“Aye,” growled the pirate. The flyer changed position in the twinkling of an eye. “That better?”
“Wait… yes! I’ve just about got her. Have to do this right the first time. Only have one blast at full zap…”
“Merde alors.” Madame whispered.
The old woman staggered away from Richard to crash against the right bulkheads. Fists pressed to her temples, she began to scream. Claude had never heard such a sound from a human throat, such a distillation of anguish, horror, and despair.
At the same moment, something flashed past the flight deck port. It glowed neon-red and was shaped like a mounted knight.
“Oh, God,” said Richard flatly. Madame’s screams cut off and she fell senseless to the deck.
“How many?” asked Claude. He tried to get a grip on himself, tried to steady the heavy Spear on target, prayed that his damned old body wouldn’t betray him at this last extremity. They had almost done it! Almost…
“I make it twenty-two.” Richard’s calm voice seemed to come from a considerable distance. “The whole Round Table circling us like Sioux around a wagon train. All scarlet except the leader, and I’d put his spectral class somewhere in the BO range, look out!”
One of the figures, the blue-white one, soared down and took a position immediately below the flyer. He drew his glassy sword and thrust it upward. Three Roman-candle globes of ball lightning left the tip and soared rather slowly toward the open belly hatch. Claude dodged, pulling the Spear out of the way, and the things flew into the aircraft, where they began caroming off the panels and decking, hissing and emitting a fearful smell of ozone.
“Shoot!” shrieked Richard. “For God’s sake, shoot!”
Claude took one deep breath. He said, “Steady, son,” and aimed, depressing the fifth stud of the Spear of Lugonn just as the little blue lights centered themselves in the weapon’s sight.
An emerald bar jabbed once at the spangled earth. Where it struck, the rock went white, yellow, orange, roiling crimson like a flame-armed starfish. Claude fell sideways and the Spear clanged to the deck. The belly hatch started to close.
Lightning balls bounced and crackled. The old man felt one of them strike him in the back, rolling up his spine from buttocks to the base of his neck, burning all the way. The interior of the flyer was filled with smoke and a smell of burnt flesh and fabric. There were sounds, too, Claude discovered, as he studied the scene from afar, a sizzle as the remaining two energy balls sought their targets, curses and then a thin scream from Richard, a whimpering sob from Angélique as she tried to creep toward him over the smeared deck, someone breathing in and out in harsh, rhythmic persistence.
“Get it away from me!” a frantic voice cried. “I can’t see to land! Ah, dammit, no!”
A jarring crash and a slow tilt to one side. Claude felt a breeze (amazing the way it seared his back) and the hatch opened. A peculiarly angled surface of grassy ground, gray and dim in the first light of morning. Richard sobbing and cursing. Angélique making no sound. Voices shouting. Heads poking up through the hatch, again at that odd angle. Wails from that silly youngster. Old Man Kawai. Amerie’s familiar tones: “Go easy. Go easy.” Felice spitting obscenities when somebody said she was going to get her armor all messed up.
“Put himover my shoulder. I can carry him. Stop your wiggling, Claude. Silly old fart! Now I’m going to have to walk all the way to the war.”
He laughed. Poor Felice. And then his face was upside down among her green skirts and he was jouncing up and down and he screamed. But after a little bit the movement stopped, and they laid him on his stomach and something touched his temple, making the pain and the rest of it grow muzzy.
He said. “Angélique? Richard?”
Unseen, Amerie replied, “They’ll recover. You all will. You did it, Claude. Sleep now.” Well, how about that? And for a moment he saw the fiery starfish again, but with crimson and gold limbs expanding, branching out among the hapless helpless firefly patterns of Finiah streets in the instant before the hatch of the flyer slammed shut. How about that… and if the lava kept oozing out of the old Kaiserstuhl volcano for even a little while, it was going to be a long time before they mined any more barium in the regions around there.
“Don’t worry about it, Claude,” Felice said.
And so he stopped.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Half-dozing in the dead hour before dawn, Moe Marshak and the other human troops on duty in Finiah had mistaken the first blast of the photon weapon for a lightning stroke. The thin green beam had lanced out of the stars, barely missing the Rhineside wall that the gray-torc garrison manned and demolishing an adjacent mess hall inside the compound. Marshak was still gaping at the flames consuming the wreckage when Claude’s second shot struck the Number Ten bastion squarely, breaching the fortification not a dozen meters from Marshak’s station. Great blocks of granite flew in all directions and the air boiled with smoke and dust. Oil tubs that held the watch fires spilled in the concussion and sent blazing rivulets racing down the cracked walkway.
When Marshak was able to get a grip on himself, he rushed to look through one of the embrasures. There in the fog-blurred waters below were the boats.
“Alert!” he shouted aloud; and then his mind sent the alarm on the declamatory mode, amplified by his gray torc.
Manhak: Invasion viaRhine! Wallbreach StationTen!
Captal Wag: Howthehellmany be there Moe? Howmany boats?
Manhak: Wholefuckin’ river FULL!! Eightyhundred who can count damnfog bastards everywhere Firvulagboats but letmesee yes! LOWLIVES TOO! Repeat Lowlives + Foe invading. Landings! Rocks swarming damnfuckers penetrating breach estimate hole maybeninemeters max.
Comet Formby: All troopsofwatch to StationTen. General alert RhineGarrison to arms. Dutyobservers scan/report Defensiveunits to wallstations… CANCELCANCELCANCEL! Defensiveunits to garrisoncompound! Invader penetration compound!
Commander Seaborg: Lord Velteyn. Alert. Firvulag and human invasion force has penetrated the city fortifications at breached Number Ten Station. Countering.
Lord Velteyn of Finiah: Kinfolk arise and defend! Flyers to saddle! Na bardito! Na bardito taynel o pogekdne!
Chief Burke and Uwe Guldenzopf led the mob of Vosges Lowlives and outland volunteers up the steep rampart and across the tumbled nibble of the breakthrough. Vitredur arrows and crossbow bolts rained down from the battlements, but until the defenders could redeploy at ground level, the invaders would have a brief advantage. As bad luck would have it, the breach was within the grounds of the principal Finiah garrison. In addition to the confusion caused by the mess hall conflagration, which was spreading to adjoining structures, a chaliko stable had been broken open by falling debris and numbers of the great animals were loose.
Three soldiers ran from the guardhouse at the compound gate. “Take ’em,” yelled Burke, and howling desperados fell upon the little force and cut it to pieces. “Out of here! Into the city streets! and get this gate off the hinges!”
Troops were pouring from the barracks, some with their armor only half strapped on. Free-for-all clashes erupted everywhere in the murk as invaders scrambled through the broken wall while the human minions of the Tanu strove to press them back. The irregulars trying to unhinge the gates were attacked and overwhelmed, and soldiers swung the heavy metal grille shut, locking it.