And there was no question about whose side it was on — the Home Guard soldiers on the wall could see that the enemy advance had been suddenly stopped dead in its tracks. Some of the Nakkz were even retreating — quickly — back to their main lines, leaving dozens of dead and wounded comrades in their path.
Still the strange aircraft kept firing, killing many of the retreating soldiers and frightening those it spared.
And it was only by a fluke of the wind that, as this flying machine went over the brigade’s line yet again, those behind the walls of Qez got a quick, clear look at it.
That’s when they realized that the flying machine was painted red, white, and blue.
At the precise moment this was happening, another strange thing was occurring, in Qez’s main square.
This part of the city was a study in chaos at the moment — soldiers either running to firing positions on the wall, or laying wounded beneath it. Gigantic Z-beam blasts were flying overhead. The noise and confusion were incredible.
In the middle of all this, two spacemen suddenly popped in.
They appeared right next to the now-discarded catapult. They were carrying two halves of a hollow cylinder with them. Even in the middle of the turmoil, a number of Home Guard soldiers stopped dead in their tracks when the two figures unexpectedly materialized.
One of the spacemen grabbed the soldier nearest to him and bellowed: “Go get your commanding officer… now!” He was sent off with a hearty shove.
Then the other spaceman grabbed a second soldier and yelled: “Get twenty more guys and help us turn this thing around!”
But the soldiers just stood frozen in shock. Zazu-Zazu was a tiny moon at the very end of the Galaxy — the outer fringe of the Outer Fringe. People didn’t just pop in here. Yet here were these two men, with bald heads and very long mustaches, wearing incredibly elaborate battlesuits, scars on their faces and tattoos on the arms, issuing orders as if they owned the place.
No one moved for a long moment. Then, seeing only blank faces staring back at them, the two spacemen started moving the huge catapult themselves.
By this time a senior Home Guard officer arrived on the scene. He was fresh from the battle on the wall and he looked it. He, too, skidded to a stop as soon as he saw the two strange men.
“What… what are you doing?” he yelled at them.
One of the interlopers turned to him and said: “We must move this contraption so it is pointing north!”
Then the second spaceman was in the officer’s face. “We must shoot this thing at that monster out there! Quickly help us!”
But the officer didn’t budge — he wasn’t sure what to do. So he stated the obvious. Looking down at the two halves of the cylinder the men had carried with them, he said: “But that thing is empty! It’s not a superbomb like our friends just lit off!”
The two spacemen looked up at the officer and suddenly smiled.
“That’s true, my brother,” one said. “But the enemy does not know that!”
It took them all just a minute to turn the catapult the way the two spacemen wanted it. Then another minute or so was spent struggling to pull the huge, tightly sprung arm back.
More Home Guard soldiers jumped in, and the arm was finally locked into place and secured with a length of thick rope. The spacemen put the two halves of the empty cylinder together — it was actually a travel flask for slow-ship wine — and joined them with an electron torch. Then the empty container was dumped into the basket of the catapult and the line was severed.
The arm let go with a deafening whomp! The silver canister went flying into the air, quickly disappearing in the haze.
No sooner was the empty flask away when the two spacemen started to run toward an elevator that would bring them up to the top of the wall. But the Home Guard officer suddenly ordered his soldiers to grab them.
“You two stand fast!” the officer bellowed at them. “You must tell me who you are and what this is all about!”
That’s when one of the spacemen used his massive hand to crush slightly the fingers of the soldier who was holding him. The soldier quickly let go.
“There’s no time for that!” the spaceman yelled back at the officer. “We must get to the ramparts to see what is going to happen!”
With that, they sprinted away to the elevator, the officer and twenty confused soldiers following close behind.
The silver canister was just coming down from its extra-steep trajectory when this small party reached the top of the battlements.
They watched as the object rocketed through the murk of battle and landed about a thousand feet in front of the xarcus.
That’s when the most ungodly noise of all thundered across the devastated plain. It was the combination of a very loud explosion and an incredibly high-pitched screech. Suddenly the air was thick with the stink of metal grinding against metal. Electrical charges began dotting the smoky sky.
The screeching got louder and louder, for more than two minutes, until it finally exploded into one loud bang!
And then suddenly the ground wasn’t rumbling anymore. The air was no longer filled with the awful sound of the huge saw turning. In fact, if it was possible, a strange peace came over the battlefield.
Soldiers on both sides stopped firing their weapons. For a few precious seconds, something had happened here that had not happened in a very long time: It got quiet.
All eyes turned past the battle in the trenches, back over Bloody Water and across another two miles of the devastated battlefield to the xarcus.
That’s when it became apparent what had caused the ungodly noise: Simply put, someone inside the supertank had stepped on the brakes— hard—and the gigantic armored mover had slowly screeched to a most violent stop. Fires broke out beneath its enormous tracks. Smoke began billowing from its rear end. The saw was just spinning freely now, slowing down with every turn.
The two spacemen literally jumped for joy. They were shaking hands and congratulating themselves profusely. It came together slowly for the officer, but then it finally dawned on him what had happened.
The xarcus had been stopped.
But how?
“Don’t you get it, man?” one of the spacemen yelled at him. “Someone inside saw that canister coming and thought it was another superbomb! They couldn’t have stalled that thing quicker if they’d tried…”
The officer just stared back at them. “You mean… this was all… a bluff?”
But the spacemen were ignoring the officer by now and talking to each other. “We’ve got to figure it will take them at least a half hour to get that bastard up and running again.”
“Judging from the sound of all that grinding metal, I’d say more like an hour or more…”
“But that means we haven’t a moment to lose!”
That’s when the officer finally snapped. He pulled out his ray gun and pointed it the spacemen.
“Now you tell me,” he said through clenched teeth, “who the hell are you people?”
The spacemen smiled again, and the shorter of the two stepped forward.
“My apologies, sir,” he said. “My name is Erx. My friend here is Berx…”
But the officer was still stumped. “What I mean is,” he said with no little fluster, “what the hell are you doing here?”
At that moment the red, white, and blue flying machine roared over their heads and went into a hover mode above the city square.