walked back over to the ramp, and got back into organizing mode. Someone had to do it, although he noted that Ogata made an even better field officer than he did lawyer. Mike Capra came up to him. "Guess what I just carried out of that ship in an interesting state of undress?"

"What?"

"Major Tana Gainor. The stitcher, in person. She probably thought she could screw her way out of trouble with the Pricklepusses, but this time she got screwed. They've mindwiped her and put an implant into her head. We found her in solitary, in the ship. All the other slaves were in dormitories, but Tana Gainor was in well-sealed solitary. Maybe the Korozhet were brighter than we gave them credit for."

Van Klomp snorted. "Almost a pity that those command-phrases Liepsich said the Korozhet used don't work any more. That's a woman I'd have cheerfully used for cannon fodder."

He shook his head. "Now, I have a problem fit for your lawyerly talents. One of the sergeants has just pointed out that there are that herd of human-sheep out on Webb Fields in those Korozhet enclosures. He's been over and he says there are about fifty in one enclosure that might be dead. They're just lying about whereas there's a clamor coming from the bigger enclosures. Get yourself a squad and head over there. Check it out. Liberate them. And document the bastards. Take names. We know some people were cooperating with these Pricklepusses. I want to know who they were when this is all over."

Someone tapped Fitz tentatively on the shoulder, as he sat on the ground next to the small body resting on Van Klomp's bush jacket.

"Excuse me, Major," said the medic respectfully. "I don't want to bother you, but we've got a woman who has just come round in the aid-station. She seems a bit confused. She's insisting on seeing you. She . . . Ah, well, she threatened to bite us if we didn't get you immediately. It might just be something urgent, sir."

Wordlessly, Fitz covered the small body with his own jacket, and got up to follow the medic. Dawn was beginning to break over George Bernard Shaw City, and already the scene was assuming some kind of normality. Vehicles were coming and going. The aid station now seemed full of humans rather than aliens. Fitz recognized one of the women on a stretcher as General Cartup-Kreutzler's blond and buxom former secretary, Daisy. She stared upward with vacant eyes. He was damned sure she hadn't been part of the assault. "What happened here?" he asked the medic.

"Dunno, sir. They're from the compound on Webb Fields. There are forty-three of them. Physiologically there's nothing we can find wrong. But they're not really responding to stimulus, except in the most basic way."

"In Daisy's case," said Fitz sardonically, "that's just about situation normal. Still, even for her, this is extreme. What are you doing with them?"

"Just stabilizing them. Cleaning them, keeping them warm. They've no more sense than a newborn. Less, if anything. The woman who wanted you is in this ambulance."

Fitz ducked his head and looked in. "Fitzy!" said the woman lying there, sitting up and shedding the sheet that had covered her nudity.

"Major Gainor." Fitz's smile had no humor it in at all. "Talk about the original bad penny. Are you in that much of a hurry to resume prosecuting me? You worthless bitch."

She blinked at him. "Doth not love me any more?" she said tragically.

Fitz frowned. "What the hell are you talk—"

Suddenly, from nowhere, an old line of poetry came to him. From something by Keats, if he remembered right.

 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

His eyes flashed to Major Gainor's head. The hair had been shaved away from part of it. There was a small, fresh scar on the scalp.

And Ariel's head had been split open, to remove her soft-cyber implant.

" 'Twas not that I meant to persecute you," insisted the woman on the bed. "Well. Except for the chocolate. If you loved me, you would give me more dark chocolate Cointreau straws."

"Ariel?" he croaked.

The implant-scarred head nodded. " 'Tis an ugly tailless body, true. 'Twill take some getting used to, especially these dullard teeth. But 'tis now mine own, Fitz."

The aid center had seen a lot of strange sights since they'd set up shop at about two that morning.

Aliens of various sizes and shapes.

Bats full of laughing gas and Irish song.

A large rat weeping over his golf cart's scratched paintwork.

A pair of blue-furred creatures having a "who-can-jump-highest" competition while making ear-shattering hooting noises.

But they all agreed afterward that the sight of Major Conrad Fitzhugh swinging a naked woman around in his arms until they both fell down together too dizzy to stand, too happy to care, laughing and crying, was perhaps the oddest.

"Kinky, you ask me," muttered one of the medics. "She's the one who was prosecuting him, you know. The guy's a freaking masochist."