But there was an even more frightening aspect to discovering the monster. The Nakkz could never have built this colossus on their own. They were made up mostly of retread space pirates — fierce fighters, but definitely not a pool of any great thinkers.
How, then, had such a giant come into their possession?
However it happened, as the recon troops contemplated the gigantic xarcus on this awful morning, they knew there was no way they and their allies could put up a defense against it. Most of the conflict’s fighting had taken place in areas like the Xomme. On a few occasions the Nakkz had actually come within sight of the Qez. But these had been small and mostly symbolic victories. No matter where these breakthroughs took place, the enemy’s lengthy lines of communication and the atrocious conditions of the combat zone itself always forced them to withdraw eventually.
But now, with this huge weapon, all that was a thing of the past. The xarcus was itself a self-contained city. Once it made its way across the battlefield and reached the Zazu-Zazu defense line, there would be no way of stopping it. It could crash through the wall surrounding Qez at any point — that is, if it didn’t simply level it with its overwhelming weaponry first.
And once it got beyond Qez and into the countryside, it would just be hours before the rest of the tiny moon was conquered.
This would not be good. The Nakkz were well known for their brutal treatment of anyone living on or fighting for Zazu-Zazu. Soldiers or civilians, young or old, it seemed to be the intent of the Nakkz not only to conquer the small moon, but to wipe out its population as well. With a weapon of this magnitude, that terrible moment now seemed very close at hand.
These were the bad tidings the recon soldiers now had to bring back to Qez.
The recon troops had just completed their depressing survey of Holy Hell when their luck began to run out.
Just as they were getting ready to withdraw, an enemy robot aircraft suddenly appeared overhead. This thing was called a Stinger. It was just ten feet long, six feet at its widest, and shaped, of course, like a triangle. It carried no weapons of its own. However, it could send viz-scan information back to enemy gunners, who could then deliver deadly accurate X-beam fire to just about any point of the battlefield.
The recon soldiers knew well that being hit by an X beam would be an especially cruel way to die. Just how the Nakkz had come into possession of a ray gun so different from the Z beams used by just about everyone else in the Galaxy, no one seemed to know. It was a very strange weapon. An X-beam blast could be as murderously accurate as that of a Z beam — but getting hit with an X beam meant that about 80 percent of the victim’s atoms were instantly ripped apart from each other — leaving 20 percent of the human being intact, to die incredibly slowly and incredibly painfully. This and their other exotic weapons provided a good insight into the cruel minds of the Nakkz and their mysterious patrons.
The recon soldiers had seen many of their comrades die the horrible death of partial-atomic disassembly.
That the same fate awaited them was a frightening thought indeed.
They began their withdrawal in haste now, but it was already too late. A devastating X-beam barrage rained down upon the soldiers just a few seconds after the Stinger spotted them. One man was hit instantly, and slowly began to fade away.
The survivors quickly jettisoned all unnecessary gear and began an all-out retreat. They had no means of communicating with Qez; no way of telling anyone back there what they had discovered. It was imperative that they get away. But the robot craft would pursue them across the bloody mud of the Xomme for the next three hours.
Coordinating the long-range beam fire from Holy Hell, the Stinger was able to zero in on individual members of the recon unit, and allow the Nakkz gunners to pick them off one at a time.
The sun went down quickly, planetrise occurred, and two more of the recon soldiers died.
The robot plane’s pursuit became even more relentless with the darkness. Stripped of all but their basic uniforms, their blaster rifles, and their battle helmets, the recon men were running madly through the maze of trenches, stepping over or sometimes into partially disassembled bodies, the remains of fighting from as long as a year before. The two men who died during the night had each been isolated, trapped, and then slowly blasted to death. When the sun rose again, only two soldiers remained.
Noon came quickly — and that’s when the airborne robot stalker suddenly disappeared from the sky. But the respite lasted no more than a few seconds, as a heavily armored aerial scout car just as quickly materialized above the two brigade soldiers. Known as an XA-10 Bolt to the defenders, this machine could carry up to twenty enemy soldiers along with a huge gun in its belly. Its appearance signaled a change in tactics by the Nakkz. They had tired of toying with the survivors of the recon unit.
With them almost halfway across no-man’s-land, the Bolt had been sent out to deliver the final blow.
Its appearance was a matter of bad timing for the last two recon men. They were crossing a huge crater field, created by a previous bombardment so concentrated it had obliterated the trenchworks for a quarter mile around. The first soldier made it across in one piece — but the second man was not so lucky.
He was about halfway through the field when the Bolt showed up. Its big gun unleashed a mighty blast ray at him right away, in effect slicing him in two. As the bottom half of his body began to dissolve away, his upper half began writhing in agony in the mud. He began crying loudly for his comrade.
The Bolt went into a hover over the mortally wounded man. A dozen or so helmeted soldiers peered out from their portholes, enjoying the sight of the soldier in his death throes. A person wounded such as this could linger for hours, even days, in intense agony before finally succumbing. Yet watching the man die seemed to be a form of entertainment for the soldiers aboard the Bolt.
Their blood lust would not last too long, though. With the man screaming in sheer pain, another ray hit him square in the chest, finally killing him completely and blowing his subatomic remains into the unknown dimensions. It was difficult to tell what had happened at first. But then the thin trail of smoke coming from the far end of the massive bomb crater finally told the tale. The last recon soldier had killed his wounded comrade.
It was the last act of mercy for a friend.
Now the Bolt began moving again. There was one live body still out there that could be cut in two, and there would be no one around to save this man from a long, slow death.
The last recon soldier was quickly running for his life again. Zigzagging through the trenches, the Bolt was firing indiscriminately at him, most of the blasts landing either right in front of the hapless soldier or right on his heels. Finally the Bolt launched one of its incendiary artillery shells. It blew up a section of trenchworks just in front of the desperate trooper, in effect blocking off his means of escape. The soldier tried reversing course, only to find that another blast had sealed the trench in that direction as well. He tried a side route. Another blast, another dead end.
He was trapped. The Bolt came into a slow hover just above him. The soldier knew what fate awaited him. Even more painful was the knowledge that he had failed in his mission — and that his countrymen back in Qez would remain unaware of the colossal xarcus that would soon be coming their way.
He heard the gun on the Bolt lower in his direction. He considered just bowing his head and allowing the blast to come. If he closed his eyes very tightly and thought of his wife and his three young children, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.