But then he realized he had something else to do first. He had to display the colors of his home planet. It was a grim if ancient tradition among the soldiers from his long-lost world. Whenever it seemed like the end was near, their flag would be displayed to show their enemy that they might be beaten but never vanquished. The soldier hastily reached into his pocket to retrieve the small flag he always kept there.
And that’s when a very strange thing happened: The very thought of showing his flag gave the recon soldier the impetus not to give up. Not just yet.
Maybe this gunfight isn’t over, he thought.
The Bolt was right above him now. He could see wide grins and steely eyes looking down at him. The aircraft’s pilot moved the Bolt a bit to his right, just so the huge nose gun would have a clear, unimpeded shot at him.
That’s when the recon soldier simply raised his blaster rifle and fired off one last burst from his power pack. It was a desperate, one-in-a-million shot — and it worked. His last dying beam had just enough energy to pierce the Bolt’s tiny generator core, obliterating it. A huge explosion went off over the soldier’s head, tearing his blaster rifle from his hands and the helmet off his head. He dove back down into the trench, flaming pieces of the craft raining down upon him. There was another explosion. The soldier looked up and saw the Bolt start to fall. It went right over his head and slammed into the ground not twenty feet away.
The recon soldier waited for several seconds before he dared to peek out over the trench. He did this just in time to see the Bolt explode one final time. This explosion was so powerful it caused a minor earthquake, which in turn led to some of the trench collapsing on top of him.
By the time the soldier dug his way out, the Bolt and its crew were little more than subatomic dust blowing in the wind.
He climbed out of the trench and stared at the debris for a moment.
How could he have been so lucky?
He had no idea — and he wasn’t about to stick around to find out. He whispered a short prayer of thanks and tapped his breast pocket three times.
Then he started running again, back toward Qez.
23
The east wall protecting the city of Qez was a thousand feet high.
It boasted six weapons towers along its two-mile length, with many gun stations pockmarking its upper tiers. The city within was big enough to fit about twenty thousand people. But these days, the number had swelled to nearly twice that figure as frightened citizens from the surrounding countryside had sought refuge behind the walls to escape the fighting.
No one could blame them; Qez was the last outpost on the tiny moon. But this increase in humanity had put additional strain on the low supply of food and power. Anxiety also was rampant throughout the city.
The citizens also had suffered through the long months of the relentless pounding coming from over the horizon. Now that the noise had stopped, the city was rife with rumors as to what the enemy was planning. The most oft-repeated rumor was that the Nakkz had built a war machine of frightening size and incredible power and soon would launch it against the city.
Little did the frightened population know just how close to the truth those stories were.
The last surviving member of the recon patrol was spotted just before sunset by a patrol of Qez’s Home Guard soldiers.
The man was nearly dead of exhaustion; he was dehydrated and suffering for some shrapnel wounds, too. But he insisted on being brought to the war room inside Qez, a place where the leaders of the five mercenary groups defending the city planned strategy with the commanding officers of the city’s Home Guard. The patrol leader checked with his superiors, and the man was immediately brought inside.
The soldier’s name was McKay. He found the mood grim inside the tiny command center deep in the city’s east wall. A total of six mercenary groups had been providing the city’s defense; most were from planets in nearby star systems. They were now sitting around a well-worn hovering table with the leaders of Qez itself. The priest also was on hand.
McKay told his story, from the dash across the Xomme, to spotting the gigantic xarcus through the storm, to the frightful withdrawal back to Qez, a trek that killed four of his comrades. With every mention of the monstrous weapon just over the horizon, he saw the spirits of those charged with defending Qez begin to waver.
“Sometimes there is much wisdom in determining when to give up the fight,” the leader of one mercenary group said. “If these reports are true, and there is an army inside that thing, then we will be outnumbered and outgunned…”
“We cannot possibly build a defense against such a weapon,” another merc leader said. “The Nakkz have nearly broken through our front right here on several occasions as well as many other places along the line. If they have the monster that this man describes, how can we possibly stop it?”
“But we have to try,” the commander of Qez’s Home Guard said; his name was Markus Poolinex. “We can’t give up. There are thousands of innocents inside these walls we must think about. You know what the enemy will do to them if they can, don’t you?”
A third merc leader spoke up: “I believe you’ll find a ‘hopeless cause’ clause in our contracts. That’s what this seems to be adding up to.”
“But we have to make a stand here,” the Home Guard commander insisted. “Even if it fails, at least we won’t go down in history as giving up without a fight.”
“But even if you were able to stop this gigantic thing,” a fourth merc said, “they’ll undoubtedly follow it up with a ground attack.”
The Home Guard commander questioned the recon soldier again as to how many soldiers he thought the rolling monster might hold. McKay gave a gloomy shrug. “According to our quadtrol readings, thirty thousand,” he said. “Maybe more.”
Another dead silence fell on the room.
“Thirty thousand troops?” one merc leader said with a groan. “That’s more than three times the strength of our forces combined. Even with the mercenaries and the militias, they still would have a twenty-thousand-man advantage.”
It was true. At that moment the entire defense force of Qez was fewer than ten thousand.
“But by giving up the fight, we are condemning our citizens to death,” the Home Guard officer said. “The Nakkz is well known for his brutality. Our surrender is not an option for them. For whatever reason, they are bent on destroying us. Wiping us out. By giving up the fight, we will only make it that much easier for them.”
“You must look at it from our point of view,” the first mercenary leader said. “It is our business to fight in return for payment. But to fight in what will surely be a losing proposition — well, let’s face facts: That will be bad for business.”
“This has been a queer enterprise from the start,” the second merc commander said. “You are a small city, on a very small moon, in a very isolated star system at the very end of the Galaxy. How this place got puffed in the first place, I will never know. But you have to ask yourself: What are you fighting for?”
Now the priest spoke up: “I hate to agree with these paid killers, but I must also question the wisdom of fighting here.”
The Home Guard commander was shocked.
“Father, how so?”
“Over on that dastardly planet called Guam, I heard tales of strange things happening all over the Fringe.
Awful things. I fear what we are facing here is just another…”
He recounted the stories he’d heard from the two arms merchants in Nails, plus others he’d heard during his brief stay in the weapons bazaar.