Three Leapers appeared in my path. I burned the second, caught the leader with the Bug-killer, and burned the third in mid-air. A spring-javelin flashed past me and out of sight behind a bush. As I passed it, I saw a Leaper that had been waiting in hiding pinned and writhing.
One appeared a scant two meters in front of me, seeming to pop out of the ground. I burned it and leaped over the body. My leap carried me into an unseen dip, and into the midst of three more. I burned one and clubbed another out of the air in front of me with the butt of the whip, but the third sank its jaws into my blaster arm and clung there. I tried to keep running and pull my arm free, but was slowly being dragged to a halt when Kor appeared, smashing the Leaper's head from behind with her armored fist while severing its jaws with her wedge-sword. It was painful, but I managed to twist the burner around and catch another that was crawling over the edge of the dip.
Then we were free and running again. The cliff face was only a few more meters ahead, but we could see a group of two Leapers waiting there for us. The pack was almost upon us now.
"Kor! Clear the cliff, Zur, with me...turn!"
My second-in-command and I whirled and faced the charging pack as Kor continued on. We backed slowly toward the cliff as we fought, confident that Kor would have disposed of the last two by the time we got there.
"Clear, Commander!"
We dashed the last two meters and turned. With Zur on my left, Kor on my right, and a cliff at my back, I lowered my head and hissed in the face of the Enemy.
For a moment they hesitated, then surged forward in a wave. We weren't running now, and the bodies began to stack around us.
I draped the Bug-killer over my shoulder as I burned a Leaper, opened a spring-javelin and pinned a second, then caught a third as I snatched the Bug-killer from my shoulder again. I saw one go down to one of Zur's acid darts and another to one of Kor's thrown steel balls as I took two more with the Bug-killer.
"Caught!" came Zur's calm voice from my left.
I turned and saw him struggling. in a tug of war with a Leaper for his alter-mace as he tried to keep two others at bay with his dart-thrower.
"Covered!" I called as I burned the Leaper that was clinging to his mace.
Suddenly I felt jaws clamp on my calf. A Leaper I thought dead had inched forward and attached itself to my leg. I started to burn it, but had to avert my shot to pick another target out of mid-air. Before I could recover, the Leaper that had my leg rolled, causing me to fall and lose my balance.
"Caught!" I said.
"Covered!" came a voice, and Kor was there. She chopped at the Leaper with her wedge-sword. Straightening quickly, she backhanded another out of the air as I shot between her legs to burn a third, which was creeping into her vacated position.
I forced myself to my feet as the battle continued.
The hand-burner finally gave out, leaving me barely enough time to snatch and open a spring-javelin and bat a leaping Enemy to one side. A throw to pin it, and I was ready again, Bug-killer in one hand and wedge-sword in the other.
There was a lull in the action as the Enemy fell back. I was both tired and puzzled. Either I had completely lost my feel for combat, or there were more Leapers than I had originally counted. I scanned the terrain.
There was another small pack of Leapers emerging from the tree line and still another pack visible in the distant grassland. All were heading in our direction. Apparently either Leaper communication or the sound of our battle was drawing reinforcements into the area.
"Weapons status check," I beamed.
"Eight...no...seven acid darts left," Zur corrected himself as he picked off another Leaper that was starting to creep close.
I noticed he was bleeding steadily from an ugly gash on his upper arm, and suddenly realized all three of us were suffering wounds. My calf wound began to throb, but I ignored it, opening a spring-javelin to meet a Leaper who was crouching to attack.
Before I could throw, the beam of a hand-burner darted from the crest of the cliff behind us, finishing the Leaper and in rapid succession several others. The ranks of Enemy surrounding us gave ground as the beam lanced out again and again.
I didn't have to look. It was Ssah.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The reappearance of the Empire fleets did not come as a surprise. We had spotted their scout flyers with increasing regularity and realized invasion was imminent. Accordingly, we began to make our preparations.
Our flyers were light enough to be carried easily by two, but that was on level ground. Unfortunately, they were not designed for a takeoff, but rather required a drop or launch to become airborne. As such, it was necessary to carry or hoist them to a higher level of the cavern. By the time our task was complete and five flyers were balanced precariously on the lip of a ledge near the ceiling of the cavern, I had had more than one occasion to question the wisdom of my decision to use the flyers again.
It was our speculation that all or part of the force would be surface troops, roaming the grasslands on foot, hunting the Leaper packs. It would be an easy matter to join up with these forces without freeing our flyers. Still, I reasoned that we could be of greater service acting as air cover for the troops. The Wasps had long since died out, and I wanted to take advantage of the air supremacy that we had fought so hard for. Then again, there was always the chance our speculations would turn out to be wrong. I had no desire to be stranded here again because we had been too lazy to arrange our own transport.
Another major portion of our time was occupied in releasing the warm-bloods we had kept penned for food. This turned out to be a greater task than we had originally planned. We had known it would be necessary to take them some distance from the cavern before releasing them to avoid luring Leapers into the area with a sudden abundance of game. What we had not counted on was the warm-bloods' reluctance to depart. Apparently they preferred to be penned and fed to having to wander and forage, and resented our attempts to return them to their natural situation. They persisted in attempting to follow us back to the cavern, even when pelted with rocks. In fact, some of them were so stubborn that they would hide themselves and attempt to follow at a distance unnoticed. They were quite crafty at this tactic, and it was not uncommon for a Tzen on a release assignment to arrive back at the cavern with more warm-bloods than he had left with.
They became such a nuisance that we seriously discussed the possibility of killing them, a rare solution for a race such as ourselves, which only kills for food or defense and occasionally for honor. We considered the possibility and discarded it. We were Tzen. We did not kill simply because something annoyed us. Another solution would have to be found.
Before the elusive solution was discovered, the fleet arrived.
I was guarding the entrance at the time of their arrival. I had never viewed one of our attacks from the defender's viewpoint before and was impressed by its suddenness. One moment the view was clear and serene, and the next the air was filled with flyers. There was no warning, no opportunity to watch the formations approach; they were suddenly there, crowding the sky with their numbers.
There were swarms of the single flyers such as we used, but my attention was held by the huge flyers of a design unfamiliar to me. As I viewed them, I noticed streams of what looked like clear balls being dropped as they swooped low over the grasslands. Curiosity made me force-focus my eyes on these balls as they fell. The increased magnification of force-focus revealed a Tzen Warrior encased in each ball as it plunged downward. Apparently the ball was composed of a substance not unlike the gel-cushion of our fliers, and this was a new method of dropping surface teams.