At the end of his report the priest finally broke down.
“Why is it our luck to bear witness to this?” he asked, sobbing. “Why are we here, to feel the first breeze of the apocalypse? If I had recognized these signs before this, I would have strongly urged that we give up this useless endeavor and flee this place immediately — with all the citizens in tow. For what awaits us out there I fear is beyond all means of defense, natural or supernatural.”
“You see,” the first merc leader said, “even the priest thinks we should go.”
The leader of Home Guard lowered his head and stared at the table. He knew what all this was leading up to.
“Even if we had enough transport for every person left on this moon, we do not have the time to evacuate them all,” he said softly. “The enemy will surely move now that his dastardly machine is completed. That thing is probably heading for us right now. The only rockets out of this place are the ones that you yourselves own. An evacuation is not an option.”
A long silence.
“We are fighting for our freedom, our way of life,” the Home Guard officer went on, though his words were barely audible. “Such things are still important — whether we are here, in this far-out place, or on Earth itself.”
“Valiant words,” one of the merc commanders said. “But they are the stuff more readily found in legends and myths. This is reality, man…”
This merc leader stood up. “I hereby ask to be released from my contract.”
Before the commander of the Home Guard could respond, four of the remaining mercenary commanders stood up and repeated the same phrase. The Home Guard officer sank lower into his seat. Without looking up, he gave them a weary wave of his hand, granting their wishes. The five men filed out of the room; with that gesture, more than five thousand paid defenders of Qez would be gone in less than an hour.
“Maybe all is lost,” the Home Guard commander said to himself. “Maybe civilized behavior will start its final collapse here, on this tiny moon, so far out on the Fringe, we can almost see the other side. Maybe this is how the Cosmos seeks to fool us — the puppets of Man. Maybe it begins here… when no good and decent men are left to fight for the most basic thing in any life.”
With that, the leader of the Home Guard looked up and was surprised to find that one mercenary leader was still sitting at the table.
It was McKay, the recon man, the representative of the Freedom Brigade.
“We will stay with you,” McKay told him.
The leader of Qez looked at him strangely. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
“But why?” he asked McKay. “You are our finest fighters by far. And we have been allies longer than time can remember. But you have every reason to walk out, just as the others have. This is a hopeless cause — I know it now. And I didn’t need to have them tell me that. Why then? Why do you choose to stay?”
McKay just shook his head.
“Truthfully, I don’t know,” he said, his voice breaking as well. “I guess that’s just the way we are…”
With the withdrawal of the five mercenary groups, the defense of Qez now fell to the city’s small Home Guard and the remaining members of the Freedom Brigade.
Counting various militias and armed civilians, this amounted to a force of just 5,251. Sending these troops into the trenches where most of the war’s fighting had taken place would have been foolish. Poulinex, the Home Guard commander, wisely decided that the last-ditch defense of Qez would be made from the walls of the city itself.
Qez was laid out in a rhomboidal shape; the widest wall faced the battlefield to the east. Even before the rocketships carrying the departing mercenaries had lifted off, the ramparts of this east wall were being reinforced by the remaining defenders. Every available Z gun, cannon, and blaster was brought forward and installed atop the very high walls. Extra gunports were burned through the solid parapets; any reserve ammunition mined from the city’s magazines was brought up as well. All noncombatants, close to twenty thousand people, were installed in the basements of buildings located as far away from the east wall as possible. The city’s meager food and water supplies were placed there with them.
Still, even as the preparation continued at a rapid pace, it became increasingly clear that when measured by what awaited them over the horizon, the defensive procedures would be little more than delaying tactics against the inevitable. There were at least thirty thousand enemy soldiers out there that the people in Qez knew about — plus the monstrous weapon.
The coming battle against such an overwhelming force might prove to be courageous, but the outcome seemed all but predetermined.
However, the soldiers of the Freedom Brigade did have a plan.
They knew of no weapon that could thwart the huge armored mover. If it was built of reatomized electron steel, then even the most powerful of Z beams would not be able to put a dent in it.
But there was one last option. It involved a technology that was more lost than secret; something that had been passed down through thousands of generations on the Freedom Brigade’s home planet. In fact, this technology had been around over such a vast period of time, it had entered the realm of myth.
In the end it was just an idea, a desperate one, that might stop the monster.
But would it work?
The quick night fell again; a thunderstorm passed overhead, then the wind died down.
As the defensive preparations continued within Qez, a contingent of volunteers from the Freedom Brigade stole out of the city and began moving through the trenchworks. Their goal was a point about ten miles away known as Heartbreak Ridge.
This was the location of a fierce battle several months before. The enemy had launched a massive three-wave attack — and the defenders of Qez met them at the shallow ridgeline. The battle lasted three days, during which hand-to-hand fighting claimed hundreds of lives. The bodies of the enemy dead were never retrieved. Their skeletons still dotted the nightmarish landscape, hence the area’s nickname.
Ironically, the ridge wasn’t much of a ridge at all. Its peak had been bombarded so many times, it was now almost even with the devastated terrain surrounding it. However, it was a place where a large part of the Xomme leading back toward enemy territory could be observed.
It was here that the Freedom Brigade would take the first step in their desperate plan.
The volunteers first installed a long-range visual array atop the highest part remaining on Heartbreak Ridge.
They were hoping to catch a glimpse of the monstrous armored mover as it began its ways toward Qez.
As it turned out, the long-range scanner was not necessary; as soon as the first brigade soldiers reached the top of the ridge and peered to the east, they were able to spot the gigantic tank by eye. Indeed, it was fewer than ten miles away!
It was a frightening sight for these men, who had never seen the behemoth before. Even in the darkest part of the quick night, its form dominated the star-filled sky. And it was moving, slowly but surely, right at them, no doubt with a destination of Qez.
The troopers got to work. Using their combat tools and even their bare hands, they began digging a hole in the soft ground just west of the battered ridgeline. One of those on hand was a munitions officer. He determined this hole had to be at least fifty feet deep and half again as wide if it was to help produce the hoped-for effect.
The soldiers dug all night, taking turns between lifting out buckets of dirt and dust and keeping an eye on the slowly advancing tracked vehicle.
By the time the first daylight appeared on the horizon, the hole had been dug. Using pieces of white plastic-cloth, a huge X was stretched on top of it.