Still, if he survived, a male with wounds like those, the Baron would have more power than any male in Ochoan history and a hell of a lot more than his uncle the King.
Curiously, Nakitti realized it didn’t matter to her how much power he’d gain. He’d been so handsome; now there were nicks on that gorgeous head from ricochets, he might never walk again, and he also might never fly, if he even got the chance, since he could die from loss of blood or infection. If she could take on those injuries and leave him whole, she would gladly surrender her position, go back to that hole in the wall and live out her life in obscurity with some low slob.
The feeling, the honest devotion, surprised, even shocked, her, and would certainly have shocked and surprised anyone who knew her. Hell, maybe it was becoming female or something, she thought; but it was the Ochoan women who did the fighting, and they seemed far less sentimental than the men, and the Ghoman women were all back-stabbing cheats even worse than their men. No, it wasn’t that she was female or Ochoan.
Who’d have thought it, though? That she would find something she cared more about than her own life and fortune. It was utterly incredible.
What happened even back in Ochoa was of little concern to her right now. She was going to be right here for him no matter what, and, to hell with social rank and convention, she would never leave his side again.
Ochoa, at the Zone Gate
“Where are those supply troops, the diggers, and the reinforcements?” the General grumbled. “And what are so many of the zi’iaphods doing coming back empty and landing over there? We need to get set up here and we need to do it now!”
“Sir, we’ve just come from the empty ones returning here,” a colonel replied, “and things are bad. We know where most of the missing Ochoan troops were now. While we fought it out here, waves of them fell upon our ships, which had little air cover, shooting those damned rockets and dropping some kind of containers that exploded into the kind of flames that could not be put out, some kind of chemical fire. They took out our supply ships and troop ships, and ignored the battle cruisers and frigates entirely. We got a lot of them with gunfire, but, sir, they took out more than half our supplies and over ten thousand troops— and now the zi’iaphod pilots have nowhere to land except back here on the ground. They tried putting down inland, in areas with a fair amount of vegetation and food, with the idea of feeding and watering the zi’iaphods and perhaps gathering supplies to bring here, but every time they came down, Ochoans seemed to pop up as if out of the ground and throw fragmentation grenades and shoot mortars that rained down. The only secure place for them in any numbers was back here.”
“I don’t like this at all,” the General mumbled. “If they could do that, then they not only knew we were coming, they had to know our precise plan of battle. There’s treason in the air here! Treason! And these little bastards die like great warriors even though they have no tradition of it, and they just don’t quit! I don’t like it. I want everyone drawn in closer to the Gate here. Leave sentries all over the top, but bring all the forces here. I smell something very nasty here, and if we are in some kind of trap, the Gate may be our only way of escape. Move!
Within the clouds that did not seem to diminish all day, much to their great joy, Ochoan scouts occasionally peaked out for brief comprehensive surveys of the crater interior. For much of the day, things had gone in mop-up fashion pretty much as expected, and having the massed big bugs grounded there was an unexpected bonus. Who would have thought that even the common fishers would rise up with whatever they could get, even weapons taken off dead enemies, and fight like this?
Throughout all the land the word of the battle and of a thousand little battles spread from lowest to highest, shaming the ones who had not taken part into action themselves and filling the rest with a national and racial pride unknown in any remembered generation.
Many thousands outside of and ignorant of the grand design died needlessly but no less heroically, and no less selflessly.
Through the night they watched. Through the night small bands threw torches onto the backs of giant slugs, and bands of raiders swooped down on Jerminian beetles and spread burning fish oil and worse on them as they hunkered down. It was a horrible night for the invaders, many of whom killed more of each other than the Ochoans had.
Worse for them, inside the crater the attackers were slaughtering many of the giant transport bugs just to feed the almost five thousand troops now inside the barren region, and because the huge creatures themselves were becoming impossible to control. Creatures that size had to eat twice their own weight every day. The ships that had fed them all the way there were empty or at the bottom or both; the countryside was alive with death in the night.
In the morning the Jerminian commander found himself and his surviving troops surrounded by organized armed forces. Ochoans—thousands of them!—now commanded the heights, having cheerfully dispatched all the sentries above and then just as happily sent reassurances by semaphore throughout the night that all was well. Ochoans had come from other islands, from caves and from forests where they normally did not go. They came with as much guns and ammo and other weapons as they could manage. They were running low, it was true; it was doubtful they could sustain an offensive for long. On the other hand, neither could the invaders below.
“Look at them!” the Grand Duchess said, hovering above her troops. “Yesterday they invaded our land, killed our people, and reveled in their victory! Now we will make certain they cannot get harnessed up, loaded, and off. The bugs need a fair amount of space to take off, remember. Aim at the drivers and anybody else around. Without them, the things are just dumb animals. Everyone else, let’s start teaching them what we mean by ‘air superiority’! They overreached themselves when they came to Ochoa! Let us teach them not to come back!”
There were shouts of blood lust and national pride, and almost spontaneously the group that could hear her began singing the anthem, which was picked up by the next closest troops until, almost as if it had been planned, it ringed the crater.
And when it was over, they began their attack.
Now it was the enemy who needed reinforcements, and because a few of the zi’iaphods were kept ready just in case, one or two got away before their area was hit, pinning down the support troops and pilots there. The mission was to get those special forces away from the castles, which were at the moment no longer vital, and bring them in before the center force was annihilated. Without the center, the Ochoans could continue to be rearmed and resupplied, battle plans could be analyzed and passed back and forth to ground and air commanders, the Ochoan wounded would get the best medical care, and the occupation would be prone to continual guerrilla warfare.
They held the center or they lost.
The special teams were having their own problems, though. These were mostly Quacksans, the larger but slower sluglike creatures. They depended as much on their much-vaunted ability to mesmerize any enemy and make it walk right to them, but even though they had surreptitiously tested the ability long ago and counted the Ochoans as vulnerable, it hadn’t worked. The Ochoan soldiers in defensive positions above the castles had been wearing goggles and earmuffs that made them impervious to the power. On the other hand, the Quacksans were the perfect ground troops for napalm, and they had poor night vision and no air cover.
There wasn’t much left of the Quacksans by the time the big bugs got to them, and the ones who did get on and load up found themselves under attack from the air.